Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on Conformity to God's Will

It is a great satisfaction for me to report that, fourteen years from the foundation of the Society, its organization, its purpose―particularly sacerdotal―of forming priests shaped in the spirit of Our Lord, in the spirit of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass―is finding its realization in the ministry, in the practice of the priestly life that you lead now, (…) which shows also your concern to keep up and to perfect your desire for holiness. This is our outstanding importance.

You see, I think that if difficulties have arisen, which we know, in the priesthood, and in the sphere of secular priests in particular, since the Council, and these difficulties have been a painful verification of something that was lacking in the formation of these priests, it is without doubt that they had lost at the same time the true notion of the priesthood in which they were clothed, and that they had not taken the means of keeping this desire to maintain their faith and their fervor…

(…)

…And then it is another great trial that we all suffer: the trial of the Church, because we finally have to recognize it, the exterior situation and in a certain way the juridical situation (at last juridical in the sense of purely literal law), well, now it is not normal, that is true. Thus we are not in a normal relation with the bishops, with the priests who are around us and who also have an apostolate―what apostolate?―but in the end, they are priests who are still in the parishes; the relations with them are obviously not the relations, which we normally should have had in the holy Church. So, no normal relations with the bishops, no normal relations with the priests who are around us, no normal relations with men religious or sisters, with a good part of the faithful, with Rome itself. It is an appalling, horrible trial, because it is abnormal. But the anomaly does not come from us. It is from them that it comes, from all those who have not followed the Tradition of the Church, who have themselves put themselves permanently outside all legality, outside the Faith, yes―even outside the Faith!

But however it may be, we are convinced of this, it is they who are wrong, who have changed course, who have broken with the Tradition of the Church, who have rushed into novelties, we are convinced of this. That is why we do not rejoin them and why we cannot work with them; we cannot collaborate with the people who depart from the spirit of the Church, from the Tradition of the Church. But that puts us in a very critical situation of breaking with that mass of Church people who are departing from the Tradition of the Church. That makes thus for an unlikely situation, assuredly unbelievable, that is at times for us a cause for sorrow, for a desire to see the Church rediscover her way, that is to say, her Tradition―at least not the Church, but the people of the Church―for a desire that the Church not be torn anymore as it is right now, and finally that her passion in some way end.

Source: Archbishop Lefebvre gave this address to the priests of the French District on December 13, 1984.

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Excerpt from "The Restoration of Christian Culture"

I spent this weekend reading the majority of John Senior's fantastic work The Restoration of Christian Culture. I can not recommend it highly enough to my readers.  I'd like to share some of the passages from the book as well as some brief thoughts.

Quoting from John Senior's fantastic work The Restoration of Christian Culture, "Work is a physical necessity; if you don't work you don't eat.  Prayer is a necessity of obligation; if you don't pray you will not enter the Kingdom.  Prayer is a duty, an office; it is free, voluntary payment of the debt we owe to God for existence and grace.  The Latin word for duty is officium, and the perfect prayer of the Church is its Divine Office; St. Benedict call it the opus Dei, the work of God" (60).

John Senior continues, "I have cited the Latin for the meaning of many words not for the pretense of learning, but because their meaning is Latin.  Latin is the language of the Roman Catholic Church; you can repudiate the tradition and overthrow the Church; but you cannot have the tradition and the Church without its language.  And though the Second Vatican Council permitted the substitution of vernacular liturgies where pastoral reasons suggested their usefulness, it commanded that the Latin be preserved.  The Catholic Faith is so intimately bound to the two thousand years of Latin prayers any attempt to live the Catholic life without them will result in its attrition and ultimate apostasy - which we have witnessed even in the few years of the vernacular experiment.  We must return to the Faith of our fathers by way of prayer of our fathers" (60 - 61).

John Senior's works are beautifully said and express an absolute reality - the Church is timeless; she is outside of time.  Only by restoring true Christian culture, as Senior explains throughout his book, will Christ again reign in our hearts, our homes, and our families.  Christ must reign.  And how can we bring about the reign of Christ without frequent prayer?  Prayer is necessary.  It is essential for the spiritual life.  A life spent in good works of charity that has no prayer is a life built on bad soil.  And no soul whose life is built in bad soil can inherit everlasting life.

You might be concerned and ask "how many hours of prayer must I perform daily?"  Quoting again from Senior on the topic, "The strictly cloistered monk and nun lead that life in the highest degree, but each of us in his station must pay his due.  There are three degrees of prayer: The first, of the consecrated religious, is total.  They pray always, according to the counsel of Our Lord.  Their whole life is the Divine Office, Mass, spiritual reading, mental prayer... They pray eight hours, sleep eight hours and divine the other eight between physical work and recreation... The third degree is for those in the married state (or single life) who offer a tithe of their time for prayer - about two and a half hours per day - with eight hours for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining five and a half for recreation with the family" (62-63).

Make an effort - an obligation - pray the Divine Office and other pious devotions for 2 and a half hours each day.  And no prayer is greater than the Mass.  If possible, attend Holy Mass daily.  We quote one final time from Senior who said, "Whatever we do in the political and social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ Himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloodly manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary.  What is Christian Culture?  It is essentially the Mass" (16-17).

To conclude with his words on our culture: "Our Lord explains in the Parable of the Sower that the seed of His love will only grow in a certain soil - and that is the soil of Christian Culture, which is the work of music in the wide sense, including as well as tunes that are sung, art, literature, games, architecture - all so many instruments in the orchestra which plays day and night the music of lovers; and if it is disordered, then the love of Christ will not grow.  It is an obvious fact that here in the United States now, the Devil has seized these instruments to play a danse macabre, a dance of death, especially through what we call the "media," the film, television, radio, record, book, magazine and newspaper industries.  The restoration of culture, spiritually, morally, physically, demands the cultivation of the soil in which the love of Christ can grow, and that means we must, as they say, rethink priorities" (21).

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St. Ambrose on the Blessed Virgin Mary

The first thing that inspires enthusiasm in learning is the greatness of the teacher. Who is greater than the Mother of God? Who is more glorious than the one whom Glory itself chose? Who is more chaste than the one who bore a body without contact with another body?

For why should I mention her other virtues? She was a virgin not only in body but also in mind. No guile stained her sincerity. She was humble in heart, serious in speech, prudent in mind, sparing of words, studious in reading. She put her hope not in riches but in the prayer of the poor. There was nothing gloomy in her eyes, nothing forward in her words, nothing undignified in her acts. There was not a foolish movement, not an unrestrained step. She was never irritable.

In this way her outward appearance itself became the image of her soul, the representation of what is approved. We ought to be able to recognize a well-ordered house on the very threshold: it should show at the very first entrance that there is no darkness hidden inside it. In the same way our soul, hindered by no bodily restraints, should shine forth like a lamp placed inside.

Source: St. Ambrose, Three Books on Virgins

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