He is risen !

N° 227 – December 2021

Director : Frère Bruno Bonnet-Eymard

The Sauvé Report: our bishops
point accusing fingers at our priests!

The December 2021 News conference

By Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary

“When one of you has a grievance against a brother, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?” Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians with indignation.●

Only one bishop abided by the words of the Apostle, Bishop Marc Aillet of Bayonne. He refused to take part in the consultation process. He saved the honour of Holy Church, whose minister he is, as “a man who is wise enough to decide between members of the brotherhood,” instead of going to law, “brother against brother, and that before unbelievers.”●

Instead of solving his problems in private, since the Church can police herself, Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort fell to his knees to ask the World for forgiveness!

He places his reliance on a “report” drawn up without scrutiny and refuses to challenge it in its most implausible statistics. Furthermore, he proposes compensation, first a lump sum and then, at Sauvé’s behest, on a case-by-case basis. Thus, bound hand and foot, he hands himself over to the world that will deliver the Church to the courts for endless litigations. Jesus, Who is but one with His Church, is crucified a second time by His own ministers!

Moreover, he himself is taken to task by Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Lille: “The writings of Matthew end with ‘whoever would be great among you must be your servant.’ This is an (unfortunate) word of the Lord” (!) because “one can also hide behind this position to make oneself indispensable and acquire power.”

Clericalism is the enemy! It is no longer Gambetta, the anticlerical politician who proclaims this, but the archbishop of Strasbourg, Luc Ravel: “There are profound factors that are connected to the system. A colloquium organised at the University of Strasbourg recently focused on clericalism. It is certain that the Gospel does not contribute to sexual abuse.” Really! So Ravel is completely at odds with Ulrich! But “we should get rid of the scum, the masks (sic!) that have been put on the priesthood in particular.” What, for example? Well!

“One of the factors peculiar to the Catholic Church is the preeminent social place occupied by the clergy in the West for several centuries. Where the clergy has been less powerful (since the French Revolution...), exercising less control (since the separation of Church and State), fewer in number (since the Second Vatican Council...), there is less abuse.” Liar!

The colloquium’s conclusion: “It is necessary to abandon certain visions of the Church that are no longer appropriate today, and risk being distorted: in particular the idea of the Church as a perfect society.” Indeed! The spectacle of our French Conference of Bishops offers a ‘vision’ that would dissuade us forever!

Not that Bishop Ravel is by any manner of means anticlerical! “It is necessary,” according to him, “to distinguish between the clericalism denounced by Pope Francis, which is internal to the Church, and the clericalism denounced by the anticlericals, which concerns the external power of the Church.” Do you understand the difference? No? Here is the explanation: “Internal clericalism is one of the roots of sexual abuse; the priesthood is not the problem, but the clericalism that has pervaded the priesthood.”

Archbishop Pontier, President Emeritus of the French Conference of Bishops, now Apostolic Administrator of Paris: “France seems to me less affected than other European countries by this phenomenon (sic!).” Do you know why? You will never guess!

“I believe that this can be partially explained by the secularism in the beginning of the 20^th century, which led to the departure of several congregations and the closure of large institutions for children that still exist in other countries. Secularism has made us more humble and realistic.” Archbishop Pontier’s humility is indeed confounding: “We probably fell off our pedestal a little earlier than elsewhere. The status of the French priest and bishop seems to me quite different from that of neighbouring countries.” He said this at the very moment when he was placing himself on the pedestal of the episcopal see of Paris!

Archbishop Pontier had deigned to write to me to ask me questions. I answered him. I have not received the slightest reply from him, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. What humility! Indeed, it is an admission of the fact that Father de Nantes was so right that Archbishop Pontier has nothing to respond to his criticisms of the Second Vatican Council and the ‘Reformation of the Church.’

The prize goes to Gérard Defois, Archbishop Emeritus of Lille, for proving Father de Nantes right: “I think that there has also been, in the post-war clergy (of which Father de Nantes is an emblematic example), a crisis of vocations certainly, but also a crisis of integration into society. In the rural world, the parish priest was, along with the mayor and the teacher, a personality who had prestige. Then came les Trente Glorieuses, and an awareness of the fact that the world was going to be formed without them, that being a priest was a road to nowhere.” Do you know why? Listen:

“We have moved from a religion of belonging – as it was with the Romans – to a religion of adherence and choice. Christendom is a 19^th century legend; it never existed. What existed was a model of society, with the monasteries that acted as employment centres! In the diocese of Sens, 20% of the land was farmed by monks; the clerics were employed by monks; the clerics were employed by the local lord. At the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, it was often the sons of the farmers who supplied the abbey, who were recruited to say Mass to these ladies [the nuns!], who are said to have run the monastery. It was a way for them to receive an education. The priesthood was sought after.”

This archiepiscopal declaration testifies to an abysmal ignorance of the very nature of the Church and her two-thousand-year history! The worst is yet to come. Mr. Olivier Bobineau, former seminarian, and Father Joseph Merlet made it into a book in 2017: Le sacré incestueux. Les prêtres pédophiles. Bobineau explains: One factor “that we have pinpointed is the judicial autonomy of Rome. When we had the idea for our research, this autonomy was still absolute. Yet any closed, idealised, sacralised system is a danger. Sexual and financial excesses become possible, as Emeritus Archbishop Rouet of Poitiers, says.” A disreputable reference, I assure you!

Another factor “is the sacredness of the priest’s body which, separated from society, has power over other human organisms, secular bodies. This accentuates the asymmetry of power between the priest and his victim [sic!]. We have devoted a chapter of our book to the sacred body of the priest. Since the 4^th century, the Church has organised herself with an ecclesial body functioning like a tribe. The Council of Trent developed a strategy to recruit and control priests, who had to take care of their bodies and souls. Hence the official expression of ecclesial body.” Sic! Do you understand? “Separation from the layman also involves housing, clothing, attitudes, ways of travelling, etc. It is understandable that the social body of the priest becomes a reference for judging what is lawful or not in society, because it participates in the ordering of the divine in the human. Its function is to impose a social system on a disordered experience.”

This former seminarian is a doctor of the Church: “The originality of Christianity is the incarnation: the body symbolises power from above. The Council of Chalcedon, in 451, has gone down in history as the one that definitively established this dimension of the incarnation, Christ being fully man and fully God, from which follows the existence of the sacred body of the priest and of a body in the process of sacralisation: that of the seminarian.” We must understand that Olivier Bobineau, a former seminarian, is speaking from experience. Now, to conclude his testimony as a son of the Church, an unnatural and apostate son:

“To come back to the ascendancy exercised by the priest, two elements seem to us to be particularly significant. In the first place, one can only be struck by the extent of the Catholic lexical field of fatherhood. It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church constantly refers to the pater familias. Starting with the Pope [and the Good God! Father, Son and Holy Spirit!], but also the Desert Fathers, the Council Fathers, abbot refers to abba – that is, the father – monsignor, etc. It is a juridically conceived paternity, as in the social conception of the family [...]. Hence the development of this whole lexical field from the 4^th century, with even redundancies such as ‘father – abbot,’ up to the title of ‘vicar of Christ’ adopted in 985 [and abolished by Pope Francis].

“Meanwhile, Vatican II has rehabilitated the term father for bishops.”

I interrupt this blasphemous Freudian delirium which, under the obvious influence of Freud, insults our Heavenly Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, second Person of the Holy Trinity, Son of God made man. I must remind you that our Founder, Father de Nantes, who wanted to be “a counterpoison to Freud” to deliver us from him, had foreseen that [the Council’s two decrees profiling] “the new Vatican II type of priest” announced, prepared, and would irremediably cause the disappearance of the clergy and the appearance of the scandals of such unprecedented magnitude that are defiling it.

As Father de Nantes explained, “the Council was obsessed by two preoccupations in matters of ecclesiastical situations and powers. The promotion of the episcopate, considered as the priestly supreme Order, directly inherited from the Apostles and constituting as a result a sovereign College (with the Pope!). And the promotion of the laity, considered as before all else, ‘People of God’ endowed with a threefold prophetic, priestly and royal charism by virtue of its baptism, and exercising its Priesthood in the world by means of a veritable irreplaceable cult and mission.

“Priests would only be mentioned in passing, in order to make them underlings of the bishops.● One fine day, however, it became obvious that nothing could be done without them. ‘Knowing very well that the desired renewal of the whole Church depends to a great extent on a priestly ministry animated by the Spirit of Christ,’ the Council decided to take interest in the ‘presbyterate’ also. It was important to make the priests participants – and enthusiastic ones! – in this ‘renewal’ for which they were to be the indispensable drudges. Thus, in October 1964, work was urgently undertaken to invent some promising transformation of this remnant of the priesthood that remained for the ‘second-rate priests.’ ‘Vatican II has already sufficiently dealt with the Sacrament of Holy Orders in the text on the episcopate; and it has already broached the matter of the priesthood with regards to the priesthood of the faithful.”● The admission was ingenuous, the Council also reinvented the diaconate. What remnant could be found for the presbyterate?

“Two conciliar decrees would have it for their object. Presbyterorum Ordinis, deals with the Magisterium and the Life of Priests (thus the abbreviation mlp), and Optatam Totius, with Priestly Training (pt). The lyrical commentaries made on these texts by their Excellences Marty and Guyot can be read with sad irony (Éditions du Centurion). Alas! They have been contradicted by the facts. As for Volume 68 of Unam Sanctam (us), it is absolutely remarkable. It is hard to explain how so much science and intelligence can combine with such total aberration, the sanction of which is printed in the fact of a complete bankruptcy of all these chimerical views. At least the good faith of these experts seems intact. It is moving, but what misfortune!

“After the upheaval of the Lutheran Reformation, the Church of the Council of Trent, known as the Church of the Counter-Reformation, shone brilliantly with holiness and sent her missionaries to conquer the whole world because she was the Church of the Eucharist. Against the Protestant negations, she extolled the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as her centre and spiritual wellspring. She accordingly honoured the priest, who is the man of the Mass. Preaching and the forgiving of sins, all pastoral works and the apostolate led back to the foot of the altar for the salvation of souls and the praise of God. This was the whole of religion, without anything else being neglected, which Congar was honest enough to admit (237).

“Then occurred the New Reformation, eager for change and desirous of getting back in touch with the former, through ecumenism. Its ambition was to invent a ‘new type of priest.’ Theologians set to work, while numerous agitators created a psychosis of dissatisfaction within the clergy. They were able to say in the Council that priests had had their fill of a spirituality of monks, entirely centred on the Altar and the confessional, of a ministry shut up in the church and absorbed by the functions of worship. Like Monsieur Seguin’s goat in its pen, the priest heard many voices that incited him to break his ties and take the plunge, free in the wild mountain!

“Once Cardinal Marty understood well what the theologians had invented, he considered it inspired, and divine. ‘Under the direction of the Spirit, the way of the future has been mapped out: the main points of reference are in place.’ (12) Well, just what is it? Something new, totally new, a doctrine that ‘corresponds to the most fundamental aspirations of the priests of today.’

“‘This doctrine matured slowly and in its final draft, it was pregnant with the watershed that Vatican II brought forth in the Church in our time.’ Here it is: ‘The Decree on the Ministry and the Life of Priests tells us what the true object of pastoral activity is, its orientation is essentially missionary. It has a twofold theocentric and anthropocentric dimension; as a result, it requires being present among men. The decree tells us how the priest must nourish and unify his entire priestly life.’ (11)

“Under these cryptic terms, it was a revolution that was being announced in the ministry and the life of priests. It was a mutation of the very essence of the priesthood.

“Imprudently, the future cardinal added: ‘If, in response to the signs of the times, the Church is everywhere called on to renew herself, it is normal that priests wonder about themselves, that they sometimes experience a real uneasiness and that a good many habits (sic) be called into question by the present situation.’ Thus, the Council deliberately created a crisis. No need to fret, however, the Holy Spirit is there to straighten everything out: ‘The conclusion of Presbyterorum Ordinis expressly recognises it: adaptations are necessary for the priestly ministry. This Holy Spirit suggests and favours the growth of fitting adaptations in the ministry of priests, if it is true that the world today is entrusted to the loving ministry of the pastors of the Church.’ This, however, was false!

“What is this new type of priest? He is the opposite of the priest after God’s Heart who was defined at the Council of Trent and illustrated by so many saints! ‘What we did not dare to call an opposition,’ according to Congar (242), was indeed just that! This ‘Pastorate’ invented by Luther before having been rediscovered by Vatican II is the antithesis of the Catholic Priesthood! ‘Considering the extent and the urgency of the missionary task, it was taking a great risk to let it be believed that we were passing from one type of a priesthood to another, and it is quite understandable that many of the Fathers of Vatican II took fright when faced with a too apostolic or rather too “activist” conception of the priestly ministry.’ (219)

“Indeed! We went from worship to mission, from theocentrism to anthropocentrism, from the service of God to that of the world! One must read unam sanctam, pp. 217-218 on this subject.

“It, however, followed the general line of Vatican II: ‘The need for a schema on priests became evident, (belatedly), to the extent to which the awareness of Vatican II’s pastoral objective made headway. It took shape in the decision to devote a schema on relations between the Church and the world of today. It also manifested itself in another decision, that of inverting the order of the subjects dealt with in De Ecclesia and to have the chapter on the hierarchy preceded by a chapter devoted to the People of God.’ (129)

“We dealt with the grave consequences of this inversion●; we will soon examine the danger of this openness to the world. We already know enough to be able to understand the poor conditions in which the Council approached the Reform of the presbyterate: priests would be subject to laymen, and their zeal would no longer be directed towards God but towards the world… The scandals that overwhelm the Church today are the rotten fruit of this inversion.”●

That was written in 1972.● The current disaster, which is overwhelming the whole Church, from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, confirms the validity of this analysis: fifty years later, the mortal fruits of this “baneful Council” adjudicates the cause in favour of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Given the magnitude of the bankruptcy, will the reformers acknowledge their crime?

ERRARE HUMANUM EST, PERSEVERARE DIABOLICUM

We observe after reading these hearings of the Independent (?) Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (icsae), that the forty-five recommendations of the icsae are, for the most part, inspired by these hearings. The anticlerical spirit of the Sauvé report comes largely from the men of the Church themselves!

Their analyses are fairly homogeneous: clericalism, systemic problem, celibacy is not a problem, the ordination of women is not a solution; what is needed is to develop synodality, to give more power to the episcopal conferences! This is the language of Pope Francis. The source of all these answers obviously flows from his speeches.

The Sauvé Report and the other ‘reports’ drawn up in other countries have the obvious objective of establishing ‘scientifically,’ ‘statistically,’ that the principles of the Church of the past systematically produce perverts. All bishops and experts agree! The absolute priority is therefore to put an end to these principles and to irrevocably impose the principles of the Second Vatican Council, to repair the damage of the Council of Trent! Synodality, declergification, abolition of religious vows and direction of conscience, promotion of the laity in parishes, etc. This is precisely the whole ‘reform’ that Pope Francis wants to imprint on the Church with his synod on synodality. Inquiry reports can only confirm him in his position.

Yet it is obvious, it is self-evident that from the only ‘scientific,’ ‘sociological’ point of view, this Report is completely erroneous. If clericalisation is so dangerous, and if the promotion of the laity is the solution, how can we explain the 114,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors, 30% of the total, that were committed by lay people “in mission within the Church”?

Both Sister Véronique Margron and Father Joulain acknowledge that the communities where there are the most culprits are the new communities and not the traditional ones. There are therefore principles in traditional communities that act against vice.

The icsae was able to interview ten priests and a deacon who were guilty, and it notes: “With the exception of one priest belonging to a more traditional Catholicism, all of them defend a rather horizontal vision of their role, in a perspective quite characteristic of the post-Council period in France.”

In fact, it is clear that the error of the Sauvé Report comes from its ignorance of the nature of the Church, of her supernatural character. Since the dawn of man, it is obvious that a person who enjoys power – and even more so when it is spiritual – is tempted to fall into abuse of power and crime. There was no need to have bishops give witness to be aware of the fact. It is because of this that men established in every human institution restraints, inspectors, controllers, etc.

Here, the icsae, together with the experts, and the Pope, analyse the Church as though she were an ordinary human institution and they have ignored all her supernatural spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit, fidelity to the faith, the teaching of truth, purity, and humility, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the grace of the Sacraments, the correction of morals, the role of the established authorities to keep the faithful, “the People of God,” on a path of penance, none of this is taken into consideration, especially not by our bishops. And that is appalling! There is not a single reference to the Good God, to Our Lord, or to the Blessed Virgin.

It is obvious who is behind this, since this sin against the Holy Spirit is the mark of the diabolical hatred that drives them. This hatred is far from inferior to that of the enemies of the Church. They abhor the Council of Trent, the priest, image of Christ, Pius IX, and the institutions of the past.

The model they propose is that of the Second Vatican Council, nothing more. However, it is precisely the heretical, progressive principles of this model that are the cause of these scandals, because this is what has dried up the sources of grace.

How can the priesthood be restored in a Church that Our Lady of Fatima represented in confidence to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta as “a great city half in ruins”? To answer this vital question, it is necessary to reread Father de Nantes elaborating the “preparatory schemes” of a reparatory Vatican III Council:

1. THE FULLNESS OF THE PRIESTHOOD.

Our Father first recalls that the fullness of the Priesthood, source and model of all priesthood, is found in Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest and Supreme Pontiff of the New Covenant. This plenary Priesthood persists in the Person of the Sovereign Pontiff, Successor of Peter and Vicar of Jesus Christ. As it is written on the band of the dome of Saint Peter’s in Rome: Inde oritur unitas sacerdotii – from here the unity of the Priesthood is born. The fullness of Order and Jurisdiction, Consecration and universal Apostolic Mission, are found in the Pope. It would be good to begin with him, the Pope, rather than with the episcopal “College”, and still less with the “People of gods”… in the plural.

2. PRIESTLY MINISTRY.

The Priesthood is a consecration to God both for Worship and for the Apostolate, according to which God’s minister acts ‘in persona Christi’ on behalf of Christ and with His virtue, and is endowed with His priestly powers. The priest is thus ‘another Christ.’ Is that which is precisely true in sacramental Action also the case in all apostolic actions and to what extent? On what conditions? Vatican II extended this effective presence of Christ to every apostolic action of the priest – and of the bishop even more. This is a dangerous exaggeration. The facts have shown this only too well. Vatican III will have to specify the exact form of this effective Presence of Christ in the action of the priest.

3. PRIESTLY HIERARCHY.

The Episcopal Order perpetuates itself by episcopal consecration which is, if we believe the teaching of Vatican II, the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Thus, each bishop would receive his Powers directly from God. It seems to me that the bishops of Vatican II underscored this autonomous character of their Order too much, to the detriment of its subordination to the Sovereign Pontificate for determining their mission or jurisdiction.

The Presbyterial Order, long considered as the classical example and the perfection of the Priesthood, must indeed be established in subordination, as to the very ministry itself, to the Episcopal Order. Here also, Vatican II did well. Did it not exaggerate the subordination of priests, even those in religious orders to their bishop? Did it act well by formally refusing to concede that priests can, through the Sacrament, receive their dignity directly and immediately from Christ (215, note 26)? Experience has shown that this leaves them too vulnerable to episcopal whims. History proves how abusive and insane they can be. They have an over-generous appraisal of their dignity.

Vatican III will have to come back to a well-defined equilibrium between the dignity of the bishop and his fidelity to the Holy See (the bishops of Vatican II are too independent with their ‘College!’), between the dignity of the priest and his sworn loyalty to his bishop (Vatican II exaggerated his subordination), and between the baptismal dignity of a Christian and his submission to the hierarchy (as we will see, Vatican II falsely emancipated the laity, as a whole, from due submission…)

4. PRIESTLY SPIRITUALITY.

The diaconal ministry and the other offices in the Church are not in themselves priestly. The worship that the faithful render through their devotions or meritorious daily actions is even less so. Vatican III will define the ways in which the lower rank ministers and the laity can unite their offerings and their hearts to the divine Victim offered by the divine Priest Who is present in His ordained ministers.

Stripped of this ‘priestly’ quality that was falsely attributed to them, the faithful will be gratified to return to their proper place, outside of the chancel, in the nave of the church, but united by the priest to the mystical Christ, the total Christ who, alone is truly a Prophet, a Priest and a King.

As for priests, because they assume the very noble functions of mediators between God and men, their life and spirituality will be marked with a highly religious character. Vatican III will restore to the ‘clerics’ their dignity of men ‘set apart’ and it will remind them imperatively of what their sacred functions demand of them in their entire life.

Men of prayer, doctrine and devotion, tomorrow’s clergyman like those of the past, will receive a long and thorough training during which a wise and broad selection will be made.

On this subject, we also have proposals to submit to the Council. The essential part, however, must first be restored.

The Priesthood is an eminent state! The priest is a notable person! The Second Vatican Council claimed to extend its limits, to enrich the notion. All would be priests and the priesthood of all would consist entirely in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the world. The result was not long in coming! No one any longer wants to become a priest. It is no longer anything to be a priest. It no longer means anything to priests themselves. If it is nothing more than to preach the Gospel with ones whole life, then anyone can strive after doing it anywhere, in anyway whatever! In their will to make the new definition of the Priesthood encompass everything, they made it lose its essential mystery.

Vatican III will come back to the teaching of the tradition, which is partially laid down in the eternal definitions of the Council of Trent. The priest is the chosen one of God, ordained for the priestly service of Christ. A mediator in His Name, he remits sins and celebrates the holy Mysteries. The Shepherd and Head of his people, he assures their eternal salvation and often their temporal good. The Catholic priesthood is the greatest thing in the world because it gives Christ to His Church! Through the mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary since this is what God wills.

“How many times have I heard it repeated by my directors of conscience, by our retreat masters, by our professors and seminary superiors,” our Father confided to us: ‘Gentlemen, devotion to the Blessed Virgin is the pledge of the fidelity of the priest.’ ” This is because She is the mediatrix of all the graces necessary for this mediator that is the priest himself.

THE IMMACULATE MEDIATRIX

After having revised the first fifty articles of The 150 Points (those concerning our Catholic religion) to put them on the ‘axis’ of the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, we must pose as a corollary of this mystery Her relationship with all the others, the fifty Political Points (51-100) and the fifty Communitarian Points (101-150). This relationship consists in a universal mediation that establishes the Immaculate as the source of all the graces necessary for a Christian life. This privilege has not yet been the subject of an infallible definition of the Church, but it was considered very early on, in the primitive Church, as the ‘secret’ of Mary.

This ‘secret’ is first of all that of God thinking of the Virgin Mary and, in the same movement, wanting to create Her by adorning Her with all “conceivable” beauty. For what purpose?

“First, for the sake of His glory. God has no need of any creature, and yet, coming out of Himself, He gave Himself the additional joy of a marvellous ‘conception,’ endowed with all the ‘conceivable’ perfections to adorn a creature fashioned by His hands to be fruitful and pour out His grace on other beings who will love Him.

“The Heart of Mary, exclusively focused on God, receives from Her love of God the desire to serve the creatures that will be granted to Her as Her children. She is therefore the Mediatrix of divine goods for angels, then for men and women who were to arise. She is ours.”●

ORIGINAL MEDIATION.

If She had not said yes to the angel Gabriel, on the day of the Annunciation there would have been no Incarnation. She said yes freely under the inspiration of the grace with which She was filled; this consent made Her the Saviour’s co-operator to be His Mother and to desire the salvation of mankind with Her Son Who descended into Her virginal womb for this purpose.

“Perfect mediation, total mediation, unique mediation of the Eternal One in the universality of time,” Father Javelet explains.●

“Heaven knocks on Mary’s Heart; the shutter opens and God’s forgiveness enlightens and regenerates the world.” Mary’s acceptance gave all mankind access to God’s grace. Immediately, the Virgin became the House of God, She bore Emmanuel, “God with us,” in Her womb. When She went to visit Her cousin Elizabeth, scarcely had She entered her house in Ain-Karim, when the Infant Jesus She was carrying acted through the voice of His Mother striking Elizabeth’s ears: the child she herself was carrying, the future Saint John the Baptist, leaped with joy. It was the grace brought by Jesus that passed through Mary’s ministry. First mediation, which concerns John. With his mother, he was the first to benefit from this love of which he would be the precursor. “Was not Mary’s mediation obvious? Mary was not even responding to a request. She anticipated the petition. She discerned in the Spirit of God the call of all distress, of the universal misery of the world, even before it is formulated. Misfortune is there; so is She. They met and Christ Whom She was carrying unborn, acted. Elizabeth, in original sin, was a ‘house bereft of God,’ John in her, bereft of God himself, could do nothing about it. Mary was there – the feelings are human but the emotion is that of a Mother of God – and God was present. Elizabeth’s house was inhabited by joy of which Mary is the Mediatrix. It is not worldly joy, but the joy that God gives Jn 16:20-24.”●

Not only “does the grace of Her Son act wherever Mary is present,” but also “glorified, Mary is present to the whole universe in Jesus. The mediation of the Visitation is significant of a mediation extended to the whole of humanity.”●

EPIPHANY.

The Annunciation in Nazareth and the Visitation in Ain-Karim took place in secret or in a family circle. The visit of the shepherds and the Magi inaugurates the manifestation, the epiphany, of the Kingdom of God to the Jews and the Gentiles.

“Without Mary, Jesus would not have been shown to us. She holds Him out to us in Her hands and, delivering Him to men, delivers Herself to them from the same Heart. Is She not a mediatrix? Is not every mother a mediatrix?

“The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple by Mary is part of this Marian mystery of the Epiphany. This Epiphany is for both Symeon and Anna: Symeon prophesied to Her the sorrows of the Redemption for Her as well as for Her Son; Anna ‘spoke of the Child to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.’● Here we clearly see that the Incarnation is linked to the Redemption, and that the Annunciation and the Nativity prelude the supreme sacrifice; Mary is always there. Mary cooperates and shares: ‘And You Yourself, a sword will pierce Your soul!’ Mary present, Mary active, Mary Co-Redemptrix!”●

HIDDEN LIFE.

Saint Joseph was charged by God to act as Jesus’ Father since it was he who named the Child of the Virgin, his Bride. By revealing the mystery to Saint Joseph through His angel, God poured into his heart His own paternal feelings. Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta contemplated Saint Joseph in the sky of Fatima, “in his place in the Holy Family, the first place. The Virgin Mary very willingly took the second place, since She never rebelled against this subordination to this saint whom God had given to Her and whom She deeply admired. Jesus, the God of God, Light of Light, creative Word, and yet subject to them, loving and admiring them more than anything else.”●

“Mary is the Mother of God; She does not forget it. Nor does She forget that Her Son will be subject to contradiction, and that He will suffer. While spinning, washing, drawing water from the well, She thinks about it. She never ceases to be the Lord’s servant and to pray for this humanity that He had come to redeem.

“When the Son left home after the death of Saint Joseph, Her mission would begin and the physical separation was more painful than the pains of childbirth that Mary had not experienced.”

SORROWFUL MYSTERIES

“Already the disappearance of Jesus in the Temple made Her suffer. God willed all mothers to be like Mary, quivering, sacrificed to their mission, living only for the flesh of their flesh.”●

Thus, in each of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, the will of a humble woman forges ahead, and as She was Mediatrix first by Her supernatural childbirth, She is Mediatrix now by the intercession of Her maternal protection. It is through Our Lady of the Rosary’s fifteen mysteries that we go to Jesus.

She gives birth to Him in Bethlehem and then carries Him to the Temple. It is Her legs that walk, and Her arms that present the Child, and the Child, entering the Temple fulfils the prophecy of Malachi:

“Suddenly the Lord Whom you seek will come to His Temple.”●

To do what?

“He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will become for Yahweh those who present their offering as it should be made.”●

Mary Immaculate is therefore the Mediatrix of our purification. That same day, She received the announcement that a sword of sorrow would pierce Her Immaculate Heart. This warning was renewed during the three days that She was searching for Jesus and Who was found in the Temple. For Her, they were an agony. She had lost Her Jesus, She was looking for Him while He was offering Himself as a sacrifice that very day in the House of His Father for the salvation of the world.

When She allowed Him to leave to enter His public life, She would follow Him with Her eyes and with Her Heart, and, at the supreme moment, would be standing at the foot of the Cross, offering Her Son admirably. He asked Her permission to fulfil His vocation, which was to ‘hand Himself over’ to men, in suffering and in joy.

The Marian and Eucharistic Epiphany of Tuy, on June 13, 1929, showed that this Immaculate Virgin, Whose pierced Heart is inflamed with love, stood in lieu and place of the mediating priest to offer Her Son as a Victim for the salvation of the world, during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, represented by the Precious Blood flowing from the wounds of Jesus onto the Host and from there into the Chalice.

Being Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix, it is therefore not surprising that at the time of Jesus’ Resurrection, She was there, in the midst of the Church. There She would remain, Her office of Divine Motherhood continuing on among the Apostles and within the whole Church. She is the Mother of every creature.

Each of us must commune with Trinitarian life, unite with the Son of God to become a child of the heavenly Father. The Bridegroom is Christ, and Christ crucified. The Bride is Mary Whose mediation enables the sinner to enter the bosom of God, as Jesus said to Nicodemus who did not understand how it was possible, imagining things in a carnal way, like a Jew.

It must be said that it was before the events that would allow him to understand, and to purify himself, to regenerate himself by the purity of ‘Him Who is pure, opening in all purity a virginal womb, this womb that regenerates men in God,’ as Saint Irenaeus used to say. He was speaking of Mary’s womb where a fire burns that sets Her Immaculate Heart aflame. Since the revelations of Fatima we have become aware of this.

Each of us has to embrace the revelations of our Divine Mother Who, according to the fundamental disposition of Her Immaculate Heart, descended from Heaven to exercise Her universal Motherhood! She is the very soul of the Church’s mediation, from generation to generation, up to the present day. A glorious eschatological mediation, revealed from the beginning in the Apocalypse, being fulfilled today since Fatima, in our last times. The Virgin Mary, in Her desire to save all souls, becomes the Advocate of Eve so that she, with all of her descendants, may be pardoned. The Blessed Virgin takes care of us all. In the apocalyptic times of the great Apostasy, She still intervenes so that Her Son may have mercy on us and save us.

This is the first Marian ‘dogma,’ called ‘Mediation’ by Saint Andrew of Crete, in the 8^th century († 720). The word is apparently abstract like “Immaculate Conception” used instead of “conceived without sin,” like Jesus calling Himself “the Truth, the Life” and not the truthful, the living.

Thus it is through Mary Mediatrix that Christ the Mediator was recognised and brought to light! Advocate against Satan, ‘the Accuser,’ victorious because of Her divine and universal Motherhood as the Immaculate Virgin, it was She Who gave Her milk to drink to Her Child, and Jesus transformed it into His Precious Blood. It is from this milk of the Virgin that came the Precious Blood of Jesus poured out for our salvation. She is therefore a “Co-Redemptrix,” pace Pope Francis, who angered in his homily of December 12, 2020, to the point of denying it.

Saint Irenaeus considered Her “Advocata nostra,” Eve’s advocate, but also the Help of Christians, Perpetual Succour. These words date from the 2^nd century a.d.! They indicate that Her Mediation does not end at the Incarnation, because we have never seen a mother give birth to children and no longer take care of them. The Virgin Mary, having been Mother of Christ in the Incarnation, never ceases to push Christ to the forefront, to accompany Him and thus having given birth to us, She continues to take care of us. She is Mediatrix in all matters, in all difficulties, and of all human beings. Resplendent with beauty in Her unstained virginity, Her Immaculate Heart rushes towards us to give us life, with such power that the Church is as though wholly contained in this Heart to Heart with that of Her Son Who is at the same time Her Bridegroom.

“THE IMMACULATE ALONE WILL TEACH US HOW TO LOVE THE LORD JESUS.”

(Saint Maximilian-Mary Kolbe)

Being the Advocate of sinners, She provides for the remission of their sins, for reparation, for salvation. Her intercession does not stop there: Mary is the deacon par excellence of all the graces and blessings of God. Indeed, She never ceases to dwell spiritually among us as She dwells in God; She watches over us like a bishop over the Church; She is no stranger to any of our human affairs, always present in our daily lives.

Is She not a mother? Is She not a woman? Did She not keep house? Did She not experience all the worries of a human being?

If She helps us to understand the Scriptures and therefore to know God, if She allows us to escape the grip of the Devil, none of our most humble needs escapes Her. She exercises Her benevolent power in all matters with the authority conferred on Her by Her divine Motherhood.

At Cana She said to Jesus: “They have no wine.” “My hour has not yet come!” Fixed by the Father, it cannot be advanced. However, Mary seems to want to anticipate it and extraordinarily, the Father rallies to Her at Her own hour. The Father obeys Mary!

Mary Mediatrix of all graces. God will always refuse man the most eminent of graces, this divine gift of mystical life of which Wine is the symbol, if he does not pass through the Heart of Mary.

THE IMMACULATE HEART MEDIATOR OF ALL GRACES

“Therein the love of the divine Heart is manifested, the love of Jesus Who gives us His own Mother (‘Son, behold, your Mother’) so that we can love Jesus, with Mary’s Heart. For us brothers, our manly love quite naturally transports us into the Heart of the Virgin Mary, and there it becomes feminine to acquire a transforming devotion. A devotion that does not transform Her, but us! “... The love of the Immaculate is the most perfect love with which a creature can love his God.”

“She alone will teach us how to love the Lord Jesus, much better than any book.”

Let us receive Communion in the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, that is, let us ask the Virgin Mary to come into us to receive Jesus. “It is not so much to come to us as it is to have us partake of Her feelings, that is, to give ourselves to Her, so that She assimilates us to Her, and to receive Him, with all the feelings of the Virgin Mary, of the perfect Bride, of the Mother of all men. I am Your child, I come into Your womb, I plunge into Your Heart and there, I burn with all Your feelings, all my feelings, my disorders and my personal vices are consumed in order to become like You and thus, to receive Jesus Christ, with Your Heart, in Your Heart, united to Your Heart.”

This reflects the whole of Father Poppe’s thought.

Only the universal devotion of the Bride of Christ, which is the Church, to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Who is His first and ultimate Bride, can obtain from Her, through the mediation of Her Heart, that all of us, whether men or women, young virgins or young men, have a truly mystical access to Jesus. Such an access can only be conceived of as the kiss of the Bridegroom to his bride, and her loving response or offering, the offertory of herself, like a bride to her bridegroom. Jesus, the Son of God made man, will thus be the Bridegroom of our being, but this will be a mystical marriage of which the Virgin Mary will be the Mediatrix. This is profoundly abysmal!

All are Mary’s children: the girls to remain virgins and be wary of any illusion, imagination or carnal regrets in the mystical life.

The men, to renounce marriage and all its seductions, to renounce their pride, to serve Our Lord Jesus Christ as loyal disciples and subjects, like their King, while receiving in addition from the Virgin Mary, from Her Immaculate Heart an inexhaustible love, having the form of a bride’s love for the Bridegroom.●

To enter into the Immaculate Heart, to “adhere” to it, to meet the Son of God.

The intimate Jesus, the mystical Jesus, is the one Who develops in the chaste womb of the Virgin Mary. She conceived Him, She breastfed Him, She kissed and caressed Him, like a flesh born of Her flesh, like a heart totally in love with Hers.

It would merit a book: “Intimate Jesus.” We know the public Jesus. Just read the Gospels. The intimate Jesus is revealed to pure hearts or to those whom God has chosen. In any case, He purifies their hearts. Jesus is the intimate joy of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, before becoming a world event through Mary’s universal mediation.

Jesus is there, a Child in the arms of His Mother, totally loving His Mother, and She, totally loving Him, a soul cleaving to His. I dare say: He was already Her Bridegroom, because He was the only Man of the one Virgin Mary. It was both the total of love and love in all its forms, in all permitted and legitimate forms. The total love that breaks down all barriers, accumulates all privileges, all perfections, in order to be one day distributed to everyone; everyone now revolves around this Child in the arms of His Mother. He was a Bridegroom, by virtue of the law of conjugal love, which He Himself had established at the origin of the world, even before Creation. He begins all over again with His Mother, the law of this difference of the sexes, so that one may be half of the other, that She may be a companion like Him and the Virgin Mary is indeed the companion similar to Jesus. Similar, They look like two drops of water. He is really His heir; and as for the spirit and divinity, She is filled with the Holy Spirit, She is filled with the Wisdom of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit that summarises all the others, and therefore They are made for each other, as never any woman had been made for a man or any man for a woman.

All women are invited to follow the Virgin Mary, and quite naturally love Jesus with a very similar love, as a bride for their Bridegroom. It is well to go through the Virgin to run in the footsteps of Christ.

This is why thousands of feminine souls have followed in the footsteps of the Virgin. It was very simple for them! Imitation of their Mother, not without grace and special love of Jesus Who calls them to do so, not without the continual mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our Lord does not tolerate being approached, at least by us men, without passing through His Mother, through the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. It is Saint John Eudes who reveals this, and Father Maximilian Kolbe who indefinitely comments on this.

Jesus therefore leads them to enter the womb of their divine Mother, Who is also His own. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Man must be reborn,” Nicodemus replied, “So I must enter my mother’s womb?” Jesus could have answered him: “In the womb of My own Mother!” The time had not yet come to reveal this! Two thousand years later, the time has come to understand it and make it our salvation in the universal shipwreck. It is a question of being reborn from another Mother, Who is a Mother according to the flesh and according to the spirit: She is the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary.

We must therefore enter this womb, where the heartbeats of Mary’s Immaculate Heart resound. We shall so well unite with it, penetrate all Her states, Her virtues, Her feelings, by dint of meditation, that in Her obedience, humility, purity, in Her and through Her, we may experience even here below this fullness of the perfect love of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His incarnate tenderness.

The whole symbolism of this mystery of the Incarnation cannot be reduced to symbolism alone, but truly reaches the exchanges, the tenderness, the intimate dialogues of the Bridegroom with the bride. It is the Bridegroom Who commands and dominates. The soul, even a masculine one, is the bride who is subject to and suffers the divine things, the divine touches, and who receives great enjoyment from them, who derives great perfection from them.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary is more than a model for every man and woman: we must make Her Heart our abode, we must dwell therein, we must cleave our hearts to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary. It is a living and life-giving sanctuary where we meet the Son of God, our Brother in Mary Who truly becomes our Bridegroom.

Is this not precisely the example that Saint Joseph gives us in his first annunciation? He is about to walk away, but the angel holds him back: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife!”● Did he not throw himself into Mary’s Heart to go to God, his Father, and already discover the Son in the Father? At the manger, did Joseph not have his eyes fixed on the Virgin Mary, to scrutinise all the feelings of Her Heart towards the Child Jesus expressed on Her face and in all Her gestures, in order to make Her attitude his own?

The extraordinary ‘marriage’ of Saint John Eudes with the Virgin Mary is not at all a marriage understood in the ordinary way, that of a domination of man over woman and submission of woman to man. The Virgin Mary did in no way submit to Saint John Eudes, but “marriage” meant that their union was so intimate that they became but one, his heart was totally in the Heart of the Virgin Mary, in order for him to espouse Her feelings. It is not She Who aligned Herself with him, it is he who became conformed to the Virgin Mary and who approached the Heart of Jesus with Her completely feminine feelings. This is the goal, and he indeed said that the centre of the Heart of the Virgin is the Heart of Jesus. Jesus is there, written in golden letters in the depths of the Heart of the Virgin, it is Jesus Whom he finds and embraces by uniting with the Virgin Mary.●

This is how on October 13, 1917, the children of Fatima saw both Saint Joseph and the Infant Jesus blessing the world “with gestures that they were making with their hands in the form of a cross.” Our Father compared this to the gesture of a parish priest: “Admirable conciliation, admirable resemblance and imitation of Saint Joseph and the Infant Jesus! We can see them, at that time, perhaps as the king of the world and the patron of the Church, but we can also see them both as two children. I love to see them as two children! Saint Joseph, with his simplicity, is a big child! And the Infant Jesus is God’s Child, the Only Begotten Son of God, Who became a little Infant to approach us. This big child and this little Infant who are so similar are the most precious treasures of the Virgin Mary and of the Church. They make a sign of the cross like a country priest or like a holy little Infant. They bless us!”