The Church, a seamless tunic woven
by the Immaculate Conception

THE authenticity of the Holy Tunic of Jesus, which attracted crowds of pilgrims to Argenteuil during an exposition in April 2025, is attested by immemorial tradition. Our Lord wore it during His public life, and He was stripped of it before being placed on the Cross at the summit of Mount Calvary. The four soldiers on duty that day, Friday April 7, A.D. 30, cast lots for it rather than tear it, because it was in one piece, while they parted among them the other garments of the condemned Man, including His cloak, now kept in Trier, Germany, the object of the same immemorial devotion as the Holy Shroud, witness to the death and resurrection of Christ.

The Holy Tunic of Argenteuil bears witness to His birth from the virginal womb of Mary. In fact, it is woven in a single stroke, “from top to bottom”, seamless, just as the Son of God sprang from the womb of His Father, took flesh in the womb of Mary by the operation of the Holy Spirit, He “Who was begotten not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”●... seamless!

So the soldiers said to each other: “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.”●

Saint John wanted to emphasise this providential detail, whereas the custom in Palestine was usually to sew two pieces together to make a tunic, as Saint John Chrysostom reports in his homilies on the Gospel of John.

In this Passion where everything takes place in Jesus’ obedience to His Father, the soldiers’ decision was truly inspired by God because the tunic thus bears witness to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word made flesh, the Son of God made man in the womb of the Virgin Mary to deliver us from Satan’s slavery.

The Virgin Mary wove the tunic of Her Son in one piece, after having ‘woven’ His “one nature” in Her virginal womb, as Saint Cyril, doctor of the mystery of the Incarnation, would say, rejecting the Nestorian heresy that mutilated Christ’s humanity. With all his understanding of the faith, he proclaimed that the Word formed Himself into a perfect humanity, without any amputation or alteration, as it was written: “You knit me together in my Mother’s womb.”●

The Fathers of the Church developed the dogma of the Faith in the course of the great crises that marked the early centuries. During his study of these great crises, our Father§ adhered with all his faith to the doctrine of Saint Cyril, according to which the personal, real and true Being, the hypostasis of the Word, is the unique Subject, woven “seamlessly”, “in one piece”, in the virginal womb of Mary. He is the unique Subject to Whom absolutely everything that is of God and man in time and in eternity relates. He, the adorable Lord, is the Son of God and the Son of Mary, indivisible. The Patriarch of Alexandria summarises his faith in one formula:

“Mia phusis tou Théou Logou sésarcoménè”, which is translated: “One nature of the Incarnate Word-God.”

Such a formula, obviously, pulverises the heresy of Nestorius, according to which the Virgin Mary is the Mother of the man in Her son Jesus, but not of God: Mother of the Person of Jesus according to the flesh, She is not Mother of the Person of the Word, “for the divinity could not be engendered. The Word is consubstantial to the Father, born of Him eternally; Christ is consubstantial to Mary, born of Her flesh in time. But it is impossible to attribute to the Word what is proper to Christ; according to Nestorius, there is no ‘communication of idioms’, i.e. no exchange, between these two Persons, of their proper attributes and operations.”●

The monks and the faithful cried scandal! The Emperor and the Court were persuaded by Nestorius, but the uproar grew when Nestorius claimed to anathematise those who invoked the Theotokos, Mary “the Mother of God.”

As soon as he heard of this dispute, Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, intervened. He approached the Emperor to turn him away from Nestorius, and appealed to Pope Celestine, to whom the rejection of the traditional and liturgical term ‘Mother of God’ was enough to make Nestorius’ ‘Dyophysitism’ abhorrent. He summoned Nestorius to recant on pain of deposition and charged the Patriarch of Alexandria with ensuring that this sentence would be carried out.

Nestorius called for a Council to be convened, hoping to justify himself. Theodosius II convened it for June 7, 431 in Ephesus. The Pope delegated two bishops to read out the condemnation of Nestorius decided by the Council of Rome in 430. On June 7, 431, everyone was present in Ephesus except the large group of Antiochians, friends of Nestorius, and the papal legates sent by the Pope. They waited a fortnight. Finally, on June 22, without further delay, Cyril opened the Council. In the absence of his most trusted supporters, Nestorius refused to appear.

The 198 bishops present, after hearing the reading of all the documents in the trial, declared Nestorius “alien to the dignity of the episcopate and to any priestly society”. They proclaimed Mary Mother of God and their decision was acclaimed by the people of Ephesus with great demonstrations of joy. The papal legates arrived on July 11. They read out the condemnation of Nestorius that they had brought with them and confirmed the Council’s decisions with their own authority.

MOTHER OF GOD

Thus, even before the arrival of Pope Celestine’s envoys, the Blessed Virgin Mary fulfilled what had been promised to Her: “You alone will conquer all heresies throughout the world.”

Christ truly experienced two births: once from the womb of the Father, giving Him His divine nature, and once historically, from the womb of the Blessed Virgin, giving Him His human nature. But that does not make two natures. Such is in its youthful fervour the Greek ‘Monophysitism’ that had been acclaimed at the Council of Ephesus.

“It presents to the eyes of the Faith the one and simple divine Word, the Son of God, God Himself.

“His divine Nature is His very being born of the Father. Whoever sees Him, sees God, sees the Father.

“In order to be seen by us, He becomes man, He gives himself a human form, a human condition, a historical individuality, a place in the world, in fact everything that is human, except sin.

“He receives the necessary ‘genetic material’ from His Virgin Mother. This humanisation of the Word does not double His divine Nature with another nature of the same kind. There is no possible comparison between the human element and the divine,” our Father explained.

“A French priest became a Targui for the love of Christ. Father de Foucauld, an officer, aristocrat, missionary monk, applied himself to living and appearing in every way among the Tuareg as one of them in order to communicate to them his Faith. He did so obviously without losing any part of his being or of his inner qualities, on the contrary!

“God became man in order that man might become God.”

“In the eyes of men, Jesus appeared to be a man like all of them, but a perfect man, and even visibly more than perfect, more than a man. He was endowed with wisdom, power and superior gifts to a super eminent, superhuman degree. His whole person and behaviour indubitably constituted a mystery.

“It was Jesus Who enlightened them with His words about His innermost being, about His invisible nature, about the radical principle of His superhuman energies and actions. He revealed Himself progressively, speaking in veiled terms, as if in enigmas, and then more clearly, with an admirable pedagogy, first the Messiah or ‘Christ’ announced and awaited by His contemporaries in Israel, then the Son of God, Whose profound ‘nature’ was explained by His ‘birth’ beyond time, from the very womb of God His Father, with Whom He was one, although, in a certain respect, inferior and submissive to Him.”

BRIDE OF CHRIST

What is striking from the start of the Nestorian crisis is the appeal to the Pope from both sides. Nestorius anticipated Cyril’s approach to Celestine.

The Council of Ephesus was held by delegation of powers from Celestine to Cyril.

A Council without the Pope, and against him! That is not a Council, it is a robbery!

At Ephesus, the ‘Mother of God’ prevailed against Nestorius’ heresy, through the voice of the people acclaiming the Theotokos. Yet, She did not triumph without the Pope! For he is the voice of the Church, the Bride of Christ.

One day, Sister Lucy asked Our Lord why he would not convert Russia without His Holiness making this consecration: “Because,” Our Lord replied, “I want the whole Church to recognise this consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so as then to extend Her cult and to place devotion to this Immaculate Heart alongside devotion to My Divine Heart.

“But, my God, the Holy Father will never believe me unless You Yourself move him by a special inspiration.

“Oh, the Holy Father! Pray much for the Holy Father. He will do it, but it will be very late. However, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will save Russia; Russia is entrusted to Her.”

THE REBIRTH OF HOLY RUSSIA

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Washington claimed victory, but found itself without an ‘enemy’ to justify its formidable military-industrial apparatus, and to keep its European and Asian allies under the spell of fear of invasion.

This posed no difficulty! The Americans’ sovietophobia turned into Russophobia, for no acceptable reason. In reality, in the 1990s, an anaemic Russia was incapable of posing the slightest threat to NATO, the offensive and hostile alliance that the Americans had created to subjugate Western Europe and attack the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

So the terror was mutual. While we had feared an invasion of West Germany by the Red hordes, the Russians, in turn, were haunted by the prospect of an invasion by American, British and German tanks.

President Gorbachev held talks with James Baker, the US Secretary of State, and his German counterpart, Hans Dietrich Gensher.

The two ministers assured the Soviet President that NATO would “not expand an inch eastwards,” in the words of James Baker, confirmed by Gensher during a press conference. But ‘verba volant’ and, a year later, President Clinton, in office since the beginning of 1993, decided to extend NATO as far east as possible. Bolstered by the state of decay of the former Soviet empire, the United States believed itself to be the master of the world. They envisaged nothing less than the expansion of NATO as far as Vladivostok and the annexation of all Russia’s satellites in the process, including the integration of two of Russia’s neighbours: Georgia and Ukraine.

It was then that the divine oracle intervened: “The Immaculate Heart will save Russia; Russia is entrusted to Her.”

American officers made no secret of their contempt for this backward, ruined and corrupt country. It is true that with Boris Yeltsin as President of the new Russian Federation in 1994, anything was possible in the decomposition of the Russian state.

To implement their plan, the Americans created the Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994. Membership of this partnership gave access to American aid.

It was a tragic time for Russia, as Alexander Orlov, former Russian ambassador to France, points out in his memoirs: “Why did the ageing Boris Yeltsin choose Vladimir Putin as his successor? He had a lot of other politicians around him who were experienced and well-known. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that this choice was providential: it was the Good God Who wanted to save Russia from chaos, from the political, economic and moral collapse that followed the demise of the Soviet Union.”●

What this diplomat does not yet know “is that the Good God wanted to save Russia from chaos” through the power of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Throughout the century, Lucy kept engraved in her memory the recommendation that her blessed cousin, Saint Jacinta, had made to her before going to Heaven:

“It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to make it known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When the time comes to say this, do not go and hide. Tell everyone that God grants us His graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that it is from Her that people are to ask for them; that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated together with His; that people are to ask the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace, since God has entrusted it to Her.”

THE CONVERSION OF RUSSIA

In his address to the Eastern Churches delivered on the occasion of the Jubilee of Hope, on May 14, 2025, Pope Leo XIV wished them: “Welcome to Rome!” and exclaimed: “The Church needs you. The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!

“It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)!”

Not so long ago, our Father particularly emphasised the “sinfulness of the West” in the “errors of Russia.” He admitted: “As soon as it was published in 1961, I read Marie Kerhuel’s admirable and extraordinary study on Russia, The Collosus with the Feet of Clay. I was misled by the author. Because of her desire to obtain justice and charity for the Ukrainian people and the other oppressed countries of European Russia, Marie Kerhuel gave free rein to an injustice and hatred against the Muscovite people, which seriously compromises her impartiality. It is no longer a history of Russia but a Ukrainian prosecution of Muscovite barbarity.”●

It seems that Pope Leo XIV has fallen into this error, which our Father called “the error of the West”, emphasising that “it is not an innocent error” because “it is the sin of the West”. And it remains so today. In order to admit this and repent of it, let it suffice to remind you, “far from the political and media hubbub”, as Colonel Marc Humbert recommends, that “we, as French members of NATO and the European Union, run the risk of incidentally being taken for fools”●.

“It is clear that the current situation in Ukraine is due to American actions in the country since the end of the Cold War in 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The process is well-established. A colour revolution is fomented. It is followed by enhanced military cooperation aimed at blocking alleged Russian expansion. An expansion heralded by a communications campaign that culminates in a proxy conflict aimed at destroying Russian power at the cost of American lives.”

Colonel Hubert writes that “in their complex and skilful planning, the Americans, accustomed to this, had just forgotten one detail: when you play chess, there is an opponent. And in real life, unlike in chess, this opponent can also become stronger over time. Russia was vigorously trying to do this, and it was soon to prove to the Americans the futility of their plan against Russia.”●

“DIVINE SURPRISE”

Russia the chess champion? Yes, that is well known. But in geopolitics, it is just a parable of the divine orthodromy revealed at Fatima in 1917, on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution announced by Our Lady:

“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Reparatory Communion of the first Saturdays of the month.

“If My requests are heard, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and many nations will be annihilated.”

“There is no need to specify how all this came about, since it is known to everyone,” writes Sister Lucy. So let us continue to see what Our Lady tells us: “In the end – that is to say after all that – my Immaculate Heart will triumph” over all the wars provoked in the world by the errors spread by Russia.”●

Sister Lucy then writes that the “consecration was made by the Holy Father John Paul II, in Rome, publicly, on March 25, 1984, in front of the statue of Our Lady, which is venerated in the Capelinha of the Apparitions, in the Cova da Iria, in Fatima. The Holy Father, after writing to all the bishops of the world to ask them to join him in this act of consecration that he was about to pronounce, had the statue brought to Rome expressly to make it clear that the consecration he was about to make before it was in response to the request of Our Lady of Fatima.

“It is well known that we were going through one of the most critical moments in the history of mankind, when the great powers, in their hostility towards each other, were preparing for a nuclear (atomic) war which they were planning and which would destroy, if not the whole world, at least most of it; and the part that remained, what means would it have had of surviving?”●

The precise date of this attack was even known; our Father referred to it as “Deadline 83” and launched a prayer campaign. The prayers of the children in our families were heard.

On May 14, 1982, however, Lucy strongly affirmed that John Paul II had not carried out the consecration of Russia requested by Our Lady.

The following year, in 1983, she read a statement to the nuncio:

“Pope John-Paul II simply renewed the consecration of the world made by Pope Pius XII on October 31, 1942. Certain benefits may be hoped for from this consecration, but not the conversion of Russia...”

In reality, she explained, “the consecration of Russia has not been done as Our Lady requested. I was not able to say so, because I did not have permission from the Holy See.”

She had “no permission from the Holy See” to speak the truth, no permission to denounce the falsehood! “Poor Lucy!”

Pope John Paul II paid no heed to the explanations and warnings of the messenger of the Immaculata. Father de Nantes observed: “There is a multiplicity of ‘Acts of offering’ of ‘men’, of ‘the world’. They are counterfeits of the consecration that Heaven requires of the Pope and the bishops as an absolute, necessary and primordial condition for the salvation of the world: the consecration by them of Russia in expiation for the wounds inflicted there to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of God, ever Virgin, and the communion of reparation on the first Saturdays of the month. This, and nothing else, is required to obtain from God a time of peace.”●

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary