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Sermon
of His Excellency
Bishop Bernard Fellay
Rome,
August 9th, 2000, at Colle Oppio, the ancient gardens of Emperor
Nero
(…)
This pilgrimage has followed its course, one could say, "as smoothly as
clockwork", with an amiability and a cordiality that we must acknowledge,
but nonetheless it is missing one thing: the essential. We are making this
pilgrimage with two opposing sentiments. Yes, there is in this pilgrimge
that which resembles the sentiments felt by Our Lord Jesus Christ on the
Cross. There is something of His beatitude and something of His crucifixion.
The
beatitude
 When one speaks of Rome, one speaks of the Eternal City,
and the Eternal City reminds us, already with the word "eternal", of Heaven.
And we sang it these past days: yesterday, today, with the psalm: "Laetatus
sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi: in domum Domini ibimus– I rejoiced when
they said unto me: let us go into the house of the Lord." Let us go into
this Jerusalem. Certainly, the pilgrims of the Old Testament could say
this of their Holy City, but this Holy City is the image of the heavenly
Jerusalem and it’s because it is the image of the heavenly Jerusalem that
it is a cause of great joy. Yes, my dear brethren, we must repeat with
Saint Paul: "Vos estis cives Sanctorum – You are inhabitants with the
Saints" – We Catholics, participating in this Communion of Saints, truly
have the Saints for our friends. We can see, from here, the Coliseum,
where so many martyrs have died. We celebrate the Mass here on the grounds
of the villa of Nero, where Christians have been burnt, as living torches.
All the martyrs of antiquity, all the saints who have sacrificed themselves
in this Holy City, are our friends: "Cives Sanctorum". We are their co-citizens.
They are in Heaven, and we are still here, but as you well know, the Church
is composed of three parts: the militant, the suffering, and the triumphant.
It forms one sole mystical body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are this
Body; and in this city where we find so many martyrs, so many signs of
holiness, we are, as it were, forced to think of Heaven.
If there is a city
to which God has bestowed His grace so that it can be distributed to souls,
we can certainly say that it is this one. And this joy has been yours
in each of these processions, in entering the basilicas, in the professing
of the faith: the joy of the Saints, already a little of the joy of Heaven,
a joy that is all pure, the joy of being with God, a prelude of Heaven.
Crucifixion
As you can see, we
have not been permitted to celebrate Mass in the basilicas. In fact, to
say it simply, the Mass of Rome, the Roman Mass, that which began here
from great antiquity, of whose vestige we can trace back to the most ancient
Gelasian, Leonine and Gregorian sacramentaries, that which we could celebrate
in its entirety, from beginning to end, with a manuscript from the XI
century; this Mass, which has formed all the Saints of this city, has
lost its royalties. It’s like the tip of the iceberg, it’s like the indication
of an unknown tragedy, which we dare to call a crucifixion. The crucifixion
of Tradition, and not by its exterior enemies, the habitual persecutors
of the Church, but by those from within. Do we speak too boldly? We are
only using the words of Pope Paul VI, who spoke of the "auto-demolition",
who spoke of the "smoke of Satan" which had entered into the Temple of
God. We may also make reference to Fatima, to Sister Lucy who speaks of
a "diabolical disorientation": she speaks of the Church and of the Hierarchy
in the Church.
Yes, the beacon of
Truth is, as it were, extinguished in the entire world. If we consider
it, if we look at where it is going, where does this transmission of the
Faith lead, what is being given to our youth, to the Catholic children
of today? And the little that remains is being mixed with a confusion
that is not far from the principle of non-contradiction, as in ecumenism.
And what shall we say of this refusal of the Cross? Of this refusal to
oppose the world, which naturally draws one to the wide and easy road
to perdition. Yes, in crucifying her Tradition, it is as if the Church
crucifies herself. But today, in this pilgrimage, we have a particular
desire, which may be also a supplication to the Holy Father, and which
is for us, at any rate, the sole means which we deem appropriate in this
tragic situation in which we find ourselves: the Mass and our Blessed
Mother.
Yes, give it back,
do justice to the Mass! We beseech the Holy Father. Not to us: who are
we? But to the Mass! Give it back its rights, give to the Tradition of
the Church its rights, because she does have them! Look upon the souls
who hunger and thirst for doctrine, who thirst for holiness, and who receive
only the Sunday insipidness, if not something worse. Why prevent men from
receiving this nourishment which saves? Why hinder the priests? We know
of so many who suffer, who haven’t had the courage, up to now, to celebrate
this Mass, and who suffer and are persecuted for the least indication
of a conservative tendency. Give back to the Church her Mass, her Tradition,
for you have the power to do so.
The
Blessed Virgin
It is clear, my dear
brethren, that Fatima has something to do with our times and it is truly
astonishing and extraordinary to note that what should have been the beginning
of a great Marian expansion, with the publishing of the third secret of
Fatima, has instead sunk it into oblivion.
It is no longer spoken
of, as if it were finished. But the Blessed Virgin said that God, Our
Lord Jesus Christ, wished to introduce the devotion to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary as a final means of salvation. Therefore it is the appropriate
means for these difficult times in which we live today, where the world
is overcome with atheism, with hatred for God, as one could see even here
in the beginning of July (no doubt the Bishop refers here to the satanic
manifestation of the homosexuals in the streets of Rome). Alas! This devotion
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has, as it were, disappeared. And in this
also, we have a request. And this request is that the Pope bring to its
conclusion what he has begun: that not only the third secret of Fatima
be published in its entirety, but that this devotion to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary be truly encouraged everywhere.
We have so many proofs
and almost all of us can verify, we who are here, that if we are here,
it is thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is thanks to the rosary. From
whichever country, from whichever culture we come, it is not through our
own merit that we are here. And if we remain faithful in these terrible
times of indescribable darkness, it will be thanks to Mary, to the rosary,
to the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And we sincerely invite
you, my dear faithful, to take very seriously this admonition because
what we have here is an admonition from Heaven itself.
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