Tag: Catholicism

Social gathering at the Vatican

Posted on by Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti 2 comments
Rosary ©James Coleman

Reading the letter from the Vatican produced by Imedia after Françoise Nyssen's visit with Pope Francis1 .

It is always a surprise to discover, like this morning, an interview with a person, known or not, representative of our time, admitting that his meeting with Pope Francis was one of the most significant moments of his life, but not getting any action from it. As if this meeting should be one moment among many others in the ocean of memories.

The loss of faith rooted in modern man by comfort

We thus see people touched by grace in their daily lives, savoring an encounter, a moment, feeling that this encounter or this moment does not belong to them in any way but that they can enjoy it, intuiting that it comes from a provoked abandonment. by the vagaries of life, experiencing the force that emanates from this encounter or this moment, while drawing no action from it. They declare: “this is the happiest moment of my life!” » and will never do anything to reproduce it or try to understand what caused it! This remains an impenetrable mystery; this inaction embodies the passivity of modern man in the face of his life and the little faith he has in his ability to transform it. This loss of faith is now rooted in modern Western man, which is how he will fight for orange peels and completely miss the point. François Nyssen admits at the end of the interview: “I myself am not baptized, but when I left, I promised the Pope that I would pray for him.” What does that mean? The confusion is total.

How many couches collapse under the weight of words or silences that gather together in the sole hope of suffocating the soul?

Two things are missing for the alchemy to take place. First, education in the inner life. Françoise Nyssen was not baptized. She is interested in religion since she asks for an audience with the Pope and publishes dear Sébastien Lapaque… Moreover, she has always lived in books, so she knows the interiority and the power of this other life. Yet nothing about her confirms this feeling. She looks at him as something outside her, as something foreign, as an exoticism, one would be tempted to say. An attractive exoticism, with a strong power of “seduction” (or nostalgia?), but not enough to change everything and to adhere to it. She doesn't feel the lack in her, even if she sees the point of it very well. She is full. Let's think back to Ernst Jünger's phrase in “The Rebel's Treatise 2 ”: “Every comfort comes at a price. The status of domestic animal entails that of animals for slaughter. » We no longer have a thirst to discover ourselves, because we are full of ourselves. The passage of psychoanalysis in the modern world and the place it has taken replacing sacrament, penance and interior life marks a sterilization of our deep being and the messages that our soul expresses more and more sporadically. How many couches collapse under the weight of words or silences that gather together in the sole hope of suffocating the soul? She herself no longer sees the use of it, because she no longer feels love which, when expressed today, is transformed into interest or curiosity ... We are spectators of our life. We watch it helplessly and cowardly. The whole message of Christ encourages us to do the opposite, to turn the table over in order to be free. Oh ! He knew well that we would continue to be weak, however did He imagine that we would be so with so much self-sacrifice, with so much devotion?

Do men always thirst for God?

So the quest, the thirst, the desire is simply missing. And François Nyssen's interview is empty of it. She suggests cooking on the Pope's plane, but there is no question of interior life. She does not want to change even though she sees the effects in Lapaque's books, in the Pope's eyes, or elsewhere, fleetingly when the soul unfolds and pushes the interior furniture a little to signify its presence. No, she will not change because she likes what she is and she is not thirsty, even if she sees people she likes drinking from it, and finally because she does not believe that that can change something in his life! And that’s the most serious part! This sin against the Spirit! Secondly, let no one ask him to drink there! Pope Francis wants, he has repeatedly repeated and shown, not to force anyone and to respect everyone on the path of faith. Not even a little encouragement? Some time ago I heard a historian and theologian explain that during the meeting between Saint Francis of Assisi and the Sultan of Egypt, Sultan Al-Malik al-Kamil, "we were not sure that the saint asked the sultan for his conversion. For a bit, we would be led to believe that he took the risk of going to see him to talk to him about the landscapes of Assisi... You have to live in the 21st century to hear such nonsense! Worse, take credit for it. Faith appears worldly, too, and we must realize that it has adhered with all its pores to modern life and that nothing has been done to prevent it, quite the contrary; she drowns in comfort and the condition of a domestic tool that can be useful from time to time... You never know... It's in the old pot , it seems.

The virility of discomfort as the only refuge

Two lacks for a non-encounter: the lack of education to seek God in all things and that of no longer proclaiming His word. The fifth joyful mystery through the recovery of Jesus in the temple, and the third luminous mystery, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Reciting the rosary every day of one's life can be compared to the illumination of a medieval manuscript; one can no longer imagine one without it after turning one of its pages. It would have been interesting to offer a rosary to Françoise Nyssen and to instruct her on its use and to invite her to recite it. If it does not lead back to God, every word is worldly. “I myself am not baptized, but when I left, I promised the Pope that I would pray for him. » Here is the very example of a worldly and decaying word. Pray, but who? Great saints have often repeated: “If you pray without naming God, without being certain that you are addressing God, you are praying to the devil. » Now, the demon is worldly. He is even the inventor of the concept. In this silky world, only the virility of discomfort conceals freedom, it is valid for everyone, man or woman, it is the ultimate means of reaching and showing oneself worthy of God's love.

Sundays

Published on by Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti 1 comment

It is Sunday ?
It is Sunday ! Smell the dawning day as we speak at home,
Savor a hearty breakfast, it's a day of celebration!
Let's not forget it or rather let's remember it! Getting ready for a big day, the big day!
Listen to a grumpy taxi driver complaining about the world as it's not going well,
Get distracted from this conversation, as from any discussion,
Climb the steps, enter the building and let yourself be absorbed by it.
Breathe, come back to life like a plant that has lacked water and light for too long... Take root.
Pray.
Pray ! Advise and be informed! Listen to yourself love! Listening to each other loved! Enjoying yourself, with yourself absent from yourself,
Feeling back at home, in lands always unknown.
Feeling completely, entirely, intensely loved...
Wondering what deserves this... Hearing yourself gasp.
Hearing yourself mean the end of eternity.
Deo Gratias! Lamenting the end of this adventure that contains all adventures.
Finding the world after having forgotten it, stammering and chaotic.
Find the crowds, the noises, the clutter of the world... everything that is not Him.
Sanctify lunch as if He were going to sit there with us.
Savor a soft nap where dreams take your mind to an unknown and heavenly land.
Waking up, foggy, in a disparate mood, getting up with difficulty.
Rework the threads of oneself, and others.
Always stitching up your life. Especially the one to come. Kneel, askew, try to stand in prayer.
Dreaming to capture the unimaginable, the meaning that gives meaning to the void.
Find a thousand excuses to run away, listen to them all one by one, paying particular attention to them.
Believing that the truth could be exercised differently.
Trying to rediscover the essence of what filled the morning hours.
Being Sunday afternoon…
Is it Sunday yet?
Where did the magic run?
Bored with useless thoughts hoping that time will pass faster.
Hearing yourself calling from a distance: “Where are you?
» Fear, shudder, tremble, cry, shudder at the terrible echo...
Remember... Fear no more.
Never have any fear again. Dreaming of it being Sunday morning...
Hallucinizing yourself going to the appointment and declaring to Him in a whisper: “I'm here!
» Dreaming of it being Sunday morning to reconnect with the marvelous.

Prayer, every morning in the world.

Published on by Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti 1 comment

Morning prayer sparkles when the body is slow to stretch itself to honor this new day. The hand turns over the covers, summoned to wait for the revolution of the day to find a use again. Rejected, crumpled, they sag, overturned on the bed when the body stands up in the splendor of the dawning day. An eternal moment which reproduces itself as long as life flows through the veins and provides this breath whose absence rhymes with death. The body moves and embraces the darkness to slide on the mattress and let the feet touch the ground. Doesn't this ground wobble? Habit causes the room to become dark by denying it its mystery. The hand finds the pants and the sweater that will dress the clumsy body to regain movement when it had become accustomed to the stillness of the night. Suddenly, space has defined and precise volumes that are best not confronted with. Darkness watches over it so as not to lose its fortifications and hopes to regain some ground in its fight against daylight and against visual acuity which slowly adapts to the lack of light.

The corridor continues. It allows you to move towards the greatest adventure of the day. A few steps, and the corridor ends. The bathroom. A little bit of light. Very little. You have to wake up, but don't wake anyone. This meeting returns every morning around the world, intimate, without any display. The body discovers the dawning day, it leaves the night and its ocean of unconsciousness to bathe in the new source.

Finally, the prayer room. The little light that slides and reveals the triptych icon, a Virgin and Child, surrounded by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. A soft light like a setting Mediterranean sun. The kneeling descent on the prie-dieu reveals the moment of truth. Knees creak and beg for mercy. The muscular force deployed to descend onto the worn cushion placed on the wood of the prie-dieu allows the members to become familiar with this new position. Slouch while maintaining the dignity required by prayer. Let your gaze wander over the composite altar. Gaze at the woody light of the lamp on the cracked icon. See the face of Christ in this 19th century painting and his finger discreetly indicating his merciful heart. Recognizing the Trinity by Andrei Rublev. Think of the genius of Tarkovsky and all the fools-in-Christ. Let your mind wander like in an Antoine Blondin novel. Review this poorly signed contract, the chaos of work and human relations. Trying to ignore those creaky knees begging for comfort. Forget that phone call where each word sounded like a hammer blow. Let yourself be overcome by a few notes of despair about life after that horrible day the day before when all the work of several weeks was reduced to nothing. Regretting this fatigue which never ends and which longs to be swept away by a vacation which does not appear on the horizon... How so many thoughts turn and turn in the human skull which cannot stop tossing and cajoling its ideas, its concepts, this way of the world, the days past, those to come? What a marvel that these senses, all these visual or tactile or sound or taste or smell impressions come back and form the memory, where the spirit resides. What poetry!

The thoughts erase any pain from the knees or the osteoarthritis that sticks there like a shell to its rock. But, after the storm of memories and hopes, comes the time of hope and remembrance. It overflows memories and hopes by a hundred cubits, in depth, in length, in breadth, and in height. To tell the truth, it is very difficult to say how much it exceeds them, because there is nothing to compare them. The soul feels a wave of shock at the idea of ​​this comparison. Nothing can be compared to hope and remembrance. It would be like comparing heaven to earth. That would not be appropriate. How can people who do not believe live like this, leaving out their souls? How can they cover them with so many artifices that they no longer resonate loudly enough to wake them? This is beyond comprehension.

Oration sifts and sifts the first ideas. Those that resonate and descend into a bottomless cavern. The ones that continue to resonate when we no longer hear them. Ideas from beyond the grave which modify everyday life, which influence and deepen it. In what time and space is life expressed? We believe it here and it is there. We think of it as distant, absorbed in theory, and practice wins the vote by embracing thoughts and actions. We are absent to ourselves. So often. In such a meaningful way. Let's leave you alone. And, if we succeed, if we allow ourselves to be absorbed by this dawn which tramples and groans, which gives birth to day and life, love arrives without warning and envelops us and embraces us. It is the fruit of prayer. There is a provoked moment that awaits us in spite of ourselves. From this moment, no one comes back the same. A moment from which we never really return. The beauty of this hand-to-hand combat from which only love emerges victorious orders the world. We would thus like to avoid it, because there is no time, there is so much to do, the seconds ricochet off one another, the world commands us and we are victims of our crumbling structure.

Sometimes too, when the thoughts dissipate, the waiting brings us to despair. The appointment is missed. A participant is kept waiting. Yet the mind demands it. We wait and we get impatient. We would come to look at the time. We stamp our feet. Until the moment we realize that it is not the right place, that we have made a mistake, that we have gone astray. From experience, we should know that if the appointment does not take place, it is never His fault, but ours. We did not make ourselves available. The only time in our lives when we must be absent to attend.

Never has the creature revealed itself as much of a creature. All weaknesses displayed. All fragilities exposed. Nothing protects anymore, because nothing could tarnish the moment. The day that slips away and merges with the night light. The furtive shadows that slide across the face of the Virgin. The sword of Saint Michael which shines ready to serve. The zertsilo of the Archangel Gabriel where Christ is reflected, indicating the way always to come, to imitate. All these thoughts, these emotions, these feelings nourish and feed each other, mindful of their importance. No order governs them. The immensity of what they reveal and the smallness of their container frighten, but also captivate. Everything that has been said, what is going to be said, what has not been said, what could have been said, is concentrated and extracted to be reduced to nothing. The prayer has only just begun. She announces herself. The eyes close. We grope our way into ourselves. There is a sanctuary there that is worrying. Will we find what we are looking for? “Lord, in the silence of this dawning day, I come to ask you for peace, wisdom and strength…” You have to come looking for nothing to find every new thing there. The words suddenly agonize. They are no longer up to the task. The prayer begins. She extinguishes everything that is not her, the silence. The depth of silence. The abysmal intensity of silence. The silence that completes everything in its presence. The silence that reigns for its master: love. Then begins prayer, when love unfolds and fills every vein, every organ, every fiber of the being to establish the precedence of the Creator over the creature. Nothing else exists. The heart flooded with joy. Nothing else can exist, because everything is incongruous when compared to this moment, which is neither a feeling, nor an emotion, nor a thought. The universe diminishes and becomes shorter. There is a moment which does not exist, but which will recur at the next abandonment. This is a moment that gives life all its importance. There, at the heart of prayer vibrates love, a jewel that we all have, but not by escaping, by abandoning ourselves. Nothing is taken for granted, everything is offered. Little by little, by no longer having access to it, we convinced ourselves that it did not exist or that it no longer existed. He did not resist science, we found, this new religion. We even ridiculed him, because it was not enough to forget him, we had to denigrate him. However, whoever allows himself to be captured there, transforms there, metamorphoses there. To refuse is to die slowly. Die to Him. Forever.

Prayer influences all life by restoring its simplicity, the marvelous.

Sketch on authority or a definition of progressive.

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Following the article, Why this hatred of authority? I received many reactions. The first was to confuse, or ask myself not to confuse, power and authority. Here, we can see one thing: many people on social networks still agree with this difference. It even marks for them a border that they decree insurmountable, even if few of them venture to explain the difference between power and authority. And, as the article was partly dedicated to highlighting this difference, perhaps not as we are used to doing, it shocked and provoked questions. In many discussions on X, the comments thought that this article defended Emmanuel Macron! That’s how you read diagonally on the Internet! But let us understand that the President of the Republic embodies for many French people an authoritarian form of power.

Thus, there was this intuition about obedience: “authority always inaugurates something new through the control that one can have over one's own passions. » In this sentence, it is possible to replace the word authority with dogma. I evaluate which of these two words is more frightening. The inversion of values ​​and the meaning of words allows progressives to say almost anything and make it... a dogma. The progressive only feeds on “ideas in the air” according to the formidable formula of Claude Tresmontant. If I had to explain this formula a little, I would say that the progressive is rooted in his own thinking. He evolves his thinking to make it evolve first of all, the progressive is made to do, not obeying any authority, he flees the depression and solitude that produces in him a thought only turned towards oneself. From then on, he draws on his latest whims to build new ones. Do we not see the connection that exists between Wokism and the undermining work that has been done for decades in France against what has been called, while distorting it, the national novel? Those who would have been the left-wing supporters of Joan of Arc at the beginning of the 20th century are today her detractors and claim that she did not exist! This shows how progressivism is a machine that goes wrong on its own, believing itself to be correcting itself, it only accentuates its headlong flight. Progressives and the left in general are the true reactionaries of our time and are becoming more and more so, forced as they are to flee, because they are incapable of declaring their wrongs and errors. They are wrong and they deceive. They only react to events without ever practicing the slightest empiricism, because they inhabit the future (I say the future, not the future, because there is no future without a past, when the future represents a goal to reach which always escapes).

Authority ushers in something completely different. It suggests leaning on the past to define or redefine what we can imagine happening. Above all, it is not a question of absolutism, but rather of conservatism. This is also why there are so few theses on conservatism. There is a lot written about how to keep, how to save, how to promote, but less often how to get a vision from it. The conservative has continually left this place to the progressive who delights in it, even though he has nothing serious to do there. What reasonable person would have proposed transforming our aging and bankrupt democracy, living on life support, into a political system for the defense of minorities? I do not deny the protection of the weak, I deny that this becomes the only motive for political actions. Especially since the weakness of the progressive is hidden under a nauseating ideological cloak. In fact, it contains a right of inventory of the weak. There are weak and weak. However, politics mixes very badly with sentimentalism and our democracy is entangled with it. The conservative ignores detailing his action, building a grand plan and making it popular. Because he is looked down upon by progressive moralists who constantly imprison him with a moral screed that is based on sentimental judgment. Suspending this diktat would force us to accept the authoritarian label, but this time this label would no longer be given by the people as in the case of Emmanuel Macron - because the people recognize legitimate authority -, but by the press and the progressive intelligentsia. Who would complain about that?

Ernst Jünger in Heliopolis dreamed of a kind of state beyond the politics led by the “Regent”. There is no regent in our modern world, just two camps spying on each other without ever thinking that they can bring anything to each other. This antagonism is increasingly visible at all levels of society. It indicates a loss of common taste, a growing lack of culture, and an atrophied language which is reduced to its simplest expression - at least, to its simplest usefulness, like the American language. The American does to French what he did to English, he exhausts it - no longer knows how to express the nuances that dialogue requires. We label and classify everyone based on what they think or believe or vote. Discussion becomes a waste of time, and since the participants lack any meaning, the dialogue cannot gain any. There is an inevitability going on, a sort of destiny.

Destiny seduces and bewitches men when they no longer believe in freedom. The West no longer believes in freedom, because it no longer believes in God. Our civilization has known over the ages to weave remarkable links that have become inextricable with freedom; pulling on a thread that sticks out amounts to destroying our world. The inheritance refuses the right of inventory.

Exile, migrants and the Holy Father (2)

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Reflections on the various remarks of the Holy Father concerning migrants

Not all migrants arriving in Europe today are fleeing a catastrophic situation. They often arrive with big smiles. They don't all seem destitute. They show no nostalgia for their country and arrive in numbers to find another number. Melancholy is absent, because it is compensated by the communitarianism that they import and that they rediscover. Finally, they travel as single people, without wives or children, which should be intriguing. At least. That there is a will behind this seems obvious, even if the conspiracy label will be brandished at this sentence. The old-style migrants left an unfavorable situation to find not comfort, but rather to escape hell, without being sure of finding comfort, but armed with hope as I said above. They left with women and children, because they wanted to protect them. National feeling has disappeared among modern migrants, are they a-national? If so, what could make them a-national, a supra-nationality? Where do they find the money to make the crossing? During the Iraq War, Christian religious authorities noted that passports and visas had been widely distributed, where before the war it was extremely difficult to obtain one. Finally, the fact that the majority of its migrants are Muslims should also raise questions. When we know that a Muslim must die (and therefore live) in a Muslim land, we can only ask ourselves the question of their lack of desire to join a Muslim land. Especially since these are often much closer geographically than Europe. So many questions that Pope Francis never asks. So many questions that seem to make sense.

Why this hatred of authority?

Published on by Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti 7 comments

Authority resembles those secret agents dear to Graham Greene who conceal their identity so as not to lose it further during a bad encounter. She still has a few admirers who love her and deploy treasures of ingenuity to define her, redefine her, so that she is understood in her time. To do this, they bring her closer to tradition, to honor, to hierarchy, to natural law... they constantly give her a cane, crutches, a tripod, so that she can still get out of his hiding place and get some fresh air. The words to which they attach authority resemble bandages, cautery, which, in the end, hide it a little more. The disenchantment has been pronounced for a long time and is increasing. Nothing can save authority, everything that it inspires brings to mind old things that we know how to do without. It is of no use. It is of no use.

Authority, in its Latin sense, comes from auctor which means “one who increases”, and from auctoritas , which has “power to impose obedience”. Authority is equated with power, which we forget when separating power and authority. On the other hand, it is a power without power, it does not constrain. Its field of action is born from ethics, knowledge, belief... Because it requires obedience. This is where we begin to stumble over its meaning, because the times do not like obedience. And, as the era no longer appreciates belief, it denigrates authority. It devalues ​​it, it identifies it with cowardly and blind power. She gives him a nickname that has become an implication: authoritarianism . As if to reveal what she hides under her mask of leniency: a brutal, violent and unstable character. It must be unmasked. She must be slandered. Above all, we must no longer understand anything, and what is not understanding anything if not a new form of belief? Authority imposes limits that no one wants anymore, which oblige and prevent us from being what we want. The era believes that it is by being what we desire that we will be what we deserve. Individualism reigns supreme, and unchallenged. No one knows better than you what is good for you. Let’s take it for granted! As it was necessary to ignore limits and hierarchy, the era threw authority aside after having put it on the picket line. Authority catalyzed modernity. She had to be subdued.

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What is the problem with the Mass of Paul VI?

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More than fifty years ago, the Catholic Church gave itself a new Mass which broke in a way never seen before with the tradition of the Church. The reformers, however, did not expect the traditional Mass to continue for them. They were even convinced of the contrary. abolition of the traditional Roman mass . commit themselves, as prayers, as seminarians, to celebrating and bringing to life this form of the Roman rite. The latter are often accused of being troublemakers, nostalgics, identity seekers, and above all, crime of lèse-majesté, of being against the Second Vatican Council, which one no longer separates from one's own spirit; this spirit of the council which we feast on without ever really qualifying it, as for almost all important things. In the Church as elsewhere, progressives act by essentializing their opponents in order to discredit them. The liturgy is the summit and the source of the life of the Church, as the last council reminds us, and the liturgy is tradition. To resolve the crisis of the liturgy that she carries within her, the Church will have to reweave the threads of damaged and wounded tradition, even and above all, if the time urges her not to do so.

Which Vatican II?

"The new Ordo Missae, if we consider the new elements, susceptible to very different appreciations, which seem implied or implied therein, departs in an impressive way, as a whole as in detail, from the theology of the Holy Mass, as it was formulated at the XXII session of the Council of Trent, which, by definitively fixing the "canons" of the rite, raised an impassable barrier against any heresy which could undermine the integrity of the Mystery” 2 Cardinal Ottaviani, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed Paul VI on September 3, 1969, we were a few weeks away from the entry into force of the new mass. In a way, this concluded the Second Vatican Council which had however closed its doors for four years! Let's dwell a little on the figure of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani: the son of a baker, from the poor neighborhoods of Rome, he turned out to be a very good student at the Roman pontifical seminary, and obtained three doctorates, in theology, philosophy and canon law. . Secretary of the Holy Office, then proprefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he worked the four years preceding the council to prepare the themes to be treated and pronounced the habemus papam for the election of John XXIII. This month of October 1962 will see the masks fall and positions, progressive or modernist, appear. John XXIII, in his opening speech of the Council, will display a certain contempt for the curial team of Pius XII by declaring: "The Spouse of Christ prefers to resort to the remedy of mercy, rather than brandishing the weapons of severity . She believes that, rather than condemning, she responds better to the needs of our time, by emphasizing the riches of her doctrine. » 3 There is in this sentence a dichotomy which inaugurates and prefigures the whole Second Vatican Council: can there be mercy if there is no condemnation of an act? Why should there be a remedy if there is no wound before? Didn't we see the will to put sin under the rug like a troublesome dust? The tone used where leniency asserts itself as the supreme authority will become the leitmotif of the Second Vatican Council. Therefore a sling is organized. The texts prepared by the curia are rejected. Notably De fontibus revelationis , on the sources of revelation, and De Ecclesia . An absolute majority was needed to ratify this rejection, John XXIII gave his agreement and was satisfied with the relative majority. “Thus was carried out a veritable coup d'etat, by which all the liberal tendencies, in the process of organizing themselves into a 'conciliar majority', snatched doctrinal power from the Curia inherited from Pius XII. » 4 . From then on, and since the working texts had been trampled on and discarded, work began on the liturgy. We thought the unifying subject. The progressives had an agenda as usual, which the conservatives almost never have. Cardinal Ottaviani, on October 30, 1962, took the floor, he was not yet blind and was going to show clairvoyance, he asked that the rite of the Mass not be treated "like a piece of cloth that is put back fashionable according to the fancy of each generation”. It seemed to the audience that it was too long in its development. He was interrupted without regard to his rank. His microphone was cut to the applause of a large number of Fathers. The Second Vatican Council could begin.

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Letter to Pope Francis regarding the Mass

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Preamble
This letter to Pope Francis was first written for La Voie Romaine 1 in order to bear witness to the beauty and effectiveness of the traditional Roman rite and to bear witness to the shock caused by the motu proprio, Traditionis custodes , published on 16 July 2021 by Pope Francis.

Holy Father,
I was waking up from a terrible nightmare: I dreamed that you were limiting access to the traditional liturgy, so I thought it was important to reveal to you how much the Mass of Saint Pius V has marked my existence without my being the least prepared for it. Do you know that it is difficult for me to write Saint-Père, because I had no father. I have one, like everyone else, but I didn't get it when I should have. So he left me before I was born. I found it later, but you understand that I didn't get it at the right time. I didn't have the good times that a child knows with his father. I didn't know him when the need arose, and the need arose at all times since absence created it I didn't have a father to guide me, like a tutor, to share my likes and my dislikes, to marry my views or influence them.

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The Chief's Sacrifice

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A book by Army Corps General Pierre Gillet published by Sainte-Madeleine editions

“Who is like God? »(1), the book of the army corps general Pierre Gillet, lists in an exhaustive way the qualities of a chief and draws up the Christian virtues necessary to the command. What could pass for an insider's book, a new TTA(1), becomes under the delicate and virile pen of Pierre Gillet, former corps commander of the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment, general commanding the rapid reaction corps - France , a poetry of being, imbued with spirituality, passion, perseverance and dignity.

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Lauda Zion

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Magnificent sequence in the Mass of Corpus Christi, written by Saint Thomas Aquinas, this dogmatic poetry praises the new and true Sion, the Church. Benoit XVI said of this Mass: “These are texts that make the waves of the heart vibrate, while the intelligence, penetrating with wonder into the mystery, recognizes in the Eucharist the living and true presence of Jesus, of his Sacrifice of love that reconciles us to the Father and gives us salvation.”

Praise, Sion, your saviour, praise your leader and your pastor, with hymns and canticles.
As much as you can, dare to sing it, because it exceeds all praise, and you are not enough to praise it.
A special subject of praise is proposed to us today: it is the living and life-giving bread.
The bread that at the meal of the Holy Communion, Jesus really gave to the troop of the twelve brothers.
Let the praise be full and sonorous;
may it be joyful and beautiful, the jubilation of the soul. For today is the solemnity that recalls the first institution of this Supper.
At this table of the new King, the new Passover of the new law ends the ancient Passover.
The old rite is chased away by the new, the shadow by the truth;
the light dissipates the night. What Christ did at the Last Supper, he ordered to be done in memory of him.
Instructed by his holy orders, we consecrate the bread and the wine in the host of salvation.
It is a dogma given to Christians that bread becomes flesh and wine becomes meaning.
What you do not understand or see, living faith attests against the course of events.
Beneath various appearances, simple signs and non-realities, hide sublime realities.
The flesh is food, the blood drink;
however Christ remains whole on one and the other species. By whoever receives it, it is not broken or broken or divided, but received whole.
Only one receives it, a thousand receive it: each as much as the others;
taken as food, it is not destroyed. The good guys take it, the bad guys take it, but for a different fate: Life or death!
Death for the wicked, life for the good: see how different the outcome is from the same take.
If finally the sacrament is broken, do not be troubled, but remember that there is under each particle as much as the whole covers.
No scission of reality occurs: of the sign alone there is a rupture, and it diminishes neither the state nor the magnitude of the reality signified.
Here is the bread of the angels which has become food for travellers: it is truly the bread of children, which must not be thrown to the dog.
It is signified in advance by figures: the immolation of Isaac, the lamb set apart for the passover, the manna given to our fathers.
Good Shepherd, true bread, Jesus, have mercy on us: feed us, keep us, show us the real good in the land of the living.
You who know and can do everything, who feed here below the mortals that we are: make us up there your commensals, the co-heirs and the companions of the holy citizens of heaven.