Cardinal Sarah at the Grave of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, who was born in Bretagne, but died in the Vendée and is buried there. |
(Paris) An extraordinary and prophetic sermon was given by Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Roman Congregation of Divine Worship and the Order of the Sacraments, in Saint Laurent sur Sèvres in the Vendée. The occasion was the opening of the 700th anniversary of the Diocese of Luçon.
The Catholic and Royalist population of this French landscape and its surroundings rose up from 1793 to 1796 in an insurrection against the anti-Christ and anti-royalist programs of the French Revolution. Their insurrection was cruelly suppressed by the revolutionaries in the name of "freedom, equality, brotherhood." The cruelty of the Revolutionary Government and its "hell columns," as the revolutionary groups were called, which precipitated the uprising in the Vendée, caused about 200,000 deaths by systematically burning entire villages and killing the population. Today, the extermination policy of the revolution is sometimes referred to as genocide (genocide) and "populicide" (popular murder).
The Cardinal will be in the Vendée until 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.
The full text of the sermon:
Dear Brothers in the Lord!
We Christians need the spirit of the inhabitants of the Vendée! We need such an example! As we have to leave our sowing, our harvest, the furrows drawn by our plows, to fight - not for the defense of human interests, but for God!
So who will stand up for God today? Who will dare to face the modern persecutors of the Church? Who will have the courage to rise, unarmed, only with the Rosary and the Sacred Heart, to meet the columns of death of our days, the relativism, the indifference and the contempt of God? Who will tell this world that the only truth worth dying for is freedom to believe?
Brothers, as once our brethren of the Vendée, today we have been called to confession, that is, to martyrdom!
Today, our Christian brothers in the Middle East, in Pakistan, in Africa, die for their faith, destroyed by the columns of the Islamic persecution. Therefore, you, people of France, you, people of the Vendée, when will you take up the peaceful weapons of prayer and love to defend your faith?
Dear friends, the blood of the martyrs flows in your veins. Be faithful to it!
We are all mentally sons of the martyrs of the Vendée! Also we Africans, we who have received many missionaries from the Vendée, who came to proclaim us Christ and to die with us! We must remain faithful to their heritage!
In this place the spirit of these martyrs surrounds us. What do they tell us? What are they going to give us?
First and foremost their courage! When it comes to God, no compromise is possible! The glory of God is not for discussion! This has to start with our personal life, our prayer life and our worship.
Brothers, it is time to rise up against the real existential atheism that stifles our lives. If we pray in the family, we place God in the first place! A family who prays is a family that lives! A Christian who does not pray, who leaves no space for God by silence and worship, dies!
From the example of the Vendée, we also learn the love of the priesthood. Because their "good shepherds" were threatened, they rose. Your children, when they see the faithful example of your ancestors, love their priests, love the priesthood!
You must ask: Have I also been called to be a priest in the succession of these good priests who have suffered martyrdom by the revolution? Would I have the courage to give life entirely to Christ and to my brethren?
The martyrs of the Vendée also teach us the forgiveness and mercy. Despite persecution and hatred, they have preserved in their hearts the concern for peace and forgiveness. Remember, commander Bonchamps 1) had given 5,000 prisoners given the freedom in 1793 a few minutes before he died. We should counteract hatred without resentment and without animosity. We are to be armed with the heart of Jesus, and like this we shall be full of meekness.
Finally, we also learn the generosity and selflessness of the martyrs of the Vendée.
Your ancestors did not themselves fight for their own interests. They had nothing to gain. Today they teach us true humanity. We live in a world dominated by the dictatorship of money, interests and wealth. The joy of selflessness is everywhere despised and mocked. Nevertheless, only the generous love and the unselfish surrender of one's own life can defeat the hatred of God and of men, the origin of every revolution. The inhabitants of the Vendée have taught us to resist all these revolutions. They have shown us that there is only one answer to the colonialists, the National Socialist extermination camps, the Communist Gulag, the Islamic barbarism: the complete self-giving of one's own life. Only love defeats the powers of death!
Today again, perhaps today more than ever before, the revolutionary ideologues want to destroy the natural place of self-giving, joyous generosity and love - I mean the family!
Gender ideology, contempt for fertility and loyalty are the new guiding principles of the revolution. The families have become many Vendées, which are to be exterminated. It is planned to systematically wipe them out as they once did against the Vendée.
These new revolutionaries are annoyed by the selflessness families with children. They laugh at the Christian families because they embody everything they hate. They are ready to send their columns of hell against Africa to put the family under pressure and impose on it sterilization, abortion and contraception.
Africa will resist like the Vendée!
Everywhere: Christian families must be a joyous avant-garde of an insurrection against this new dictatorship of egoism!
Now, in the heart of every family, every Christian, every person of good will has to raise an inner Vendée! Every Christian is mentally a Vendéan! Let us not allow the unselfish and generous devotion to be stifled in us. Let us also learn how the martyrs of the Vendée, to draw this gift from their source: the heart of Jesus. Let us ask that a powerful and joyful inner Vendée rise in the Church and in the world.
Amen!
Text / Translation: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Le Salon beige / Messa in latino
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG
Image: Le Salon beige / Messa in latino
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG