1975 ordination sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre

Archbishop Lefebvre speaks on the importance of always being faithful to God and how Our Lady exemplified this virtue.

Sermon for the ordination of Fr. Franz Schmidberger

Given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on December 8, 1975 at St. Pius X Seminary in Econe, Switzerland

My dear friends, my very dear confreres,

Virgo fidelis, ora pro nobis. Faithful Virgin, pray for us.

If there is one virtue that we all need in a very special way, it is surely fidelity: to be faithful.

What then does fidelity mean? “Fidelity” comes from the Latin word fides, so it means to have faith. But fidelity means more than faith. It is perseverance in the Faith. It is perseverance in the spirit of faith. It is the practice of the Faith. Not just for one day; not just for one month, but throughout our life. Fidelity is keeping the promises that you have made, the commitment that you have made. And first of all this fidelity is found in its fullness, in its perfection, in its boundlessness in God Himself.

God is faithful. God is faithful to Himself. God is faithful to all His promises. God is faithful to all those who love Him. This is the fidelity that should be exemplary, the model of our own fidelity.

Today, my dear friends, and particularly you, dear Franz, who have just received the grace of the priesthood, you are making a commitment in the presence of God to be faithful to the grace that you have just received.

Earlier, we came across a term in the prayers that expresses this fidelity well: constantia: constancy, perseverance in the promise that one has made.

Fidelity, if it is tied to the virtue of faith at its foundation, in its practice is linked to the virtue of fortitude. It is this fortitude, the gift of fortitude, that we ask the Holy Ghost to give you in your priesthood. May you be constant, constantly faithful to God, faithful to the commitments that you have solemnly made today, in coming to receive this grace of the priesthood, and in receiving all the counsels and advice that the celebrating bishop gives you when he gives you the grace of the priesthood. Therefore be faithful.

And you, my dear friends, who are also about to renew your engagements in the Society: be faithful too, faithful to your engagements.

God too has been faithful and ever-faithful. He is semper idem, always the same: God is always the same. And this fidelity that is so precious to us rests precisely on this constancy in His perfection, in His infinity, in His infinite Being. If we are attached to our Faith, it is because we are attached to God. Our Faith is nothing other than God Himself, present in our mind, in our heart, in our will. It is the Holy Trinity dwelling in us; it is Our Lord Jesus Christ Who is God, dwelling in us. This is our fidelity; this is what we promised at our baptism, to believe for eternity, forever. Not for a day, but for eternity.

Now, if there is an example of this fidelity in the history of humanity, it is certainly the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. She too was faithful. She was already faithful before pronouncing her Fiat. She was already all-pure, all-holy, completely attached to the good Lord, faithful to God down to the last fiber of her heart. But when she pronounced her Fiat, then she was faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ. She was faithful to her Son Who was also her God.

Faithful throughout her life—through trials, through doubts, through difficulties, through contradictions, through scandals—the Most Blessed Virgin was always faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to her Divine Son. She never abandoned Him, not even at the Cross. When the Apostles had fled, when the Apostles had abandoned Him, when her Son was covered with blood, dead, abandoned by all, by God in a sense, the Virgin was present there: Stabat Mater juxta crucem.

She did not abandon the work of her Divine Son. She did not abandon it because she was present at its origin on the day of Pentecost. She, the Virgin Mary, was there to distribute the graces that Our Lord Jesus Christ had wanted the Apostles to receive through her. Therefore, she was faithful to her commitments, always faithful to Our Lord. She still is; she still is today. She has only one desire: to see us guard this attachment to Our Lord Jesus Christ, this attachment to our faith. It is her honor. It is all her desire; it is her whole life that we remain attached to Our Lord Jesus Christ with every fiber of our being.

This fidelity is also remarkable in the Old Testament. If the Virgin was and still is the most perfect example of fidelity among God’s creatures, we can see that fidelity is precious to God. That God wants us to be faithful. Whereas He is faithful to Himself and to all His commitments, He also wants us to be faithful to our commitments. And the whole story of the Old Testament is nothing but the fidelity or infidelity of Israel to its God.

And certainly God chastised them severely when they were unfaithful, when they strayed from God, when they strayed from their promises. God delivered them to their enemies. God decimated them. God even allowed the Temple of Jerusalem to disappear because they were unfaithful to their God. This is an example that we must never forget. And it seems to me that this example is very dear to us, is very precious to us in our Church of today.

Oh, certainly the Church has the words about eternity, words of everlasting life; the Church will not sink. But she may go through painful trials and be unfaithful to God, at least most of her members, since Scripture tells us that perhaps one day there will be only a few believers left on this earth.

Therefore, there will be terrible moments in the history of the Church, when it will seem that the Church herself is losing the Faith. Are we not in that time today, or at least in one of the times that is preparing for the general apostasy? Can we really say that today we have an example in the Church of a remarkable fidelity? Quite the contrary, it seems that we are abandoning God, abandoning Our Lord. I would point out that fidelity contains within its meaning the word semper, “always”. Fidelity that is not forever is not true fidelity.

Be always faithful to God. This always includes the past, the present, and the future. Thus, if we want to be faithful, we must be faithful to the past, to the faith that has always been the Faith of the Church. We must be faithful to God, in what the Church has promised, in what the Apostles have promised, in everything that the Church has promised over the centuries.

We must be faithful to these promises of the Church. And we who are part of this Church, we who are members of this Church must be faithful to our ancestors, to the faith of our ancestors, to the Faith of the Church of all times. If we cannot say that we are faithful, even if we were unfaithful for only a few days, we would no longer be worthy of those who preceded us.

This faith must last throughout the centuries and, for us personally, throughout our lives. Above all else, it is this to which we must be attached, because, again, our faith is God. It is Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is eternity; it is eternal happiness; it is the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ; it is Heaven.

We cannot detach ourselves from these things that are our whole life, the whole reason for our existence, the whole reason for our redemption, and the Church’s whole reason for being. This is why we must keep this love for the Church in our hearts, a profound love for our Holy Catholic Church in which Our Lord has enclosed all the treasures of His life and His grace.

Faithful also to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom Our Lord Jesus Christ handed over all His graces so that they might be granted to us through her. If we are truly faithful to the Church, if we are truly faithful to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, whatever happens, whatever scandals may occur around us, whatever they may tell us, whatever people may think, whatever they may write, whatever they may publish, we will remain faithful, faithful to what the Church has always believed; faithful to what the saints have always practiced.

Let us seek therefore with all our soul, with all our heart, to be faithful, so that one day the Good Lord can say to us too: Euge serve bone et fidelis: Well done, good and faithful servant. Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee for eternity over many things (cf. Mt 25:23).

And so, by this promise that Our Lord has made to us to give us an eternal reward, if we are faithful, let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to give us this grace of final perseverance and of fidelity.

In the name of the Father....