August 2005 - Summer News

The month of August is traditionally a quiet one at the Seminary with only the week long retreat preached to priests changing somewhat the peaceful passing of the days. Vacation time allows us the opportunity of sharing with you some news concerning the Seminary.

In July two Ignatian retreats were preached at the Seminary. Two priest Seminary staff members took one each, aided by a deacon.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

The month of August is traditionally a quiet one at the Seminary with only the week long retreat preached to priests changing somewhat the peaceful passing of the days. Vacation time allows us the opportunity of sharing with you some news concerning the Seminary.

In July two Ignatian retreats were preached at the Seminary. Two priest Seminary staff members took one each, aided by a deacon.

Presently, most of our seminarians, under the direction of Fr. Iscara, are making a trip to the tombs of the Apostles and to the birthplace of our Society. Indeed, once every four years we organize a trip to Rome and to Ecône so that the seminarians can get to know better the See of Peter and can spend time in recollection before the tomb of our Founder. This year the trip will end at Fatima where the Seminary will thus be well represented and will participate in the ceremony of reparation, presided over by His Excellency Bishop Fellay and organized to make reparation for the outrages committed against the Mother of God at Her sanctuary in Fatima.

The seminarians of the years of humanities and spirituality (the first two years of the Seminary course) will successively be at the Seminary during this time to help us with up-keeping the place and running the retreats. Some seminarians have likewise helped fellow priests in their running of different Youth Camps.

Next September the Seminary will receive the Novitiate of the Brothers of our Society under its wings. We recommend this important change to your prayers. Apart from forming future priests, we shall thus form also Brothers, that they may help priests in their apostolate by the atmosphere of their religious life, a jewel that Holy Church cannot do without. Let us rejoice that it yet flourishes in our Society, and let us pray that many young men understand its value and beauty.

We pay tribute to Rev. Fr. Doran who, after nine years of apostolate at the Seminary, is this Fall going to take charge of the parish at Geneva, on the banks of the lake of the same name, in Switzerland. His ministry will thus be in French, in the country of St. Francis de Sales. We would like to give him an expression of our deepest gratitude and assure him of our prayers in his demanding new post.

Lastly, the Seminary must affront a housing crisis! With the coming of the Brothers' Novitiate and with a good number of entrants each year to the Seminary, our means for accommodation prove to be too restricted. Two solutions are offered us. The first consists in making the Seminary bigger, adding wings giving us seventy rooms more. But these additions pose problems of no small order, for we would have to respect the architecture of the buildings as they stand, and this cannot be done without incurring considerable expense

The other solution would be to acquire an unused religious house, with a capacity of one hundred and twenty or a hundred and fifty rooms. Having looked into this without success, we conclude that finding such a place is not easy. We, moreover, would be interested in a house only of pronounced religious character and situated out in the country: a city, noise, commotion do not suit a Seminary.

And so we see ourselves obliged to call upon your charity, for, whatever the solution we are led to adopt, the costs will prove to be major. But the formation of priests is certainly today's most necessary work and we cannot risk refusing applicants just because of not enough room. That would be too much! We entrust the Good God with this appeal to your generosity and beseech Him to recompense with choice graces for yourselves and for your families the sacrifices that you accept to make in helping us form tomorrow's priests, men of profound faith, witnesses of the Love of God.

This project shows that vocations continue to flourish in the heart of tradition. Of course, we should like that they be more numerous still, but each one is a miracle of grace and an occasion to thank God Who continues to watch over His flock. Let us not forget to pray the Lord of the harvest that He send forth laborers into His harvest.

In Christo Sacerdote et Maria,

Fr. Yves le Roux

PS.: We are including a short text from Rev. Fr. Emmanuel, Benedictine monk and Pastor of the parish of Mesnil Saint-Loup, to encourage you to pray during this time of vacations. Fr. Emmanuel was considered by His Excellency, Archbishop Lefebvre, one of the greatest spiritual writers of the 19th century. The passage we are giving you shows the exactitude of this judgment. 

Summertime Reading: God's Time and the World's Time

By Rev. Fr. Emmanuel OSB

"My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready."

"Tempus meum nondum advenit; tempus autem vestrum semper paratum est." (John 7,6)

There is the time of God and the time of the world: the time of God has its own measure, its own rule and its own law, in God Himself; the time of the world has its measure in man. Consequently, to

the degree that there is a difference between God and man, there is a difference between the time of God and the time of man. God's time is never in a hurry; man's time seems to be always hurrying: the reason is that God has an eternity for Himself, while man seems to have but a little of the present.

And so God is patient, man is impatient. God is patient because He is eternal, says St. Augustine; man is impatient because he is of a day, of an instant.

This is easily perceived in the realm of prayer, even of the holiest and most humble prayer. Man asks, and would like to be answered at the first word. It would be very difficult for us to pray with fervor for a grace that we knew would not be granted for a quarter of a century. Man's time has always come.

That is not the way it is with God's time: it comes at the hour of God, and God's hour is measured by the clock of eternity. Often, therefore, God seems not to answer prayers; nevertheless He hears them, and listens with a love in proportion to His grace that excited them in our souls; and having excited, heard and received them, He puts them on reserve, so to speak, until His time has come.

Very rare, too rare, are the souls who know how to pray without demanding to be answered on the spot. The best prayers are those made according to God's will and abandoned to the will of God, to bear fruit when God's time will have come.

The creature's impatience shows itself too before the judgment and the judgments of God.

Men weak in faith would like sin to be punished straightway: God's delaying in judging becomes a sort of scandal for some, and all too often a difficulty for others. Here too, man would like to impose his time upon God, give Him the hour, and nearly teach Him His ways.

But the ways of God are far from the ways of men, and nobody is admitted to the council of His eternal Providence. God knows, and we do not know; while we judge, God judges too, and our judgment is hardly in agreement with His.

Will God submit to our wisdom? Will He come to man's school to learn how to govern heaven and earth? No: God laughs at our vanity, has compassion on our haste, and teaches us to submit to Him in everything. "Commit thy way to the Lord and trust in Him, and He will do it." (Psalm 36,5) Taken from a series of articles entitled: "The sayings of Our Lord" from the Bulletin of Notre-Dame de la Sainte-Esperance, Dec. 1886.