December 2003 - Venite Adoremus!

The glorious hymn of the angelic choirs, bursting into the silence of the Christmas night, illuminates men with the amazing news of Our Lord’s birth: “Unto you a child is born, a Savior is given to you, come all and worship Him.” And in the souls eager to serve God peace is established. Divine benevolence inclines towards our misery, and God, thwarting all human calculation, espouses our vile condition. In taking upon Himself our misery, He offers us the treasure of His divinity in a royal exchange!

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

The glorious hymn of the angelic choirs, bursting into the silence of the Christmas night, illuminates men with the amazing news of Our Lord’s birth: “Unto you a child is born, a Savior is given to you, come all and worship Him.” And in the souls eager to serve God peace is established. Divine benevolence inclines towards our misery, and God, thwarting all human calculation, espouses our vile condition. In taking upon Himself our misery, He offers us the treasure of His divinity in a royal exchange!

Nothing can undermine our hope when, responding to the angelic invitation, we go to the manger and admire the spectacle of the Immaculate Virgin worshipping her Son and Savior. By uniting ourselves with the joy of the angels, we go beyond our own misery and sing a hymn of thanks to God for the manifest proof of His love for us. United with Our Lady, we worship the infinite majesty of the divinity hidden under the appearances of a child.

This act of worship perfectly characterizes the fundamental attitude of the Catholic soul.

By worshiping God in the Person of Christ, man responds in an appropriate manner to the Savior’s infinite Love for him. Our Lord’s unfathomable love is the supreme reason for His incarnation, which led Him onto the path of Calvary to offer his Sacrifice, supreme testimony of His love for His Father and for us. The Redemptor became incarnate not only to snatch man away from the devil’s grasp, but especially to manifest His Father’s glory by transforming us, detestable sinners, into children of predilection. His Precious Blood not only erases sin, but it also introduces us into the bosom of the Divinity by making us participate, through grace, in His own life.

As a result, our vocation cannot be simply reduced to our abstaining from sin. Our foremost and ultimate duty of gratitude and fidelity is to live constantly in adoration. In this constant adoration, man finds the secret of his essential balance, for he fulfills Christ’s profound desire as He revealed it to the Samaritan woman: “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Fathers in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him” (St. John IV, 23).

To worship in spirit is indeed the first duty of the soul who recognizes the eternal majesty of God, sitting above all creatures in a light inaccessible because uncreated: “God is spirit,” Our Lord says again to the Samaritan woman, “and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” To worship in spirit is to live by faith. Only the virtue of faith can introduce us into the presence of God and make us enter into His intimacy. This startling proximity of the soul to God transforms and deifies her. This nearness forces her, fortunately, to live above sentimentality, and helps her to free herself of her impressions, which only make the soul curl upon herself.

To worship consists precisely in going out of oneself to give oneself to God, acknowledging that in every-thing we belong to Him, and that we desire to be seized by His omnipotence, to become a praise of grace singing His splendors and His mercy.

To worship is to acknowledge that God is God, magnificent, unfathomable, magnanimous, immutable, perfect. Any epithet will forever remain short of the reality, for His nobility infinitely exceeds any human notion.

But to worship in spirit is to know, by the virtue of faith, that God wants us to partake in His nobility by be-coming one of us, by becoming through grace the soul of our souls. His nobility is in no way diminished by looking after our misery, for nobility is elevated when it bends down towards misery in order to help it.

We worship in spirit, knowing that the Presence of Our Lord in us is not an illusion, but an indubitable reality. This presence, moreover, is a living and active presence, a constant invitation to be united to His life, a union that is the summit of our life of adoration. Our Christian life is indeed nothing but a burning desire to participate in the praise of Christ, a search for Him in our souls through faith since “the kingdom of God is within you” (St. Luke XVII, 21).

Being baptized, we are the dwelling of the Most Holy Trinity. Our main purpose is to adore, allowing us to fulfill the demands of our baptismal consecration. In doing this, we avoid falling into that spiritualist error that reduces adoration to a simple inner devotion. We are intent on incarnating our adoration into our daily life. From then on, we will be able to comply with what Our Lord asked from the Samaritan woman, when He demanded that we render Him this worship in truth.

We must adore not only in spirit, but also in truth, for we are members of the kingdom of grace, which is nothing else than that of the Incarnation. By worshipping in truth, we refuse the easy life in the abstract world of theories, which allows us to avoid all contact with reality, as so many Liberal cowards do today.

Being consecrated by the blood of Our Lord at the time of our baptism, we are radically opposed to the world and its works, marked by concupiscence. Worshipping is the best means of progressing on the steep path of sanctity in a totally unbalanced world. In order to advance on this path, our daily actions must be always actions of praise.

Our daily duty is nothing else than the foundation upon which our adoration is incarnated, becoming thus the ultimate criterion for all our acts. We understand then that our radical opposition to the world does not stem from some cautious fear, but rather from the testimony of the infinite respect that we render to God present in our soul. Such homage and vassalage may find fulfillment in a very simple life. For a Christian, the value of an act does not depend on the value of the thing itself, but on the dependence of our soul on the Most Holy Trinity.

“Omnis honor and gloria.” These words express exactly the habitual attitude of the Christian soul living in grace, and identifying its life with the supreme sacrifice of Christ dying on the Cross for His Father’s glory. The Holy Mass, through the adoration it renders to the Most Holy Trinity, is the source and the model of Christian life. Our daily duty is only its radiance.

The adoration offered to God would thus be vain if it be not manifested in the daily actions of our ordinary life. We would not be truly living according to the mystery of Christ’s Love if we did not incarnate it in the concrete reality of our life. Yet we must point out again that adoration is the unique remedy that can clear away the putrid fumes of a world whose ultimate leader is Satan himself. The depth of today’s decadence can only be accounted for by his diabolic power.

This world, which advocates the systematic revolt against the divine order and blesses the decadence of morals, is in a state of total rebellion. Modern man hates the very ideas of dependence, order, submission and nobility, considering himself as the sole measure of everything and wanting to submit the world to his supreme authority. We are witnessing a proliferation of laws that scorn the natural law and its Author. We are living in a mad world that does not want to follow any other path than that of an absolute independence. We are living in a time of collective madness that pours its poisons into souls. No authority is allowed to interfere to thwart the designs of the al-mighty will of man: he is now king and god.

It would be vain to look for human means of escaping from the profound abyss in which we are sinking more and more every day. Adoration is the unique possibility of salvation that is offered to us. Adoration alone stands in the way of Revolution. Adoration is the complete worship that man can render to God, while Revolution is the worship, no less absolute, that man renders to Satan as the father of all rebellion.

There is no other conceivable way out, and we only risk sinking further in the infernal mud of today’s decadence in our search for other solutions.

It is most important for us to understand that the essence of Revolution is this perverse doctrine that makes liberty the cornerstone of all human construction and which bears the accursed name of Liberalism. Liberal-ism is that philosophical doctrine which pretends to free man from all authority on behalf of the imprescriptible right of his sovereign liberty, and thus, it is nothing else than the soul of Revolution.

We are confronted with a dogma that directly attacks God’s majesty by denying His rights as Creator and Redeemer. This satanic dogma has an immediate political implication that takes up again the old cry of hatred addressed to Pilatus: “We do not want Him to reign over us.” This key thought of Liberalism eloquently points to its original and real nature, and shows that Liberalism is not neutral. It is an act of war to prevent Our Lord Jesus Christ from reigning over societies and souls.

On the contrary, we want Him to reign over us, in all domains, so that our lives will be nothing but a preparation for the eternal adoration of His supreme majesty, already worshipped by angels and saints.

In the meantime, in this world, the worshipper is made soldier of Christ the King by virtue of his adoration. He must be faithful to it in spirit and in truth, thanks to a solid doctrinal training and a resolute commitment in the current battle. Adoration without effective incarnation in the concrete is a diabolic illusion, an “angelism” that actually denies the mystery of the Incarnation. This error threatens us, for it is easy to slide into a sentimental pietism which is nothing but an unfortunate substitute for the true piety of the man in arms, the true disciple of Christ offering his life in a supreme act of adoration.

On the other hand, fighting against this evil without the spirit of adoration risks leading us into a deadly spiral, and we could end up dangerously fascinated by evil, as it is strongly attractive to our souls wounded by original sin. We also could fall into activism and then slide into a frantic search for personal success not only illusory but also terribly dangerous, for it only rests on the ruins of the search for the glory of God.

The world in which we live is in open war against God, denying His existence and His rights by stifling the souls with an avalanche of sensuality. Our Catholic duty is simple: we must defend our God by living in the spirit and truth of adoration. The last act of adoration is to offer one’s life in sacrifice in close union with the Sacrifice of Calvary. Putting on the very strength of God, we will then conquer with His grace.

In Christo Sacerdote et Maria,

Fr. Yves le Roux