From the dawn rising over the snow-covered peaks of powerful mountains, to the incomparable majesty of the sunset at sea, passing through the intimate and amiable spectacle of our fields, Nature offers us incomparable subjects of contemplation. Such beauty speaks the language of the soul, the language of its Creator – the language of the Beautiful and, consequently, of Truth. But this universal language is not the prerogative of nature alone; it is also that of Art and the Humanities, starting with the noblest of them, Philosophy, which precisely teaches us how from the Beautiful we can arrive at Truth.
Dear friends and benefactors,
From the dawn rising over the snow-covered peaks of powerful mountains, to the incomparable majesty of the sunset at sea, passing through the intimate and amiable spectacle of our fields, Nature offers us incomparable subjects of contemplation. Such beauty speaks the language of the soul, the language of its Creator – the language of the Beautiful and, consequently, of Truth. But this universal language is not the prerogative of nature alone; it is also that of Art and the Humanities, starting with the noblest of them, Philosophy, which precisely teaches us how from the Beautiful we can arrive at Truth.
All the impulses of our souls naturally press us on this path.
This aspiration to the beautiful is due, indeed, to our demanding thirst for truth. Our souls rest only in the beauty that radiates from the truth and makes us discover order and its principle, God.
The beautiful is thus like the fringe of God’s mantle, of God who always acts with order and measure.
This appeal of the beautiful represents, first of all, an invitation to come back to the natural order: man is great only when he enters into this order, an order that is higher than him and that ennobles him.
Indeed, man is not a whole in himself, but he is part of a whole, society, in which he must fit by respecting the established hierarchy: family, town, country. Man is a social being who finds his full development in social relationships. This invaluable balance is fragile, and history shows the patience of the centuries that have created the highest civilizations and caused, on the other hand, the rapid decline of times of barbarism.
These dark times strongly emphasize the need for order.
If in times of peace such balance seems to be a matter of course – so much so that we pay hardly any attention to it! – its absence in times of crisis is very painfully felt. Man cannot carry on his ordinary occupations when all of his energy has to be devoted to ensure his survival and that of his family. This situation may go on, but we must hope that it does not go on to the point of breaking the order of natural law, because without the framework which this law offers to him, man is unable to act virtuously. And as virtue is what is proper to human life, man would then be reduced to being no more than an animal led by his instincts.
It is interesting to note that all the ages of decadence – and ours does not escape from this rule – are characterized by this will to use disorder as a weapon of mass destruction. When we say “disorder reigns”, we are not aware of how false such an expression is. Indeed, disorder cannot reign since it is the profound negation of any order. To reign is itself order. It is more correct, then, to say that disorder exercises a temporary tyranny, during which the disorder feeds itself from the order, as the ivy sucks the sap of a tree or as a cancer grows from healthy cells. The disorder needs the order to subsist. Its specific action consists in destroying the established order so as to be able to substitute it with another, according to a new end, since order is not an absolute but a means necessary to arrive at an end. It is the intended end which gives to the order its nobility or its perversion. The order that is put at the service of a shameful end preserves its intrinsic qualities and turns it into a powerful mold that shapes man. In such case, its influence is devastating.
We live in a world shaped by iniquitous laws that make habitual what should be unbearable, that destroy families and endanger man by cutting him off of his social bonds, reducing him to being no more than one individual without defense, lost in the multitude.
What we fear is a fact that appears to us brutally obvious: the natural law is constantly ridiculed in the name of a new order which boasts of respecting “neither God nor masters”.
Man becomes the only master, the new idol before which all knees must bend to pay homage. The divorce law, for example, affected the stability of marriage and the first cell of society promptly broke apart in the name of an unbreakable freedom.
Beyond the slogans that celebrate the advent of the divine kingship of man, the new order is the gilded slavery of individualism.
Individualism is, indeed, contrary to the profound nature of man, who is not self-sufficient and must live in relation with others. Son and heir, he has to transmit a wealth that does not belong to him, but of which he is an invaluable link. In the guise of romantic exaltation, individualism cuts man from his roots and deprives him of the possibility of producing flowers and fruits; he is no more than a dead, sterile branch. Man is from now on teetering on the brink; he can no longer fulfill his role and his marvelous vocation, blossoming in the transmission of an ancestral wisdom which defies the caducity of time.
It is time to return to the humble tasks of daily life, establishing among ourselves the close and essential bonds of friendship which constitute the soil of our social life, practicing the simple but noble domestic virtues, living in dependence on an obedience which elevates him who embraces it.
Bound to one another, we will then respect our human nature, and we will constitute a symphony that will express the beauty of truth.
In Christo sacerdote et Maria,
Fr. Yves le Roux