The True Essence

of the Holy Church of

Jesus Christ

by Father Mathurin of the Mother of God Dear brothers and sisters, fifty years ago to the day, on September 29, 1971, the pontifical coronation of Gregory XVII, Our glorious predecessor, took place in our little chapel. 1 We are commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the official recognition of the translation of the Church. This translation of the See of Peter had been foretold many times through the ages by way of many prophecies. “Where Peter is, there is the Church.” 2

What is the Church?

But what do we mean by “Church”? Here is the definition of the Church that I greatly prefer and that sums up all the other definitions: The Church is the continuation of the Work of Christ. It’s that simple! You say this to a child and he understands it. Then in the catechism we learn the qualities and marks of the Church. 3 But above all, the Church is the continuation of the Work of Christ. This is the clear answer I usually give to people who ask me: So then what is the Church? By God’s design, Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, came down to earth to teach us by His words and His examples: three years of preaching after thirty years of hidden life. And to crown His three years of public teaching, Jesus dies in ignominy on the cross. This is the Work of Jesus Christ, decreed by God Himself, for the salvation of souls. And it was also God’s design that His Work should be carried on. Jesus instituted the Church to continue what He had first done Himself for thirty-three years. Following in the footsteps of the Master, the Church must set an example and must teach. That is truly its role.

Why did God transfer His Church?

So today in our little chapel, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the official recognition of the transfer of the Church and the See of Peter. Why was something of this magnitude necessary? Why did God arrive at transferring the See of Peter, and therefore the Church, to another place? Again, we could answer with a short formula that remains well engraved in our minds: The Church, the men of the Church, have lost the sense and the spirit of renouncement. Let us remember the words of Jesus. Speaking clearly to His disciples and to the entire crowd, He said: If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 4 “If you want to be My disciple, My servant, My apostle, work for My Church, if you want,” says Jesus, “take up your cross each day, deny yourself. Put your steps in My steps, follow Me.” So we can also define the Church in this manner: The Church is putting our steps in the steps of Jesus, taking up our cross, denying ourselves. I wanted to remind us of this on this solemn occasion. On the one hand, it is very important to understand it well, but it is even more important to adhere to this expectation of Heaven, this request of Our Lord Jesus Christ; to adhere and do everything to live this spirit of self-denial, which means taking up our cross each day and following Jesus. The Church has deviated because it has lost this spirit of renouncement. The Church of Rome has become worldly. They have loved the world. Loving the world and loving oneself are the same thing. They wanted their whims, they wanted their sensualities, above all they wanted their vanities, they became vain; these are all things that are precisely contrary to renouncement, to the way of salvation that Jesus came to show us. Our Lord renounced His divine advantages, and even, in a way, the quality of man that He had adopted. Our incarnate God was treated as less than a man. The Church has crumbled because it generally stopped embracing renouncement. Churchmen no longer proclaimed it and taught it. Since they no longer wanted to deny themselves, they no longer communicated it to the faithful. So Jesus went looking for people who said “yes” to His call to follow Him on the narrow road to Heaven. Saint Paul writes: We preach a crucified Christ: to the Jews indeed a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness... For consider your own call, brethren; that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But the foolish things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the strong, and the base things of the world and the despised has God chosen, and the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are. 5 We may not be geniuses, and we may not know the entire Gospel by heart, but it is easy to remember this sentence which sums it up well: If you wish to be My disciple, take up your cross, deny yourself, put your steps in My steps and follow Me.

Why is the true Church persecuted?

The renouncement preached by Our Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all persecutions. Why did Jesus’ own people persecute Him, the prophesied Messiah awaited for centuries? The Jews, the chosen people, were the depositories of the prophecies. They knew them by heart! Yet they did not recognize the Messiah. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. 6 Why not? Because on the one hand, His teaching offended the fondness we humans have for enjoying life; and more than anything else, because it offended our vanity. Jesus went against every vanity, against the pride of man. It left them gasping for air. They did not want a Messiah of this sort: humble, making Himself nothing, nothing, nothing! Jesus became nothing. He annihilated Himself, taking the nature of a slave. They didn’t want Him, and they slaughtered Him. The Apostles and the first Disciples adhered to this renouncement that Jesus had come to teach. First of all, renouncement of their pride, which is the hardest one of all, and their vanities. It took a little time at first, but by the action of the Holy Spirit they adhered to it, and after them so did the first Christians. Their conduct made an impact, caused a conflict between this new little Church and the Jews of the time, and then paganism. There was a conflict, a huge head-on collision. Christians were massacred for centuries because of it. In pagan Rome there were plenty of deities! Having one more was no problem. But the problem was this: a God who lowers Himself, humbles Himself, goes against all our vanities and asks us for universal renouncement – universal. There is no way out, no place where we can say to ourselves, “Well now, I can seek myself here.” No, Jesus asks for universal renouncement. For God to ask this of a frail, weak, sensual, proud creature was too much. Hence the first persecutions. The first Christians were massacred by the millions. Ever since its foundation, the Church has advanced along this path of renouncement, carrying the cross in the Master’s footsteps. Then, after many centuries, this spirit weakened and finally came to a halt. Good Christians, and certainly some good priests, continued in the practice of renouncement, but due to the immense expectation of Heaven towards the Church, it was not enough. And that is why Heaven intervened. In order to preserve His Spirit, God wanted to transpose His Church, because the official Church had stopped preaching renouncement. That is the source of all our persecutions. All sorts of reasons are given: it is because of this and because of that, because Father John called himself the pope, because there are women priests. Even if these reasons are partly true, all of that is not the crux of the matter. It is really the devil that is behind it. What preoccupies the evil spirit above all is to see souls following Jesus, Jesus crucified, by denying themselves. It was necessary at all costs to set every snare in order to keep this spirit of renouncement from continuing in the Church. Satan even used a Church that had stopped denying itself to persecute the true little Church that had been set aside. Among our detractors, there were also good but blinded people who persecuted us. But the fundamental cause of the persecution is that here we teach renouncement, self-denial. And even within this little Renewed Church there were defections, abandonments, rejections, and eventually people who fought against it. Why? All sorts of pretexts were found. The reason was that they no longer wanted to deny themselves, and especially not renounce their vanities and sensualities. They did not want to do it any more. So they found all sorts of pretexts to condemn us.

If you would be My disciple...

My brothers and sisters, I want to take advantage of this occasion to invite you, urge you, beg you to renew within yourself the spirit of renouncement. If you wish to be My disciple, take up your cross, deny yourself, follow Me. Let your heart adhere absolutely to this word of the Gospel. You will say, “I am weak, I stumble, I am not doing it perfectly.” Adhere! Adhere to this word of the Gospel and to all the others, but especially to this one which is really a stumbling block for many. “My Jesus, for You! Oh, I am a coward! But all my heart, all my body, all my being, all my soul wants, adheres to this sentence and to Your whole Gospel. I believe in Your word, I want to live it! I adhere to it for You, to follow You. God has great designs, but do you really know what His design is, His immense design? He wants this spirit to return to the earth. He came to give us this example two thousand years ago; He wants it to continue, He wants all human beings on earth to live by His example and His spirit. This is the only reason for the existence of the Renewed Church. There is no other. In the meantime, we hold ceremonies and mark events to remind us of this great truth, an eternal truth because it was taught by Jesus, Eternal Truth. It is an eternal truth because it is the truth that leads us to our blessed eternity. The more we adhere, the more we want to live according to this truth, then the more we reach our own blessed eternity and lead others there.

Deny yourself graciously

Deny yourselves with good grace, my brothers and sisters. May your neighbor, your brother, your sister, and eventually every person who sees you, be able to say: “My God, it seems very pleasant to serve You! They don’t look so unhappy!” When a religious does not carry his cross graciously, he alienates souls from the service of God: “Oh, it’s no fun, you know! We have to get up every morning, then we have to accomplish the same tasks. I’ve been a religious for fifteen, thirty years: I have the impression that they regard me as if I had arrived only yesterday. They don’t seem to trust me.” No! With good grace let us perform the little duties we may find monotonous – without exuberance, perhaps, but graciously, applying ourselves to them for the love of God. Have you ever seen gracious people? Everyone is charmed by them. Well then, may people be charmed on seeing each one of us adopt this spirit of self-denial by graciously carrying our cross in the footsteps of Jesus. May our neighbor be so charmed upon seeing us do it that he will want to deny himself too. This is the story of the early Christians, the story of the Church. The Church, from one person to the next, spread because the people, the pagans of that time, saw these Christians who served God, who denied themselves so graciously, even to the point of martyrdom, and sometimes in all sorts of unspeakable torments! They did not go to martyrdom protesting and grumbling, they went with grace, graciously! Without vindictiveness, without rage, not saying, “You people are not in the truth. Fire from heaven is going to fall upon you and destroy you!” No, that’s not how it was: it was gracious. They even prayed for their executioners. “What sort of religion is this?” the pagans asked. It was the graciousness of the early Christians that charmed and gained souls for God. I wish you to assume and adhere to this spirit of renouncement so graciously that your brother, your sister, your neighbor who comes in contact with you, will feel like serving God. Just by seeing you, they will feel like denying and sacrificing themselves for Him.

The Work of Jesus Christ

The holy elder Simeon prophesied to Mary when She presented Jesus in the Temple: This child is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, and for a sign of contradiction... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. 7 That is precisely what the Gospel does. The thoughts of our hearts are brought to light. We accept the Gospel or we do not. When Jesus spoke to the crowds, some adhered to Him, to His teaching. They loved Him. They were frail, but they loved Him and wanted to follow Him. Eventually, the Holy Spirit transformed them. The others, hearing the same words of Jesus, became filled with rage, and that rage increased until they wanted to slaughter Him. By the same words that came out of Jesus’ mouth, some were inflamed with love and eventually became great saints; the others rejected that same divine word and became worse than demons. There is no other way to salvation than this path of renouncement following Jesus. It may be hard to hear about self-denial on a festive day like today; but I repeat, it is the only way. We have organized this feast to solemnly mark the intervention of God, who wanted to preserve His Church by raising up Father John Gregory XVII who taught us in every way – in public, in private, in hundreds of ways. I take this opportunity to personally thank in your name our Father John Gregory XVII, now in his blessed eternity. Words are too weak, but with all my heart, THANK YOU for teaching us the Truth of the Gospel, for putting it in our hearts, in good times and bad. Day and night, in all sorts of ways, our Father taught us that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross, that is what God expects from His children. This is the salvation of the Church. As you know, the Work here is not our work, but the Work willed by Jesus. The Church is the extension, the continuation of the Work of Jesus Christ. We must therefore live all things as Our Lord lived them. On the occasion of the celebration of this translation of the Church here, I invite you to come to the communion rail where I will lay the Holy Gospel upon each one of you. I know that you already adhere, but by receiving this imposition of the Holy Gospel, I invite your hearts, I invite your souls to renew your adherence to the word of Jesus with a concrete and truly voluntary interior act. Say: “My Jesus, I want it. For You I want to deny myself, I want to take up my cross. I ask Your forgiveness for all the times in my life that I have failed. This is my greatest sorrow: not to have followed You in this path of renouncement, carrying my cross behind You. I ask Your forgiveness. My heart wants to follow the way of renouncement. My Jesus, my entire being wants it. I don’t want anything else than this, my Jesus. No matter how things appear, I want to deny myself for You, to work out the salvation of Your Church, so that Your Kingdom may come!” I invite you to this absolute, total adherence to the Gospel of Jesus which is summed up in His call to renouncement. For those who do it in this disposition, I ask Jesus, Eternal Truth, to purify your soul completely through baptismal innocence. I propose this to you by the grace of God, by His mercy, by the power of the Gospel word. Jesus said to His Apostles: You have been purified by the words that I have spoken to you. 8 That is exactly how Jesus said it. He did not play on words. As we read through the Gospel, we notice that the same words of Jesus which were heard by the Apostles and the Disciples, were also heard by Judas, the Pharisees and the High Priests. They were all able to hear His words. But far from adhering, they rebelled. Did these words of Jesus apply to them? You have been purified by the words that I have spoken to you. No! Far from being purified like the Apostles, they became deicides. 9 These words of Jesus only applied to those who adhered in their hearts. They did not live it perfectly right away, but their hearts adhered to the words that came out of Jesus’ mouth, to His teaching; their hearts wanted it. Jesus, Eternal Truth, said to them: You have been purified by the words that I have spoken to you. This is not an invention of mine, it is the very word of Jesus: purified. This is the gift I want to offer you on this feast: that you may be completely purified by the word of Jesus to which you adhere. Do as the first Apostles and Disciples did, as the martyrs did, and not as those who rejected and persecuted Jesus, and who after hearing the same words, said to themselves: “No, this is too much! Who can listen to such strong words?” 10 No, my Jesus, it is not too much! We adhere to Your word. We want to live it absolutely. I wish for you this grace to be purified by the word of Jesus. I bless you with the Holy Gospel. May the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost descend upon you through His holy Gospel. By His word and according to the disposition and adherence of your heart, your soul, may you be completely purified. Adhering to the Gospel, my brothers and sisters, is our salvation, it is our sanctity, it is our eternal crown. This exhortation was given to the Community on September 29, 2021. • This Child is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, and for a sign of contradiction... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. (St. Luke 2:34- 35) This prophecy is as surprising as it is sorrowful; and how completely, universally and perpetually it has been fulfilled! Let us open the Gospel and listen to the people’s judgment of Jesus: “He is a good man,” said some. – “No, He is deceiving the people!” replied others. – “He is the Christ,” claimed others. – “He is a man possessed, a madman,” cried others. “Why should we listen to Him anymore?” – “And yet,” murmured some, “His words are not the words of a possessed man.” He has just been born, and already He is an occasion of downfall for Herod, of resurrection for the shepherds, the magi and all upright hearts. The combat has never ceased, and it will continue until the last day. It will never cease to divide the world into two sides: the side of those who adore Jesus and the side of those who blaspheme Him. In fact, the entire history of souls and societies is reducible to this everlasting contradiction. Inevitably, we must live or die by Jesus. And do we not often see even those who claim to be His disciples rising up against His mysteries which disconcert their feeble faith, or against His doctrine which offends and scandalizes their sluggishness? Do they love Jesus if they cannot tolerate His maxims, if their life is in permanent contradiction with His Gospel?