The Feast of Christ the King

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
29th October 2017

To Christ the King - Through the Church
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Now the way to reach Christ is not hard to find: it is the Church. Rightly does Chrysostom inculcate: "The Church is thy hope, the Church is thy salvation, the Church is thy refuge". It was for this that Christ founded it, gaining it at the price of His Blood, and made it the depository of His doctrine and His laws, bestowing upon it at the same time an inexhaustible treasury of graces for the sanctification and salvation of men. And so in this manner we shall sanctify ourselves and honour Our Lord, and His reign shall come through the expansion of the Catholic Church. There is no other way, and it is for this that we are striving. We want to keep the Church as she has always been to give Our Lord Jesus Christ to souls, as He has always wished to give Himself: By the Church, by the faith and grace of the Church.

St. Pius X points out that: "The duty that has been imposed alike upon Us and upon you of bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God. But if our desire to obtain this is to be fulfilled, we must use every means and exert all our energy to bring about the utter disappearance of the enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of our time; the substitution of man for God".

How can we help but think of the novelties of the Second Vatican Council? What is most striking in them is the place of man in relation to God. It is practically the religion of man. In the new Mass, for example, it is man that stands out, it is a democratic Mass; whereas the Mass of tradition, the one we call the Mass of all times, is hierarchical: God, Christ, the Church in the person of Bishop and Priest, then the faithful. Even among the faithful a hierarchy is recognised: a distinction used to be made between the princes or magistrates; those who exercise authority, and thus share the authority of Our Lord (because all authority comes from God); and the rest of the faithful. These are not mere medieval ideas, this is simply a part of the hierarchy that we shall find in Heaven, where God will be first, then the hierarchies of the Angels and Saints. This is normal, for God has willed that we share in His glory in differing degrees. And this allows us to practice charity. The very fact that some men have fewer gifts and some men more gives rise to exchanges between men here below, as it does between the Saints and the Angels in Heaven. According to the modern errors, on the contrary, all men are equal. They form a uniform mass, and it is number that gives authority! Man substitutes himself for God; there is no more God.

St. Pius X recalls the order in society willed by God:

"[I]t remains to restore to their ancient place of honour the most holy laws and counsels of the Gospel; to proclaim aloud the truths taught by the Church, and her teachings on the sanctity of marriage, on the education and discipline of youth, on the possession and use of property, the duties that men owe to those who rule the State; and lastly to restore equilibrium between the different classes of society according to Christian precept and custom."

Such is the program of the holy Pope Pius X: To renew all things in Christ, to put God back in society by the Church.