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| (Cardinal Burke in St. Peter's, at the main evening news broadcast in Italy, TG1) |
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
It is the source of deepest joy for me to offer the Pontifical Mass at the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter as the culmination of the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage of 2025. In the name of all present, I express heartfelt gratitude to those who have labored so diligently and well to make possible the Pilgrimage. I am offering the Holy Mass for the faithful in the Church throughout the world, who labor to safeguard and promote the beauty of the Usus Antiquior of the Roman Rite. May today’s offering of the Pontifical Mass encourage and strengthen us all in love of our Eucharistic Lord Who, through Apostolic Tradition and with unfailing and immeasurable love for us, renews sacramentally His Sacrifice on Calvary and nourishes us with the incomparable fruit of His Sacrifice: the Heavenly Food of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
Offering the Holy Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday, we contemplate Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, assumed into glory and never ceasing to beat with love for us, the children whom her Divine Son confided to her maternal care, as He was dying upon the Cross. When Our Lord pronounced the words, “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother”[1] to His Mother and to Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, standing at the foot of the cross, He expressed an essential reality of the salvation He was winning for us: the full cooperation of His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in His saving work.
God the Father, in His all-loving plan for our eternal salvation, granted that the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the very moment of her conception, participate in the grace of the salvation which her Divine Son was to accomplish on Calvary. By her Immaculate Conception, Mary was totally for Christ and, in Christ, totally for us from the first moment of her being. The mediation of our salvation through the sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary is exemplified in the final words of the Virgin Mother of the Savior recorded in the Gospels. She spoke them to the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana who came to her in anguish over the lack of sufficient wine for the guests of the newlyweds. She addressed their great distress by leading them to her Divine Son, also a guest at the Wedding Feast, with the maternal instruction: “Do whatever he tells you.”[2]
These simple words express the mystery of the Divine Maternity by which the Virgin Mary became the Mother of God, bringing God the Son Incarnate into the world for our salvation. By the same mystery, she continues to be the channel of all the graces which immeasurably and unceasingly pour forth from Her Divine Son’s glorious-pierced Heart into the hearts of His brothers and sisters, adopted through Baptism, as they make their way on earthly pilgrimage to their lasting home with Him in Heaven. We are Mary’s sons and daughters in her Son, God the Son Incarnate. With maternal care, she draws our hearts to her glorious Immaculate Heart and takes them to Him, to His Sacred Heart, and she instructs us: “Do whatever he tells you.”
In the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see “the most perfect created manifestation” of the eternal Wisdom of God, God the Son, the Word at work from the very beginning of creation and ordering all things and, above all, the human heart in accord with the perfection of God, “both because she is the particularly faithful ‘handmaid’ of the Lord and because in her, as Mother of Christ, the divine plan has found its fulfillment.”[3] She is, in the inspired words of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, “the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope.”[4] We are filled with hope that Our Lord, Divine Wisdom Incarnate, hearing the prayers of the Mother of Divine Grace who is ever in His presence, will also have mercy on our generation, restoring the loving order written by God in creation, written by God, above all, upon every human heart. Striving, each moment of the day, to rest our hearts in the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, we announce to the world the truth that salvation has come into the world. We, one in heart with the glorious Immaculate Heart of Mary, draw others to Christ, the fullness of the mercy and love of God in our midst, in His holy Church.
We celebrate this year both the centennial of the apparition of the Infant Jesus, together with Our Lady of Fatima, to the Venerable Servant of God Sister Lúcia dos Santos, on December 10, 1925, and the centennial of the publication of the Encyclical Letter Quas Primas of Pope Pius XI, establishing the Feast of Christ the King of Heaven and Earth in the universal Church, on December 11, 1925. We, thereby, give witness to the truth that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the King of all hearts by means of the Mystery of the Cross and that His Virgin Mother is the mediatrix by which He brings our hearts to dwell ever more completely in His Most Sacred Heart.
In the apparition to the Venerable Servant of God Sister Lúcia dos Santos, Our Lord showed us the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, covered with many thorns because of our indifference and ingratitude, and because of our sins. In a particular way, Our Lady of Fatima desires to protect us from the evil of atheistic communism which leads hearts away from the Heart of Jesus, the sole font of salvation, which leads hearts into a rebellion against God and the order, which He has placed in His creation and has written upon the heart of every man.[5] Through her apparitions and the message which she confided to the shepherd children Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos, which is for the whole Church, Our Lady addressed the influence of the atheistic culture upon the Church herself, leading many into apostasy, to the abandonment of the truths of the Catholic faith.
At the same time, Our Lady instructed us to make loving reparation for our offenses to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and her Immaculate Heart by the First Saturdays Devotion, that is, on the First Saturday of the month, to make the sacramental confession of our sins, to receive worthily Holy Communion, to pray five decades of the Holy Rosary, and to keep company with Our Lady by meditating on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary. It is clear from Our Lady’s message that only the Faith, which places man in the relationship of unity of heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the mediation of her Immaculate Heart, can save man from the spiritual chastisements which rebellion against God necessarily brings upon its perpetrators and upon the whole of both society and the Church. The First Saturdays Devotion is our response of obedience to our heavenly Mother who will not fail to intercede for all of the graces so desperately needed by us and by our world. The Devotion is not an isolated act but expresses a way of life, namely, daily conversion of heart to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus under the maternal guidance and care of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
When we reflect upon the rebellion against the good order and peace with which God endows every human heart, leading the world and even the Church into ever greater confusion, division, destruction of others and of self, we understand, as Pope Pius XI understood, the importance of our worship of Christ under His title of King of Heaven and Earth. Such worship is not a form of ideology. It is not the worship of an idea or an ideal. It is communion with Christ the King, especially through the Most Holy Eucharist, by which our own royal mission in Him is understood, embraced, and lived. It is the reality in which we are called to live, the reality of obedience to the Law of God written upon our hearts and into the very nature of all things. It is the reality of our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, resting ever more completely in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The Pontifical Mass is offered today according to the More Ancient Form of the Roman Rite, the Usus Antiquior. The Church is celebrating the 18th Anniversary of the promulgation of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum by which Pope Benedict XVI made possible the regular celebration of the Rite of the Mass according to this form used since the time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great. Privileged to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass today, we cannot help but think of the faithful who, throughout the Christian centuries, have encountered Our Lord and deepened their life in Him, through this venerable form of the Roman Rite. Many were inspired to practice heroic sanctity, even unto martyrdom. Those of us who are old enough to have grown up worshipping God according to the Usus Antiquior cannot help but consider how it inspired us to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus,[6] especially in responding to our vocation in life. Lastly, we cannot fail to thank God for the way in which this venerable form of the Roman Rite has brought to the faith and deepened in the life of faith so many who have discovered its incomparable beauty, for the first time, thanks to the discipline set forth in Summorum Pontificum. We thank God that, through Summorum Pontificum, the whole Church is coming to an ever-greater understanding and love of the great gift of the Sacred Liturgy as it has been transmitted to us, in an unbroken line, by Sacred Tradition, by the Apostles and their successors. Through the Sacred Liturgy, our adoration of God “in spirit and truth,”[7] Our Lord is with us in the most perfect way possible on this earth. It is the most excellent expression of our life in Him. Witnessing now the great beauty of the Rite of the Mass, let us be inspired and strengthened to reflect that beauty in the goodness of our daily living under the maternal care of Our Lady.
Let us now lift up our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, opened for us in the Eucharistic Sacrifice by which He makes sacramentally present for us His Sacrifice on Calvary. Let us lift up our hearts, filled with so many joys and sorrows, to the unfailing font of Divine Mercy and Love, trusting that in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus we will be confirmed in peace and strengthened to carry the cross of our sorrows with the trust of the Virgin Mary. So may we, under the constant and merciful maternal gaze of the Blessed Virgin Mary, progress faithfully and wholeheartedly along the way of our earthly pilgrimage toward our lasting home in Heaven.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
