Fongombault Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Rosary: "There is one presence that remains, that of Mary."

Feast of the Holy Rosary

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

Fontgombault, October 7, 2019

Fiat voluntas tua.

Thy will be done.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

My dearly beloved Sons, 

The gospel of the Annunciation to Mary should be considered as the apex of the encounters between God and mankind. These encounters are numerous. The Bible, the Gospel, the lives of Saints, our own lives, are the places where continually God’s words, requests, commandments, signs, are expecting a loving answer from our hearts and lives. 

These words of God may concern a precise event, a personal assent, as is the case for Mary, even though this event will subsequently have the stupendous and inconceivable consequences we know regarding mankind’s history. The word of God may also formulate a general rule that concerns the whole of mankind, as is the case in the first pages of the Book of Genesis, opening with the loving recommendations God gives man concerning the use of the creation. 

In a world which is not only heathen, but openly at war against its Maker, Whose rights it wants to arrogate, the word of God would seem to draw but a small response. Yet, it is comforting to see so many men and women taking to the streets to remind us that man and woman have received the mission to become fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. [Rorate note: Reference to the 'Marchons Enfants' protest march in Paris this Sunday against the introduction of surrogacy-sale of babies to same-sex "couples".]

Event: Rosary Pilgrimage and Solemn High Mass in NYC

The 'Eucharistic' Rosary?

It is perhaps no surprise and only natural that basic knowledge of the Church's traditional liturgical rites and pious devotions, let alone a real understanding of and sympathy for them, are scarcely to be found among adherents and advocates of the unprecedented and disastrous post-Vatican II construction of a new liturgy that was meant to replace the ancient liturgical rites of the Latin Church and thereby weaken or eliminate perennial Catholic eucharistic doctrine and theological emphases. Among the pious devotions for which they have no sympathy and understanding, we may count the old practice, formerly widespread but today all but fallen into desuetude, of praying the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary and meditating on its mysteries during Holy Mass. As noted here before, the current reigning Sovereign Pontiff earlier this year spoke of this devotional practice as if it were an obstacle to participation in the liturgy. Opposition to this devotion in the modern Church sometimes extends as far as virulent hatred, with one lay Catholic blogger expressing his personal opinion that praying the Rosary at Mass is an "execrable habit" and "a practice born of the rankest of ignorance, generally performed by people completely unschooled in the Faith."

To Catholics living a hundred years ago, however, such sentiments would be not only unintelligible but indecent, irreverent, and prideful if not blasphemous and proximate to heresy. Not only was this devotion not thought to be an obstacle to participation in Mass, but the entire purpose of the devotion was to provide the laity with another way to enhance their participation in the liturgy. No doubt at least partly underlying the post-Vatican II antipathy toward the devotion is the widespread, lamentable inability or even refusal on the part of many Catholics to distinguish between the liturgical roles and functions of the priest and the laity at Mass and in all aspects of Catholic life. This blurring of ordained priesthood with the lay state -- a "laicising" of the priest and "clericalising" of the layman -- was behind, and helped by, the former intentional mistranslation of the Orate fratres (corrected in the current English translation of the Missal). Whereas the liturgy distinguishes between the oblation of the priest and the offerings of the laity at Mass -- "Orate frates: ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium acceptabile fiat apud Deum Patrem omnipotentem" [Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty] -- the former approved mistranslation of the Orate fratres erroneously spoke of "our sacrifice."