Immaculata Spiritual Pilgrimage

Transcript of the Sermon:

Dear Father, dear Sisters, dear Faithful,

The last email that Father Bourmaud sent to me before he passed away, he shared with me a sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre from 1979, here in Saint Mary's, during what was called at the time the Angelus Pilgrimage. I quote that sermon: “When I came to St. Marys College for the first time two years ago, I was amazed and stupefied by the magnificence of the chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. And when those who were showing me around this magnificent chapel told me that it was a shrine venerated throughout America, and particularly in this area, I thought at once that if God permitted us to have this property - especially this chapel - we would make of it a center of pilgrimage, a center of devotion to the most Blessed Virgin Mary for all America. People would come from the north, south, east, and west to this center which lies in the geographical center of America. So as to manifest their devotion to the most Blessed Virgin Mary and to discover at her feet the line of conduct to follow in this terrible period that the church is passing through today.”  

So our spiritual Father saw in The Immaculata a place where souls would come in pilgrimage. A place where souls would come to praise the Blessed Virgin Mary. They would walk and come here to increase their faith. And that's why I would like to propose to you, to the parish, and in fact anybody who is a part of this project or wants to be a part of this project, an opportunity. A spiritual pilgrimage. Our shrine is not finished yet, we will see obviously when the Immaculata is built how we can fulfill this vision of Archbishop Lefebvre. But at least in the meantime we can begin a spiritual pilgrimage. Over the span of a year - from December the 8th of this year 2021 to December the 8th of 2022 - I would like us as a parish to grow in holiness and to set out on a spiritual pilgrimage during the course of a Marian Year if you will. We will make resolutions for the Mother of God. We will try our best to fulfill them, to grow in holiness as a parish. The goal of almighty God and the Blessed Virgin Mary looking down on us and being pleased with us, so that we can find ourselves truly worthy to enter into this sacred temple once it's completed.

Someone shared with me a beautiful quote that says: “The building of a church offers a wonderful opportunity to make for the glory of God, but also for the good of human beings, a thing of beauty in a world where there is so much ugliness and to embody a symbol in a world where symbols are so largely forgotten. A house is but the night lodging of a pilgrim whereas a church should be the reflection of eternal life and bliss.” A church is a symbol of heaven. When our church is completed in about a year and a half's time we want to be worthy to come into it. We want to have made some efforts so that when we enter into that symbol of heaven we feel worthy of it, as worthy as one can feel. And that's what a pilgrimage is; you start in one place and you end up in another. Back in the day people would walk from their houses on pilgrimage to Chartres, to Santiago, to Rome, to Jerusalem. And we want to end up somewhere else too, somewhere other than where we are now, spiritually. We're in a battle. We're in a battle with the Blessed Virgin Mary against the devil, against sin.

Again, to return to that same sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre, he references the protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15 where God promises to place enmities “inimicitias ponam inter te et Mulierum”, “I will place enmities between thee and the Woman, between your seed and her seed”. And the Archbishop says, “There are then by the will of God two armies in the world, an army of the children of the Virgin Mary and an army of the children of Satan. And between them God is placed in enmity, an enmity that will last until the end of time. Consequently the Virgin Mary already before being born, promised by God, draws us into a combat, into her combat, into the combat that will lead her to victory. A combat which however alas will often be waged in the painful, in difficult and in trying periods. But if we follow the Virgin Mary we are sure with her to achieve victory. The victory that the Virgin Mary desires is a victory against Satan and consequently against sin. The Virgin Mary is the symbol of those who do not want to sin, who do not want to disobey God. This is the battle that the Virgin Mary is going to wage through the ages so we must do battle with her and must do battle against the common enemy who is Satan and all those who with Satan are against God.” So this is our goal: to turn away from creatures to turn towards God. To turn away from sin to serve in this combat with Our Lady. 

How will it work? 

Well, again as I said we'll observe the Marian Year from December the 8th of this year until December the 8th of next year. During that period we will all as a parish make extra efforts. Not doing a lot of different things but maybe even just doing things well, that we do poorly. Maybe in fact changing our lives, who knows what will come of it. We'll make extra efforts especially during that period. That's why we're announcing it to you today so that you can have some time to think about it, and then to make it official on our rosary procession on October 17th. We've made available to you these forms, these pledge cards. A few years ago you responded very generously to the financial pledges that you wanted to make for the church project. Well now, we give you pledge cards for a spiritual pledge; and you'll take these home with you along with sort of the instructions if you will, which we have made available to you by the bulletins and in the vestibules, and you'll think over the next month about what you can do as a family, maybe as an individual, even for your children. And you'll write your spiritual pledges on the backs of these cards and you'll bring them with you to the rosary procession in October, assuming you can come; and there at the end of that rosary procession, where we honor Our Lady, as we enter back into the Quad, we will all bring our pledges up to Her, and present them to Her placing them in the receptacle at Her feet so that we're really committed to it. If you can't be present on that day, well, we will have the same receptacle placed under the Pilgrim statue in the chapel and sometime before December the 8th you can bring Her your pledges then too.

We won't be taking tally, or this many rosaries were said, or such and such decided to do this resolution; it will all be completely anonymous. It's between you and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Those pledges will remain sort of untouched, it's truly between you and Her. But please try to take resolutions that are balanced, that are realistic. This isn't meant to be, and I originally had a huge list of ideas of things that you could do, but I simplified it a lot because I didn't want people to think I was looking for something overwhelming, challenging but not overwhelming. So for example if in your family you don't pray the family rosary or it's inconsistent, at least, that's your resolution. Simply pray your family rosary, that's all. That's a sufficient resolution, the Mother of God will look down on that effort and will be very happy with that. Or perhaps it's been a decade or so since you've been on retreat, well this is the year to do one, this is the year to go on a retreat and try to make yourself - take a look at yourself in the sight of God, and see what needs to be changed. Maybe it's simply going back to retreat resolutions that you have made, that you made under the influence of grace and in the sight of God and with the good advice of a priest, and you've dropped them, well just go back and take those back.

Maybe you already do all the basics: maybe your sacramental life is regular and your spiritual reading is regular, mental prayer, whatever it may be; maybe there are some extra things that you can do. Some harder things, more challenging things that you can do. I have mentioned in the little guide on the back some things you can do, I guess, if you are already doing the basics, one of which is a pledge to do a 60-day Reconquista. What is that? Well we will make the booklet for that available to you online very soon. We'll have a little page dedicated to this Spiritual Pilgrimage on the Immaculata website probably this week and we'll put that booklet on there so that you can peruse it and find out what a 60-day Reconquista is. Basically it's a program, 60 days of consistent prayer, asceticism and fraternity. It's based off another thing that's called Exodus 90 that we've sort of tailored to our own purposes. We've done it already here with Acies and the college. But you're provided daily prayers and spiritual reading, along with other acts of mortification that you can do over a period of 60 days. Again we'll make a little packet if you're interested in making Reconquista. Eventually we'll make a packet available for you at the switchboard in due time, but part of the program too is to meet regularly with friends, with maybe a group of friends, maybe guys from work, or yeah, a group of friends to sort of be accountable to each other. That's one of the very strong aspects of Reconquista, and I would say it's one of the aspects of this Spiritual Pilgrimage that all of us should take advantage of. We live in a Catholic town where we're surrounded by so many other people who have the same vision that we have. So use that, use that to your advantage, use the people you work with maybe use your friends, use your families to hold each other accountable to this commitment, to this effort to end up somewhere different than we are now.

The Immaculata has already drawn attention from all around the world. 24 countries are supporting this project, this means something. It's a source of hope for a lot of people in very chaotic times as we see our world and our country turning to Marxism as Our Lady of Fatima predicted. Our Lady of Fatima said that in the end, though, Her Immaculate Heart would triumph. We need to be on her side. We need to put ourselves under Her mantle and we need to make efforts, so that we can truly be worthy of the Immaculata.

So for the love of Our Lady we will undertake this Spiritual Pilgrimage and in reverence for our spiritual Father, Archbishop Lefebvre, again who saw the Immaculata as more than a church, a real symbol of a counter-revolution, a real symbol of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Again in that same sermon that he gave 42 years ago, you can hear that he really thinks this church is going to be rebuilt before he dies. He says, “I hope that next year or perhaps in two years, I do not know if of course God gives me life, that I shall be able again with you to say Mass no longer here in the chapel (the Assumption Chapel is what he's referring to) no longer here but in our beautiful basilica which will be rebuilt by the grace of God and we shall be able to sing the praises of the Virgin Mary as we are doing today, perhaps with still greater beauty and a still greater number of pilgrims.” 

Well again, in reverence to him and for the love of Our Lady, over the next month do really think; take these forms and the pledge card, think about what you can do for Our Lady. Not just a bunch of things, definitely not idealistic things, but realistic things that we can do. I think for most of us it'll be obvious what we need to do to change and to please the Blessed Virgin Mary, but do pray over it and be generous. Challenge yourself. We need time, that's why we're doing it over the span of a year. You know when Lent comes, it’s 40 days, and I think that most of us somewhat cringe because we know we'll have to make some efforts but at the same time we're happy because we need sort of an excuse to be good sometimes. And we start Lent and we are strong for that first week then we fail, we give up on our resolutions, and it's kind of up and down for 40 days, and then Easter’s there and it's like, ‘okay well I made a few efforts’. But we need time, we need a year; we need a year to make these efforts consistent. I really think the goal is in some of our cases to reprogram ourselves, so to speak, to acquire good habits of life that we've lost. And that's why we're doing it over a longer period of time. So again challenge yourself for the love of Our Lady and do it for Her, but also do it with Her. Amen