December 2004 Print

What is very interesting about this place is that, from its beginning, it has always been a house of formation. Looking at how this priory has developed throughout the years, we see that Divine Providence has deigned to arrange for you faithful to have seen very different aspects of this Catholic formation. You first saw the formation of future priests when this property was a seminary. Then, you witnessed the formation of religious souls when it was a novitiate for the Sisters of the Society of Saint Pius X. Now, you see it as a school for the formation of Catholic youth.

It may be at different levels, but it all comes to the same thing. It is a fact in the life of the Catholic Church and there's a name for it: Tradition! Tradere means "to transmit," that is, to hand down what the Church has received from our Lord. His Revelation and grace she transmits from generation to generation. What is received by one generation is passed on to the next. This Catholic formation embraces the whole human being both naturally and, much more, supernaturally. These are things we distinguish but never separate.

When we speak of an anniversary, my dear brethren, we are dealing with tradition. We may celebrate the past 30 years, but at the same time, while remembering the past, we look into the future because when we celebrate an anniversary, we do not celebrate the end of something. On the contrary, we expect things to continue, to develop, and to increase. The look into the past is necessary, however, so that we may maintain the line that has brought us to this moment and continue into the future on the same line which has provided for our past accomplishments. We can learn from the past how to improve and correct what, due to human frailty, may not have been perfect, for we should have always in mind our Lord's greatest law. Our venerated founder Archbishop Lefebvre had a very interesting insight. Looking at history, he said that we can see there is one law given by God which imparts movement to the world, which, to use a modern word, gives it its dynamics. This highest law, which explains the movement of creatures and especially that of human life, is the law of Charity.

This commandment of God is imposed on each soul He has created. It is the soul's duty to grow in perfection, to become more perfect every day by being a little bit more like God. Growth in perfection is received from God who makes us perfect, makes us happy, and promises us the unimaginable happiness of heaven. There is a law, denied by those using only unaided natural reason, that says that movement in human beings always tends to move from something imperfect to something more perfect. That we try to become better is something God has written on our hearts. We all know this push, this invitation, to become better. Whether we do or not, however, is another question, but God's invitation is there.

Now when we look at this call to perfection, we see immediately that it is exactly what we try to answer by the work of formation, by the work of education at any level, whether it be the formation of priests, religious brothers and sisters, or of youth. First of all, we want to make children of God. God has created us for heaven; if ever the work of education would forget that aim, it would forget the essential! Of course, we have to study the formation of the mind and the reason, and study various other sciences: Physics, Literature, Arts. But the "first science" is the science of God; it is the Faith, which is not just something to learn but which has a direct effect on our life.

And here we touch the second point of this education, a very serious one, which has become in our days a nightmare but which has always been a struggle. We may summarize it in the words of St. Paul, who knew something of the struggle himself: "The good I would like to do, I don't do. The evil I don't want to do; that is what I do." The normal development of the Catholic life is to come to understand the Faith, to know the invitation of God to the supernatural life, and to know that heaven is the purpose of life. There are many obstacles to this development and amongst them are, we know, the devil, the world, and ourselves. Any work of education which would make abstraction of this is doomed to failure.

In his great encyclical on education, Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI describes two great errors in modern education. These are, firstly, to forget grace-the supernatural world-and to stay at the natural level; and secondly, to forget the disaster caused in the soul by original sin.

Modern education starts with the point of view that man is good. If man is good, then let him do whatever he wants because it starts from a good source. On the other hand, Catholic education is based on revelation. Experience tells us that education is a battle, a constant preoccupation and presence to protect souls against danger. Catholic education wants the soul to grow, yes, to be good, to be the best, and this is not going to happen without a fight. I say more than just an effort; I say a fight!

When we speak of a school we speak of teaching, of communicating knowledge. Of course, this is absolutely necessary, but it's not enough. This is where the "nightmare" begins, and I'm very concerned about it. I see, especially in the First and Second World nations, dramatic decadence among the youth. The caliber of modern youth is in severe decline. At this level, this is verified at the level of communication of knowledge. If you look at tests given to students today, what is required to get a passing grade is five and six years behind that of years ago. That's on top of the fact that the knowledge being communicated today is much less than ever. This is bad, but it is not the worst of the nightmare.

The nightmare I speak of touches the affections, the will, and character. Whatever is going on in their classrooms, the modern young person is, in general, incapable of facing the world and its responsibilities.

Take marriage, for example. Why are there so many cases where a boy and a girl live together without marriage? The answer goes beyond merely "a way of life." When you speak to these youngsters, they often can have naturally upright hearts. Many of them are of good will. But they fear! They are afraid! In a certain way, they know-or they think they know-that they are not able to promise to stay together forever. They fear they aren't capable of being faithful to that promise. I see the same phenomenon in candidates for the religious life, even for the priesthood. It's something you see across the board. There is a debility of the will.

We are speaking of the virtue of fortitude, which is distinguished by two different acts. The one which still is evident in modern youth is the aggredi, the strength of the sudden act, for example, when one is attacked or defends himself from attack. You still see that. It still does exist in sports, for example. The other act of the virtue of fortitude is the sustinere, the strength to support, to sustain, to bear an unpleasant situation with patience for a long time. This is the act of fortitude which is severely damaged. Faced with the daunting difficulties of real life, the modern soul tries to escape into dreaminess-drugs, technology, games, and fantasy-or becomes depressed. These are "modern sicknesses" which are very much the consequences of the debilitated modern soul.

My dear brethren, we are fighting against this. But we are far from achieving rousing success. I have to say, in all honesty, that I see the influence of the modern world leaking through the walls of protection we are trying to build. We are also suffering. The intensity of the evil may be less, perhaps, but we are also suffering, to be sure.

It may be a consolation to know that Cardinal Pie, a French cardinal of 150 years ago, already recognized and addressed this same problem. So it's not a new problem; it's just reaching its peak today. In our opposition, we may feel like we are fighting waves, like we are fighting the wind. Evil is in the air, in the atmosphere of the modern world in which we live.

So what can we do? What should we do? We can't become Martians. We can't go to the moon and say forget about the Earth. No! We are in this world and we are living today. Where do go for a solution? There is a solution. Why?-Because there is God!

There is a God who created us. There is a God who is Almighty, who is in control of everything that is happening and who is allowing this situation. We know that whenever this God allows a soul to be in a certain situation, He offers him the graces which he needs to resist, to persevere, and accomplish the duty God has asked of him. My dear brethren, I have to say with all certitude, it is not more difficult for God to make a saint today than it was in the Middle Ages! God is above all the human circumstances in which we find ourselves and in which we fight. Very clearly, if we look for a solution, we must first of all look to God. It's in this look to God, in this begging for His grace, and in our prayer, that we will find the solution.

In one of the psalms, we pray, " ipse cognovit figmentum nostrum.-You know how we are made." Okay, well, God made us and is also allowing all these circumstances, all these dangers of which we must be aware. Do I need to name some of them?-We are more or less sunk into television, modern music, and a variety of virtual worlds of pleasure, convenience, impurity, and softness which are made available to us. The modern world is doing its best to empty the cross at every level. Look at the way youth are educated. Look at the way we educate our children. We do the same; we try with good heart and will to make sure our children avoid any kind of pain or effort. My dear brethren, we are wrong to do so!

It's hard to say it. It may be hard to hear it. It sounds contradictory to charity. It may contradict what you believe is best for your children. But my dear brethren, God has made our wills in such a way that they will increase in the virtue of fortitude only through acts of greater intensity. That means through effort.

There is a phrase, "No pain; no gain," and that's a law of life. We most often do the contrary by getting the most with the least effort. In a certain way, on the material level it seems to work. But on the spiritual level, it does not work! It does not work because there is the ultimate law, the law of charity. Since the advent of original sin, there is one law by which human beings go to heaven and it is the cross. The Catholic spirit is the spirit of the cross. If you want the youth of tomorrow to persevere, if you want the youth of tomorrow to be one day men and women able to elevate this world and bring their neighbor to God's love and into eternity, there is only one way-Jesus crucified! Or as St. Paul said, "I don't want to know anything else than Jesus and Jesus crucified!" Our children must know the cross! All other things and all other knowledge are nothing in comparison to the knowledge of the cross.

This knowledge can be gained every Sunday: for many of you, every day. We know the cross by the Holy Mass, the re-presentation of this Sacrifice of our Lord. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a great teaching. It can form our soul on the condition that we unite our life-our thoughts, desires, and preoccupations-with what is happening on the altar. It was Pope Pius XII who said that the best way to attend Mass was to go there embracing the feelings, the desires, and the will of our Lord when He went to Calvary, when He went to His Passion. That means it's the best way to receive the help of God, to receive His grace to heal our wounds, to nurture us, to strengthen us in this life. Who else can help us grow in virtue toward God and neighbor?

Yes, definitely, my dear brethren, we are not Martians; we are human beings in this world. And God wants us to sanctify ourselves in this world. So we must keep the balance. We can't just cut ourselves off from everything in this world. But in the name of this spirit of the cross, we do have to renounce many things, even legitimate goods, that is, those we have a right to. And so, deliberately, we must daily spread throughout our life those acts by which we renounce things of this world so we may be closer to God. Without this law of sacrifice, my dear brethren, which has to be sown in the hearts of our children from the crib, we will get caught up in the current which is flooding the present world.

We want to save ourselves; we want to do something for Mother Church; we want the restoration of our Holy Mother Church. We don't need to look for new remedies. The medication is already prescribed. It's there. Even if we don't like it, it's there. It's the Catholic spirit, the spirit of Christ: "Whoever wants to be My disciple, let him deny himself...." That's the first thing our Lord says. The disciple renounces himself, takes up his cross, and follows Him.

Nevertheless, if we only speak of the cross-of renouncement, of sacrifice-without looking any further, my dear brethren, our words will be lost like water off a duck's back. Why?-Because renunciation itself is too hard and the invitation of this world is too strong. The world charms the youth. Its curiosity thrills them; its speed distracts them; its ease hypnotizes them. They will not stand fast if all they hear is you barking, "Renounce!"

So how do we do it? There is only one way: Charity. One passion must dominate all the others, and its name is charity. The one thing that must govern our will is charity. Only one thing is capable of governing the entire supernatural life and informing the life of virtue, and that is charity.

We must beg God for the grace to love Him to the point of being ready to leave all things for Him, to have such a love of Him that when faced with any choice we make the right choice.

The Catholic spirit tells us that charity is absolutely necessary. Most of the time, however, it is aided by Fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The first gift of the Holy Ghost is the fear of the Lord. The fear of penalty helps us to remember that we will have to give an account for whatever we do. We will be judged on what we have done here and receive recompense according to justice. What is evil will be punished. Though this motivation is not the most elevated, it will probably be what saved most of those who go to heaven. Thus, there is no contradiction between this fear of punishment and the love of God. They go together.

We must keep in mind those things the modern world absolutely wants to forget: Death and Judgment. Nothing is more sure than death, nothing more unsure than how and when it will happen for us. But we know this life comes to an end and we will be judged. We will receive recompense for our acts. Modern educators deny this knowledge to their students; we have to make it the basis of what we teach to ours.

How did the Church educate souls in the past? How did she bring them to God? Answer: What did the Blessed Virgin Mary say at Fatima? She asked for two things-Prayer and Penance. Nothing else! They are the summary of the Catholic life. Our Lord Himself said to the crowds, " If you don't do penance, you all shall perish!" When souls came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he answered, "Penance." On the glorious day of the manifestation of the Holy Ghost and the birth of the Catholic Church-Pentecost-souls inquired of St. Peter after he had given his first sermon, "What shall we do?" St. Peter replied, "Penance." It's always the answer. The Blessed Virgin Mary said to Sr. Lucy, "If today there are so many souls that go to hell, it's because nobody does penance for them." So this penance is good for us and is good for winning other souls.

You see, my dear brethren, the Church has always preached that the good Lord who wants to save us has given us the cross to get us to heaven. We have it on the top of all our steeples. We have it everywhere in our Catholic homes. Only a cross; it says it all. But the modern church no longer wants to preach the cross. They speak of the "risen Christ"; they forget there would be no risen Christ had He not first died.

Our greatest help for salvation is the cross. Let us go to the good Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to St. Joseph. Let us ask them to teach us this thing that our human nature does not want to know. If our Faith teaches us that the way of charity is through the cross, let us beg God for this knowledge. May we have on our lips and in our hearts the words of St. Thomas the Apostle, "Let us go up with Him and be crucified with Him." Oh, we don't like that! Humanly speaking, we don't.

Grace will help us overcome our negative reaction. Down deep, we know God is not asking us much. Yet, I know that when the word "cross" hits your ears, the devil is using a loudspeaker to make the echo in your head unbearable. The daily cross is not unbearable. The proof?-You are all here. Your souls have a spirit of anticipation, of readiness, of wanting to follow our Lord, to follow God. You want to please God. You want to love Him. You want to do His will. When we love, we are ready to surrender our will to that of the One we love. We are ready for the greatest renunciations.

Take a look at how people deny themselves in sports, for example. Here they are ready to renounce tremendous things just for a medal. Shouldn't we Catholics be ashamed not to be ready to give up at least as much as these people do for their sports or other occupations?

Let us ask God for this burning fire of charity which makes us love with all our heart, strength, mind, and all our soul! Everything in us is directed towards God who wants to be All in all. Our Lord wants to be our life. He wants to communicate to us His life. He wants us to live His life in us. It's not complicated. It requires every day some effort, yes, it is true. Let's do it with the help of His grace. And we can be certain there will be more anniversaries like this one, other jubilees, and in the end, the eternal happiness of heaven. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Transcribed exclusively for Angelus Press by the office staff of St. Joseph's Priory and Academy. Edited by Fr. Kenneth Novak.

 

You Want the Devil's Attention?
Start a School!

St. John Baptist De La Salle, Founder Of The Brothers Of The Christian Schools

Fr. Olivier Berteaux

 

St. John Baptist de la Salle (1651-1719) ranks among the advanced educators of the 18th century and among the greatest thinkers and educational reformers of all time.

The founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools was born at Reims on April 30, 1651. His father, a lawyer serving as king's counselor in the city, reared him in the esteem and practice of the Gospel, yet in a manner in keeping with their bourgeois social standing. Thus the little John Baptist never met the children of the people, though he shared their dismay at having to learn to read in Latin before learning to read in their maternal tongue. He attended the College des Bons-Enfants, where he spent nine years until his 18^th birthday.

Upon completion of his studies.he successively received minor orders (1662), became canon of the metropolitan See of Reims (1667), and took the degree of Master of Arts (1669), after which he set out for Paris. He was drawn to the capital by the secular renown of the Sorbonne University and by the growing reputation of its seminaries, including St. Lazare,founded by St. Vincent de Paul,and St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, created by Fr. Adrien Bourdoise (1584-1655), though he was to prefer St. Sulpice. Eighteen months spent with the sons of Fr. Jean Jacques Olier (1608-57) completed the formation of this generous soul for sacred orders. After a crisis of doubt and anguish occasioned by his father's death and the familial duties that he consequently acquired, he was ordained priest in the metropolitan church of the city of his birth on April 8, 1678.

That same year, a certain gentleman renowned for sanctity, Blessed Nicolas Roland (1642-78),Canon of Reims, died prematurely at Reims. Until his death, he had been in charge of schools for girls. Responsibility for them passed to the young priest, and therein he was to discover his particular calling. He soon realized the inadequacies of the instruction which the religious authority was sponsoring.

While it is true that elementary free education already existed, that, in fact, this was the rule in the so-called "charity" schools, it must be recognized that there were few of them. Moreover, the situation of the teachers assured them of profit and esteem: their undeniable zeal was sometimes marred by a certain desire for money or the satisfying of ambition. The young canon was especially moved by the plight of the boys, who were more neglected than the girls were. For their sake, he first opened a free school in St. Maurice parish, providing two devoted teachers. Then he assigned three others to the school of St. James parish.

The five teachers lived together.They agreed to follow a community rule fixed by Fr. de la Salle, who eventually took them under his own roof. By 1682, postulants flocked to the growing institute, enabling him to branch out far from Reims. Laon, Rethel, Guise, and Chateau Porcien all saw the arrival of the new Brothers. At Reims that same year, the founder installed 12 disciples in the suburb of St. Reims on the rue Neuve, in a building to which he soon had to annex the adjacent buildings because of the influx of pupils.

To inspire in his Brothers the desired disinterestedness and to fix them in the austerity of their task, he strove to show them the sublime nature of their vocation. Little by little he revealed to them the outline of the religious life he envisioned for them. He inspired them by his own example of zeal and self-abnegation. During the famine of 1684, they saw him distribute almost all his fortune to the poor.

On Trinity Sunday of that year at the conclusion of a two-week retreat, the first general assembly of the Institute was held. Between the hands of the founder, the masters pronounced their vow of obedience.The following winter, they adopted for their attire the full-sleeved cloak of the peasants of Champagne, a serge soutane, and a distinctive while collar. Fr. de la Salle gave to his disciples the name of Brothers of the Christian Schools. Finally, he inculcated in them the principles of the reform to be promoted in primary instruction.The Institute then comprised 15 Brothers, 15 novices, and 30 student teachers.

Meanwhile, Fr. de la Salle harbored the ambition of spreading the Institute far and wide. In 1688 he went to Paris accompanied by two Brothers.The pastor of St .Sulpice commissioned him to open a free school for 200 children. But the rival headmaster of Notre Dame took umbrage at this, and clamored for closing the establishment. Thanks to the protection of Our Lady of the Virtues whom the Brothers went to implore at Aubevilliers, the Parliament favored their cause. Nevertheless, the trials the Parisian foundation endured did not stop there. Hell broke loose; the devil tried to nip in the bud a work destined to cost him so much.

After the novitiate was transferred to Vaugirard to a ramshackle accommodation, the cross weighed more and more heavily upon the founder's shoulders. It appeared first in the departure of several notable disciples. Then followed the calumnies of jealous lay rivals, the pillaging of the novitiate, violent protests of the "writing masters" against the appearance on the scene of rivals in the art of teaching penmanship and drawing. Meanwhile, the Arch­bishop of Paris had intervened by pronouncing a writ of deposition, accusing the canon of Reims of Jansenism even as the Jansenists reproached him for his inopportune zeal. In short, such animosities were stirred up that Fr. de la Salle had to disappear for a time and hide in the Carmelite monastery on the rue de Vaugirard.

All these vexations and reversals the saint endured with profound humility. His Christian sense attributed all the opprobrium he suffered to the prodigious progress of the work he had so much at heart.At Chartres, Calais,Troyes and Avignon, at Rouen and Saint-Yon, the schools in fact were prospering and the novitiate school was packed.The Institute had already spread throughout the realm: one by one Dijon, Marseilles, Mende, Calais, Grenoble, and Saint-Denis clamored for Brothers.Then it was Macon. Versailles, Moulins, and Boulogne that desired to receive them.

Even so, the hostility did not abate. In 1711, during an inspection tour in Provence, Fr. de la Salle was brusquely summoned to Paris under the accusation of stealing from a minor. Upon returning to the capital, he left his defense to his lawyer while he resumed his task. Condemned by a Parisian criminal court, hounded and defamed, he with­drew exhausted to Sainte-Baume¹ and then to the Chartreuse,² remaining there a while to rebuild his strength in solitude.

In the spring of 1714, he received a message from Paris. The principals of his Brothers,"having in view the greater good of the Church and of society," entreated him to "take charge of the general governance of the Institute." He returned to his own. In retreat,he carefully revised the rules he had traced. He also edited the works he had composed for the Brothers and their pupils, which were of two kinds. There were treatises of spirituality, instructions and prayers for Mass, an explanation of the method of mental prayer, meditations for retreat, common rules, etc. He also wrote pedagogical works, including Conduite des Ecoles, Devoirs du Chretien, and Regies de civilite chretienne [The Conduct of the Christian Schools, The Duties of the Christian to God, The Rules of the Christian Decorum and C/V/7/ty.These works have recently been published in English in the anthology Jean Baptist de la Salle:The Spirituality of Christian Education (NY: Paulist Press, 2004)].

Three years later, to his great joy, the holy founder was relieved by the general chapter of his generalate. So he set himself the task of providing his Brothers with a definitive legal statute. From Saint-Yon,he returned to Paris. He deeply edified the community at the St. Nicholas du Chardonnet Seminary. Upon his return to Normandy,he learned that his faculty to confess had been withdrawn by the Archbishop of Rouen because of a baseless accusation against him.

Finally, on the morning of April 7, 1719, a Good Friday, he gently expired after having recommended to the Brothers of the Institute, in the words of a very brief testament, "total docility to the Catholic Church." John Baptist de la Salle was beatified on February 19,1888, and canonized on May 24, 1900, by Pope Leo XIII.

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Fideliter (May-June 2004). Fr. Olivier Berteaux, a priest of the Society of Saint Pius X, was ordained in 1989. He is the headmaster of the Society's St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle School in Camblain 1'Abbe, France.

 

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1. The grotto in the South of France where St. Mary Magdalen spent her last years in prayer and penance.

2. The Grand Chartreuse, the Carthusian monastery in the Alps near Grenoble.