January 2005 Print

Fr. Michel Simoulin

The difficulty today, as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Fr. de Chivré and would evoke his memory, is that we find ourselves before a life so rich, a life lived to the full, that there are no words able to express it all. We remember a life so entirely devoted to all the battles worthy of being waged–patriotic battles, religious battles, ecclesiastical battles–all these battles which Father waged even as a very young man for the Dominican order, for the Church, for the Mass, for his homeland as well. We will perhaps have the occasion to speak of all these things during the conference planned for this afternoon, but if we want to summarize or try to offer a synthesis or a symbol of the life of Fr. de Chivré, I believe we should simply remember–as has already been said and written–remember quite simply that he was essentially a priest, a priest before all else. And where do we find the priest? What is, so to speak, the heart of a priest's life, the source of unity in a priest's life? His chalice.

The Chalice: The priest is made for the altar; and the priest is made for the chalice.

It is this chalice which he is made to touch the day of his ordination, the chalice and the paten which he has to touch in the very ceremony of his ordination.

And then, it is over this chalice, hunc calicem, that, day after day, with never an interruption, the priest leans to pronounce those holy words, those terrible words that do not come from him, that could not come from him; those words that have the extraordinary power–of which he is the instrument–the power to transform this bit of bread and wine into the divinity of the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is this chalice which follows the priest all through his life, always the same, hunc calicem, that of our Lord; materially different and yet identical, for the sacrifice and the priest are identical. It is his chalice that ties together all of the Masses which the priest has the privilege to offer day after day: it is there before Mass; the Sacrifice itself takes place within it; and it remains after the Mass…still all steeped in the presence of the divine Word.

And it is this very chalice which makes the priest; it is this chalice of his daily Mass in which is realized the continuity of the divine presence; the continuity of the fullness of love of our Lord Jesus Christ; the continuity of the work of Redemption. It is this chalice which models the priest after the image of the Sovereign Priest. It is by his daily contact with his chalice that the priest becomes every day a little more what he should be: in adoration and consumed with zeal for the glory of God.

Yes, of course, he is a priest by the sacred character with which he is marked, but the chalice is what educates the soul and the heart of the priest, and establishes him in a living and unceasing contact with the heart and the soul of our Lord, to become truly a priest according to the order of Melchisedech; to love as our Lord loved; to give his life as our Lord gave His life. It is the chalice–if the priest truly gives himself to what he is doing on the altar–it is the chalice which educates the heart and the soul of the priest.

And it is also the chalice which educates the word of the priest. These words so simple, so sober, and yet charged with the fullness of an infinite power; these words which the priest pronounces every day educate his own speech, taking away its inclination to squandering itself in vain conversations, in worldly conversations, in useless, wasteful speech, to the benefit of the fullness of life of the divine Word, that his words might spread only what is sacred wherever they are heard, purified of all that has nothing to do with the sacred, of what can have no value for eternity before God or for the good of souls.

I believe that Father's chalice is what can help us understand who Fr. de Chivré was; to bring back to us something of this priest we have so loved. This chalice was offered to him by his mother for his ordination, and God knows it was his pride and joy—he loved his mother so much! This chalice is a real treasure, very simple and very rich, and was consecrated the very day of Father's ordination by Archbishop Le Roy, a Holy Ghost Father–perhaps a sign of Providence. So it was a Holy Ghost Father archbishop who consecrated Father's chalice as he himself was receiving the priestly consecration and, near the end of his life, we find Fr. de Chivré by the side of another Holy Ghost Father archbishop, Archbishop Lefebvre. A beautiful touch, isn't it? This chalice, which is in fact identical to the chalice of Archbishop Lefebvre's ordination, was consecrated by one of the predecessors of Archbishop Lefebvre at the head, as Superior General, of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. I think we would be allowed to see there a sign of Providence.

So now if we look at Father's chalice (we will all see it soon), this same chalice which Father used for his first Mass, on the feast of St. Anne in 1930, even to his last Mass, his very last Mass, celebrated in his oratory of Our Lady of the Granite, Tuesday of Holy Week in 1984, that is April 17, 1984 (he had to travel very early Wednesday morning and was not able to celebrate Mass, since he was already too exhausted, and it was here on Holy Thursday that Father was struck down without having had a chance to say Mass), that is, between July 26th of the year 1930 until April 17, 1984, this chalice was the life of Fr. de Chivré and Father de Chivré was the life of this chalice—he who brought down into it the life of God…for us. Mysterium fidei!

So now if we look at this chalice, what do we see?

First, we see a very noble material, the union of the most noble materials found on this earth: gold and silver. Silver, for this chalice is solid silver; and then gold on the inside of the cup. The most noble material, then, and the purest. An elegantly simple chalice, without flowery designs. Here already we have Father, in his human nature: an extremely noble nature inherited from his mother, inherited from his father, inherited from his ancestors. The Chivrés were a proud and noble race. And this nobility which would be humanly so natural to him he put in the service of God's nobility, for the most noble of works: the divine glory and the work of Redemption; for God and for souls. We have then first of all the most noble of materials, and equally the most durable: a material made for the duration, made for a sacred eternity. When I had the joy of receiving this chalice, Father's words came back to me, namely that this chalice never needed to be refinished in gold, and therefore never had to be reconsecrated. It is always intact, such as it was on the first day, such as Father received it from the hands of his dear mother and such as he possessed it from his very first Mass. And there, too, we find Father: embattled, exhausted, even shattered by illness or by the petty malice of his fellow men, Father remained intact, indestructible, always the same. It really took death itself to reduce him to silence. But up until then, nothing could stop him, nothing could stop the vigor of his heart, the vigor of his soul, nor even the vigor of his word, even if it had a harder time expressing his thought. There we already have the essence of Father, on the natural level.

But if we look more closely at this chalice, what do we see? Only one "decoration," only one symbol, but a symbol which is not soldered on; a symbol which is not added onto the metal of the chalice; a symbol which is engraved in the base of the chalice: and that is the cross, engraved in the very metal of the chalice. This cross is inseparable from the chalice: it forms an integral part of the chalice and no one will ever be able to detach this cross from the chalice; this cross is engraved in the base of Father's chalice. This cross, too, is engraved in Father's life from his earliest childhood, from the age of nine, when he had the great sorrow of losing his father while still a child. And for as long as he lived, this cross remained engraved in Father's life. The life of a priest is necessarily a crucifixion, and I think that Father's life was perhaps more of a crucifixion than the lives of many other priests who, perhaps for that very reason, do not have Father's spiritual vigor; because the cross is not an integral constant, engraved in their life, but maybe only juxtaposed, superposed on their life. The cross ought to be engraved, impressed in a permanent and inseparable way in the soul and the heart of the priest, in his very life; and that was the case with our beloved Fr. de Chivré.

Finally, the third thing we can see in this chalice, after its noble and pure material, after this cross engraved in the base, at the node of the chalice we find a vine: a cluster of grapes and the leaves of the vine: it is the superabundance of life, the fullness of life which overflows from this chalice, marked with the seal of the Cross; a fullness of life sufficient to re-consecrate the world, to re-sacralize a desecrated earth. And when just a moment ago we read the passage from the book of Wisdom, how can we not think precisely of Father's chalice, of all these fruits of sanctity attributed to the Wisdom of God and, rightly, to our Lady; but also the fruits which ripened in the heart of Father's chalice, those fruits of sanctity spread by his daily Mass, by his holy, pious and sometimes painful celebration…? God only knows the multitude of those fruits! But those who had the grace to be able to assist at Father's Mass in the last years of his life know to what point he truly lived his Mass; to what point it was adoration and suffering. We felt his soul draw itself toward the Heart of our Lord, and we understood that his soul suffered, even physically, in unison with the soul of our Lord. All that suffering he lived through every day, there, at the heart of this chalice—all that suffering was a source of life. Who can say the number of souls who found life again at Father's feet; who perhaps even found the faith again; who found again the courage to live, the courage to go forward simply because Father had found in his chalice the strength to smile? What power there was in Father's smile, in just a word, when Father would say, almost offhandedly, "Come, child…" And suddenly everything was simple: Father had understood you, Father had guessed, because Father had already understood these sufferings, our own sufferings, in the chalice of his Mass, because in his daily Mass, he lived the suffering of our Lord. That is surely where lies the secret of Father's penetration of hearts, his penetration of souls. He had an extraordinary grace: the penetration of our most intimate sufferings. And what was his secret? Well, it was precisely that suffering shared with our Lord Jesus Christ at the heart of the chalice, deep within the chalice of his Mass.

Here, then, are a few very imperfect words to help us perhaps summarize the life of Fr. de Chivré: nobility, the cross, and then the abundance of life. I am convinced that it is within this chalice that Father found the answers to our questions and to his own questions; the answers to what we came to confide to him to help us resolve our difficulties. There, in the chalice, he found THE answer, that is, our Lord, and our Lord Jesus Christ crucified. The answer is there, and even if Father isn't there any more, we, too, can go and seek the answer every day in the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is the answer, the only answer: Jesus Christ.

Father also found that answer at the feet of our Lady. Father had named that statue in front of which he used to kneel, before the altar in his oratory, "Our Lady of the Answer." There is the answer. It is the answer our Lady used to give him in silence; she would give it to him simply by showing him the tabernacle, the altar: there is the answer.

On this First Saturday of the month, as we celebrate the Immaculate Heart of Mary, let us pray to our Lady to make us always be the echo of that answer, and to draw us to do what Father used to do: to go before our Lord Jesus Christ to find the answer to all the difficulties we may have. May she teach us to follow her divine Son on the road to Paradise, with a soul full of hope, full of dignity; with a soul full of confidence.

As long as the Chalice of the Real Presence of His Son will be raised up to God, there will be for souls, even the most deprived or the most rebellious, a source of life and salvation; a place to go and re-sacralize all the beatings of their heart; a holy refuge to consecrate every instant of their life here below.

Translated from a sermon preached by Fr. Michel Simoulin (Aug. 7, 2004) at Fanjeaux, France, exclusively for Angelus Press. Fr. Michel Simoulin was ordained in 1980 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. He is currently serving in Romagne, France, as chaplain to St. Thomas Aquinas School. Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray') was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre.