Video and full text in English- Cardinal Sarah's wonderful and prophetic sermon this morning at Sainte-Anne-d'Auray
The Gospel is first read
Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia
The Lord be with you
And with your spirit.
Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke.
Glory to you, O Lord.
Then also Jesus exulted for joy in the Holy Spirit, and said
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I proclaim thy praise. What you have hidden from the wise and
learned, you have revealed to the least of these. Yes, Father, you wanted it that way in your
benevolence. Everything has been handed
over to me by my Father. No one knows
who the Son is except the Father. And
no one knows who the Father is except the Son and the one to whom the Son
wishes to reveal him. Then he turned to
his disciples and said to them in particular: "Blessed are the eyes that
see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see
what you see and did not see it. Hear
what you hear. They have not heard.
Cardinal Sarah
My dear people from Brittany and France, I respectfully
greet the civil authorities present on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of
the apparitions of Saint Anne. Pope Leo XIV has delegated me to be his
extraordinary envoy to this shrine of Saint Anne d’Auray. By
his gestures, the Holy Father wishes to emphasise the importance (applause) he
attaches to your pilgrimage. I therefore bring to all of you, pilgrims to
Saint Anne, the greetings and blessings of the Holy Father. On
this day, through his envoy, he is showing you his fatherly affection. On
his behalf, I extend a very friendly greeting to Monsignor René
Centène , Bishop of Vannes, who loves Saint Anne so much and greetings
to the other bishops, Father Abbe, the superiors of the communities here
present, the priests from Brittany and elsewhere. And
you, dear pilgrims of Saint Anne, who have come to this shrine to respond to
Saint Anne's call and above all to adore God.
(Another voice Amen).
In this place, 400 years ago, Saint Anne appeared to Yvon
Nicolazic and said: "Yvon Nicolazic, Me zo Anna, mamm Mari ("I am
Anne, mother of Mary", in Breton).
Yvon, don't be afraid, I am Anne, mother of Mary, tell your rector, your
priest, that on the land called Bocenno - that is to say this place where we
are now - a chapel was once built in my name, it was the first in the whole
country. It has been in ruins for 924
years and 6 months. I want it to be
rebuilt as soon as possible and for you to take care of it because God wants me
to be honoured there and God wants you to come there in procession".
Dear Breton brothers and sisters Saint Anne said to Yvon
Nicolazic, God wants this place. God chose this land to make it a holy place. God
wanted a piece of your land, a piece of your country, France, to be a sacred
place, a reserved place. God wanted your ancestors not to cultivate
this place, not to farm it. He chose this place to be, to be honoured. There's
a great mystery here that needs to be pondered. There
were many other Churches available. There were many other possible places to live. But
he chose this one. Why did he choose it? First,
to tell us that God comes first. That God's glory precedes us and does not
belong to us. God created us by an act of gratuitous love. All
creation is the work of his hands, the free gift of his love.
That he knows among all beings that God's hand made all
these things and that he holds in his hands the soul of every living thing and
the breath of every human creature.
You saved us from sin through the Cross, which is an act of
gratuitous love even greater than creation itself.
We have not deserved his love. He loved us first. We owe him everything, because in him we
have life. Movement and being. For us who are his creatures and his
children, to honour God, to give him glory, is therefore to do justice. Giving glory to God is not an optional
choice, it is a duty, it is a necessity.
It's very important to become aware of this, especially in your
societies, which tend to regard God as a useless dead thing of no interest.
Too often in the West, religion is presented as an activity
at the service of human well-being. Religion
is equated with humanitarian action, acts of charity, welcoming migrants and
the homeless, promoting universal brotherhood and world peace.
Spirituality would be a form of personal development, there
to bring a little relief to modern man, tending towards his usual political and
economic activities. While these issues
are important, this view of religion is wrong.
Religion is not about food or humanitarian action. In the desert, it was the first temptation
that Jesus rejected. To redeem
humanity, you have to overcome the misery of hunger and poverty, and that's
what the devil proposes to the Lord. But
Jesus replies that this is not the way to redemption. He makes us understand that even if everyone
had enough to eat, even if prosperity extended to everyone, humanity would not
be redeemed.
In fact, we see how, precisely in the countries of ease,
wealth and abundance, man destroys himself, self-destructs, because he forgets
God and thinks only of his wealth and his earthly well-being. What saves the world is God's bread. Man must be fed with the bread of God. And the bread of God is Christ himself. What will save the world is the man who
kneels before God to adore and serve him.
God is not at our service. We
are at his service. We were created to
praise and adore God. It is in the
worship of God that we discover our true dignity, the ultimate reason for our
existence.
It is kneeling before God to adore him. That's when man discovers his true greatness
and nobility. And if we do not worship
God, we will end up worshipping ourselves.
God has chosen this place to be worshipped. God chose France to be like holy ground, a
land reserved for God. Do not desecrate
France with your barbaric and inhuman laws that take death when God wants life. Amen.
Amen.
Do not desecrate France.
For it is holy ground, a land reserved for God. He told us that this place should be
reserved for me, that it should be set apart to worship God. We have to set ourselves apart. Brittany is a sacred land and must remain a
sacred land, a land reserved for God. God
must have first place here and our first activity must be to adore and glorify
God. To adore and glorify is the
highest expression of our gratitude to God and the most beautiful response of
our lives to his exceptional love for us.
To adore God, we must set ourselves apart in silence. Don't flood this place with noise, but come
here in the silence of your heart to listen to God.
This is what we call entering into a sacred attitude. There are sacred places, places reserved for
God, chosen by God. Places that cannot
be desecrated by activities other than prayer, silence and liturgy. Our churches are not theatres. Our churches are not halls for concerts,
cultural activities or entertainment. The
church is God's house. It is reserved
exclusively for him. We enter with
respect and veneration, properly dressed, because we tremble before the
greatness of God. We don't tremble with
fear, but with respect, support and admiration. And I want to say thank you to the Breton
men and women who know how to wear the most beautiful traditional garments to
give glory to the divine majesty. This
is not about folklore.
The outward effort you make to dress is only a sign of the
inward effort you make. You present
yourself to God with a pure soul, washed by the sacrament of confession,
adorned by prayer and the spirit of adoration.
Sacred places do not belong to us.
They belong to God. Nor do
sacred songs or any sacred liturgy belong to us. The purpose of the liturgy is the glory of
God and the sanctification of the faithful.
And sacred music is a privileged means of facilitating the active and
fully conscious participation of the faithful in the sacred celebration of the
Christian mysteries.
We come here to enter into a
liturgy that precedes us and guides us to worship. We do not come to find a moment of folklore
or distraction or to show off our cultural values. We are here for the glory of God. The liturgy is not a human spectacle. It is our timid response to the glory of God
that precedes us. That is why it is
imbued throughout with beauty, nobility and sacredness.
In the apparition, Saint Anne tells Yvon Nicolazic that God
wants the old church, which was in ruins, to be rebuilt and cared for. Rebuilding God's church is difficult, costly
and demanding. And yet it is the image
of what God wants today. God still
wants us to rebuild his house today. God
is coming to say to each of us today, I have chosen your soul, I have chosen
your heart as sacred ground to be adored.
Your baptismal soul is a sacred place.
Do not profane it by giving it over to disordered passions and the
spirit of the world. Do not profane it
by stealing God's first place. Your
soul is like a church because I, your God, dwell there. I am alive in it by the grace of baptism,
but this church can be ruined. And if
the Church of your soul is ruined, then hear God's call.
It's time to rebuild it, and to rebuild it on rock. The rock, the solid foundation on which we
must build our life and our hope of eternal life, is Christ Jesus himself. Yes, it's time to rebuild the church of our
soul. It's time to confess. Confess the sins you have committed in word
and deed by night or by day. Confess in
this favourable time and on the day of salvation receive the heavenly treasure. Above all, watch over your soul, Saint Cyril
of Jerusalem tells us.
It's time to take care of it by keeping a real time of
intense silent prayer every day. It's
time to expel the idols of money and the screens of easy, vulgar seduction. God wants your heart. God wants your soul. Just as he wanted this land of Brittany,
your soul is a sacred place. Take care
of it. It is only in this sacred
sanctuary of your soul that God will be able to speak to you, console you and
bring you back to himself through a radical conversion of life. Only in that inner sanctuary will you be
able to hear his call to be holy, to be a worshipper. Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. It is in this inner and sacred place that
you, as a young man, will be able to hear his call to be a priest or a
religious, that you, as a young woman, will be able to hear his call to give
yourself over to him in the religious life, consecrating to him your body, your
heart, and all your capacity to love.
If you desecrate this inner place of your soul by a life
dominated by sin and worldly entertainment, you risk missing out on your life. You risk never really being yourself. My beloved brothers and sisters, let us not
rob God of the sacred sanctuary of our soul.
God created it, God redeemed it.
Let us not desecrate our bodies.
Our body is God's temple and God's spirit dwells in us. Let us not destroy this temple because God's
temple is sacred and we are that temple.
God has entrusted it to us so that we can care for it and worship him in
silence. God wants this. God wants you. Dear brothers and sisters, God chose this
piece of land in Brittany with a very special intention. He wanted to be honoured here through the
cult of Saint Anne. There is no other
place in the world where Saint Anne has appeared. What a privilege, what a grace, what a
mystery.
Saint Anne brings a special message to this place. She, who happily and healthily had no
children because of her advanced age, must have suffered from this situation. Your heart must have been full of pain and
worry. What suffering for the heart of
a woman who longs to become a mother and sees her wait prolonged. How much Saint Anne must have wondered? Is
it my fault? Why such a trial? There are certainly men and women among you who
suffer from not having children. Certainly
among you. There are parents whose
hearts, like the Saint's, are filled with suffering, anguish and concern for
sick children, for children who have abandoned the faith and who seem to be
drifting away from God for their family, for their homeland, our trials and our
suffering sometimes leave us in a state of profound incomprehension.
But why? Why the death of a child? Why the suffering of the
innocent? Why war? Why betrayal? Why, Lord, do we sometimes feel abandoned by
him? Apparently, God is no longer here, and for Europe, God is dead. Should we rebel? Should we believe that God
has become indifferent to us? Should we abandon religious practice because God
doesn't listen to my prayers? Should we stop praying and going to Sunday Mass?
Let's look at Saint Anne today, especially as you have come to honour her. Let us look at her and listen to her voice. What does she do? Does she rebel against
God? It is turning away from God. No,
she remains in adoration. God is
greater than our misunderstandings, than our doubts. God is greater than our hearts.
In the face of evil, we have no ready-made answers. We
have no human answers. In the face of
evil, in the face of the suffering of the innocent, we have only one response. Adoration.
Our only response to the mystery
of evil is silent adoration . Yes, evil
is incomprehensible, but we know from faith that adoring trust in God is
stronger than the absurdity of evil. Sainte Anne has come here to tell the Breton
people and the whole of France, and through them to people everywhere, that
adoration is the only remedy for the despair that evil brings. Faith
in God and the worship of God are the only remedies that can guarantee mankind
a solid and lasting peace.
Here, generations of women and
sailors lost at sea have come to proclaim that God is stronger than the
suffering of a grieving heart. Here, generations of parents struck by
sterility have come to proclaim that trusting adoration is the ultimate
fruitfulness of a soul ravaged by suffering.
Here, generations of parents
worried about their children who have gone off to war, about their sons who
have disappeared or are far from God, have come to protest their faith, their
trust and their hope.
So all of you who are suffering, I am speaking to you. Look
at Saint Anne, all of you who despair for your children, your parents, your
country. Look at Saint Anne as she
perseveres in adoration. Adoration of God will never let us down. Saint
Anne's patient and silent adoration enabled Mary to be born, the mother of the
Saviour, the most beautiful, the purest, the holiest of all creatures, all of
you whose hearts bear suffering and pain your hope in trust in God. As the night grows dark, your adoration will
bear fruit in hope.
Persevering, relentless worship tears through the darkness. It brings the light of hope. And you, dear priests, are few in number. You
are involved in different parishes, you are restless left and right. I beg
you, devote a lot of time to adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Persevering adoration, I repeat, tears the
darkness apart. It brings the light of hope.
Confident adoration pierces the
cloak, the lead of evil. It overturns the weight of despair. It is
the cry of love and faith that alone remains fruitful at the heart of the night
of evil. No ugliness can exhaust the beauty of a heart
that adores. No violence can dry up its invincible strength. My
brothers and sisters, there is one grace that will never be taken away. It is
the ability to adore God and to love God with all our heart, with all our soul
and with all our strength. And we have come here to learn from Saint Anne
how to worship God, to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with
all our strength.
When everything sometimes seems dark, we can always say,
with our beloved Pope Leo XIV, that evil will not prevail. God, our God, is infinitely good, infinitely
beautiful, infinitely great. Today,
with Saint Anne, in this blessed place chosen by God, let this cry of love rise
up in each of our hearts: "Come, let us adore the Lord, come, let us adore
him, let us bow down before him, let us bend our knees before the Lord our
Creator, for he is our God. Amen".
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