Archbishop Viganò: Homily on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary Most Holy

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Genuisti qui te fecit
Homily on the Nativity of Mary Most Holy

Allow me to express my greeting to the dear parents, relatives, and friends of Claudio and Fabrizio, who today consecrate themselves to the service of the Most High: not on the feast day of the Presentation in the Temple, as usually happens, but on another Marian feast that is no less important. Tu es qui restitues hereditatem meam mihi. You are the One who gives me the inheritance that is due to me (Ps 15:5). These are the words that accompany the rite of the Sacred Tonsure, signifying that the abandonment of the world represented by the cutting of hair involves a loss of transient and changeable things in order to appropriate the eternal and immutable ones.

As on the Feast of the Assumption, so also on the Nativity of Mary Most Holy we find the parallel between the Virgin Mother and Holy Church confirmed. She is Queen and Lady just as her Divine Son is King and High Priest. The liturgy of this blessed day is centered on the Mystery of the Incarnation, for which the Most Holy Trinity created ab æterno, from of old (Prov 8:23) the One who – assimilated to Divine Wisdom – would be the Ark of the Covenant, the Tower of David, the Living Tabernacle of the Most High. From the first moment of Her Conception, Our Lord consecrated the integrity of the Mother of God by preserving Her from original sin and keeping Her Ever-Virgin: quæ et Unigenitum tuum Sancti Spiritus obumbratione concepit; et Virginitatis gloria permanente, lumen æternum mundo effudit, Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Who also conceived Thine only-begotten Son by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, and the glory of her virginity still abiding, gave forth to the world the everlasting Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. (Preface of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

Saint Bernard calls Mary Most Holy the Aqueduct of Grace, because through her all the graces and blessings of Christ, the Divine Fountainhead, come to us. Holy Church is also a channel of Grace through the Sacraments. In Her bosom the Body of the Lord is mystically formed in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar; thanks to the Priesthood, the Sacrifice of the Mass perpetuates the presence of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

The clerical vestment and the sacred tonsure that I am preparing to confer on Claudio and Fabrizio in this solemn celebration mark the moment in which they freely choose to dedicate themselves to the Lord and to renounce the world. The rite contained in the Roman Pontifical shows this separation with its external signs – the black cassock, the cutting of hair, and the surplice that symbolizes the new man with whom to clothe oneself in justitia, et sanctitate Veritatis, in righteousness and true holiness. The cleric stops living in a worldly manner, however licit, so as to follow the example of the Divine Master: in the world, but not of the world. In fact, what is of the world is profane, and as such must remain outside the temple, which is precisely sacred and holy, that is, separate and inviolable because it is reserved for the worship of God (sacer) and ratified by God as His (sanctus).

The cleric, with his austere robe that silently but eloquently recalls the Cross of Christ, penance, renunciation, and mortification, is and must be “outside the world.” For this reason, the world hates everything that recalls heavenly realities, the external signs of Religion, the Cross, the relics of the saints, the sacred images, and also the cassock that today you will put on forever, and which is stripped from those who, although honored with Holy Orders, continue to live in a manner that belongs to the world.

This ceremony is the first step in the itinerarium (path) towards the priesthood. In the Liturgy of the Nativity of Mary Most Holy, and in particular in the Epistle taken from the Book of Wisdom, we find a starting point for spiritual meditation: Therefore, O children, listen to me: Blessed are those who walk in my ways. Hear the teaching, be wise, and do not reject it: Blessed is the man who hears me and watches over me daily at the entrance of my house, and is attentive to the edge of my door. Whoever finds me will find life and receive salvation from the Lord (Prov 8:32-35).

Dear Claudio and Fabrizio, you are preparing to walk towards a goal, following a very precise path. You are called to keep vigil every day in the dwelling of the Lord, on the threshold of the Holy of Holies, in order that one day you may be worthy to offer to the Divine Majesty the pure, holy and immaculate Victim, born of a pure, holy and immaculate Virgin. And for this reason your life and your whole being must have as their model Christ, Victim and Priest, and His Most Holy Mother, who is our Mother and who in Co-redemption united herself to the Lord’s Passion. Divine Wisdom and the Virgin Mary both speak to the heart of each one of you: my delights are to be with the children of men (Prov 8:31). The Church also repeats these words to you, and you yourselves must combine your duties towards God with charity towards your neighbor, so that those who from this day forward see you, listen to you, and turn to you, may see in you a minister of Christ and listen to his voice, the voice of the Church, established by God in initio viarum suarum, the firstborn of His ways (Prov 8:22).

The world is hostile to you, as it was hostile to Our Lord, and as it is hostile to everything that comes from God: if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also (Jn 15:20), the Divine Master warns us. If the world did not mock you, did not marginalize you, did not fight you, that would mean that the world saw something of its own in you, and you would know that you do not represent a threat. But you are like these conscientious doctors who were disbarred during the pandemic farce because they treated patients instead of killing them with wretched protocols; you are like these teachers suspended because they were unwilling to corrupt children and young people with the perversions of gender and woke ideology; you are like these magistrates who are dismissed because they administer justice instead of letting criminals go free. You are strangers to the world, and the world knows this and fears you because of the power of the Gospel of Christ that you preach.

Today the Church of Christ has been obscured and eclipsed by the heretics and corrupt who have occupied it: the Hierarchy has prostituted itself to the world and has made its maxims its own. It no longer recognizes the Lordship of Our Lord, and proclaims along with the Sanhedrin: We have no king but Caesar (Jn 19:15). On the Throne of Peter sits, not the Vicar of Christ, but a usurper devoted to the demolition of the Church. The ostracism that the faithful and clerics suffer for their fidelity to the Lord is therefore not the voice of the Church but rather of its counterfeit. This is why false pastors fear and fight against those who denounce their betrayal.

They will tell you that you are an endangered minority; that you want to distinguish yourself from others out of pride; that your rigidity and backwardness are contrary to the Gospel; that the Faith you proclaim is obsolete and intolerant; that the Liturgy you celebrate is incomprehensible and distant. They will tell you that you are few and alone, just as there are few good doctors, good teachers, and good judges: pusillus grex (little flock). And while they fill their mouths with words of inclusiveness and acceptance, tolerance and dialogue, it will be only against you that their fury will be unleashed, only for you that their prisons will be opened. Excommunications for heretics and schismatics are hurled against those who fight error and schism, in the overthrow of every principle and in the abuse of both civil and religious authority. Just as prison doors open to release criminals while honest people are locked up. Satan is not bipolar: his corrupting action – a liar and murderer from the beginning (Jn 8:44) – reveals that lucidity in deception and perverse coherence which is proper to an angelic mind, albeit fallen – that is, diabolical. And this is why today the Church goes through its own passio at the hands of its own leaders, just as it was once the Sanhedrin that stirred up the people and blackmailed Pilate in order to send Our Lord to death.

Yet, despite the efficiency of the organization of the forces of evil and the disorganization of the good, Satan knows he has already lost, this is why he does everything he can to drag as many souls as possible into damnation with him, thus nullifying the Redemption. This is why he wants a world without faith, without hope, without love. This is why he wants a world without priests, without religious and nuns, without expiatory souls. And for this reason – as we see happening – he wants every vocation to be corrupted, perverted, or rendered useless. This is why Satan demands that his arrogant lie not only be tolerated, but that it be accepted as such and that the Truth be condemned. His imposture requires conscious and ostentatious adherence to error, together with the obstinate rejection of the Good. This is the only way to explain the abomination of desolation in the holy place: a man who usurps the Throne of Peter and the sacred authority of Our Lord to impose apostasy and destroy the Church.

Dear Claudio and Fabrizio, do not be discouraged! The Church has always been considered alien to the world, as is Our Lady, Mary Most Holy. We are exsules filii Hevæ, children of the old Eve in sin, children of the new Eve in Grace. Our exile is the time of trial and struggle by which we merit the citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem. Our Lady’s Nativity makes Her the purest and holiest of all creatures, associating our poor humanity with Her perfections. And with Her Assumption into Heaven in body and soul, she shows us our heavenly homeland. May her virtues – first of all humility and purity – be the cornerstone of your spiritual life, because all the evils that afflict the ecclesial body today derive from pride and fornication. We have a distressing example of this in the scandals of the Bergoglian sect. Be humble in accepting the treasure that Holy Church holds, handing it over to posterity without adding or taking anything away from it. Be pure in the daily immolation of your body and soul, knowing that you are always in the presence of God and the Virgin Mary.

Let us therefore make ourselves worthy, with the Grace of God and under the patronage of Mary Most Holy, to reach the goal indicated by the Stella matutina, the Morning Star that announces the Sun of Justice, repeating with filial trust the Marian antiphon: Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis, post hoc exilium, ostende. And after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

September 8, a. D.ñi MMXXIV
In Nativitate B.M.V.