It's difficult to live a Catholic life in these days - and when you see the ordinations
and you see a young man being ordained, a Day of Ordination, it's a day of great hope,
because God, as we know in our minds and in our hearts that He won't abandon His people
- but this is something very concrete.
Ever since the crisis in the Church, people, to show their great Faith in the Church, or
great hope that the Church continues in all its doctrinal purity and missionary zeal,
they now makes these pilgrimages, we can say, to ordinations, to see the priesthood conferred
on these young men.
When I had joined the Benedictines in Europe, each year, the big event was to go to Econe
for the ordinations. And there was such a great spirit, seeing representatives of all
the orders there, the traditional orders... seeing the elders of the clergy, older priests
coming in to lay their hands on the ordinands; it was the event of the year. And in this
spirit of hope... that God is with us; and we are in the heart of the Church.
People realize that here God is continuing to form, to give priests for their soul.
We've got that bloodline that goes back to Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Last Supper
when he gave those apostles, celebrated that Mass and gave them power to do what these
priests now have the power to do. To confess sins, to absolve sins, and to be the Christ
amongst us, both Victim and the one that does the victimizing.
The priest as the mediator between God and man and so he's able to give Sacraments to
the faithful, just one ordination and the Sacraments he can provide and everything of
that nature, is a great grace for all of the faithful that he will be able to see.
A priest is set aside, he's meant to be different, he's meant to be a leader amongst men; and
so for the SSPX it's very clear - we are here to form priests. And we are here to form priests
for Holy Mother Church, for the work of Tradition, and for souls.
It signifies that many vocations come to us from families, true Catholic families that
have many children, that the good Lord chose to send a vocation; that is a great hope of
the Church.
If we look back a little bit more than forty years here, in the United States, the Society
just arrived with a couple of priests. Over this forty years this group of priests developed
to a group of 95 priests is a more or less exponential growth.
The seminary is all about forming priests. We're a priestly society, we take care of
faithful, we take care of parishes, but we need priests to do that.
Of all the projects that we could possibly do in the Society, this new seminary is the
most important project.
The formation of the seminarians, which is the formation of the priests, is the formation
of the officers of the Church. When you support the formation of the seminarians, you support
the building of the Church.
It's fitting, perfectly fitting, that we do all we can, all our best, to build seminaries,
and to form vocations, to form future priests, the future of the Church.
The seminary project, is for us the perfect realization of the Archbishop's spirit, which
was full of hope - and a magnanimous spirit. To put the light on the hilltop, so that all
may see, and be attracted, by this beacon of light which is the place where priests are made.