Pastoral Lenten Letter

Archbishop emeritus of Tulle, Founder of the Society of St. Pius X


Ecône, 25th January 1987,   Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul



It was in the past an excellent custom that the Diocesan Bishop send a letter to all his faithful for the forthcoming Lent.

Indeed, as the Epistle of the First Sunday of Lent says: "Brothers, we do exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain... behold now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation." (11 Cor. VI 1 sqq).

My very dear faithful, read again and again the notes in your old missals which explain the time of Lent. They will remind you of the origin and signification of these forty days of prayer and fasting, which prepare us for Holy Week, for the great mystery of the Cross in order to arrive at the Resurrection.

The Church wants to lead us into the practice of a more perfect Christian life. She gives us the example of Christ and by true fasting and penance unites us to His sufferings in order to give us a share in His redemption.

All along these forty holy days, She reminds us that we are sinners, tempted by "the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life" (1 Jn II 16), and She puts on our lips these moving supplications: "Lord, repay us not according to our sins, chastise us not according to our iniquities... Let Thy Mercies speedily prevent us"! (Tract of Ash Wednesday).


Blessed are you, dear faithful, who have kept the spirit of Faith, and who prepare yourselves for this period of prayer and penance with devotion, convinced that you will sanctify yourselves by a more frequent assistance at Holy Mass, by frequent Communion, by the sacrament of Penance, by fasting and abstinence, by alms, by a more fervent practice of the Christian virtues of humility, meekness, patience, gentleness, mercy; and if possible by a holy retreat, which will help you to detach yourself more and more from sin and from all attachment to this world, to find the intimacy of the love of Jesus and Mary and thus to transform your life.



But in order to believe in this revivifying of grace in your souls one must have not only faith but the spirit of faith, i.e. a living faith animated by the Holy Ghost who leads our souls in the ways of perfection, in a greater and greater charity towards God and our neighbor.



Unfortunately, we notice that the spirit of Faith, believing in and living of the baptismal grace, has disappeared even in the highest levels of the hierarchy. The principles that lead and direct the spirit of the Pope and of the Bishops are no longer. the true principles of faith but the false principles of human reason, as those who are at the origin of the Protestant liberalism, of modernism, of Americanism, of Sillonism, principles which have all been condemned by the Council of Trent and by all the Popes until Pope Pius XII included.



The last Popes have departed from the heritage of twenty centuries of the Church to make themselves the heirs of the Liberals and Modernists. All what they say or do is but the echo of what was said and done by those who for the last four centuries have been imbued with these false principles. (the meeting of) Assisi is the clearest fruit of this liberal Catholicism condemned by all the Popes before Vatican II.

Thus we find ourselves in front of an ecclesiastical world fully incoherent, illogical, searching for compromises between truth and error, between good and evil, between light and darkness, God and Belial.

This shaking of faith truly seems to prepare for the coming of the Antichrist according to the predictions of St. Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians and the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church.

When Our Lord describes the end of times and after Him the Apostles in their letters, they speak to those who shall remain faithful saying: vigilate, vigilate - watch and be ready! "Thus Brothers, St. Paul says, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned."(II Thess II 14)

"But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, St. Peter says in his 2nd Epistle, in which the heavens shall pass with great violence... and the earth shall be burnt up (...) Wherefore, dearly beloved, waiting for these things, be diligent that you may be found before Him unspotted and blameless in peace." (II Pet III 10-14).

May our prayers and fasts be for us a source of sanctification and a supplication for the return of the shepherds to the truth of the Traditional Magisterium of the Church, for the honor our Lord, for His universal reign and for the reign of Mary, His Holy Mother. Amen



+ Marcel Lefebvre