The adventure of the pilgrimage has gone through the years, the generations have followed one another since 1983. The older generation has experienced persecution and then liturgical peace under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The young pilgrims discover with amazement the icy harshness of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, the responses of the Congregation for Divine Worship, with its panoply of restrictions, punishments, bureaucratic clarifications, threats.
We are ordinary Catholics who want to practice the extraordinary form.
It is enough to look at you, dear pilgrims:
It is obvious: you are nostalgic for a bygone era!
It's obvious: you want to live on the margins of the Church in ghettos!
Let's be serious, half of you are under 20 years old. Your grandparents did not even know the period before Vatican II.
One day, our authorities will have to look at the reality, the simple one that is obvious.
We are ordinary Catholics who want to practice the extraordinary form.
Jean de Tauriers
Pilgrims of Christianity, you come to make a spiritual retreat of conversion during these 3 days of Pentecost. It is about your eternal salvation and nothing in your life is more important. You come to pray and you want to pray in the Tridentine liturgy, in the traditional form, hence your presence at this pilgrimage. You also come to listen to and meet the priests, religious and seminarians in charge of spiritual guidance. You have come to encounter the grace of God during these three days and to "shout the Gospel" as Saint Charles de Foucauld asked.
Dear pilgrims, you are not responsible for the current crisis in the Church, for the disappearance of religious practice, for the empty seminaries, for the inconsistent catechisms, for the prevailing relativism.
Is it so complicated to understand it?
The recent restrictions that have prevented some diocesan clerics from coming to the pilgrimage are distressing and deeply sadden us. We are in prayerful union with all those banned from pilgrimages in Christendom.
Dear pilgrims, you are not responsible for the current crisis in the Church, for the disappearance of religious practice, for the empty seminaries, for the inconsistent catechisms, for the prevailing relativism.
You are not responsible for the compromises with Catholic morality, for the disaster of teaching. You are not responsible for the prohibition of public masses, ordinations, sacraments and even the prohibition of cassocks, be it for Covid or Traditionis Custodes.
You have inherited this society without God. You must raise your children and transmit the faith for their salvation, which involves your own.
How can you be reproached for choosing traditional parishes, priests, catechisms and schools in the present situation?
We are not subtle theologians, great exegetes of the hidden intentions of Vatican II, nor are we sophisticated liturgists. We are simple Catholic families wanting to remain Catholic in a world that is no longer Catholic.
We beg the Holy Father to look at the daily life of Catholics.
We are not subtle theologians, great exegetes of the hidden intentions of Vatican II, nor are we sophisticated liturgists. We are simple Catholic families wanting to remain Catholic in a world that is no longer Catholic.
All the pilgrims, walkers and guardian angels, will pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, our bishops and the Church so that we are not deprived of the sacraments and that our priests can exercise their apostolates in peace.
On this beautiful feast of Pentecost, I know that you are not lacking in that hope which, as Saint Paul tells us, "does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
We have chosen this year, so important for us, to celebrate the Sacred Heart, hope and salvation of the nations. The Sacred Heart is a devotion for our time, it is the heart of God that bends over man, a descent of God taken with compassion for humanity.
In 2023, next year, we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the law declaring the construction of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre to be of public utility, a shrine of Eucharistic adoration and divine mercy. We will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the completion of its construction in 1923.
Not everything was better before, but we love that time when the Republic encouraged the construction of churches and put God above human laws.
Michael Matt speaks with Jean de Tauriers after the 2022 Chartres Pilgrimage
We understand better how right the words of Pope John Paul II were when he told us that "a democracy without values is easily transformed into a declared or underhand totalitarianism".
As the Holy Father has just consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, why don't the bishops of France consecrate their dioceses to the Sacred Heart next year on the feast of the Assumption?
Nothing seems more urgent.
I would like to conclude by speaking to you about your association, Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, which organizes the Chartres pilgrimage.
We need first of all your prayers but also arms, brains and financial support.
Dear pilgrims, I am addressing you first. Please remember to thank the wonderful young people (and the not so young as well) of the different support services that make the pilgrimage possible.
You will not be alone, 20,000 pilgrims will pray with you.
Dear pilgrims from the Support Services and other NDC services, please remember to thank the pilgrims for their prayers. They are your successors of tomorrow, be good recruiting sergeants!
Support Our Lady of Christendom. Follow our activities throughout the year: retreats, trainings, recollections, universities.
Be present on October 8 at the Thanksgiving Mass at St. Roch Church in Paris for our 40th anniversary.
Get involved as an evangelizer in the Emmaus chapter. Go with them to the peripheries! You will not be alone, 20,000 pilgrims will pray with you. With St. Charles de Foucauld this afternoon, let us pray that they will be able to touch hearts.
Among the many intentions this afternoon, I ask you to pray for a mother, a great friend of the pilgrimage who is very ill, for Gaultier.
Do not forget our friends, very close to NDC, who have recently been called back to God: Madame Pozzetto, Major Beth, Eric Angier de Lohéac, Christine Rudent, Dominique Neveu, Eric Van Rie, Jean-Pierre Hachard, Didier Raynal, Agnès Artur, Hervé and Herrade Pinoteau. Sorry for those I forgot.
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