New Years Day message from Fr. Boulet

A New Year’s Day Check up

Dear faithful,

As we are heading to a New Year, we ought to express our thanksgiving for the many graces received during the past year in our parishes of Etobicoke, Markham, Orillia, and St. Catharines, as well as in our mission of Sudbury. Graces are supernatural gifts of an invisible nature, but some of them have visible effects.  

Let me review the main events of the year 2022, which ended the painful restrictions of the pandemic era.

Special mention to the eleven couples who received the sacrament of Matrimony; and the ninety-one souls who received the Sacrament of Confirmation, on the occasion of the visit of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais.  We had also the beautiful Mass and procession of Corpus Christi, which gathered a record number of 650 faithful in the majestic Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Markham.

Then, the move of the Church of the Canadian Martyrs from Orillia to Warminster, which was complete just on time for Christmas.But, as we thank God for these many blessings, we ought at the same time to renew our contrition for the sins committed during the past year and try our best to be better Catholics in the New Year.  Now, let me go further on the occasion of this New Year’s Day check-up, and invite you to review some of the positive and negative points that are part of our life as Christians and Traditional Catholics.

At first, let me cover some of the good points of our way of life as Traditional Catholics.  Thanks to the infinite mercy of God and His all-powerful grace, we carry a treasure in our hands, the treasure of the Catholic Faith, that we received from the priests, our parents and all those who dedicated themselves to the faithful transmission of the Faith in these troubled times.  Our gratitude is going first to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X, who laboured throughout his life to transmit what he had received, and the motto "Tradidi quod et Accepi" was inscribed on his tomb. We have the true Mass and the true Sacraments.  We have children who know and love the faith, and who are respectful of the authority of their parents.

Because of the persecution against Tradition, we have been banned from the Mainstream Church, but, thanks to this seclusion, we have been preserved from the corruption of faith and morals rampaging in the Modern Church.  But there are some dangers arising from that situation of seclusion, especially because of its long-lasting character.  In the early days of the battle, we were full of zeal for the defense of the Faith and of Tradition.  But, after a while, there is a lassitude or fatigue from the present-day situation of the Church: when is it going to come to an end? Will it come to an end?  Then we would be tempted to give up the fight one way or the other.

But later on, there is another temptation that may be even more dangerous, it would be to consider that the situation of the Crisis of the Church as something perfectly normal, as most of us grew up with that, and we are used to that situation.  The younger generation is more at risk with that because they do not remember the way that the Church was before the crisis.  Because of that, we may be tempted to feel a bit too comfortable with our present-day seclusion from the Mainstream Church and thus abandon the idea of being in perfect union with the Pope and the Bishops.  

The same thing happened to the Hebrew people at the time of the Babylon exile.  The ancients among the people were standing on the shore of the rivers of Babylon, weeping and crying over the lost city of Jerusalem, and reminding the young people that they were not allowed to sing the canticle of joy, the Alleluia, while they were still in this land of exile, away from Jerusalem.  

Like the Israelites, we are now somehow in exile: up to a point, we had to run for safety away from the official structure of the Church because it was being bombarded by modernism.  As long as the bombing over the Mainstream Church is still going on, we have to keep a distance for safety purposes, but when the bombing will be over, there may be still some smoke and dust.  But then, we will have to be generous to offer our help to the Pope and the Bishops, to repair the damage done to the Church by fifty years of modernism, and contribute to the restoration of all things in Christ, according to the motto of our Patron Saint, Pope St. Pius X.

When it will be? Only God knows.  But there is something that we are absolutely sure of: it will happen, sooner or later.  May this New Year bring us closer to that happy day, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

With all my best wishes for a Happy and Holy New Year!

Father Dominique Boulet