SSPX Document – Letter of Abp. Lefebvre

Dearest faithful,

According to an ancient and salutary tradition in the Church, on the occasion of Lent, I address to you these few words in order to encourage you to enter with all your soul into this time of penitence, with the dispositions willed by the Church and to accomplish the purpose for which the Church prescribes it.

If I look in the books of the beginning of the century for the ends for which the Church prescribed this time of penance, they indicate three of them:

1.  First to repress the concupiscence of the flesh

2.  Then to facilitate the elevation of our souls toward divine realities

3.  Finally, to make satisfaction for our sins.

Is this not the example Our Lord shows us in the course of His life here below? Pray and do penance. But having neither concupiscence nor sin, He did penance and made satisfaction for our sins, thus showing us that our penance can be beneficial not only for us, but for our fellow man.

Pray and do penance. Doing penance in order to pray better, in order to draw closer to God. This is what all the saints have done, and what the Virgin Mary reminds us of in all her messages.

Will we dare to say this necessity is less great in our age than in previous ages? We can and must, on the contrary, affirm that never more than today have prayer and penance been necessary, because everything has been done to diminish and despise these two fundamental elements of Christian life.

Have we ever sought, as today, to satisfy without any limit all the disordered instincts of the flesh, even going as far as murdering millions of innocents? We would likewise believe that society has no other reason for existing other than to give the maximum “standard” of living to all men, in order to protect them from any deprivation of material goods.

In this way the aim of society would be opposed to what the Church prescribes. And we understand that in these times, when men of the Church align themselves with the spirit of the world, we witness the disappearance of prayer and penance, and particularly for the reparation of sins and of obtaining forgiveness for faults. Who today likes to repeat the moving psalm of Miserere and to repeat with the Psalmist Peccatum meum contra me est semper: “My sin is always before me”? And how can a Christian soul not move away from the thought of sin if the image of the crucifix is always before his eyes?

The bishops asked the Council for a reduction of fasting and abstinence that these prescriptions have practically disappeared. We must recognize that this disappearance is a consequence of the ecumenical and Protestant spirit which denies the necessity of our participation for the application of the merits of Our Lord to each of us, for the remission of our sins, and the restoration of our divine filiation.

While in the past the commandments of the Church expected:

-obligatory fasting for all the days of Lent except Sundays, for Ember days, and several vigils;

-abstinence on all the Fridays of the year, the Saturdays of Lent, and in many dioceses, all Saturdays of the year.

What remains of these prescriptions today? 

-fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday;

-abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Fridays of Lent.

We can ask ourselves: why such a reduction?

Who are those required to fast?

-Adults aged 21 to 60 years old. [In Canada, the minimum age is 18. - Ed.]

Who must observe abstinence?

-All the faithful starting from the age of 7 are required to abstain. [The current law holds that this rule applies the day after a Catholic's 14th birthday. - Ed.]

What is fasting? This is only to have one meal per day, to which it is permitted to add two collations, one in the morning and one in the evening, not exceeding two ounces, or 60 grams of solid food. [The Archbishop refers here to the European order of meals; in Canada, dinner is the evening meal and the food measurements are not applied. - Ed.]

What is abstinence? It is abstaining from meat.

The faithful who truly have the spirit of faith and who profoundly understand the Church’s motives, which were indicated above, will have at heart not only to fulfill these light prescriptions of today, but entering into the spirit of Our Lord and the Virgin Mary, they will bear the sins that they have committed and those of their fellow man, their family, their friends, their fellow citizens.

This is why they will add to these prescriptions either fasting on all Fridays of Lent, or abstaining from alcohol or wine, or they will abstain from television. They strive to pray more, to assist at holy Mass more often, to recite the Rosary, and not to miss evening prayer with the family (…)

SOURCE: fsspx.news, article published on Feb 14, 2024