CARDINAL SARAH GAVE A RESOUNDING CALL TO PRAYER AND WITNESS TO THE FAITH IN FRANCE THIS PAST SATURDAY

Winchester, VA – A listener shared this with the Crusade News Desk… Info Catolica is reporting that Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrated Mass in the Vendee region of France, in honor of the 700^th anniversary of the founding of the dioceses of Lucon and Maillezais. The Cardinal himself credits missionaries from Lucon for his vocation and training. The Vendee is known as the region whose peasants, during the French Revolution, revolted against the Revolutionary government’s oppression of the Catholic Church. Nearly 200,000 Vendeans perished in the revolt. In his homily, Cardinal Sarah sought to again rouse the Catholics of the Vendee in defense of their faith. Here are some excerpts of his homily:

Faced with the dictatorship of relativism, in the face of the terrorism of thought that, once again, wants to wrest God from the hearts of children, we need to rediscover the freshness of spirit, the joyful and ardent simplicity of these saints and martyrs. When the Revolution wanted to deprive the Vendeans of their priests, a whole town revolted. In front of the guns, these poor men only had their canes! In front of the rifles, they only had their sickles! Faced with the hatred of the infernal columns, they presented only their rosary, their prayer and the Sacred Heart embroidered on their chest!

But God was there. His power was revealed in weakness! History-the true story-knows that the Vandean peasants triumphed in the end. With their sacrifice they prevented the lie of ideology from becoming a teacher. Thanks to the Vendeans, the Revolution has had to remove the mask and reveal its face of hatred towards God and to the faith. Thanks to the Vendeans, the priests did not become servile slaves of a totalitarian state and could be the free servants of Christ and of the Church. Like them, we must abandon our fields and crops, leave their furrows, to fight not for human interests, but for God!

Who will rise today for God? Who will confront the modern persecutors of the church? Who will have the courage to rise with no other weapons than the rosary and the Sacred Heart,to face the columns of death of our time that are relativism, denial and contempt of God? Who will tell this world that the only freedom worth dying for is freedom to believe? The souls of these martyrs surround us in this place. What do they tell us? What do they want to convey to us? To start your courage. When it comes to God there is no other commitment… And this must begin with our personal life, prayer and worship. It is time, my brethren, to rebel against the practical atheism that suffocates our lives. Let us pray in family, let us put God first! A family that prays is a family that lives! A Christian who does not pray, who does not know how to leave room for God through silence and adoration, ends up dying!

Even today, perhaps more than ever, the ideologues of the revolution seek to destroy the natural place of self-giving, joyful generosity and love.I’m talking about the family. The ideology of gender, the contempt of fertility and fidelity are the new slogans of this revolution. Families today are like other Vendées to be exterminated. Their disappearance is planned methodically, as was done in the Vendée. These new revolutionaries are worried about the generosity of large families. They tease Christian families because they embody everything they hate. They are willing to launch new “infernal columns” on Africa to pressure families and impose sterilization, abortion and contraception. Africa will resist as the Vendee did! Everywhere families should be like the spearhead of this revolt against the new dictatorship of selfishness.

Henceforth, in the heart of every family, every Christian, every man of good will, an inner Vendée must be liberated. Every Christian is spiritually a Vandean! Do not let the generous and gratuitous gift drown in us. Let us know, like the martyrs of the Vendée, how to extract this gift from its source: the Heart of Jesus. Let us pray that a powerful and joyful inner Vendée will rise in the Church and in the world!

Amen.