Archbishop Viganò: Homily on Holy Thursday

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Archbishop Viganò: Priests must hold fast to tradition as the Church goes through this agony
Let us implore the Blessed Virgin, that we may truly be friends of Christ, doing as He commands. By staying awake and praying during the agony of His Church.



Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on Holy Thursday, 2025
exsurgedomine.it

Apr 17, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — The following was written and published in French by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on Holy Thursday. The following is an unofficial English translation.

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Homily of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday

On Thursday of Holy Week, the Church honors with the utmost solemnity some of the most important mysteries of our religion. In ancient times, this blessed day began with the reconciliation of public sinners who had atoned for their sins during Lent. Vivo ego, dicit Dominus: nolo mortem peccatoris, sed ut magis convertatur, et vivat.

But for the sinner not to die, but rather to be converted and live, it is indispensable that the Sacrifice of the New and Eternal Covenant, the Holy Mass, be perpetuated in an unbloody manner; and for this eternal Sacrifice to be celebrated, it requires the Priesthood, and thus the Episcopate to transmit it in the line of Apostolic Succession; and with the Priesthood, the Oils and Chrism of the anointing of Priests and Kings, Prophets and Martyrs. In short, it is necessary that the Messiah – the Χριστός, the Lord’s Anointed – gloriously risen and ascended to Heaven after suffering and dying on the Cross, perpetuate His presence in Holy Church, His Mystical Body, until the day of His return at the end of time.

On this blessed day, we remember the Last Supper, the institution of the priesthood, the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament.

The evening liturgy takes us back to the Upper Room, where the Apostles received His spiritual testament from the Lord, before the agony of Gethsemane and the arrest by the Sanhedrin. And while the days before and after Maundy Thursday offer us the Gospels of the Passion and the outward signs of mourning, today the Church dresses in white, intones the Gloria and concentrates on contemplating these last hours that the Redeemer spends with His disciples.

Never as in this crucial phase in the history of the Church and of humanity can we feel and share the apprehension of the Apostles, their disorientation at seeing their feet washed by the Master, their awareness of an imminent destiny, the sleep that seized them during the Agony in the Garden of Olives, the fear that led them to flee, Peter’s triple denial in the Praetorium, the despair that led Judas to take his own life, the silent presence of John and the holy women on the ascent to Calvary and at the foot of the Cross.

In the space of a few hours, the ritual banquet of the Jewish Passover, anticipating the only Mass celebrated before the Sacrifice on Golgotha, gives way to the apparent triumph of the executioners, the arrest of the Lord, a trial conducted with fraud and false witnesses, His condemnation to death on the infamous scaffold reserved for slaves, the outrages of the crowd stirred up by the scribes and priests.

We find all this in the modest signs of the Liturgy, which ends in sadness, with the rite of the stripping of the altars accompanied by the monotonous singing of Psalm 21, and the replacement of the sound of the bells by the austere noise of the rattle.

We could say that the Savior’s earthly life – and by extension the whole of Salvation history – is locked up in this day when the Lord allows the Twelve, and us with them, to enjoy a brief flash of solemn consolation and hope before the terrible hours of Good Friday.

On the day when the Levites renew their priestly promises and the bond of unity with the Bishop, we must ask ourselves to what model we wish to conform our Priesthood.

There are indeed many ways of understanding and living the priestly ministry, but only one conforms to the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you (Jn 15:16), said the Divine Master.

And if He has chosen us, if He has chosen you, it is so that you may be as He wants you to be, and so that you may go and bear fruit and that your fruit may remain (ibid.). That you may go, not that you may remain. That you may grow in holiness, not wallow in mediocrity, or worse, sink into sin. That you may bear fruit. You are not trade unionists, propagandists, leaders of a humanitarian organization or members of a philanthropic circle.

You are not called to reassure souls, nor to please them, but to awaken them from their torpor, to warn them, to prod them opportune, importunate. You are no longer of the world, but in the world: the black robe you wear is a sign of separation and renunciation, an example for the good and a warning for sinners. You are not presidents of an assembly, but ministers of Christ, dispensers of the Mysteries of God (1Co 4, 1). You are not actors on a stage, nor lecturers on a podium: you are priests, in whose gestures and words those who listen to you must see and hear Our Lord, the High Priest, stretching out his arms on the Cross to offer himself to the Father. The Church, the Priesthood, the Mass, the Sacraments, the Liturgy and the Gospel are not your property, nor a draft that God leaves you free to alter, distort or “reread” as you please.

So honor Holy Tradition, not as the cold, extinguished ashes of a past now buried, but as a living flame that should set everything ablaze with supernatural Charity, starting with yourselves. For if you are not the salt of the earth and the leaven of the mass, you will end up being thrown to the ground and trampled underfoot (Mt 5:13) by those you think you are pleasing.

Make the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the main reason for your life and your days, for on it depends the salvation of the Church, the world and your own. Complete in your body what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings, as the Apostle says (Col 1:24), for the good of His Body, which is the Church. Resistite fortes in fide (1 Pet 5:9), as St. Peter exhorts us. Beware lest your hearts be deceived and you turn aside, serving foreign gods or bowing down to them (Dt 11:16). Heed the advice of the Commonitorium of Saint-Vincent de Lérins: In ipsa item Catholica Ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.

This is the most certain rule of Faith, before an apostate Hierarchy that eclipses the true Church of Christ, [...]. Learn to obey God rather than men, remembering that the destiny of the priest or bishop is indissolubly linked to that of his Lord:

If the world hates you, know that it hated me first.

If you belonged to the world, the world would love what belongs to it. But because you are not of the world, and I chose you out of the world, the world hates you because of this. Remember what I said to you: The servant is not greater than the master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my word, they will also keep yours. But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know him who sent me (Jn 15:18-21).

The Church is preparing to face the passio Ecclesiae, the Mystical Body of Christ, which, like its Head, must not only face torment in the individual members of the Martyrs, as has happened throughout history, but also in the whole body, brought before a new Sanhedrin that hates the Church as it hates Christ. And in these blessed hours, we are given the opportunity to celebrate the Priesthood that has been conferred upon us: some in the fullness of the Episcopate, others in participation in the various degrees of the Order you have received. Gathered around the Calvary of the altar, let us repeat the words and gestures that the Lord taught the Apostles, faithful to the mandate received: Hæc quotiescumque feceritis, in mei memoriam facietis (1Co 11, 25). Each of us can say with Saint Augustine: Admiramini, gaudete, Christus facti sumus (Tract. XXI). We have become Christ: the faithful, in Baptism; you, Sacred Ministers, in the ordained ministerial Priesthood; we, Bishops, in the fullness of the Priesthood and in the Apostolic Succession.

We repeat what we have been taught and ordered to do. Let us pass on intact – with God’s help and the assistance of the Holy Spirit – what we have received: Tradidi quod et accepi (1 Cor 1:3). For we have nothing of ourselves to pass on, except all that Christ has given us: Dominus pars hereditatis meæ et calicis mei: tu es qui restitues hereditatem meam mihi (Ps 15:5), the Lord is my inheritance and my cup: it is You who brings me back into possession of the inheritance I had so abruptly lost. And if we are children, we are also heirs: heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, if we truly share in his sufferings so as to share in his glory (Rom 8:17). Our being heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ thus involves assimilating the royal priesthood of Our Lord: a priesthood that consists in offering the divine Victim in the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass; but also in offering ourselves, mystically, as victims in union with the Immaculate Lamb; and in being, like Christ, the cornerstone, the mystical altar on which the rite is celebrated. Only in this way, dear brothers, can we be worthy of hearing the Master repeat the consoling words he spoke to the Apostles in the Upper Room:

This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you may go and bear fruit, that your fruit may abide, and that the Father may grant you whatever you ask of him in my name (Jn 15:12-16).

Let us implore the Blessed Virgin, the Regina Crucis, Mother of the High Priest, Mother of the Divine Victim, Tabernacle of the Most High, that we may truly be friends of Christ, doing as He commands. By staying awake and praying during the agony of His Church; by remaining faithful to Him when new Judases hand Him over to the Sanhedrin; by not fleeing in fear, by not denying Him as Peter did. By loving one another as He loved us: Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor; by knowing how to give life as He gave it for us. By sharing in His sufferings, so as to share in His glory. And may it be so.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

17 April 2025

Feria V in Cœna Domini