Church is beautiful, lovable
How beautiful is the Church and worthy of being loved! The Church, sprung from an eternity of glory in God, to return to it and find a glory it did not have before, a glory it has acquired in Jesus Christ through death in obedience to charity.
It is beautiful and glorious like Mary and worthy of being loved like her. It is through her that we are saved. It is her obedience to charity that has opened the gates of salvation for us. It is obedience to Mary, an echo of that of Jesus Christ; it is the obedience of the entire Church that opens the gates of glory for us.
We must love the Church, always beautiful and glorious despite the disfigurements inflicted upon her by the malice or weakness of her children. We must love her with the same love that draws us to Jesus Christ, for she is His Body: we are undoubtedly moved by the sufferings of Jesus Christ; how could the Passion of the Church fail to move us? How could the Passion of the Church drive us away from her? On the contrary, we must love her all the more because she is suffering and disfigured, because she seems lost, because her eternal voice is no longer heard, because her reassuring splendor is no longer seen, because she seems to be sleeping, overtaken by death, delivered to the Prince of this world.
We must love and believe in the Church, learn to see her divine and unchanging face behind the sinners who compose her. Believe in the Church and make her live, proud and happy to be her children.
The Church is always beautiful in the eyes of those who love her. And it is not to love her to doubt her holiness or to despair of her victory!
Listen! It is silence! It is the night of the Church! Men have silenced her; she has lost the battle. But listen! There, in the depth of her suffering, at the heart of her death, in the core of her silence, she has joined the great night of the One whose Body she is, that night which prepares the hour when He will rise in His omnipotence to prove His victory. Listen to her heart beating within her silence. She says nothing, but she awaits her hour. Tomorrow, perhaps, if, like Mary, we make the Church live through our faith and our hope, yes, tomorrow, perhaps, the Church will rise, beautiful, majestic, transfigured, in all the splendor of her holiness and glory to carry us within her into the heart of God, alongside Mary, among the angels and the blessed, to weep forever the one and eternal sob of love and gratitude. […]
Yes, blessed night of the Church, where faith, to endure, must become truer, where love is purified of the attractions of sentimentality to become a more ardent prayer. […]
Blessed night, where she seems vanquished by the world and hatred, but where the divine Word remains alive in her to keep her beautiful and strong in her wounded and broken body. In her night, He prepares to live His resurrection in her.
When the Church reaches the threshold of her third day, He Himself will come to make her burst forth from the night to lead her into the light of a day that no night will ever interrupt again.
Abbé Michel Simoulin (+2025)
Note on the author: Abbé Michel Simoulin passed away at the age of 82 after several hospitalizations during Passion Sunday and Holy Week due to repeated falls. His health had been seriously weakened for the past two years and ultimately could not withstand the injuries. He received the last sacraments and offered his sufferings for the Society of Saint Pius X until the end. He had served 44 years as a priest.
Born into a large family that gave three religious vocations to the teaching Dominican Sisters of Fanjeaux, he initially pursued a military career as an officer before entering the seminary in 1976. He was ordained on September 20, 1980.
He began his priestly ministry in Paris, serving at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and the Saint Pius X University Institute, where he was rector from 1983 to 1988. Following the episcopal consecrations, he was appointed rector of the Ecône seminary, a role he held for eight years. In 1996, he became prior of Lyon, and from 1997 to 2004, he served as District Superior of Italy.
From 2004 to 2006, he was chaplain at the Dominican school in Romagne. In 2006, he joined the motherhouse of the teaching Dominican Sisters of Fanjeaux, where he served as chaplain to the school and novitiate until his death.
