Everything Starts Afresh in Jesus Christ, an Homily by Cardinal Lacroix

Homily by Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix
Archibishop of Quebec, Primate of Canada

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Dear brothers and sisters,

Here—today—we are not getting away from the reality of our world. We bear it. And we lay it down in Mary’s Heart, who is worshiped here in Montligeon – Our Lady Liberator. Not the one who suppresses the reality, but the one who gives birth to an entirely new reality.

The Book of Qohelet which we have just heard is one of the most lucid texts in the entire Bible. It is not pessimistic. It is true.

Things are fleeting, friable, vanishing, slipping through our fingers.
Human powers which thought of themselves as strong—turn out to be dust. You may have heard the story of that fiery preacher who gets to his pulpit and has these words: “My dear brothers, you will all die one day–and so will I…perhaps.” No, there is no ‘perhaps’. We are all called to experience this passage when we tilt into eternal life.

Such realism is not defeatist. It is the very foundation of Christian liberation. We cannot be liberated from what we refuse to face. Liberation begins exactly when the illusion of saving oneself falls away.

The Virgin Mary never escapes reality. She ENGENDERS what God wants to do in reality. In Psalm 99 we can read twice: “He made us and we are His”.

One primary step to liberation consists in letting go of the illusion of self-creation. There is no such thing as life produced by itself. Human freedom cannot be self-sufficient. Christian liberation starts when we say: “I do not need to be my own savior.”

Exactly then and there does humanity recovers its centre, a strong centre. Not based on performance but on relationship, by meeting a God who is good and merciful.

Saint Paul powerfully reiterated it to us: the Holy Spirit does not create individuals standing side by side. He creates a Body.

Every person here—every story—every wound—every sin—every grace received—all of this is taken up, gathered, integrated by the Spirit into a single living being : the Body of Christ.

Christian liberation is never a ‘technical’ or a ‘mental’ process. It occurs as part of the Church community. You cannot save yourself on your own. No one is a fragment. No one is in excess. No one is lost for ever.

The Gospel of the Cana Wedding—is the revelation that opens to hope for us.

Where our human nature meets its limits, where “there is no more wine”—

Where human solutions are no longer available—Mary then says the most liberating sentence in the whole Gospel: “Do whatever he (Jesus) tells you.”

Marie sees what is missing and she says it. She gives a name to what is real, without disguising or embellishing it.

At this point—Mary opens a space. At this point—she creates the space allowing Jesus to act. What Jesus then does is no fixing. He transfigures. He turns water into wine. He turns a need to superabundance. He takes us from “nothing” to “better than the initial situation”. That is Christian liberation.

Here at Montligeon—through the intercession of Our Lady Liberator—we come to lay down our powerlessness. Our deaths already initiated. Our broken relationships. Our stubborn sins. Our dead-ends – economic, emotional, moral. Not to get them magically erased. But to let Christ transform them.

Mary is not a goddess who acts as a proxy. She is the one who opens up the inner space—so that God can act, in order to let God entirely free to act as He wishes.

Brothers and sisters—here is what we are asking today: “Mary, release in us the ability to listen to Jesus.” True Christian liberation does not release from the outside. True Christian liberation—is being made capable of obeying Love.

So—here—in this shrine of Notre-Dame de Montligeon—in this solemnity—may the Holy Spirit reconstitute the Body of Christ in us. May he transform our poor waters into wedding wine. May he make us—together—a people who hits the journey of hope, the pilgrimage of our lives, guided by Jesus, in communion with the Body of Christ.

Brothers and sisters—here at Montligeon—before Our Lady Liberator—we come with our futilities, our emptiness, our fatigue, our failures, our grief, our addictions, our guilt, our concrete impossibilities, our sins–we come with our reality. We don’t come here to escape our reality, but to entrust it to the Lord.

With Mary we come here to say: “There is no more…peace in my heart, no more hope in the face of the trials I’m going through, no more harmony in my marriage, in my family, no more joy in life, no more freedom. And we come to ask her to obtain for us the ability to say:
“Jesus, speak. Speak. And we’ll do what you will say.”

True Christian liberation stems from Christ and from the Church community. Mary does not replace Christ. She opens the space for his Word to become effective in us. Liberation is not primarily our work, it is God’s work. Let us surrender in trust to the maternal guidance of the Virgin Mary, our Liberator. She knows where she is leading us—or, rather, she knows the One who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. He alone can lead us to Life in abundance, to eternal Life.

Brothers and sisters, may the Word of God be the light that illuminates our path of life, our pilgrimage. It is alive and effective. That’s why we listen to it and welcome it.

Pope Francis, of late memory, once said: “The Word of God is the love letter written to us by the One who knows us like no one else. By reading it, we hear his voice again, we contemplate his face, we receive his Spirit.[1]. “

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[1] Pope Francis, Homily, Sunday of the Word, January 24, 2021.