The Mystery of Jesus Christ by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

"Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John 1:17).

The mystery of the God-Man is great, clearly; but it is absolutely necessary to meditate on it, and to know the reality, the truth, because this is our faith, our whole life and the life of the world. Nothing is done in the world that does not relate to Our Lord; it is either for Him or against Him, with Him or without Him. Our Lord is the key to the solution of all the problems. There are none here below that are indifferent to Our Lord. Men try in vain to work without reference to Our Lord, but it is impossible because Our Lord is everywhere. He is in everything because He created everything; therefore everything is in His hands. Everything belongs to Him, nothing is outside of Him. Men seek to evade Him, but they cannot because everything is His.

To try to construct human history outside of Our Lord Jesus Christ is an absurdity. Our Lord is the centre of history. Everything was made by Him and for Him and the only happiness of men and mankind is to be united to Our Lord, to live for God by Jesus Christ, because He is God. He has given us the means; this is why He came. St. John says as much in his first epistle, which is also very beautiful: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life" (1 John 1:1). St. John cannot distract his mind from the moments when he touched Our Lord, when he rested his head upon His breast during the Last Supper. The scene is anchored in his mind and he will never forget these instants; he lived to the end of his days in thinking of the extraordinary happiness he had known in touching the Word of God: "For the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father and hath appeared to us".

Undoubtedly, it was only little by little that the Apostles came to recognise the Divinity of Our Lord. Even at the Ascension, they were still asking when His temporal reign would begin. What notion did they have of this Person who was before them? In fact, they did not fully understand the mystery of Our Lord until after Pentecost, after the pouring forth of the Holy Ghost upon them. They drew from it the consequences which appear in their writings. This is what is admirable.

The affirmations of the Apostles and the Evangelists are quite ­precise: Those who affirm the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ are of God. Those who deny it are not. The consequences are enormous. Think of the multitudes of people, of all humanity which lives today as the men who lived before. It is in relation to Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Divinity that the fate of all these men is decided, and so their eternity!