Preface  by Archbishop Lefebvre The reception of the tonsure, the door to the seven steps to the Sacred Priesthood This text is taken from the special issue on Traditional Communities of  Courrier St. Joseph, published in 1983  and which is updated in the following pages. The immense disaster at the very center of the Church - intra Ecclesiam - which we are witnessing again calls to mind the words of the Psalmist: “If God builds not the house; they labor in vain those who build it” (Ps. 126).  Actually, we see a will to secularize, to laicize everything: so that all contemplative and religious are to be useless supernumeraries; those teaching and caring for the sick will be laymen or laywomen, there will be no need for brothers or sisters doing it.   Priests are to be considered as ordinary men; they must be laicized; consequently, vice versa, laymen take over their priestly function.  Thus, why vocations, one might ask, what is the use?  Yet nevertheless, when to God is given His rightful place, to Our Lord, His Reign, vocations will surge on all sides; in order to sing God’s praise everywhere, to bring souls to Our Lord and to His redemptive Sacrifice. All vocations are in sense missionary vocations.  Our Lord showed this by example at Nazareth, in His public life then, and on the Cross; let those who are thirsting for God and Charity choose.  Let them go over these pages that follow let them imitate Our Lord and the Virgin Mary in choosing a family that will aid them in realizing the divine call. “Messis quidem multa, operarii autem pauci.  Rogate ergo Dominum messis ut mittat operarios suos - The harvest is great but the workers few.  Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth His workers.” What is necessary then is to pray fervently. For it is Our Lord Who chooses for Himself His apostles and Who gives the grace of a vocation.  The following pages prove that the Church cannot perish and that the Holy ghost still animates it today as He has done so in ages past thanks to the unceasing prayer of the Mother of Jesus, since the day of Pentecost. March 7, 1983 + Marcel Lefebvre A newly ordained priest gives his first blessing to his father. To Contents To Vocations