| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 261 online users.
» 0 Member(s) | 259 Guest(s)
Bing, Google
|
| Latest Threads |
Pope Pius XI : Lux Verita...
Forum: Encyclicals
Last Post: Stone
11 hours ago
» Replies: 1
» Views: 3,717
|
Feast of the Maternity of...
Forum: Our Lady
Last Post: Stone
11 hours ago
» Replies: 2
» Views: 4,797
|
Where did those lies abou...
Forum: General Commentary
Last Post: Deus Vult
Yesterday, 01:56 PM
» Replies: 3
» Views: 7,209
|
Pope St. Pius X's prophec...
Forum: Catholic Prophecy
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:51 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 1,707
|
Holy Mass in Georgia [Atl...
Forum: October 2024
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:42 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 56
|
Holy Mass in New Hampshir...
Forum: October 2024
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:37 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 57
|
Thursday Night Holy Hour ...
Forum: Appeals for Prayer
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 06:50 AM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 479
|
St. Louis de Montfort: Af...
Forum: Our Lady
Last Post: Stone
10-09-2024, 11:52 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 2,607
|
Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Feas...
Forum: October 2024
Last Post: Stone
10-09-2024, 11:30 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 83
|
Please Pray for Bishop Ti...
Forum: Appeals for Prayer
Last Post: Stone
10-09-2024, 04:01 AM
» Replies: 4
» Views: 630
|
|
|
| St. Victorinus: On the Creation of the World |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2021, 10:52 AM - Forum: Fathers of the Church
- No Replies
|
 |
To me, as I meditate and consider in my mind concerning the creation of this world in which we are kept enclosed, even such is the rapidity of that creation; as is contained in the book of Moses, which he wrote about its creation, and which is called Genesis. God produced that entire mass for the adornment of His majesty in six days; on the seventh to which He consecrated it . . . with a blessing. For this reason, therefore, because in the septenary number of days both heavenly and earthly things are ordered, in place of the beginning I will consider of this seventh day after the principle of all matters pertaining to the number of seven; and as far as I shall be able, I will endeavour to portray the day of the divine power to that consummation.
In the beginning God made the light, and divided it in the exact measure of twelve hours by day and by night, for this reason, doubtless, that day might bring over the night as an occasion of rest for men's labours; that, again, day might overcome, and thus that labour might be refreshed with this alternate change of rest, and that repose again might be tempered by the exercise of day. On the fourth day He made two lights in the heaven, the greater and the lesser, that the one might rule over the day, the other over the night, Genesis 1:16-17 — the lights of the sun and moon and He placed the rest of the stars in heaven, that they might shine upon the earth, and by their positions distinguish the seasons, and years, and months, and days, and hours.
Now is manifested the reason of the truth why the fourth day is called the Tetras, why we fast even to the ninth hour, or even to the evening, or why there should be a passing over even to the next day. Therefore this world of ours is composed of four elements — fire, water, heaven, earth. These four elements, therefore, form the quaternion of times or seasons. The sun, also, and the moon constitute throughout the space of the year four seasons — of spring, summer, autumn, winter; and these seasons make a quaternion. And to proceed further still from that principle, lo, there are four living creatures before God's throne, four Gospels, four rivers flowing in paradise; Genesis 2:10 four generations of people from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ the Lord, the Son of God; and four living creatures, viz., a man, a calf, a lion, an eagle; and four rivers, the Pison, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The man Christ Jesus, the originator of these things whereof we have above spoken, was taken prisoner by wicked hands, by a quaternion of soldiers . Therefore on account of His captivity by a quaternion, on account of the majesty of His works — that the seasons also, wholesome to humanity, joyful for the harvests, tranquil for the tempests, may roll on — therefore we make the fourth day a station or a supernumerary fast.
On the fifth day the land and water brought forth their progenies. On the sixth day the things that were wanting were created; and thus God raised up man from the soil, as lord of all the things which He created upon the earth and the water. Yet He created angels and archangels before He created man, placing spiritual beings before earthly ones. For light was made before sky and the earth. This sixth day is called parasceve, that is to say, the preparation of the kingdom. For He perfected Adam, whom He made after His image and likeness. But for this reason He completed His works before He created angels and fashioned man, lest perchance they should falsely assert that they had been His helpers. On this day also, on account of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we make either a station to God, or a fast. On the seventh day He rested from all His works, and blessed it, and sanctified it. On the former day we are accustomed to fast rigorously, that on the Lord's day we may go forth to our bread with giving of thanks. And let the parasceve become a rigorous fast, lest we should appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews, which Christ Himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by His prophets that His soul hates; Isaiah 1:13-14 which Sabbath He in His body abolished, although, nevertheless, He had formerly Himself commanded Moses that circumcision should not pass over the eighth day, which day very frequently happens on the Sabbath, as we read written in the Gospel. John 7:22 Moses, foreseeing the hardness of that people, on the Sabbath raised up his hands, therefore, and thus figuratively fastened himself to a cross. Exodus 22:9, 12 And in the battle they were sought for by the foreigners on the Sabbath day, that they might be taken captive, and, as if by the very strictness of the law, might be fashioned to the avoidance of its teaching. 1 Maccabbees 2:31-41
And thus in the sixth Psalm for the eighth day, David asks the Lord that He would not rebuke him in His anger, nor judge him in His fury; for this is indeed the eighth day of that future judgment, which will pass beyond the order of the sevenfold arrangement. Jesus also, the son of Nave, the successor of Moses, himself broke the Sabbath day; for on the Sabbath day he commanded the children of Israel Joshua 6:4 to go round the walls of the city of Jericho with trumpets, and declare war against the aliens. Matthias also, prince of Judah, broke the Sabbath; for he slew the prefect of Antiochus the king of Syria on the Sabbath, and subdued the foreigners by pursuing them. And in Matthew we read, that it is written Isaiah also and the rest of his colleagues broke the Sabbath Matthew 12:5 — that that true and just Sabbath should be observed in the seventh millenary of years. Wherefore to those seven days the Lord attributed to each a thousand years; for thus went the warning: In Your eyes, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day. Therefore in the eyes of the Lord each thousand of years is ordained, for I find that the Lord's eyes are seven. Zechariah 4:10 Wherefore, as I have narrated, that true Sabbath will be in the seventh millenary of years, when Christ with His elect shall reign. Moreover, the seven heavens agree with those days; for thus we are warned: By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the powers of them by the spirit of His mouth. There are seven spirits. Their names are the spirits which abode on the Christ of God, as was intimated in Isaiah the prophet: And there rests upon Him the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of wisdom and of piety, and the spirit of God's fear has filled Him. Isaiah 11:2-3 Therefore the highest heaven is the heaven of wisdom; the second, of understanding; the third, of counsel; the fourth, of might; the fifth, of knowledge; the sixth, of piety; the seventh, of God's fear. From this, therefore, the thunders bellow, the lightnings are kindled, the fires are heaped together; fiery darts appear, stars gleam, the anxiety caused by the dreadful comet is aroused. Sometimes it happens that the sun and moon approach one another, and cause those more than frightful appearances, radiating with light in the field of their aspect. But the author of the whole creation is Jesus. His name is the Word; for thus His Father says: My heart has emitted a good word. John the evangelist thus says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made. Therefore, first, was made the creation; secondly, man, the lord of the human race, as says the apostle. 1 Corinthians 15:45-47 Therefore this Word, when it made light, is called Wisdom; when it made the sky, Understanding; when it made land and sea, Counsel; when it made sun and moon and other bright things, Power; when it calls forth land and sea, Knowledge; when it formed man, Piety; when it blesses and sanctifies man, it has the name of God's fear.
Behold the seven horns of the Lamb, Revelation 5:6 the seven eyes of God Zechariah 4:10 — the seven eyes are the seven spirits of the Lamb; Revelation 4:5 seven torches burning before the throne of God Revelation 4:5 seven golden candlesticks, Revelation 1:13 seven young sheep, Leviticus 23:18 the seven women in Isaiah, Isaiah 4:1 the seven churches in Paul, seven deacons, Acts 6:3 seven angels, seven trumpets, seven seals to the book, seven periods of seven days with which Pentecost is completed, the seven weeks in Daniel, also the forty-three weeks in Daniel; with Noah, seven of all clean things in the ark; seven revenges of Cain, Genesis 4:15 seven years for a debt to be acquitted, Deuteronomy 15:1 the lamp with seven orifices, Zechariah 4:2 seven pillars of wisdom in the house of Solomon. Proverbs 11:1
Now, therefore, you may see that it is being told you of the unerring glory of God in providence; yet, as far as my small capacity shall be able, I will endeavour to set it forth. That He might re-create that Adam by means of the week, and bring aid to His entire creation, was accomplished by the nativity of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Who, then, that is taught in the law of God, who that is filled with the Holy Spirit, does not see in his heart, that on the same day on which the dragon seduced Eve, the angel Gabriel brought the glad tidings to the Virgin Mary; that on the same day the Holy Spirit overflowed the Virgin Mary, on which He made light; that on that day He was incarnate in flesh, in which He made the land and water; that on the same day He was put to the breast, on which He made the stars; that on the same day He was circumcised, on which the land and water brought forth their offspring; that on the same day He was incarnated, on which He formed man out of the ground; that on the same day Christ was born, on which He formed man; that on that day He suffered, on which Adam fell; that on the same day He rose again from the dead, on which He created light? He, moreover, consummates His humanity in the number seven: of His nativity, His infancy, His boyhood, His youth, His young-manhood, His mature age, His death. I have also set forth His humanity to the Jews in these manners: since He is hungry, is thirsty; since He gave food and drink; since He walks, and retired; since He slept upon a pillow; Mark 4:38 since, moreover, He walks upon the stormy seas with His feet, He commands the winds, He cures the sick and restores the lame, He raises the blind by His speech, — see that He declares Himself to them to be the Lord.
The day, as I have above related, is divided into two parts by the number twelve — by the twelve hours of day and night; and by these hours too, months, and years, and seasons, and ages are computed. Therefore, doubtless, there are appointed also twelve angels of the day and twelve angels of the night, in accordance, to wit, with the number of hours. For these are the twenty-four witnesses of the days and nights which sit before the throne of God, having golden crowns on their heads, whom the Apocalypse of John the apostle and evangelist calls elders, for the reason that they are older both than the other angels and than men.
|
|
|
| Abbot Marmion: Christmastide |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2021, 08:00 AM - Forum: Christmas
- Replies (2)
|
|
SUMMARY. -The mystery of the Incarnation is a wonderful exchange between divinity and humanity.
I. The Eternal Word asks of us a human nature in order to unite it to Himself by a personal union: Creator . . . animatum corpus sumens.
II. In becoming Incarnate, the Word brings us, in return, a share in His Divinity: Largitus est nobis suam deitatem.
III. This exchange appears still more wonderful when we consider the manner in which it is wrought. The Incarnation renders God visible so that we may hear and imitate Him.
IV. It renders God passible, capable of expiating our sins by His sufferings and of healing us by His humiliations.
V. We are to take our part in this exchange by faith: those who receive the Word-made flesh by believing in Him have 'power to be made the sons of God.
The coming of the Son of God upon earth is so great an event that God willed to prepare the way for it during centuries. He made rites and sacrifices, figures and symbols, all converge towards Christ; He foretold Him, announced Him by the mouth of the prophets who succeeded one another from generation to generation.
And now it is the very Son of God Who comes to instruct us:
Multifariam multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus . . . novissime locutus est nobis in Filio (Heb 1:1,2). For Christ is not only born for the Jews of Judea who lived in His time. It is for us all, for all mankind, that He came down from Heaven:
Propter nos et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. He wills to distribute to every soul the grace that He merited by His Nativity.
This is why the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, appropriates to herself, in order to place them upon our lips and with them to fill our hearts, the longings of the patriarchs, the aspirations of the just of ancient times, and the desires of the Chosen People. She wills to prepare us for Christ's coming, as if this Nativity was about to be renewed before our eyes.
See how when she commemorates the coming of her Divine Bridegroom upon earth, she displays the splendour of her solemnities, and makes her altars brilliant with lights to celebrate the Birth of the 'Prince of Peace (Is 9:6), the 'Sun of Justice (Mal 4:2), Who rises in the midst of our darkness to enlighten 'every man that cometh into this world (Jn 1:5, 9). She grants her priests the privilege, almost unique in the year, of thrice offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
These feasts are magnificent, they are likewise full of charm. The Church evokes the remembrance of the Angels singing in the sky the glory of the new-born Babe; of the Shepherds who come to adore at the manger; of the Magi who hasten from the East to offer Him their adorations and rich presents.
And yet, like every feast here below, this solemnity, even with the prolongation of its octave, is ephemeral: it passes by. Is it for the feast of a day, howsoever splendid it may be, that the Church requires such a long preparation from us? Certainly not! Why then? Because she knows that the contemplation of this mystery contains a special and choice grace for our souls.
I said at the beginning of these conferences that each one of Christ's mysteries constitutes not only a historical fact which takes place in time, but contains a grace proper to itself wherewith our souls are to be nourished so as to live thereby.
Now what is the intimate grace of the mystery of the Nativity? What is the grace for the reception of which the Church takes so much care to dispose us? What is the fruit that we ought to gather from the contemplation of the Christ Child?
The Church herself indicates this at the first Mass, that of midnight. After having offered the bread and wine which, in a few moments, are to be changed, by the consecration, into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, she sums up her desires in this prayer:
'Grant, O Lord, that the oblation which in we offer today's festival may be acceptable unto Thee, and, by Thy grace, through this most sacred and holy intercourse, may we be found like unto Him in Whom is our substance united to Thee.
(Accepta tibi sit, Domine, quaesumus, hodiernae festivitatis oblatio: ut tua gratia largiente, per haec sacrosancta commercia, in illiusi nveniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia. Secret of the Midnight Mass.) The word forma is here taken in the sense of 'nature, 'condition natura, as in the text of St Paul: Christus cum in forma Dei esset . . . exinanivit semetipsum formam servi accipiens et habitu inventus ut homo.)
We ask to be partakers of that divinity to which our humanity is united. It is like an exchange. God, in becoming incarnate, takes our human nature and gives us, in return, a participation in His Divine nature.
This thought, so concise in its form, is more explicitly expressed in the secret of the second Mass: 'Grant, O Lord, that our offerings may be conformed to the mysteries of this day's Nativity, that as He Who is born as man is also God made manifest, so this earthly substance (which He unites to Himself) may confer upon us that which is divine. (Munera rostra, quaesumus, Domine, nativitatis hodiernae mysteriis apta proveniant, ut sicut homo genitus idem refulsit et Deus, sic nobis haec terrena substantia conferat quod divinum est. . (Secret of the Mass at Break of Day.)
To be made partakers of the Divinity to which our humanity was united in the Person of Christ, and to receive this Divine gift through this humanity itself,-such is the grace attached to the celebration of today's mystery.
Our offerings will be 'conformed to the mysteries of this day's Nativity, according to the words of the above quoted secret, if-by the contemplation of the Divine work at Bethlehem and the reception of the Eucharistic Sacrament,-we participate in the eternal life that Christ wills to communicate to us by His Humanity.
'O admirable exchange, we shall sing on the octave day, 'the Creator of the human race, taking upon Himself a body and a soul, has vouchsafed to be born of a Virgin, and, appearing here below as man, has made us partakers of His Divinity: O admirabile commercium! CREATOR generis human!, ANIMATUM CORPUS SUMENS, de virgine nasci dignatus est; et procedens homo sine semine, LARGITUS EST NOBIS SUAM DEITATEM (Antiphon of the Octave of Christmas).
Let us, therefore, stay for a few moments to admire, with the Church, this exchange between the creature and the Creator between heaven and earth, an exchange upon which all the mystery of the Nativity is based. Let us consider what are the acts and the matter of it;-under what form it is wrought;-we will afterwards see what fruits are to be derived from it for us;-and to what it engages us.
I
Let us transport ourselves to the stable-cave at Bethlehem; let us behold the Child lying upon the straw. What is He in the sight of the profane, in the sight of an inhabitant of the little city who might happen to come there after the Birth of Jesus?
Only a new-born Babe to Whom a woman of Nazareth had given birth; only a son of Adam like unto us, for His parents have Him inscribed upon the register of enrolment; the details of His genealogy can be followed. There He lies upon the straw, a weak Babe Whose life is sustained by a little milk. Many Jews saw nothing more in Him than this. Later on you will hear His compatriots, astonished at His wisdom, ask themselves where He could have learnt it, for, in their eyes, He had never been anything but 'the son of a carpenter: Nonne hic est fabri filius? . . . (Mt 13:55; cf. Mk 6:3; Lk 4:22).
But to the eyes of faith, a life higher than the human life animates this Child: He possesses Divine life. What does faith, indeed, tell us on this subject? What revelation does it give us?
Faith tells us that this Child is God's own Son. He is the Word, the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity; He is the Son Who receives Divine life from His Father, by an ineffable communication: Sicut Pater habet vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et Filio habere vitam in semetipso (Lk 4:22). He possesses the Divine nature, with all its infinite perfections. In the heavenly splendours, in splendoribus sanctorum (Ps 109:3). God begets this Son by an eternal generation.
It is to this Divine Sonship in the bosom of the Father that our adoration turns first of all; it is this Sonship that we extol in the midnight Mass. At day-break, the Holy Sacrifice will celebrate the Nativity of Christ according to the flesh, His Birth, at Bethlehem, of the Virgin Mary; finally, the third Mass will be in honour of Christ's coming into our souls.
The Mass of the night, all enveloped with mystery, begins with these solemn words: Dominus dixit ad me: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te (Introit of the Mass of Midnight), This cry that escapes from the soul of Christ united to the Person of the Word, reveals to earth for the first time that which the heavens hear from all eternity . 'The Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son: this day have I begotten Thee. 'This day is first of all the day of eternity, a day without dawn or decline.
The Heavenly Father now contemplates His Incarnate Son. The Word, although made man, nevertheless remains God. Become the Son of man, He is still the Son of God. The first glance that falls upon Christ, the first love wherewith He is surrounded, is the glance, the love of His Father. Diliget me, Pater (Jn 15:9). What contemplation and what love! Christ is the Only-begotten Son of the Father; therein lies His essential glory. He is equal to and 'consubstantial with the Father, God of God, Light of Light . . . by Whom all things were made, 'and without Him was made nothing that was made. It is of this Son that these words were spoken: 'Thou in the beginning, O Lord, didst found the earth, and the works of Thy hands are the heavens. They shall perish, but Thou shalt continue; and they shall all grow old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the selfsame, and Thy years shall not fail! (Epistle for the Mass of Christmas Day.)
And this 'Word was made Flesh: Et Verbum caro factum est.
Let us adore this Word become Incarnate for us: Christus natus est nobis, venite adoremus (Invitatory for Christmas Matins.) . . . A God takes our humanity: conceived by the mysterious operation of the Holy Ghost in Mary's womb, Christ is born of the most pure substance of the blood of the Virgin, and the life that He has from her makes Him like unto us! Creator generis human de virgine nasci dignatus est, et procedens homo sine semine.
This is what faith tells us: this Child is the Incarnate Word of God; He is the Creator of the human race become man. Creator generis human); if He needs a little milk to nourish Him, it is by His hand that the birds of heaven are fed.
Parvoque lacte pastus est Per quem nec ales esurit (Hymn of Christmas Lauds)
Let us contemplate this Infant lying in the manger. His eyes are closed, He sleeps, He does not manifest outwardly what He is. In appearance, He is only like all other infants, and yet, being God, being the Eternal Word, He, at this moment, is judging the souls that appear before Him. 'He lies upon straw, and as God, He sustains the universe and reigns in heaven: Jacet in praesepio et in caelis regnat (12th response at Matins on the Sunday of the Octave of Christmas), This Child, just beginning to grow, Puer crescebat . . . et proficiebat aetate (Lk 2:40, 52), is the Eternal Whose divine nature knows no change: Tu idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficient. He Who is born in time is likewise He Who is before all time; He Who manifests Himself to the shepherds of Bethlehem is He Who, out of nothing, created the nations that, 'are before Him as if they had no being at all (Is 40:17).
Palamque fit pastoribus Pastor creator omnium (Hymn of Christmas Lauds.)
To the eyes of faith there are two lives in this Babe; two lives indissolubly united in an ineffable manner, for the Human Nature belongs to the Word in such wise that there is but a single Person, that of the Word, Who sustains the Human Nature by His own Divine existence.
Undoubtedly, this human nature is perfect: perfectus homo (Creed attributed to St. Athanasius): nothing of that which belongs to its essence is lacking to Him. This Babe has a soul like to ours; He has faculties:-intelligence, will, imagination, sensibility- like ours. He is truly one of our own race Whose existence will be revealed, during thirty three years, as authentically human. Sin, alone, will be unknown to Him. Debuit per omnia fratribus similar) (Heb 2:17) . . . absque peccato (Ibid. 4:15). Perfect in itself, this human nature will keep its own activity, its native splendour. Between these two lives of Christ-the Divine, which He ever possesses by His eternal birth in the bosom of the Father; the human which He has begun to possess by His Incarnation in the bosom of a Virgin-there is neither mingling nor confusion. The Word, in becoming man, remains what He was; that which He was not, He has taken from our race; but the divine in Him does not absorb the human, the human does not lessen the divine. The union is such, as I have often said, that there is however but a single Person-the Divine Person,-and that the human nature belongs to the Word, is the Word's own humanity: Mirabile mysterium declaratur hodie: innovantur naturae, Deus homo factus est; id quod fuit permansit et quod non erat assumpsit, non commixtionem passus neque divisionem (Antiphon of Lauds in the Octave of Christmas.)
II
This then, if I may so express myself, is one of the acts of the contract. God takes our nature so as to unite it to Himself in a personal union.
What is the other act? What is God going to give us in return? Not that He owes us anything: Bonorum meorum non eges (Ps 15:2). But as He does all things with wisdom, He could not take upon Himself our nature without a motive worthy of Him.
What the Word Incarnate gives in return to humanity is an incomprehensible gift; it is a participation, real and intimate, in His Divine nature: Largitus est nobis suam deitatem. In exchange for the humanity which He takes, the Incarnate Word gives us a share in His Divinity; He makes us partakers of His Divine Nature. And thus is accomplished the most wonderful exchange which could be made.
Doubtless, as you know, this participation had already been offered and given, from the creation, to Adam, the first man. The gift of grace, with all its splendid train of privileges, made Adam like to God. But the sin of the first man, the head of the human race, destroyed and rendered this ineffable participation impossible on the part of the creature.
It is to restore this participation that the Word becomes Incarnate; it is to reopen to us the way to heaven that God is made man. For this Child, being God's own Son, has Divine life, like His Father, with His Father. In this Child 'dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally (Col. 2:9); in Him are laid up all the treasures of the divinity (Cf. Ibid. 3). But He does not possess them for Himself alone. He infinitely desires to communicate to us the Divine life that He Himself is: Ego sum vita (Jn 14:6). It is for this that He comes: Ego vend UT vitam habeant (Ibid. 10:10). It is for us that a Child is born; it is to us that a Son is given: Puer natus est NOBIS et Filius datus est nobis (Introit of the Mass of the day). In making us share in His condition of Son, He will make us children of God. 'When the fulness of time was come, God sent making us share in His condition of Son, He will make us children of God. 'When the fulness of time was come, God sent 5). 'What Christ is by nature, that is to say the Son of God, we are to be by grace; the Incarnate Word, the Son of God made man is to become the author of our divine generation: Natus hodie Salvator mundi DIVINAE NOBIS GENERATIONIS est auctor (Postcommunion of the Mass of Christmas Day). So that, although He be the Only-begotten Son, He will become the First-born of many brethren: UT sit IPSE PRIMOGENITUS in multis fratribus (Rom 8:29).
Such are the two acts of the wonderful 'bargain that God makes with us: He takes our nature in order to communicate to us His divinity; He takes a human life so as to make us partakers of His divine life: He is made man so as to make us gods: Factus est Deus homo, ut homo fieret Deus (Sermon attributed to St. Augustine, number 128 in the appendix to his works). And His human Birth becomes the means of our birth to the divine life.
In us likewise there will be henceforth two lives. The one, natural, which we have by our birth according to the flesh, but which, in God's sight, is not only without merit but, before baptism, is stained in consequence of original sin; which makes us enemies of God, worthy of His wrath: we are born filii irae (Eph 2:3). The other life, supernatural, infinitely above the rights and exigencies of our nature. It is this life that God communicates to us by His grace, since the Incarnate Word merited it for us.
God begets us to this life by His Word and the infusion of His Spirit, in the baptismal font: Genuit nos Verbo veritatis (Jac 1:18) . . . Per lavacrum regenerationis et renovationis Spiritus Sancti (Tit 3); it is a new life that is superadded to our natural life, surpassing and crowning it; In Christo nova creatura (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). It makes us children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, worthy of one day partaking of His beatitude and glory.
Of these two lives, in us as in Christ, it is the divine that ought to dominate, although in the Child Christ it is not as yet manifested, and in us it remains ever veiled under the outward appearance of our ordinary existence. It is the divine life of grace that ought to rule and govern, and make agreeable to our Lord, all our natural activity, thus deified in its root.
Oh! if the contemplation of the Birth of Jesus and participation in this mystery by the reception of the Bread of Life would bring us to free ourselves, once and for all, from everything that destroys and lessens the divine life within us; from sin, wherefrom Christ comes to deliver us: Cujus nativitas humanam repulit vetustatem (Postcommunion for the Mass of Day-break); from all infidelity and all attachment to creatures; from the irregulated care for passing things: Abnegantes saecularia desideria (Tit 2:12; Epistle for the midnight Mass); from the trying preoccupations of our vain self love! . . .
If we could thus be brought to give ourselves entirely to God, according to the promises of our baptism when we were born to the divine life; to yield ourselves up to the accomplishment of His will and good pleasure, as did the Incarnate Word in entering into this world: Ecce venio . . . ut faciam Deus voluntatem tuam (Heb 10:7); to abound in those good works which make us pleasing to God: Populum acceptabilem, sectatorem bonorum operum (Tit 2:14. Epistle for the midnight Mass.)!
Then the divine life brought to us by Jesus would meet with no more obstacles and would freely expand for the glory of our Heavenly Father; then 'we who are bathed in the new light of the Incarnate Word should shew forth in our deeds what by faith shineth in our minds (Da nobis quaesumus omnipotens Deus; ut qui nova incarnati Verbi tui luce perfundimur, hoc in nostro resplendeat opere, quod per fidem fulget in mente. Collect for the Mass at Daybreak); then, 'our offerings would befit the mysteries of this day's Nativity. Munera nostra nativitatis hodiernae mysteriis apta proveniant (Secret for the Mass at Day-break).
III
What further renders this exchange 'admirable is the manner in which it is effected, the form wherein it is accomplished. How is it accomplished? How does this Child, Who is the Incarnate Word, make us partakers of His divine life? By His Humanity. The humanity that the Word takes from us is to serve Him as the instrument for communicating His divine life to us; and this for two reasons wherein eternal wisdom infinitely shines out; the humanity renders God visible; it renders God passible.
It renders Him visible.
The Church, using the words of St. Paul, celebrates with delight this 'appearing of God amongst us: Apparuit gratia Dei Salvatoris nostri omnibus hominibus (Tit 2:11. Epistle for the midnight Mass): 'The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men: Apparuit benignitas et humanitas Salvatoris nostri Dei (Tit 3:4, Epistle for the Mass at Day-break). 'The goodness and kindness of God our Saviour hath appeared.
Lux fulgebit hodie super nos, quia natus est nobis Dominus (Introit of the Mass at Daybreak): 'a light shall shine upon us this day: for our Lord is born to us; Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis:The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.
The Incarnate Word brings about this marvel: men have seen God Himself abiding in the midst of them.
St. John loves to dwell upon this side of the mystery. '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. 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 in us. That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you that . . . your joy may be full (1 Jn 1:1-4).
What joy indeed, to see God manifesting Himself to us. not in the dazzling splendour of His omnipotence, nor in the unspeakable glory of His sovereignty, but under the veil of humble, poor, weak humanity, which we can see and touch!
We might have been afraid of the dreadful majesty of God: the Israelites fell on their faces to the ground, full of terror and fear, when God spoke to Moses upon Sinai, in the midst of lightnings. We are drawn by the charms of a God become a Babe. The Babe in the Crib seems to say to us: 'You are afraid of God? You are wrong: Qui videt me, videt et Patrem (Jn 14:9). Do not heed your imagination, do not form yourselves a God from the deductions of philosophy, nor ask of science to make My perfections known to you. The true Almighty God is the God that I am and reveal; the true God is I Who come to you in poverty, humility and infancy, but Who will one day give My life for you. I am 'the brightness of [the Father's] glory, and the figure of His substance (Heb 1:3). His Only-begotten Son, God as He is; in Me you shall learn to know His perfections, His wisdom and His goodness, His love towards men and His mercy in regard to sinners: Illuxit in cordibus nostris . . . in facie Christi Jesu (2 Cor 4:6). Come unto Me, for, God as I am, I have willed to be a man like you, and I do not reject those who draw near to Me with confidence:Sicut homo genitus IDEM refulsit et Deus.
Why did God thus deign to render Himself visible?
First of all so as to instruct us: Apparuit erudiens nos. It is indeed God Who will henceforth speak to us by His own Son: Locutus est nobis in Filio (Heb 1:2); we have but to listen to this beloved Son in order to know what God wills of us. The Heavenly Father Himself tells us so: Hic est Filius meus dilectus: ipsum audite (Mt 17:5); and Jesus delights in repeating to us that His doctrine is that of His Father: Mea doctrina non est mea, sed ejus qui misit me (Jn 7:16).
Next the Word renders Himself visible to our sight so as to become the Example that we are to follow.
We have only to watch this Child grow, only to contemplate Him living in the midst of us, living like us as man, in order to know how we ought to live in the sight of God, as children of God: for all that He does will be pleasing to His Father: Quae placita sunt ei, facto semper (Ibid. 7:29).
Being the Truth Who has come to teach us, He will point out the way by His example; if we live in His light, if we follow this way, we shall have life: Ego sum via, et veritas et vita (Ibid. 14:6). Thus, in knowing God manifested in the midst of us, we shall be drawn by Him to the love of invisible things: Ut dum VISIBILITER Deum cognoscimus, PER HUNC in invisibilium amorem rapiamur (Preface for Christmas).
IV
The humanity of Christ renders God visible, and above all-and it is in this that Divine Wisdom is shown to be 'admirable-it renders God passible.
Sin which destroyed the divine life within us demands a satisfaction, an expiation without which it would be impossible for divine life to be restored to us. Being a mere creature, man cannot give this satisfaction for an offence of infinite malice, and, on the other hand, the Divinity can neither suffer nor expiate. God cannot communicate His life to us unless sin be blotted out; by an immutable decree of Divine Wisdom, sin can only be blotted out if it be expiated in an adequate manner. How is this problem to be solved?
The Incarnation gives us the answer. Consider the Babe of Bethlehem. He is the Word made flesh. The humanity that the Word makes His own is passible; it is this humanity which will suffer, will expiate. These sufferings, these expiations will belong, however, to the Word, as this humanity itself does; they will take from the Divine Person an infinite value which will suffice to redeem the world, to destroy sin, to make grace superabound in souls like an impetuous and fructifying river: Fluminus impetus laetificat civitatem Dei (Ps 65:5).
O admirable exchange! Do not let us stay to wonder by what other means God might have brought it about, but let us contemplate the way wherein He has done so. The word asks of us a human nature to find in it wherewith to suffer, to expiate, to merit, to heap graces upon us. It is through the flesh that man turns away from God: it is in becoming flesh that God delivers man:
Beatus auctor saeculi Servile corpus induit Ut carne carnem liberans Ne perderet quos condidit (Hymn for Lauds at Christmas.)
The flesh that the Word of God takes upon Himself, is to become the instrument of salvation for all flesh. O admirabile commercium!
Doubtless, as you know, it was necessary to await the immolation of Calvary for the expiation to be complete; but, as St. Paul teaches us, it was from the first moment of His Incarnation that Christ accepted to accomplish His Father's will and to offer Himself as Victim for the human race: Ideo ingrediens mundum dicit: Hostiam et oblationem noluisti: CORPUS autem aptasti mihi . . . Et tune dixit: Ecce venio . . . ut faciam Deus voluntatem tuam (Heb 10:5, 7. Cf. Ps 39:8). It is by this oblation that Christ begins to sanctify us: In qua voluntate sanctificati sumus (Heb 10:10). . It is from the Crib that He inaugurates this life of suffering such as He willed to live for our salvation, this life of which the term is at Golgotha, and that, in destroying sin, is to restore to us the friendship of His Father. The Crib is certainly only the first stage, but it radically contains all the others.
This is why, in the Christmas solemnities, the Church attributes our salvation to the temporal Birth itself of the Son of God. 'Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the new Birth of Thine Only-begotten Son in the fiesh may deliver us who are held captive by the old bondage under the yoke of sin (Concede quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, ut nos Unigeniti tui nova per carnem nativitas liberet, quos sub peccati jugo vetuita servitus tenet. Collect for the Mass of Christmas Day.). This is why, from that moment, 'deliverance, redemption, salvation, eternal life, will be spoken of constantly. It is by His Humanity that Christ, High Priest and Mediator, binds us to God; but it is at Bethlehem that He appears to us in this Humanity.
See, too, how from the moment of His Birth, He fulfils His mission.
What is it that causes us to lose divine life?
It is pride. Because they believed that they would be like unto God, having the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve lost, for themselves and for their race, the friendship of God. Christ, the new Adam, redeems us, brings us back to God, by the humility of His Incarnation. Although He was God, He annihilated in taking the condition of the creature, in making Himself like unto men; He manifested Himself as man according to all appearances (Phil 2:6-7). . What a humiliation was that! Later, it is true, the Church will exalt to the highest heavens His dazzling glory as the conqueror over sin and death; but now, Christ knows only self-abasement and weakness. When our gaze rests upon this little Child, Who is in no way distinguished from others, when we think that He is God, and that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, we feel our souls deeply moved, and our vain pride is confounded in the face of such abasement.
And what besides pride? Our refusal to obey. See what an example of wonderful obedience the Son of God gives. With the simplicity of little children, He yields Himself up into the hands of His parents; He allows Himself to be touched, taken up and carried about; and all His Childhood, all His Boyhood and Youth are summed up in the Gospel in these few words which tell how He was subject to Mary and Joseph: Et erat subditus illis (Cf. Lk 2:51).
And next there is our covetousness 'the concupiscence of the eyes (1 Jn 2:16), all that appears, glitters, fascinates and seduces; the essential inanity of the passing trifles that we prefer to God. The Word is made flesh; but He is born in poverty and abjection. Propter nos egenus factus est cum esset dives (2 Cor 8:9). 'Being rich, He became poor. Although He is 'the King of ages (1 Tim 1:17), although He is the One Who drew all creation out of nothing by a word, and has only to open His hand to fill 'with blessing every living creature (Ps 144:16), He is not born in a palace; His Mother, finding no room in the inn, had to take refuge in a stable cave: the Son of God, Eternal Wisdom, willed to be born in destitution and laid upon straw.
If with faith and love we contemplate the Child Jesus in His Crib, we shall find in Him the Divine Example of many virtues; if we know how to lend the ear of our hearts to what He says to us, we shall learn many things; if we refiect upon the circumstances of His Birth, we shall see how the Humanity serves the Word as the instrument to instruct us, but likewise to raise us, to quicken us, to make us pleasing to His Father, to detach us from passing things, to lift us up even to Himself.
'Divinity is clad in our mortal flesh . . . and because God humbles Himself to live a human life, man is raised towards divine things: Dum divinitas defectum nostrae carnes suscepit, humanum genus lumen, quod amiserat, recepit. Unde enim Deus humana patitur, inde homo ad divina sublevatur (S. Gregor. Homil. I, in Evangel.)
V
Thus from whatever side our faith contemplates this exchange, and whatever be the details of it that we examine, it appears admirable to us.
Is not this child-bearing of a virgin indeed admirable: Natus ineffabiliter ex virgine? (Antiphon for the Octave of Christmas).
'A young Maiden has brought forth the King Whose name is Eternal: to the honour of virginity she unites the joys of motherhood; before her, the like was never seen, nor shall it ever be so again (Genuit puerpera regem, cui nomen aeternum, et gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore, nec priman similem visa est, nec habere sequentem. Antiphon for Lauds at Christmas.) 'Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you admire me? This mystery that you behold in me is truly divine (Filiae Jerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis. Antiphon for the Feast of the
Expectatio partus virginis, Dec. 18).
Admirable is this indissoluble union, that is yet without confusion, of the divinity with the humanity in the one Person of the Word: Mirabile mysterium: innovantur naturae. Admirable is this exchange, by the contrasts of its realisation: God gives us a share in His divinity, but the humanity that He takes from us in order to communicate His divine life to us is a suffering humanity, 'acquainted with infirmity, homo sciens infirmitatem (Is 53:3), that will undergo death and, by death, will restore life to us.
Admirable is this exchange in its source which is none other than God's infinite love for us. Sic Deus dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum Unigenitum daret(Jn 3:16). 'God so loved the world as to give His Only-begotten Son. Let us, then, yield up our souls to joy and sing with the Church: Parvulus natus est nobis et filius DATUS est NOBIS. And how is He given? 'In the likeness of sinful flesh. This is why the love that thus gives Him to us in our passible humanity, in order to expiate sin, is a measureless love:
Propter NIMIAM caritatem suam, qua dilexit nos Deus, misit Filium suum in similitudinem carnis peccati (Antiphon for the Octave of Christmas).
Admirable, finally, in its fruits and effects. By this exchange, God again gives us His friendship, He restores to us the right of entering into possession of the eternal inheritance; He looks anew upon humanity with love and complacency.
Therefore, joy is one of the most marked characteristics of the celebration of this mystery. The Church constantly invites us to it, remembering the words of the angel to the shepherds: 'Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy . . . for this day is born to you a Saviour (Lk 2:10-11). It is the joy of deliverance, of the inheritance regained, of peace found once again, and, above all, of the vision of God Himself given to men: Et vocabitur nomen ejus Emmanuel (Is 7:14; cf. Mt 1:23).
But this joy will only be assured if we remain firm in the grace that comes to us from the Saviour and makes us His brethren. 'O Christian, exclaims St. Leo, in a sermon that the Church reads during this holy night, 'recognise thy dignity: Agnosce, O Christiane, dignitatem tuam. And made a partaker of the divinity, take care not to fall back from so sublime a state (Sermo I de Nativitate).
'If thou didst know the gift of God (Jn 4:10), said our Lord Himself. If thou didst know all that this Son is Who is given to thee! If, above all, we were to receive Him as we ought to receive Him! Let it not be said of us: In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt (Gospel for the Mass on Christmas Day). 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. By our creation, all of us are 'His own; we belong to God; but there are some who have not received Him upon this earth. How many Jews, how many pagans have rejected Christ, because He has appeared in the humility of passible flesh! Souls sunk in the darkness of pride and sensuality: Lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.
And how ought we to receive Him ? By faith: His qui credunt in nomine ejus. It is to those who-believing in His Person, in His word, in His works,-have received this Child as God, that it has been given, in return, to become themselves children of God: Ex Deo nati sunt.
Such is, in fact, the fundamental disposition that we must have so that this 'admirable exchange may produce in us all its fruits. Faith alone teaches us how it is brought about; wherein it is realised; faith alone gives us a true knowledge of it and one worthy of God.
For there are many modes and degrees of knowledge.
'The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his Master's Crib, wrote Isaias, in speaking of this mystery (Is 1:3). They saw the Child lying in the crib. But what could they see? As much as an animal could see: the form, the size, the colour, the movement,-an entirely rudimentary knowledge that does not pass the boundary line of sensation. Nothing more.
The passers-by, the curious, who approached the stable-cave saw the Child; but for them He was like all others. They did not go beyond this purely natural knowledge. Perhaps they were struck by the Child's loveliness. Perhaps they pitied His destitution. But this feeling did not last and was soon replaced by indifference.
There were the Shepherds, simple-hearted men, enlightened by a ray from on high: Claritas Dei circumfulsit illos (Lk 2:9), They certainly understood more; they recognised in this Child the promised Messias, long awaited, the Exicctatio gentium (Gen 49:10); they paid Him their homage, and their souls were for a long time full of joy and peace.
The Angels likewise contemplated the New-born Babe, the Word made Flesh. They saw in Him their God; this knowledge threw these pure spirits into awe and wonderment at such incomprehensible self-abasement: for it was not to their nature that He willed to unite Himself: Nusquam angelos, but to human nature, sed semen Abrahae apprehendit (Heb 2:16).
What shall we say of the Blessed Virgin when she looked upon Jesus? Into what depths of the mystery did her gaze penetrate- that gaze so pure, so humble, so tender, so full of bliss? Who shall be able to express with what lights the soul of Jesus inundated His Mother, and what perfect homage Mary rendered to her Son, to her God, to all the states and all the mysteries whereof the Incarnation is the substance and the root.
There is finally-but this is beyond description-the gaze of the Father contemplating His Son made flesh for mankind. The Heavenly Father saw that which never man, nor angel, nor Mary herself could comprehend: the infinite perfections of the Divinity hidden in a Babe . . . And this contemplation was the source of unspeakable rapture: Thou art My Son, My beloved Son, the Son of My direction in Whom I have placed all My delights (Mk 1:2; Lk 3:22) . . .
When we contemplate the Incarnate Word at Bethlehem, let us rise above the things of sense so as to gaze upon Him with the eyes of faith alone. Faith makes us share here below in the knowledge that the Divine Persons have of One Another. There is no exaggeration in this. Sanctifying grace makes us indeed partakers of the divine nature. Now, the activity of the divine nature consists in the knowledge that the Divine Persons have the One of the Other, and the love that they have One for the Other. We participate therefore in this knowledge and in this love. And in the same way as sanctifying grace having its fruition in glory will give us the right of seeing God as He sees Himself, so, upon earth, in the shadows of faith, grace enables us to behold deep down into these mysteries through the eyes of God: Lux tuae claritatis infulsit (Preface for Christmas).
When our faith is intense and perfect, we do not stay to look only at the outside of the mystery, but we go deeply into it; we pass through the Humanity to penetrate as far as the Godhead which the Humanity at the same time hides and reveals; we behold divine mysteries in the divine light.
And ravished, astounded at such prodigious abasement, the soul, vivified by this faith, falls prostrate in adoration and yields herself up entirely to procure the glory of a God Who, from love for His creature, thus veils the native splendour of His unfathomable perfections. She can never rest until she has given all, in return, to fill up her part in the exchange that He desires to contract with her, until she has brought herself wholly into subjection to this 'King of Peace Who comes with so much magnifcence (Antiphon at Vespers on Christmas Day) to save, sanctify and, as it were, to deify her.
Let us then draw near to the Child God with great faith. We may wish to have been at Bethlehem to receive Him. Yet He is here giving Himself to us in Holy Communion with as much reality although our senses are less able to find Him. In the Tabernacle as in the Crib, it is the same God full of power, the same Saviour full of tender mercy.
If we will have it so, the admirable exchange still continues. For it is likewise through His Humanity that Christ infuses divine life into us at the Holy Table. It is in eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, in uniting ourselves to His Humanity, that we draw at the very wellspring of everlasting life: Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit meum sanguinem, habet vitam aeternam (Jn 6:55) . . .
Thus, each day, the union established between man and God in the Incarnation, is continued and made closer. In giving Himself in Communion, Christ increases the life of grace in the generous and faithful soul, making this life develop more freely and expand with more strength; He even bestows upon such a soul the pledge of that blessed immortality of which grace is the germ and whereby God will communicate Himself to us fully and unveiled: Ut natus hodie Salvator mundi, sicut divinae nobis generationis est auctor, ita et immortalitatis sit IPSE largitor (Postcommunion of Christmas Day).
This will be the consummation, magnificent and glorious, of the exchange inaugurated at Bethlehem in the poverty and humiliations of the Crib.
|
|
|
|
| Swedish company showcases microchip that can download COVID-19 passport status |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-20-2021, 01:58 PM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
- No Replies
|
|
Swedish company showcases microchip that can download COVID-19 passport status
Firm has showcased implant capable of storing COVID passport that can be read by many devices
FoxBusiness | December 20, 201
A microchip technology introduced in recent years by the Stockholm-based startup Epicenter is being presented as a means to store one's COVID-19 vaccine passport under the skin, according to a video from the South China Post that went viral Friday.
The firm has showcased an implant capable of storing a COVID passport that can then be read by any device using the near-field communication (NFC) protocol, according to the video.
The video featured DSruptive CEO Hannes Sjöblad, who was founder of the Swedish Association of Biohackers.
Sjöblad demonstrated how Epicenter's rice-sized microchip, which has been adapted as a COVID-19 passport, is implanted under the skin either in the arm on between the thumb and forefinger.
Three Square Market, a Wisconsin-based technology company, became the first company in the U.S. to offer its employees similar free microchip implants in August 2017. The chip gives employees access to locked rooms and the ability to pay for food and drinks in the break room.
The microchips were provided to Three Square Market (32M) at the time by Biohax, which was run by Jowan Österlund, a Swedish tattooist and body piercing specialist, according to The Guardian.
"Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc.," said Todd Westby, the 32M CEO at the time.
The technology the company uses is called RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), which uses electromagnetic fields to identify electronically stored information. The chips also use near-field communications (NFC), the same type of technology that is used in most contactless credit cards and mobile payments.
Westby said at the time that these microchips have already become very popular in many European countries and that the companies intended to be ahead of the curve in bringing it to the U.S. Now they could become COVID passports.
|
|
|
|
| A "Revolution of Tenderness", or "The Roche Christmas Massacre": A Farce in Eleven Dubia |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-18-2021, 10:38 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- Replies (1)
|
|
A "Revolution of Tenderness", or "The Roche Christmas Massacre": A Farce in Eleven Dubia
[Official Vatican Press Release follows in next post]
Rorate Caeli | December 18, 2021
As reported by this blog a few days ago, the "clarifications" of Traditionis custodes from the CDWDS, which the Pope has given his assent to, have been published today - relentlessly appalling in their attempted suppression of the traditional rites, yet comically absurd in their claim to be "preserving the gift of ecclesial communion by walking together, with conviction of mind and heart". In this current joke of a pontificate, war truly is peace.
The summary of what the Pope and the CDWDS are attempting to do is as follows:
1. Dispensations from art. 3 § 2 of TC can, in principle, be given for the traditional Mass to be celebrated in parish churches. Of course, under the current regime, "decentralisation" means the opposite of what most people would expect it to mean, so the Bishop is to request permission from the CDWDS, who may then graciously allow him to give permission for this, but "only if it is established that it is impossible to use another [non-parish] church, oratory or chapel." Further, once a non-parish church is available, "this permission will be withdrawn."
Of course, "there is no intention in these provisions to marginalise the faithful who are rooted in the previous form of celebration". No, contrary to all appearances, "this is a concession to provide for their good". Unlike the luminaries currently occupying the CDWDS, we plebs are not practiced in this sort of doublespeak. Why, sometimes Archbishop Roche can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast!
2. The use of the traditional Rituale Romanum is allowable only for personal parishes, and use of the traditional Pontificale Romanum is absolutely forbidden. Pope Benedict's statement that "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful" has officially been chucked down the memory-hole.
3. The canonical right of priests to freely choose not to take part in concelebrated Masses (see Canon 902) is now being treated as "a lack of acceptance of the liturgical reform". Perhaps in the fulness of time there will be someone in the CDWDS who this sort of wrongthink can be reported to.
4. To fulfil the conditions of TC art. 3 § 3, only a Bible in an authorised vernacular translation may be used for the proclamation of the readings at the usus antiquior. I have already pointed out the many problems and issues that will result from this, but the CDWDS is insistent that "no vernacular lectionaries may be published that reproduce the cycle of readings of the previous rite". So, we now have a new Index Librorum Prohibitorum for "modern man" - the traditional lectionary!
5. The CDWDS clarifies that TC art. 4 decentralises power by centralising it, requiring the explicit permission of the Apostolic See for priests ordained after 16th July 2021 to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass. This is "intended to assist the diocesan Bishop in evaluating such a request", presumably as long as the answer the Bishop comes to is "permission denied".
6. The granting of fixed-term, temporary permissions for the celebration of the usus antiquior is clearly desired by the CDWDS to be the norm: "the possibility of granting the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962 for a defined period of time... is not only possible but also recommended". And you'd all better be on your best behaviour, boys and girls, as "the outcome of this assessment [at the end of the ad tempus period] can provide grounds for prolonging or suspending the permission". A new Roman Inquisition of tenderness!
7. Papers, please! Every sacred minister now requires authorisation for celebrations of the traditional Mass - not just priests, but deacons, instituted ministers, etc. - no matter the circumstances. If the priest celebrating your Sunday traditional Mass falls sick, but he's the only priest the Bishop has authorised for such celebrations, then tough. If you're a priest who has permission from your own Bishop to celebrate the usus antiquior but find yourself in another diocese for travel, study, etc., then tough.
8. Finally, no bination using the 1962 Missal, for any reason whatsoever. Canon 905 § 2 doesn't apply here, apparently, because we can just attend Mass "in its current ritual form." How very pastoral!
* * * * *
"Peace, peace" they say, when there is no peace (Jer. 8:11). And there can be no peace, or unity, from this irresponsible, ideological and illegitimate attack on the traditional Roman Rite, and the faithful attached to it.
If it wasn't obvious at this point, then it really should be to all by now: this attempted extermination of the usus antiquior demonstrates that everything this papacy claims to be - "merciful", "accompanying", "listening", "synodal", "tender", "decentralising" - is a vicious lie.
Lord, have mercy on your Church!
|
|
|
|
| Pope Francis’ new foundation appears to have more in common with French Revolution ... |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-18-2021, 08:00 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis’ new foundation appears to have more in common with French Revolution than with Catholicism
References to God, the Holy Trinity, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Beloved Mother are totally absent from this catalogue of the new foundation's politically correct 'values,' among which environmentalist concerns and 'fraternity between believers and non-believers are, of course, paramount.
![[Image: shutterstock_72657706-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/shutterstock_72657706-810x500.jpg)
Fri Dec 17, 2021 - 8:07 am EST
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — A “Fratelli tutti Foundation” attached to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome was launched on Wednesday by Pope Francis who signed a decree that officially established the new entity. It aims at encouraging “fraternity and dialogue” among pilgrims and tourists visiting the Vatican.
The document was signed on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and released to the Vatican Press office on Wednesday, together with the news of the nomination of its president, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of the Basilica, vicar general for the Vatican State, and president of the Fabric of Saint Peter. It is in this last capacity, as the head of the institution tasked with the conservation and maintenance of the Basilica, that Gambetti has now been given a free hand for the cultural and spiritual animation of the church itself and Saint Peter’s Square, within the “embrace” of the colonnade of Bernini, as the papal decree put it.
Cardinal Gambetti, it should be said, was the initiator of the new Foundation; he presented his brainchild to the world last October, describing it as a “dream” that was born in Assisi even before Fratelli tutti was written, but adding that the Encyclical is “the vision for which we should be striving globally.”
The example of what is afoot at Notre Dame of Paris immediately springs to mind: as LifeSite readers know, plans for a makeover of the Gothic jewel’s interior include creating a “discovery trail” for people of all religions, leading through chapels dedicated to the five continents and messages of the Old and New Testaments and culminating with Laudato si’. The revamping of Notre Dame is set to include benches with modern lighting systems, elements of “contemporary art” and music and light projections in the side-chapels, “creating the conditions for an experience” that would appeal to the cathedral’s many non-Catholic visitors.
The revamping of Notre Dame wants a clear break from traditional liturgy, as the designer of the revamp, Father Gilles Drouin, a staunch promoter of Traditionis custodes, has made clear. In interviews he has rejected what he says is a “Tridentine” conception of the liturgy as a “theater,” instead favoring an “active participation” that blurs the limits between the priest and the faithful attending Mass.
No practical details of upcoming changes or “animations” to St. Peter’s Basilica have been given yet, but a parallel can surely be drawn regarding Cardinal Gambetti, a 52-year-old Franciscan hand-picked by Pope Francis last year to receive the red hat. Gambetti has banned the traditional Latin Mass from the nave and side-chapels of Saint-Peter’s, relegating individual priests and groups to the Crypt and insisting that Masses within the central church of Christendom be in the vernacular, preferably Italian, and concelebrated.
He is certainly a perfect fit for presidency of the new “Fratelli Tutti Foundation” based on Pope Francis’ eponymous Encyclical. Fratelli tutti has already borne fruits such as the relativistic Abu Dhabi Declaration proclaiming that the “diversity of religions” was “willed by God in his wisdom.”
How this will play out in and around the Basilica of Saint Peter, where Catholics venerate the tomb of Saint Peter, the “rock” on whom the Church was built, can already be sensed in the few elements of the Foundation’s statutes that have been quoted by the Italian media. Key words and phrases are “humanism,” “building social alliances,” and, of course, “bridges,” the creating of “events,” “trails,” “experiences” and “spiritual exercises,” and “promoting dialogue with cultures and the other religions based on the themes of the Pope’s last Encyclical.”
In a communiqué published on Wednesday by the Holy See, the language is even more revealing: ten “purposes” are quoted in detail, and they certainly deserve to be reproduced in full. Here is our translation of the statement:
The Foundation’s mission areas are:
1. to support and design pathways of art and faith;
2. to invest in cultural and spiritual formation through events, experiences, paths, and spiritual exercises;
3. to promote dialogue with cultures and other religions on the themes of the Pontiff’s latest encyclicals to build a “social alliance.”
The purposes of the Foundation are included in Article 3 of the Statute:
“The Foundation has purposes of solidarity, training, dissemination of art and particularly sacred art; it promotes synodality, the culture of fraternity and dialogue. To this end, the Foundation:
- promotes a holistic formation, attentive to the spiritual and cultural levels, to the community dimension and to the commitment of service in the world;
- encourages tourists to live the experience of pilgrims through spiritual, cultural, and artistic itineraries in St. Peter’s Basilica and in the spaces made available bythe Fabric of St. Peter;
- organizes itineraries, events, and experiences to promote fraternity and social friendship between Churches, different religions, and between believers and non-believers;
- promotes the culture of peace in the various spheres of life, from the personal to the social and political dimensions;
- promotes “new encounters” nourished by social dialogue, by the sense of social forgiveness, by the purification of memory, by the promotion of restorative justice as an alternative to social revenge;
- nurtures initiatives aimed at fostering the development of fraternal humanism, through the promotion of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, conditions for building a “universal love” that recognizes and protects the dignity of persons;
- encourages projects for the care of creation, the protection of environmental resources, international solidarity, and social responsibility;
- promotes social alliance, responsible entrepreneurship, social investment, human and sustainable forms of work; integral ecology, sustainable development, ecological transition, health and scientific and technological research, in light of the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church;
- supports responsible communication, the truthfulness of sources, and the credibility and reliability of those committed to building bridges;
- takes charge of, in the symbolic embrace of the colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica, the weakest people, the stranger and the foreigner, the different and the marginalized, and the cultural and social frontiers to reinterpret the sufferings of the world and offer solutions in the light of the Gospel and the papal Magisterium”.
To carry out its activities, the Foundation will be chaired by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, a nine-member Board of Directors, a single Auditor, and a General Secretary. The future guiding bodies of the Foundation will be: the General Council composed of members of the Vatican Dicasteries to which the Foundation’s mission themes pertain, and the Sustainability Committee in which the Foundation’s benefactors are represented.”
References to God, the Holy Trinity, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Beloved Mother are totally absent from this catalogue of politically correct “values,” among which environmentalist concerns and “fraternity between believers and non-believers” are, of course, paramount.
For French observers, the mention of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” in objective VI, together with a nod to “fraternal humanism,” has obvious Masonic overtones. A carbon copy of the motto of the French Republic, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, the words point to the French Revolution that allowed “no liberty for the enemies of Liberty” and understood the concept as the right to think and do what one wills, without regard for the superior right of truth and divine law.
“Equality” would soon degenerate into collectivism, socialism, or communism, and the overthrowing of natural hierarchies, while “Fraternity” is not so much a desire for true love and friendship among human beings as a rejection of paternity and its God-given authority.
Of course, all these words have their true value but, taken together and made absolute, they contradict each other and, improperly defined, they were the basis for the revolutionary “Terror” of 1792 and the following years when the Vendée region of France underwent a legal genocide as ordered by the Parisian revolutionaries[NB: See here and here for more on the Catholic Vendée - The Catacombs].
The Pope’s chirograph (i.e., papal decree limited to the Roman Curia) was also devoid of any obvious Catholic references, being content to refer to “religion” and “spirituality:”
Quote:I have learned with satisfaction that the Fabric of Saint Peter, together with some of the faithful, wish to join together to establish a Foundation of Religion and Worship intended to collaborate in spreading the principles set forth in my recent encyclical, Fratelli tutti, in order to encourage initiatives linked to spirituality, art, education and dialogue with the world, around Saint Peter’s Basilica and in the embrace of its colonnade.
I therefore gladly accede to the request expressed to me to establish in the State of Vatican City an autonomous foundation for the above-mentioned purposes.
By virtue of my apostolic power in the Church and my sovereignty in Vatican City, I establish the Fratelli tutti Foundation as a public canonical juridical person and as a civil juridical person with its headquarters in Vatican City State.
The Foundation will be governed by the canonical laws, in particular by the special norms that regulate the Bodies of the Holy See, by the civil norms in force in the Vatican City State, and by the attached Statute which I simultaneously approve.
From the Vatican, 8 December 2021
FRANCIS
The Foundation’s first public initiatives are expected to take place early next year. Cardinal Gambetti gave an interview to Vatican News last October in which he said the new Foundation will be a “polyhedron” (one of Pope Francis’ stock words) made up of “formation and dialogue, sacred art and economy, young people, and startups.” All will be welcome there “to find the direction of a common road towards the future… in harmony with the magisterium of Pope Francis,” he said.
Much of his interview is made up of variations and repetitions on this theme of a “common road.” But beyond the glib Newspeak, there is a clear, political objective that smacks of global spirituality and global governance. As Gambetti puts it:
Quote:We already have in mind, probably at the beginning of next year, some initiatives linked to the dual theme of art and spirituality, which are the first, and also the simplest, to activate. But then we are also thinking of something on formation, and it is probable that we will begin with young people, although this is not yet decided because we need to study it well. In any case, the idea is to have a few weeks of residential meetings to allow people to get together, to share, to think about some issues and then try to bring out something new or a new way. For example, if we think of young people, it could be a startup in some segment of the economy, mobility, climate, and environmental issues. Or if we turn to the world of business, putting together people who have managerial roles, or in any case important ones, we could look at the theme of new models of development.
Are we also looking at politics?
We could also think about new ways of doing politics, which are perhaps a bit tired or suffocated by the problems that exist, problems that are obviously real and need to be addressed. But along with this fatigue, we also need to look beyond, to the future. If we do not help each other imagine the future, or a society in which we wish to live, not just see others live it, perhaps politicsin particular will lose a bit of its own vocation.
This all sounds very ambitious for a Foundation centered on a Basilica and a Square – but so much in tone with the objectives of the global “élite” that it can certainly hope for its support.
|
|
|
|
| The Month of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Translated from the French, 1848 |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 10:46 AM - Forum: Resources Online
- No Replies
|
|
The Month of the Nativity
A Series of Devotional Practices Whereby to Honour and Prepare for the Birth of the Holy Infant Saviour
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvidalcuglietta.com%2Fwp...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvidalcuglietta.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F08%2Fnativity-scene-painting-beautiful-interfaith-ramadan-the-nativity-scene-through-art-history-of-nativity-scene-painting.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
"We have a Paradise much better, and far more agreeable than that of our first parents," says St. Bernard "and this Paradise is our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Serm. Nativity.) He is our beatitude in body and soul; His Divinity is the bliss of the latter, his Humanity that of the former. He is then our true Paradise. And He is all ours; all for our use, all for our wants: "Light to our eyes, hearing to our ears, perfume to our smell, bread to our mouth," says Origen. (Hom. 2 in Cant.) How lamentable, then, that faith and hope in, and knowledge and love of, this divine Saviour are so much on the decrease and become daily more diminished! To remedy this evil, in some degree, is the object of the following pages, having for title, "The Month of the Nativity of our Lord," in which are retraced the mysteries of the Incarnation and Nativity of this divine Saviour.
"The daily entertainment for each day, which besides a point of doctrine, includes reflections, &c., is preceded by a practice and aspiration, both to render it more conformable to the devotions appointed for other months, as well as to gratify more fervent souls who never think they can do enough to please their divine Saviour. In order to include all the feasts of Christmas without exceeding the period of a month, this devotion does not commence until the sixth of December. It will by this means terminate on the feast of the Epiphany, and those who have faithfully and fervently practised it, may hope to receive, in presenting it, with the offerings of the holy Magi, to their Infant God in His manger, a share in His choicest graces here, and because they have known and loved, "and confessed Him before men," to be acknowledged by Him before His Father who is in heaven, to whom, in unity of the Holy Ghost be all honour, might, glory, power, for endless ages.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
God of our hearts, while desiring this prodigy, we, the children of the Holy Catholic Church, thank you for having caused us to be born in its bosom, and fed with the milk of pure faith. “You have not done this for every nation,” which vastly enhances the precious gift. We shall never cease to thank You for it, and to praise and bless you for having bestowed upon us such a mark of predilection. May our gratitude be sincere and eternal. Amen.
Download the book, "The Month of the Nativity"
|
|
|
|
| Children's Consecration to the Sacred Heart [1890] |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 10:23 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lord
- Replies (1)
|
|
Blessed Margaret Mary exhorted all Christians, even as they value their salvation, to consecrate themselves to the Heart of Jesus. These are her words: "The devil fears above all things else the accomplishment of this good work . . . by the saving of so many souls, through devotion to this loving Heart, of those who shall consecrate themselves wholly to Its love, honor, and glory."
A sure means of having all Christians consecrate themselves to the Divine Heart is to begin with the children. The year 1889 was the year of the reign of the Sacred Heart over society, promoted by the Consecration of Families to the Divine Heart. The year 1890, the 2d Centenary of Blessed Margaret Mary, should be the crowning and completion of the work so well begun. Under the auspices of this blessed seer a special effort will be made to consecrate to the Sacred Heart the "heart of the family"--the children so dear to the Divine Master. A special motive urgently pressing the proposal of this Consecration of Children, is the relentless and unholy warfare against the Christian education of children. A more powerful protection than this Consecration could not be given them.
Form Of Consecration
(To be said by all the children after the priest, or teacher, or one in the family leading.)
Priest or teacher: Divine Heart of Jesus, behold us prostrate in Thy sight to give Thee our love and consecrate ourselves to Thee for ever. In the name of Mary, our Mother in heaven, sweet Heart of Jesus, have pity on us.
Children: In the name of Mary, our Mother in heaven, sweet Heart of Jesus, have pity on us.
Priest or teacher: O good and most loving Jesus, during the days of Thy mortal life, Thou wert pleased to bless little children and didst allow them to press close to Thee, saying to the bystanders: Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not. "We thank Thee, O good Jesus, for Thy great love toward us and we offer in return our whole heart and all our love.
Children: We thank Thee, O good Jesus, for Thy great love toward us and we offer in return our whole heart and all our love.
Priest or teacher: O good and most loving Jesus, Thou delightest in the prayers of children and dost listen to their innocent desires. On this beautiful day, more than ever, give ear to their wishes and grant their requests. Together we will say: Heart of Jesus, bless our father, bless our mother, bless our relatives and our teachers.
Children: Heart of Jesus, bless our father, bless our mother, bless our relatives and teachers.
Priest or teacher: Heart of Jesus, bless our companions and pardon poor sinners.
Children: Heart of Jesus, bless our companions and pardon poor sinners.
Priest or teacher: Divine Heart of Jesus, we pray Thee, also, for the children of the whole world: guard the cradle of tho new-born, the school of children, the vocation of youth; be Thou Thyself the support of poor children and a father to orphans. But, most of all, O Jesus, Thou fulness of mercy and of love, we beseech Thee to aid us in the hour of death; then, more closely than ever before, unite us to Thy Divine Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Thy gracious Mother; be our shelter and our refuge, and our resting-place; and when, one after the other, we shall have fallen asleep in Thy blessed bosom, O Jesus, may each of us in Paradise find again all his family unbroken in Thy Sacred Heart.
All together: Divine Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! Great Saint Joseph, pray for us! Holy Guardian Angels, intercede for us! Amen.
Note: This consecration may be made by children at any time, either in common in church, or privately at home.
|
|
|
|
| Bishop Challoner: On the Wonders of God in the Incarnation of His Son [1807] |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 10:18 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
- No Replies
|
|
On the Wonders of God in the Incarnation of His Son
by Richard Challoner, 1807
![[Image: Incarnation_Wonders_Challoner_2019.jpg]](http://catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/Incarnation_Wonders_Challoner_2019.jpg)
Infant Jesus, true God and Lord, have mercy on us.
Consider first, how after the blessed Virgin's consent, and offering herself with a profound humility, with an entire obedience and a perfect conformity to the sacred will of God, by those words: 'Behold the handmaid of the lord, be it done to me according to thy word,' Luke i. 38, the greatest of all the wonders of God, and of all His works, was immediately effected: even a Man-God, the miracle of miracles. For a human body perfect in all its parts, was formed in an instant by the Holy Ghost, out of the purest blood of the blessed Virgin, and a most excellent rational soul was at the same time created; and this body and soul were joined with and assumed by the eternal Word, the second person of the most adorable Trinity. Thus God was made man, and man was made God; and the blessed Virgin was made mother of God. Thus in her womb was celebrated that sacred wedding of our human nature with the divine person of the Son of God, to the feast of which we are invited, Matt. xxii. Thus was our humanity exalted to the very highest elevation, by being united with, and subsisting by the person of, the eternal Word, and we all in consequence of this elevation of our human nature, have also been wonderfully dignified and exalted, by being raised up to a kindred with the most high God, who by taking to Himself our nature, has made us all his brothers and sisters; and by assuming our humanity has made us in some measure partakers of His divinity. O my soul, stand thou astonished at these wonders, which will be a subject of the greatest astonishment both to men and angels for all eternity! O admire and adore, praise and love, with all thy power, and with all thy affections, that infinite goodness that has wrought all these wonders out of love to thee!
Consider 2ndly, the wonders of God in all those graces and excellences which He conferred on the soul of Christ and on His sacred humanity, in the first instance of His conception, in consequence of its being united with the divine person--graces and excellences which are all immense and incomprehensible, and which exceed, without any comparison, all the rest of the wondrous works of God, and all whatsoever He has done at any time in favour of any of His saints, or of all of them put together. For God did not give to this His Son His spirit by measure, (John iii. 34,) as to the rest of His saints, but gave all things into His hands, 'and of His fullness we all receive,' John i. 16, even all grace and truth, according to the measure of His giving it to us, Eph. iv. 7. Now these graces and excellences we may reduce under the following heads: 1. An immense purity from all manner of sin or imperfection whatsoever--not as by privilege but in His own right, as being the Lamb of God, who came to take away the sins of the world. 2. The grace of sanctity, incomparable exceeding that of all the angels and saints put together; from whence He is called the holy of holies, Dan. ix., that is, the Saint of all saints--the Spirit of God resting on Him with all His gifts, with an incomprehensible plenitude, Isaias ii. 3. The grace of the beatific vision of the divine essence, and that in the most consummate degree, with proportionable love of the deity and joy in God. 4. All the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. 5. The power of working all kinds of miracle and of raising the dead to life by His own will, with a general command over all the elements and over all nature. 6. The power of excellency in forgiving sins, converting sinners, changing their hearts, ordaining sacraments and sacrifices, and distributing amongst men graces and super-natural gifts. 7. The grace of being the perpetual head of all the church, both of heaven and earth, and the source of all blessings, gifts, and graces that either have been, are at present, or shall at any time be bestowed upon this His mystical body, or any of its members. O what subject have we here, my soul, to bless and praise the eternal Father for all these excellent gifts and graces with which He has enriched His Son, the man Christ Jesus! How ought we also to rejoice and congratulate with the sacred humanity of our Saviour on this occasion, and to give thanks without ceasing for all that share or portion of divine grace we continually derive from this overflowing fountain!
Consider 3rdly, in all these graces and excellences conferred on the humanity of Christ in His incarnation, how that of the prophet was verified, Isaias ix. 6, 'A child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God, the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace.' Yes, Christians, these great titles here bestowed on your Saviour by the Spirit of God abundantly declare both the wonders that God wrought for Him and those which, through His incarnation, He has wrought also for you in giving Him to you; that He might be not only your Saviour, your redeemer, and your deliverer, but also your king, your lawgiver, your teacher, your model, your advocate, your physician, your friend, your high priest, and your victim, your father, and your head--in a word, the source of all your good; the way, the truth and the life, in your regard, by whom alone you can go to God. And do not all these great things, effected by the incarnation of the Son of God, show forth the power, the wisdom, the mercy, and goodness of God, with all the other divine attributes, infinitely more than any of the rest of the works of the Almighty!
Conclude to honour by a lively faith, by a serious and frequent meditation, and a sincere devotion, all those wonders of God, wrought, in the incarnation of His Son, both in favour of Him and of us, and to lead henceforward such lives as become those who, by this mystery, have been so highly exalted, and brought so near to the very source of all grace and sanctity.
On the Glory of God in the Incarnation of His Son
Consider first, how the angels, upon occasion of the birth of Christ, sung forth that blessed hymn, recorded Luke ii. 4, 'Glory to God on high, and on earth peace to men of goodwill;' to give us to understand that the incarnation and birth of the Son of God was designed to produce those two principal fruits, the greater glory of God and the peace and reconciliation of man with God. The glory of God shines forth most brightly in the incarnation of His Son by the manifestation of His power, of His wisdom, of His goodness, of His justice, and of His mercy, and by setting all these His divine attributes in their most beautiful light. The almighty power of God is here manifested in all these wonders He wrought in this mystery, and especially in that greatest and most glorious of all His wonderful productions, viz., a God-man--a greater work, without comparison, than the creation of ten thousand worlds. The infinite wisdom of God is here manifested in the contrivance of this wonderful way of uniting God and man, the creator and the creature, which were at an infinite distance from each other, so closely together as to be but one and the same person, and of reconciling by this means man, who was fallen from God by sin, in such manner as that, without his divine majesty departing in the least tittle from what was due to the reparation of His glory, He should continually receive from this one man, for every moment of time and eternity, a homage of adoration, praise, thanksgiving, and love, infinitely more glorious to the deity than all the homages of ten thousand worlds could be, though they were all full of angels and men eternally employed in nothing else but in glorifying God.
Consider 2ndly, with relation to the other attributes of God, viz., His goodness, His mercy, and His justice, how brightly they also shine forth in the incarnation of His Son, in which, according to the psalmist, (Ps. lxxxiv.,) 'Mercy and truth met each other; justice and peace have kissed.' The infinite mercy of God is set in no less clear a light by this mystery, in His here furnishing us, out of pure compassion, without any regard at all to our merits, with such and so great a Redeemer, to be both out priest and our sacrifice, for a propitiation for all our sins. And as to the infinite justice of God, so far from its being set aside in this mystery, or forgetting its right, it never exerted or manifested itself more than when it insisted upon such a satisfaction for sin as could not be paid by any lesser or meaner person than a God made man. So that the justice of God has been in effect more evidently demonstrated by the incarnation of the Son of God, coming down here amongst us to be made a bleeding victim for our sins, than by any other judgments or punishments whatsoever that either have been or ever could be inflicted by the divine majesty, either in time or eternity, for the sins of men.
Consider 3rdly, that the infinite dignity of the person of this God-man, as it gives an infinite dignity and worth to all His performances--even to every thought, word, or action, and every suffering of His--so it is an inexhaustible source from which continually and eternally flows an infinite glory to God from every thought, word, or action, or suffering of his Son, even from the moment of His conception till His expiring upon the cross, as well to all that adoration, praise, glory, thanksgiving, &c., which, as man He shall present to His Father for all eternity. See then, my soul, how very much the incarnation of the Son of God has advanced the glory of His Father; since every motion of the heart of this God made man gives in effect infinitely more glory to the Father, both in time and eternity, than all the adorations and praises of millions of angels and millions of worlds could ever have done, though eternally employed in nothing else but in glorifying God. Besides all that glory which the Son of God incarnate has procured for His Father by His gospel; by His worship which He has established here upon earth; by that great sacrifice of His body and blood, offered up daily on a million of altars, &c., and that kingdom of souls which he has here purchased, to be delivered up hereafter to His Father, to glorify Him for all eternity.
Conclude to rejoice in this great glory which the Son of God has procured both for His Father and for Himself by His incarnation, and sing to Him with the angels hymns of perpetual praise for His having so well associated together in this mystery His own glory with thy peace and salvation.
|
|
|
|
| Christmas Novena of St. Alphonsus Liguori |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 10:13 AM - Forum: Novenas
- No Replies
|
|
Christmas Novena
This Novena is translated from the Italian of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguoiri and was first published in 1758. Although this novena is intended primarily as a preparation for the feast of our Lord's Nativity, it can be used with spiritual profit at any time of the year as a devotion in honor of the Infant Jesus.
![[Image: ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimages2.fanpop.com%2Fima...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimages2.fanpop.com%2Fimages%2Fphotos%2F2800000%2FNativity-Baby-Jesus-Christmas-2008-christmas-2806904-468-309.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
First Day
God's Love Revealed in His Becoming Man.
Because our first parent Adam had rebelled against God, he was driven out of paradise and brought on himself and all his descendants the punishment of eternal death. But the Son of God, seeing man thus lost and wishing to save him from death, offered to take upon Himself our human nature and to suffer death Himself, condemned as a criminal on a cross. "But, My Son," we may imagine the eternal Father saying to Him, "think of what a life of humiliations and sufferings Thou wilt have to lead on earth. Thou wilt have to be born in a cold stable and laid in a manger, the feeding trough of beasts. While still an infant. Thou wilt have to flee into Egypt, to escape the hands of Herod. After Thy return from Egypt, Thou wilt have to live and work in a shop as a lowly servant, poor and despised. And finally, worn out with sufferings. Thou wilt have to give up Thy life on a cross, put to shame and abandoned by everyone." "Father," replies the Son, "all this matters not. I will gladly bear it all, if only I can save man."
What should we say if a prince, out of compassion for a dead worm, were to choose to become a worm himself and give his own life blood in order to restore the worm to life? But the eternal Word has done infinitely more than this for us, though He is the sovereign Lord of the world. He chose to become like us, who are immeasurably more beneath Him than a worm is beneath a prince, and He was willing to die for us, in order to win back for us the life of divine grace that we had lost by sin. When He saw that all the other gifts which He had bestowed on us were not sufficient to induce us to repay His love with love. He became man Himself and gave Himself all to us. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"; "He loved us and delivered Himself up for us."
Prayer
O Great Son of God Thou hast become man in order to make Thyself loved by men. But where is the love that men give Thee in return? Thou hast given Thy life blood to save our souls. Why then are we so unappreciative that, instead of repaying Thee with love, we spurn Thee with ingratitude? And I, Lord, I myself more than others have thus ill treated Thee. But Thy Passion is my hope. For the sake of that love which led Thee to take upon Thyself human nature and to die for me on the cross, forgive me all the offences I have committed against Thee.
I love Thee, O Word incarnate; I love Thee, O infinite goodness. Out of love for Thee, my God, I am so sorry for all the injuries I have done Thee, that I could die of grief for these offences. Give me, O Jesus, Thy love. Let me no longer live in ungrateful forgetfulness of the love Thou bearest me. I wish to love Thee always. Grant that I may always persevere in this holy desire.
O Mary, Mother of God and my Mother, pray for me that Thy Son may give me the grace to love Him always, unto death. Amen.
Second Day
God's Love Revealed in His Being Born an Infant.
When the Son of God became man for our sake. He could have come on earth as an adult man from the first moment of His human existence, as Adam did when he was created. But since the sight of little children draws us with an especial attraction to love them, Jesus chose to make His first appearance on earth as a little infant, and indeed as the poorest and most pitiful infant that was ever born. "God wished to be born as a little babe," wrote Saint Peter Chrysologus, "in order that He might teach us to love and not to fear Him." The prophet Isaias had long before foretold that the Son of God was to be born as an infant and thus give Himself to us on account of the love He bore us: "A child is born to us, a son is given to us."
My Jesus, supreme and true God! What has drawn Thee from heaven to be born in a cold stable, if not the love which Thou bearest us men? What has allured Thee from the bosom of Thy Father, to place Thee in a hard manger? What has brought Thee from Thy throne above the stars, to lay Thee down on a little straw? What has led Thee from the midst of the nine choirs of angels, to set Thee between two animals? Thou, who inflamest the seraphim with holy fire, art now shivering with cold in this stable! Thou, who settest the stars in the sky in motion, canst not now move unless others carry Thee in their arms! Thou, who givest men and beasts their food, hast need now of a little milk to sustain Thy life! Thou, who art the joy of heaven, dost now whimper and cry in suffering! Tell me, who has reduced Thee to such misery; "Love has done it," says Saint Bernard. The love which Thou bearest us men has brought all this on Thee.
Prayer
O Dearest Infant! Tell me, what hast Thou come on earth to do? Tell me, whom art Thou seeking? Yes, I already know. Thou hast come to die for me, in order to save me from hell. Thou hast come to seek me, the lost sheep, so that, instead of fleeing from Thee any more, I may rest in Thy loving arms. Ah my Jesus, my treasure, my life, my love and my all! Whom will I love, if not Thee? Where can I find a father, a friend, a spouse more loving and lovable than Thou art?
I love Thee, my dear God; I love Thee, my only good. I regret the many years when I have not loved Thee, but rather spurned and offended Thee. Forgive me, O my beloved Redeemer; for I am sorry that I have thus treated Thee, and I regret it with all my heart. Pardon me, and give me the grace never more to withdraw from Thee, but constantly to love Thee in all the years that still lie before me in this life. My love, I give myself entirely to Thee; accept me, and do not reject me as I deserve.
O Mary, thou art my advocate. By thy prayers thou dost obtain whatever thou wilt from thy Son. Pray Him then to forgive me, and to grant me holy perseverance until death. Amen.
Third Day
The Life of Poverty which Jesus Led from His Birth.
God so ordained that, at the time when His Son was to be born on this earth, the Roman emperor should issue a decree ordering everyone to go to the place of his origin and there be registered in the census. Thus it came about that, in obedience to this decree, Joseph went to Bethlehem together with his virgin wife when she was soon to have her Child. Finding no lodging either in the poor inn or in the other houses of the town, they were forced to spend the night in a cave that was used as a stable for animals, and it was here that Mary gave birth to the King of heaven. If Jesus had been born in Nazareth, He would also, it is true, have been born in poverty; but there He would at least have had a dry room, a little fire, warm clothes and a more comfortable cradle. Yet He chose to be born in this cold, damp cave, and to have a manger for a cradle, with prickly straw for a mattress, in order that He might suffer for us.
Let us enter in spirit into this cave of Bethlehem, but let us enter in a spirit of lively faith. If we go there without faith, we shall see nothing but a poor infant, and the sight of this lovely child shivering and crying on his rough bed of straw may indeed move us to pity. But if we enter with faith and consider that this Babe is the very Son of God, who for love of us has come down on earth and suffers so much to pay the penalty for our sins, how can we help thanking and loving Him in return?
Prayer
O dear Infant Jesus, how could I be so ungrateful and offend Thee so often, if I realized how much Thou hast suffered for me? But these tears which Thou sheddest, this poverty which Thou embraces! for love of me, make me hope for the pardon of all the offences I have committed against Thee.
My Jesus, I am sorry for having so often turned my back on Thee. But now I love Thee above all else. "My God and my all!" From now on Thou, O my God, shalt be my only treasure and my only good. With Saint Ignatius of Loyola I will say to Thee, "Give me the grace to love Thee; that is enough for me." I long for nothing else; I want nothing else. Thou alone art enough for me, my Jesus, my life, my love.
O Mary, my Mother, obtain for me the grace that I may always love Jesus and always be loved by Him. Amen.
Fourth Day
The Life of Humiliation which Jesus Led from His Birth.
The Sign which the angel gave the shepherds to help them find the new-born Savior, points to His lowliness: "This shall be a sign to you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." No other new-born baby who was wrapped in poor swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, a feeding trough for animals, could be found anywhere else but in a stable. Thus in lowliness the King of heaven, the Son of God, chose to be born, because he came to destroy the pride that had been the cause of man's ruin.
The prophets had already foretold that our Redeemer was to be treated as the vilest of men on earth and that He was to be overwhelmed with insults. How much contempt had not Jesus indeed to suffer from men! He was called a drunkard, a trickster, a blasphemer and a heretic. What ignominies He endured in His Passion! His own disciples abandoned Him; one of them sold Him for thirty pieces of silver, and another denied having ever known Him. He was led in bonds through the streets like a criminal; He was scourged like a slave, ridiculed as a fool, crowned with thorns as a mock king, buffetted and spit upon, and finally left to die, hanging on a cross between two thieves, as the worst criminal in the world. "The noblest of all," says Saint Bernard, "is treated as the vilest of all." But the Saint adds, "The viler Thou art treated, the dearer Thou art to me." The more I see Thee, my Jesus, despised and put to shame, the more dear and worthy of my love dost Thou become to me.
Prayer
O Dearest Savior, Thou hast embraced so many outrages for love of me, yet I have not been able to bear one word of insult without at once being filled with resentful thought--I who have so often deserved to be trodden under foot by the demons in hell! I am ashamed to appear before Thee, sinful and proud as I am. Yet do not drive me from Thy presence, O Lord, even though that is what I deserve. Thou hast said that Thou wilt not spurn a contrite and humbled heart. I am sorry for the offences I have committed against Thee. Forgive me, O Jesus. I will not offend Thee again.
For love of me Thou hast borne so many injuries; for love of Thee I will bear all the injuries that art done to me. I love Thee, Jesus, who wast despised for love of me. I love Thee above every other good. Give me the grace to love Thee always and to bear every insult for love of Thee.
O Mary, recommend me to Thy Son; pray to Jesus for me. Amen.
Fifth Day
The Life of Sorrow which Jesus Led from His Birth.
Jesus Christ could have saved mankind without suffering and dying. Yet, in order to prove to us how much He loved us, He chose for Himself a life full of tribulations. Therefore the prophet Isaias called Him "a man of sorrows," His whole life was filled with suffering. His Passion began, not merely a few hours before His death, but from the first moment of His birth. He was born in a stable where everything served to torment Him. His sense of sight was hurt by seeing nothing but the rough, black walls of the cave; His sense of smell was hurt by the stench of the dung from the beasts in the stable; His sense of touch was hurt by the prickling straw on which He lay. Shortly after His birth He was forced to flee into Egypt, where He spent several years of His childhood in poverty and misery. His boyhood and early manhood in Nazareth were passed in hard work and obscurity. And finally, in Jerusalem, He died on a cross, exhausted with pain and anguish.
Thus, then, was the life of Jesus but one unbroken series of sufferings, which were doubly painful because He had ever before His eyes all the sufferings He would have to endure till His death. Yet, since our Lord had voluntarily chosen to bear these tribulations for our sake, they did not afflict Him as much as did the sight of our sins, by which we have so ungratefully repaid Him for His love towards us. When the confessor of Saint Margaret of Cortona saw that she never seemed satisfied with all the tears she had already shed for her past sins, he said to her, "Margaret, stop crying and cease your lamenting, for God has surely forgiven you your offences against Him." But she replied, "Father, how can I cease to weep, since I know that my sins kept my Lord Jesus in pain and suffering during all His life?"
Prayer
O Jesus, my sweet Love! I too have kept Thee suffering through all Thy life. Tell me, then, what I must do in order to win Thy forgiveness. I am ready to do all Thou askest of me. I am sorry, O sovereign Good, for all the offences I have committed against Thee. I love Thee more than myself, or at least I feel a great desire to love Thee. Since it is Thou who hast given me this desire, do Thou also give me the strength to love Thee exceedingly.
It is only right that I, who have offended Thee so much, should love Thee very much. Always remind me of the love Thou hast borne me, in order that my soul may ever burn with love of Thee and long to please Thee alone. O God of love, I, who was once a slave of hell, now give myself all to Thee. Graciously accept me and bind me to Thee with the bonds of Thy love. My Jesus, from this day and forever in loving Thee will I live, and in loving Thee will I die.
O Mary, my Mother and my hope, help me to love Thy dear God and mine. This is the only favor I ask of thee, and through thee I hope to receive it. Amen.
Sixth Day
God's Mercy revealed in His Coming Down from Heaven to Save us.
Saint Paul says, "The goodness and kindness of God, our Savior, has appeared." When the Son of God made Man appeared on earth, then was it seen how great is God's goodness towards us. Saint Bernard says that first God's power was manifested in the creation of the world and His wisdom in its conservation, but His merciful goodness was especially manifested later in His taking human nature on Himself, in order to save fallen mankind by His sufferings and death. For what greater proof of His kindness towards us could the Son of God show us than in taking on Himself the punishment we had deserved?
See Him as a weak, new/born infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Unable to move or feed Himself, He has need of Mary to give Him a little milk to sustain His life. Or see Him again in Pilate's courtyard, tied with fast bonds to a column and there scourged from head to foot. Behold Him on the way to Calvary, falling down from weakness under weight of the cross that He must carry. Finally behold Him nailed to this tree of shame, on which He breathes His last amid pain and anguish. Because Jesus Christ wished that His love for us should win all the love of our hearts for Himself, He would not send an angel to redeem us, but chose to come Himself, to save us by His Passion and death. Had an angel been our redeemer, men would have had to divide their hearts in loving God as their Creator and an angel as their redeemer; but God, who desires men's whole hearts, as He was already their Creator, wished also to be their Redeemer.
Prayer
O my dear Redeemer! Where should I be now, if Thou hadst not borne with me so patiently, but hadst called me from life while I was in the state of sin? Since Thou hast waited for me till now, forgive me quickly, O my Jesus, before death finds me still guilty of so many offences that I have committed against Thee. I am so sorry for having vilely despised Thee, my sovereign Good, that I could die of grief. But Thou canst not abandon a soul that seeks Thee.
If hitherto I have forsaken Thee, I now seek Thee and love Thee. Yes, my God, I love Thee above all else; I love Thee more than myself. Help me. Lord, to love Thee always during the rest of my life. Nothing else do I seek of Thee. But this I beg of Thee, this I hope to receive from Thee.
Mary, my hope, do thou pray for me. If thou prayest for me, I am sure of grace. Amen.
Seventh Day
The Flight of the Infant Jesus into Egypt.
Although the Son of God came from heaven to save men, scarcely was He born when men began to persecute Him to death. Herod, fearing that this Child would deprive Him of his kingdom, seeks to destroy His life. But St. Joseph is warned by an angel in a dream to take the Infant and His Mother and flee into Egypt. Joseph obeys at once, and tells Mary about it. He takes the few tools of his trade, that he may use them to gain a livelihood in Egypt for himself and his poor family. Mary wraps up a small bundle of clothes for the use of her little Son, and then, going to the crib, she says with tears in her eyes to her sleeping Child, "O my Son and my God! Thou hast come from heaven to save men; but hardly art Thou born when they seek to take Thy life." Lifting Him meanwhile in her arms and continuing to weep, she sets out that same night with Joseph on the road to Egypt.
Let us consider how much these holy wanderers must have suffered in making so long a journey, deprived of every comfort. The divine Child was not yet able to walk, and so Mary and Joseph had to take turns in carrying Him in their arms. During their journey through the desert towards Egypt they had to spend several nights in the open air, with the bare ground for their bed. The cold makes the Infant cry, and Mary and Joseph weep in pity for Him. And who would not weep at thus seeing the Son of God poor and persecuted, a fugitive on earth, that He might not be killed by His enemies!
Prayer
Dear Infant Jesus, crying so bitterly! Well hast Thou reason to weep in seeing Thyself persecuted by men whom Thou lovest so much. I, too, O God, have once persecuted Thee by my sins. But Thou knowest that now I love Thee more than myself, and that nothing pains me more than the thought that I have so often spurned Thee, my sovereign Good.
Forgive me, O Jesus, and let me bear Thee with me in my heart on all the rest of the journey that I have still to make through life, so that together with Thee I may enter into eternity. So often have I driven Thee from my soul by my sins. But now I love Thee above all things, and I regret above other misfortunes that I have offended Thee. I wish to leave Thee no more, my beloved Lord. But do Thou give me the strength to resist temptations. Never permit me to be separated from Thee again. Let me rather die than ever again lose Thy good grace.
O Mary, my hope, make me always live in God's love and then die in loving Him. Amen.
Eighth Day
The Life of the Child Jesus in Egypt and in Nazareth.
Our Blessed Redeemer spent the first part of His childhood in Egypt, leading there for several years a life of poverty and humiliation. In that land Joseph and Mary were foreigners and strangers, having there neither relatives nor friends. Only with difficulty could they earn their daily bread by the labor of their hands. Their home was poor, their bed was poor, their food was poor. Here Mary weaned Jesus; dipping a piece of bread in water, she would put it in the sacred mouth of her Son. Here she made His first little garments and clothed Him with them. Here the Child Jesus took His first steps, stumbling and falling as other children first do. Here too He spoke His first words, but stammeringly. O wonder of wonders! To what has not God lowered Himself for love of us! A God stumbling and falling as He walks! A God stammering in His speech!
Not unlike this was the poor and humble life that Jesus led in Nazareth after His return from Egypt. There, until He was thirty years old. He lived as a, simple servant or workman in a carpenter shop, taking orders from Joseph and Mary. "And He was subject to them." Jesus went to fetch the water; He opened and closed the shop; He swept the house, gathered the fragments of wood for the fire, and toiled all day long, helping Joseph in his work. Yet who is this? God Himself, serving as a apprentice! The omnipotent God, who with less than a flick of His finger created the whole universe, here sweating at the task of planing a piece of work! Should not the mere thought of this move us to love Him?
Prayer
O Jesus, my Savior! When I consider how, for love of me. Thou didst spend thirty years of Thy life hidden and unknown in a poor workshop, how can I desire the pleasures and honors and riches of the world? Gladly do I renounce all these things, since I wish to be Thy companion on this earth, poor as Thou wast, mortified and humble as Thou wast, so that I may hope to be able one day to enjoy Thy companionship in heaven. What are all the treasures and kingdoms of this world" Thou, O Jesus, art my only treasure, my only Good!
I keenly regret the many times in the past when I spurned Thy friendship in order to satisfy my foolish whims. I am sorry for them with all my heart. For the future I would rather lose my life a thousand times than lose Thy grace by sin. I wish never to offend Thee again, but always to love Thee. Help me to remain faithful to Thee until death.
O Mary, thou art the refuge of sinners, thou art my hope. Amen.
Ninth Day
The Birth of Jesus in the Stable of Bethlehem.
When the edict was issued by the emperor of Rome that everyone should go to his own Joseph and Mary went to be enrolled in Bethlehem. How much the holy Virgin must have suffered on this journey of four days, over mountainous road and in the wintertime, with its cold rain and wind! When they arrived in Bethlehem, the time of Mary's delivery was near. Joseph, therefore, sought some lodging where she might give birth to her Child. But because they were so poor, they were driven away from the houses and even from the public inn, where other poor people had found shelter. So in that night they went a short way out of the town and there found a cave that was used as a stable, and here Mary entered. But Joseph said to his virgin wife, "Mary, how can you spend the night in this cold, damp cave and here give birth to your Child?" Mary however replied, "Dear Joseph, this cave is the royal palace in which the King of kings, the Son of God, wishes to be born."
When the hour of her delivery had arrived, the holy Virgin, as she knelt in prayer, all at once saw the cave illumined with a dazzling light. She lowered her eyes to the ground and there saw before her the Son of God now born on earth, a poor little Babe, crying and shivering in the cold. Adoring Him as her God, she took Him to her breast and fondled Him. Then she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him on the straw of the manger that stood in the cave. Thus did the Son of God choose to be born among us to prove His infinite love for us.
Prayers
O Adorable Infant Jesus! I should not have the boldness to cast myself at Thy feet, if I did not know that Thou Thyself invitest me to draw near Thee. It is I who by my sins have made Thee shed so many tears in the stable of Bethlehem. But since Thou hast come on earth to pardon repentant sinners, forgive me also, now that I am heartily sorry for having spurned Thee, my Savior and my God, who art so good and who hast loved me so much.
In this night, in which Thou bestowest great graces on so many souls, grant Thy heavenly consolation to this poor soul of mine also. All that I ask of Thee is the grace to love Thee always, from this day forward, with all my heart. Set me all on fire with Thy holy love. I love Thee, O my God, who hast become a Babe for love of me. Never let me cease from loving Thee evermore.
O Mary, Mother of Jesus and my Mother, thou canst obtain everything from thy Son by thy prayers. This is the only favor I ask of Thee. Do thou pray to Jesus for me. Amen.
|
|
|
|
| Big Pharma, Gates, Fauci, UK officials accused of crimes against humanity in complaint to IC |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 08:00 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
- No Replies
|
|
Big Pharma, Gates, Fauci, UK officials accused of crimes against humanity in complaint to International court
Activists are charging UK officials and the world’s most powerful health figures with genocide,
citing a range of statistics on the effects of COVID “vaccines” and policies.
![[Image: shutterstock_1102794638-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/shutterstock_1102794638-810x500.jpg)
Thu Dec 16, 2021 - 9:29 pm EST
(LifeSiteNews) – A group that includes former Pfizer vice president Dr. Michael Yeadon filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of UK citizens against Boris Johnson and UK officials, Bill and Melinda Gates, chief executives of Big Pharma companies, World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab, and others for crimes against humanity.
The UK group, including an astrophysicist and a funeral director, additionally charged Dr. Anthony Fauci; Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO); June Raine, chief executive of Medicines and Healthcare products regulatory agency (MHRA); Dr. Radiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, as “responsible for numerous violations of the Nuremberg Code … war crimes and crimes of aggression” in the UK and other countries.
After repeated unsuccessful attempts to raise a case with the English Court system, the applicants resorted to calling with “the utmost urgency” for the ICC “to stop the rollout of COVID vaccinations, introduction of unlawful vaccination passports and all other types of illegal warfare … being waged against the people of the UK.”
In the group’s complaint filed December 6, they present evidence that COVID-19 “vaccines” are in fact experimental gene therapies engineered with gain-of-function research from bat coronaviruses, arguing that these “vaccines” have caused massive death and injury and that the UK government has failed to investigate such reported deaths and injuries; that COVID case and death numbers have been artificially inflated; that face masks are harmful due to hypoxia, hypercapnia and other causes; and PCR tests are “completely unreliable” and “contain carcinogenic ethylene oxide.”
They furthermore argued that effective treatments for COVID-19 such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, were suppressed, leading to a greater death toll from COVID-19 than what should have occurred.
They make the case that the lockdowns were enacted under the pretext of artificially inflated infection and death numbers from an engineered virus, as well as the experimental “vaccines” have resulted in:
Massive short-term damage and death, with at least 395,049 reported adverse reactions to COVID “vaccines” in the UK alone; a sharp uptick in ChildLine calls from vulnerable children during lockdowns; “destruction of wealth and businesses” through imposed lockdowns;” “severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law,” including bans on travel and gatherings, and forced quarantine and self-isolation; apartheid due to segregation by vaccine passport possession; and “expected reduction in fertility” after “vaccination,” among other harmful physical and psychological effects.
In addition, the applicants maintain that “the suppression of safe and effective alternative treatments for Covid-19 amounts to murder and warrants a full investigation by the court.” They noted that besides censorship of online information on and promotion of these alternative treatments, “some academic journals are blocking the publication of studies showing the effectiveness of drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.”
The applicants also cited quotes from Holocaust survivors who have drawn “stark parallels between Covid restrictions and the beginning of the Holocaust.” In an open letter, the Holocaust survivors have asked medical regulatory authorities to “stop this ungodly medical experiment on humankind immediately,” which they maintain violates the Nuremberg Code.
They even allege that “another holocaust of greater magnitude is taking place before our eyes.” One survivor, Vera Sharav, noted in an interview cited in the complaint,
“The stark lesson of the Holocaust is that whenever doctors join forces with government and deviate from their personal, professional, clinical commitment to do no harm to the individual, medicine can then be perverted from a healing, humanitarian profession to a murderous apparatus.”
“What sets the Holocaust apart from all other mass genocides is the pivotal role played by the medical establishment, the entire medical establishment. Every step of the murderous process was endorsed by the academic, professional medical establishment. Medical doctors and prestigious medical societies and institutions lent the veneer of legitimacy to infanticide, mass murder of civilians.”
According to the applicants, all of the damaging consequences of the “vaccines,” lockdown and virus meet the criteria for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against the people of the UK, because the guilty “members of the UK government and world leaders have both knowledge and intent with respect to these alleged crimes.”
In fact, they argue that the destructive consequences of the “vaccines,” lockdowns and engineered virus are deliberate attempts at depopulation and societal destabilization as part of a globally coordinated plan to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
They argue that these measures therefore also constitute a “crime of aggression,” that is, the effort “effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State.” In this case, they claim, the goal is to “dismantl[e] all the Democratic Nation States, step by step,” and to “destroy small and medium sized businesses, moving the market shares to the largest corporations,” owned by the ultra-rich, to give this “elite” group greater political and monetary control.
|
|
|
|
| Fr. Daniel Lord: Revolt Against Heaven [1936] |
|
Posted by: Stone - 12-17-2021, 07:51 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
- No Replies
|
|
SHARP commotion ran through the streets of heaven. The calmness of eternal day was broken by alarms and shouts, the gathering of angels in excited, hurried knots, the rushing to and fro of mighty-winged seraphs.
Two names were spoken in hushed and terrified voices, the name of the Most High and the name of His fairest and strongest angel, Lucifer. Glorious beyond all the other angels of heaven, endowed with brilliant intellect and compelling will, Lucifer had deserved his name and wore it proudly, Bearer-of-the-Light.
But where heaven yesterday had known peace, today excitement drew angels together in troubled groups and filled the very air with dread and wonder. A new problem, filled with fearsome possibilities, agitated their intellects and disturbed their wills.
For from the White Throne had gone forth word of a new Leader. He was, rumour said, to be chosen from the ranks of a race as yet untreated. Mankind was to be the race's name. The Most High had announced that the Second Person of the Divine Trinity would pass by the nine orders of heavenly knighthood and unite Himself with this inferior nature of an inferior race. Uniformed in this lower rank, He would still claim place as God of heaven and commander of the celestial armies.
What of Lucifer?
Wonder that grew into consternation, questions that rose like the swift swelling of a hurricane, swept the far reaches of the Heavenly City. In every mind was one piercing doubt. What of Lucifer?
Would the mighty warrior of God take his commands from one who wore a uniform less splendid than his own? Would Lucifer drop his proud head in obedience to a being of inferior race? If sometimes with a glint of rising resentment he accepted the orders even of the Most High, what would he do when the orders fell from the lips of a man lower in human nature than the weakest and least noble angel among Lucifer's subordinates?
Though there was doubt in the minds of all, the passing of the day brought to Lucifer's friends a frightening certainty. God Himself might command Lucifer and be obeyed; but were the command sounded by a lesser voice than that of Omnipotence, Lucifer, his followers felt, would lift his head in proud refusal. He was not likely to recognise a substitute commander for the Almighty.
Suppose, ran the terrifying speculation, he refused to acknowledge this new commander in chief. Would God bow before his haughty resentment? Would God yield to His glorious favourite? And if God did not yield, that might mean war in heaven. Dared Lucifer make war upon the Almighty?
Was he-and here his followers felt a strange exultant thrill-strong enough to wrest to himself the sovereignty even of the Heavenly city?
'He would not dare rebel,' was the voiceless whisper that swept through heaven.
'He will keep his plume unbowed to any save the All-Highest, even if this means war,' his closest followers answered; and there was pride in their reply.
The Summons
Across the measureless distances of heaven the ringing blasts of trumpets were flung from battlement to battlement. Excited knots instantly slipped into disciplined companies. The disorderly rushing to and fro became the steady flow of marshalled spirits toward the Throne from which radiated the white, vibrant light that filled heaven. Silence quickly chained the doubts and questions that still thrashed about in angelic minds, for the wordless voice of Omnipotence sounded above the trumpets and the wind-like rush of forward-moving legions.
Before the Throne the long lines halted. Light leaped from spear to spear and flashed back in brilliant repercussion from starlike shields. Great, massed choirs, whose voices were like the swell of an organ built by no human hands, now stood silent and waiting.
God from His throne looked upon the angels of His creation, and loved them as an artist loves the supreme work of his hands, and then loved them with the deeper love of a father for the brilliant, glorious sons of his begetting.
A wide, hollow square of angels framed the reviewing ground before the Throne. Into this square, his glory like the glory of a thousand suns, his strength anal beauty involuntary tribute to God's great craftsmanship, stepped Lucifer. His sword flashed in a salute that had in it as much pride as reverence-flashed and was quickly buried once more in its scabbard. His head, unbowed, was lifted toward the face of the All-Beautiful.
A New Captain
Then, above them all rolled the words of divine prophecy and command. In the fulness of time a man should be born, Jesus who is the Christ. He was to be the Second Divine Person, emptying Himself and taking the form of a slave to serve and redeem a fallen race. Clad in perishable flesh and human mortality, he was still to be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Commander in Chief of the armies of earth and heaven. Now in vision they will see their new Leader. In vision they are free to accept or reject His divinely appointed leadership.
The glorious, haughty form of Lucifer stiffened. An almost imperceptible tremor ran through the serried ranks, quickening the light that broke in glinting sparks from spear tips and swaying the shields to the involuntary tautening of angelic arms.
Suddenly darkness, heaven's first and only darkness, flung its quenching cone over all. Then, like a powerful spotlight, a circle of radiance splashed the steps of the now hidden throne, and in the exact centre of the circle stood the figure of a Man.
The Man
A long, seamless garment robed Him from throat to instep. Above the robe, His dignified head was crowned with the strangest crown-blood-red thorns matted into the gold of His hair. He carried, not in His hand, but against His shoulder, a terrifying standard: two heavy, crossed beams that He held with difficulty. And with the slow lifting of His head His eyes swept the angel ranks, not commandingly, but in tender, pitiful beseeching.
Again the voice of the, Almighty rolled and shook in power and majesty.
'Your Commander and your King!'
Tense, almost tangible, silence as the humble, beseeching eyes of the Man swept their lines hungrily. Then the vision was gone. Like the lash of a whip withdrawn, the circle of light was snapped away. Again the city was flooded with the light from the great White Throne. And in its searching brilliance the angels stood revealed.
Half of them knelt or stood with lifted spears offering royal salute. But myriads stood hesitant, shocked by the command to bend their proud strength to one of inferior nature. Still others had drawn back in instinctive repugnance and proud resentment. This weak, tortured man with thorns for a crown and crossed sticks for a standard, could he be the Commander in Chief of their strength and beauty and magnificence? It could not, must not be! What would Lucifer think or do or bid them do?
'Non Serviam'
To him swung every eye. Would he kneel, raise his sword in salute to royalty, turn cold back on inferiority, or . . . Like lightning on a summer's evening, Lucifer whirled. His sword leaped from its scabbard and the flame of its blade cut like a sulphurous flash through heaven.
Instantly the resentful and the wavering angels knew. That flashing sword was their rallying signal. His angry, black look swept the ranks, searching for and singling out his followers. Then back he whirled toward the Throne, knowing that with him was half of heaven's army, and his voice, was dashed with all his power into the very face of God.
'I will not serve!' he shouted.
And from the hosts of his followers came the answering cry, 'Nor will we serve!'
War Breaks Out
Instantly heaven seemed chaos. From their knees or from their exalted gestures of salute leaped the obedient angels. The banner of Michael, chosen, in one of God's instants, captain of His faithful warriors, cracked in the wind of conflict. Pure white, it bore for the first time the purple symbol of the Cross.
Over the swiftly marshalled hosts of Lucifer leaped like a tongue of devouring flame the red banner of defiance. Trumpet answered trumpet in angry screams as the two armies rushed with the force of a tempest through a narrow canyon into fierce embrace. The shock of that meeting seemed to rock the foundations of heaven.
It was war the more terrible because the issue was not death-death could not touch immortal spirits-but ruin of power and beauty and spiritual dignity.
Lines swung back and charged again like breakers against a rocky cliff. Angels, a moment before brothers, rushed at each other with levelled spears. But in the hands of Lucifer and his army these spears melted as candles melt in the hottest flame; while the spears of Michael's followers dug deep wounds that all eternity would never heal.
Back were flung the lines of the rebellious angels. A moment they hesitated on the brink of God's city. One final charge of loyal lances against dishonoured shields, and Michael saw his opponents fall like lightning from the clouds, and the gates of hell, shell-hole of this battle of immortals, swung open and swung shut to cut off the last repetition of that cry, despairing now and crazed in agony, but shrill and bitter in its defiance. 'I will not serve.' And the echoes of the universe flung it back and then far beyond the reaches of obedient space.
The armies of God and evil had met in their first deadly conflict. Creatures for the first time had dared defy their Creator. They had dreamed of driving Him out of His own creation?
Free Choice
Sin with quick fingers fashioned the blood-red banner of rebellion. The first sad army of the proud and rebellious had looked upon the leadership of Christ and had cried defiantly, 'Him we will not serve.' And the battle cry and the rebellion had initiated a war that never yet has ended.
From the very start God placed no compulsion upon His creatures. He wanted only free service. He preferred to be served by willing spirits. Beautifully, He despised the service of slaves.
So for the angels there was a perfectly free choice. They could accept Him or reject Him, lift their swords in allegiance to His divinely appointed Leader or turn their swords against His Sacred Heart. They could league themselves with their Creator or join forces with the rebellious Lucifer. They could stand under the standard marked with the purple cross or under the red flag of rebellion.
Retribution
They made the choice. Those who chose the leadership of Christ were assured of eternal happiness. Michael and Raphael and Gabriel, the angels who later were to be men's guardians, the mighty spirits of the Apocalypse, were given an eternity of God's friendship and glory and of faithful devotion to the interests of man. The very moment that saw the rebellious angels draw their swords against Christ, saw them transformed by the ugliness and destructive power of their own malice into the devils of hell.
From that day to this the rival banners have flown: the pure white banner bearing the purple cross, and the flaming red flag of revolt. Around each has gathered an eager army. One accepts gladly as captain and leader the crucified Christ. The other picks up and echoes in each new age the battle cry of the fallen angels, 'We will not serve!' Christ or Lucifer, there are no other leaders, only subordinates. God's cause or the cause of evil; the choice is inevitable.
The Captain Comes
He came, that Commander of the angelic vision, and Lucifer watched Him with hatred and tricky plotting. Thrice they met face to face in the insult of Christ's triple temptation. Conquered from that moment, Lucifer worked, as Lucifer has cleverly learned to work, through and behind his willing lieutenants.
Christ's first call to His followers was the cry of the Babe of Bethlehem swept through the world on a wintry wind. Then from His hidden life He walked out into the rough highway, searching for followers. He entered fearlessly the bloody battlefield of Calvary, and for a moment Lucifer must have exulted in the thought that perhaps at last his red banner was floating in victory.
During those three years of searching and struggling, success and failure fought for apparent mastery. Men and women flocked to Christ's side, loving His humility and humanity. But far more turned from Him, contemptuous of His work-hardened hands and the ragged followers He drew after Him. His stalwart courage and tender heart, the divine power that manifested itself in His miracles and the human and divine pity that dropped those miracles upon mankind's bent shoulders won Him deep and passionate love. But it won Him enmities in high places, and suspicion where suspicion quickly bred hate and hate bred death.
For every twelve who hailed Him as King on Palm Sunday, a hundred gathered in dark corners of temple or pretorium to league themselves in ugly plots against His life. They hated the thought of a king born in a manger. They could yield no throne to Him except the cross on which they meant to exalt Him. They resented His talk of the pure of heart and His denunciation of divorce. They were furious that He wasted time on fishermen and peasants, while they waited vainly in palaces for a sight of His miracles or the recital of one of His parables. They wanted a king who would smash their enemies, not one who preached love even for those who had wronged them.
Again the Armies
His very first appearance on earth was the signal for the gathering of those two rival armies as the first vision of Him in heaven had split the heavenly hosts into relentless civil war. Lucifer was not ready now to let the Captain gain an easy victory. He had his army ready to fight every step of the way. And that army rose quickly at his command.
If Magi came from afar seeking Christ, the filthy Herod sent his soldiers seeking Him too. One group came bearing gifts to a Child; the others came with bared swords for the throats of infants. And Lucifer exulted when the first brush with the armies of evil sent Christ into apparent retreat to Egypt.
The World is Split
High was the purpose that flamed in the heart of Christ the Saviour. He had from the moment of the Incarnation one multiple purpose: to drive sin and its sad consequences from the world, to bring happiness to human hearts, to restore to our race the lost sonship of God and the heavenly inheritance which Adam lost when for a moment he rejoined the rebellious forces of Lucifer. His divine mission was to bring to the world the blessed peace of His Beatitudes.
Yet He foresaw mankind split into hot enmities because of Him. The army of Lucifer lay solidly entrenched throughout a world that had gone over in rank treason to idolatry and sin. Glorious armies of white-clad virgins would follow Him singing; but armies of martyrs would grow red under the swords of His enemies or in the midst of torturing flames.
He visioned the cross carried before peaceful armies led by Paul and Patrick and Augustine and Boniface as they marched to conquer new lands. But he saw hairy hands clasping the handles of Asiatic lances and Mohammedan swords to cut through Christian civilisations a path for oriental barbarism or the rising Crescent.
He watched golden pens racing across vellum to write His praise, but the harsh scratch of other pens reached His ears, pens dipped in acid and venom as they attacked His personality, His doctrines, His Church, His truth, and corroded with their poison the minds of His followers.
No Coercion
He was, He well knew, the storm centre of the world, a sign to be contradicted, a person set for the rise and fall of many in Israel and in the whole world. Lucifer had refused Him homage; Lucifer would struggle with all his subtle, if sin-twisted, intellect to turn mankind from His service and His praise.
At any moment Christ could have wrested from the world a slave service. But this He would not do. He wanted free men and women to follow Him. He had not wanted the angels to be slaves; He would not allow mankind to be slaves, either. They must answer His quiet 'Follow Me' as John did or Magdalen. He would bind no one to His service except with the chains of love and devoted loyalty.
Force would have been easy. His was the power that struck the raging waves into cowering tranquillity. He spoke quiet words to the thundering tempest, and it shrank back to its mountains, cowed and frightened. Once, in the garden, when His enemies leaped forward at the signal kiss to bind Him, He spoke gently and they fell back upon the ground helpless to touch Him. Even then, however, He released them and stood patiently for the beginning of the bloody work on which they were obstinately bent.
He could have forced men to follow Him, broken their wills to His commands, and dragged them after Him by the same divine force that commanded demons, sent swine thundering into the sea, shook free the grip of disease, changed the very nature of water by bidding it be wine, and forced a few loaves and fishes to feed a multitude.
Instead, almost humbly, He asked men to follow Him. 'Come,' He said gently again and again as He walked along the road or skirted a lake. A handful of fishermen, out of all the fishing fleets of Galilee, heard the invitation and accepted. One taxgatherer from Rome's multitudes forsook his money table for a place in the apostolate. And of those who did accept, one sold out to His enemies as a spy, preferring thirty pieces of silver to the riches of a spiritual kingdom.
Lucifer, self-confessed lord of the world, had won the vast majority to his side. With gold he held them, or with the laughter of dancing girls, or the promise of kingdoms bounded only by the limits of civilisation, or with cleverness calling itself wisdom and drugging the mind, or the sweet insistence of wine. Men gladly fought the wars of evil, lured on, as warriors all too often are lured, by Lucifer's promise of the spoils that belong to the conquerors of earth.
The Crest of the Conflict
Never did the eyes of Christ so clearly see the rival armies as He did from the lookout of the Cross. Embattled Rome was there, guarding with its world-conquering legionaries this spiritual world conqueror from possible rescue by His tattered followers. Embattled Israel stood at alert attention, the soldiers of the high priests with swords and clubs ready to smite down any disciple who dared to slink back in the futile hope of saving his Master.
In the blackness that covered Calvary, Lucifer brooded over his suspiciously easy victory and wondered why he had been allowed to win. He had gloated in quiet confidence as he saw his work taken completely from his hands by able lieutenants. His war against Christ was safely carried on without his personal care as long as he trusted one regiment to Herod, wedded to incestuous lust, and another to Pilate, cynical of anything except a place in the good graces of Caesar, and a third to the high priests, who had grown to prefer power to the truth, the wealth and revenue of the temples to religion, the certain luxuries and eminences of this life to the doubtful blessings of eternity. Never, and he knew it, had Lucifer seen his army more adequately commanded. Yet, even so, he was puzzled by the swiftness and apparent completeness of his victory.
The twin powers of the world, political Rome and religious Israel, had looked upon the leadership of Christ and rejected it. Like Lucifer, they would have none of a king born in a stable, nurtured in a cottage, trained in a carpenter shop, sun-browned by foot-journeys through the hill country, companioned by illiterate fishermen, acclaimed by women and children, leading the life of a poor, itinerant preacher, pitiful toward the poor whom they despised, and pitiless toward their transparent hypocrisy.
Rejection
So, when Christ turned toward them and said, 'Come, follow Me,' Lucifer knew that their answer would be the same as his own.
'We will not serve,' they shouted. But Lucifer must have seen the irony of their further cry, 'We have no king but Caesar,' when he knew how vigorously and tirelessly they were fighting for him.
Never was a leader rejected with such relentless finality. They levelled against Him Roman short swords and heartpiercing lances. They beat Him down with Jewish clubs and scourges. No consecrating oil of royalty anointed His head or filled His palms. They had only one anointing for Him, the purple blood spilled from His own body. Before Him they bowed indeed, but in the taunting homage of mockery and the jeers of unbelief as they substituted for grateful praise their laughter and obscene ridicule.
A vast armed host, led by a Roman Governor, and blessed by outstretched priestly hands, sprang up to repel Him just as the legions of Lucifer had rallied against Him in that first heavenly vision. He asked for followers, and they willingly followed Him along the Via Crucis. He pleaded for companionship, and they crowded about Him only when He was safely fastened to a cross. His divine eloquence was directed against the horrible effects of sin, and sin achieved its masterpiece, the murder of a God-man.
His Defeated Army
Lucifer stood by in panting approval as Christ's mercy actually inflamed hatred and His gentleness aroused force. Dying, He saw for His bodyguard the coldly indifferent executioners and priests who, like fox hunters, had tracked their quarry to the death. Did He see the sinister smile of Lucifer, proudof this day's work as his revenge for the defeat of heaven?
Yet, from the Cross Christ saw what Lucifer could not possibly see nor guess, the rising of another army that would pick up this blood-stained cross and carry it to triumphant victory. Strangely impotent in appearance, but wonderfully potent in the powers o£ their soul, the nucleus of that army was near Him as He died: Mary the Mother; John, His young captain; the Holy Woman, who loved Him unselfishly, and a centurion whose spear through His side opened the way to his own faith and the world's way to the Sacred Heart.
Lucifer would have, had he so much as noticed them, despised that pitiful handful. Lucifer has a way of missing the strength of God's saints.
But the rest of Christ's army was in apparent rout. His bodyguard of apostles had been scattered in the first sharp brush of conflict. The disciples, his skeleton regiment, were flung back into complete disorder. Hopelessly outnumbered, they crouched in their hiding places as the conquering armies of Lucifer's lieutenants swept to and fro unchallenged.
In heaven the conflict between His faithful angels and the insurgent forces of Lucifer had been sharp but quickly decisive. Michael's army, in an irresistible charge, had swept Lucifer's proud regiments over the brink to utter defeat. From Calvary He saw His army beaten not so much by their vigorous foes as by the terrors and cowardice of their own hearts.
Never had an army been so hopelessly outnumbered and outfought. Never had a victory so completely shattered the vanquished while it carried the defeated commander, not to a noble death under fire, but to a slave's death by torture.
Victory Beyond Defeat
Yet Christ, as He looked from the Cross upon the world's most decisive battlefield, must have smiled through His pain and shame. He must have smiled at the puzzled gloating of Lucifer, the open exultation of the priests, and the cold assurance of the legionaries. For beyond the defeat He saw the slow reforming of His scattered bodyguard, the regathering of His skeleton regiment, augmented by the first converts of Pentecost, and the counter-attack that was to sweep across the world.
He foresaw that tiny army starting off with high hearts and His own noble purposes. He saw it attack Israel in its temple and Rome in its impregnable citadels. He saw that army turning aside sword stroke with uplifted crucifix, sapping in the dark tunnels of the catacombs under the very centre of Roman dominion, matching the naked bodies of martyrs against the tridents of steel-clad gladiators, pitting virgins in victorious conflict against the lions of the arena and the beasts in men's hearts, beating the imperial legions with an army of slaves released from the slave marts by the freedom of Christ.
He saw, as Lucifer could not possibly see, how one morning Rome would wake to find its emperor kneeling before the Pope, His personal representative on earth, and asking for baptism. He saw the Roman eagles disappearing from the standards of the Empire to give place to the Labarum of the Cross. Israel He saw as it hurled its power against the Rock of Calvary and then against the Rock of Peter, breaking into a thousand scattered, exiled groups without temple or priesthood or fatherland.
Lucifer, puzzled as he was by his too easy conquest, could not see this, but he was soon to feel that counter-attack upon his allies.
The Victorious March
The fishermen Christ had chosen soon became the inspired preachers and writers of His Gospel. John of the rower's bench became the lofty eagle of God, and Peter from the helm of a fishing craft became Peter guiding the destinies of His Church. The scattered handful of His fighting men and women, broken by the victorious plotters of Good Friday, reformed into the irresistible Church marching through history, attacked and persecuted, outnumbered and outshouted always, yet moving from victory to victory.
The peaceful regiments of His priests and religious, His devoted fathers and mothers, His high-minded young men and pure young women took up His victorious war. They made relentless battle upon sin; they hated from their hearts the forces of evil; they struggled with undimmed hopes for the conquest of the world. And when they conquered, they imposed upon the vanquished, not the chains of the oppressor, but the reign of Christ's beatitudes and the kingdom of His peace.
All this is history. History, too, is the brilliant way in which after each defeat Lucifer musters new armies and initiates a new campaign. Seldom, though, does he announce his war in terms of loyalty to himself. Instead, he makes the war centre, as spiritual war will always centre, around the figure of Christ. He did not say, as he rallied to his side Nero and the persecuting emperors, Julian the Apostate and the cynical philosophers of his court, all the powers of pagan lust and pagan cynicism, 'Here is my banner; follow it.' Instead, he cried, 'There is His Cross; attack it.'
So, since Calvary, there has been a warfare against Christ to which there is neither truce nor armistice. Always Lucifer, seen or unseen, acknowledged or lurking behind some chosen subaltern, has been the leader of the attack on Christ, which is really an attack upon all that is best in humanity.
New Armies
Often the war was bloody. More often it was fought with subtler weapons than swords or lances. Arianism made war on the divinity of Christ and carried forward that war on the rugged war ponies of Teutonic barbarians. But a thousand other heresies, all directed against the person of Christ, used brilliant books and scholarly-sounding lectures, political intrigue and polished rhetoric.
Mohammed might rouse wild Arab tribesmen to a holy war against the Cross and Christ; his far more potent weapon was the lust of the harem and the promise of an earthly paradise followed by an eternity of unending sense of gratification.
There have been armies like that of Genghis Khan, marching forward under oath to stable their horses on the altar steps of St. Peter's. Lucifer surely approved that oath. But there have been the far more deadly armies of a pagan renaissance, attacking the love of Christ by offering instead the love of decadent Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, proposing the rotten novels of Petronius Arbiter for the Gospel according to St. John, and the brilliant smut of the Decameron for the parables of Christ. The perverted brilliance of Lucifer surely approved all that with much more enthusiasm.
The War Goes On
Today, however much humanitarianism may soften the hearts of men and pacifism outlaw armies and navies and beat swords and guns into pen points, the war between good and evil, between Christ and Lucifer, between those who accept the Saviour's leadership and those who reject it, goes on unendingly. Around the person of Christ still gather His faithful armies. Against Him are directed, not crude spears or ten-inch guns, but the crafty dislike and resentment and far subtler warfare of clever minds and rotten morals, by men who hate His law and refuse to permit His intrusion into their lives or loves.
They may scarcely know His name or recognise His face. They may violently deny or contemptuously laugh at the idea that there is or ever was a Lucifer. They are none the less making war upon Christ and carrying on the warfare begun in heaven. They are fighting the things which He came to bring to the world: purity and charity and faith and the love of realities beyond this world. They are fighting for the things by which Lucifer conquers men for himself: pride and sin and lust and power and dominance and gold and pleasure and the things of the immediate Now rather than the things of the ultimate Then.
With or Against
Christ stated the fact of this unending war in one clear phrase: 'He that is not with Me is against Me.' There is no middle ground. We can no more be on the side of Christ today and at the same time on the side of His enemies than we could, in the year 33, have been a disciple of Christ and approved the treachery of the priests and the death sentence passed by Pilate.
Pacifists in this war between good and evil are monstrosities . Either we accept the standard of His Cross or we are really under the red banner of Lucifer. We promote His kingdom upon earth or we make war upon it. With Him or against Him. There is no third choice.
The Fight is Fiercest
Never was the fight as fierce or as bitter as it is today. War against God has reached incredible heights of intensity and hatred. Organised atheism captures Russia, walks in doctor's hood into college classrooms, and shoots the poisoned bullets of its propaganda from behind the shelter of newspapers, pamphlets, books and magazines.
Defiant of all laws of civilised warfare, it carries its war to women and children and organises them into battalions of death. Lucifer admitted God even when he fought Him. The foes of Christ had first to lay their hands upon Him before they could put Him to death. Atheism, by a supreme contradiction, makes war upon a God whose existence it denies. It says there is no God and then, with personal venom and fury, attacks Him.
Surely Lucifer must gloat over this magnificent re-inforcement of his army. War was never fought more unscrupulously.
The War of Contempt
Where God is not flatly denied, war is made upon Him by a much more subtle method. His presence in the world is ignored. His rights over His own creation are emphatically questioned. That He has anything to say about His own creatures is regarded as a relic of obsolete superstitions. Whether he made the world or not is of little importance; it is important that He have no right to rule it. He may have redeemed the world, but the world has no desire for that redemption.
Cashiering Christ
Lucifer, who once cast his glance covetously on the control of heaven, must have a sneaking admiration for those who have tried to grasp the control of earth by the simple expedient of asking God to mind His own affairs and let mankind alone.
One reads much of modern literature wondering if the authors ever heard of God or Christ. Clearly they know there is a fight between the issues of Christ and the issues of evil, but just as clearly theyare not interested in Christ's side. He is thrust aside as carelessly is if He were a myth like William Tell or an outmoded philosopher like Philo the Greek. Man is encouraged to trace his relationship with the orangutan; his relationship with His Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, is regarded almost as a blot on the escutcheon.
Lucifer tried by the magnificently conceived and executed conspiracy of Calvary to drive Christ from the world. He failed. Modern society has taken up his task most willingly.
Frankly Ignored
Christ spoke very clear words on a great many subjects. He expected, apparently, those words to be heard, accepted, and obeyed by His followers. Otherwise they could hardly call themselves His followers. Are they heard?
With almost brutal frankness He called marriage following divorce adultery. Almost every so-called Christian country has written divorce into its laws. Most of them have speeded up their divorce courts to the point of vying in efficiency with a modern automobile factory.
Millstones
Christ talked beautifully of personal purity and laid down strict laws for its preservation. A thousand writers of the day regard His views as childish and amusingly out of date. The hero of your modern novel changes his mistress when he changes his tie. The heroine of your best seller kicks purity under her party slippers or mules and tears it into ribbons as something less important than the favour of a New Year's party.
Christ recommended millstones for the necks of those who scandalised little children. Today little children, when they are graciously' permitted entrance into this modern world, are in a million cases deprived of any knowledge of God their Father or of their eternal destiny, and are subjected to the most insidious and disheartening attacks upon their innocence. It is not hard to imagine the approval which Lucifer gives to all this.
Christ demanded faith. Faith is widely regarded as the refuge of cowardly minds and a survival of stale superstition. He praised the poor in spirit; our monuments rise and our incense is burned to honour those who have built fortunes by the doubtful methods and brash buccaneering of modern business. Lucifer would hardly disapprove of that.
Christ is not admitted to the public schools or State universities of Christian lands. His image may not appear on the walls of our State institutions. He is permitted no place at the council tables of the nations, and His presence in diplomatic circles would be often, to put it mildly, embarrassing for all concerned.
Or Disliked
Lust, that tore Christ's back with scourges, is no longer regarded as very terrible. In fact, it is treated as distinctly amusing and undoubtedly delightful. (Let lust make war upon Him if it will. Perhaps Herod was right when he treated the pure Christ as a fool.) Pride, that crowned His head with thorns, is a modern sign of bravery and courage. (The soldiers may not have been far wrong when they laughed at the meek Christ and struck His bowed and thorn-crowned head with reeds.)
Doubt, that led the callous Pilate to let an innocent man go out to die, is now regarded as a sign of broadmindedness and an enlightened attitude toward life. (Perhaps Pilate knew what he was doing when he sent this man who taught an embarrassing and annoying sort of truth to crucifixion.)
Honesty is good enough for underlings. One does not rob a news-stand, but one may without qualms of conscience pillage the stock market. (Clearly the real crime of Judas was not that he sold Christ, but that he failed to demand a decent price for his sale.)
State worship, which once placed a statue of the emperor in Roman temples, has become the religion of millions, and the State rises supreme over all things, Church, conscience, the right of mothers and fathers to their own children, property, the natural right of a sick man or an imbecile to life. (Can it be that we have no king but Caesar?)
If the French Revolutionists took a courtesan and placed her upon the altar of Notre Dame, we have seen notorious courtesans placed in the electric lights of Broadway, honoured by the admiration and adulation of millions of men and women, and held up on stage and screen for the delighted admiration of the young. (It may be possible that God made a mistake in selecting His Mother.)
Worship of Self
Most of all, Christ has seen Himself supplanted in modern life, not by the service of even so brilliant a leader as Lucifer. When the angels turned from God to Lucifer, they were picking a bad second choice, yet a second choice of brilliance and beauty and power. Today Lucifer has cleverly substituted for himself and God the contemptible service of self, the debasing worship of self.
'Why should you serve the Creator?' Lucifer insinuates into receptive ears. 'Serve your own interests, and only your own interests. What right has God to give you commandments? Make your own laws. What right has Christ to lay down hard laws for you? Decide for yourself which of His commands you will accept and which you will reject. The Church pretendsto speak with an infallible voice. Don't allow your life to be governed by so thoroughly mediae- val an institution.'
And his suggestions, accepted and repeated by thousands of brilliant subordinates, ring through modern life and modern literature. Lucifer is content gracefully to appear to step aside, provided that the service of self means the thrusting of God into second place.
For His Defence
This is the black picture of the warfare, the presentation of just one side of the conflict. Fortunately there is another side, too, the ever-growing army sworn to stand at the side of Christ and fight His war to the death. There are the modern successors, millions of them, of the good angels and of those faithful few who loved and clung to Him when the whole world was conspiring for His death.
For, if every sin is a blow struck at Christ, every good action is a blow struck in His defence. If impurity, by rotting bodies, brutalising souls, destroying homes, and spoiling the future of little children, drags down the work He came to do, every pure man or woman is an intimate associate of the pure Christ and places a pure body between the wolves of the world and the future generation.
Dishonesty takes sides with the lying witnesses who swore away the life of Christ; honesty cries out in His defence. Doubt wags its head and walks no more with Him; faith says staunchly, 'To whom else shall we go? for Thou hast the words of eternal life.' If the grafting politician and the tricky statesman ape the betrayal of Judas, the honourable man of affairs stands with John near the Cross, admitting his part with Christ crucified.
High Stakes
Men and women are prone to forget the tremendous issues at stake in this warfare. Christ is the concrete expression of what is finest and best in humanity. We cannot make war upon Him without attacking human purity, unselfishness, love of neighbour, high honour, service of country, gratitude for favours, the desire to benefit mankind, tenderness of heart, strength of purpose, respect for women, gentleness to the unfortunate, comradeship among men, reverence for little children, loyalty to friends, forgiveness of enemies, all that He Himself expressed in the idea of the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of men.
Nor can we make war on any of these things without making war on Him.
The man who betrays a woman betrays Christ's reverent love of womankind. A man who tricks his neighbour, tricks the Christ who bade us love our neighbour. No man closes his heart to the cries of the unfortunate or to the needs of little children without closing his heart to the Christ who comforted the unfortunate and loved little children. If a man refuses forgiveness to his enemies, he dare not ask forgiveness of the Christ from whom he himself so desperately needs forgiveness.
'As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me.' Christ's statement is unequivocal and inclusive. For the good it should be the highest joy; for the evil, a frightening consideration.
So, if one adopts the side of Christ, one stands for all that is best in human conduct.
If one takes any low standard, at that moment he has turned against Christ and taken his place with the lustful Herod, the tricky Judas, the sceptical Pilate, the ambitious priests; and Lucifer the proud holds out welcoming arms to another recruit.
Christ's army is not battling merely to scale the heights of heaven. It is fighting with all its magnificent strength to bring decency to earth, and honour and cleanness of body and soul. It is warring for the protection of children and women and homes, of the weak and defenceless, of the precious things on which the happiness of the world is grounded and without which the earth becomes a pigsty and a terrifying cage of lawless wild animals.
Again the Vision
So, before the world today appears, as it appeared in that first vision of heaven, the calm, strong, beautiful, appealing figure of Jesus Christ. He looks straight into the heart of every man and woman in the world. Each heart hears Him say, 'Come, follow Me.'
No invitation could be clearer than this royal invitation to enlist as the saints have done, under the standard that signifies happiness for the world and the conquest of .that world for the Heavenly Father. Strange1y enough, that invitation sounds in the hearts of millions who never knew the name of Jesus Christ and other millions who know Him only imperfectly. It is the rallying cry of all the good and fine throughout the world.
Invitation and Response
Yet it is, we must remember, an invitation. No coercion is exercised here. No force binds or compels. No chain drags any soul to slavery. All must join Him freely. He invites men and women to accept His captaincy. He offers them His comradeship as well as His leadership. But they must answer spontaneously, moved by the charm of the Leader and the glory of His cause.
And from a million loyal followers goes up the answer, in rousing shout, in quietly whispered prayer, in gallant gesture, in the quick bending of the knee: 'Lead on, for we will follow You.'
Dominance
From another million go up low rumbles of protest, wild shouts of indignant refusal, sneering laughter tinged with contempt, indignant repudiation of all the invitation implies. Cowards turn away afraid of the conflict. Laggards glance back over their shoulders at the beautiful things of the world (made in that moment especially fascinating by command of Lucifer) and sigh, 'Must I give up all these to follow You?' Proud heads are flung upwards as Lucifer's was flung, and the cry, 'I will not serve!' is hurled in the face of Christ.
Now, as in every age, Christ's is the dominant figure. In love or hatred men look up at Him, see Him, and lift their hands flung high in royal salute or clenched in threatening fist. Cowards may run away, but there is no place for them to run except into the ranks of His enemies. Men may seek to avoid the conflict; they find themselves in the end leagued, by their destructive apathy, with His enemies.
Now and always 'He that is not with Me is against Me.'
New Weapons
Day after day the din of battle rises all about the modern man and woman. From filthy news stands the poison gas of rotten literature floats in deadly green clouds. Sharpshooters from a decadent stage snipe virtue, innocence, and the decencies. Scholarly professors fire deadly shrapnel into crowded classrooms, with deadly effect upon the souls of youth.
Dishonest business enlists the brains and brilliance of men in a war that makes might right and sees in success the supreme justification for any method of attack. Dark conspiracies hurl mobs against personal property. The hobnailed armies of Communism march steadily on against State and Church and the home and the commonest rights of humanity.
With Michael and His Hosts. With masterly generalship Lucifer enlists on his side great forces of cleverness and wit and beauty and wealth and envy and passion and discontent and pride. He knows that even with them he can never ultimately defeat God or His chosen Leader, Jesus Christ. But he also knows that they canhurt God's best beloved sons and daughters. They can impede the work of His Church. They can spoil the peace and happiness of earth. They can drive men into the mad charge of battle, until, blinded by the smoke and deafened by the din, they regain full consciousness only as the gates of hell clang to behind them. Recruiting his army on earth, Lucifer knows he is recruiting his slaves for eternity.
But that side which was powerful enough to attract God's warrior, Michael, and the best of the angelic hosts is daily augmented by the best of earth. New missionaries, cross aloft, advance steadily to the conquest of fresh lands. Each morning, at a million altars, the priests bring down the Commander in Chief for an early council before the day's battle. Religious priests and brothers train young men to fight the battle of life with high courage.
Brave, splendid men fire a decisive no into the teeth of temptation. Young men face the hot rebellion within their own souls, curb it with strong, pure hands, and turn what might have been ruinous passion into the devoted service of God and humanity. The same emotional strength which, perverted, would have made them rakes and roués and despoilers of innocence makes them, enlisted in the cause of Christ, tender husbands, sympathetic fathers, sincere lovers of their fellow-men.
And though they may not wear silver armour or stride a white horse, young women and older women, like modern Joans of Arc, do mighty battle for God's cause. Devoted, unselfish mothers, they guard courageously and vigilantly the little fortresses that are their homes. Tenderly they bind the wounds that sin has made in human souls.
Purity with them is the golden shield protecting their bodies for the sake of the man they will love and the children they will give to the Lover of little children. Charity for them is the daily walking at the side of the Divine Physician, touching with cool, healing hands the aching heads and sick hearts of humanity, bringing to sin-sodden mankind the tenderness that lies in the soul only of good women.
Stainless nuns hold the far outposts of Christ's far-flung battle line in hospitals, orphanages, refuges, schools, contemplative convents. Splendid mothers stand protectingly between their children and the soldiers of a modern Herod come to slay them. Young women walk into the world, and their shining purity and intelligent faith strike victoriously for Christ with wounds that bring life, not death, safety, not ruin, to the future.
Defence by Attack
In this war, as in all wars, the best defence is fearless attack. The army of Christ does not merely stand its ground in safe entrenchments. It carries the fight to the enemy. It even wins from the side of Lucifer new recruits for the army of God.
Sterling example carried into business and social life by those who stand by the side of the perhaps invisible Christ captures where arguments might be fired without results. Bad literature is met with the return barrage of good literature. Deeds of charity compel an acknowledgment of the love of God and of humanity that inspired them. Faltering souls are strengthened by theexample of heroic courage that they see in Christ's followers. Hesitant souls are swayed to the army that is Christ's.
Through History
Through the ages brave men and women have responded with all the high enthusiasm of their hearts to this war that throws them into the companionship and under the captaincy of Christ. Paul rose from the dust to turn the sword of persecution with which he had been smiting the Christians into the gloriously sweeping sword of world-conquest. Lucifer knew he had lost one of his brilliant allies when he heard the changed voice of Saul crying, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'
The martyrs went out into the battlefield glad to shed their blood in so glorious a cause. Missionaries walked fearlessly into savage lands where Lucifer was worshipped under a thousand hideous shapes and with a thousand vile rites, to fling down his obscene images from the temples and put in their place the symbol of Redemption.
Husbands and fathers, coming from their homes beautifully like the house of Nazareth, preached to the world by example and by deed the beauty of the faith that inspired their conduct.
And the glorious army of women, from those first brave souls on Calvary to the last courageous girl entering religious life or the modern Madonna accepting the children God sends her, have carried on the fight with a strength that cannot be resisted. Agnes and Cecilia and Theresa and Catherine, Jane Frances and Frances of Rome, Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena, the nun who trained you in third grade, the mother whose devoted self-sacrifice made your youth safe and happy, are Christ's willing warriors on the only important battlefield in the world.
A Reconnoitre of the Enemy
But before us, more truly now than ever, the army of Lucifer gathers in restless energy and skilled plans of attack. Brilliantly the light gleams from their armour, though that armour covers hearts filled with hatred of God and His law, and with open purposes that mean the destruction of the human race through an attack on faith, on charity, on innocence, on marriage, on the home.
Scarcely less beautiful and strong do they seem than were the angels who rallied to the side of Lucifer when he began his war upon God. They bear a strong resemblance to those haughty priests who held fast the rich corridors and sanctuaries of the Temple of Jerusalem and to those clever, cynical, magnificently strong Romans who looked upon the figure of a Carpenter-King and thought Him more than a little absurd. And like the priests and the governors, these moderns are leagued together in a frank conspiracy to destroy the Christ who still has the temerity to speak to a morally emancipated world of purity and faith and the humble acceptance of His law.
What right-minded man or woman cares that the handle of the sword is beautifully carved and its blade of Toledo steel if its blows are directed toward the heart of Christ and of humanity? What matters it that tongues are clever if they sneer at the Saviour? What does literary brilliance avail, the almost diabolic cleverness of many a modern book, if that brilliance is used to attack God and ridicule the honest man and the pure woman?
What ultimately does it profit a business man to build his fortune to the clouds and fill his nights with pleasure, when in the end he' must give a strict balance-sheet of his life to the God whose accounting takes exact reckoning only of good and evil deeds? What will it avail the famous beauty to have her name written in the lights of Broadway if it is not also written in the Book of Life?
The Modern Challenge
The call to modern battle rings out in t he challenge of Christ's chief of staff, the Holy Father. 'Catholic Action!' he cries, and the followers of Christ respond.
This is no vague and mysteriously ambiguous call. It is simply the ringing challenge to be ashamed of sloth and apathy, when the army of Lucifer moves with restless energy and resourcefulness. It is the call to a life of active service, whatever one's vocation may be, service dedicated to Christ and His cause.
And the challenge has drawn to the side of Christ great new armies of warriors. Their own lives are the clear expression of the faith that is in their souls and of the love of God that dominates that faith. They are active in their campaign for souls, whether it be by supporting the missions, working for their parish church, taking part in great Catholic movements, spreading Catholic literature, talking of their faith to others, learning to know it better so that they may better explain it to inquirers, doing charity work among God's poor, or any of the thousand aggressive things by which new fields are won for Christ.
Ultimate Decision
When the soul faces its Judge it will not want to say in trembling admission, 'I waged war against You.' It will want to say, humbly but confidently, 'Christ, my Leader, to the best of my ability I fought at Your side.
This is no deathbed decision. One does not become a fighter as the last grim warrior known as Death grapples the body for a final throw. It is a decision for youth, for full maturity, for vigorously alive manhood and glowing womanhood. And it is a decision that must be made with perfect freedom.
Christ will not force your decision. You make it freely, without coercion. Now as always He wants willing service. Now as always He will accept no other. Christ wants brothers in arms, sisters in service, not slaves nor driven mercenaries.
The whole conquest of the world might have been accomplished by Christ alone. Christ was omnipotent, He was God made man; He might have crushed His enemies with a gesture, won the whole kingdom during his lifetime, marched into heaven in proud and complete triumph.
That, however, was not His purpose. He determined to share the glory with us, His creatures. He permitted us to take part in the conflict, to bear honourable scars, to win sectors of the battlefield for Him. He unfurled the banner of the Cross as a signal for volunteers. He wanted free companions. He asked for brave souls loyal to His Father and devoted to their fellow men.
My Captain
And with a thrill of pride I realise my high privilege. I may stand at the very side of Christ Himself. I may make His cause my cause, His glorious purposes my objectives. I may claim as my commander no selfish general bent on looting the world, nor harsh dictator whose eyes are aflame with lust of power and whose hand rises in mail-clad power above a crushed world. I follow no philosopher groping for truth nor scientist piddling about till he grasps some infinitesimal fraction of the universe and weighs it in inaccurate scales.
I follow the glorious Son of God, whose eyes are filled with tender pity, whose hands are scarred with the wounds of His sacrifice for mankind, whose feet are tireless in the pursuit of the world's needy, whose back is loaded with the weight of the world's ills, whose mind fountains divine truth, whose heart glows with burning love for all the children of His Heavenly Father.
I follow the Leader who hates only evil and makes war only upon those things that will ruin mankind. I give my loyalty to the world's most illustrious man. I follow Him, perhaps through the dangers and terrors of Gethsemane and the apparent defeat of Calvary, but to a victory as certain as Easter's and as glorious as the Resurrection.
Not the most beautiful or clever or brilliant or persuasive or powerful of Lucifer's modern lieutenants can turn me aside from that Leader. No eloquent tongue can seduce me. No enthralling book can persuade my treason. For those who fight Christ hardly knowing Him I feel deep and prayerful pity. For those who fight Him with hatred in their heart I have the firm resolve to meet war with war, their relentless attack upon Christ with my tireless defence of Him.
Your Choice
My captain is Christ. Let those follow Lucifer who do not know the Saviour or who, knowing Him, reject Him. So the choice must be made, and made by you. This is no allegory or flight of fancy or dramatic unreality. It is stern and terrifying fact.
As truly as in that vision of heaven, you must choose either Christ or Lucifer.
Then, where do you stand? Whom do you choose?
Lucifer and his followers? Those rebellious and ungrateful angels? Cain, the first murderer? The builders of the
Tower of Babel? The loathsome sinners of Sodom? The priests of occult and filthy cults? Pilate and Judas? Herod and Nero? Arius and the early heretics? Voltaire and the unhappy Christ-haters and God-baiters of literature? The donothing kings and their lustful courts? Henry of England, faithful neither to wives nor to Church? The brilliant modern writers who make their hatred of morality dominate their hatred of truth, and who lead young men and women deliberately astray? The murderers, convicted or unconvicted. whose hands are soiled with the blood of bodies and the invisible death of souls? Surely they do not appear attractive.
Or shall it be the army of Christ? Michael the Archangel, and the faithful band of warrior angels? The Patriarchs struggling against a world grovelling at the feet of idols and offering Lucifer the sweet incense of their sacrificed children and their raped virgins? Peter and the Apostles marching out to reconstruct the world? Sebastian and Lawrence? Anastasia and Philomena? Xavier and Aloysius? The Little Flower and young Gabriel? The worldconquering missionaries and the fathers happy in their children? The great abbesses of mediaeval days and the splendid mothers of holy families? The writers who loved truth better than cleverness, and true beauty more than the daintiest smut? The scholars who could see beyond the atom under their microscope to the God who sent the atom's particles spinning in a tiny solar system? Saints and poets and the vast army of the pure and strong and good?
Mary is there. So are the great and virtuous who perhaps never heard the name of Christ, but who loved their fellow-men and worshipped truth and beauty with disinterested service.
Both groups ask you to join their ranks.
There is no escaping.
It is war to the death.
Which army is yours?
Which leader claims your allegiance?
Nihil Obstat:J. DONOVAN, Censor Deputatus.
Imprimatur: D. Mannix, Archiepiscopus Melbournensis. 1 May 30, 1936. (No. 64.)
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fephesiology...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fephesiology.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F05%2FVictorinus.jpg%3Fresize%3D574%252C1024%26is-pending-load%3D1%23038%3Bssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1)
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fcatholichou...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fcatholichousehold.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F01%2F16.-Adoration-of-the-Shepherds-Boucher-1.jpg%3Fw%3D1080%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1)
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Frlv.zcache.com%2Fsacred...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Frlv.zcache.com%2Fsacred_heart_of_jesus_child_religious_postcard-r26792ea9c42845b0b6df748254939fed_vgbaq_8byvr_704.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
![[Image: ?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.traditionalcatholicp...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.traditionalcatholicpriest.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F07%2Frebel_angels_rubens2.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booksofparadise.net...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booksofparadise.net%2Fassets%2Fimages%2Fproduct%2FR9198.JPG&f=1&nofb=1)
