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| On Devotion to the Passion of Christ [1807] |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 07:41 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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"Who was delivered up for our sins" --Romans 4:25
Consider first, that meditating on the sufferings and death of our Redeemer ought to be a principal part of the Christian's devotion during the time of Lent. For the season approaches in which we celebrate the yearly memory of our Lord's passion, and therefore the Church, which at no time can forget the sufferings and death of her heavenly Spouse, at this time particularly recommends to her children to set before their eyes their crucified Saviour, and to make him the great object of their devotion. His passion is the ever-flowing source of all mercy, grace, and salvation to us; all our good must be derived from His cross; therefore, the more we approach to Him in His sufferings, and station ourselves near the cross, by pious meditations on His passion, the more plentifully shall we partake of the mercy and grace which flow continually from those fountains of life, His precious wounds. The great design of Lent is that the sinner should now return to God, and sue for pardon and mercy; and what better means can he have for this, than by taking along with him to the throne of mercy the blood of Christ, by daily meditating on His passion.
Consider 2ndly, that the passion of Christ has been always from the beginning of the world, the great object of the devotion of the children of God: in all their bloody sacrifices of old, of oxen and sheep, they celebrated beforehand the death of the Lamb of God, slain in figure from the beginning of the world. And as, from the time of the fall of Adam, no grace could ever be derived to any man, but through the channel of the merits of the death and passion of our Redeemer, whose future coming was revealed to man immediately after his fall; so no sacrifices could ever be acceptable to God, but such as had relation to Him, and through faith in Him. Much more now under the new law, are all the faithful obliged to make the passion of Christ the great object of their devotion, since He has instituted the eucharistical sacrifice and sacrament, and left us therein the sacred mysteries of His body and blood; for this very end, that in our most solemn worship, we should have always before our eyes His passion and death. See, my soul, how much thy God desires thou shouldest remember what He has suffered for thee! And why? Doubtless that by this means thou mightest be confirmed in His love. O blessed be His goodness for ever!
Consider 3rdly, how ungrateful all such Christians are, as forget the suffering and death of their Redeemer; may they not all be reckoned in the number of those of whom he complained of old, by the Royal Prophet, that they left him alone in His passion, and took no notice of Him. 'I looked on my right hand, and beheld, and there was no one that would know me,' Ps. cxli. 5. Had the meanest man upon earth suffered but the tenth part of what our Lord has suffered for the love of one of us, we should be basely ungrateful if we ever forgot his sufferings and his love. What then must we think of ourselves, if we forget the unspeakable sufferings and infinite love of the Son of God Himself, nailed to a cross, to deliver us by His death from the eternal torments of hell? Ah, Christians, let us never be so ungrateful.
Conclude, O my soul, at this holy time at least, daily to accompany thy crucified Jesus by meditations on His sufferings. 'With Christ I am nailed to the cross,' said St. Paul, Gal. ii. 12. 'My love is nailed to the cross," said St. Ignatius, the martyr. O that like these generous lovers, we could always adhere to our crucified God.
On the Great Advantages of Devotion to the Passion of Christ
Consider first, that the consideration of the passion of Christ is the sovereign means of all good to Christian souls. 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up,' saith our Lord to Nicodemus, John iii. 14, 15, 'that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have everlasting life.' As then the looking at the brazen serpent, (which was a figure of the death of Christ,) was the means of divine appointment to heal the Israelites, who were bitten by the fiery serpents sent among them for their sins, and to rescue them from temporal death; so the contemplation of the passion of Christ, is the great means to heal Christian souls from the bites of the infernal serpent, and to deliver them from everlasting death. Every sinner that looks for mercy, must return to God with his whole heart, and that by faith, hope, love, and repentance. Now it is in meditating on the passion of Christ we contemplate the great object of our faith the chiefest ground of our hope; the most pressing motive of divine love; and the strongest and most effectual inducement to repentance for our sins. O! let us embrace then this great means of bringing us to God, and to all good.
Consider 2ndly, that as the belief of Christ crucified is the most fundamental article of the Christian's faith, so it has the greatest influence of all other articles on our justification; according to that of the Apostle, Rom. iii. 23, 24, 25, 'that we all have sinned and need the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God had proposed to be A PROPITIATION THROUGH FAITH IN HIS BLOOD,' &c. 'Tis then through faith in His blood we are to be introduced to the divine mercy and 'tis by meditation on His passion we are to be introduced to a lively faith in His blood. So that the devotion to the passion of Christ is the shortest way to come at justifying faith. It has no less influence on our hope, by setting before our eyes how much God has loved us in giving his only Son, and the great grounds we have to look for all good through him. For as the Apostle writes, Rom. viii. 32, 'He that spared not even His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, hath He not also with Him given us all things.' O what an earnest indeed has God given us of all mercy, grace, and salvation in the blood of His Son! O what may not poor sinners hope for from such and so great a Redeemer, if they apply to this sacred passion by daily meditations, and offer up their humble supplications to His Father, through Him, and His infinite merits.
Consider 3rdly, that as nothing contributes so effectually to our justification and sanctification as the love of God; so nothing contributes more effectually to excite this heavenly love in our souls than the devotion to the passion of Christ. For there he must clearly discover the incomprehensible goodness of God, and the inexhaustible treasures of His divine love for us. This excites in us a desire of returning love for love; life for life. This attracts us, like Magdalene, to the feet of our crucified Saviour, with an earnest desire to wash them with penitential tears, flowing from, and enlivened by, divine love. This makes us grieve for our past ingratitude, in having had hitherto so little sense of His goodness and love; this makes us lament the share our sins have had in nailing Him to the cross; this teaches us to offer our whole hearts to Him, in order to make Him the best amends we are capable of by loving Him henceforward, both in time and eternity. Thus the devotion to the passion of Christ introduces that penitential love to which our Lord attributes the remission of sins, when he says of Magdalene, Luke vii. 47, 'Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much.'
Conclude to station thyself at the foot of the cross, and by the daily contemplation of the sufferings of thy Redeemer, so to exercise thy soul in faith, hope, love, and repentance, as to secure to thyself mercy, grace, and salvation.
On the Lessons Christ Teaches in His Passion
Consider first, that the devotion to the passion of our Lord brings with it other great advantages to the soul, inasmuch as it teaches us many excellent lessons for the regulating our lives according to his blessed example. The Son of God came down from heaven, not only to shed his blood for us to pay our ransom, but also to give himself to us as a perfect pattern of all virtues for us to follow in the practice of our lives; that so the image of God in man, which had been disfigured by sin, might be repaired and reformed according to this great original. Now, although the whole life of Christ was full of admirable examples of all Christian virtues, yet they nowhere shine forth more brightly than in his passion, in which he has drawn, as it were, under one view, all the great lessons of virtue he had taught in his life, both by his words and his works. So that the passion of Christ is the great school that the Christian must frequent by devout meditations, if he desire to learn the virtues of his Redeemer. He must look on by contemplation, and execute in work what he sees in this devout pattern, which his Lord here shows him, on Mount Calvary, if he desire to make his soul a living tabernacle for the living God. And it was said to Moses when he was to make the tabernacle of the covenant:- 'See that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shown thee on the Mount,' Heb. viii. 5.
Consider 2ndly, what the lessons are that Christ more particularly desires to teach us in his passion. The Apostle informs us, Phil. ii. 5, 8, that they are principally his obedience and his humility. 'He humbled himself, become obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross;' and this, that we might learn to be of the like mind. O let us study well these great lessons. Adam fell from God by disobedience; to gratify himself, he transgressed the holy law of God; and so entailed both sin and death upon all his offspring. By the obedience of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, we are delivered from sin and death, but upon articles of learning and practising his obedience, and that also unto death; by a constant and perpetual will of sticking close to the commandments of God at all events, and of rather dying than transgressing his holy law. This is the obedience that Christ expects we should learn from his cross, so as to be ever willing to part even with our dearest affections, rather than offend our God; and to submit to any sufferings whatsoever rather than to disobey. This is true Christian obedience, and nothing less will bring us to God. My soul, thou must learn this lesson at the foot of the cross.
Consider 3rdly, what a lesson of humility Christ has given us in the whole course of his passion; becoming therein, 'as a worm and no man; the reproach of men and the outcast of the people,' Ps. xxi. 7. See how he humbled himself, under the malediction of our sins, in his prayer in the garden. How he humbled himself, in suffering with silence, all manner of calumnies, affronts, and disgraces. How he humbled himself under those ignominious and infamous torments of scourging at the pillar, crowning with thorns, and his carriage of the cross. In fine, how he humbled himself, in his being crucified between two thieves, and in dying that most disgraceful death of the cross. But who is this, my soul, that thus humbles himself, and makes himself thus mean and contemptible for thee? Why it is the Lord of Glory; it is the Most High; it is the great King of heaven and earth. And why does he thus debase himself? It is to teach thee his humility; a lesson so necessary, that without learning it thou canst never please God, nor have any part with him.
Conclude to study well these necessary lessons, by a daily attendance upon our Lord in his passion. He came down from heaven to be our teacher; and his cross is the pulpit from which he most feelingly and effectually preaches to our souls.
On Other Lessons to be Learned from Christ in His Passion
Consider first, that in the passion of Christ His meekness is no less admirable than His humility. These two He jointly recommended in life to be learned of Him, Matt. xi. 29. And these two He jointly taught in death by His great example. 'He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer He opened not His mouth.' Isai liii. 7. 'The Lord God hath opened my ear,' saith he, Isai l. 5, 6, 'and I do not resist--I have given my body to the strikers, and my cheeks to them that plucked them; I have turned not away my face from them that rebuke me, and spit upon me.' And why all this? But 'to leave us an example that we should follow His steps,' 1 Pet. ii. 21, 23. 'Who when He was reviled did not revile; when He suffered He threatened not; but delivered Himself to them that judged Him unjustly.' O let us learn from the consideration of the behaviour of our Lord in His sufferings to suppress all the risings of our passion and pride, and to imitate His meekness and silence; who in the midst of affronts and injuries of all kinds, 'became as a man that heareth not, and as a dumb man not opening his mouth.'
Consider 2ndly, that the devotion to the passion of Christ is the great means to teach a Christian patience under all the crosses and sufferings we are exposed to during our mortal pilgrimage. We cannot live without crosses and sufferings; and 'in our patience' under them, 'we are to possess our souls.' Luke xxi. 19. Patience both sweetens and sanctifies all our sufferings; 'patience is necessary for us, that doing the will of God, we may receive the promise.' Heb. x. 36. 'Patience hath a perfect work; that we may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing.' James i. 4. As none hath ever gone to heaven but by the way of the cross, so none can ever come thither without patience. Now, this all-necessary virtue of patience is best learned in the school of the passion of Christ by the consideration of the multitude and variety of His sufferings; and the manner in which He endures all for the love of us. How shall a sinner (who has deserved hell for his crimes) pretend to complain, or think much of any sufferings in life or death, when by a serious meditation he sets before his eyes the far greater sufferings of the innocent Lamb of God, endured with an unwearied patience, for his sins?
Consider 3rdly, what further lessons are to be learned from the contemplation of the passion of Christ. 1. Of charity for our enemies; by considering the Son of God, praying for them that crucified Him, and dying for His enemies. 2. Of perfect resignation, and conformity in all things to the holy will of God; by the great example of the prayer of our Lord in His agony, 'not my will but thine be done;' and the consideration of the great sacrifice that He made of Himself to His Father upon the cross, without the least reserve. 3. Of the spirit of voluntary mortification and self-denial; by seeing how the Son of God allows Himself no ease or comfort in His sufferings; but both in life and death makes choice of what is most disagreeable to natural inclination. O my soul, these are necessary lessons indeed. See thou study them well at the foot of the cross, sitting under the shadow of thy beloved. O dear Jesus, do Thou, by Thy eternal grace, teach me effectually these virtues, by that mercy and love that nailed Thee to the cross.
Conclude by loving and blessing thy God for having sent thee so excellent a master from heaven to teach thee the way thither by His sufferings and death. Let these be always before thy eyes, and thou shalt never miss thy way.
To Jesus Agonizing in Honour of His Sweat of Blood in the Garden of Olives
Remember, O my Divine Saviour, Thine anguish and fear, when being in an agony, Thou didst prolong Thy prayer; and Martyr to suffering, desire, and love, didst water the ground with a sweat of blood. O tender Lamb, let me, with the deepest reverence and love, gather up each drop of Thy Precious Blood, and offer them all to Thee for my salvation and that of the dying. Deign to apply Its merits to us, and having purified us by Its virtue from all our stains, bring us to the dwelling of eternal joy. Amen.
Prayer to Jesus in Agony on the Cross
O my beloved Jesus, on the Cross for love of me, enduring with infinite patience sufferings upon sufferings, not only bodily pains, but the most grievous affliction of soul, in being forsaken by Thy Heavenly Father; have compassion on all who are in their agony, and upon me, when I shall be in this extremity. And grant us, by the merits of Thy Precious Blood, grace to bear all the pains and anguish of our agony with true patience, so that, uniting our sufferings to Thine, we may be made partakers of Thy glory in Heaven. Amen.
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| The Necessity of Mortification - from the Catholic Pulpit 1855 |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 07:37 AM - Forum: Resources Online
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The Necessity of Mortification
from the Catholic Pulpit, 1855
![[Image: Sermon%20Mortification.jpg]](https://www.catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/Sermon%20Mortification.jpg)
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards hungry--MATT. iv. 2.
Every Portion of the history of our Divine Redeemer was intended to convey important lessons to His followers. The Church continually points at His example, and so distributes and adapts in her office the several incidents of His life, as to make them bear, as her instructions vary, on the particular lesson, which she is desirous of teaching. At the commencement of the present holy season, when penance is her theme, she selects for our contemplation, the penitential exercise, which He underwent, previously to the opening of His mission; when retiring, as you have just heard in the gospel, to a distance from the society of men, He subjected Himself to a severe and uninterrupted fast, during the space of forty days. At the conclusion of this protracted abstinence, exhausted nature demanded support, and this was the moment, which he selected for confounding the insidious tempter of man. Entering then into the views of the Church, we cannot do better, on the present, occasion, than fix our eyes on the instructive spectacle, with which we are presented, and endeavour to learn, in this great example, what the obligation is, what the titles are, by which we ourselves are bound to the practice of penance.
Our Saviour fasts as man. In the long privation of sustinance which he endured, a miraculous power preserved indeed his existence, but did not prevent him from feeling the pains and inconvenience arising from His austerities. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterwards hungry. He fasts as our model and our head. Being about to inculcate the necessity of works of mortification, he would excite and animate His followers to the performance of this duty, by His own sacred example. He fasts as one charged with the expiation of the sins of men. Having come from heaven in quality of our Redeemer, He offers up to His eternal Father this long and severe maceration of His flesh as part of His atonement. On an attentive consideration of these three characters, which our Lord here assumes, we shall find ample matter for instruction; inasmuch as they point out the triple obligation, which we all incur, of practising the virtue of mortification, as men, as christians, and as sinners. A few reflections on this three-fold obligation shall form the matter of my present discourse.
In the first place, then, my brethren, as men, as the offspring of a corrupted stock, self-denial is indispensably necessary for us. No sooner did our first parents transgress the divine command than labours and sufferings were declared to be their inseparable lot. Their descendants, born in pangs and in sorrow, were to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow: the earth was to yield them thorns and briars; and all nature was in some measure to disclaim the sovereignty of its fallen lord. But, if the effects of man's disobedience were thus widely felt in the objects around him, it was in his own breast, that his transgression occasioned the most baneful revolution. From that moment, a furious and interminable war arose within him. His inferior appetites, rebellious to reason, incessantly demanded gratification at the expence of duty. All the powers of his soul were corrupted and brutalized. His will became perverse, sluggish to good, impetuous to evil: his understanding was overclouded with error, his heart was elated with pride, his affections were either fixed and centered on himself, or chained and enslaved to the objects around him; virtue from that moment assumed, in his jaundiced eye, a repulsive aspect, and the service of his Creator, which in innocence had been his sweetest occupation, became in guilt an employment of toil and restraint.
From this unhappy train of evils no one, of all the children of Adam, could in justice claim exemption. And it is not necessary for any one to go farther than his own heart, to witness these sad consequences of that first transgression. All have felt desires, which their better reason forbade them to gratify ; all have felt within themselves that domestic warfare, described by St. Paul; all have experienced the rebellion of the flesh, which lusteth against the spirit, and all might, with truth, apply to themselves those words of the Apostle, The good which I will, I do not, but the evil which I will not, that I do.
Here, then, my brethren, from this fatal propensity to evil, we learn the necessity of the unsavoury doctrine of mortification. Here it is, that we meet with the apology for that holy anger, with which the saints of God have mortified the deeds of the flesh, by giving their bodies to fasting and austerities, their will to unreserved obedience, their whole lives to the severest exercise of penance. Here, in fine, we read the condemnation of the world, and of all its voluptuous maxims; the condemnation of its pleasures and its pastimes, its vanities and its excesses. Man, by sin, brought on himself all the miseries under which he groans; and as the inordinate propensities, to which he is subject, are the punishment of criminal indulgence, it is a duty incumbent on him in his fallen state, to meet and combat them by salutary restraints. God, the sovereign Physician, in undertaking to cure, by His suffering, the deep-struck malady of original sin, has pointed out the antidote which He would have us employ, the means which we should make use of, if we would be enabled to counteract the pernicious consequences which sin has entailed. Reason herself declares the exercise of mortification to be that, by which the dignity of man's nature is best supported and secured; and to suffer and endure is a precept, in the practice of which, a celebrated sage of antiquity has placed the perfection of virtue.
Indeed, my brethren, little will it avail you to have been restored to the dignity of children of God, if, by sensual gratifications, by a life of pleasure, softness and effeminacy you oppose the triumphs of divine grace, and keep an understanding with the mortal enemies of your souls. Believe me, every concession which you make to an inordinate appetite, adds to the clamours and impetuosity of the passions, lessens your power of resistance, and prepares the way to greater and more dangerous concessions.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, can reign only in an unmortified soul. As a proof, examine for a moment the progress of depravity: interrogate the sinner, who has plunged the deepest into the sink of vice;--was it by some sudden revolution, by any instantaneous impulse of his passions, that he was hurried at once into all the lengths of criminal excess? Did the same day see him watchful, mortified, restraining all his irregular appetites, and then behold him sunk in guilty voluptuousness, a slave to all the base inclinations of his nature! Or was not his depravation rather the fruit of repeated concessions made to his sensual appetites? Did he not first enervate his heart, gradually weaken and undermine his own virtue by an unmortified life? Did he not, by habitual indulgence, add strength to his passions, and, by gratifying them in their less sinful demands, at length render them irresistible in those which were more criminal? Should such, unfortunately, be the line of conduct, which you have pursued, attempt not, when you fall, to palliate your enormities, under the plea of the weakness of nature, the strength of your passions, the fascinating power of that which seduced you; rather attribute your calamity to its real cause, to your neglect of the wholesome exercises of penance. By neglecting these, you have neglected the means of salvation, which God had placed within your reach; and if you have received death, it is from the venom of a serpent, which would not have harmed you, had you not fostered it within your bosom.
But, alas! the generality of men consider these observances as duties incumbent indeed on persons in a retired or religious state, but wholly inapplicable to those, who take an active part on the theatre of the world. In opposition to this so fatal an error, I assert, that the practice of penance is, to persons in the world, above all others, of the most imperative obligation. The man of contemplation might possibly find, in the constant meditation of the truths of eternity, in the undisturbed application of his mind to prayer and celestial things, in the sacred and sublime occupations of his state, wherewith to combat his inordinate appetites. In the world, on the contrary, all things tend to excite and augment their violence. In the world, besides the evil propensities of nature, you have to struggle against the force of general example, against the seductions of pleasure, artfully decked out in its most attractive garb to enchant and captivate. There the passions are soothed and flattered; there virtue is without honour; there vicious indulgence, in almost all its shapes, is excused, in many is even applauded. In the world, then, the practice of self-denial is of the first necessity; there, if you are not mortified, your ruin is inevitable.
And here, my brethren, allow me to mention an objection, not unfrequently brought forward against the duty, which we are now considering. Does God, it is urged, delight in the sufferings of His creatures? has He gifted us with a thirst for pleasure, which He intended never to be gratified? and is He, like some of the sanguinary idols of paganism, to be appeased by the blood and torments of his adorers? To obviate the futile and impious objection, we have only to recur to the origin of the duty of mortification, such as I have described it, to that domestic war, in which the sin of Adam has engaged all his posterity. Know, then, O man, that, if thou art subject to corrupt appetites, God is not the author of thy corruption: that He created thee for a happiness more real, more pure, and more exalted: that thy progenitor, by an abuse of his free-will, depraved and degraded that nature which he has transmitted to thee; that God, in imposing upon thee the duty of mortification, is but withholding thee from that, which would enslave, but would not content thee, is but elevating thy desires thither, where only thou canst find satisfaction and repose. After thy probation here, a new state of being awaits thee. There all thy desires, directed at length to their proper object, shall be satiated, thy longings for happiness completely gratified. I shall be satiated, says holy David, when Thy glory shall appear.
From mortification, as the duty of men, we will next proceed to consider it as the duty of christians.
A christian is defined by Tertullian, "one born to penance," and indeed, if, by assuming the name of christians, we rank ourselves as followers and imitators of Christ, no duty can be deemed of stricter obligation. The life of Christ, from its commencement to its close, was a continued series of privation and suffering. Poverty, exile, toil, abstinence, contempt, persecution; such are the prominent features in the history of this Man-God. But, not content with setting the example, he has enforced the doctrine of the cross by repeated precepts: He that would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be overcome with gluttony and drunkenness. Unless you do penance, you shall all perish. The Church, the, faithful interpretress of the will of her divine Spouse, has in like manner always considered mortification as a duty incumbent on all her children. When, in baptism, she ranked us among the faithful, she signed us with the cross, as if to point out the standard, under which we engaged to combat. On that solemn occasion, before we were admitted to the benefits of redemption, we were required to declare perpetual war on satan and his auxiliaries. From that moment the mortification of the flesh, the subjugation of our passions, and the denial of our own will, became a duty from which we could not depart, without breaking the faith, which we then solemnly pledged to the Most High. From that moment, we engaged to follow Christ in the rugged path, which He had chosen; nor could we quit it, without leaving and dishonouring our model and our head.
Yet, among those who make profession of christianity, how rarely do we meet with one, who properly acquits himself of this important duty. How many, on the contrary, are there, who might be classed with those, whom the Apostle designates with tears, as enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction: whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame. How many are there, who, though again and again admonished, by their repeated falls, of the necessity of employing violence in subduing their inordinate inclinations, still shudder at the name of penance; still make the gratification of their appetites, the enjoyment of ease and of pleasure, the whole study of their lives? How many are there, who feel sad and sorrowful at the commencement of this holy time, for no other reason, but because it opposes a slight check to their accustomed round of diversions and enjoyments? Oh! my brethren, the heavenly kingdom, for which you are candidates, is not to be attained by the way of earthly gratifications. From the days of John the Baptist until now, says our divine Redeemer, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. Every one, says St. Paul, taking allusion from the wrestlers and those that ran in the race, every one, that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed, that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. I therefore, continues the Apostle, so run, not as at an uncertainty; I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection. If your conduct be in opposition to these sacred admonitions, pretend not to assume the name of christian. You have dishonoured the badge, deserted the standard of your chief: you have co-operated with His enemies, and have betrayed to them again the soul, which, at the price of His own blood, He had rescued from their yoke. You have, like Esau, bartered your birth-right for a sensual gratification. Act, then, no longer, the hypocritical part of marking your forehead with the emblem of Christ; rather throw off the mask, and at once openly declare, that you follow the party of his enemies. If the Lord be your God, follow him; but, Baal, then follow him.
The third character, which I pointed out as rendering the severities of penance indispensable to us, was that of sinners. And here it is, my brethren, that this duty appears in all its weight and importance. On a certain occasion, when the disciples told our blessed Redeemer of the massacre of some Galileans, whom Pilate had ordered to be slain, whilst performing sacrifice,--an event which happened about the same time that a tower in Jerusalem fell down, and crushed to death eighteen persons,--our Saviour, who turned every circumstance to the advantage and instruction of his hearers, took occasion from these two incidents to call their attention to the just judgments of God, which were impending over them for their sins, and hence inferred the need, which they all had, of penance, in order to be saved.
The individuals, he argued, who were thus suddenly cut off, were not greater sinners, than others who survived them; and if, by an inscrutable judgment of God, they were selected for punishment, their fate ought to serve as a warning to those who were in a state of equal, if not of greater, guilt. Think you, says he, that those Galileans were sinners above all the men of Galilee, because they suflered such things? I say to you no. But unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower fell in Siloe and slew them : think you that they also were debtors above all the men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you no. But unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.
Applying, then, to yourselves, my dear brethren, this important instruction, delivered from the mouth of truth itself, and which was doubtless intended for you no less than for the Jews, consider, for a moment, what is passing around you. Every where do you witness the effects of God's inscrutable judgments. On every side do you behold your fellow-creatures pining in misery, affliction, sickness, and want. Here an unexpected stroke prostrates one from the number of your intimate acquaintances; there you see another long struggling under the severest sufferings, and finally falling under the hand of death. Yet are these, who by the severity of their lot seem marked and devoted in the decrees of an inscrutable but just providence, greater sinners than yourselves? Let your own consciences answer the question.
Again; descend in imagination to the verge of the bottomless abyss, and view, in that place of indescribable woe, the punishments, with which an avenging God visits the violators of His law: then, if mortal sin ever defiled your soul, if in that abode of torments you can descry one, whose guilt is less heinous than your own, then, oh then, apply to yourselves in all their force, those words of our Divine Redeemer: unless you do penance, you likewise shall perish.
In the order of God's justice, sin must be punished. Into heaven nothing defiled can enter. By sin your soul hath contracted a defilement, which can be cleansed only in the crucible of penitential suffering. Say not that your transgression has been forgiven in the sacrament of penance. You have, it is true, deposited your crime at the feet of your ghostly father; yet how can we believe it to have been with the perfect or even with the necessary dispositions? The sinner, who has truly repented, regards himself as his own greatest enemy; he rages with a holy indignation againt his own flesh; he treats it as a rebellious slave. He acts towards it as he would towards a domestic traitor, whom he cannot put away. Such is the true penitent. But as for you, does not that dread, that horror, that flight of mortification, and of everything that puts a restraint upon your appetites, seem to indicate, that you never really hated sin, that the enemy still holds you enslaved and shackled? But, let us suppose, that you have confessed as you ought; do you imagine, that, because you are freed from the eternal punishment of sin, you are freed also from the temporal punishment, which sin has entailed? That, while Christ is expiating your offences by a life of suffering and a death of ignominy, you may lead a life of ease and voluptuousness? Ah! let the severe rules, the penitential exercises imposed upon sin in in primitive fever convince you of the truth. Let the example of thousands of holy penitents, who punished slight offences by years spent in sighs and tears, and self-maceration, convince you of your error. So far from considering the pardon which they had received, as an exemption from penitential rigours, they only saw in it a stronger motive to punish and mortify that flesh, which had impelled them to offend so good and merciful a God.
From this view of the subject, my brethren, it follows, that, if mortification be a duty incumbent upon all, it is more imperatively so on those, who have offended God by wilful sin. The moment that worst of evils gained entrance into your breast, from that moment a penitential life was the only means of securing your salvation. In vain, then, do you attempt to shelter yourselves from the severe precept, by alleging excuses of inconvenience, of necessity, of business, of health. The law of penance is as general as sin. The precept is universal. Unless you do penance, you shall all perish. Think not, therefore, that, because a peculiar combination of circumstances may exempt you from the specific observance of the law of fasting, you are thereby exempted from the obligation of penance. No! Your director may, for prudential reasons, have exonerated you from keeping to the letter of the church precept; but he has not, he cannot exonerate you from the obligation of punishing yourself for sin. In the hand of the Lord there is a cup of strong wine, full of mixture, the dregs thereof are not emptied: all the sinners of the earth shall drink.
My brethren, from all that has been said, it follows, that the observance, to which you are now called, is not one of supererogation; it may not be practised or omitted at pleasure; it is an observance of absolute precept: one, on your fulfilment or neglect of which, nothing less than your eternal lot depends. Without the grace of God, no one can attain eternal life: in neglecting the practice of mortification, in giving way to sensual indulgence, in leading a life of softness, of pleasure and dissipation, you are directly opposing the influence of divine grace; you are throwing down the arms, which were given you for combat, and are placing yourselves defenceless in the power of your mortal enemies. As you value, then, your salvation, my dear friends, let your notions and conduct on this vital subject be, from this moment, reformed. Resolutely undertake the mortification of your sensual appetites, the conquest of your rebellious will, the destruction of the empire of self-love. Undertake it as men, lest indulgence should strengthen, and render irresistible those evil propensities, of which you are the inheritors. Undertake it as christians, lest you degrade that sacred character which you bear, and break the solemn engagements, into which you have entered. Undertake it as sinners, lest, by failing to satisfy the injured justice of God in the present life, you come to feel the weight of His indignation in the life to come.
Let the holy season, on which we are entering, be to you the commencement of a new life. Courageously join with all the true children of the Church of God in declaring war upon the flesh and its concupiscences. If you are terrified at the prospect of privations and restraints, know, that God Himself will render the rough way of penance smooth and agreeable, in proportion as you advance.
To animate yourself to the task, often extend your views beyond the present order of things. Often, in imagination, anticipate the moment, when you are to stand before the awful tribunal of an omniscient God: then, if you shall have deserved a favourable sentence, how pleasing will be the retrospect of the little crosses and momentary tribulations, by which you have purchased for yourselves above measure an exceeding weight of glory: but, should you unfortunately be cast at that momentous trial, how bitter the reflection, that for a few, fleeting, base, and deceitful gratifications, you have lost your title to eternal happiness, and incurred a condemnation to eternal woe.
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| Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange: Excerpts from 'Three Ages of the Interior LIfe' |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 07:20 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
- Replies (2)
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Mortification According to the Blessed Apostle
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Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. [adapted] | March 4, 2022
[Listen to the audio here]
The doctrine of the Gospel on the necessity of mortification is explained at considerable length by St. Paul in his epistles. Frequent quotation is made of his words: “I chastise my body and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway” (I Cor. 9:27). Likewise he says to the Galatians: “They that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:24).
Not only does St. Paul affirm the necessity of mortification, but he gives reasons for it which may be reduced to four; they are precisely those which are disregarded by practical naturalism. The mortification of all that is inordinate in us is necessary: (1) because of the consequences of original sin;(2) because of the results of our personal sins;(3) because of the infinite elevation of our supernatural end;(4) because we must imitate our crucified Lord.
Considering these different motives, we shall see what interior and exterior mortification is for St. Paul. It is attached to many of the virtues, since each one excludes the contrary vices, and particularly to the virtue of penance, which ought to be inspired by love of God, and which has for its end the destruction in us of the consequences of sin as an offense against God.[1]
The Consequences of Original Sin
First of all, St. Paul draws a parallel between Christ the Author of our salvation and Adam the author of our ruin, and notes the consequences of original sin. To the Romans he says: “By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death” (Rom. 5:12). And again: “By the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners. . . . Where sin abounded, grace did more abound . . . through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Ibid. 19-21). With infirmities and maladies, death is one of the results of original sin, but there is also concupiscence, of which St. Paul speaks when he says: “Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit” (Gal. 5:16).
According to the Apostle, this is the condition of the “old man,” that is, of man such as he is born of Adam, with a fallen and wounded nature. We read in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “You have heard Him, and have been taught in Him . . . to put off, according to former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind: and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Eph. 4:21-24). St. Paul writes in the same vein to the Colossians: “Lie not one to another: stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him” (Col. 3:9).
Again, he writes to the Romans: “For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:22-24).[2]
The old man, such as he is born of Adam, has a certain lack of balance in his wounded nature. This will be evident if we recall the nature of original justice. In it there was perfect harmony between God and the soul, made to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him; and also between the soul and the body. In fact, as long as the soul was subject to God, the passions or sensible emotions were obedient to right reason enlightened by faith, and to the will vivified by charity. The body itself shared this harmony by privilege, in the sense that it was not subject to sickness or death.
Original sin destroyed this harmony. The first man, by his sin, as the Council of Trent says, “lost for himself and for us sanctity and original justice,” and transmitted to us a fallen nature, deprived of grace and wounded.[3] Without falling into the exaggerations of the Jansenists, we must admit, with St. Thomas, that we are born with our will turned away from God, inclined to evil, weak in regard to the good,[4] with our reason prone to error,[5] our sensitive appetites strongly disposed to inordinate pleasure and to anger, source of every type of injustice.[6] Whence come pride, forgetfulness of God, egoism under all its forms, often a gross almost unconscious egoism, which wishes at any cost to find happiness on earth without aspiring any higher. In this sense, we can truly say with the author of The Imitation: “Nature proposes self as her end, but grace does all things purely out of love for God.”[7] St. Thomas speaks in the same way: “Inordinate love of self is the cause of every sin.”[8]
The fathers, in particular Venerable Bede, state in their explanation of the parable of the Good Samaritan that fallen man is not only stripped of grace and of the privileges of the state of original justice, but is even wounded in his nature. “By the sin of the first parent, man was despoiled of grace and wounded in nature.” This is explained especially by the fact that we are born with our will turned away from God, directly averted from our supernatural last end, and indirectly from our natural last end; for every sin against the supernatural law is indirectly contrary to the natural law which obliges us to obey whatever God may command.[9]
This disorder and weakness of the will in fallen man are shown by the fact that we cannot, without healing grace, love God, the Author of our nature, efficaciously and more than ourselves.[10] There is also the disorder of concupiscence, which is visible enough for St. Thomas to see in it “a quite probable sign of original sin,” a sign which adds its confirmation to what revelation says about the sin of the first man.[11] In place of the original triple harmony (between God and the soul, between the soul and the body, between the body and exterior things), appears the triple disorder which St. John speaks of when he writes: “For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world” (I Jn. 2:16).
Undoubtedly baptism cleanses us from original sin by applying Christ’s merits to us, by giving us sanctifying grace and the infused virtues. Thus, by the virtue of faith our reason is supernaturally enlightened, and by the virtues of hope and charity our will is turned to God. We also receive the infused virtues which rectify the sensible appetites. However, there remains in the baptized who continue in the state of grace an original weakness, wounds in the process of healing, which sometimes cause us to suffer, and which are left to us, says St. Thomas, as an occasion for struggle and merit.[12]
This is what St. Paul says to the Romans: “Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer. . . . Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof” (Rom. 6:6). Not only must this “old man” be moderated, regulated; he must be mortified or made to die. Otherwise we shall never succeed in obtaining the mastery over our passions and we shall remain more or less their slaves. This will mean opposition, perpetual struggle between nature and grace. If unmortified souls do not perceive this struggle, it is because grace is scarcely alive in them; egoistic nature has free play, with some virtues of temperament, natural happy inclinations that are judged to be true virtues.
Mortification is, therefore, imposed upon us because of the consequences of original sin, which remain even in the baptized as an occasion of struggle, and of struggle indispensable in order not to fall into actual and personal sin. We do not repent of original sin, which is a “sin of nature,” which was voluntary only in the first man; but we must labor to rid ourselves of the withering effects of original sin, in particular concupiscence, which inclines us to sin. By so doing, the wounds of which we spoke above are healed more and more with the increase of the grace which heals and which, at the same time, raises us up to a new life (gratia sanans et elevans). Far from destroying nature by the practice of mortification, grace restores it, heals it, and renders it increasingly pliable or docile in the hands of God.
From Three Ages of the Interior Life.
Original French edition © The Dominican Province, France.
English translation © Baronius Press Ltd
[1] St. Thomas, in IlIa, q. 85, a. 2 f., says that penance is a special virtue which labors to efface sin and its consequences, inasmuch as sin is an offense against God. Wherefore penance is a part of justice, and, inspired by charity, it commands other subordinate virtues, in particular temperance, as exemplified in fasting, abstinence, vigils. A distinction may be made between mortification, properly so called, which depends on the virtue of penance, and mortification in the broad sense, which depends on each virtue, inasmuch as each one rejects the vices that are contrary to it. Correctly speaking, we cannot repent of original sin, but we should labor to diminish those of its results which incline us to personal sin.
[2] The meaning is: who will deliver me from the law of sin which is in my members, and consequently from spiritual or eternal death. As has often been pointed out, the idea of deliverance by physical death is foreign to the context.
[3] Council of Trent (Denzinger, no. 789): “Adam acceptam a Deo sanctatem et jusam non sibi soli sed eam nobis perdidit.”
[4] St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q.83, a.3: “Two things must be considered in the infection of original sin. First, its inherence to its subject; and in this respect it regards first the essence of the soul. . . . In the second place, we must consider its inclination to act; and in this way it regards the powers of the soul. It must therefore regard first of all that power in which is seated the first inclination to commit a sin, and this is the will.” Ia IIae, q.85, a.3: “In so far as the will is deprived of its order to the good, there is the wound of malice.” Ibid., ad 2um: “Malice is not to be taken here as a sin, but as a certain proneness of the will to evil, according to Gen. 8:21: ‘Man’s senses are prone to evil from his youth.’” (Vulg.: The imaginaon and thought of man’s heart are prone to evil from his youth.)
[5] Ibid.: “Hence, in so far as the reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance.”
[6] Ibid.: “In so far as the irascible (appetite) is deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of weakness; and in so far as the concupiscible (appeitte) is deprived of its order to the delectable, moderated by reason, here is the wound of concupiscence. Accordingly, these are the four wounds inflicted on the whole of human nature as a result of our first parent’s sin.”
[7] The Imitaon, Bk. III, chap. 54.
[8] See Ia IIae, q.77, a.4: “Inordinate love of self is the cause of every sin.” We explained elsewhere at greater length the Thomisc doctrine of the consequences of original sin in relation to the spiritual life. Cf. L’amour de Dieu et la croix de Jesus, I, 292 ff.
[9] If man had been created in a purely natural state (or of pure nature), he would be born with a will not turned away from God, but capable of turning freely toward Him (Author of our nature and of the natural moral law) or of turning away from Him. There is, therefore, a notable difference between this state and that in which man is actually born. As a result of original sin, our powers to observe the natural moral law are less than they would have been in a state of pure nature. This is why, without the aid of healing grace, we cannot succeed in efficaciously loving God, the Author of our nature, more than ourselves.
[10] St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q.109, a. 3: “In the state of corrupt nature man falls short of this (of the efficacious love of God, the Author of nature) in the appetite of his rational will, which, unless it is cured by God’s grace, follows its private good, on account of the corruption of nature.” See also, De malo, q.4, a.2; q.5, a.2; De veritate, q.24, a.I2 ad 2um.
[11] St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 42, no. 3: “Considering divine providence and the dignity of the superior part of human nature, it can with sufficient probability be proved that defects of this kind are penalties; and thus it can be concluded that the human race is somewhat infected by original sin.”
[12] Cf. IIIa, q.69, a.3 ad 3um: “Original sin spread in this way, that at first the person infected the nature, and afterward the nature infected the person. Whereas Christ in reverse order at first repairs what regards the person, and afterward will simultaneously repair what pertains to the nature in all men. Consequently, by baptism He takes away from man forthwith the guilt of original sin and the punishment of being deprived of the heavenly vision. But the penalties of the present life, such as death, hunger, thirst, and the like, pertain to the nature, from the principles of which they arise, inasmuch as it is deprived of original justice. Therefore these defects will not be taken away until the ultimate restoration of nature through the glorious resurrection.” Ibid., in corp. a. 3: “Wherefore a Chrisan receives grace in baptism, as to his soul; but he retains a passible body, so that he may suffer for Christ therein (Rom. 7: II, 17). . . . Secondly, this is suitable for our spiritual training: namely, in order that, by fighting against concupiscence and other defects to which he is subject, man may receive the crown of victory” (Rom. 6:6)The Council of Trent (Denzinger, no. 792) says that baptism remits original sin perfectly by giving us habitual grace and the infused virtues, but that in the bapzed the “coal of concupiscence” remains, which is left ad agonem (for the struggle) and which cannot harm those who do not consent to it and who struggle manfully by the grace of Christ.
Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (1877–1964) was a professor of metaphysics and theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome from 1909 until 1960. A faithful Thomist, standing squarely within the Dominican tradition of Thomist commentary, he penned many articles and books through the course of his very active career. Although best known for his masterpiece in spiritual theology, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, he wrote extensive commentaries on St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, a massive two-volume work devoted to the topic of apologetic theology, multiple philosophical texts defending Thomistic metaphysics and epistemology, and a number of studies dedicated to particular theological topics such as Providence, Predestination, and the problem of theological modernism. Through his many years of activity, he defended the truths of the faith, as well as the theological positions of the Thomist school, doing so with a charitable but firm tone. A man of apostolic zeal, when not teaching and writing, he dedicated much time to the vocation of preaching that is eponymous for his religious order, in particular in the form of retreats for religious and laity alike. Through this teaching and writing, he influenced countless souls and left a mark upon Thomism which remains to this day and, in fact, is finding new appreciation among readers seeking to understand the great principles of Thomist thought. English translations of his works can be found at St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and Cluny Media.
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| Pentagon Says Russia-Ukraine War Likely to Last For Years |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 07:09 AM - Forum: Global News
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Pentagon Says Russia-Ukraine War Likely to Last For Years
Weapons contractors will be delighted.
Summit News | 7 April, 2022
The Pentagon believes that the Russia-Ukraine war will turn out to be a “very protracted conflict” that is likely to go on for “years.”
The prediction was made during a House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday which was attended by General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
I do think this is a very protracted conflict, and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decade, but at least years, for sure, Gen. Milley told Congressional leaders.
“This is a very extended conflict that Russia has initiated, and I think that NATO, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners that are supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time,” he added.
The Pentagon continues to insist, although it may well be propaganda, that the Russians expected Ukraine to be mopped up in a matter of weeks if not months, but unexpected fierce resistance and western support has forced them to scale down their ambitions to taking Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions.
During his testimony, Milley also suggested that the proxy war between NATO and Russia will escalate as a result of what is happening in Ukraine.
“We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable. The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing,” he said.
The news that the war is likely to last for years is guaranteed to be music to the ears of weapons contractors, as well as many within NATO itself.
As we previously highlighted, a report by the Washington Post confirmed that some prominent individuals within NATO want the war to be prolonged so as to weaken Russia.
“Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO — a concession that Zelensky has floated publicly — could be a concern to some neighbors. That leads to an awkward reality: For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe,” stated the article.
“There is an unfortunate dilemma. The problem is that if it ends now, there is a kind of time for Russia to regroup, and it will restart, under this or another pretext.”
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| Sacred Triduum Schedule 2022 |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 06:30 AM - Forum: Event Schedule
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Holy Week - Sacred Triduum
April 14th - 16th
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✠ ✠ ✠ Holy Thursday ✠ ✠ ✠
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginal...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Feb%2F1a%2F23%2Feb1a23d243379e93cfc53c1254dfe2c3.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
2:15 PM Confessions
3:00 PM High Mass / Procession
6:00 PM Conference
6:45 PM Holy Hour of Reparation
7:45 PM Private Adoration to Midnight
✠ ✠ ✠ Good Friday ✠ ✠ ✠
9:45 AM Confessions
10:30 AM +Mass of the Presanctified+ (Faithful Abstain from Communion)
1:30 PM Stations of the Cross
2:15 PM Conference on the Passion
3:00 PM Devotions to the Sorrowful Mother (Mater Dolorosa)
✠ ✠ ✠ Holy Saturday ✠ ✠ ✠
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F1...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F1f%2Fe3%2Ff2%2F1fe3f232eb9a5a75832c80dc70a55b9c--stock-art-holy-mary.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
10:30 AM Easter Vigil Ceremonies and Mass (Faithful May Receive Communion / End of the Lenten Fast)
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| Bill Introducing 'Mandatory Vaccination' For All Germans Over 60 Expected To Pass |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-07-2022, 06:22 AM - Forum: Global News
- Replies (1)
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Bill Introducing 'Mandatory Vaccination' For All Germans Over 60 Expected To Pass
ZH | APR 07, 2022
The COVID pandemic has largely subsided in Europe (although health authorities have warned about an uptick in cases caused by subvariants and hybrid variants of the omicron strain). But this hasn't stopped German lawmakers from pushing for a new law that would legally require people age 60 and older to be vaccinated.
But that's not all. The deal struck by members of Germany's ruling "stop sign" coalition, which includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the 'classical liberal' Free Democrats, also includes an option for making COVID shots mandatory for everybody age 18 and older.
That second provision will depend on how the next wave of the pandemic develops during the fall, according to Bloomberg, which cited a local report.
According to other provisions in the proposed law, the government would initially try to "encourage" the unvaccinated to voluntary submit to inoculation (Germany still has millions of unvaccinated citizens, not unlike the US). Fortunately, even if the proposal becomes a law (it's due for a vote on Thursday), it will also include provisions that would reverse the situation if enough people receive their COVID shots voluntarily before the summer.
Lawmakers told Bloomberg that the goal of the proposal is "effective prevention."
Quote:"We are united by the goal of effective prevention through the highest possible level of basic immunity for all adults for the fall, because in this way we can prevent the health system from being overwhelmed," they added.
Germany is still recording more than 200,000 cases and more than 300 deaths from the virus on most days. But with more than 75% of its population vaccinated, the pressure on the country's health-care system has significantly lessened since the depths of the pandemic.
Most western countries have strongly opposed mandatory vaccination requirements (although the Biden Administration in the US has attempted to force millions of workers to either get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs before the Supreme Court to declare Biden's executive orders unconstitutional). But Chancellor Scholz has decided that mandatory vaccination is permissible, so long as the Bundestag grants its blessing.
Another lawmaker said compulsory vaccination for all Germans over 60 will help the German economy remain "free" during the fall wave. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen.
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| Washington Post Admits NATO Wants to Prolong War in Ukraine |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-06-2022, 09:11 AM - Forum: Global News
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Washington Post Admits NATO Wants to Prolong War in Ukraine
“It’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting.”
![[Image: 050422war1.jpg]](https://cdn.summit.news/2022/04/050422war1.jpg)
Summit News | 6 April, 2022
In an article about the potential for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, the Washington Post admits that some within NATO want to prolong the war for as long as possible.
The admission is contained in a piece titled ‘NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russia — within limits’.
“Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO — a concession that Zelensky has floated publicly — could be a concern to some neighbors. That leads to an awkward reality: For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe,” states the article.
“There is an unfortunate dilemma. The problem is that if it ends now, there is a kind of time for Russia to regroup, and it will restart, under this or another pretext.”
And there you have it.
Now we know why the NATO-aligned legacy media and journalists are constantly lobbying for an escalation that could spark World War III.
NATO wants the war to continue for as long as possible so Russia can be drained and isolated, while the media is addicted to the clicks and ratings it brings.
The article also reveals how Zelensky wants a “legally binding security guarantees from the United States and others to defend it if it were attacked,” something that is totally delusional.
As Chris Menahan notes, a peace deal looked possible around a month ago when Vladimir Putin vowed to end the war “if Ukraine agreed to recognize Crimea, accept Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, swear off joining NATO and disarm.”
However, despite being told by Israel to accept the deal, President Zelensky refrained from doing so immediately after the U.S. decided to sent $14 billion dollars in aid, an act that prolonged the war.
“(Zelensky) should have taken Putin’s deal as Bennet told him to four weeks ago,” writes Menahan. “Instead, he has insisted on sticking with his strategy of forcing all men aged 18 to 60 to take up arms and become enemy combatants so he could use their deaths as atrocity propaganda to con NATO into the war.”
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| President Macron Says He is “Opposed to Self-Defense” After Farmer Shoots One of Four Burglars |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-06-2022, 09:08 AM - Forum: Global News
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President Macron Says He is “Opposed to Self-Defense” After Farmer Shoots One of Four Burglars Who Broke Into His Home
Tone deaf comments hurt presidential hopes just days away from first round.
![[Image: 050422macron1.jpg]](https://cdn.summit.news/2022/04/050422macron1.jpg)
Summit News | 6 April, 2022
After a farmer was charged with murder for shooting a man after four burglars broke into his home, French President Emmanuel Macron said people should not have the right to self-defense.
Yes, really.
“According to the initial investigation, the farmer fired twice with a large caliber rifle at a group of four burglars, killing one of them. The self-defense shooting took place last Friday, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and the man was alone with his 3-year-old daughter at the time,” reports Remix News.
However, Macron responded to the story by asserting that the 35-year-old farmer had no right to defend himself or his daughter in such a manner.
“Everyone must be safe, and the public authorities have to ensure it,” Macron told Europe 1.
“But I am opposed to self-defense. It’s very clear and undisputable because otherwise the country becomes the Wild West. And I don’t want a country where weapons proliferate and where we consider that it’s up to the citizens to defend themselves,” said Macron.
Presumably, the farmer should have just allowed the four burglars to ransack his home and potentially harm his young daughter without doing anything to intervene.
Macron insisted that the farmer should have called the police, who in many areas of France are already stretched to the limit thanks to criminal gangs of migrants youths being in a perpetual state of war with them.
“I’m not going to judge this news. I convey the rules,” said Macron, whose weak record on security and crime is under scrutiny.
With the first round of the French election just days away and polls tightening in the race between Macron and his likely final round challenger Marine Le Pen, the comments will do his chances little good.
After being charged with murder, the farmer was released but will remain under judicial supervision.
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| Saskatchewan pauses rollout of digital ID system after public backlash |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-06-2022, 07:23 AM - Forum: Great Reset
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Saskatchewan pauses rollout of digital ID system after public backlash
' ... people want to know who the government is working with to implement an actual mass digital ID system ... ' one politician stated.
![[Image: shutterstock_1385218223-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/shutterstock_1385218223-810x500.jpg)
Apr 5, 2022
REGINA, Saskatchewan (LifeSiteNews) — The province of Saskatchewan will hold off on implementing a digital identification system for the time being.
The Saskatchewan government announced that, at least temporarily, they will halt the rollout of a digital identification system in the conservative stronghold province. While there were reportedly multiple reasons for axing the system, two of the factors were unfavorable polling and pushback from both the public and provincial legislators.
“We just thought we’ve got an opportunity here to review what other governments are doing with this, and so we decided not to proceed right now,” said MLA Jim Reiter, the minister responsible for SaskBuilds, the division behind the digital ID.
“There [were] enough people raising concerns that obviously you have to make that a factor,” Reiter added. “But it certainly wasn’t the only one.”
In addition to concerns about how the system would impact personal privacy, there were also concerns that the system was actually part of a larger agenda that did not originate or was not contained to those within the Saskatchewan government.
“Mr. Speaker, people want to know who the government is working with to implement an actual mass digital ID system that will link all of our personal information to one source,” MLA Nadine Rivers asked during the Question Period in the legislature.
According to a government-commissioned poll, just 42 percent of respondents in the province were even “somewhat comfortable” with a digital “photo ID verification,” with only 25 percent saying they were “extremely comfortable” with the idea.
The topic of digital IDs has become a hot-button issue in Canada over the past few months, with the heavily populated provinces of Ontario and Alberta having already rolled out their systems to varying degrees.
According to the Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), the group Saskatchewan joined to push the system, “Saskatchewan joined the DIACC because we recognize that if we are going to realize the potential of digital ID, we need to define and govern digital identity nationally, with private and public sector collaboration,” the council said.
The council also says the digital ID will “enable Canadians” to “participate in the global digital economy” while further outlining that the program has the stated goal of becoming “ubiquitous.”
Other partners include major banks, Canada’s postal service, and large telecommunication networks such as TELUS, with the Canadian Bankers Association having already openly talked about the need for Canada’s financial institutions, under the guidance of the World Economic Forum (WEF), to push for adoption of the digital ID regime in order for the transition to be successful.
The WEF is the globalist organization behind the widely criticized “Great Reset” agenda. The Great Reset is a radical plan designed by global elites that “seeks to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy” and establish a New World Order that seems to closely emulate many aspects of the Chinese Social Credit System.
According to the WEF, under the “Great Reset,” by the year 2030, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”
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| Interview w/ Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò - April 3, 2022 |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-06-2022, 07:03 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Interview w/ Carlo Maria Viganò: "React and oppose the dictatorship, before being deprived of other fundamental rights"
![[Image: vigano.jpg]](https://www.aldomariavalli.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/vigano.jpg)
Aldo Maria Valli | April 3, 2022
Dear friends of [i]Duc in altum, I am pleased to propose this interview that was granted to me by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Many topics were touched upon, from national politics to the world situation, from the pandemic to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, from the pontificate of Bergoglio to the next conclave. The guiding thread is the battle for the Truth, in constant listening to the Word of God: "Truth is not a club with which to strike those who ignore it, but a light that cannot be hidden under a bushel, and that may perhaps dazzle everyone. beginning, but it cannot be ignored by people of good will and a good conscience. Who does not want to see that light - which is always a ray of the only Light in the world which is Christ - takes sides with the darkness, and must be helped to come out of it with Charity.”[/i]
by Aldo Maria Valli
***
Your Excellency, a political vacuum is increasingly evident in our country. A growing portion of Italians does not feel represented by the current alignments. On the other hand, there are sectors that are gearing up in different ways to fill this void. The question also and perhaps above all concerns Catholics, as emerged during the first public meeting of the Liberi in Veritate Committee, born in adherence to the anti-globalist appeal that you launched starting from the consideration that for two years now we have been living at all. the effects of a world coup. There are two questions in this regard. The first: Do you actually see a political margin for maneuver for those who intend to oppose the single dominant thought and fight for the freedom of man as God created him? The second:
Catholics, as citizens, have the right and the duty to influence society with a civil and political commitment. To let others participate in the political life of the nation, especially at a time when the principles of natural law and morality are ignored or openly opposed, would be irresponsible. Of course, the democratic system has shown its critical points, because it assigns the government to the numerical majority, and not to what is just and good. However, we must recognize that with the pandemic farce before and now with the Russian-Ukrainian crisis we have understood that the will of the majority, despite all the manipulations of the mainstream, is less and less convinced of the official narrative. This shows a rift between the political and ruling class of the country and the citizens, who are realizing the global coup d'état carried out against them by a mafia of bureaucrats and rulers enslaved by the globalist elite.
Once the white coup is understood, the people will have to react and oppose the dictatorship, before being deprived of other fundamental rights.
In your Call for an anti-globalist alliance, you have called together rulers, political and religious leaders, intellectuals and people of good will, inviting all to come together to launch an anti-globalist manifesto. Can you update us on the developments, not only in Italy, of this initiative?
I have launched an appeal to respond to the globalist tyranny, and I see the interest and support of many forces in various nations growing. However, I believe that the evidence of the responsibility of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the folly of insisting on provocations rather than seeking peace will make many people understand the danger to which they expose themselves if they do not organize themselves to firmly resist the deep state coup. . I know that in the United States the initiative is well received not only by Republicans, but also by many Democratic voters, disgusted by the scandals and corruption of Obama, the Clintons and the Bidens.
His appeal speaks of real "popular resistance movements and national liberation committees" for a radical reform of politics. In the opinion of some, however, in the current situation there would be no suitable moral tension, given that public opinion is largely addicted and asleep. How do you respond to this objection, who have contacts with the whole world?
The masses are unwilling to mobilize, especially if they are manipulated and drugged by experts in social psychology. The real resistance and the establishment of National Liberation Committees will be successful if they are coordinated by intellectuals and politicians who know how to put the common good and the defense of justice before their own electoral advantage. We need courageous leaders, with a sense of honor, animated by sound moral principles: their example, together with an awakening of consciences and a surge of dignity of the magistrates, the police, public officials could really prevent the advent of the New World Order.
Social and political commitment must obviously be combined with a supernatural gaze, combining action with prayer confident in the help of divine Providence. Priests, religious and all the faithful are therefore called to spiritually accompany their brothers in the good fight not only with prayer, but also with penance, fasting and the frequency of the sacraments. The Mercy of God and the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin await our concrete gesture and of true conversion to pour out a torrent of Graces on this poor humanity. Thus, our numerical inferiority and our lack of means in front of the enemy will allow the Lord to show how true his words are: Sine me nihil potestis facere (Jn 15: 5).
The globalist coup took place, and continues to take place, also because the leaders of the Catholic Church are no longer the guarantors of freedom in respect of human dignity but have enslaved themselves to the New World Order, speak the same language as the globalists and pursue the same interests as the ruling elites. This enslavement, a source of great suffering for so many Catholics, seems to extinguish all hope in a Christian rebirth. The time factor has its own importance. The longer this pontificate lasts, the more homogeneous the Church is to the overall project, up to self-cancellation. Do you think that a recovery will be possible after Bergoglio's reign? What do you see on the horizon?
The complicity of the Bergoglian church and of the entire world episcopate in the psychopandemic farce has marked one of the lowest points reached by the Hierarchy in history. But this is the logical consequence of a corrupt and corrupting ideology that finds its basis in Vatican II, as its own architects are proud to reiterate. Just last March 25 other conspirators gathered in Chicago to coordinate a marketing operation with which to underline that those who oppose Bergoglio are opposed to the Council. Beyond the low reputation of these conspirators - among them the minions stand out McCarrick's with their courtiers - we cannot disagree with them on the intrinsic relationship between conciliar cancer and Bergoglian metastasis. It is evident that the apostasy of the Catholic Hierarchy is the punishment with which the divine Majesty afflicts rebellious and sinful humanity, so that it recognizes the sovereign rights of God, is converted and finally returns under the gentle yoke of Christ. And until the bishops recognize their betrayal and repent of it, no hope is possible for the world, since salvation can only be had in the one fold and under the one shepherd.
Recently a memorandum was shot among the members of the Sacred College, signed with the pseudonym Demos, which lists the disasters caused at every level (doctrinal, pastoral, managerial, economic, legislative) by the pontificate of Bergoglio. "Better late than never", commented some, while others said: "It is useless to close the barn when the oxen have already escaped". What do you think of that memorandum? Do you think it was the work of a cardinal? Is it the symptom of a belated awareness?
The memorandum lists the horrors of the Bergoglian "pontificate", and this certainly is already progress compared to magnifying it. But the horrors and errors of the Argentine and his court did not appear out of nowhere, as if in the previous pontificates everything was perfect and wonderful. The crisis begins with Vatican II: deploring the symptoms of an illness without understanding its causes is a useless and harmful operation. If the College of Cardinals is not persuaded that it is necessary to return to what the Church believed, taught and celebrated until Pius XII, any opposition to the current regime will be doomed to certain failure.
Within the College of Cardinals, in your opinion, is there a credible, authentically Catholic figure on which the cardinals, in the event of a conclave, could make the votes converge for a total change of register compared to the current pontificate?
Certain Popes, let us not forget, are granted ; others are inflicted . But before discussing the next conclave, it is necessary to shed light on the abdication of Benedict XVI and on the question of the frauds of the 2013 Conclave, which sooner or later will have to give rise to an official investigation. If there were to be proofs of irregularity, the conclave would be null, the election of Bergoglio null, just as all his appointments, acts of government and magisterium would be null. A reset that would providentially bring us back to the status quo ante, with a College of Cardinals composed only of cardinals appointed up to Benedict XVI, ousting all those created since 2013, notoriously ultra-progressive. Certainly the current situation, with all the rumors about Ratzinger's resignation and Bergoglio's election, does not help the ecclesial body and creates confusion and disorientation in the faithful.
Here too, Catholics can implore the divine Majesty to spare further humiliations to His Church, by granting her a good Pope. If there is a cardinal who really wants "a change of register", that he comes forward, and that - for the sake of love of God - stop referring to Vatican II and think about the sanctification of the clergy and the faithful.
In the United States, the Biden administration is increasingly in difficulty and the president is increasingly showing his inadequacy; yet, by virtue of alliances and intersections of interests at the highest level, it seems impossible to bring down this house of cards. How is Trump doing? Can he help us to better read the American situation, of which you are an expert?
The Biden administration is the mirror of the corruption that prevails in public affairs, regardless of the immutable moral principles of the Gospel. And if a politician in favor of abortion, euthanasia, gender and all the worst deviations dares to call himself a Catholic, we should ask ourselves what is the responsibility of the teachers, educators and priests with whom this politician was trained. What did the parish priest teach in the catechism? what the professor in the Catholic University? what the spiritual director of the future political leader? And we are back to the starting point: Vatican II, which instead of converting the world to the Church, converted the Church to the world, making her evangelization useless. There was a lot of talk about the "missionary Church", but at the same time the preaching has become the propaganda of fatuous philanthropic ideals, of old leftist ideologies, of empty pacifist slogans. And behold, from those Jesuit schools, thecrème of Vatican II: characters like Pelosi or Biden, who have nothing Catholic but who present themselves with impunity to receive Communion with the applause of the bishops and of Bergoglio himself.
The American episcopate, too careful to please Bergoglio, has indeed been careful not to condemn the electoral program of the Dems, while it has not hesitated to lash out against President Trump who, despite all his contradictions, certainly defends more effectively and convinced the principles of the natural law and the sanctity of life.
The Russian-Ukrainian crisis shows us a Biden, a deep state puppet , obstinate in preventing peace in the ongoing conflict because he is too worried about covering up his scandals and that of his son Hunter: I am thinking, for example, of the Burisma case and the interests in bio-laboratories in Ukraine. If the evidence leads to the indictment of Hunter Biden and the involvement of his father Joe, impeachment will be inevitable and amply justified, and this could lead Trump back to power. If, in the meantime, the ongoing trials prove electoral fraud, he could be proclaimed president. And that would be a fatal blow to the deep state and the Great Reset .
The Covid affair and that of the war in Ukraine have brought to light the existence of profound differences - we could say anthropological even before cultural and political ones - between those who feel the problem of the conditioning to which we are subjected by the constant and coordinated action of the "bosses of thought ”and those who accept the dominant narrative and align themselves with the imposed dogmas. Faced with such differences, which are also dividing people united by family ties and friendship, how should we move, as believers, to witness the Truth without giving in to the temptation of "militarization" of consciences?
The manipulation of consciences constitutes a real violation of the freedom of the individual, leading him to a dulling of his faculties which can undermine moralityof his actions. Social psychology teaches that those who are subjected to mental conditioning according to specific techniques end up acting by staggering their judgment or even refraining from formulating a moral evaluation of their actions: let's think of the driving force of the example of the mass, of the power that social judgment exercises. on our behavior, to the force of the threat of sanctions to induce us to "respect the rules", and vice versa to the seduction of prizes and rewards for our "socially responsible" action. On this, for example, the pandemic farce was built, in which all the principles of mass manipulation were implemented with great success, without there being an equally mass reaction on the part of those who have been deprived of rights, of work. , salary,
The faithful, as part of society, have suffered the regime propaganda also with Covid, with the aggravating circumstance that the delusions of the civil authorities have been ratified and supported by the ecclesiastical authority, which has therefore induced Catholics to obey uncritically the lockdown , the use of masks, the administration of a morally unacceptable experimental gene therapy. It must therefore be recognized that the responsibility for accepting the psychopandemic and the vaccination campaign falls almost entirely on the Pastors, and especially on Bergoglio, who makes no secret of his unconditional support for the NWO, the WEF and the globalist ideology.
You talk to me about the "militarization" of consciences, as if this were a deplorable thing. Our Lord said: «From now on in a house of five people they will divide three against two and two against three; father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law "(Lk 12: 52-53). And again: «The brother will give the brother to death and the father the child, and the children will rise up against the parents and they will make them die. And you will be hated by all on account of my name; but whoever perseveres to the end will be saved "(Mt 10, 21-22). How can we think that in the face of the deployment of the forces of evil, in the face of the attack of the New World Order against society and against Christ, it is possible to avoid the "militarization" of consciences,
The truth is not a club with which to strike those who ignore it, but a light which cannot be hidden under a bushel, and which may perhaps dazzle at first, but which cannot be ignored by people of good will and a good conscience. Who does not want to see that light - which is always a ray of the only Light in the world which is Christ - takes sides with the darkness, and must be helped to come out of it with Charity. This is all the more true for our loved ones: their erroneous beliefs, in the face of our patient response without animosity, often crack and over time they understand that our "conspiracy" was only an anticipation with reason and insight into what from there it would soon be in the public domain. Of course it is easier to understand the deception of the psychopandemic than the much worse one hatched by the Modernists with the Council.
Among some Catholics there is an objection, addressed to you, which goes more or less like this: "Monsignor Viganò is now too busy with politics and economics, moving away from his field of action, which should be the most strictly religious and therefore theological , doctrinal and pastoral ". How do you respond to this criticism?
But what do these know of my pastoral activity? With the strength that the Lord grants me, I carry out an intense pastoral and doctrinal activity, which represents my main commitment; together with the spiritual and material support of priests and faithful from all over the world - a priestly action that does not make the news, also because I am not in the habit of taking the troupe with me ... On the other hand, those who attack me today because I speak of political or health emergency, yesterday attacked me because I denounced the corruption in the Church, the deviations of the Council and the reformed liturgy.
The "sectoralization" of skills is an excellent tool with which the opponent decides, motu proprio , what his interlocutor is authorized to say, when he can do it, what qualifications he must have in order to pronounce. Who has decided that a bishop cannot intervene in politics? The secularists and, among Catholics, those who curiously let bishops and ultra-progressive clerics rant, who swoon if Bergoglio speaks against Trump or in favor of Trudeau, but they tear their clothes if a bishop does not please the system or does not follow the narrative to unified networks of single thinking.
I do not think that Saint Ambrose - who also came from the public administration and who was acclaimed bishop when he was still a layman - ever had any qualms about intervening in political matters. Because a bishop is a shepherd, and among the sheep of the flock that the Lord has assigned to him are humble and powerful people, there are subjects and rulers, men and women, honest citizens and criminals: they are all sheep to be led in the pastures and from protect from wolves.
It seems to me that in my interventions I have always and only pursued the mission that the Lord has entrusted to me as Successor of the Apostles, working for the salvation of souls in an hour in which humanity is falling into the abyss without anyone launching it. alarm for imminent danger.
We are preparing to enter Holy Week. Your Excellency, would you like to say a word to help us live it well, in an authentically Catholic way?
With the Fifth Sunday of Lent we have entered the time of Passion, which will culminate in the celebration of the Sacred Triduum: the beauty and profound spirituality of the rites of these days are a precious opportunity to worthily complete Holy Lent in preparation for the Resurrection of Our Lord. .
We contemplate the Hosanna of the crowd who triumphantly receives the Son of David in Jerusalem, and who shortly afterwards allow themselves to be manipulated by the Sanhedrin and invokes Pilate for the crucifixion of the King of Israel: may there be a warning to keep us away from bad advisers and authorities. corrupt, following the Lord with courage along the way of the Cross.
Let us contemplate the painful scourging, the crowning with thorns, the ascent to Calvary and the crucifixion of Our Lord, after an unjust and unjust sentence, carried out by the civil authority to please the interests of the high priests: spiritually uniting ourselves to the Passion of our Most Holy Redeemer, let us not be deceived by those who, using their authority, would still like to send Our Lord Jesus Christ to death, repeating the words of that time: non habemus regem, nisi Cæsarem, we have no other king but Caesar (Jn 19:15).
Videbunt in quem transfixerunt , They will look to Him whom they have pierced (Jn 19:37), says the Scripture. Let us also look to the Savior disfigured by the torments of the Passion, considering how much part each of us had in the pains of Our Lord. Let us repent of our sins, our infidelities, our human respects, our silences. Let us shake ourselves from our mediocrity and stand up courageously under the banner of the King of kings, starting with a life in the grace of God, the recitation of the Holy Rosary, assistance at Holy Mass, frequent Confession and Communion. And let us remember that there is no Resurrection without the Cross, and that the instrument of death has become, through the Most Precious Blood shed by the Lord, an emblem of life and victory.
April 3, 2022
Passion Sunday
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| Sermons of St. Vincent Ferrer |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-05-2022, 09:34 AM - Forum: Resources Online
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Sermons of St. Vincent Ferrer
Found here.
![[Image: proxy-image?piurl=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.w...83df497553]](https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.wf-f.org%2FWFFResource%2FStVincentFerrer.jpg&sp=1649165623Tc4a23b04f6fc551bac32c3c6b7041b75312131f18055d4191c5aab83df497553)
Sermon on the Last Judgment – Mt 25:33 Sheep and goats
First Sunday of Advent. Sermon 1 – Part one -The theme
Second Sunday of Advent- Sermon on the Last Judgment
Third Sunday of Advent — The Voice of One Crying Out in the Wilderness
Sermon on the Incarnation
Sermon for Christmas Eve
On Christmas — “This day is born to you a Savior,” (Lk 2:11)
On Epiphany — “And falling down they adored him,” (Mt 2:11)
On the Baptism of Christ — “I ought to be baptized by you,” (Mt 3:14)
On the Six Jugs of Cana — “Now there were set there six…” (Jn 2:6)
On the Conversion of St. Paul — “…a vessel of election,” (Acts 9:15)
On the Purification of the BVM (Presentation of the Lord) — (Lk 2:22)
On St. Blaise (Feb. 3) — (Jn 12:24)
On the Cure of the Centurion’s Servant — (Mt 8:7)
Ash Wednesday (Mt 6:16-18)
On Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving (Mt 6)
1st Sunday of Lent: Jesus is Tempted in the Desert (Mt 4:1-11)
2nd Sunday of Lent: The Transfiguration (Mt 17:1-9)
3rd Sunday of Lent: The Samaritan Woman at the Well (Jn 14:5-42)
4th Sunday of Lent: The Cure of the Man Born Blind (Jn 9:1-38)
5th Sunday of Lent: The Raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:1-46)
Palm Sunday (Mt 21:1-9)
Holy Thursday: The Lord’s Supper
Good Friday: The Passion of the Lord (Jn 18-19)
Holy Saturday (Col 3)
Easter Sunday: Sermon 1
Easter Sunday: Sermon 2
Easter Octave (Jn 20:26-29)
The Good Shepherd (Jn 10:12-16)
The Ascension (Acts 1:9-11)
Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4)
Pentecost 2 (Jn 14:27-29)
Holy Trinity 1 (Jn 3:9-11, 1 Jn 5:7)
Holy Trinity 2 (Jn 3:1-3)
Corpus Christi 1 (1 Cor 11:23-27)
Corpus Christi 2 (1 Cor 11:24)
Ninth Sunday in OT (Mt 7:21)
Tenth Sunday in OT (Mt 9:9-13, The call of Matthew)
Eleventh Sunday in OT (Mt 9:18-26, Daughter is raised, woman healed)
June 24 On St. John the Baptist 3 (Lk 1:66)
June 29 On St. Peter (Mt 16:17)
On St. James, Apostle (Eph 2:1)
On St. Ann, Mother of the BVM (Rom 6:22)
On St. Dominic (Mt 5:13)
On the Assumption of the BVM Sermon I (Lk 10:38-42)
On Perseverance (Mt 10:22)
On Predestination (Jn 15:4)
On Aging (Eph 4:23)
Sept. 14 Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Letter to Benedict XIII on the Last Judgment
Treatise on the Spiritual Life: Chapters 1-3
The Life of Christ As Seen in the Parts of the Mass
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| Colorado legalizes abortion until the moment of birth |
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Posted by: Stone - 04-05-2022, 09:13 AM - Forum: Abortion
- No Replies
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Colorado legalizes abortion until the moment of birth
'A fertilized egg, embryo or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state,' states Colorado's new bill.
![[Image: Gov.-Jared-Polis-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Gov.-Jared-Polis-810x500.jpg)
Gov. Jared Polis, Colorado's Democrat governor, in a December 2021 interview with NBC.
Apr 4, 2022
DENVER (LifeSiteNews) — Democrat Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado signed a bill into law on Monday that allows babies to be killed in the womb up until the moment of birth.
“No matter what the Supreme Court does in the future, people in Colorado will be able to choose when and if they have children,” Polis said at the signing ceremony in downtown Denver, referencing the possible reversal of Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks.
“We want to make sure that our state is a place where everyone can live and work and thrive and raise a family on their own terms,” the pro-abortion politician added.
The bill itself states that it will be illegal in Colorado to “deny, restrict, interfere with or discriminate against an individual’s fundamental right to use or refuse contraception or to continue a pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion,” while adding that “a fertilized egg, embryo or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state.”
“Besides the all-out war against children in-utero, because it defines abortion as a right, the law could also be used to attempt to force medical professionals to commit or participate in abortions. There are zero conscience protections in the law,” reacted pro-life advocate Lila Rose on social media.
“Abortion at 9 months?!” added musician Flint Bedrock, “That’s murder!”
The signing of the bill comes just ahead of the highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization expected in June, which pro-lifers hope could reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent that legalized abortion countrywide.
While many Republican states such as Wyoming, Arizona, and Florida are seeking to ban or limit abortion following a possible reversal of Roe v. Wade, Democrats have also gone on the offensive, seeking to radically expand abortion.
AB 2223, for example, a gruesome pro-abortion bill proposed in California in February, could legalize infanticide for weeks, months, or even years after a child is born, an attorney with the Thomas More Society told LifeSiteNews.
Under AB 2223’s language, a “person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.”
According to Thomas More Society special counsel Charles LiMandri, the proposal “exposes the false narrative that the abortion lobby has been peddling for over half a century: That no one knows when life begins, and babies in their mothers’ wombs feel no pain. No sane person can deny that a newborn infant is a fully developed human being, one that is capable of feeling intense pain. Yet, by including ‘perinatal’ in its provisions, [the bill] would authorize the brutal murder of these infants even after they are born.”
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![[Image: Challoner_Week3_Lent_Part1.jpg]](https://www.catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/Challoner_Week3_Lent_Part1.jpg)
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