Many thanks to The Catholic Trumpet for providing this transcription!
[Slightly adapted and reformatted]

Fr. Hewko: He Shall Be Mocked & Scourged
Quinquagesima Sunday - March 2, 2025

Quote:“Brethren, if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not Charity, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling symbol. And if I should have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all Faith so that I could remove mountains and have not Charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned and have not Charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity is patient, is kind. Charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never falleth away, where the prophecy shall be made void, our tongues shall cease, our knowledge shall be destroyed. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when that part which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known. And now there remain Faith, Hope, and Charity, these three, but the greatest of these is Charity.

Quote:“At that time Jesus took unto Him the twelve and said to them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem and all things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man. For He shall be delivered to the Gentiles and shall be mocked and scourged and spit upon. And after they have scourged Him, they will put him to death, and the third day He shall rise again. And they understood none of these things, and this word was hid from them, and they understood not the things that were said. Now it came to pass, when He drew nigh to Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging. And when he heard the multitude passing by, he asked what this meant. And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and he cried out saying, Jesus son of David have mercy on me. And they that went before rebuked him that he should hold his peace. But he cried out much more, Son of David have mercy on me. And Jesus standing commanded him to be brought unto him. And when he was come near, He asked him saying, what wilt thou that I do to thee? But he said, Lord that I may see. And Jesus said to him, receive thy sight, thy Faith has made thee whole. And immediately he saw and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people when they saw, gave praise to God.” 

Mere Tradition or Mere Compromise?

Quote:“Obviously, I don’t go to the Novus Ordo, I don’t recommend it. But we are in this crazy crisis in the Church, in this mysterious time where we have basically two religions operating, and it’s very hard to understand, and people are kind of stuck in the crosshairs.

And so doing our best to try to have a little bit of grace and compromise, not on the principles that are necessary, but let’s say compromise like, you know, hey, if there’s a, you know, a traditional mass available at 7:30, and you go to that one early in the morning, and your wife doesn’t want to go, it’s like you can drive her to the Novus Ordo and just sort of be there and don’t go receive communion if, you know, that sort of thing, because you’ve already gone to mass, but you’re kind of supporting her. There are things like that, if that makes sense. And I think a little bit of understanding will help go a long way.”

Quote:“This new Mass… is impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the Faith.”

- (Archbishop Lefebvre, Letter to Friends & Benefactors, Sept. 1975)

A Season of Fasting: A few thoughts on a Lenten exercise



Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness by James Tissot Nantes

• The fasting I’m talking about is fasting from calories. Some guys apparently abstain from water as well. This is too much for me.
  
• The gurus say coffee and tea are allowed, but no cream or sweeteners. Again, the point is no calories.
  
• I don’t love intermittent fasting and prefer a few longer fasts over frequent short ones. If they work well for you, that’s great. But intermittent fasts are not quite what I’m getting at in this essay.
  
• I avoid physical exertion during fasts. Walks and mobility sessions are the extent of it for me.
  
• You will need electrolytes to calm your nerves and your stomach. Before I learned this, sleep was all but impossible because my stomach was twisting in discomfort. Sprinkling salt into a glass of water a couple times per day will do wonders. I also use a topical magnesium spray.
  
• Be prepared for the chill. Digestion is an involved process which generates much heat—and when it’s not happening you will often feel cold. If you have the opportunity, a sauna session does wonders to offset this effect.
  
• Time takes on strange properties during a fast. This is one of the most interesting experiences—the days become almost literally longer. When you don't eat meals, don’t prepare meals, and don't clean up after meals, suddenly a couple hours are freed up every day. Still more time presents itself when you don’t go to the gym. You also don’t need as much sleep at night when the body hasn’t expended so much energy on digestion. In all these ways, the day is longer. We all say we want more time—but using it well is no small challenge. A man ought to approach fast with the attitude of a warrior-monk going into the desert to do battle with all that is weak within himself. A dopamine fast should probably accompany an actual fast: no pointless scrolling, no podcasts, no background music, no Youtube, etc. All that extra time freed up by fasting needs to be dedicated to prayer, work, and study—and a man needs to be belligerent about making this happen.
  

Quote:“The Cathedral in which he would have celebrated was denied to him by a Hierarchy that is now allied and complicit with the same enemies of the past, which excommunicates not the enemies of the Papacy, but those who denounce the betrayal of a usurper. Bishop Williamson also was betrayed: not by four assassins, but by those who wounded him in the heart, betraying the legacy of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.”

Quote:

Mons. Carlo Maria Viganò

Message for the Solemn Obsequies of Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson

O mors, ero mors tua;
morsus tuus ero, inferne.

O death, I will be your death;
I will be your mortal blow, O hell. Hos 13:14

The land of Canterbury was consecrated to Christ by the blood of Saint Thomas Becket, martyred on the 29th of December, 1170, in the Cathedral which has now become Anglican. At that time, Archbishop Thomas opposed the Constitutions of Clarendon, with which King Henry II attacked the liberties and independence of the Catholic Church. He paid with his life for this courageous defense of the Catholic Church, and today the Saintly Bishop looks down on us from heaven as we celebrate the suffrages of another Bishop, Richard Nelson Williamson, whom we consider a witness to the Faith and Catholic Tradition in times no less troubled and hostile.

Bishop Williamson was not killed by four assassins of Henry II. He did not shed his blood by being struck while celebrating the Holy Sacrifice at the altar of his Cathedral. The Cathedral in which he would have celebrated was denied to him by a Hierarchy that is now allied and complicit with the same enemies of the past, which excommunicates not the enemies of the Papacy, but those who denounce the betrayal of a usurper. Bishop Williamson also was betrayed: not by four assassins, but by those who wounded him in the heart, betraying the legacy of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

I hope that the heroic example of Saint Thomas Becket and the testimony of white martyrdom given by Bishop Richard Williamson may awaken in us the feelings that they both shared: first and foremost, the love of God; the love of the God-Man, Our Lord Jesus Christ; the love of the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church; and the love of man for the sake of the love of God, from which flows the apostolic zeal of true Shepherds toward their sheep, who recognize in them the voice of the divine Shepherd.

This earthly life is a battlefield, in which we fight without quarter against a mortal enemy. This enemy has already been defeated by Our Lord, on the Cross, the Via Regia, the Royal Road to the eternal glory of Heaven. This is what the prophet Hosea meant when, referring to Christ, he pronounced these words: O mors, ero mors tua; morsus tuus ero, inferne. Giving one’s life, giving all one’s life and all one’s energy for Our Lord Jesus Christ and for the Holy Church, and doing so in a daily crucifixion, allows us to be cooperators in the Redemption. Our human weakness, when placed at the service of the Gospel, allows Grace to accomplish great things; it allows us to face each day, even the last day, without giving up fighting the bonum certamen and repeating, with the Prophet: O death, I will be your death; I will be your mortal blow, O hell.

Tempora bona veniant. Pax Christi veniat. Regnum Christi veniat.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

February 26, 2025

The following is taken from Volume I of Michael Davies Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre. It deserves reading every so often for it's timelessness and most certainly, for the corollary to our times post Vatican II [emphasis mine].

Quote:What happened over 1600 years ago is repeating itself today, but with two or three differences: Alexandria is the whole Universal Church, the stability of which is being shaken, and what was undertaken at that time by means of physical force and cruelty is now being transferred to a different level. Exile is replaced by banishment into the silence of being ignored; killing, by assassination of character.

Mgr. Rudolf Graber, Bishop of Regensburg,
Athanasius and the Church of Our Times, p. 23.

Quote:...the inept, puerile, semi-literate English translation which has been foisted upon us by the ICEL - the International Commission for English in the Liturgy - a body of men possessed of all the worst characteristics of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, which has done an immeasurable disservice to the entire English-speaking world. The work has been marked by an almost complete lack of literary sense, a crass insensitivity to the poetry of language, and even worse by a most unscholarly freedom in the rendering of the texts, amounting at times, to actual misrepresentation.1 (My emphasis.)

Quote:Arianism had admitted that Our Lord was both the God of the Evangelical Covenant, and the actual Creator of the Universe; but even this was not enough, because it did not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite, Supreme Being, but as one who was made by the Supreme. It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God's Hands; not enough to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough because it was not all, and between all and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval. The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself.2

Quote:No other word could be found to express the essential union between the Father and the Son, for every other word the Arians accepted, but in an equivocal sense. They would deny that the Son was a creature as other creatures - or in the number of creatures - or made in time, for they considered him a special creation made before time. They would call Him "Only-begotten," meaning "Only directly created" Son of God.3 They would call Him "Lord Creator," "First-born of all creation"; they even accepted "God of God" meaning thereby "made God by God." This word (homoousion) alone they could not say without renouncing their heresy.4

Quote:Men of worldly character, they disliked dogmatic precision and wished for some comprehensive formula which men of all opinions could sign while understanding it in widely diverging senses. To these men the precise and exact faith of an Athanasius and the obstinate heresy of Arius and his plain-spoken followers were equally distasteful.

"Respectable, tolerant, broadminded" would be their ideal of religion. They therefore brought forward, instead of the too definite, ineradicable homoousion - of one substance - the vaguer term homoiousion, i. e., of like substance. They sent letters far and wide couched in seemingly orthodox and fervent language, proclaiming their belief in Our Lord's divinity, ascribing to Him every divine prerogative, anathematizing all who said He was created in time:5 in short, saying all the most orthodox could ask, except that they substituted their own homoiousion for the homoousion of Nicea.6

Quote:...over-rigid precisians, more anxious about terminology than about fraternal charity.

Meanwhile these latter, foremost among them Athanasius, at first deacon and disciple of Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and afterwards his successor, refused to modify in any way their attitude. Steadfastly they refused to accept any statement not containing the homoousion or to communicate with those who rejected it.7

Quote:On being informed of my pleasure, give free admission to all who are desirous of entering into communion with the Church. For if I learn of your standing in the way of any who were seeking it, or interdicting them, I will send at once those who shall depose you instead, by my authority, and banish you from your see.8

Quote:He appealed to Constantius to do justice to Athanasius. The imperial reply was to summon the bishops of Gaul to a council at Arles in 353-354, where, under threat of exile, they agreed to a condemnation of Athanasius. Even Liberius' legate yielded. When the Pope continued to press for a council more widely representative, it was assembled by Constantius at Milan in 355. It was threatened by a violent mob and the Emperor's personal intimidation: "My will," he exclaimed, "is canon law." He prevailed with all save three of the bishops. Athanasius was once more condemned and Arians admitted to communion. Once more papal legates surrendered and Liberius himself was ordered to sign. When he refused to do so, or even to accept the Emperor's offerings, he was seized and carried off to the imperial presence; when he stood firm for Athanasius' rehabilitation, he was exiled to Thrace (355) where he remained for two years. Meanwhile, a Roman deacon, Felix, was intruded into his see. The people refused to recognize the imperial anti-pope. Athanasius himself was driven into hiding and his flock abandoned to the persecution of an Arianizing intruder. When he visited Rome in 357, Constantius was besieged by clamorous demands for Liberius' restoration. Subservient bishops around the court at Sirmium subscribed in turn to doctrinal formulas more or less ambiguous or unorthodox. In 358, a formula drawn up by Basil of Ancyra, declaring that the Son was of like substance with the Father, homoiousion, was officially imposed.10

Quote:About this time Liberius began to sink under the hardships of his exile, and his resolution was shaken by the continual solicitations of Demophilus, the Arian Bishop of Beroea, and of Fortunatian, the temporizing Bishop of Aquileia. He was so far softened, by listening to flatteries and suggestions to which he ought to have stopped his ears with horror, that he yielded to the snare laid for him, to the great scandal of the Church. He subscribed to the condemnation of St. Athanasius and a confession or creed which had been framed by the Arians at Sirmium, though their heresy was not expressed in it; and he wrote to the Arian bishops of the East that he had received the true Catholic faith which many bishops had approved at Sirmium. The fall of so great a prelate and so illustrious a confessor is a terrifying example of human weakness, which no one can call to mind without trembling for himself. St. Peter fell by a presumptuous confidence in his own strength and resolution, that we may learn that everyone stands only by humility.11

Quote:Everything points to the fact that he [Liberius] accepted the first formula of Sirmium of 351...it failed gravely in deliberately avoiding the use of the most characteristic expression of the Nicene faith and in particular the homoousion. Thus while it cannot be said that Liberius taught false doctrine, it seems necessary to admit that, through weakness and fear, he did not do justice to the full truth.16

Quote:His fall, which followed, scandalous as it is in itself, may yet be taken to illustrate the silent firmness of those others of his fellow-sufferers, of whom we hear less, because they bore themselves more consistently.17

Quote:Liberius did not have the strength of character of his predecessor Julius I, or of his successor Damasus I. The troubles that erupted upon the latter's election indicate that the Roman Church had been weakened from within as well as from without during the pontificate of Liberius. His name was not inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.18

Quote:A. D. 360. St. Gregory Nazianzen says, about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel by the influence of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance." (Orat. xxi. 24).

Cappadocia. St. Basil says, about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitude, with groans and tears to the Lord in heaven." Ep. 92. Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assemble in deserts, - a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part in the wicked Arian leaven." Ep. 242. Again: "Only one offense is now vigorously punished, - an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries, and transported into deserts." Ep. 243.

Quote:It is not a little remarkable, that, though historically speaking, the fourth century is the age of doctors, illustrated, as it is, by the Saints Athanasius, Hilary, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine (and all those saints [were] bishops also, except one), nevertheless in that very day the Divine tradition committed to the infallible Church was proclaimed and maintained far more by the faithful than by the episcopate.

Here, of course, I must explain: - in saying this then, undoubtedly I am not denying that the great body of the Bishops were in their internal belief orthodox; nor that there were numbers of clergy who stood by the laity and acted as their centres and guides; nor that the laity actually received the faith in the first instance from the Bishops and clergy: nor that some portions of the laity were ignorant and other portions were at length corrupted by the Arian teachers, who got possession of the sees, and ordained an heretical clergy: - but I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the divine dogma of Our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the Ecclesia docta than by the Ecclesia docens; that the body of the Episcopate20 was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the Pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great sees, at other times general councils21 said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Eusebius of Vercellae, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them....

On the one hand, then, I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens.22 The body of bishops failed in their confession of the faith.

Quote:I see, then, in the Arian history, a palmary example of a state of the Church, during which, in order to know the tradition of the Apostles, we must have recourse to the faithful; for I fairly own, that if I go to writers, since I must adjust the letter of Justin, Clement, and Hippolytus with the Nicene Doctors, I get confused: and what revives me and reinstates me, as far as history goes, is the faith of the people. For I argue that, unless they had been catechized, as St. Hilary says, in the orthodox faith from the time of their baptism, they never could have had that horror, which they show, of the heterodox Arian doctrine. Their voice, then, is the voice of tradition....

Quote:The heresy long ago disseminated by that enemy of truth, Arius, grew to a shameless height and like a bitter root it is bearing its pernicious fruit and already gaining the upper hand since the standard-bearers of the true doctrine have been driven form the churches by defamation and insult and the authority they were vested with has been handed over to such as captivate the hearts of the simple in mind.23

Quote:The Church has not just recently been given order and statutes. They were faithfully and soundly bestowed on it by the Fathers. Nor has the faith only just been established, but it has come to us from the Lord through His disciples. May what has been preserved in the Churches from the beginning to the present day not be abandoned in our time; may what has been entrusted into our keeping not be embezzled by us. Brethren, as custodians of God’s mysteries, let yourselves be roused into action on seeing all this despoiled by others.24