If I keep preaching about Mary I’ll cry. Don’t worry, Father, we’ll cry with you.

After Holy Mass a group of us met in the “counter’s room” which doubles as a sacristy and triples as Faith Formation classrooms. One fellow in particular has been speaking much to me about dearest Mary, Jesus’ good mom. I told him that I blame him if I’m preaching so much about Mary. I added that if keep this up, I’m going to cry during the homily, the truths about Jesus and Mary being too overwhelming for me. He immediately countered by saying that they would all be crying with me, and to keep going.

I remember someone telling me that choking up like that (and I’ve already done that very many times) – and much more anything to do with actual tears – is a terrible sign of weakness, effeminate, womanly, and is not to be done by a man. Never. And it was a woman who told me this, a Mother General of her religious order no less. Sigh. So, I guess I am the most inept of all, weakness incarnate. But I knew that already, as I’ve crucified the Son of the Living God, dearest Mary’s Divine Son, with my sins. How can I begin to preach to others? But such is the intercession of maternal heart of Mary Immaculate, and the outrageous forgiveness of her Divine Son.

I preach about Mary because it brings it all home in a way, I think, that pleases Jesus. And so now I suppose I am being presumptuous, thinking that I surely know what it is that is going on in the perspective of Jesus on the Cross. I’m sure I am awfully presumptuous in some way. From hidden faults acquit me, O Lord! I’m a fallen human being. BUT, it just seems so very right about what is going on between Jesus and His Immaculate Mother. I can’t help it. I’m quite sure that Jesus is telling me: “Ah, little Georgie, if you only knew what goes on between my Heart and my Mother’s Immaculate Heart. But you cannot bear it now. But, yes, we are in solidarity with each other…” I tried to preach about this solidarity last night. I lead up to it…

I do mention Pope Francis’ take on the Gospel. Here are some of his words of his I didn’t much get into during the homily for your convenience. I wanted to speak more about Mary. You might not quite get the motivation for my incisiveness below if you’ve not listened to the homily about Mary from Jesus’ perspective. I’ve written on this before. I’ve added some commentary: ///

“It is more the time for joyfully proclaiming the Gospel than for combatting paganism. [Ooops! These are not mutually exclusive. Throwing the demonic pagan death-cult Pachamama into the Tiber river is entirely consonant with God’s life of grace that will not have us tolerate a fear of our own death in testifying that Pachamama is straight out of hell. Is it really no longer a time to call out the brood of vipers, the sons of Satan, who hate God and man? Why is that? Not only has Pope Francis been complicit in the worship of pagan death goddess idol Pachamama, but now he’s commanding that no one else is to condemn paganism? I mean, this is in the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not have strange gods before ye! Pope Francis wants to rid the Church of the Ten Commandments?!] It is the time for bringing the joy of the Risen Lord, not for lamenting the drama of secularization. [Wait, wait, wait. Pope Francis, bringing the joy of the Risen Lord is in and of itself part and parcel of lamenting the drama of secularization embodied in, say, Pachamama, which you promote. What the hell are you talking about? This is the first time you’ve offered Holy Mass on this altar after enthroning Pachamama there quite a while back and the first thing you do is to hold up paganism and then the protection of the secularization of the world and the Church. Is this your bid to excuse yourself concerning Pachamama? And now you entrench by wanting the whole Church to follow your lead right into hell (objectively speaking) by teaching others to break the Ten Commandments?] It is the time for pouring out love upon the world, yet not embracing worldliness. It is more the time for testifying to mercy, than for inculcating rules and regulations. [Woah woah woah. You see what he did there? He just said that rules and regulations (like the Ten Commandments in context) is itself worldliness. That’s, like, demonic. For Pope Francis, the Ten Commandments are not love and mercy, you know, love of God and love of neighbor and love of parents, but rather are an embracing of worldliness, a lack of love and mercy.] It is the time of the Paraclete! It is the time of freedom of heart, in the Paraclete. [Saint Paul says much the same, except that Saint Paul says our freedom as the children of God in grace is not to be an excuse to throw away the Ten Commandments, not at all.]

“The Paraclete is also the Advocate. In Jesus’ day, advocates did not do what they do today: rather than speaking in the place of defendants, they simply stood next to them and suggested arguments they could use in their own defence. That is what the Paraclete does, for he is “the spirit of truth” (v. 26). He does not take our place, but defends us from the deceits of evil by inspiring thoughts and feelings. [Whoa, whoa, whoa: “feelings”? This is where Ignatius and Freud meet up, and where Ignatius is killed off with a discernment of spirits of fallen human feelings that do not follow reason and which are part of the cross we now carry after original sin. “Inspiring… feelings.” The feeling that I’m being inspired with right now is this: barf barf barf. In grace, we follow right reason to make an act of the will to do what is honest before God and man, often very much against any fallen “feelings.”] He does so discreetly, without forcing us: he proposes but does not impose. [Actually, the Holy Spirit quite forcefully puts us next to the Blessed Virgin Immaculate Mother of God so as to have us look upon the wounds of our Savior. That‘s what the Holy Spirit does. Sure, we can reject this, but this is what The Holy Spirit does. We don’t make existential decisions in the Holy Spirit apart from Christ Incarnate and Crucified.] The spirit of deceit, the evil one, does the opposite: he tries to force us; he wants to make us think that we must always yield to the allure and the promptings of vice. Let us try to accept three suggestions that are typical of the Paraclete, our Advocate. They are three fundamental antidotes to three temptations that today are so widespread.

“The first advice offered by the Holy Spirit is, “Live in the present”. The present, not the past or the future. The Paraclete affirms the primacy of today, against the temptation to let ourselves be paralyzed by rancour or memories of the past, or by uncertainty or fear about the future. The Spirit reminds us of the grace of the present moment. There is no better time for us: now, here and now, is the one and only time to do good, to make our life a gift. Let us live in the present! [“The grace of the present moment”… What does that even mean? Mere advice? I’m waiting for Jesus here. We are to live in Him by the sanctifying of the Holy Spirit. God holds all of time in His hands as just another creation. We are with those of all time as we are all brought in that one hour before Christ Jesus on the Cross. We are all of us in all times in the present moment, and we are all in that present moment through all time inasmuch as we are in union with Christ as the members of the Body of Christ. Without Christ, this “live in the present” thing is mere existentialism. This is not what the great spiritual writers speak about. Instead, any present moment, say, with Jesus in Holy Communion, puts us right before all the members of the Body of Christ. Or am I being ideological, using “trite” words like “trademark”?]

“The Spirit also tells us, “Look to the whole”. The whole, not the part. The Spirit does not mould isolated individuals, but shapes us into a Church in the wide variety of our charisms, into a unity that is never uniformity. The Paraclete affirms the primacy of the whole. There, in the whole, in the community, the Spirit prefers [“prefers”…] to work and to bring newness. [Because individuals who are redeemed and saved and made into tabernacles of the Holy Spirit, who carry about the death of the Lord in them, that most glorious death in all love, are nothing? It’s all about “The People”, “The Proletariat”, not about us individually being brought into the One Body of Christ? The Holy Spirit sanctifies individuals, all of them with free will and a conscience. Not a Body Politic.] Let us look at the apostles. They were all quite different. They included, for example, Matthew, a tax collector who collaborated with the Romans, and Simon called the zealot, who fought them. They had contrary political ideas, different visions of the world. Yet once they received the Spirit, they learned to give primacy not to their human viewpoints but to the “whole” that is God’s plan. [No, no. They didn’t keep their fallen human drama, their fallen human viewpoints, their sin. They actually abandoned all of that, all of them. They abandoned all to follow Christ. They didn’t carry secondary anti-Christ ideology but now were simply giving a bit more primacy to Christ. No. Pope Francis is speaking B and in B, S as in S.] Today, if we listen to the Spirit, we will not be concerned with conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and innovators, right and left. [Oh, yes we will. If any of those labels regards doctrine and morality, and in context, that’s exactly what you mean, Pope Francis, and that’s exactly what these things refer to in our common parlance, well then, we will reject all that lacks integrity and honesty. Yep.] When those become our criteria, then the Church has forgotten the Spirit. [No, no. I’ve remembered the Body of Christ, of which we are the members, you know: “What you have done to the least of these you have done to Me.” Therefore, no contraception, no abortion, no euthanasia, no homosexualist “civil unions” or “marriages” etc., etc., etc. This is about Christ Jesus, not your political categories foisted upon the faith by which you condemn all those who by the grace of God try to follow the Ten Commandments accepting all doctrine, all morality.] The Paraclete impels us to unity, to concord, to the harmony of diversity. He makes us see ourselves as parts of the same body, brothers and sisters of one another. [Again, what about the BODY OF CHRIST? You can’t say, can you? Try it: “BODY OF CHRIST.” You know, let’s give Holy Communion to the pious soul and also to the monster Joe Biden who comes up to Holy Communion while picking his teeth with the little ribs of aborted babies. That’s your unity is diversity? The Holy Spirit, as Cardinal Siri says, speaks univocally. Yep. Read Gethsemane. The living Truth is the same for all: Sacred Tradition, consonant with the Sacred Scriptures.] Let us look to the whole! [We will all look together to Him whom we have all pierced through, men of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, to Him who is, who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Just say it. With the Body of Christ we have… wait for it… the Body of Christ, not some lowest common denominator of hell. All members of the Body of Christ are equally to have acceptance of the full integrity of doctrine, the full integrity of morality, like, you know, the Ten Commandments.] The enemy wants diversity to become opposition and so he makes them become ideologies. Say no to ideologies, yes to the whole. [Say yes to the Body of Christ, for all else is ideology. And what you have given us, Pope Francis, is pure and unadulterated ideology, really quite Marxist in your presentation.]”