/// I reprint this from December 22, 2019. We simply must have an incisive sense of Christian irony. ///
The great receptionist lady at Valley View Nursing Home in Andrews, NC, above the cow pasture on the edge of town, told me quite a while back that I had better not just see Marie McIsaac (who died Nov. 21, 2019), but I had better see Marjorie Harris as well.
“Who’s Marjorie Harris?” I asked. Of course, I would have to find out for myself.
I went to her room and saw a terribly pitiable sight, that is, to all appearances. What a strong woman, such a fierce wit. How much she has suffered… The currents run deep in those who suffer. Marjorie was effectively without a family. They were far away, so very distant.
Marjorie had what’s called an essential tremor. The brain sends it own signals to the muscles on its own and there’s a Parkinson-esque tremor especially in the head which continuously shakes and especially in the hands, especially when trying to hold flatware or pick up a cup to drink. Sitting in a wheel chair staring at a corner of her room she looked pitiful until I noted (it didn’t take long) a piercingly ironic brilliant wit. Wow! I love to see this. I am rightly reprimanded for being tempted to judge appearances, first impressions and all that idiocy. Stupid, stupid, stupid me. She quickly became a close friend.
We spoke much about her family… We spoke a great deal about the faith, about the sacraments, about the ironies of life, about literature. Regarding the literature thing, take a hint about her from the comment she made to me the other day with some dismay at the state of affairs with education today:
“Father George, you’re the only one who speaks to me with the subjunctive.”
Marjorie made me laugh. I was able to bring her to laugh, almost to tears. She thanked me for that. I learned about laughter from the great Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, who spoke of breaking the suffering of those in a hospital or institution. He said those who suffer do suffer in the present, but they are also tempted to drag all suffering of the past into the present and they project all that heap of suffering into the future and drag all of that back upon themselves into a suffocating, frustrating web of suffering in the present so great that it seems it is impossible to extricate oneself. And then one is brought to laugh. It all breaks apart.
We spoke of Jesus and His great wit, His irony, how He turns tables with but a word. Yep.
Testing me, Marjorie told me about Dorothy Parker and asked me to find a quote, any one will do, from her many aphorisms. Marjorie told me this was a test of my own wit or lack thereof. I tendered this magnificent aphorism:
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
I laughed when I saw that. I printed it out and brought it to her. She struggled a bit trying to hold the paper still enough to read it, trying to see around dark spots in her eyes… Then she laughed and laughed a howling laugh making me laugh with her. Snorting laughter. Lovely, really.
Marjorie loved the likes of T.S. Elliot, Kipling, Frost, Wordsworth… Knowing this, I promised to bring her, in big print, my summary of Hilaire Belloc’s chapter on the greatness of irony:
“To the young, the pure, and the ingenuous, irony must always appear to have a quality of something evil, and so it has, for […] it is a sword to wound. It is so directly the product or reflex of evil that, though it can never be used – nay, can hardly exist – save in the chastisement of evil, yet irony always carries with it some reflections of the bad spirit against which it was directed. […] It suggests most powerfully the evil against which it is directed, and those innocent of evil shun so terrible an instrument. […] The mere truth is vivid with ironical power […] when the mere utterance of a plain truth labouriously concealed by hypocrisy, denied by contemporary falsehood, and forgotten in the moral lethargy of the populace, takes upon itself an ironical quality more powerful than any elaboration of special ironies could have taken in the past. […] No man possessed of irony and using it has lived happily; nor has any man possessing it and using it died without having done great good to his fellows and secured a singular advantage to his own soul.” [Hilaire Belloc, “On Irony” (pages 124-127; Penguin books 1325. Selected Essays (2/6), edited by J.B. Morton; Harmondsworth – Baltimore – Mitcham 1958).]
She loved it totally. So full of thanksgiving. Then she brought up GK Chesterton and The Man Who Was Thursday. Testing me again, I’m sure, she said ever so non-nonchalantly: “I’m not sure what it means. I had to read it seven times.” I brought her commentary on that work of G.K., commentary on where Chesterton was in his life, he writing that more than a decade before his conversion. Instantly I could see everything click, all her questions answered. So I promised to bring her THE CHAPTER. What’s that she inquired with expectation of good things to come.
It’s called The Secret of Father Brown in a volume of the Father Brown stories also sporting that title, said I. It was that Secret which accompanied Marjorie to the next life. It is so filled with the greatest suffering, with the greatest hope, going to the heart of Chesterton’s own friendship with Christ Jesus, the greatest expression of spiritual irony surpassing even that of Belloc’s take on irony included above.
Marjorie was the most incisive literary wit I have ever known, ever. And, believe me when I tell you, after hanging around the most brilliant people in the world all around the world for a lifetime, all at the top of their game on the world stage, that’s saying a lot.
I will miss you terribly Marjorie of the essential tremor, trembling with essential life before Him who is our Life on the Cross. Remember me from where you are, this donkey-priest. Tell Jesus that this donkey priest needs His special help.
THE SECRET OF FATHER BROWN
FLAMBEAU, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address: in a castle in Spain. The castle, however, was solid though relatively small; and the black vineyard and green stripes of kitchen garden covered a respectable square on the brown hillside. For Flambeau, after all his violent adventures, still possessed what is possessed by so many Latins, what is absent (for instance) in so many Americans, the energy to retire. It can be seen in many a large hotel-proprietor whose one ambition is to be a small peasant. It can be seen in many a French provincial shopkeeper, who pauses at the moment when he might develop into a detestable millionaire and buy a street of shops, to fall back quietly and comfortably on domesticity and dominoes. Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish Lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders. But on one particular morning he was observed by his family to be unusually restless and excited; and he outran the little boys and descended the greater part of the long mountain slope to meet the visitor who was coming across the valley; even when the visitor was still a black dot in the distance.
The black dot gradually increased in size without very much altering in the shape; for it continued, roughly speaking, to be both round and black. The black clothes of clerics were not unknown upon those hills; but these clothes, however clerical, had about them something at once commonplace and yet almost jaunty in comparison with the cassock or soutane, and marked the wearer as a man from the northwestern islands, as clearly as if he had been labelled Clapham Junction. He carried a short thick umbrella with a knob like a club, at the sight of which his Latin friend almost shed tears of sentiment; for it had figured in many adventures that they shared long ago. For this was the Frenchman’s English friend, Father Brown, paying a long-desired but long-delayed visit. They had corresponded constantly, but they had not met for years.
Father Brown was soon established in the family circle, which was quite large enough to give the general sense of company or a community. He was introduced to the big wooden images of the Three Kings, of painted and gilded wood, who bring the gifts to the children at Christmas; for Spain is a country where the affairs of the children bulk large in the life of the home. He was introduced to the dog and the cat and the live-stock on the farm. But he was also, as it happened, introduced to one neighbour who, like himself, had brought into that valley the garb and manners of distant lands.
It was on the third night of the priest’s stay at the little chateau that he beheld a stately stranger who paid his respects to the Spanish household with bows that no Spanish grandee could emulate. He was a tall, thin grey-haired and very handsome gentleman, and his hands, cuffs and cuff-links had something overpowering in their polish. But his long face had nothing of that languor which is associated with long cuffs and manicuring in the caricatures of our own country. It was rather arrestingly alert and keen; and the eyes had an innocent intensity of inquiry that does not go often with grey hairs. That alone might have marked the man’s nationality, as well the nasal note in his refined voice and his rather too ready assumption of the vast antiquity of all the European things around him. This was, indeed, no less a person than Mr. Grandison Chace, of Boston, an American traveller who had halted for a time in his American travels by taking a lease of the adjoining estate; a somewhat similar castle on a somewhat similar hill. He delighted in his old castle, and he regarded his friendly neighbour as a local antiquity of the same type. For Flambeau managed, as we have said, really to look retired in the sense of rooted. He might have grown there with his own vine and fig-tree for ages. He had resumed his real family name of Duroc; for the other title of “The Torch” had only been a title de guerre, like that under which such a man will often wage war on society. He was fond of his wife and family; he never went farther afield than was needed for a little shooting; and he seemed, to the American globe-trotter, the embodiment of that cult of a sunny respectability and a temperate luxury, which the American was wise enough to see and admire in the Mediterranean peoples. The rolling stone from the West was glad to rest for a moment on this rock in the South that had gathered so very much moss. But Mr. Chace had heard of Father Brown, and his tone faintly changed, as towards a celebrity. The interviewing instinct awoke, tactful but tense. If he did try to draw Father Brown, as if he were a tooth, it was done with the most dexterous and painless American dentistry.
They were sitting in a sort of partly unroofed outer court of the house, such as often forms the entrance to Spanish houses. It was dusk turning to dark; and as all that mountain air sharpens suddenly after sunset, a small stove stood on the flagstones, glowing with red eyes like a goblin, and painting a red pattern on the pavement; but scarcely a ray of it reached the lower bricks of the great bare, brown brick wall that went soaring up above them into the deep blue night. Flambeau’s big broad-shouldered figure and great moustaches, like sabres, could be traced dimly in the twilight, as he moved about, drawing dark wine from a great cask and handing it round. In his shadow, the priest looked very shrunken and small, as if huddled over the stove; but the American visitor leaned forward elegantly with his elbow on his knee and his fine pointed features in the full light; his eyes shone with inquisitive intelligence.
“I can assure you, sir,” he was saying, “we consider your achievement in the matter of the Moonshine Murder the most remarkable triumph in the history of detective science.”
Father Brown murmured something; some might have imagined that the murmur was a little like a moan.
“We are well acquainted,” went on the stranger firmly, “with the alleged achievements of Dupin and others; and with those of Lecoq, Sherlock Holmes, Nicholas Carter, and other imaginative incarnations of the craft. But we observe there is in many ways, a marked difference between your own method of approach and that of these other thinkers, whether fictitious or actual. Some have spec’lated, sir, as to whether the difference of method may perhaps involve rather the absence of method.”
Father Brown was silent; then he started a little, almost as if he had been nodding over the stove, and said: “I beg your pardon. Yes. . .. Absence of method. . . . Absence of mind, too, I’m afraid.”
“I should say of strictly tabulated scientific method,” went on the inquirer. “Edgar Poe throws off several little essays in a conversational form, explaining Dupin’s method, with its fine links of logic. Dr. Watson had to listen to some pretty exact expositions of Holmes’s method with its observation of material details. But nobody seems to have got on to any full account of your method, Father Brown, and I was informed you declined the offer to give a series of lectures in the States on the matter.”
“Yes,” said the priest, frowning at the stove; “I declined.”
“Your refusal gave rise to a remarkable lot of interesting talk,” remarked Chace. “I may say that some of our people are saying your science can’t be expounded, because it’s something more than just natural science. They say your secret’s not to be divulged, as being occult in its character.”
“Being what?” asked Father Brown, rather sharply.
“Why, kind of esoteric,” replied the other. “I can tell you, people got considerably worked up about Gallup’s murder, and Stein’s murder, and then old man Merton’s murder, and now Judge Gwynne’s murder, and a double murder by Dalmon, who was well known in the States. And there were you, on the spot every time, slap in the middle of it; telling everybody how it was done and never telling anybody how you knew. So some people got to think you knew without looking, so to speak. And Carlotta Brownson gave a lecture on Thought-Forms with illustrations from these cases of yours. The Second Sight Sisterhood of Indianapolis —— ”
Father Brown, was still staring at the stove; then he said quite loud yet as if hardly aware that anyone heard him: “Oh, I say. This will never do.”
“I don’t exactly know how it’s to be helped,” said Mr. Chace humorously. “The Second Sight Sisterhood want a lot of holding down. The only way I can think of stopping it is for you to tell us the secret after all.”
Father Brown groaned. He put his head on his hands and remained a moment, as if full of a silent convulsion of thought. Then he lifted his head and said in a dull voice:
“Very well. I must tell the secret.”
His eyes rolled darkly over the whole darkling scene, from the red eyes of the little stove to the stark expanse of the ancient wall, over which were standing out, more and more brightly, the strong stars of the south.
“The secret is,” he said; and then stopped as if unable to go on. Then he began again and said:
“You see, it was I who killed all those people.”
“What?” repeated the other, in a small voice out of a vast silence.
“You see, I had murdered them all myself,” explained Father Brown patiently. “So, of course, I knew how it was done.”
Grandison Chace had risen to his great height like a man lifted to the ceiling by a sort of slow explosion. Staring down at the other he repeated his incredulous question.
“I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully,” went on Father Brown, “I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”
Chace gradually released a sort of broken sigh.
“You frightened me all right,” he said. “For the minute I really did think you meant you were the murderer. Just for the minute I kind of saw it splashed over all the papers in the States: ‘Saintly Sleuth Exposed as Killer: Hundred Crimes of Father Brown.’ Why, of course, if it’s just a figure of speech and means you tried to reconstruct the psychology — ”
Father Brown rapped sharply on the stove with the short pipe he was about to fill; one of his very rare spasms of annoyance contracted his face.
“No, no, no,” he said, almost angrily; “I don’t mean just a figure of speech. This is what comes of trying to talk about deep things. . . . What’s the good of words . . .? If you try to talk about a truth that’s merely moral, people always think it’s merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: ‘I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.’ Naturally, I said: ‘In what other sense could you believe it?’ And then he thought I meant he needn’t believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . . I mean that I really did see myself, and my real self, committing the murders. I didn’t actually kill the men by material means; but that’s not the point. Any brick or bit of machinery might have killed them by material means. I mean that I thought and thought about how a man might come to be like that, until I realized that I really was like that, in everything except actual final consent to the action. It was once suggested to me by a friend of mine, as a sort of religious exercise. I believe he got it from Pope Leo XIII, who was always rather a hero of mine.”
“I’m afraid,” said the American, in tones that were still doubtful, and keeping his eye on the priest rather as if he were a wild animal, “that you’d have to explain a lot to me before I knew what you were talking about. The science of detection —— ”
Father Brown snapped his fingers with the same animated annoyance. “That’s it,” he cried; “that’s just where we part company. Science is a grand thing when you can get it; in its real sense one of the grandest words in the world. But what do these men mean, nine times out of ten, when they use it nowadays? When they say detection is a science? When they say criminology is a science? They mean getting outside a man and studying him as if he were a gigantic insect: in what they would call a dry impartial light, in what I should call a dead and dehumanized light. They mean getting a long way off him, as if he were a distant prehistoric monster; staring at the shape of his ‘criminal skull’ as if it were a sort of eerie growth, like the horn on a rhinoceros’s nose. When the scientist talks about a type, he never means himself, but always his neighbour; probably his poorer neighbour. I don’t deny the dry light may sometimes do good; though in one sense it’s the very reverse of science. So far from being knowledge, it’s actually suppression of what we know. It’s treating a friend as a stranger, and pretending that something familiar is really remote and mysterious. It’s like saying that a man has a proboscis between the eyes, or that he falls down in a fit of insensibility once every twenty-four hours. Well, what you call ‘the secret’ is exactly the opposite. I don’t try to get outside the man. I try to get inside the murderer . . . . Indeed it’s much more than that, don’t you see? I am inside a man. I am always inside a man, moving his arms and legs; but I wait till I know I am inside a murderer, thinking his thoughts, wrestling with his passions; till I have bent myself into the posture of his hunched and peering hatred; till I see the world with his bloodshot and squinting eyes, looking between the blinkers of his half-witted concentration; looking up the short and sharp perspective of a straight road to a pool of blood. Till I am really a murderer.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Chace, regarding him with a long, grim face, and added: “And that is what you call a religious exercise.”
“Yes,” said Father Brown; “that is what I call a religious exercise.”
After an instant’s silence he resumed: “It’s so real a religious exercise that I’d rather not have said anything about it. But I simply couldn’t have you going off and telling all your countrymen that I had a secret magic connected with Thought-Forms, could I? I’ve put it badly, but it’s true. No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”
Flambeau came forward and filled a great goblet with Spanish wine and set it before his friend, as he had already set one before his fellow guest. Then he himself spoke for the first time:
“I believe Father Brown has had a new batch of mysteries. We were talking about them the other day, I fancy. He has been dealing with some queer people since we last met.”
“Yes; I know the stories more or less — but not the application,” said Chace, lifting his glass thoughtfully. “Can you give me any examples, I wonder. . . . I mean, did you deal with this last batch in that introspective style?”
Father Brown also lifted his glass, and the glow of the fire turned the red wine transparent, like the glorious blood-red glass of a martyr’s window. The red flame seemed to hold his eyes and absorb his gaze that sank deeper and deeper into it, as if that single cup held a red sea of the blood of all men, and his soul were a diver, ever plunging in dark humility and inverted imagination, lower than its lowest monsters and its most ancient slime. In that cup, as in a red mirror, he saw many things; the doings of his last days moved in crimson shadows; the examples that his companions demanded danced in symbolic shapes; and there passed before him all the stories that are told here. Now, the luminous wine was like a vast red sunset upon dark red sands, where stood dark figures of men; one was fallen and another running towards him. Then the sunset seemed to break up into patches: red lanterns swinging from garden trees and a pond gleaming red with reflection; and then all the colour seemed to cluster again into a great rose of red crystal, a jewel that irradiated the world like a red sun, save for the shadow of a tall figure with a high head-dress as of some prehistoric priest; and then faded again till nothing was left but a flame of wild red beard blowing in the wind upon a wild grey moor. All these things, which may be seen later from other angles and in other moods than his own, rose up in his memory at the challenge and began to form themselves into anecdotes and arguments.
“Yes,” he said, as he raised the wine cup slowly to his lips, “I can remember pretty well – – – – – ”
Claire (Girardin) Dion, 84, of Bridgton, ME, died Wednesday April 24, 2024 after a courageous battle with cancer. Born in Lynn to the late Arthur and Doris (Therrien) Girardin. Claire had lived in Lynn for many years, as well as Beverly, MA, and most recently in Bridgton, Maine with her husband of 23 years Ronald Guthenberg. Claire’s faith was strong and she was very active in the Catholic community and loved the connections she made over the years through her church and its extended community.
Claire was passionate about caring for others and while raising her family, she followed her dreams and attended Bunker Hill Community College and obtained her degree in nursing. She spent many years working with patients and caregivers helping them through their times in need. From labor and delivery to end-of-life, she brought the care and understanding that graced all those who had the privilege of her support.
Claire was also an avid volunteer and gave her time freely to programs such as Greater Lynn Mental Health, where she once served as president of the board. She was also known for taking in those in need, whether an elderly relative or young adult that needed a safe place, her home was always filled with love. Her volunteerism led to her being selected as a torch bearer for the 1996 Olympics. Her caring spirit also extended to animals, whether pets or wild, she loved them all and never missed an opportunity to contribute to their welfare. […]
Funeral Mass: Monday, April 29, 2024, 10:30AM – St. Pius V Church, Maple Street; Lynn, MA
In the picture at the top you see Claire visiting with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, who were, are both friends of Father Gordon MacRae, Claire helping the both of them through the years. God speed, Claire. Hail Mary…
Dear Aussie Mum, I was able to offer Mass for you again. We’re all asking Sister Lucia to intercede for a miracle on your behalf. While we are doing that, it came to mind recently that perhaps I might ask a favor of you should you perhaps get called to heaven by Jesus before I am.
And while many have told me that saying such things is terribly presumptuous, I think we must indulge in the hope that we have been provided. Indeed, I’m convinced that it would be a sin not to have hope. As Saint Paul asks, If the Lord is for us, who can be against us?
The cowardly, say, Karl Marx, thought that such hope is the opiate of society, but I find, instead, that the hopeless do nothing except to kill as many as they can, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Sanger, so dark, so violent…
Hope, instead, sets us on fire to do what we can also here upon earth, in the midst of our sufferings, by way of our union with dearest Jesus, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception. And with Saint Paul we desire both to stay here for the sake of the brethren, or to be with Christ and intercede from heaven all the more. Being with the Creator of the Universe, with Love, is no opiate. It is Life and Truth. Jesus is the only Way.
Having said all that… Aussie Mum… I would like to ask a favor of you, a favor which I’ve asked countless souls, capitalizing on my being a priest, giving Last Rites to so very many. My asking of such a favor has assisted so very many, very close to death, to laugh, and joyfully give up resisting making a good Confession, so as to then receive the Last Rites, so as then to receive Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and, as I would say to them, so as to be given as a gift of Jesus to our Heavenly Father, soon, very soon.
Might you, please, Aussie Mum, upon entering the pearly gates, raucously welcomed into the everlasting habitations, as Jesus says, by all those for whom we’ve prayed to get them to heaven, to get them out of purgatory… Might you, please, Aussie Mum, after you’ve thanked Jesus humbly, saying that you only ever did what you had to do, and after you’ve interceded for family and friends so that they might be on their way to heaven, might you add one more intercession for me? Please, tell Jesus that there’s a donkey-priest down upon earth who desperately needs His special help. He will say that all priests worthy of being called His priests are donkey-priests, guarding His Little Flock. He will ask which one in particular. Then, please, begin to explain that there’s a troublemaker in the mountains, who… and as you do, all those there to greet you and bring you before Jesus will laugh, with Jesus, to your bewilderment. Jesus will then explain that I’ve sent so very many to Him with instructions to say the same thing!
Should it work the other way, whereby I die first… while I’m aiming for heaven and to go there straightaway, as Jesus is so merciful, methinks that nevertheless I will be in purgatory until the end of the world, unless someone, again, ask Jesus about a certain donkey-priest who may well be in purgatory, likely until the end of the world, who needs His special help… and I will be most grateful for this, praying for you and yours to be on your way to heaven.
Cromwell: “Justice is what you are threatened with!”
Thomas More: “Then I am not threatened.”
“Encounter” — something difficult or hostile
unexpected – unnerved by the encounter
confrontation – unpleasant struggle
a violent incident – shot dead in a police encounter
meet as an adversary
“Encounter” is a word I encountered[!] as a young seminarian in a presentation on the modernist theologian whose translator coined this term in it’s use regarding one’s relationship with God. “We encounter God.”
This theologian would sometimes try to let his readers know about his prayer life, truly an encounter so empty, so locked out, in which he is so terribly left to himself, knowing nothing of the Lord, with the Lord clearly pronouncing to him: “I never knew you…” All of it… so very horrific…
His method to meet Jesus was not of Jesus as His Savior, who draws him to Himself on the Cross, but rather to insist that he himself under his own power with no supernatural grace might work his own way into heaven. He’s a Jesuit, of course.
This is not the Carmelite dark night of the soul, which is, instead, a most lively and, indeed, lovely bond with Him who is Light from Light, True God from True God: God alone! Even if one feels locked-out in the true dark night, even feeling abandoned by God, all the effects of original sin (minus the guilt!) one knows something of which our Lord saved us from, which ever so very importantly provides us with an opportunity to thank Jesus for reaching so very far into this world to grab us, in that graced dark night.
Because graced, this dark night is always wrought in the intimate presence of the Most High. We know we’re not locked-out at all. We are there, with Him. He has a good grip on our souls. He will not lose even one whom the Father has given to Him. The grace, we know, will turn to glory, as Saint Paul says. “Life is changed, not ended.”
Would children say that they “encountered” Jesus?
I think they might be squealing with joy that little Jesus gave their flowers to Mary.
Walking into the carport just barely doesn’t require me to bow down. Every time I went to and from Sassy the Subaru my head moved right under the entrance to that yellowjacket nest. My guardian angel finally just turned my face a few more feet away and made me look death in the face. Jaw dropped. Eyes wide. Slowly backing away. My guardian angel probably let it go for so long because I brag too much about situational awareness. I think my guardian angel likes to point out to me that he’s much better at it than I am. I’m good with that.
Anyway, I found my yellowjacket spray and waited until 4:30 AM the next morning. The one below, in the kitchen, followed me into the house after the spraying:
At daylight, I saw that these had dropped underneath the nest:
Although it was night, although I had sprayed them, a half-dozen+ others followed me to the door of the rectory, dropping to the ground as I went, too weak to sting because of the spray. But they tried. That morning I saw that the nest was half melted away, but that they were busy reconstructing it already. That got sprayed again, and then one more time.
There was a second one as well. Now gone as well.
Such beasts can be deadly to me, not because I’m allergic, but because of a hereditary malady. If they get me in the neck or face, that might well mean death.
It’s not that long ago that I happened upon a good friend who is deadly allergic, and he just got stung well over a hundred times, just as I pulled up to his house. I rushed him down the mountain and got hold of the police and EMTs. They gave him an EpiPen jab literally a few seconds away from death. Thank you guardian angel.
We might be staring death in the face anytime, anywhere, when least expected. Our guardian angels want us to be prepared for when the Lord calls.
You know what that means: Go to Confession! That’s where we thank our Lord for dying for us, you know, so that we could say:
“Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).
I’m forever saying, “I wanna go to heaven!” But I think my guardian angel just rolls his eyes saying that I’m just so very not ready, not yet anyway. Perhaps when I am ready, he will just let a few well placed stings get through. Thanks, guardian angel.
The other day – the “Day Off” – the traffic jam on the interstate was mentioned with the dozens of emergency vehicles with so many trailers of search and rescue rafts going by. The above picture I took shows just one of those trailers racing by in the breakdown lane with three of those rafts. There were at least 15 rafts coming from – I thought – as far away as the other part of the State, Winston-Salem, but I was told yesterday that they came from as far away as the Atlantic coast. You can read the road sign. I think it said that it was still 15 miles to Canton. I never did see any accident, and only found out the next day that this was no traffic accident, say, over a bridge, but rather a flooding catastrophe of the town of Canton. The town was flooded. The residences were flooded.
One story I heard was of a woman floating through town in her trailer-home, going about four streets downstream until she hit a tree, hard. Another story, so sad… so very sad… recounted by the wife… said that her husband, a special ops military guy in superb physical shape, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, got smacked hard in the head in the chaos and wound up outside the vehicle, still not found in the ravaging waters. Hail Mary…
The angels were at work with impossible coincidences, and I was able to deliver a load of food from the Joe El-Khouri Mercy Outreach of our little parish here in Andrews to Grace Community Church on scene. I had an EMT as navigator. Without him, I never would have found the tucked away little church which was super busy with relief efforts. God bless them.
There were, as of yesterday afternoon, two dead and twenty-six missing, two days later… That’s a huge blow to this village. They have no gymnasium or makeshift shelters to go to. FEMA can’t come in until the rescue effort is finished. That will be quite a while yet. With waters receding and people wanting to get what they can from any upper level of their homes, another priority is to educate about the deadly black mold which starts to grow almost immediately.
Father Dana is dying of ALS. He’s a friend of friends for me, and I met him a number of times here in North Carolina. What a great priest. Read his cry from the heart by clicking on “Continue reading” above. Hail Mary…
When some of my own unrepeatable circumstances weigh on me, I think of other priests such as Father Dana. His very life of profound faith in the midst of impossible circumstances – his very life now on what will be his death bed being an act of intercession for the entire Church – is a great encouragement to me.
Dearest Donna was called by our Lord to the next life the other day. This was a sudden death. Her funeral is this coming Wednesday at 11:00 AM (April 6, 2021) at Saint Dorothy’s Catholic Church in Lincolnton, NC. Donna was a best friend, as is her husband John, and their son, John Brian.
I should like to write more at length about these great witnesses to our Lord and our Blessed Mother in future.
But for now, a humorous story. It is NOT a canonization of Donna. And I’m not saying I’m some sort of visionary. No. I think that no matter what we are to pray that those who die be released from purgatory forthwith and be on their way to heaven, and if they are already there, our prayers will go – in their honor – for other souls to be on their way. It’s all good.
To preface this story you have to know that for a million reasons, one more far reaching than the other, I think that donkeys are the coolest of all God’s creatures, ever. They can sing, they only do what they understand, they are always with the Holy Family, they are the hard-working symbol of Israel from time immemorial. I could go on for volumes, and I have written at great length quite innumerable times about the glories of donkeys. I believe that the Lord’s Little Flock must have shepherds, priests, who are guard-donkeys, for donkeys protect the flock from the wolves, a swift kick, and then suffocation by crushing of the esophagus and then a quick side-to-side, ripping their throats right out.
Know that St Corbinian’s bear on Pope Benedict’s Coat of Arms is actually a donkey, and that Pope Benedict fancied himself as that very donkey. So very many stories in my own life, from the seminary to the Pontifical Bibilical Institute in Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to…
So! Donna heard my praise of donkeys for years. My hermitage where I wrote on the Immaculate Conception of our Lady was on a back ridge on their back-woods property John and Donna had in the heart of Appalachia. Donna was not so impressed with donkeys. Donkeys stink. Donkeys are “stinkers”, a nickname Donna gave to all and sundry good troublemakers, you know, those who are somewhat too clever in getting done what needs to be done. For Donna, I was often the stinker. “YOU, STINKER!” she would exclaim with joy, laughing at how subtly outrageously guard-donkey-esque I had just been for the good of the Church anywhere right around the world and right into the Holy See, from my little mountain hermitage or now in my tiniest of all parishes. It was and is to laugh, me being perhaps too happy with myself in getting done what needs to be done while quite miraculously escaping the wrath that otherwise might be expected from those more politically correct than ourselves. Good times.
In all these years of knowing John and Donna, they got to know very quickly that when anyone needed the Last Rites, I would rush to whatever junk vehicle I had at the time – even Jenny the Jeep – and chase off at breakneck speed to the the home or hospital or rehab bed of the one in dire straits. The Donkey-Priest must go quickly!
They knew my continuous stories of what I would say after providing Last Rites with all the attendant Sacraments and Indulgenced blessings and prayers, that when they finally go before Jesus, they are to tell Him that there is a Donkey-Priest upon this earth who needs His special help. This would always bring laughter or faked-politeness, which is also humor:
Some would say that telling Jesus about some Donkey-Priest would be useless, they would have to be more specific, for, they said, Jesus would ask who it is they are talking about, as all priests are Donkey-Priests! Hahaha. It’s good to have good humor when one is on one’s way!
Some would promise that they would, of course, do just this, happy to do it. Great!
Some would absolutely refuse. There is absolutely no way, ever, that they are going to tell any such thing to Jesus, that they love their priests, and pray for their priests all the time – so many Rosaries for priests!!! – and so they are not going to insult Jesus’ priests right in front of Jesus, to His Face, talking to Jesus about Donkey-Priests! No! Donna was one such refusenik. I countered by saying that I have done this so very times with souls on their way that it’s now “A Thing”, so that if she doesn’t do it, Jesus will Himself bring up the subject, asking if there isn’t a Donkey-Priest who is in special need of His help, and she will have to admit that there is a specific Donkey-Priest in need of Jesus’ help.
But in all of this, my emphasis on the great benefits of the Last Rites went deep into her soul. The day before she suddenly died, she insisted on going to Holy Mass at the Cathedral. From where they are, this involves a nightmare of traffic. John wanted to go to Holy Mass at Saint Dorothy’s. But there was no changing Donna’s mind. Off they went. Afterward, she got the Anointing of the Sick from the Rector of the Cathedral. Within hours, through in relatively good health, she was dead. She did have an untoward diagnosis (which apparently had little to do with her death). It was not long after she died that the “EVENT” happened.
Again, I’m not canonizing Donna here. Pray for the repose of her soul. I’m not saying I’m a visionary. No. It just is what it is. My experience. Take or leave it. Whatever. I find it all to be good humor. Haha.
Not very long at all after Donna dropped dead, it seemed that for one split-nanosecond she appeared to me in such good humored manner that I thought my appeals about requesting help for this Donkey-Priest had come true, not because she had brought this up to Jesus, but because Jesus had to bring it up to her, to the laughter of all who met her to bring her in before Jesus. Jesus has good humor. Just read the Scriptures. You’ll find God’s good humor throughout, everywhere you look. Donna had only two words to say to this Donkey-Priest in that split-nanosecond “visitation” if you will, knowing that I would know what she meant with her good demeanor in such good humor. Donna exclaimed, as only she can:
” ♬ YOU STINKER ! ♬ “
It is to laugh. And I did. And I do. Jesus is good and kind, even to the likes of His own Donkey-Priests. Thanks, Donna.
May Donna’s soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Hail Mary… Hail Mary… Hail Mary…
And thank you, Jesus, for giving special help to Donkey-Priests. :-)
Just got a phone call from her son, a best friend. Donna was younger than me. In great health. Just like that. When the Lord calls, there’s nothing we can do but go. This was very sudden, but she did have a provided-for death.
More later on this great woman of the Church. I’m literally running out the door for first Confessions and more Confessions and Mass.
After the reading of the Passion of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the Gospel of John at the Good Friday liturgy, aka The Mass of the Presanctified, the rubrical guidance indicates that if there are a few words to be said by the priest, those words are to be brief. I obeyed. Here’s a brief summary:
Firstly, I confessed my experience of Good Friday as a kid and until recently. Good Friday was always a super-sorrowful day, with the darkness and heavy weight of the sin of all mankind and mine bearing down… on me. And because it was all about me – and this since I was a kid (I remember everything) – I always tried to distract myself with the rules of fasting and abstinence. That will make it all better, thought I, ever so stupidly. How very lost on the peripheries I have been. Dear Lord, I am so sorry for not being with you in all solidarity.
Secondly, I preached up the catastrophic trauma that Jesus’ good mom was going through in witnessing all the sin of all mankind vomited on her Son tortured to death, even while He died for us ungrateful cynical self-centered fallen men, Immaculate Mary being in perfect solidarity with her Son. After Jesus fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of mercy, standing in our place, Innocent for the guilty to have the right in His own justice to forgive us, after He died, she remained traumatized. The Body of her Son was lowered from the cross into her arms…
Thirdly, mention was made of Mary the mother of Jesus sitting outside the tomb accompanied by Mary of Magdala. Such a dichotomy. Mary of Magdala was already entirely saintly, and she was utterly in grief, and her accompaniment of Jesus’ good mom was entirely appreciated. But then, I said, Jesus’ mom and the Magdalene went their own ways to await for the Sabbath to pass. Good thing, said I, as it would be too difficult for Jesus’ mom to contain her… joy…
Think of it this way (1): Jesus’ mom was in perfect solidarity with her Son. This did not change when Jesus died. Mary rejoiced in her Son’s victory over all of hell broken out on Calvary: her son stayed on the Cross, did not come down. Jesus, her Son, conquered. Sure, it was difficult to see Him in battle. But now He is eternally victorious. This is cause for rejoicing.
Think of it this way (2): As we say in the creed, when Jesus died, he descended into hell. We read:
ἐν ᾧ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, (1 Peter 3:19) – In [His spirit] He went about proclaiming to the [obviously fallen] spirits in prison.
Καὶ ὅταν τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη, λυθήσεται ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐκ τῆς φυλακῆς αὐτοῦ (Apocalypse 20:7) – And when the thousand years are completed, Satan [obviously a fallen spirit] will be released from his prison.
There were fallen angelic spirits and fallen human spirits in the time of Noah (to which Peter refers). The flood was a punishment for such disobedience to the will of God. The disbelievers during the building of the ark are especially the fallen angelic spirits. When Jesus goes to proclaim to them… what is He proclaiming? This proclamation is not necessarily any evangelizing for conversion, but rather proclaiming victory over all of hell that had been broken out on Calvary, over our sin, over death, by His death, by His innocence, by His carrying heaven within Himself.
In hell, in that prison, Jesus is delivering His victory speech, which will in eternity for the fallen spirits the source of eternal spiritual and intellectual frustration, having Satan proceed in writhing in all writhingness, the curse in Genesis, the punishment for those to be in that hell for eternity, even if loosed for a moment before the second coming of Jesus.
Immaculate Mary, having witnessed all hell broken out on Calvary, having seen her Son be victorious by NOT coming down from the Cross, she knew exactly, immediately, what He was doing in those three dark days. And she rejoiced: “That’s my good Son, Jesus, who’s doing that!” Meanwhile, she’s still catastrophically traumatized, yet joyful in her Son’s victory, joyful that the fallen angelic spirits are getting a good tongue lashing that will be their hell for eternity.
How could she tell Mary of Magdala about this. Jesus would let her know about His victory first thing Easter morning. If it is Mary of Magdala that Jesus meets first, it is not because He is ignoring His mother. She was always in perfect solidarity with Him, knowing what He was doing, her Immaculate Heart ever close to His Sacred Heart.
And with that, “my” Good Friday, as it were, is no longer about me — It’s so dark for me… so sad for me… so heavy for me… how do I distract myself? — No, no. Now it’s about rejoicing to be with Mary in solidarity with her Son, rejoicing in His great victory.
Easter is glorious, yes! But the greatest glory — glory unto glory — of God’s Love in Truth is witnessed in all the darkness and sadness of Calvary, but only in solidarity with Mary, with Jesus, rejoicing in the victory over all of hell!
Now when I look at Mary holding Jesus under the cross, having received the forgiveness of her Son at her intercession, it is no longer a question as to whether I am with her, with Him by the grace of redemption and please God salvation, what I see is an invitation to be in solidarity with her, with Jesus, as He goes to make His victory speech in hell, but wanting the fallen human spirits in this world to join with Mary, to join with Jesus in the victory, jumping for joy as Satan is put in his place. Yes!
So, flowers for you, Immaculate Mother, even while you are catastrophically traumatized.
For those fallen human spirits yet in this world, for their conversion: Hail Mary…
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 