Tag Archives: Jesus

2024-04-18 · 6:58 am

Deep calls to deep. Heart speaks to heart. Notes on the spiritual life.

The poetry of these images speaks to me of “deep calls to deep”, “heart speaks to heart”…

There are a number of recent, inspiring, awesome comments on the post “[“Pinned” post: scroll down for newer posts] Sister Lucia of Fatima’s future miracle for “Aussie Mum” aka Yvonne Cheryl Ann” which, however, request that I do up a philological foray into Psalm 42:7 (careful of the numbering of both chapter and verse), particularly the words “deep calls to deep,” rendering, then, an exegesis for the benefit of these good souls.

Translations of this are as poetic as the vocabulary. None of them fail. All are glorious. We could say that all the translations struggle, as would any attempt of mine. But poetry is all about “triggering”, to use a modern poetic descriptive. You yourself have to bring your whole life to any poetry as an occasion to hope to unlock a smidgeon of what, as Hopkins said, is inscaped therein. Take his description of the Holy Spirit as Manley speaks directly to Christ Jesus, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception:

THE WINDHOVER — by Gerard Manley Hopkins —

To Christ our Lord…

  • I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  • Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
  • High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
  • In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  • As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  • Rebuffed the big wind.
  • My heart in hiding
  • Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
  • Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  • Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
  • Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
  • No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
  • Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  • Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Speaking, repeating… such words to Christ Jesus, the Son of His Maid-Servant, words spoken to the Risen Jesus still bearing His wounds – that Heart! – King of kings, Lord of lords, Prince of the Most Profound Peace, I weep as “deep calls to deep.”

Who am I to interpret such things? I am very much afraid, of myself, my lack, my ineptitude, my nothingness. Do people want my death consequent upon the hubris of my claiming such a pulpit, the angels desirous of sundering me with mighty swords for not rendering justice to the Scriptures inspired by that fiery Holy Spirit? I fear that everything I might say will be an insult, not that it would be wrong, or malicious, but that it would be devastatingly inadequate…

Wisdom, chapter 9, comes to mind:

  • “God of my ancestors, Lord of mercy, you who have made all things by your word, and in your wisdom have established mankind to rule the creatures produced by you, and to govern the world in holiness and righteousness, and to render judgment in integrity of heart: Give me Wisdom, the consort at your throne, and do not reject me from among your children; for I am your servant, the child of your maidservant, a man weak and short-lived and lacking in comprehension of judgment and of laws. Indeed, though one be perfect among mortals, if Wisdom, who comes from you, be lacking, that one will count for nothing.”

Some months ago while preaching on the glories of Sacramental Confession, I waxed poetic on my fear of hearing the words at the end of my life, called before Jesus for my judgment: “Get away from me you evildoer: I never knew you.” I rhetorically asked in my homily about how it is that we can be certain that Jesus will know us as His friends, as part of His Holy Family. I again spoke of Sacramental Confession where we hear the words of Jesus commanding His Father to forgive us: “Father! Forgive them!”

To hear those words, we have to be there, on Calvary, returning, like John, accompanying Mary accompanying Jesus (back to the images at the top of this post). That’s where we are when we go to Sacramental Confession.

Well, well… we can speak of such things as poetically as we might, but it is not a matter of us inscaping everything we are into the facts at hand, but of dying to ourselves and being drawn into the reality of what is happening there, where heart speaks to heart. The yearning of my heart, crying out to Jesus, wanting to explain to His Little Flock such Mysteries of the Kingdom, was this deep speaking to deep, heart speaking to heart?

I am nothing. But the Lord Jesus had pity on me, right then, right there, while I was preaching away. I went silent, standing there not saying a word for what seemed an eternity, self-conscious that the homily was delayed and someone would try to help me because of thinking that I was suffering a stroke.

But here’s my experience of heart speaking to heart, deep calling to deep, and this has nothing to do with me bringing anything, inscaping anything into the situation:

All of a sudden my perspective, my heart, my depths [if any], were those of Jesus on the Cross, no longer looking to Him but instead one with Him, He sharing with my continuing nothingness and continuing blindness and continuing weakness and continuing ineptitude… He sharing the solidarity He had with His Immaculate Mother, the depths of those Hearts crying out to each other.

It’s not philology speaking to philology, exegesis speaking to exegesis. Instead, deep calling deep, heart speaking to heart, is the consequence of the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophesy: When I am lifted up [on the Cross], I will draw all to myself. When we are there, one with Him on the Cross, we see Mary’s heart from within Jesus Heart… we’re drawn into the calling out of those depths…

The images, the sounds, that come to mind, so banal, I’m so sorry, are those of whales, mother and calf, in the deep, calling out to each other in the deep, obviously heart speaking to heart…

I feel like running away, thinking I could speak to such ineffable, unspeakable calling, crying out…

I beg the Lord that I not to fall asleep again in this Gethsemane of today, oblivious that the betrayer is at hand, oblivious of Sacred Heart speaking to Immaculate Heart, of such Deep calling to Deep.

It is not a matter of our nothing-love that we stay awake and not run away into the dark, a matter of our hearts speaking, our depths crying out, but a matter of His love, His Mother’s love, those Hearts, those Depths into which we are drawn so as to be one with the two Hearts of Jesus and Mary. I know who you are! Come into the kingdom prepared for you!

We must wake up now in the Gethsemane of today:

Arise! Let us be going! Behold! My betrayer is at hand!

/// This waking up was moments after Jesus was sweating blood, after Jesus’ Heart was sundered in concern for His Mother’s heart… Back to the poetry of those images up top…

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2024-04-02 · 8:16 am

My God! My God! Why have you freed me? Eastertide special. God’s will for Mary.

“My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?” Psalm 22; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34.

During the Sacred Triduum 2024 I kept hearing interpretations of this psalmistic cry of Jesus on the Cross to His Heavenly Father such that “abandoned” and “forsaken” meant that Jesus’ Heavenly Father hated Jesus. That’s blasphemy. God is love, not hate.

Checking out the Hebrew and Aramaic, the most foundational meaning of this word has to do with being freed, a meaning not contradicted, but again, foundational in sense to the provided Greek translation. Thus:

  • “My God! My God! Why have you freed me?!”

Wait? What?!

Trying to fathom this for some seconds, it struck me very hard in heart and soul, all spiritually, all emotionally, sorry, that this conversation of Jesus on the Cross with our Heavenly Father was not another, but a continuation of the same conversation that Jesus had with our Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane three times, just some hours previously, in a sweat of blood: “If possible, let this chalice pass from me…” and “Not my will, but thine be done…”

And now, hours later, at The Hour, our Heavenly Father frees Jesus from the obligation of obedience. Jesus is free to choose to come down from the Cross or to remain. Up to this time, Jesus – I’m speaking of the human nature of Jesus in which He had to learn obedience by what He suffered (Hebrews 5:8) – up to this time, Jesus was simply being obedient, and He did learn obedience by what He suffered… but now, freed from the obligation, it was all on Him to redeem us, to save us.

In Psalm 22, of which this cry – My God! My God! … – is the first line, immediately, amidst descriptions of the hellish violence of Calvary, the crucified voice in that psalm speaks of His Mother, who bore Him in her womb, who nursed Him at her breasts, for whom He has such a tender love. She is His first concern, not His own sufferings. Then, on the Cross, on Calvary, Mary is, again, His first concern amidst all the hellish violence. It’s not just that the chief priests are mocking Him, telling Him to come down from the Cross to save Himself and save us, but they are mocking His Mother: Tell Him to come down from the Cross! All the powers of religion and state are telling Him to do this. Why don’t you tell Him. You’re His Mother. He’s going to hell and you are going to hell with Him!

Up to this moment, Jesus was obeying. Now, being freed up, Jesus can stop all this in a moment, coming down from the Cross, or He can stay. But it’s now totally His decision. He must make the decision which will, in effect, cause His Mother to suffer more (short term). The purpose of our Heavenly Father freeing Jesus to choose is to make the loving merits of the human nature of Jesus grow, and the same for Mary, making them more of a team than ever. That lasted for only moments, but it was “enough”, when Jesus would then breathe forth His Spirit.

The only derived sense in which Jesus’ human nature was abandoned was to be freed up for an increase of love, and that is not abandonment at all. Can we, please, read the Scriptures in faith, in the love of God, and perchance notice the great truth of the instigated increase of love before rushing to derived cynicism?

  • “My God! My God! Why have you freed me?!”
  • “For an increase of love for you, my Son, and your dearest dear Mother Mary.”

/// Now, I called this an Eastertide special, looking forward to Pentecost. For this increase of love surely brought about in Mary the same experience of sweating of blood subsequent to a heart attack also breaking the pericardium, from which one can temporarily survive. Jesus died of such a broken Heart within hours on the Cross, though it should have taken Him days to die. Mary survived until Pentecost, but in a terribly weak state, John taking care of her. She had the joy of meeting Jesus, risen. But during this entire Eastertide she was utterly weak, always at the point of death.

And then did die, also of a broken heart, not because she was subject to original sin, but because she was Immaculate, because she was so generous with her love, that special increase of love upon the freeing up of Jesus by our Heavenly Father.

God’s ways are not our ways. My must allow ourselves to be slammed to our knees before these tremendous Mysteries of our Salvation, before Jesus and Mary, before our Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit. The invitation to the increase of love was provided to John. He said yes. And what about us, this Eastertide, awaiting the fiery Pentecost to come? Are we available for this increase of love?

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2024-03-29 · 8:26 am

Two Hearts as one during the Triduum

Perhaps many will say that I am a heretic in what I’m going to say here, the accusation being that even on Good Friday I can’t stop talking about Immaculate Mary: Can’t you talk about Jesus even on Good Friday, Father George?

So, it’s not that I’m bidding you to discontinue your heart-stopping awe before the wounds that Jesus suffered, the Innocent for the guilty, to have the right in His own justice to have mercy on us, the wounds making the mercy credible, majestic. No. I’m just encouraging you to go to the next step: Be so one with Jesus that you are with Him in His solidarity for His dearest dear Immaculate Mother.

If you are with Jesus you will instantly recognize His concern for His good mama, and you will join Him in this, seeing that those two hearts are but one.

Then, I’ll tell you what, when it comes to the judgment, Jesus will say that He knows you already and He will invite you into heaven, for you have been one with Him in His greatest concern.

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2024-02-08 · 4:34 am

[Tucho UPDATE] Donkey genitals, stallion emission, she-camels & she-donkeys in heat, viper’s brood, vixen-bitches, white-washed tombs, boy prostitutes: biblical insults for today

Given that we now have The Porn King, aka homosexualist Tucho-Boy, appointed by king-maker homosexualist Pope Francis, it’s time to make this past post on Biblical name calling all the more incisive. Hurling insults is so Jewish, so Catholic. Happy to do it. Please, though, understand that this is aimed at the conversion and salvation of Tucho-Boy and Pope Francis, for whom I pray.

Quite a number of priest-friends scattered throughout the world, at different times, in different places, appraising my blog, concluded that what I write is spot-on, all extremely exact, correct, BUT that I should watch my mouth, that I should be respectful. “Great!” thought I, thinking of Jesus and John and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Paul… who cannot at all be said to be disrespectful of anyone.

LET’S START WITH EZEKIEL 23

That chapter is about God criticizing the political correctness of religious leaders to the ways of the world. Those in Jerusalem, male leaders all, are spoken about as being a woman lusting after handsome young soldiers (Ez 23:12), foreigners. That “woman”, aka Jerusalem, is a homosexualist, the whore of the world, whose homosexualist lust is described in this way:

  • “She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” (Ez 23:20).

And while Tucho-boy and Pope Francis call this love, it’s actually God telling such homosexualist, faithless religious leaders west of the Jordan river to F*** Off if that’s what they want. Yep. That’s inspired revelation regarding what God thinks about any one of us abandoning the faith so as to be politically correct with faithlessness. What’s in Ezekiel is what the Holy Spirit, God, Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, inspired to be written there, exactly as it is.

To the homosexualist individuals in leadership positions in the Church: “F*** Off” is that’s what you want. THAT’S the Holy Spirit. THAT’S God taking us seriously. That’s God wanting to shake up the sinners to bring them back and convert them and save them and bring them to heaven… because God takes us seriously and graciously wants us in heaven.

In the midst of all this, I suggest not telling the Holy Spirit that He is inappropriate, or that He’s an old meanie and ought to be a man of consensus, just another homosexualist. Go ahead, read Ezekiel 23. Are you afraid? You’ll get to it later, much later? Lefties hate the Scriptures. Too much truth, too much of God taking us seriously, too much calling us to conversion, too much getting us on our way to heaven.

LET’S MOVE ON TO JEREMIAH 2:23-26

This is a hoot, surely also about our own days:

  • “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled; I have not run after the Baals’? Look at your behavior in the valley; acknowledge what you have done. You are a swift young she-camel galloping here and there, a wild donkey at home in the wilderness, sniffing the wind in the heat of her desire. Who can restrain her passion? All who seek her need not weary themselves; in mating season they will find her. You should have kept your feet from going bare and your throat from being thirsty. But you said, ‘It is hopeless! For I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’ As the thief is ashamed when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced. They, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets…”

The tradition about Jeremiah’s death was that he was stoned to death by his co-religionists. Yep. The faithless church leaders of today would say that he deserved everything he got for not being a man of consensus, and then they will turn around and read from the Book of Jeremiah at Holy Mass, congratulating themselves for building shrines to the prophets.

SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

In the Gospel of Matthew we find the holy name-calling of the greatest of all the prophets, John the Baptist (3:7-12), he being a saint, with his name-calling geared to repentance and salvation of souls. Mind you, he does this precisely as the forerunner of Jesus:

  • “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

This is the ultimate name-calling, this “Brood of Vipers” thing. What it means is that they are WILLINGLY possessed by Satan. That means they hate themselves, hate their neighbor, hate God. This name-calling is meant to convert them, right? “Bear fruit that befits repentance!” It’s all for their own good. John speaks the truth to them. John is taking them seriously. He will get his head cut off for behavior such as this. Mind you, he is the greatest of all the prophets.

JESUS

This is from Matthew 23:13-38. Again, this is the Divine Son of the Living God. Are you scandalized?

  • “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.
  • Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
  • “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, If any one swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it; and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
  • “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
  • You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
  • “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity.
  • You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
  • “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
  • “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, `If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.
  • You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
  • Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation.
  • “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate.

Whew! Thank you, Jesus. And that thank you is to be voiced by those whom Jesus is criticizing, for it is a blessing to be reprimanded by God Most High.

Recall Herod, who clothed Jesus in a robe of royal purple to mock Jesus. Jesus had called Herod a fox. In Greek, both dog and fox, when used as an insult, refer to the female of the species, the bitch, which usage had the same connotation then as now. “Go and tell Herod, that bitch…” (see Lk 13:32). Yep. This is not Jesus being flippant for no reason. This is Jesus taking us deadly seriously. Herod would help send Jesus to His death.

SAINT PAUL

I remember a priest who told me years ago, reprimanding me:

  • “We are now beyond John. We are now beyond Jesus. They were then. We are now. We are better because we live today. We are a post-Ascension New Testament people. We’re men of consensus.”

Let’s see what Saint Paul says (Romans 1:18-32):

  • “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.
  • “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.
  • “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.
  • “They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
  • “Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.”

Talk about name calling! Saint Paul says such things not because he is hateful, or “homophobic”, but because he loves all and is in anguish that all be saved, if possible. Recall his success in this new evangelization (1 Corinthians 6:9-11):

  • “Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor practicing homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. That is what some of you used to be; but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

EZEKIEL

Is there a danger about the hypocrisy of a splinter in someone else’s eye while we have a beam in our own eyes? Yes, Jesus warned us about this as well. Some think that since we have all of us, you, me, all of us, put Jesus to death with our sins, that we cannot ever reprimand someone else. But this is just a bit too convenient. With full recognition of our own unworthiness, we can surely do this spiritual work of mercy. We had just better not forget how weak we ourselves are. Recall the frightening and yet hopeful words of Ezekiel 3:18-21:

  • “If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.
  • If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.
  • If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him.
  • When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Having said all that, in the end, we are supposed to call ourselves names, like “sinner”, in confession.

Confession is great. It is there that we meet with a potential part of the virtue of justice, that is, mercy, as the Common Doctor says in his commentary on the sentences.

Don’t delay. I love going to confession. Because I’m such a sinner. But Jesus is very good, very kind, truthful, just, taking us deadly seriously so to get us out of hell and into heaven.

  • “But Father George! Father George! You’re calling people names! You’re an old meanie! You’re not accompanying people! Leave them in their sin, Father George! There is no sin anyway!”

So, to conclude in reprimand of some of the powers that be, we recall Saint Paul reprimanding Peter when Peter, manifestly not Saint Peter, instead stood condemned:

  • Galatians 2:11 – “When Cephas [=rock=Peter] came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.”

So, we have to fill in the blank for vocabulary. It’s entirely consonant that Paul would have called Peter a damnable reprobate. Remember, it is the Holy Spirit judging Peter as condemned, as a hellion. Talk about name calling!

Look, here’s how it is: reprimanding each other so that we might receive forgiveness and salvation from our Lord Jesus is so very Judeo-Catholic. This is what we do.

  • Holy name-calling is a spiritual work of mercy. We will be judged also on whether we have accomplished the spiritual works of mercy.

When’s the last time you called someone a name so as to shake them up and get them back to Jesus?

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2023-11-27 · 9:00 am

Sacred Heart (seeing the Holy Spirit)

The above Sacred Heart was texted in with the note that this was a painting her father did for her on her birthday. Awesome. Of course, this reminds us ever so appropriately of the fiery Holy Spirit:

Great theological truths being portrayed with the Sacred Heart! Thank you.

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2023-11-17 · 11:30 am

Fidei Depositum – Deposit of Faith – Strickland, Pierre, Bergoglio

Our Heavenly Father speaks One Word in Eternity. That Eternal Word is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the perfect and absolutely truthful Expression of Our Heavenly Father. That Eternal Word, never a lie in all eternity, became Incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Word made Flesh, the Eternal Truth made Flesh, the fullness of Sacred Revelation, Jesus being Himself the Deposit of Faith.

If anyone were to say that we are not to put such an emphasis on the Deposit of Faith, it is as much to say that we are not to put such an emphasis on Jesus Christ, who is the one and only Face of God. “When you see me, you see the Father.”

À propos of diverse perspectives on the Deposit of Faith, there is this clip from an interview of Bishop Joseph Strickland by Raymond Arroyo. The whole interview is great, but on this particular point: 8:20 to 10:09. Just… wow…

Then, as an addendum on this point, see, in the same video, 21:11 to 23:00.

Is it not outright blasphemy to insist on the Hegelian replacement of Jesus as the fullness of Revelation with, instead, whatever up-to-date-ness of stupidity there happens to be at any given time coming from the Synod on Synodality, such as the discounting of the Deposit of Faith?

And if one should dare to ask that question, it is in view of the eternal welfare of those who are on the wrong weg or path, so to speak, because they have rejected Christ Jesus as The Way.

Are we not also to be judged on whether we have helped to correct the errant ways of others?

It’s not much charitable to let someone just go on in error, risking going to hell for having rejected the Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception.

Will one be tossed beyond the peripheries, into the outer darkness, where it is thought by the powers that be that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? Sure. But in that darkness as perceived by this world there will instead be the Living Light of Christ shining brightly from within, the ardent flame of love of the Holy Spirit.

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2023-11-14 · 5:00 am

[THAT was prophetic.] Localized Theology Doctorates & homosexualized abuse crisis

dung snow

[[ REPOST! Someone drew my attention to this just now. It was published many years ago. It’s more relevant today than when it was written. Worth the read. This has been going on since, say, Bergoglio was in the seminary.]]

Some doctorates about local stuff are good. But – just to say – …

For all the years I was in Rome across many decades – and also here in these USA, fellow students were – pretty much all of them it seemed – were writing their doctoral theses (you fill in the blanks) on ____[TOPIC]___ in ___[LOCAL AREA]___. For instance:

  • Sing-song vocalizations of various words spoken by street people [of a certain race] on a particular street corner in Louisiana depicting continuation in liberation. [That’s for real. The priest who wrote this thesis ended up convicted of abuse of minors. Yep.]

Some were more serious theologically, along the lines of:

  • Whether violence is useful in Liberation Theology applications in Amazonian Region #___[NUMBER]___

Most were outright attacks on the Creed, along the lines of:

  • The non-divine Jesus from below in the experience of the ___[TRIBE]___ peoples

Lots of these dealt with sexual morality, of course, forcing a loss of morality.

  • One, from a priest in Oceania, promoted ethnic cleansing, even violent, as in genocide. He hid it in footnotes, but I spotted it. None of the professors, some quite (in)famous on the defense commission, saw this at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Surprise, surprise.

I brought that thesis to the attention of his bishop, of the local archbishop, and of a number of dicasteries in the Holy See. The guy was promoted. I’m so naive. But failure is still success if one has done one’s best to do what is right and just. We must never give up. Never. God’s not so interested in our success as He is in our faithfulness to Him.

The content of all this blather doesn’t matter. The point is that the very exercise of writing such a thesis restructures the writer’s beliefs, so that he now has nothing but a Marxist world-view, a dialectic analysis of “the people.”

Did I say that pretty much everyone was doing this?

And now we see this as the constant theme, the pastoral solution of this diocese or that conference of bishops in that ever so special culture in an ever so special place, so special that the Church is irrelevant, Jesus is irrelevant, the truth is irrelevant. It’s experiences and feelings and stuff like, you know, like that stuff.

When people in not so special cultures in not so special places hear of such things, of course they think that they are also so special that the Church and Jesus and the truth is also irrelevant for them, so they can do what they damn well please. And make no mistake, this is always about morals, always about sex.

Does no one believe in Christ Jesus?

These weak people do such damage to peoples right around the world.

If you’re reading this and you’ve done up such a thesis, perhaps you’d like to comment and defend yourself, or, as someone else known to me has done instead, repent of such idiocy and then speak of your new found friendship with Him who is the Living Truth, for all peoples of all times and places and cultures and social conditions, of all tribes and tongues and peoples and nations. Perhaps you would like to speak of looking upon Him who we have all pierced with our sin, He who hangs on the cross for all of us to see.

Jesus crucified passion of the christ

It’s all about Him. He’s the One. He’s the only One. Write about Him. Speak about Him. Bring people to Him, to their knees in Confession. Then we’ll live by His love, His Truth, His goodness and kindness, His forgiveness, and yes, then, His mercy founded on… wait for it… His justice.

Otherwise, people run to the lowest common denominator of hell. Sexual deviance. Always.

Peace, my friends.

Update: LifeSite’s interview with Cardinal Sarah, a particularly apropos interjection:

“We tolerate any calling into question. The Catholic doctrine is challenged, and in the name of self-styled intellectual postures, theologians take pleasure in deconstructing dogma and in emptying morals of their profound meaning. Relativism is the mask of Judas disguised as an intellectual. How can we be surprised that so many priests break their commitments? We downgrade the meaning of celibacy, we demand the right to a private life, which is the opposite of the priest’s mission. Some go so far as to claim the right to homosexual activity. One scandal follows another, involving priests and bishops.”

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2023-09-12 · 4:00 am

Mary’s reverence & most severe traumatic stress as witnessed by Jesus’ burial shroud

Surely it was upon seeing the reverence and trauma of Mary upon Jesus’ death on the Cross that those detaching the body of Jesus from the cross and lowering Jesus into her arms could not bear to hurt Jesus further, ripping his hands and feet over the nails. What to do?

We see from this scientific study that they were able to remove the nails with the body, so that the nails remained in His hands and feet while Mary held Him, while He was buried, while He – as we see in this video – rose from the dead. The shroud documents the first five seconds of the Resurrection of Jesus.

This cut me to the quick, dark and evil sinner that I am. Imagine how this overwhelmed the Immaculate Blessed Virgin Mother of God. I want that my heart of stone be ripped out and thrown away so that I might be given a heart of flesh that might suffer with her, however unworthy that I am.

It kind of brings it home, seeing her see the nails still there, while she holds Him.

The Holy Name of Mary? Bitter Sea? A sea of bitterness… the sorrow… the perfect maternal intercession for us…

Co-Redemptrix? Yes. Jesus is the One, the only One. But it is fitting in justice that one of us intercede perfectly for those graces of Redemption, for those graces of Salvation brought to us by her Divine Son.

She, having seen those nails, now looks up… Is there any sorrow like her sorrow, oh you who pass by the way?

I recall, as if I were Elijah’s servant, out front of the cave of Elijah on Mount Carmel years ago, praying about the cloud in the shape of a foot, laden with the rain that would end three and half year drought as described in the Sacred Scriptures. And, very suddenly, right before me, over the bitter sea below Mount Carmel, there immediately formed a cloud in the shape of a foot, laden with rain. What is the three and a half years that is coming upon us, I wondered. Here’s the picture I took of that event:

Let’s not forget. Mary, whose name means bitter sea, is the one who, with the Redeemer, crushes the head of the serpent, the ancient dragon, Satan.

She intercedes that we might once again have clarity in the teaching of doctrine, morals, the spiritual life, with reverent liturgy. Enough of the drought that we are suffering. We want Jesus. We want Mary.

Pray the Rosary. Keep up with the Sacraments. Pray for the salvation of souls. The rains will come.

Addendum: Here is a rendition of the instruments of the passion. The huge pincers have always been depicted as enormous. I think that, in this way, the nails could be removed with the body, the pincers circling around the hands and feet.

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2023-04-08 · 8:23 pm

Happy Easter

This altar way in the back corner of the Angelicum chapel was a favorite place way back in the day. Thank you Jesus, for all you did and do for us. Happy Easter.

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2023-04-08 · 8:47 am

Abomination of Desolation: Jesus and…

Psalm 22 is cited by Jesus on the Cross: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” This is recalled even while all the apostles had run away.

In verse 6 of Psalm 22 the statement is “I am a worm and no man.” I’ve read that a million times before, but my eyes glazed over and I just kept reading and that was the end of it.

Being inept, weak, bad and evil most of my life (and not much better now), even though I had studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and have had so many of the biblical and so many ancient extra-biblical languages down, I simply continued to let my eyes glaze over with such exclamations as this: “I am a worm and no man.” I’m such a spiritual coward.

More recently I have waxed poetic on this worm-reference having reference to a maggot: “I am a maggot and no man.” You’ll recall that one of the names of the Evil One is Beelzebub, or Lord of the Flies, the reference being to maggots, to death. That’s quite fierce.

That recalls Jesus saying that just as Moses lifted up the serpent of bronze on a stake in the desert so that all of those who should look at it would live, so the Son of Man will be lifted up on a Cross and all who look on Him whom we have all pierced through will live. The serpent looked like the serpents who were killing the chosen people. Jesus looks like us, we who kill each other in sin. Because He stands in our place, Innocent for the guilty, taking on the punishment we deserve for sin, death, He has the right in His own justice to have mercy on us. The irony… He who looks like the brood of Beelzebub is our redemption and, please God, our salvation.

Just the other day I thought I might take a closer look at the worm-maggot reference.

תוֹלַ֣עַת is a writhing creature sucking blood, like a leech, the image of a serpent, only worse.

Wait… What? That’s what Jesus is calling Himself?

σκώληξ is the word in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation. Same thing. A writhing creature, the image of a serpent. Those in the Gospels who are damned go to hell where their σκώληξ never dies and the fire is never quenched, with σκώληξ again referring to parasitic worm-esque, serpent-esque, writhing of writhingness.

Dearest Jesus… your Mother had to see you suffer, had to see you mocked in this way…

And it get’s worse.

Of late I’ve been perusing things apocalyptic. There is a multitude of references to the Abomination of Desolation in the Old Testament, in the Gospels, in the Apocalypse.

Let’s see. What’s with the word “Abomination”?

Abomination = ab + omenation = ab + omen.

“ab” – in this case, the understanding of this preposition is taken away from something.

“omenation” – “omen”, from old Latin osmen, from “os” (mouth) + “mens” (mind), therefore, an oracle, in derivative usage, an oracle of foreboding, a sign or symbol of evil. An “abomination”, in the case of these translations of the Scriptures, is one who represents, is an agent of, one who speaks for Satan, one who is possessed by Satan. This speaks to this Abomination referring more to a person, an agent, who can speak, than a mere wooden idol or suchlike.

Desolation is, in modern derivation, a psychological state, so that someone who is desolate is sad, or sorrowful, or depressed. If the intention of this specious translation referred to the most intense state of this desolation, so that we have despair, a demonic despair by which in cynicism one loses all love, all faith, all ability to recognize truth, a willful disability to recognize Him who is Living Truth, then we’re on to something. But, etymologically, the word, in the Greek, is ἐρήμωσις, “desert-like”, referring to the wasteland steppe of the Judaean desert, where one will be destroyed, where one will die with no water, no food, where Christ Jesus went to fast for forty days and forty nights, temped by Satan. The desert is the home of the Evil One. Thus, the one who is bringing about such demonic desertification spiritually is one who is taken over by Satan, the one who is the Abomination.

Having said all that, let’s start over. The word in the Greek of the New Testament for Abomination is βδέλυγμα, but, when you go back, all the way back, maddeningly, into historical philological roots of words, one finds that the original meaning refers to a writhingness, like a serpent, and even more particularly, a worm, more specifically, like a blood-sucking leech monster.

Back in Genesis, when the angelic oracle “serpent” was cursed after he fell into sin by attacking Adam and his wife, the curse was not that he should proceed on his belly. That translation is idiotic. This word draws on vocabulary found only extremely rarely in the more ancient of the Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, so that what we have is that Satan should now writhe in his writhingness, that is, with the intense and eternal curse of spiritual and intellectual frustration.

I was a bad and evil little kid, and I once hit a snake on the head. Wow… the writhing of writhingness… unforgettable… I brought that to Confession later…

Biblically, this βδέλυγμα, much worse than a serpent, is a blood sucking writhing serpentesque creature, an image of those possessed by Satan drinking the blood of the saints, which will earn them condemnation to hell for all eternity in the writhing of their writhingness. It is an image of despising the life given by God, of mocking God to His Face.

Now, what this means for the man of sin, the man of perdition, the one whose number is 666, the antichrist, the false prophet and so on… well… however much any of those overlap or are figurative or whatever… that will require more delving… Who is that whore of Babylon drunk on the blood of the saints? Would that be Jerusalem? Would Jesus look like Jerusalem, taking on the sins of Jerusalem?

The point about our Lord Jesus in all this is His humility, His founding mercy on justice, His standing in our place, Innocent for the guilty, to the point of His looking like that man of sin. Saint Paul just says it in his shorthand: He became sin for us. Jesus, personally, looks like the man of perdition, destruction, like the one whose number is 666, the antichrist, the false prophet, even like me, like all of us while we were yet sinners.

And dearest Mary watched as the bloodthirsty possessed sinners tortured her Son to death. Jesus hated to see His mother suffer.

To stand with Jesus in His trials is to stand with Mary even if the bloodthirsty leeches should all of a sudden attack in the writhing of their writhingness.

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