Pentecost 2024

Fifty days after the Passover, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples with great power and so began the mission of the Church.

St. Luke tells us in Acts that the Spirit filled the house where the disciples were gathered like a rushing wind, alighting on their heads as tongues of fire. Wind and fire, ancient mystical signs of the creative life giving power or energy of God and of his presence

Wind, think of the Spirit hovering over the waters of creation, breathing life into clay of Adam, animating Ezekiel's dry bones. Fire, from which God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and led Israel through the wilderness by night, fire which fell upon Horeb to the dismay of the heathen priests.

Wind and fire, the creative energy of God and the burning love of his presence, with this the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples at Pentecost with power. Lo and behold, but was the date of descent significant in itself? Surely yes.

The Jewish Feast of Pentecost was and is a celebration of two things, thanksgiving for the early harvest, and a celebration of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. The giving of the Law by God himself, signified by the fire which enveloped the summit of the mountain on which he stood, his presence proclaimed by a trumpet call blown by the the divine breath. Yet again, the wind and fire of the Spirit.

This Pentecost, the Pentecost of the Upper Room, is therefore a new Sinai, a new giving of the Law, the new Law of Divine Love, engraved this time upon the human heart instead of stone. Filled, then, with an ecstasy of Divine Love, the disciples proclaim the Good News of salvation in Christ, they begin to reap the harvest, the harvest of souls for eternal life. So, the ancient Feast is gloriously recapitulated and fulfilled. It is so miraculously.

Devout Jews from every nation, gathered together for the Feast, hear the universal language of the Gospel, each in their own tongue and with that the curse of Babel is lifted. As man blasphemously attempted to scale heaven, only to be struck down in confusion and discord, so now God descends to earth, uniting us to himself and to each other in the Word of Truth.

Yes indeed, a harvest, and we read that some 3000 souls were converted on that day, and it didn't stop there. The Apostles went on to the ends of the then known earth, bringing souls to salvation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Their successors, Bishops, Priests, Deacons and the faithful people of God do so today and this will continue to the close of the age. And let me tell you this.

Those who go against the Holy Spirit, against Truth Himself, will be relentlessly destroyed by that same Spirit. Then again, those who side with the Spirit will have life and truth and freedom and all that's good. 

Your Call,

LSP

++++

And via Robin Ward:

Come, Thou holy Paraclete,

And from Thy celestial seat

Send Thy light and brilliancy:

Father of the poor, draw near;

Giver of all gifts, be here;

Come, the soul’s true radiancy.

Idea Energy Power

 

Dorothy Sayers was known for her crime novels, she was also a mystical theologian in the Anglican tradition of the Western Church, think, perhaps, Charles Williams. Here she is on Idea, Energy and Power:

WHEN THE writer’s Idea is revealed or incarnate by his Energy, then, and only then, can his Power work on the world.  More briefly and obviously, a book has no influence till somebody can read it. 

Before the Energy was revealed or incarnate it was, as we have seen, already present in Power within the creator’s mind, but now that Power is released for communication to other men, and returns from their minds to his with a new response.  It dwells in them and works upon them with creative energy, producing in them fresh manifestations of Power. 

This is the Power of the Word, and it is dangerous.  Every word—even every idle word—will be accounted for at the day of judgment, because the word itself has power to bring to judgment.  It is of the nature of the word to reveal itself and to incarnate itself—to assume material form.  Its judgment is therefore an intellectual, but also a material judgment.  The habit, very prevalent to-day, of dismissing words as “just words” takes no account of their power.  But once the Idea has entered into other minds, it will tend to reincarnate itself there with ever-increasing Energy and ever-increasing Power.  It may for some time only incarnate itself in more words, more books, more speeches; but the day comes when it incarnates itself in actions, and this is its day of judgment.  

At the time when these words are being written, we are witnessing a fearful judgment of blood, resulting from the incarnation in deeds of an Idea to which, when it was content with a verbal revelation, we paid singularly little heed.  Which Ideas are (morally) Good and which are anti-Good it is not the purpose of this book to discuss; what is now abundantly manifest is the Power.  Any Idea whose Energy manifests itself in a Pentecost of Power is good from its own point of view.  It shows itself to be a true act of creation, although, if it is an evil Idea, it will create to a large extent by active negation—that is to say, by destruction.  The fact, however, that “all activity is of God” means that no creative Idea can be wholly destructive: some creation will be produced together with the destruction; and it is the work of the creative mind to see that the destruction is redeemed by its creative elements. 

 

At the time when these words are being written, we are witnessing a fearful judgment of blood, resulting from the incarnation in deeds of an Idea to which, when it was content with a verbal revelation, we paid singularly little heed.  Which Ideas are (morally) Good and which are anti-Good it is not the purpose of this book to discuss; what is now abundantly manifest is the Power.

Draw the moral as you will and choose wisely, my dear friends.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Monday Message

 

I was in the Compound's front office, aka "porch" when I read this, which echoed my thoughts entirely. It's presented here as a Monday Message, and a tip of the spear to LL for writing it.

Via Virtualmirage:

There are key illuminators to civilized society that can be counted on to guide or to fail to guide us upward (Matthew 5:14 – You are the light of the world). A number of them have gone out, possibly forever.

Universities were places of learning where ideas were tested, and even liberal arts had its place. Today everything is racist – everything – and students have different graduation ceremonies with tribe-over-whole. It allows people who may have not been that bright a chance to give a commencement address about how aggrieved they are.

Denigration of the Family as a key institution in society has become so routine that it’s not even news anymore. Pro-Choice is used to refer to prenatal infanticide. I heard the term “birthing person” used in place of “mother” the other day for the first time. What mother wants to be referred to a birthing person, and do you have to give birth to a baby to be its mother? There are a lot of adoptive mothers who are far more to their children than the one who gave them birth. It’s better if you are raised in a nuclear family but the FAMILY is the core of culture. As a child, sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you don’t. Vogue calls childbearing “environmental vandalism.” They’re very woke over at Vogue.

 

 

Art Philosophy

 

Much has been said on this blog and others about how some of us feel that churches have let us down during the most recent plague. The government didn’t give us a voice. They worked to silence us – “wear your obedience mask, slave”. The media was silent except as an instrument of propaganda. There was a general hope that religious institutions would stand up to tyranny – crickets.

Elections…yeah. What about the republic (past tense) being the great balancing lever in society? Do you really think that the last election cycle was free and fair?

There has been general persecution of anything uplifting, of worth, of cultural value, and the government has been pushing the hateful narrative of the progressive movement. Corporations with vast wealth and power have formed a shadow government that is difficult to get your hands around. The carcass and the whore are barely figureheads. They’re jokes.

 

Well said. In the words of the satanist Manasseh, in Charles Williams' War in Heaven, "They build and we destroy." That in mind, we can add another line item to LL's list, the wholesale rejection of God, of Christ. He is inevitably replaced by demons, see above.

And now, by way of solace and Vespers:

Your Friend,

LSP

The Rage Of The Left

Do you detect a note of hatred and rage in the Left, a constant, hysterical, shrieking chorus of outrage and anger? And at the same time a corresponding and sometimes frustrating lack of aggression in their opponents? Roger Scruton sums up the ethos:

“I think that, in the end, there is something that unites all conservatives, which is that they are pursuing something they love. My view is that the Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on. And what makes us conservatives is the desire to protect those things, and we’re up against people who want to destroy them, and it’s very simple.”

If you're unconvinced, listen to Georg Lukacs, a founder of the Frankfurt School and some would say Western Marxism:

“I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution. A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.” 

Quite. Charles Williams, the remarkable hermeticist turned Anglo-Catholic, puts it neatly in his novel War in Heaven, as the Satanist Manasseh states, "They build and we destroy."

Keen-eyed observers of the political scene will have noticed that a Leftist Congress has done nothing to build up our country and has, instead, worked its damndest to overthrow a President who was elected on a promise to make America great, to rebuild the nation.

Mark this too, Baphomet is trans.

LSP

Pentecost

The beginning of Christendom is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metaphysical trigonometry finds it among the spiritual Secrets, at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement, the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind, is, in effect, theology. (Charles Williams, Descent of the Dove)

Today's the Feast of Pentecost and we celebrate the descent of the Spirit upon the disciples, who fills them with the fire of divine love. You might like this powerful wisdom from St. Basil the Great:

And He, like the sun, will by the aid of thy purified eye show thee in Himself the image of the invisible, and in the blessed spectacle of the image thou shalt behold the unspeakable beauty of the archetype. 

Through His aid hearts are lifted up, the weak are held by the hand, and they who are advancing are brought to perfection. Shining upon those that are cleansed from every spot, He makes them spiritual by fellowship with Himself. Just as when a sunbeam falls on bright and transparent bodies, they themselves become brilliant too, and shed forth a fresh brightness from themselves, so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others.

Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made God [that is, sharers in the divine nature]. Such, then, to instance a few out of many, are the conceptions concerning the Holy Spirit, which we have been taught to hold concerning His greatness, His dignity, and His operations, by the oracles of the Spirit themselves.

Veni Sancte Spiritus,

LSP 

Halloween Scary

Have fun trick 'r treating and remember. Halloween isn't Satan's birthday.

Pretty scary demoncrat pumpkin, eh?

God bless,

LSP