Let's have this back. After all, we need the Bosphorus and Constantinople, psuedo-Caliph Erdogan regardless. But guess what, we won't regain the glory of the Faith until we embrace it. Christians, wake up, and that's it, that's the sermon.
Ad Orientem,
LSP
I won't preach because I've already done that, but here's Tucker via ZeroHedge:
Weltwoche: In general, what gives you hope in a rather worrisome time, looking into the future?
Carlson: That the stakes have suddenly gotten so high that smart people are rethinking their assumptions. I see it all around me. I see people all around me asking themselves, “I used to believe this. Is it still true? Was it ever true? What is the truth?” People are focused on questions of truth and falsehood, I think, much more deeply than they ever have been, and that's a good thing.
I also see an awakening of spiritual awareness and religious faith in the United States that I think is great. Not everyone is reaching the same conclusions that I'm reaching, but that's okay. It's better than thinking that Amazon's going to make you happy, because Amazon is not going to make you happy, actually. That's not true. That's a lie. And more and more people seem to be concluding that it's a lie, and I think that's a great thing.
There's this idea that somehow the main threat to our happiness is from religious people. That's absurd. The main threat to our happiness is from people who think they're God. They're the dangerous ones. If you think that you're God, there's no limit to what you'll do because you think you're the final arbiter, you're the final judge, you're all-powerful. That's terrifying.
The main threat to our happiness is from people who think they're God. They're the dangerous ones. If you think that you're God, there's no limit to what you'll do because you think you're the final arbiter, you're the final judge, you're all-powerful. That's terrifying.
Yes indeed, and while you may not agree with everything Tucker says in this interview I'd argue he's right on target in the above. The people who have convinced themselves of their power, that they have no God but themselves, are the ones to be feared.
You'll note and Tucker highlights this, that they are liars at every level, as is their agitprop mouthpiece which was once a free Press and now exists as a satrap Quisling of unholy, demonic power.
I tell you, their Leader is the Father of Lies and a murderer from the beginning.
Stand Firm,
LSP
The Gospel this morning focused on debt, sin and forgiveness in the form of a wicked servant who owed his king the vast sum of 10,000 Talents and was forgiven, only to throw a man into gaol (debtors' prison) who owed him a far smaller sum. The king was justly furious and threw the wretch to the jailers till he should "pay the last penny." This, of course, he could never do.
We get the point of the story on a purely human level, the behavior of the servant "just ain't right." In spiritual terms? How can we, who owe such a weighty debt of sin to God and have been shown such merciful love by Him, turn 'round in vindictive, merciless fury on people who owe us so much less in comparison.
You don't need to be a world class ethicist to work it out, it just ain't right. And Christ warns us, unless you forgive your neighbor from your heart you'll be thrown into the prison of Hell. That sounds harsh but divine math is clear; a person who harbors merciless, vindictive wrath against another person has no place in paradise. Love and hatred cannot coexist.
So forgive, 70 x 7 or go to Hell. Does that mean we have to like or condone the behavior of people who grievously offend us? By no means, their actions may well be unconscionable and I do not say that lightly. But even so, banish hatred and merciless anger from your heart, it is toxic, poisonous, and utterly incompatible with God and heaven. So hard to do! Especially if we've been on the receiving end of evil, but do it we must. I find this helps, you may too.
Start with God, reflect or meditate on his person, on his perfection, and on Christ, his character, teaching and, above all, what he has done for us, how he has given his life on the cross that we, utterly unworthy, might be forgiven.
Stand in humility before God, in the humility from which contrition and mercy flow, which in their turn drive out pride, hatred, malice, hardheartedness and a vindictive spirit, all the non-qualities abhorrent to God. Then offer the person or persons who have offended you to Christ, praying that his good will may be done in them.
Well done, you've made an act of love for the person who's sinned against you and in the process opened yourself up to be a channel of his love in the world.
Having done that, pray fervently that Christ will grant you a forgiving heart. He will hear that prayer, made sincerely, and with it we will be forgiven as we forgive those who trespass against us, and find the gates of heaven opened. Yes, even to us who are not worthy ut intres sub tectum meum .
Here endeth the Lesson,
LSP
++++++
Postscript, via Kobiessi Letter:
The U.S. Now Has:1. Record $17.1 trillion in household debt2. Record $12.0 trillion in mortgages3. Record $1.6 trillion in auto loans4. Record $1.6 trillion in student loans5. Record $1.0 trillion in credit card debtThe average house payment is about to hit $3,000/month for the first time in history.All as oil prices are up ~40% in 3 months, mortgage rates hit 7.5% and credit card rates are at a record 25%.Borrowing more debt is not the solution to high inflation.This is unsustainable.
Who will forgive this debt? God? The bankers who issued it at interest? But who cares, maybe it'll all magically disappear and everything will be trans unicorn bathrooms and rainbows forever as we live into our stunningly brave new secular utopia where the debtor will never be punished by their bankster gaolers. Sure, go right ahead and believe that, and good luck to you.
Because this is a military blog, we have to ask, have you heard of Colonel "Mad John" Boyd? He was a fighter pilot in the Korean war, flying Sabres, then went on to become a "Top Gun" instructor and more than that, a tactician who wrote on aerial warfare and a strategist whom some liken to Sun Zhu or Clausewitz. Others disagree.
Regardless, he was hated by the military establishment of his day and never made General, doubtless because he called out paper-pushing, careerist, establishment cipher drones for what they were, paper-pushing, careerist, establishment cipher drones.
He had, apparently, a "fork in the road" speech which he invariably delivered to the people who worked with him. You have a choice, you can go this way and get promotion, money and all of that, or you can go that way and do something for your country and Air Force at the expense of preferment. Free will, you see, be somebody or do something:
“And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
There you have it, that's the sermon.
Boyd's credited, with others, of transforming the US Military into the force which triumphed on the battleground in the Gulf. No small thing. What would he think about our preparedness today and, more importantly, would such a man even be allowed in the gilded corridors of our beloved Pentagram Pentagon.
Thanks, Wild, for the tip and God Bless,
LSP
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Surely it should be the other way around and the Baptizer says as much, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replies, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” There's our clue, righteousness, obedience to God's commandments, and what is the Father commanding his people to do?
To be baptized in the Jordan as a mark of repentance and cleansing in preparation for the coming of the Holy One. And Jesus, the sinless King of the Jews, represents his sinful people to the Father, so he too must be baptized in solidarity with them. This speaks to another baptism, the baptism of his blood on the Cross. (Lk 12:50)
The Father is commanding his Son to die for his people, to take their sins upon his shoulders and offer himself as a sinless sacrifice on the Cross for their forgiveness, only to rise again, victorious over the grave. This, the mighty work of salvation, is prefigured in the Jordan.
Jesus goes down into the water, the Cross, and rises in the power of the Spirit, the Resurrection, and the heavens are opened to him and to his faithful people. Even ourselves, who have been buried with Christ in Baptism and have risen, regenerate in the power of the Spirit to new life, the gates of heaven open to us.
What a powerful message for the new year, full of strength and hope. The world is badly insane and odds on the monkey it'll get worse still, even to the point of catastrophe. And the same holds true in our personal lives, who knows what out of leftfield furies will fall upon us in the next 12 months.
Regardless, nothing can take away or destroy the life Christ has won for us by his Cross and Resurrection. It's happened, it cannot be taken back, and it's freely given for us to accept. Pray, then, that our union with the Saviour, begun in the waters of baptism, only grows, deepens and increases so that when we stand on the far shore we will hear the Father's voice, "Thou art my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."
God bless you all,
LSP
Trads, try not to scorn me but we use the new-fangled three year lectionary in the missions, which means today's Gospel was Luke 14:1, 7-14. Here, Jesus is at a feast held by a ruler of the pharisees and he gives, on the face of it, a simple warning against pride.
When you're invited to a wedding feast don't go for the seat of honor lest you're cast down in shame to a lower place. Instead, go for the lower place and be invited up. He concludes, "He who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
How that must have stung in such exalted company. Woe to you pharisees! You tithe and go for the seats of honor at the synagogue, you make long prayers and while you're at it devour widow's houses. "Ye are as graves," spiritually dead.
We can imagine the dinner party's host shifting uneasily as he's served five star from his slaves, and we can also imagine the Savior holding the man's gaze, eye to eye. The Word pinning the darkness to itself, and of course the pharisee can't complain; God abhors the proud, they are repellent to him, the Law and Prophets make this clear. Our Lady exults, "He has cast down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek." But why are the proud so egregious in the eyes of God?
Because they're ugly in themselves. "Look at me, I am so very, very important," said the junior British Army officer, fresh out of Sandhurst. to the platoon and the world. I know, a certain arrogance goes with the trade, but still, no one likes that man, not me, not you, not God. Again, pride is the start of sin, a well-head of wickedness. What evil will a proud, self-obsessed, exalted man not commit? More seriously, this deluded, luciferean attitude of heart and mind, of soul, is idolatrous.
The proud man sets himself up against God, he's forgotten "it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves." And therein lies disaster, you cannot go against God, reality itself, and stand. The math doesn't work. What a warning to the pharisees, what a warning to our present age.
Are we not at the xenith, the pyramid peak of rebellion against God? What would the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist look like if was a person? Hideous thought. I tell you, its head would be so swollen with self-importance that it couldn't fit through the door posts of the narrow gate which leads to the marriage feast, to heaven.
Caveat in mind, what a blessing that the people of the missions and all over the world came together in humility to worship God, to adore Christ as their sovereign King and Lord, to hear his revealed Word and be nourished by the Sacrament of the Altar in which we find union with the one perfect sacrifice of our Savior.
May God give us the grace to go out into the world and invite the "maimed, the lame, the blind," all those wounded by sin, to the Feast, to the heavenly banquet, even as we ourselves have been invited by the author and perfecter of our faith.
Ad Maiorem,
LSP
I'm not a contractor, never have been, never will be, just a humble LSP, but I do know this.
Roddy walked into our South Ken office in '97, in tears, positively weeping, all 6.4 of him. Why? Because Lady Di had died and he'd just visited her multi-candlelit shrine. "Why are you crying, Roddy?" asked the Guv'nor. "Because she... she... died!"
Our boss paused, "But Roddy, you're a fkn arms dealer." And he was; tragedy meet mourner and, to be fair, what a neat guy. He sold missiles and drove a Porsche through West London while threatening to invite me to the Special Forces Club.
Drive Safe.
Your Old Pal,
LSP
“Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." (Lk 13:22)
Strive to enter by the narrow gate. It grates against post-modernist Marcusian ears, against the culturally ascendant air we breathe because "narrow gate" sounds dangerously like narrow-minded, and so bigoted, intolerant and hateful.
"After all," says our Ivy League uneducated friend, "I've got my truth, you've got yours. Coexist!"
What a broad path and it sounds alluring; so free and tolerant, so very narrative. But let's apply this logic to mathematics. Imagine a classroom full of young children, pronouns mixed. Their teacher asks, "You have two rainbows in the sky and you add another two rainbows, how many rainbows are there?"
An impetuous youngster raises zhir hand, "One!" A pensive girl, she/hers, utters "three," another adventurer exclaims four, another eight and an enthusiastic child offers up "eighty eight!" The teacher beams, "Children, all of you are right!" And each receives a delicious unicorn cupcake, don't say Lambeth Conference.
But look what's happened. In the name of freedom, these poor children have been denied the liberty of doing mathematics because they haven't been allowed to go through the narrow gate of correct addition. The logic of salvation's similar.
As with 2+2=4, there's one solution to paradise and that's Christ; He is the gate. Only He unites humanity to God, He alone is true God and true Man. He alone offers the perfect, sinless, atoning sacrifice to the Father for the forgivness of sins and He, and only He, rises victorious from the grave only to give His resurrected life to the faithful.
If you wanted to make up a religion for, say, profit, fun and a seat on a private jet you wouldn't come up with the Trinity; the doctrine's too hard, that God is a trinity of Persons in unity of substance. Not three gods or three aspects of god but one God who is three distinct Persons, each one of which is fully divine. The Athanasian Creed puts it thus:
We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost.
It goes on to say that unless you believe this you will, without doubt, “perish everlastingly,” which sounds harsh and is doubtless why this Creed's hidden away at the back of the 1979 Prayer Book. It's just not very polite, especially for modern Anglican sensibilities. But there it is and if we aspire to heaven we'd better worship God as He's revealed Himself to us, as triune. Can we make any sense of this or must we fall into reverent silence in the face of the mystery?
Both, surely, and perhaps the African Doctor St. Augustine comes to our aid. He teaches us that the act of love, human love, necessitates three things, a lover, the beloved and love itself. This, he believes, is analogous to the Trinity, where from all eternity the Father pours out his being to the Son in an act of perfect love.
The Son returns the Father’s love and gives himself to the Father perfectly. So they are one in essence or substance, yet distinct as persons in their relationship one to another. And from their love, this timeless interplay of perfect being, proceeds the Spirit. The love of God personified, distinct by virtue of his procession.
Benedict XVI describes the relationship with admirable clarity:
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one because God is love and love is an absolute life-giving force; the unity created by love is a unity greater than a purely physical unity. The Father gives everything to the Son; the Son receives everything from the Father with gratitude; and the Holy Spirit is the fruit of this mutual love of the Father and the Son.
Per B16, St. John sums it up in three words, "God is love." Reflect on that for more than a moment and silence, to say nothing of fear of the Lord ensues, "Remove your sandals for you are on sacred ground." But we can say this, God, in the Trinity, has revealed himself to us as an infinitely loving communion of persons. So what? So a lot. Consider some of the other options.
What if your higher power is the enigmatic "Life Force," a popular deity in San Francisco, Portland, and Austin, which sounds suspiciously like electricity, doubtless solar. But however green, electricity doesn't love you, it can't, it's not a person. Stick your finger in a light socket and find out.
Again, what if "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" by you is simply the universe, the world writ large. The good Texan soil, the trees, the sun and moon, the stars glittering in the night sky, galaxies cascading out into the icy void of deep space. Such grandeur and all good in itself but here's the thing, the atoms don't care when they're smashed together and obliterate a city. Lake Whitney doesn't shed a tear when you tragically fall off the boat and drown along with your guns. Again, this version of God doesn't love us, it can't, it's not a person.
So what? So a lot. People become like the gods they worship and an unloving, impersonal god produces unloving disciples; followers of the Life Force become just that, all about force. You'll note that "we just want civil unions" moved to "bake the damn cake!" at warp speed.
The doctrine of the Trinity saves us from this tyranny and the despair which goes with it. God, the ultimate reality, the great I AM, is love and He loves us. He dies for us on the Cross, he reconciles us to the Father, He restores God’s image in us, He adopts us as sons as we rise reborn in the waters of the font, the Spirit anointed Sons of God, beloved by the Father, heirs in Christ of everlasting life.
What can we do but fall down in humble adoration, wonder and praise before the God who loves us and has revealed Himself to us as love, as He who is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
God bless you all,
LSP
“What then is this that is written," says Jesus in the Temple to his enemies, the High Priests and Scribes, "'The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but when it falls on anyone it will crush him.”
At that moment the evil tenants of the vineyard decide to kill the heir, they reject the stone and are, as a matter of fact, crushed or pulverized some thirty years later by the Romans. And a new foundation is established, the vineyard of the Church is given to new tenants, Jews and Gentiles united to God as walls to a cornerstone in Christ. Our Lord's prophecy was fulfilled and it speaks with power today.
Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but when it falls on anyone it will crush him.
Terrifying. You cannot go against God, the rock of reality itself, and escape destruction. Witness our present anti-culture which is hurtling fast into insanity, to say nothing of wicked tenants, those wolves in sheep's clothing, those false prophets, those apostate mutineers who deny the Faith once delivered. Who champion behavior explicitly condemned in the revealed Word of God and are silent or complicit in the face of godless secularism with all its increasing tyranny.
They will have their reward, they fell upon the rock and will be destroyed. The late Bishop Terwilliger put it well, "If you go against the Holy Spirit you will be relentlessly destroyed by that same Spirit." And so to us.
Are we not placed by God as tenants of the vineyard of our souls, the Church writ most intimately, responsible for producing the good fruit of righteousness, of faith and love? We are, and yet we sin. "Oh wretched man that I am," says the Apostle and so do we in the face of our own imperfection reflected in the light of divine truth.
Knowing this, and know it we must, what choice do we have but to repent like the Prodigal and return to the Lord crying out for mercy. He, while we are still a long way out, there's comfort in that, runs to embrace us and, forgiving our sins, reclothes us in the garments of sanctity and raises us up to new life. Take heart.
And here endeth the lesson except to say several ranchers came up after the Mass and said, "You know, LSP, I learned something. I'd always thought 'fall upon the rock' meant tripping over it, like stubbing your toe. Never thought it meant 'fall upon' as in 'fall upon your enemy.' Thank you for that."
They're a kinetic bunch, I tell you.
Ride on,
LSP
Strive to enter by the narrow gate, says Christ, and woe to those who don't, "I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Depart and go where? To that place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, to Hell. Terrifying, not least to the wicked pharisees who presumed on salvation by virtue of birthright and letter of the Law, but nonetheless hated God.
"They are enemies of the cross," blasts St. Paul to the Philippians, "Their end is destruction. Their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame." As with the pharisee so with us in what was once Christendom. Dominant cultural orthodoxy (DCO) rejects the crucified Christ, the narrow gate, as far too narrow minded.
So in the interest of broad mindedness, tolerance and liberty we're told there is no one truth, religious or otherwise, only opinion. You know the mantra, I've got my truth, you've got yours. Welcome to the age of narrative and note, narrative and fiction go hand in hand. No wonder we're deluged at every level with a barrage of lies.
That aside, the whole project sounds so rainbow utopia, so listening to John Lennon's Imagine on continuous loop. How very tolerance, I've got my truth, you've got yours. But hold on, there is no truth only opinion translates to, "Reality, truth, is whatever I decide it to be."
Welcome to satanic pride. Reality, truth, is whatever you decide it to be, emphasis on you decide. And what happens. Sure, you're the master of the universe, so get out there and own all the kingdoms of the world, greed. Fill your belly with the surfeit, stones to bread, and while you're at it throw yourself off the Temple and dare the God you don't believe in to do his worst. Reject the narrow way in favor of the broad.
Go right ahead, just don't be surprised when you're locked out of paradise on account of your opposition to it. Wailing and gnashing of teeth? Don't say Yoko Ono. Instead, return to the Lord with a humble and contrite heart.
God bless,
LSP
By way of a sermon, here's the latest from Archbishop Vigano, enemy of the Deep State and the Deep Church but servant and friend of Christ: Dear American People, Dear Friends, for two years now, a global coup has been carried out all over the world, planned for some time by an elite group of conspirators enslaved to the interests of international high finance. This coup was made possible by an emergency pandemic that is based on the premise of a virus that has a mortality rate almost analogous to that of any other seasonal flu virus, on the delegitimization and prohibition of effective treatments, and on the distribution of an experimental gene serum which is obviously ineffective, and which also clearly carries with it the danger of serious and even lethal side effects. Then, after identifying the instigators and accomplices of the "coup" or "revolution," along with its satanic ethos, we're in a "spiritual war," he concludes: |
Dear American brothers and sisters! Dear Patriots! this is a crucial moment for the future of the United States of America and of the whole of humanity. But the pandemic emergency, the farce of global warming and the green economy, and the economic crisis deliberately induced by the Great Reset with the complicity of the deep state, are all only the consequence of a much more serious problem, and it is essential to understand it in depth if we want to defeat it. This problem is essentially moral; indeed, it is religious. We must put God back in the first place not only in our personal lives, but also in the life of our society. We must restore to Our Lord Jesus Christ the Crown that the Revolution has torn from Him, and in order for this to happen a true and profound conversion of individuals and of society is necessary. For it is absolutely impossible to hope for the end of this global tyranny if we continue to remove from the Kingdom of Christ the nations that belong to Him and must belong to Him. For this reason, the movement to overturn Roe v. Wade also acquires a very important meaning, since respect for the sacredness of unborn life must be sanctioned by positive law if it is to be a mirror of the Eternal Law.You are animated by a yearning for justice, and this is a legitimate and good desire. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” says the Lord (Mt 5:6). But this Justice must be based on the awareness that this is a spiritual battle in which it is necessary to take sides without equivocation and without compromise, holding transcendent and eternal references that even the pagan philosophers glimpsed, and that have found fulfillment in the Revelation of the Son of God, the Divine Master.My appeal for an Anti-Globalist Alliance – which I renew today – aims precisely to constitute a movement of moral and spiritual rebirth which will inspire the civil, social and political action of those who do not want to be enslaved as slaves to the New World Order. A movement that at the national and local level will be able to find a way to oppose the Great Reset and that coordinates the denunciation of the coup that is currently in progress. Because in the awareness of who our adversary is and what his aims and purposes are, we can disrupt the criminal action he intends to pursue and force him to retreat. In this, the opposition to the pandemic farce and the vaccination obligation must be determined and courageous on the part of each of you.Yours must therefore be a work of truth, bringing to light the lies and deceptions of the New World Order and their anti-human and antichristic matrix. And in this it is mainly the laity and all people of good will – each in the professional and civil role he holds – who must coordinate and organize together to make a firm but peaceful resistance, so as not to legitimize its violent repression by those who today hold power.Be proud of your identity as American patriots and of the Faith that must animate your life. Do not allow anyone to make you feel inferior just because you love your homeland, because you are honest at work, because you want to protect your family and raise your children with healthy values, because you respect the elderly, because you protect life from conception to its natural end. Do not be intimidated or seduced by those who propagate a dystopian world in which a faceless power imposes on you contempt for the Law of God, presents sin and vice as licit and desirable, despises righteousness and Morality, destroys the natural family and promotes the worst perversions, plans the death of defenseless and weak creatures, and exploits humanity for its own profit or to preserve power.Be worthy heirs of the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and do not follow those of your Pastors who have betrayed the mandate they have received from Our Lord, who impose iniquitous orders on you or who remain silent before the evidence of an unheard of crime against God and humanity.May this Holy Christmas illuminate your minds and inflame your hearts before the Infant King who lays in the manger. And just as the choirs of the Angels and the homage of the Magi united with the simple adoration of the Shepherds, so also today your commitment to the moral rebirth of the United States of America – one Nation under God – will have the blessing of Our Lord and will gather those who govern you around you. Amen.May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
You can read the whole thing here. It is, I believe, the true voice of the Church and a rallying cry for the faithful. As one pundit put it, "He should be Pope."
Amen to that,
LSP
The Apocalypse, prophesied by our Savior. False Christs, wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, famine, "troubles." The Gospel preached to all nations as the faithful are beaten in the synagogues and handed over to councils and kings, to the secular authority.
And then the abomination of desolation, the visible triumph of blasphemous pagan power in the holy place, followed by the great tribulation, the reign of Antichrist mercifully cut short by God and the return of Christ in glory.
You can read it all in Mark 13 and the other synoptics, but what are we to make of this, like children on a road trip we want to know, are we there yet? Stand back and reflect. Have Christ's words been fulfilled, are they being so and will they be, at some point in the future. The answer, surely, is yes to all three.
Christ's prophecy was partially and accurately fulfilled in the sack of Jerusalem, and the persecution of the Church. St. Paul, notoriously, was brought before a "ruler," Caesar himself, and blasphemous pagan power ruled supreme over the world and the rubble of the Temple.
But Christ didn't return, so this is a type or prefigurement of greater things to come, the final battle between good and evil, of Christ and Antichrist. Are we there yet, we ask and the answer is no, the Abomination has not yet been set up, whether from a rebuilt Temple, the Vatican, Canterbury Cathedral(!) or anywhere else. Pagan, blasphemous power is not yet triumphant. Yet.
This means, in terms of the prophecy, that we're at the "beginning of sorrows," the rest is to come and note, as we draw inevitably closer to the date so too does evil increase and wax large. This will continue until it's evidently triumphant, the abomination will be set up with all signs and wonders so as to deceive the very elect. The mystery of iniquity at work. Woe, flee to the hills.
Then Christ returns. Great will be the fall of the anti-kingdom before the might and irresistible power of God, and the elect, God's chosen people, his faithful, will be gathered to him in glory as evil is thrown down, utterly, for evermore into the lake of fire.
Apocalypse, and a message of hope. God wins, the Devil and his apostate angels don't, so be strong in your faith, "hang tough" said one church person, rightly. But consider this (I didn't preach it and maybe should've):
The Synoptic "Little Apocalypse" can be paraphrased as a lesser or desultory persecution, the blasphemous abomination, the great persecution and the triumphant return of Christ. Leaving aside Danielic math (think half weeks and three days) does this present us with the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ? Yes, it does.
Brought before councils, beaten in the synagogues, the scourging, a lesser tribulation. Golgotha, the sacrilegious desolation, and the Tomb, witness the effect of the greater persecution only to be followed by the return of Christ.
We, as Christians, share in this, we live in Christ and he in us. The apocalypse must, then, play out in our lives and as it does, by the grace of God may we be raised to glory, even as evil is cast into the lake of fire.
Your Old Pal,
LSP
St. James says, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
At enmity with God, what a terrifying position to be in, and isn't that where we are now as a nation. For example, how many billions of dollars were made in profit over 30 years of war, which we curiously didn't win, and how much of that money was spent on the love of God and neighbor? None, to speak of. On the contrary, the cash flowed into the pockets of our rulers and their puppets, making them even richer than they were already.
Again, can you imagine any country claiming with any legitimacy that they worship God when they subsidize abortion to the tune of over $600 million annually. That's almost $2 million dollars a day, to kill children in the womb of a mother. A country which does that doesn't worship God, it worships some other thing.
I'll cut to the chase. America, to say nothing of any other country, Anglosphere, we're looking at you, has become worldly. We've become, as a nation, friends of the world, and people who love the world do all in their power to possess as much of the object of their desire as they can.
Thus, driven by prideful greed and vainglorious ambition, the worldly heap up for themselves money, possessions, power, and influence. After all, what's the point of all that cash when you can't fly your private jet to Davos and scheme the greater imposition of your will upon others. And the result?
James is clear. Discord, fighting, division, killing, and every kind of "vile practice." Is that not us, as a country, right now? I'll spare you the examples, all you have to do is throw a dart at the internet and pull out a story. But suffice to say, America's at enmity with God.
The worldly, who rule and influence us, promote pride instead of humility, hatred instead of love, disbelief instead of faith, division instead of peace, death instead of life, and iniquity instead of righteousness. They are, when we pause to reflect, against the qualities which Christ revealed to us on the Cross.
They hate that, they're opposed to it, and mock, deride and blaspheme it, they are enemies of God. What a terrible position to be in, not least on account of its telos or end. Writing to the Philippians, St. Paul describes their character and fate, "They are enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their god is the belly and they glory in their shame."
St. James is no less fierce, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire."
The end of the way of the cross is paradoxically very different. As Christ teaches his uncomprehending disciples on the way to Capernaum, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
He will rise, triumphant over Hell and death.
The way of humility, faith, love and righteousness is the way of life, the way of the Cross. Choose that and live by the grace of God.
Here Endeth the Lesson,
LSP
PS. Do you not think "Friends of The World" sounds like a Soros funded NGO? Just sayn.
In some dioceses the bishop's visitation is a terrible thing, a nightmare. There you are when some unspeakable old heretic tips up with a view to destroying everything you believe in. Thank God it's not that way in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Our bishops stand firm for the Faith, they're successors of the Apostles as opposed to wicked mountebanks in the pay of Rainbow Baphomet.
So today was good, our bishop came, sung the Mass and preached, what a blessing. The Specialist even came down from Fort Hood to swing some incense, well done. Curiously, everyone in the sanctuary party was either former or active duty or involved in pro rodeo. Clearly a moral, if you care to draw it.
Then we fell back to the church hall for a delicious lunch, the mission eats well, and a good time was had by all. What a lot of fun, and I tell you, it's a real blessing to be in this diocese.
Is it perfect? No. Should we be part of the wider Catholic Church, East and West? Yes. But so too should Rome and Constantinople be as one and, of course, the broken shards of the catholic mirror are one, essentially, in terms of faith, to say nothing of deeper sacramental union.
Ut unum sint, may they all be one, prayed Christ. Do you think the Father somehow chose to ignore His Son's prayer? Hardly. The Mystici Corporis, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, is one by nature or essence. The unity is there; that we've wrecked it, in worldly terms, with competing jurisdictions and associated wickedness is, frankly, the Devil's work.
My take, for what little it's worth, is that it'll take real persecution to bring about the outward and visible unity which strengthens the inward and spiritual. After all, it's in the Good Book, "Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved."
Apocalypse aside, what a great day.
Keep the Faith, you heathen,
LSP
Then saith he to Thomas, (in the upper room) Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. Jn. 20:27
Thomas wanted physical proof of the resurrection and got it, the risen Christ was touchable, tangible. He had risen bodily from the tomb and, on reflection, anything less doesn't cut it.
What dies when we die, the spirit? Hardly, it doesn't have any physical parts to decay and return to the dust from which they came. The body, notoriously, does; we don't bounce like we used to, to put it mildly. So what has to be resurrected? The body, rejoined to the spirit, between them both making up the whole person.
Without this, we're left with spirit only or in other words, a shade or ghost, and the rising becomes a haunting. This is not the case in the upper room on the 8th day, the Sunday following the Resurrection. On the contrary, Jesus stands before Thomas, the whole man, body and spirit, risen from the grave.
In an explosion of divine power, Christ had taken humanity to a new dimension of existence, a new mode of imperishable, glorified being. No wonder Thomas fell down and worshiped, he touched the Glory, "My Lord and my God." And note this.
When Christ appeared to the disciples on Easter Sunday, the "doors were shut" for fear of the same people who'd crucified Jesus crucifying them. For fear of death. With the reality of the resurrection upon them, made concrete on the 8th day, the fear was gone. And so they went out and died in the proclamation of the Faith, knowing they would rise in and with their Lord.
What hope! As opposed to the dismal, wretched, con-trick despair of our disbelieving age. God grant us the faith, hope and love of the disciples in the upper room, and with Thomas the grace to fall down and believe, "My Lord and my God."
Christus Surrexit,
LSP
ἔνθα στᾶσ᾽ ἤϋσε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ, ὃς τόσον αὐδήσασχ᾽ ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα
there the goddess, white-armed Hera, stood and shouted in the likeness of great-hearted Stentor of the brazen voice, whose voice is as the voice of fifty other men (Homer, Iliad V. 785)
John Wright wrote that we live in a posthuman age. By that, he did not mean that men could not extend life and expand consciousness by bio-nanotechnology, neural shunts or downloading self-identities into the psycho-cyberverse. He meant, nearly a third of us has sold the heritage of mankind, what it means to be human, for a mess of pottage called political correctness. And at its root, you will always find that the PC culture has at its core, a hatred of Jesus Christ.The posthumans renounce the gift of reason, and think themselves superhuman, beyond good and evil. Neither the law of cause and effect nor the law of supply and demand has any bearing on their talking points and chanted slogans.
The Left promoted hedonism until it ran out of any pleasures to give, and championed socialism until it went broke, and preached skepticism until all men grew skeptical of it. The freethinkers entered the thought prison of political correctness, and threw the keys away, and called a halt to all thought.So the Left are basically left with nothing. That nothing is called Nihilism. Think of Antifa. They are its poster children. Producing nothing, they live to destroy.
