Happy Easter!

 

I know, a day late and a dollar short, but Happy Easter!

Christ has risen,

LSP

Holy Saturday

 

Here we are, on Holy Saturday, and the body of our Savior lies in the tomb, the fourteenth station. Consider this, by George Herbert:

Oh blessed body!  Whither art thou thrown? 

No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?

So many hearts on earth, and yet not one

Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;

For they can lodge transgressions by the score:

Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door

They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.

Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,

Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it

Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,

And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;

Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,

And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,

Was writ in stone;  so thou, which also art

The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart

To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,

And so should perish, but that nothing can,

Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man

Withhold thee.

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee. 

Herbert was a country parson,  as am I. There's clearly a lot to live up to, eh? 

Light v. Dark,

LSP

Good Friday

 

The Tabernacles are empty, the Altars are stripped, and Christ lays in the tomb. It seems as though Satan has won, and he must have thought so. You can imagine the infernal ecstasy. Imagine, too, the horror of the Adversary as Christ rises from the dead, demolishing the calculus of the Pit.

Consummatum est. It is finished, the perfect sacrifice is made, man is reconciled to God and the powers of Hell cast down, only to rage in fury as they descend into the Lake of Fire. 

They take their followers with them, the followers of the False Prophet Caiaphas, who on the sixth hour of the sixth day stamp their foreheads with the mark of the Beast crying out, "We have no king but Caesar!"

We follow a different King, the Lord of Life, who reigns victorious on the hard wood of the Cross. Satan and death have no power over us.

Rejoice in that and stand firm.

God bless,

LSP

Maundy Thursday Pistol

 

One of the things which happens on Maundy Thursday is that the priest gets to wash peoples' feet, as Christ washed his disciples' feet. My MC doesn't like it because he thinks it's "hokey," which perhaps it is. That in mind, most definitely a lesson in humility.

Regardless, there I was, about to wash a rancher's right foot, and there on a sock next to his boot was a compact S&W(?), a 9 or 40 I think. So I looked at the pistol, looked at the foot and did some quick math.

Should I bless the pistol and make it part of the rite or not? I chose the latter path, deciding to store up value for a later a date, a churchwide blessing of guns. Go long and hold, went the arithmetic.

Later, at the Pax, I told  my friend, "That was the safest footwashing I've ever seen." He replied, embarrassed, "Padre, I just forgot it was there, in my boot!" He needn't have worried, "Brother, next year we'll make it mandatory."

And that, all five of you readers, is the story of that. A short tale of God, country life and guns in Texas.

God bless,

LSP

Holy Wednesday

 

In between cleaning all the guns that I don't have and watching scenes from Tombstone on continuous loop, I look forward to Maundy Thursday with it's double mandate, do this and love one another as I have loved you, the former realized in the Eucharist, was ever a command so obeyed?, and the latter signified by Christ washing the feet of his disciples.

The connection is clear and lies in the Cross, from which Jesus washes away our sins in his supreme act of love. And it's precisely this sacrifice that's made present to us in the Sacrament of the Altar. The extent to which we receive the grace offered, think Parable of the Sower, depends on our obedience to the commandment to love. 

Benedict XVI reflects:

In it (Confession), the Lord continually rewashes our dirty feet, and we are able to sit at table with Him.

But in this way, the word takes on yet another meaning, in which the Lord extends the "sacramentum" by making it the "exemplum," a gift, a service for our brother: "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet" (John 13:14). We must wash each other's feet in the daily mutual service of love. But we must also wash our feet in the sense of constantly forgiving one another. The debt that the Lord has forgiven us is always infinitely greater than all of the debts that others could owe to us (cf. Mt. 18:21-35). It is to this that Holy Thursday exhorts us: not to allow rancor toward others to become, in its depths, a poisoning of the soul. It exhorts us to constantly purify our memory, forgiving one another from the heart, washing each other's feet, thus being able to join together in the banquet of God.

Holy Thursday is a day of gratitude and of joy for the great gift of love to the end that the Lord has given to us. We want to pray to the Lord at this time, so that gratitude and joy may become in us the power of loving together with his love. Amen.

Amen to that. We must and should hunger and thirst for righteousness, swords about the Cross. But by the same token, there is no place for the poisonous serpent of hatred within our hearts. It is the hallmark of our Adversary, Satan. And remember, though it seems counter-intuitive, the enemy's lost and lost hard.

Be on the side of Light,

LSP

A Typical Night At The Compound

 

Just another typical day in North Central Texas. Make of it what you will.

Wild West,

LSP

You Dirty Beasts!

 

If you lost all your guns when the canoe capsized on the Brazos you don't need to worry about cleaning them because they're gone, lost to the waters of the deep. But say, hypothetically, you were able to retrieve some of the firearms, perhaps with rope and magnets. Well then, you'd clean them.

Light and Fast

Otherwise they'd be filthy, dirty, beasts and wouldn't work properly, and what's the point of a gun if it doesn't work? Speaking of dirty, I like gas guns a lot, they're fun to shoot, but they do get fouled up and take time to clean.

7.62 Weightlifting, anyone?

Thanks a lot, "gas impingement." Still, it works, and I like the low recoil of the .308/7.62 AR as much as I dislike the weight of the thing. Is it a deadly assault rifle? Good question, it's certainly black, so perhaps it is. Who knows, maybe it'll learn to take a thermal and assault the nocturnal porcuswine.

Typical Street Scene in Biden's America

But that's in the future. In the meanwhile, I'm waiting for ammo prices to drop from their currently obscene heights; 50 cents per round for .22LR, really? Over a buck for a round of 5.56, what? And that's if you can find it.

Not that it matters, I lost all my guns when the skiff hit a reef in Lake Whitney and sank beneath the waves. What. A. Catastrophe.

#2A,

LSP 

Juke Box Monday

 

Shoot some pool, fire off a few darts, have a pint or several and spin some tunes on the juke. Yes, it's Jukebox Monday and here's Juliette's choice, Copperhead Road. Great choice.

Infidel takes us to a contemplative space, with Stella Blue. Let's hear it for the Dead:

RHT recommends Stevie boy.

And here's some country from Jim.

Me? I just like Thunderstruck, because it's awesome. Check it out:

Rock on,

LSP

Wolf Pack

 

It's been a busy time here at the Compound, so we're catching up. This short infovid's for our nautical friend LL; we managed to get some video footage, so check it out. And if you don't like the "Metal"? Too bad, no one ever said life'd be easy (click "watch on Youtube" and widescreen):

Mind how you go,

LSP

Death Metal

 

Sometimes the old tunes are the best tunes, and this one's for WSF, who knows Death Metal when he hears it. Enter Sandman:

Well, there's genius and there's genius.

Your Pal,

LSP

A Short Palm Sunday Sermon

 

Here we are on Palm Sunday, the "gateway to Holy Week," and the liturgy of the Mass seems strange or jarring. One minute we're hailing Jesus as the Messiah while singing All Glory Laud and Honour and the next shouting out Crucify Him!, as we hear the Passion. It's as though we've been catapulted, in mood, from Easter to Good Friday. But of course we understand the connection.

Christ's kingship as the anointed holy one of God rests upon the Cross, his throne from which he establishes sovereignty over sin and death. He could, in that week leading up to his death, have chosen worldly power; the temptations in the wilderness surely returned with demonic intensity.

Stones to bread? Yes indeed, literal bread for himself and the world, to say nothing of spiritual bread in the form of the righteous wisdom he could have given from the gleaming, thunderstruck fastness  of Mount Zion. 

Instead of being scourged and nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers he could have ordered the angelic host to his defense, lest he dash his foot against a stone. And the kingdoms of the world? His for the asking, with all the glories therein.

Christ says no to this and by extension to the Devil himself. He follows a different path, the way of the Cross. What qualities took him there? Humility, for sure. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant or slave, even to an agonizing, shameful death. Likewise obedience. 

Recall the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prays that the chalice of suffering and death would be taken from him, but he continues, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou willest." (Matt. 26:39) This utterly faithful submission to the Father's will takes him to Golgotha, where he lays down his life in a perfect act of love for the forgiveness of our sin.

Humble, obedient, loving faith. The way of the Cross and the way to the empty tomb and everlasting life. It comes at a cost, obviously, but consider the reward, the green pastures of paradise.

I pray we're given the courage, by the grace of God, to acknowledge Christ as our King and follow him through the "grave and gate of death" to eternal life.

God Bless,

LSP

Stations of the Cross and Benediction

 

"It's almost that time of year, LSP, can you you help out?" asked the Rector of St. Matthias. I zeroed in, like a thermal on a hog, "You'd like me to give a Lent talk? Sure, count me in," and took the last Friday of the course.

My job was to drive to the Metrosprawl yesterday and comment on the last sentence of the Apostles Creed after assisting at Stations of the Cross. Which I did, contrasting the fear, uncertainty and deceit of the world with the boldly asserted truth of the Creed. 

Thurifer, get down!

Then came Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,  Therefore we, before him bending, this great Sacrament revere; types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here; faith, our outward sense befriending, makes our inward vision clear.

A blessing, and it was good to be back at St. Matthias and its people. The Metrosprawl? Fun to visit Ma LSP's HQ and have dinner with her and BW. Less fun to see all the mask zombies wandering about with their made in China talismans covering their faces, voluntarily. 

"I say, what's that?" "We call it a 'laptop' LSP."

They proudly "follow the science" even though the scientific language on the Chinese mask boxes says, quite specifically, that the facial wares enclosed don't protect the wearer from viruses. You'll remember Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

 

He and Magda poisoned their beautiful young children, and then killed themselves as the truth caught up with their lie at the end of the war. Death and destruction, perhaps especially of children, are the hallmarks of the People of the Lie and their Father, who was a murderer from the beginning.

The Ninth Station, Jesus falls for the third time

Compare and contrast that to the God-given truth and life of the Creed.

Your Friend,

LSP