CHECK out the man sitting at the bar. He probably had never heard anything so beautiful.

Pope Pius IX

“OUR mouth overflows with joy and our lips with exultation. We give, and shall always give, the humblest and deepest thanks to Jesus Christ Our Lord because, through a singular grace, He has granted to us, unworthy though we be, to decree and offer this honor and glory and praise to His Blessed Mother.

“We repose all our hope in the most Blessed Virgin – in the all beautiful and immaculate one who has crushed the poisonous head of the most cruel serpent and brought salvation to the world. In her who is the glory of the prophets and apostles, the honor of the martyrs, the crown and joy of all the saints; in her who is the safest refuge and the most trustworthy helper of all who are in danger; in her who, with her only-begotten Son, is the most powerful Mediatrix and Conciliatrix in the whole world; in her who is the most excellent glory, ornament and impregnable stronghold of the holy Church; in her who has destroyed all heresies and snatched the faithful people and nations from all kinds of direst calamities; in her do we hope who has delivered us from so many threatening dangers.”

— Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX, December 8, 1854, the day he solemnly instituted the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin

See more reflections on the Immaculate Conception here and Catholic devotion to Mary here.

The Rose which I am singing,
Whereof Isaiah said,
Is from its sweet root springing
In Mary, purest Maid;
Through God’s great love and might
The Blessed Babe she bare us
In a cold, cold winter’s night.

The Immaculate Conception, Fillippo Parodi; 1660s

THOU art all fair, O Mary, and stain of original sin is not found in thee.
Thy vestiture is white as snow; and thy face is as the sun.
Thou art the glory of Jerusalem; thou art the joy of Israel; thou art the honor of our people.
Blessed art thou, O Virgin Mary, by the Lord, the Most High God, above all women upon the earth.
Draw us, O Immaculate Virgin: we will run after thee in the odor of thy ointments.

(From the First Vespers of the Vigil for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, observed this year on Monday Dec.9)

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“EVERYWHERE evil is undermined by good. It is only that good is undermost; and this is one of the supernatural conditions of God’s presence. As much evil as we see, so much good, or more, we do know assuredly lies under it, which, if not equal to the evil in extent, is far greater in weight, and power, and worth, and substance. Evil makes more show, and thus has a look of victory; while good is daily outwitting evil by simulating defeat.”

— Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Tan Books, 1978); p. 191

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Madonna and Child, Giotto

 It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. — G.K. Chesterton

FROM G.K. Chesterton’s essay “The God in the Cave” (The Everlasting Man):

[N]o other story, no pagan legend or philosophical anecdote or historical event, does in fact affect any of us with that peculiar and even poignant impression produced on us by the word Bethlehem. No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because it was poetical, or because it was philosophical or any number of other things in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man. It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity.

[G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, Ignatius Press, 1925; pp 184-185]

“THIS one of the heavenly bodies, which we tenant, was created to be as it were the garden, the Eden, of His Incarnation; and He adorned it in His love, before Adam, the first copy of Him, lived among its Asiatic shades. Perhaps it lay for ages in the glad sunshine, solitary, silent, in beautiful desolation, and He took complacence in the adorning of it. He loved perchance to see its beauty ripen, rather than to rise up at once complete. Continents sank slowly at His will, and new oceans rolled above their mountain tops, or elevated steppes. New lands rose out of the bosom of the deep. Floras of marvellous foliage waved in the sun, and the wisdom and the joy of the Babe of Bethlehem was in them. Faunas, strange, gigantic, terrible, possessed the waters and the land, of His fashioning, and for the delight of His glory. The central fires wrought beautifully and delicately the metals and the gems, which were for the altars of the Babe of Bethlehem, for the tiara of His Vicar, or the chasubles of His priests. The rocks and marbles ripened on the planet, as the fruits ripen on a tree and the Babe, the Wisdom of the Father, disported Himself in the vast operation, the pacific uniformity, and the magnificent slowness of His own laws. The grandeur of those huge-leaved trees, the unwieldy life of those extinct monsters, the loveliness of now sunken lands, were all for Him who has just now been born in Bethlehem, and were not only for Him, but were also His own doing.

“Bethlehem then was not His first home. We must seek Him in an eternal home if indeed He be older than the angels, the eldest-born of creatures. The dark cave within and the moonlit slope without are not like the scenery of His everlasting home. He is the Eternal Word. He is the first Word ever spoken, and He was spoken by God, and He is in all things equal to Him by whom He was spoken…”

— Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1900), p. 7

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UNITED Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was reportedly assassinated by a gunman outside a New York City hotel in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 2024. Once again, we have the lone white gunman, a number of odd things that don’t add up, a highly-publicized “manhunt” and a compelling setting, this time Manhattan in the pre-Christmas shopping season. The public, it seems, is being deliberately fed more manhunt stories. Hmm, I wonder why.

The most noticeable anomaly in the event as reported is that when Thompson is initially shot at close range in the back — on camera, of course — he is not knocked off his feet and does not crumple from the powerful impact, as would be the case, but does a little skip dance. Also, there is no sign of blood. And Thompson is not wearing a coat despite chilly winter weather. And there are messages on the shell casings — who’s writing this stuff? It’s impossible to know what went on here. Some other anomalies have been noticed: Read More »

SOME thoughts on math as the “last bastion of truth” from Fitzpatrick Informer:

They have already removed honest study of religion from the system. Now they must remove the teaching of logic-based math—a science that naturally leads sincere students to religious conclusions. Logic and critical thinking have long been removed from the world education system. This explains why not only literacy rates but also mathematics comprehension rates are plummeting, mostly in the West.

…. Get the kids while they’re young. Retard their minds from learning to think critically and you will have a completely plasticized brain with which to mold into whatever you wish: a slave…an automaton…a creature alienated from his creator. Read More »

MADELY Court, a 16th-century manor in Telford, England, is housing “migrants” in style.

Jonathan Pollard, Israeli spy

TRUMP pardoned the most dangerous spy in American history — and we’re supposed to feel outrage that Biden did the same for his son? Sure, it’s bad but we’ve been ruled by traitors for a long time.

This is government not of the people, not for the people and not by the people.

HINDUISM “has something to offer which is suited to all minds. Its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the metaphysical philosopher — its practical and concrete side suited to the man of affairs and the man of the world—its esthetic and ceremonial side suited to the man of poetic feeling and imagination—its quiescent and contemplative side suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion. Nay, it holds out the right hand of brotherhood to nature-worshippers, demon-worshippers, animal-worshippers, tree-worshippers, fetish-worshippers. It does not scruple to permit the most grotesque forms of idolatry, and the most degrading varieties of superstition. And it is to this latter fact that yet another remarkable peculiarity of Hinduism is mainly due—namely, that in no other system in the world is the chasm more vast which separates the religion of the higher, cultured, and thoughtful classes from that of the lower, uncultured, and unthinking masses.”

— Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 1891, p. 11