BLACK South African admits things were better under whites.

GREAT comments at minute 4:44 by Neil Oliver on how middle class mothers are driven out of their homes to seek paid employment by stresses and incentives deliberately created by the government and financial system.

Resurrection of Christ and the Women at the Tomb (detail), Fra Angelico

THEY ARRIVED on the early morning of that world-changing day. They came with precious spices to dress the body of the deceased, as was the ancient custom. They were so motivated in this task they did not consider in advance how they would roll away the enormous stone placed at the mouth of the tomb. How like women to fail to think of this.

Men cowered and hid behind closed doors.

Others feared for their safety.

They were not deterred by the risks. They were not afraid of being associated with a convicted political criminal, even one who had been executed.

And what a turn of events! The stone was already removed.

And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed with a white robe: and they were astonished.

“He is not here.”

This caused them fear at last.

God could have revealed the Resurrection to men, in keeping with those times and that place, where women did not hold positions of public power or authority. He chose to reveal it to women first. How paradoxical. How meaningful.

Their greatness consisted in their determination to proceed with a practical, private step to honor the dead, rather than in swashbuckling action. Their greatness was in their devotion. Their monumental place in history began in the invisible depth of their hearts.

The beauty of their souls illuminates the darkness still.

Miles David (Wikipedia)

“IF somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow. If I got tired I’d stop, have a glass of water, and choke him some more.”

— Miles David, 1985

Video link

(I’m not sure who made this video.)

Deposition of Christ, Francesco Cabianca; 1711

MANY magnificent works of art such as this 18th-century altarpiece depict the Passion of Our Lord dramatically and movingly.

Though these works are viewed as morbid by the world at large — especially in a society that engages in mass panic over the seasonal flu —  they rarely depict the full horrors of the Crucifixion. It was much more bloody, gruesome, brutal and humiliating than is typically shown, even by some of the greatest artworks.

In 1950, Pierre Barbet, chief surgeon at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paris, published A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon. Other physicians have since published similar books, and, though none have produced accounts as seemingly thorough or as moving as Barbet’s, they dispute some of his anatomical conclusions. Even if the French doctor was in error on some points, his sincerity in seeking to know more is not in doubt and his book constitutes a compelling and realistic examination of the physical sufferings and humiliations Christ endured.

Here are conclusions Barbet defended: Read More »

Behold how the righteous dies
and no one takes notice.
The righteous are taken away
and no one pays attention.
From facing iniquity
the righteous is removed.
And his memory will be in peace.

His resting place is in peace
and his dwelling place in Zion.
And his memory will be in peace.

“THERE IS no sinner, however great may be his crimes, there is no heretic, or infidel, who has not his share in this precious Blood, whose infinite merit is such, that it could redeem a million worlds more guilty even than our own.”

— Dom Prosper Guéranger, “Wednesday in Holy Week,” The Liturgical Year

 “HIS Name should be the sweetest music that we know; His words the laws of all our life. He wishes us, as it were, to forget the precise amount of our actual obligations to Him. Indeed what is the use of remembering them, when we know that it is beyond our power to fulfill them? He would have us deal with Him promptly, generously, abundantly, with the instincts of love, and not as if the life of faith were a spirit of commerce, the balance of justice, the duty of gratitude, or the wise calculations of an intelligent self-interest. We should cling to Him as a child clings to its mother. We should hang about Him as a friend whose absence we cannot bear. We should keep Him fondly in our thoughts, as men sometimes do with a sweet grief, which has become to them the soft and restful light of their whole lives. Now the way in which our Lady’s dolors keep His Passion continually before us, has a special virtue to produce this tenderness in us. We love Him, who is infinitely to be loved in all ways, in a peculiar manner when He is reflected in His Mother’s heart; and although it is absolutely necessary for us perpetually to contemplate His Passion in all the nakedness of its harrowing circumstances and revolting shame, for else we shall never have a true idea of the sinfulness of sin, yet there is something in the Passion, seen through Mary, which makes us forget ourselves, and tranquilly engrosses us in the most melting tenderness and endearing sympathy towards our Blessed Lord. The emotions, which are awakened by the Passion in itself, are manifold and exciting, whereas the spirit of tenderness presides over Mary’s sorrows with one exclusive, constraining presence.”

— Fr. Frederick William Faber, The Foot of the Cross, p. 80

The Kiss of Judas; German, 16th century (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

[Reposted]

GOD in his Sacred Passion drew our attention to human betrayal. He helped us understand what it is and what to do about it. He commiserated with the betrayed. He recognized betrayal, one of the most painful of human experiences. His Passion is a microcosm of all the greatest sufferings and this world of suffering was filled with more acute pain than ours because of the incomparable sensitivity and guiltlessness of the Victim.

No harder experience in life exists. Friends, spouses, relatives are betrayed in acts of hidden treachery every day and their suffering is often hidden. Judas was one of Jesus’s chosen, elected as a friend. And yet he betrayed Jesus not in an impetuous moment, but in a calculated plot.

Why do people betray each other? Read More »

JANICE writes:

This video [about the Trumptard] was my laugh of the week!

Now I’m thinking of the “Q”ers, who log on regularly to 8chan (or whatever it is, now) to receive those indecipherable-to-everyone-else communiques from the “White Hats!” Puh-leeeeze!!

It’s like the 50’s kids who mailed in cereal boxtops to get decoder rings from “Commander Bob.” The kids actually had an excuse for such credulity and feelings of specialness – they were kids!

THERE is no need to celebrate this day of fun pranks and open lies.

That’s because every day is April Fools Day.

“THE endurance of sorrow is perhaps the highest and most arduous work we have to do, and it is for the most part God’s ordinance that the amount of sorrow to be endured should increase with the amount of holiness enabling us to bear it. We must bear it naturally even while we are bearing it supernaturally. There is no sanctity in unfeelingness, or in the blunting of the soul, even when religious interests have blunted it by a superior engrossment and a higher abstraction. Spirituality no doubt hinders us from feeling many sorrows, and no one will say that such indifference is not in many ways a privilege. But it must not be confounded with an heroic endurance of sorrow. To be heroic in this matter, the heart must feel to the quick, and divine love must barb the more cruelly, and drive the deeper in, the shafts with which we are wounded. Now, in all this, Mary is our example, and a purely human example, an example moreover which has as a matter of fact produced such results of exceeding sanctity and supernatural gracefulness in the Church, that we may safely venture the conjecture that it was one of the reasons for which God permitted her surpassing martyrdom.”

— Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Foot of the Cross, or The Sorrows of Mary

“IT is as much life-long with us as anything can be. It is a prominent part of our first turning to God, and there is no height of holiness in which it will leave us. It is the interior representation of our guardian angel in our souls, and the disposition and demeanor he would fain should be constant and persevering in us. It is quiet. Indeed, it rather tranquillizes a troubled soul than perturbs a contented one. It hushes the noises of the world, and rebukes the loquacity of the human spirit. It softens asperities, subdues exaggerations, and constrains everything with a sweet and gracious spell which nothing else can equal. It is supernatural. For it has a natural motive to feed upon. It is all from God, and all for God. It is forgiven sin for which we mourn, and not sin which perils self. And this very fact makes it also a fountain of love. We love because much has been forgiven, and we always remember how much it was. We love because the forgiveness has abated fear. We love because we wonder at the compassion that could so visit such unworthiness. We love because the softness of sorrow is akin to the filial confidence of love.”

— Frederick William Faber, Growth in holiness; or, The progress of the spiritual life, 1864

Read More »

THE letter below, dated May 16, 2000, was written by the writer Lawrence Auster to a minister of the prominent St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Mr. Auster died ten years ago yesterday at the age of 64. Born and raised Jewish, he followed Eastern religious beliefs for years as a young adult. He was then baptized at St. Thomas in the 1990s after a powerful mystical experience of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Here he addresses the pastor of the church, honing in with his characteristically unsparing intensity on its atmosphere and beliefs. In the letter, among other interesting things, he notes the infuriating tendency of modernists (or postmodernists) to speak out of both sides of their mouths.

A letter from Lawrence Auster was not always welcome by its recipient (and often went unanswered). Perhaps in reading this you can sense why.

Here is the letter:

Dear Fr. —-,

If you were wondering what I was talking about with Bishop S. in the narthex after Sunday services, this is what I said to him: ‘Where in the Bible does it say that we discover the meaning of Christ’s resurrection by ’embracing our particularity’?

He replied: ‘That’s my interpretation.”

When I objected to his interpretation, he clarified that he did not mean that it’s about all of us just going off in our own direction (which had been my impression), but that we live ‘in Christ.’

I was glad he said this. Combined with his evident sincerity of manner, it mollified me somewhat. However, that’s not what he said in his sermon. In his sermon, he said nothing about living in Christ. In his sermon he threw out an endless series of rhetorical and sophomoric-sounding questions (there must have been about twenty of them), such as ‘How do we know what the meaning of the resurrection is?’, ‘How can we tell tht Christ is risen?’ and so on and on. They were questions that led nowhere, questions that to my mind betokened a lack of genuine engagement with the Gospels. They were posed not in the spirit of a man who is looking for the truth or who is leading up to an exposition of the truth, but in the spirit of a man who is saying that there isn’t any truth.

If that suspicion seems extreme and unfair, it was confirmed at the end of his sermon when he said — yes, he actually said this — that there is no answer, that each of us must find the answer for ourselves, by living our lives, meeting the diversity of life, being kind to people, blah blah blah. (I’m not quoting exactly but this is very close to what he said.) Finally he said by living this way, by “embracing our particularity,” we would understand that Jesus was risen and with us.

This was not quite as bad as Bishop G.’s remark in his 1998 Christmas Eve sermon, that we come to the truth of Christianity by realizing that it’s ok to be ‘fat and sloppy,’ since Christ loves us any way we are. But it was in the same ballpark. Read More »