FROM The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger:

There was another custom, which originated in the Ages of Faith, and which is still observed in many countries. In honour of the Three Kings, who came from the East to adore the Babe of Bethlehem, each family chose one of its members to be King. The choice was thus made. The family kept a feast, which was an allusion to the third of the Epiphany-Mysteries – the Feast of Cana in Galilee – a Cake was served up, and he who took the piece which had a certain secret mark, was proclaimed the King of the day. Two portions of the cake were reserved for the poor, in whom honour was thus paid to the Infant Jesus and his Blessed Mother; for, on this Day of the triumph of Him, who, though King, was humble and poor, it was fitting that the poor should have a share in the general joy. Read More »

Video link.

THE FEAST OF THE Epiphany on January 6 marks the day when three cultured philosopher-kings came from the East to Bethlehem. Their systems of thought and pagan divination now exhausted, these seekers were drawn by a mysterious revelation to search for a child. They were kings looking for a king. They found a baby in a cave, surrounded by none of the prerogatives of power. Here was no symbol or sign. Here was the very Wisdom they craved incarnated. Here was no illumination of the mind alone. Their hearts were enlightened too. Their search ended; they fell to their knees and adored. “We have seen His star, and are come to adore Him” – Matt, ii, 2.

As Eastern mysticism and “mindfulness” continue to spread in the West, let’s remember today that these ideas are not new, but as old as time. This road was traveled by the Magi.

Some relevant words by G. K. Chesterton:

“It is still a strange story, though an old one, how they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names; Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages.They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales, but the truth of things; and since their truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward.” (The Everlasting Man, Ignatius Press; p. 176)

“O God, who by the direction of a star didst this day manifest thy only Son to the Gentiles; mercifully grant, that we, who now know thee by faith, may come at length to see the glory of thy Majesty.”

Read More »

‘THE Church very clearly points out what truths are articles of Faith, that we may distinguish them from pious beliefs and traditions, so that no one can be guilty of the sin of heresy without knowing it.

“So far, so good, right? Most of you are nodding your heads in agreement, and shrugging: ‘So, what about it?’

“Well, the problem ‘traditional Catholics’ are facing today is the fact that the ordinations of all the ‘traditional’ priests ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre, and Archbishop Thuc, as well as bishops consecrated and stemming from these lines are illicit. These priests, in general, will admit this fact but brush it off lightly and continue to function in violation of Divine Laws and Dogmas of our Catholic Faith.”

— From “Are You Still a Catholic?” by Patrick Henry and an anonymous author

Originally published at Identity Dixie by Terry Morris

Grandson: “Grandpa, I asked my dad why we have to eat black-eyed peas every New Years, and he said I should ask you.”

Grandpa: “Did he? Well, then, let’s sit down and talk about it.”

Grandson: “Okay!”

Grandpa: “First of all, we should never think of it as *having* to eat black-eyed peas to bring in the New Year, like it’s a burden to us or something we don’t want to do; we should instead look upon it as an honor and a privilege that we do cheerfully and with gratitude and thanksgiving. Pay attention and I will explain why.”

Grandson: (look of attentive curiosity) Read More »

“IN THE reign of Genseric, the Arian King of the Goths, one of the King’s favorite courtiers, the Count of Armogasto, was converted from Arianism and joined the Catholic Church.

“The King, on hearing of the fact, fell into a violent fury and, calling the young nobleman to his presence, tried by every means in his power to induce him to recant and return to the Arian sect. Neither threats nor promises availed. The Count refused all overtures and held fast to his new-found faith. Genseric then gave vent to this fury and ordered the young man to be bound with strong cords as tightly as the brawny executioners could draw them. The torment was intense, but the victim showed no sign of pain. He repeated two or three times, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” and lo, the cords snapped like spider webs and fell at his feet!

“Enraged beyond measure, the tyrant now commanded that the sinews of oxen, hard and tough as wire, should be brought. The Count was again bound, and the King bade the executioners use their utmost strength. Once more their victim invoked the Name of Jesus, and the new thongs, like the old, snapped like threads. Genseric, foaming with rage, ordered the martyr to be bound by the feet and hung from the branches of a tree, head downwards.

“Smiling at this new mode of torture, Count Armogasto folded his arms on his bosom and, repeating the Holy Name, fell into a tranquil sleep, as though he were lying on a soft and comfortable couch.”

[Source]

ST. PETER WEEPING, a 17th-century painting by the Florentine Agostino Melissi, hangs in a small, darkened gallery of the Philadelphia Art Museum. I coincidentally happened upon it for the first time the other day, just as the world and its vast propaganda machines prepared to eulogize Benedict XVI in Rome.

This computer image is entirely inadequate. It cannot do this beautiful and dramatic painting of the man who would become the first Pope on earth justice. The globular tears dropping toward the nose, the depth of the creases in the brow, the brilliance of the cloth with which he mops his tears are not fully visible. It is truly a stunning image — a portrait of a man in the throes of deep sorrow and self-incrimination. Peter in this famous scene, as we all know, has not just once, but three times lied about knowing Jesus. The faces in the background revel in his tears and his public lies. They laugh so hard with mockery they too are probably crying. “Ha, Ha! Oh, so you think you’re so holy!” they seem to say.

Yes, Peter lied — though he had been warned by Christ himself that he would betray his master.

Why would Jesus choose such an impulsive and unstable man to be his shepherd and his Vicar on earth?

The answer to this question is that no man — not even one many times more reliable than Peter — could truly fulfill this role created by God without divine assistance. Peter wept before he had been strengthened with miraculous graces. The Church is not of human origin nor was the courage of the men who once led it of human origin. No human motives or talents can fully explain their works and immense success. After the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost, Peter — this passionate, impetuous and somewhat unstable man — was ready. It was only then that he could face the world with brutal honesty and unwavering courage. He would die willingly a martyr’s death, as would 25 popes in the first 300 years of the Church.

If saints in heaven weep, these martyred popes must be weeping now.

They would be weeping to see the shameful spectacle of almost the entire world hailing a man who relentlessly undermined the Church as a one of Christ’s Vicars on earth. For if Benedict XVI, who died at the age of 95 this week, was a successor of Peter then Christ has indeed failed in his promises to be with His Church until the consummation. The gates of hell have indeed prevailed.

Let those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and minds to think with look at the true record of Joseph Ratzinger, the “conservative” foil to the bombastic Argentinian who now parades as pope. It’s comical the way the world views the Church as a political theater. You’ve got your conservatives and you’ve got your liberals. They battle it out and it makes for a great show! World wrestling at its finest.

This shows how far removed the world is from knowing the Church  — a divine mother, a guardian of the soul, not a political society.

Benedict prays at the Wailing Wall

As Dr. Thomas Droleskey wrote in 2013:

Contrary to what the secular and even most of the “religious” experts have stated, Joseph Ratzinger is no “conservative.”

He is a man who has made unremitting warfare upon almost every aspect of Catholic Faith, Worship, Morals and pastoral praxis, starting with the very nature of dogmatic truth. He has engaged in the most hideous forms of “inter-religious” prayer services.

He has attempted to make various Apostles, Fathers, Doctors Saints and true popes of the Catholic Church into perjured witnesses in behalf his conciliar apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges such as the “new ecclesiology,” “religious liberty,” “separation of Church and State,” false ecumenism, etc.

He has publicly praised propositions condemned by our true popes. Read More »

Adoration of the Shepherds (detail), Ridolfo Ghirlandaio; 1510

“THE SHEPHERD’S Farewell” is one of the most moving of carols, taken from a 19th-century French composer’s Christmas oratorio, L’Enfance du Christ. Hector Berlioz, known mostly for his discordant music and said to be an atheist, imagined the shepherds in Bethlehem bidding the Holy Family goodbye and composed this tender hymn. People who disliked his other music praised The Shepherds’ Farewell. He said:

In that work many people imagined they could detect a radical change in my style and manner. This opinion is entirely without foundation. The subject naturally lent itself to a gentle and simple style of music, and for that reason alone was more in accordance with their taste and intelligence. [Source]

Perhaps one has to be simple to enjoy this evocation of the ancient shepherds, their hearts overflowing with hushed wonder and love. The single oboe suggests a rustic pipe and the choir, the angels they have heard.

The Shepherds’ Farewell to the Holy Family (from L’Enfance du Christ Op. 25) by Hector Berlioz

1. Thou must leave Thy lowly dwelling,
The humble crib, the stable bare.
Babe, all mortal babes excelling,
Content our earthly lot to share.
Loving father, Loving mother,
Shelter Thee with tender care! Read More »

Adoration of the Name of Jesus, El Greco

NAMES are mysterious confluences of the universal and particular. A name that has been used for thousands of years takes on new meaning in a new generation. A name is phonetic music. Take the names “Emma” and “George.” Could Emma Bovary have been a George? Could George Washington have been an Emma? It is difficult to grasp all the psychological effects and associations names conjure.

The sweetest and most beautiful name in heaven and earth, a name that is a universe and eternity in itself, a name that resounds through history like no other, is the name of Jesus. It is entirely particular and entirely universal; holy and unearthly like no other. Dom Prosper Gueranger, abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes, France in the nineteenth century, wrote that the name of Jesus is food, light and medicine. So powerful is the Holy Name that people constantly invoke it in everyday life, often blasphemously.

It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that the Church set aside a specific day on which to revere and celebrate the Most Holy Name of Jesus. In Hebrew custom, a male child was named at circumcision. The Feast of the Holy Name, on January 2, comes right after the Feast of the Circumcision. Gueranger wrote about this important tradition in his work The Liturgical Year:

In the Old Covenant, the Name of God inspired fear and awe: nor was the honour of pronouncing it granted to all the children of Israel. We can understand this. God had not yet come down from heaven to live on earth, and converse with men; he had not yet taken upon himself our poor nature, and become Man like ourselves; the sweet Name expressive of love and tenderness, could not be applied to him.

But, when the fulness of time had come – when the mystery of love was about to be revealed – then did heaven send down the Name of ‘Jesus’ to our earth, as a pledge of the speedy coming of him who was to bear it. Read More »

In the Middle Ages, the gloomy, penitential New Year’s rituals did not exist.

WONDERFUL observations from The Clerk of Oxford:

Since the late 20th century it’s become common to invert the traditional relationship between fasting and feasting in the Christmas season. The ancient custom was to fast in Advent in preparation for the feast, and then to celebrate for at least twelve days after Christmas (and to some degree, all through January). Now we do it the other way around; for many people the feast is followed by a penitential fast, in the form of ‘Dry January’ or New Year’s resolutions about eating less and going to the gym. As a manifestation of the desire for a fresh start, this ‘New Year, new you’ impulse is natural enough, but it does strike me as strange that it’s so often framed in negative terms. There’s an odd sense, encouraged mostly perhaps by journalists and advertisers, that the indulgence of Christmas is a ‘sin’ which has to be atoned for – as if eating and drinking with friends and family, to celebrate the turn of the year from darkness to light, is a moral lapse for which one must subsequently make amends by privation and self-punishment. We are much less kind to ourselves in these weeks after Christmas than the strictest confessor would have been in the Middle Ages. Feasting at Christmas is not something to atone for, but a proper observance due to the season; and that feasting is also the sustenance we need to carry us into the New Year with energy and strength. The renewal of Nowell in these medieval poems is not a repudiation of Christmas feasting, but the power and life with which Christmas endows us as the new year begins. Find something new in the New Year, certainly, but don’t punish yourself for enjoying Christmas first! Sing a new song, seek new adventures; it’s true that ‘a yere yernes ful yerne, and yeldez never lyke’, and we don’t know what it will bring. But nevertheless: ‘Now is well and all is well’.

Do your part to dispel the penitential gloom of the secular January. Continue with some feasting and merrymaking throughout the month. If that is not possible, simply retain the joy of Christmas in your heart.

THOSE WHO sneer at Christmas and say it’s just a pagan feast will never be able to explain its beauty. Those who point to the undeniable commercialization and sleaze of Christmas can’t explain the gladness. Those who attack the expense and the excess of Christmas miss the sublimity. Those who say it’s just a fairy tale don’t hear the silence. Those who can’t rejoice will never know the infinitude of Christmas.

Adoring Angel, Fra Angelico

[Reposted and edited.]

CHRISTMAS is mostly a non-controversial phenomenon in what is otherwise a highly controversial world. Some complain about its commercialization and excesses or denounce its roots in pagan festivities, but it is still loved and enjoyed by billions. It is a unifying force. And what’s not to like? The tree, the decorated greens, the lights, the food, the presents, the music, the togetherness of friends and family, days off from work, the slackened pace for an entire week, the brief silencing of all commercial activity and, behind it all, the mystical backdrop of an infant birth unlike any other. All this is perfectly attuned to human sensibilities and joy. Christmas is by no means just for the religious.

But the strength and longevity of these traditions should not deceive us. Christian civilization is a shell of its former self, a termite-ridden house. A moderately heavy blow and it will tumble — and take the rest of the world with it.

The vast majority of the people who enjoy Christmas find much that is Christian deeply repugnant. The principles and doctrines are too ingrained and in conformity with reality to be cast off entirely. But the things rejected are hardly insignificant. The most serious things do not even pertain to morals. They pertain to Faith and the first of the Ten Commandments.

Christmas comes from the words “Christ’s Mass” and refers to a definite ritual, the highest form of prayer, instituted by God Himself. The Mass — what we Catholics call the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — is not just a prayer. It’s a form of propitiation, offering to God something of great value to repair the damage done by sin. In the ancient pagan and Hebrew worlds, live animals were offered — and sometimes humans. Our Lord instructed His disciples to end these practices and replace them with the most perfect of sacrifices, an infinite and unblemished sacrifice: Himself.  The idea that He was just a great ethical teacher or a sort of guru cannot be true. He claimed to convert material substances into His flesh and demanded that He Himself be worshipped, something no great prophet or spiritual master had ever done — or would ever in good reason do. He was a deceiver or a lunatic, and thus quite evil, or He was what He said He was. Read More »

KNOWN to the world as “Pope Emeritus” Benedict XVI since his retirement in 2013, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger is nearing the end of his life, according to news reports.

At 95 years old, Benedict is extremely frail and is now confined to his bed on Vatican grounds.

Though still hailed by some as a conservative Catholic and a force for “tradition,” Benedict defected from the Catholic Church long ago and his death will bring to a close merely one chapter in a story of harrowing, unprecedented apostasy. Based on his public record, Ratzinger sadly cannot even be considered a Catholic, let alone a retired pope. Those who hold to the familiar, nostalgic image have not fully examined the record. Like the other Vatican II false popes he smiled and waved from countless photographs and traveled the world, creating a personality cult similar to those of Soviet Communism where enormous pictures of Uncle Joe Stalin assured the powerless they were loved. He was the perfect man for would-be Catholics hungry for a dash of intellectualism in an age of sentiment and longing for some of the old grandeur that had been replaced with ugly, Bolshevik worship and churches. Meanwhile Benedict openly and repeatedly denied dogmas of the Church, including the Resurrection, the indissolubility of marriage and Infant Baptism. He was a master of doublespeak. He never reversed the gutting of the liturgy by his predecessors. He promoted a Marxist social gospel while also making many genuinely Catholic statements. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: falsehood is never so destructive as when it is very close to the truth. Indeed, Ratzinger was one of the primary forces behind the revolution of Vatican II, the cause of so much chaos — social, religious and political.

An excellent dossier on Benedict is available at Novus Ordo Watch. I strongly caution readers, however, to be wary of Novus Ordo Watch’s promotion of traditionalist chapels operating outside the structure of the Catholic Church. These are not the solution.

When it comes to the false popes of Vatican II, it is not a question of left or right. They were and are both progressives and conservatives. No, it is a question of truth or error. No pope has ever possessed the authority to build a new religion. We cannot know the interior state of Joseph Ratzinger at this time. May God have mercy on his soul.

BRIAN Shilhavey at Created4Health.org addresses the ridiculous claims that computers are going to rule the world and human beings are going to become machines:

Take a skeptical view of all the claims currently being made for this “new” technology, which actually is not all that new, and see if there is any evidence to all these claims of super quantum computers, AI intelligence exceeding the intelligence of man, human biology being intertwined with technology to “create” transhumans, etc.

Where is the evidence for all this? I think you will find that the evidence is lacking, and that the more likely truth is that this is all a big hoax designed to control people and make them fear the technology.

In preparation for writing this article, I did a few basic searches, including “what is the current highest functioning computer?”

Read more here.

From Ballade to Our Lady

— by François Villon (1431-1463), in the voice of the poet’s mother

Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal
Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,
I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,
Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,
Albeit in nought I be commendable.
But all mine undeserving may not mar
Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are;
Without the which (as true words testify)
No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far.
Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

Unto thy Son say thou that I am His,
And to me graceless make Him gracious.
Said Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss,
Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theophilus,
Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus
Though to the Fiend his bounden service was.
Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass
(Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!)
The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass
Even in this faith I choose to live and die. Read More »

                                                 The Nativity of Jesus, Gerard van Honthorst; 1620

I WAS not able to get to the computer yesterday on Christmas Day. In my heart though I extended sincere wishes to readers of this site. May this season of gladness fill you with confidence and hope.

Happiness is not incompatible with suffering. I know other readers have experienced tragedy and hardship this Christmas, as we have with the devastating loss of a young child in our family. True happiness consists in knowing the purpose of existence. The answer to all tragedy is to love God more and more. That’s why we turn our gaze so lovingly to Bethlehem.

My thoughts and prayers go out to you this Christmastide, and always.