A Sermon on the Feast of the Holy Family,* Jan. 10, 2021
Heaven, or Hell on Earth?

Everyone needs a place to call home and a family to love. Everyone looks for his place in the world, something to hold on to, something to give meaning to his life, especially in times of trouble and insecurity. At such times we need to turn to God. God is always there. But in fact, most human beings are homeless persons, in the sense that they do not know God.  They are desperately seeking, because in not knowing God they have lost the very meaning and purpose of their existence. They are sheep without a shepherd, because they do not know their true Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Our true home is with God, as the psalms declare:

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O lord of hosts! My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest in which she puts her young – your altars, O lord of hosts, my king and my God! Happy are they who dwell in your house!” (Ps.83:2-5).

The Holy Family – Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – help us to understand our destiny, which is Heaven, where we shall know God and love God forever. The essence of Heaven is knowing God as He is, which the Church calls the Beatific Vision.

“Beloved,” says St. John, “now we are called the children of God; and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he appears, we shall be like to him, for we shall see him just as he is” (1Jn.3:2).

Those who knew Jesus Christ, His Holy Mother Mary and St. Joseph, were close to Heaven without knowing it, since the Holy Family was Heaven on earth. But in this world there is always a certain distance, even in the closest of relationships. It will not be so in Heaven. In Heaven, besides knowing God, we shall also know and love everyone else there. Our closeness to them on the spiritual plane will be far greater than anything that we could possibly know on earth.

To be without God is the greatest of human tragedies. The essence of Hell is separation from God. Hell is homelessness, loneliness, hopelessness. Having lost God, and everyone else as a result, one has no place, no home, for all eternity. (more…)

IS WOMAN MAN’S EQUAL?

By Florence Goff Schwarz

Can she cull from the forest and mines and shape

A ship that will stand the gale?

Or fashion a monster of steel and steam

To writhe o’er the polished rail?

Can she conquer the forces of earth and air

To bend to her own sweet will?

Or current the water to furnish power

for the wheels of a giant mill?

Can she burrow the earth for a great subway?

Or chain up the lightning’s bars?

Or harness a jumble of wheels and wings

And soar to the distant stars?

Can she dig and delve while her brow reeks sweat

In the bowels of a fetid mine?

Can she face the powder and the shot and ball

Of the enemy’s firing line? (more…)

  Source

Sick of Politics
By Anonymous

Accusations! Denials! Impeachments! Voter Fraud! Slander! False Promises! Coup!

What Are We Talking About?

To constructively talk about something, we must know what we are talking about! Pretty obvious, huh?

Yet most people are clueless as to what politics is all about! For most people, politics is much like God — and that means, everyone has their own idea about it!

But what, objectively speaking, is “politics” and where does “politics” rank among the bigger scheme of things?

The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, the works of Confucius and Arthashastra, and Chanakya neeti by Chanakya in 3rd Century BC.

If we look at the etymology — in other words, “Where the Heck Did the Word Come From?” —  we find the word “Politics” comes from the same Greek word. Popularized by the title of Aristotle’s book, it comes from the ancient Greek word: Πολιτικά (romanized into Latin as Politiká, Politicus), meaning “affairs of the cities,” “of, for, or relating to citizens,” “civil” “civic,” “belonging to the state,” etc.

Derivatives of politicus are the words polites (pronounced “polytess”), meaning “citizen” and also the word polis, meaning “city.” Cities, in those times, were much like a mini-state or a mini-nation. Notice the similarity with our word “metropolitan” which means a large urban area, usually one that includes a city and its suburbs and outlying areas. (more…)

WE see everywhere the news story of the Missouri congressman who opened Congress this week with a prayer. There is supposedly a big to-do over the fact that he said "Amen and a-woman" at the end of the prayer. But the ending of the prayer is a minor novelty in comparison to what Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri), who is a Methodist, said in the body of the prayer. And dare I ask, oh Lord, peace even in this chamber now and evermore," he said while concluding his prayer. "We ask it in the name of the monotheistic god, Brahma, and God known by many names by many different faiths. Amen and a-woman.” (Source.) Not only does Cleaver during Christmastide open Congress with a prayer to the god Brahma of polytheistic Hinduism,  but he makes a nonsensical and blasphemous claim that many gods are "monotheistic." Not a single headline in literally thousands of news outlets drew attention to this fact.  

THIS VIDEO provides analysis of the alleged shooting of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was supposedly shot while climbing through a door during the staged Capitol insurrection two days ago. (Warning: Although there is almost no blood in this video, it still may be upsetting to the sensitive.)

Along with photos in the news showing fake-looking blood (real blood is not bright, candy red) on Babbitt and the stagey video rant Babbitt allegedly posted before the protests, it offers strong support for claims that the whole shooting was political theater of the most tawdry and transparent variety. Notice, as the creator of the video points out (and I thank him for his work here), Babbitt is surrounded by police officers as she is climbing through the window. They unrealistically make no effort to stop her. Then, even though police officers are trained in basic emergency resuscitation and even though simple help, such as staunching blood flow, at that critical moment can save someone’s life, they make no effort to treat her wound or help her other than shouting, “Get back!” So often in fake shooting events, standard emergency protocols are not followed. As a former newspaper reporter who covered real crimes and accident scenes for two newspapers, I can tell you that real officers and real paramedics would lose their jobs or face massive lawsuits if they did not follow emergency rules. And most officers and paramedics want to save lives anyway so they react appropriately.

It looks like Ashli Babbitt, a supposed Air Force veteran, is either alive and well — or a fictitious character. Her name certainly sounds like something out of a cheap novel. The Babbitt in the video, whatever her name, deserves a shout out for a performance which, in the annals of crisis acting, is pretty good. She could have added a few screams or audible gasps to make it better. (I’m not trying to tell her what to do next time, I’m just saying it would have made it more life-like.)

Of course, it was a black police officer who allegedly shot Babbitt — and that fits in with the purposes of this event — to create division; to demoralize and agitate Trump supporters; and to incite civil war so that those in power can stay in power.

Oh, and by the way, where is Donald Trump in all this? When will he point out the obvious?

Once again, he is missing in action. If you think Trump isn’t aware of the obvious anomalies in the Capitol siege, or at least suspicious, then I would like to interest you in a piece of real estate. (more…)

CLAES G. Ryn, professor of politics at The Catholic University of America, has studied the 2020 election. He has written an excellent, seemingly non-partisan and measured overview of the evidence of fraud.

[W]hat I have found to date gives me no choice but to conclude that in the 2020 election, there was major and organized vote fraud and that it probably stole the election.

More from the article:

Those who are partisans by temperament will assume that any charges of vote fraud in the 2020 election must spring from partisan motives. They will find it hard to believe that someone might simply want to find out what actually happened in the election, that a political scientist or responsible citizen will want to understand what the election tells us about the state of his country. What motivated me to study the election and write down my observations was not a preference for one of the two presidential candidates. It was these three things: (1) a desire to know what happened in the election; a political scientist has certain obligations; (2) a suspicion, derived in part from studies of trends in American politics, that in the 2020 election something went egregiously, disturbingly wrong; and (3) the media’s absurdly one-sided treatment of the candidates and their blacking out the charges of fraud. (more…)

THE staged "riots" yesterday at the Capitol complex illustrated perfectly what the ultimate purpose of the Trump Show has been  --- to make you, dear patriot, look like a dangerous, "far-right" buffoon. Now if you have doubts about whether the storming of the Capitol was staged, I invite you to consider this image of Capitol security during the BLM protests last year: Here is Capitol security yesterday: If you know anything about the federal government, you know that a crowd cannot mob the Capitol complex and ransack offices without the government's explicit permission. They have plenty of security to keep things under check. The police yesterday all but invited the protestors in. Look at this. And here we see the police actually open the metal barricades. Images of Congressmen ducking behind seats in fear of the "far-right" extremists and police pointlessly aiming their guns at the Stop-the-Steal hoodlums roaming the halls lacked nothing but a director to yell, "Okay, cut!" Now the election has not been officially certified. The fake mob (which, of course, included real protestors with real grievances) of the Capitol prevented a conclusion and a battle over the electoral votes: The storming of the United States Capitol on Wednesday stalled the counting of electoral votes by Congress to confirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, prolonging the process but not preventing Mr. Biden from becoming president. Legal scholars were struck by what they described as a shocking assault…

Below is fake, ketchup-red, photo-shopped blood as Army veteran Ashli Babbitt is allegedly shot (Warning: May be upsetting if you believe in it!): (more…)

https://twitter.com/RepMcCaul/status/1346904501391912961?s=20

FIND details at Lifesite News.  

  THIS very interesting and clever street protest originated with a theater group in Vienna, Austria and was recently staged at a mall in Toronto.  

IN ITS protocols for trials of its COVID vaccine, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer acknowledged that the vaccine could cause birth defects. It admitted this by requiring study participants to abstain from sexual activity for a month afterward and by eliminating women who are possibly pregnant from the study.

On page 132 of the trial protocols, we find this:

10.4. Appendix 4: Contraceptive Guidance 10.4.1.

Male Participant Reproductive Inclusion Criteria

Male participants are eligible to participate if they agree to the following requirements during the intervention period and for at least 28 days after the last dose of study intervention, which corresponds to the time needed to eliminate reproductive safety risk of the study intervention(s): (more…)

HUNDREDS of restaurants in Pennsylvania stayed open over the New Year's weekend, defying Gov. Tom Wolf's "order" that they must close. This little girl supported the cause. Meanwhile, the war against small businesses continues: