[Reposted]

THE SECRET of existence — a golden rule that will never fail no matter what happens  — is to remain always, in some essential part of one’s being, a child.

Not a child physically or intellectually, of course. But in the supernatural order, in the depth of our souls, we should always be children. Children are immature, willful, stubborn, emotionally unstable and unknowledgeable. But, most important of all, they are trusting. They are highly conscious of the benevolence that lies behind all things. A child knows he is loved and he loves in return with an undivided heart. He has momentary fears, sometimes they are severe, but he does not suffer from existential anxiety or dread. He is not plagued with constant worry. It is often when adults don’t understand the complete trust and love of the child that they mistreat him. The child has confidence that he is protected even when he lives in miserable surroundings or has irresponsible parents.

And so it is with us — or should always be with us.

We are loved and protected. Benevolence surrounds us — and if we are not conscious of it, something is terribly wrong with us. Everything that happens expresses the will of God. He wants the best for us in his fatherly protectiveness. But we cannot know him as a true Father unless we are true children. We can turn everything to good if we trust in his love and fatherliness.

Even when we are in our busy prime years, with important affairs and responsibilities, and even when we are old, this beautiful truth holds — we are children all the same.

Yoga instructors say we should empty ourselves. But nothingness cannot love us. Nothingness cannot satisfy us. Nothingness is nothing. The child knows there is something. He is never seduced by blankness. His heart is too full for blankness. He cannot attain that aridness.

Instead we should seek to fill ourselves. (more…)

"IT is clear, then, that the man who does not live according to man but according to God must be a lover of the good and, therefore, a hater of evil; since no man is wicked by nature but is wicked only by some defect, a man who lives according to God owes it to wicked men that his hatred be perfect, so that, neither hating the man because of his corruption nor loving the corruption because of the man, he should hate the sin but love the sinner. For once the corruption has been cured, then all that is left should be loved and nothing remains to be hated." --- St. Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, chapt. 4  

"SIN stupefies the intellect and the heart; it draws a veil and a mist over the brightness of the intelligence, and it darkens the light of the conscience. Sin, like hemlock, deadens the sense, so that the spiritual eye begins to close, and the spiritual ear becomes heavy, and the heart grows drowsy." --- "The Holy Ghost and the sin against Him," Bishop Otto Zardetti, 1888  

"SPIRIT of Light, of Love and of Life, be with us every hour of this day. Illumine, vitalize, enkindle us. Lift up our hearts; keep in strength and in honor the body which thou hast chosen for thine own temple. Grant to us integrity of purpose; cleanse us of self-love and self-deceit. Reveal to us the beauty of holiness, O thou who art the Spirit of Truth and not less the Comforter! Speak to us above the voices of the world, and give us grace evermore to hear thee --- who together with the Father and the Son art one God for all eternity. Amen. Source: The Holy Ghost Prayer Book, Fr. Frederick T. Hoeger; 1952  

"THE traitors who rule over us will tell you that Britain has always been diverse. This is a damned lie." --- Way of the World  

"IF you commit a sin and take pleasure in it, the pleasure passes but the sin remains. But if you do something virtuous even though you are tired, the tiredness passes but the virtue remains." --- St. Camillus de Lellis  

"RESTlessness usually stems from pride and from being discontented with one's lot in life." --- St. Vincent de Paul  

VIDEO link here. Image  

AS I pointed out in the previous entry, wherever you find people boasting of their humanitarianism, you find a lack of love and sympathy toward actual human beings. Wherever people are proud of their tolerance, they are noticeably and sometimes cruelly intolerant. The more universalistic the values, the less particularistic the everyday affections. The utopian crushes the real. The perfect crushes the imperfect. The vanity of abstraction and the illusory goal of paradise on earth devastate bonds of kinship and lasting ties of affection. Treasure the imperfect. For Utopia seeks to overturn whatever good we have. 'Humanity' is the eternal enemy of human beings.  

"[R]EASON today is everywhere decried. The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation; and almost all the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an atmosphere of contempt. "See what has happened for instance to the word 'logic,' to the word 'controversy;' note how such popular phrases as 'No one yet was ever convinced by argument,' or again, 'Anything may be proved,' or 'That may be all right in logic, but in practice it is very different.' The speech of men is becoming saturated with expressions which everywhere connote contempt for the use of the intelligence." --- Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (1938)  

IF YOU are signed up for an e-mail subscription to this site, you have probably noticed that you are not getting notifications for any or all of the posts. My hosting service changed a few months ago, and the change caused a glitch in the program for subscribers. Until I figure out how to fix it, please check for updates by coming directly here. I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion. Thank you sincerely for your interest.    

STANDING IN our backyard lately has been a little like standing on the runways at JFK Airport. The aviators come soaring in for a landing, sometimes so uncomfortably close to our heads, we can feel the whoosh of their wings and the hum of their engines.

Had not a catbird expertly tipped his wings at just the right moment recently, I would have had grounds for a very serious legal claim against him. A wren just the other day zoomed past, almost shaving hairs from my head, as if he was a Blue Angel in a summer airshow. It’s not beneath these aviators to show off occasionally for the sheer pleasure of it. If you could fly, wouldn’t you sometimes show off to those who couldn’t? They may also be trying to say, “Get the heck off the runway, you idiot!”

It’s one shift after another with minimal down time, all day long. It’s like working for a corporate airliner with no union. We have stickers on our windows to prevent crashes because there’s no ground crew with lighted batons to wave them away. They stop only to refuel and clean, splashing around in the little baths we’ve provided like busy airmen in a naval shower room. There’s no time to towel off. They expertly flex the wings so that excess moisture doesn’t create drag on subsequent flights and then quickly service with a few skillful tweaks any feathers out of alignment.

For a quick fuel stop, they peck, pry, poke, pull and pick up various delicacies from the ground, all with the same ingenious tool. It’s fast food to them. There isn’t time to be choosy before air traffic control issues another command. Then their off, some just for quick, local flights, others for the long haul and distant landing grounds — and a few for stealth missions in enemy territories. (more…)

"THE present moment is the ambassador of God to declare His mandates. The heart listens and pronounces its 'fiat.' Thus the soul advances by all these things and flows out from its centre to its goal. It never stops but sails with every wind. Any and every direction leads equally to the shore of infinity. Everything is a help to it, and is, without exception, an instrument of sanctity. The one thing necessary can always be found for it in the present moment." --- Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence  

“IN the first place, take care never to harbor voluntarily in your heart any thought calculated to grieve, disquiet, or dishearten it. From one point of view, such thoughts are more dangerous than impure temptations. Your need then, is to allow them to pass you by, despising them and letting them fall like a stone into the sea. You must resist them by concentrating your attention upon contrary reflections . . .” --- Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Letters of Fr. de Caussade on the Practice of Self-Abandonment  

 " ... [W]HATSOEVER things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things." --- Phillipians 4:8-9  

ALAN writes:

One day more than ten years ago, I happened to overhear two librarians talking about a freight train passing nearby with multiple cars defaced with spray paint.  Some of what they called the “artwork” was attractive, one of them said to the other.  Some of it had artistic merit, she said to the other, who did not voice any disagreement. Neither one of them said anything about the rights of people who own private property like railroad cars, or about vandalism to such property, or about “The Law’s” remarkable ineptitude in defending those rights and punishing those who vandalize that property.

Countless photographs of freight trains from the 1920s through the 1950s do not show any such vandalism to freight cars. If at age ten I had attempted to use my crayons to draw a picture on the side of a railroad car, my elders would not have lost any time in instructing me — properly — that I could not do such a thing because I had no right to touch other people’s property. The absence of such vandalism to railroad cars in those years proves that most parents and public officials had a firm understanding of property rights and the moral determination to uphold them.

That “The Law” today does nothing to punish those who deface other people’s property, that there is no accountability whatever for such negligence or ineptitude, and that members of the intelligentsia like public librarians do not condemn such vandalism but choose instead to sanction it by calling it “art” are but three proofs among many of the profound moral-philosophical degeneracy of contemporary “cool” culture. (more…)

"CONVERSE in fear during the time of your sojourning here; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled." -- Pet. 1: 18.  

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