[Revised and reposted]

IT’S Groundhog Day in America and Crepe Day in France. These empty customs fill the void where the beautiful and uplifting Feast of the Purification of Mary, also known as Candlemas Day, the liturgical end to the Christmas season, once was — and still is to the few.

“All the mysteries of the Man-God have for their object the purifying of our hearts,” said the renowned Dom Prosper Guéranger. And so it is with Candlemas. It’s “a day of purification, renewal, hope, an honoring of obedience, and light.”

A young couple and their infant, turtle doves, an ornate temple and two wizened figures filled with mystical fervor.

These are the vital elements of this day. “The most pure and beautiful Virgin, in obedience to the law, presented the child Jesus in the temple, offering a couple of turtle-doves for her purification, and five sicles as a ransom for her first-born, Jesus,” wrote Guéranger.

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CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE
(adapted from a poem by Robert Herrick)

DOWN with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe ;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box (for show).

The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer
Until the dancing Easter day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old. Read More »

FROM Fr. James F. Wathen’s The Great Sacrilege:

… The Revolution cannot tolerate the solitary man, the self-possessed man, the contemplative, the man who does not need to be forced to conform.

The Revolution incessantly repeats the word ‘freedom.’ What it means by this word is that every man should free himself from the laws and self-preserving instincts of his own nature, that he should dispossess himself of all inner strength, restraint, and virtue, to say nothing of the inner dominance of Christ by His truth and grace. The purpose of corrupting a person is to put him at the disposal of his fallen nature; the purpose of destroying his faith and of dispossessing him of all certainty is that he will have to be controlled from without. The Revolution means to unshackle a man interiorly, that it may have the excuse of encircling him with the mindless mob (which the ‘Community’ is), of regimenting him, binding him, and putting him under guard. Despising virtue, which is man’s mastery of himself by the power of Christ, even being unable to comprehend it, the Revolution cannot conceive a community of truly free men, nor the idea of peace through the rule of the Spirit of God.

The true Revolutionary cannot stand to be alone, to be in silence, to be inactive. In such a condition he would either go mad or find God. Because of his own spiritual vacuity and restlessness, and because of his conceited passion for ruling, for managing others, he cannot permit anyone to be alone. …

… According to the thinking embodied in the “New Mass,” charity and communal harmony require you to busy yourself doing something with everyone else — sing a long, march around, listen to the commentator, go here, go there. In the Rite of Peace, all are saying, “peace, peace.” But there is no peace. They will not leave you alone that you may find any….

THE issue neither presidential candidate will ever discuss is explained in this podcast by Legalman, who loses his cool a couple of times unfortunately but does a good job explaining the basics.

The fake money system is at the root of all the fakery.

“The system is there to enslave you and it works.” Read More »

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PEGGY HALL rightfully expresses skepticism about the “Take Back Our Border” Convoy heading to Texas.

As I see it, this ruckus at the border serves to drum up support for that heinous traitor, Donald Trump, and for election-time drama between two heinous traitors, one of whom will be our next oppressor-in-chief.

“Keep ’em fighting so they don’t look at how we’re ripping them all off.”

That’s the game plan of the organized crime syndicate that is the federal government. Read More »

ASHLEY and Derek tell the painful story of their twin boys’ sudden decline after receiving high doses of the Hepatitis B shots.

Rubens Peale, 1856

FROM “Home Whispers to Husbands and Wives” by Melva (American Female Guardian Society, 1859):

“OH dear! what did I ever marry for?” sighed a weary wife and mother. “It’s nothing but care, trouble, disappointment and vexation, sick and crying children, miserable, shiftless domestics, overtaxed energies, feeble health, and more than all, a cross, selfish, exacting husband. Oh! I wish I was dead and at rest in the grave.”

The wife lowered her complaining tones a little as she said this, for she knew it was wrong to cherish such thoughts, and when they took form and expression, they startled her with their harshness and sinfulness. But the clouds were dark overspreading all her sky that day, and the winds that blew over the plain of her life were chill and dreary, sweeping rudely and harshly over the chords of her soul. It was often so. Harmonies were the exceptions in her mournful chant of life-discords the rule. Hers was a vexed and sore-tried, a disappointed and overburdened life. It had for her no rest, no recreation nor sustaining sympathy, none of the sunshine of congenial love and confidence; and her soul had not yet learned to arise from the low grounds of its disquietudes and sorrows, and to enter into its “rest.” Read More »

“FITS of anger, vexation, and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride, and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect.”

— St. Francis de Sales

Van Gogh’s White Roses, National Gallery of Art

THE GREATEST fault among those who have a good will is that they wish to be something they cannot be, and do not wish to be what they necessarily must be. They conceive desires to do great things for which, perhaps, no opportunity may ever come to them, and meantime neglect the small which the Lord puts into their hands. There are a thousand little acts of virtue, such as bearing with the importunities and imperfections of our neighbors, not resenting an unpleasant word or a trifling injury, restraining an emotion of anger, mortifying some little affection, some ill-regulated desire to speak or to listen, excusing an indiscretion, or yielding to another in trifles. These are things to be done by all; why not practice them? The occasions for great gains come but rarely, but of little gains many can be made each day; and by managing these little gains with judgment, there are some who grow rich.

—- St. Francis de Sales

THE lawyer Lee Gaulman, a former constitutional conservative who goes by “Legalman,” supports secession in general, but says the Texas succession movement is a “total waste of time.” Constitutional conservatism is a “grift,” meant to keep people on the “tax plantation.”

“The people have been taught a pack of lies about the ‘founding’ of the country, the idea that the ‘people’ are in charge and that the constitution somehow actually limits the govt. It’s lies, guys. All lies to control you.”

“JUST three weeks after 49 people were supposedly killed at The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fl. [in 2016], Orange County authorities and the Orlando P.D. released this P.S.A. video announcement. (Yes, this a Public Service Announcement.) They must have been celebrating deceiving the gullible public by producing another D.H.S.-mandated, scheduled active shooter drill that went live in the media as more gun control propaganda. They pulled one over on the public, and they insult your intelligence by making their own dance video. How many more of these gungrab sh**shows does it take before you get the message that you’ve been had by Homeland Security??”

From Mowac on Gab

“MAY you never be numbered among those whose house is peaceful, quiet and free from care; those on whom the Lord’s chastisement does not descend; those who live out their days in prosperity, and in the twinkling of an eye will go down to hell.”

— St. Raymond of Peñafort

IN ANOTHER interview at Children’s Health Defense, Ginny Rodriguez describes the death of her 66-year-old mother, who was treated in a hospital in September 2021 for 53 days as a COVID patient.

Many other interviews are available here.