The John Hancock Life Insurance Christmas Carol Booklet

[Reposted]

“TALES OF CHESTER” continues here with a few words from my husband, A. Wood, on the season of Advent:

EVERY self-respecting kid in Chester was a school resister, possessing an instinctive and deeply-rooted sense of the dignity of human freedom. But Sonny Trenjic [pronounced TRENCH-ick] raised the art of dodging school to a new level.

One day in early December, Sister St. Reginald (they called her “Reggie”) asked Sonny’s sister, Babe, why he was absent from his eighth-grade class. Babe said that a terrible mishap had occurred at home. Sonny was conducting an extra-curricular science experiment. He was attempting to electrocute a spider — for the greater cause, of course — and the spider bit him, seriously injuring his hand.

           In the annals of truancy, this was a dazzling masterpiece.

But, even artistry at this exalted level could not disarm the hardened prejudices of Sister Reggie. She stopped what she was doing and left her class in the charge of a student proctor.

She marched to the Trenjic house. She knocked on the door. Without further ado, she snagged the un-injured Sonny by the collar. The fugitive was then escorted back to class. This was all part of a nun’s job profile. She physically, as well as spiritually, battled the forces of evil. The profane waged its ceaseless war with the sacred in the streets and living rooms of this small industrial city by the rat-gray Delaware River. Reggie and the other sisters were the shock troops.

The profane weakened during the four-week liturgical season of Advent. Our small, darkened minds were uplifted with greater frequency to the supernatural as the lamps in row houses brightened the encroaching night. Expectation was in the air. Let’s be clear: It was anticipation, not fulfillment. Thanksgiving was still Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t have remotely crossed our minds to go shopping for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday was not yet black. We didn’t put up Christmas trees or wreaths during Advent. We didn’t have parties until Christmas week. Read More »

FROM “Commentary on Isolation” by Jeff Green:

What I have always maintained is that there are many types of viruses—up to 320,000 known to living animals. And, that those viruses are a natural and innate part of any living creature, including plants, arising as cellular survival mechanisms; communicated and being intelligently created by cells to dissolve their own toxicity and that of other dead and dying cells unable to produce their own solvents. Each virus occurs in the living nucleated cells of each area of the body. Read More »

PENNY writes:

In your response to “Your Car’s Ready” you made this comment: “I doubt she would want to be a housewife. Nothing in her life would have prepared her for anything like that.” It brought to mind something the certified lay speaker (a young woman) said in the message in my church this past Sunday.

It was to the effect that when the Angel greeted Mary with “Hail, Favored One” Mary would have been thinking “How am I favored? I’m only fourteen and have nothing to look forward to in life but being married to Joseph, having his children, washing clothes in the stream and beating them with rocks. I’m not a princess.” Read More »

FROM Winter Watch:

Every man, woman and child in America is owed $65,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), according to a report published earlier this year by Michigan State University professor and economist Mark Skidmore. Read More »

MY husband and I went for a walk last night in the winter darkness. Many houses in the neighborhood were decorated with ropes of Christmas lights, as I’m sure they were where you live. On one house, the roof of a second-floor addition was lighted up and we wondered how the elderly man who lives there got the lights so high. He must have hired someone to do it. People go to extraordinary lengths and expense to hang lights. I know of one man who got up on the roof and … well, maybe it wasn’t worth it.

These artificial lights are often festive and cheerful. But they are only outer lights — inferior to the inner lights which appear one by one in the night of Advent. They glimmer and brighten as Christmas approaches. In the blackest black, in the dark so dark, beautiful balls of fire dangle from the roof of the soul. They illuminate lonely highways and byways. Seen, but unseen.

Exert, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power and come, succour us by thy great might: that by the assistance of thy grace, thy indulgent mercy may hasten what is delayed by our sins: who livest and reignest God, world without end.

[Collect from the Fourth Sunday of Advent]

WILL many of the elderly and disabled in the U.K. die this winter, as they did in large numbers in 2020, after being administered the drug Midazolam? The drug has been used in lethal injections in the U.S. because it suppresses breathing. Read this hair-raising report from last June by U.K. Exposé.

A new article states:

“Now the authorities are about to play this whole game again, this time under the guise of the alleged Omicron Covid-19 variant.”

The government is reportedly once again stocking up on the drug. The situation will likely be exacerbated by staffing shortages due to vaccine mandates.

THAT super-scary “Patriot Front” march in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago was some of the most poorly-executed political theater I have ever seen in the news. The blogger Banned Hipster comments:

I’m guessing that Patriot Front will be holding a lot more demonstrations as the mid-term elections heat up. The Democrats have nothing to run on except for mandatory medical malpractice for children and Permanent Covid Lockdown.

So having a Cartoon Nazi group to run against makes it much easier. Read More »

A GREAT recording by Chanticleer of Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria  can be found here.

GOD permits darkness so that we, with our feeble and clouded minds, can better see the light. 

Oh great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515

MEDICAL doctors who are honest and upfront about possibly terminal illness are generally not hated for the news they deliver.  Those who speak about spiritual ailments, however, are greatly disliked.

Please pause a moment and have sympathy for the messenger before reading this post. This is not fun, but since you have kindly granted this sympathy to me, I hereby grant you permission to resent me. Please know, however, that everything I say is not said on my own authority. It is said on the authority of those greatly superior to myself, whose words and teachings I have studied and to which I am bound.

If you are guilty of any errors mentioned below, I do not revel in your error or condemn you as a person. It is the awareness of my own mistakes and sins that motivates me. I want to spare you my wrongs.

Now for my subject:

In all the posts I did about “the pandemic,” I never lamented the fact that people were forced to stay home from church. Yes, the unconstitutional orders that closed those churches were wrong and treasonous. Yes, all congregations and ministers should have resisted those orders and kept their churches open.

But it was not a bad thing in itself that people were staying home and not going to church. There were potential gains in this.

Now that the churches are open let me outrageously say this: they should all be closed. Yes, every single church should shut down or revert to a place of authentic communal prayer (mentioned below) with no priests or ministers until the real crisis we are in passes.

This is an audacious and arrogant thing to say, or so it seems. In response, I remind you of these words of Christ:

But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth? (Luke: 18:8)

Given this prophecy of near-universal apostasy, and many other prophecies; given also the state of the world, you should at least admit the possibility that we are in the midst of that near-universal apostasy. Given that we live in a world so steeped in irrationality that the ineffectiveness of a new medicine is being blamed on the people who don’t take it, you should at least admit the possibility that there is a near-universal collapse in discernment and rational thought.

Could it be that we hear today of so much fakeness, so much fake news, so many lies, because the very thing that must be real, the reality on which all else depends, has been rendered fake?

Jesus goes on in Luke 18 to speak of the Pharisee and the publican:

The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. [emphasis mine]

Such important words for us to ponder! Read More »

NP writes:

I just went to my Subaru dealership to get my car ready for winter (I live in northern Connecticut).  The “girl” who scheduled things seemed quite knowledgeable.  She was pretty with nice hair, but had a nose ring and a tattoo on her chest.

What kind of world tells a woman to look like a tramp when if she was a little simpler in her lifestyle she could be a housewife to a successful  man? Read More »

WEDNESDAY, Friday and Saturday in the third week of Advent are known as “Ember Days” in the Catholic Church and are traditionally days of fast and abstinence from meat.

Please consider participating, starting tomorrow, in this beautiful tradition. It’s a perfect way to prepare for Christmas.

Four periods of three-day Embertide observances occur every year, since ancient times, at the change of seasons, drawing us to reflection and wonder. Fisheaters considers the winter Ember Days and their connection, not just with Christmas, but with nature:

Winter is a time of reflection, when human activity is stilled and snow blankets the world with silence. For the Christian, Winter symbolizes Hope: though the world now appears lifeless and makes us think of our own mortality, we hope in our resurrection because of the Resurrection of the One Whose Nativity we await now. How providential that the Christ Child will be born at the beginning of this icy season, bringing with Him all the hope of Spring! Also among our Winter feasts are the Epiphany and Candlemas, two of the loveliest days of the year, the first evoked by water, incense, and gold; the latter by fire…

Yes, despite the typical, unimaginative view of Winter as a long bout with misery, the season is among the most beautiful and filled with charms. The ephemeral beauty of a single snowflake… the pale blue tint of sky reflected in snow that glitters, and gives way with a satisfying crunch under foot… skeletal trees entombed in crystal, white as bones, cold as death, creaking under the weight of their icy shrouds… the wonderful feeling of being inside, next to a fire, while the winds whirl outside… the smell of burning wood mingled with evergreen… warm hands embracing your wind-bitten ones… the brilliant colors of certain winter birds, so shocking against the ocean of white… the wonderfully long nights which lend themselves to a sense of intimacy and quiet! Go outside and look at the clear Winter skies ruled by Taurus, with the Pleiades on its shoulder and Orion nearby… Such beauty!

The words “Ember Days” evoke smoldering hope and love — charred, almost extinguished fuel in our hearts and minds. It needs to be stirred up. We are too busy, too rushed to keep the fire alive. We need to detach ourselves from the whirlwind. One way we can do that is by eating less — in a spirit of penance and recollection of our sins.

God denied himself to come to us. Let us deny ourselves to come to him.

1. HARK! a gladsome voice is thrilling,
Earth’s dim pathways wildly shaking:
Lo! the ancient fane is filling
With the glow, for day is breaking;
Day is breaking, night-dreams vanish;
Christ is coming, gloom to banish.

2. Christ is coming! from thy prison,
Earth-bound spirit, spring with gladness!
Rising with the Star, new risen,
Health to shed on human sadness:
Lo! the Lamb descends from heaven:
Sinners, haste to be forgiven.

3. Yea! to grant a gracious guerdon,
Once again he comes in glory:
Mourners, freighted with your pardon,
His right hand he lifteth o’er ye:
Lord, when doom and death confound us,
Be thine arm of mercy round us.

[“Fane” means ‘temple.’]

“VOX CLARA ECCE INTONAT” is an Advent hymn from the Liturgy of the Hours for the hour of Lauds during Advent believed to date from the sixth century. This is a translation from the Latin by Cardinal John Henry Newman.

JOHANNA writes:

I have loved the carol Gabriel’s Message, which you recently posted, since one of my singing groups began performing it about ten years ago. This was the final group out of four which I belonged to and had hoped would continue unmasked. Two were large choruses with orchestras which had classical repertoires (‘unjabbed’ may not even attend the performance); another was very small and visited nursing homes and such to provide a little cheer.

This final one was informal and went out into the community mainly during the Christmas season, but also occasionally in the Spring. It has started up again but masks are “strongly encouraged” for the first rehearsal so the writing is clear. The other three already put their mandates in place long before any directive from the powers-that-be.

So, thanks for the memories. Read More »

THIS NEW VIDEO attacking “anti-Semitism” spreads dangerous falsehoods and incites hatred.

Produced by the well-funded organization Shine a Light, the video states that criticizing Jews is tantamount to hatred. The female announcer suggests that criticism or verbal attack are the same thing as violence. She calls verbal or graphic attacks online “small crumbs of darkness.”

“Yet, it is still Jew hate,” she states.

Well, no it isn’t necessarily.

Millions of people have criticized Jews in power and have not engaged in any violence against Jews, have even lived amicably with them, and do not support violence. Hatred of Jews is wrong and I don’t support it. Crude caricatures are crude and rude, but they are not violence, do not depict all Jews and are sometimes justified, possibly even preventing violence and hatred.

A recent report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is under the Department of Commerce, showed no link between the growth of such criticism on the Internet and “hate crimes.”

“The evidence does not show that during the last decade, a time of expansive growth of electronic communications, particularly on the Internet and mobile devices as well as social media, there has been a rise in hate crime incidents,” the report states.

The report alleges that research into extremism fails to present data showing “any causal relationship between increased social media use and increased violence.”

The report also cautions against efforts to crackdown on online speech over the baseless concerns about hate crimes. “We caution that efforts to control or monitor online speech, even for the worthy goal of reducing crime, present serious First Amendment concerns and run counter to our nation’s dedication to free expression. To quote President Barack Obama, “The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech.”” (Source)

In fact, there is reason to believe that suppression of criticism leads to anger and resentment. This video alone has created tremendous resentment, with more than 5,000 negative comments on Youtube, suggesting there is quite a grassroots movement afoot of people who have had it up to “here” with being told they are evil for noticing certain undeniable facts.

This video reminds me of the day recently when a Jewish friend of mine was driving through a parking lot and saw a sign saying “Wrong Way.” He said, “That’s anti-Semitic! It won’t let me do what I want so it’s anti-Semitic!” He was joking, of course, but it’s basically come to this.

Read More »

A READER has produced an informative and lucid dashboard that clarifies the adverse effects of the Covid injections. **

The statistical charts he has put together compare the relative frequency percentages of different adverse events found in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and data from its European counterpart, EudraVigilance, with control groups (either influenza vaccine data or past data).

The reader writes:

“Most of the adverse event dashboards that I know, such as Open VAERS, only give raw numbers and are kind of misleading and sensationalist. I wanted to try to see if there really is a higher percentage in relative frequency of adverse events being reported for Covid vaccines when compared to a control group, and if so, for which types of symptoms. Also, I allow the user to compare the symptoms at different levels of generality by using the MedDRA symptom classes and subclasses. If you use the symptom comparison tool, I would recommend comparing VAERS data to VAERS data and EudraVigilance to EudraVigilance and not mixing them. Also, I would suggest keeping the MedDRA symptom layer at 2 or below.

“I found, as probably would be expected, a much higher percentage (several thousand percent increase) of occurrence of cardiac conditions (especially myocarditis and pericarditis), similarly large increases in clotting, and thousands of percent increases in menstrual disorders.”

** Note, the site may take a few minutes to load up and it may not display on mobile phones. Make sure you view the drop down menu in the sidebar.

FROM The Jewish State (1896), by Jewish founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl (See discussion here):