[57] And it came to pass, as they walked in the way, that a certain man said to him: I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. [58] Jesus said to him: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. [59] But he said to another: Follow me. And he said: Lord, suffer me first to go, and to bury my father. [60] And Jesus said to him: Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou, and preach the kingdom of God.
[61] And another said: I will follow thee, Lord; but let me first take my leave of them that are at my house. [62] Jesus said to him: No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, one of my favorite Marian Feasts. In Spain, Our Lady is referred to as “Virgen de la Merced” (Virgin of Mercy), or simply as “La Merced” (the Mercy, or, Mercy). She is venerated under this title in Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of the New World.
Under this title she is Patroness of the Mercedarian order. This order, begun in Barcelona by St. Peter Nolasco in 1218, was founded with an eye towards mercy– real mercy– to the poor Christians captived by the Mohammedans. The full title of the order in English is the “Royal and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy of the Redemption of the Captives”. Hence the traditional title of today’s feast, Our Lady of Ransom. They established a church that was later designated a papal basilica in Barcelona, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (You’ve no doubt seen the Mary’s Fiat memes. Think about Our Lady’s much nicer car when you’re touring around in a Mercedes). There is a good page on the history of the order here.
Perhaps nowhere has she been venerated more than in Barcelona. “La Merced” in the local language is rendered “La Mercè”. She is Patroness of the city, and each year, on her feast day of September 24, the city holds a magnificent festival to celebrate. They celebrate as only Spaniards do, with intensity, passion and exuberance. There is a festival with its timeless traditions and fireworks. Lots of fireworks. The image at the top of this post is the city’s yearly poster for the event from 1957. Note the obvious image of Our Lord and Lady, the cross, the Sagrada Familia in the background, and the Spanish flags. Say what you will about El Caudillo, but the country was Catholic. Here is another poster from that era:
When my family first visited Barcelona in 1998, this fiesta (about which we knew nothing and thus for which were totally unprepared) was a revelation. It was so lively, and combined Catholic Marian veneration with city patriotism. On my old, obliterated blogger site, I posted some photos, but here are some of the more interesting customs, such as castellers:
Back in 1998, it was still an obviously Catholic country with Catholic sensibility. Of course as we all know, the rot was well on its way to destroying everything, but when we went out in the evenings, churches were open, with people going to confession and sizeable congregations praying the Rosary together. Church bells rang throughout the day. You could go to one of many stores that sold religious articles (and nationalist memorabilia if you were so inclined). It just felt Catholic, in Madrid most of all, but everywhere you went.
By 2002 when we returned, that feeling was palpably passing away. It wasn’t like you couldn’t walk into a Church, but the sizeable congregations weren’t there and the religious goods stores we remembered were closed. It didn’t feel anti-Catholic, but rather that it just didn’t matter in day-to-day life. Admittedly, these memories are not the basis for a logical argument, they are just what two tourists remember.
And as of our last trip to Barcelona in 2014, considering the political situation there, the place didn’t feel Spanish (even allowing for the regional Catalonian version thereof), let alone Catholic. There was some barely measurable menace or hostility in the air, which at the time I chalked up to the independence-from-Spain push, but now I recognize as the miasma of this current, demonic, anti-God hellscape in which we find ourselves. It is easier to recognize from our spot in the U.S., because of the lag time, growing ever shorter, between the European rush to suicide and our unthinking amble off that particular cliff.
Our last experience of Spain, on the Camino de Santiago in 2018, confirmed the analysis for us. Even while walking through some of the most still-religious parts of Spain–on THE CAMINO for crying out loud, an overtly religious activity– the historical Camino Churches were all LOCKED, unless Mass happened to be going on at the time. All of them were, until we reached the Cathedral itself. I keep wanting to write a post entitled, “The Camino of the Closed Doors”. Nearly five years later, I suppose I never will.
So, you may wonder, how did we get from then to now? How did it collapse so spectacularly in one generation? Actually, by now we know the answer all too well. The Mass was attacked, and the Church lost her most beautiful expression and her most powerful guardian. A certain council brought forth the regime of error and the era of libertines. But to give you sort of visual travelogue of the demise of the West, let’s look at some posters. Recall the two beautiful, and beautifully faith-filled posters for La Merced, above.
Now let’s go forward some years. First, from 1992, the year of the Olympics in Barcelona, popularly thought of as Barcelona’s “coming of age” as a city in the modern world:
Pretty decent, as a poster, though secular. Fireworks. Columbus, not yet cancelled. Palm trees. The Spanish “Merced” now becomes the Catalan “Mercè”. Now on to the poster for 1998, the year I first visited the city:
Weak sauce, that. And barely had we cleared the area, than in 1999 this abomination was chosen:
Wow, there was zero warning of the Mohammedan re-invasion of Europe, was there? Prominent Arabic-style lettering and the crescent moon. I see churches but no crosses. Those are offensive, you know. Could it get worse? Oh, you know it can. Here is 2018, the year of our Camino:
Not only disregarding of the faith, but hostile to it. Lots of rainbow. Lots of girl power. Is there a straight man depicted in it? Seemingly no. Let’s keep going, to 2020:
Nothing says, “Come on out and celebrate!” like a dystopian poster of diabolically-masked girl (?) contemplating a cricket. Am I right? It is as though she’s thinking, “If I take off this mask I’m just going to have to eat this bug.” This poster is the perfect chronicle of the death of both cult and culture. And this isn’t the end. I’ll give you one more, the poster from this year. I think it perfectly portrays the ersatz globo-farcical anti-culture our betters have planned for us:
This, to me, is perfect for where we are now. Total communism. The name of the event is barely noticeable. It is not at all beautiful. The women with their ambiguously-sexed child are creepy as hell. There is a glimpse of the modern finish to La Sagrada Familia, but in the bottom left– is that a guard tower in our prison camp? And best of all, the laughable virtue signaling for sexual perversion and the glorious Ukrainian cause in the bottom right. Just what is this fiesta about?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we are. The great thing about traveling is that since you don’t live in the places where you travel, you get snapshots of change that help avoid incremental creep. I submit to you that these posters and our anecdotal travel experiences verify what we know from our faith and our intellects– that we as the civilization following Christendom have lost our way, and nearly completely.
Today we are as much captives as our poor ancestors were in Spain at the founding of the Mercedarian order. More so, because they were physically captived but they knew their faith was true. How many of us today believe in the Catholic Faith? How many of us are left to call upon La Virgen de la Merced? She is our Lady of Ransom, and we NEED RANSOMING.
She can ransom us. She will do it, if we heed her call to penance and the Rosary. She promised it. Today, on this beautiful feast of hers, beg her again and again– Our Lady of Mercy, ransom us from the slavery of sin and the reign of antichrist! She said it before: only she can save us. Lady of Mercy, save us!
As long as thou carriest about with thee thy mortal body, thou shalt feel weariness and heaviness of heart. Thou oughtest, therefore, while in the flesh, oftentimes to bewail the burden of the flesh, for that thou canst not unceasingly give thyself up to spiritual exercises and divine contemplation.
Daily thought in following Christ, New Marian Missal
Chapel of St. Hubert on the grounds of the Chateau d’Amboise
Today is the Feast of St. Eustace, or Eustachius, if you will. He is patron saint of hunters and also against family discord. I chose the photo above because of the nifty hunting motif on the frieze. And because it is one of my favorite memories, having visited Amboise with my wife and two of my daughters in 2014. As an aside, the chapel above contains the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci.
St. Eustace was martyred in A.D. 118 under Emperor Hadrian. He was a Roman general who converted after seeing the sign of the Cross over the antlers of a deer he was hunting. Kind of like this:
Now, Jaegermeister was not yet invented, so St. Eustace didn’t get any ideas from subliminal messaging, nor was he drunk. Instead, like Constantine, he saw the sign of the Son of God and knew he had. He gave Christ his grateful allegiance. All it cost him at first was the loss of his estates, and separation from his family at grievous cost.
Gotta love the pagans, you know. Because later, when he was useful to them, the Roman empire brought him back as a general and he led its troops to victory in battle. He was given back his rank and unexpectedly reunited with his family.
But, just like their modern counterparts in the NWO, once he served his purpose to them the pagans demanded he sacrifice to the deathvaxx and mother earth idols. He refused, loyal to the King of Kings.
Therefore, he and his reunited family were thrown to wild animals. The animals refused to eat them, so the emperor ordered the whole family to be put into a brazen bull to die in agony. They died, but the flames did not burn them up. Thus ended the earthly lives of these great early martyrs.
Maybe you’ll think of St. Eustace and companions when you are forced to down a shot of Jaegermeister at a friend’s house. Maybe you will face nothing more unpleasant in your life than that, but if you do it may be fitting training.
I submit this great saint’s example, timely as the Church’s examples always are, for your meditation today, pondering the trials and martyrdom which will likely await many of us. Pray for God’s strength, for we have none. And pray for the intercession of St. Eustace, who intercedes for us in Heaven.
Oremus pro invicem. St. Eustace and companions, pray for us!
My thanks to Frank Walker for highlighting this article from Dr. Naomi Wolf, who has been doing yeoman’s work to expose the death cult these days. Here is an excerpt:
The Pfizer documents reveal monstrous damage to menstruation, harm to the testes and epididymis, harms to the penis, horrible harm to the ova and ovaries, mechanisms for compromising the placenta, contamination of amniotic fluid, and damage to newborns. They reveal that four women’s breast milk turned blue-green. They reveal injuries to at least one newborn that extend to death (or murder) from ingesting tainted breast milk. They reveal horrific levels of miscarriages. They reveal that Pfizer defined “exposure” to the vaccine as including sexual intercourse, especially at conception. They reveal a weird focus on mammalian sexual and reproductive issues.
Soon humanity will realize that the worst thing ever to happen to it, has taken place.
Soon humanity will realize that the miscarriages and the drops in birth rate worldwide documented by Igor Chudov; the drop in life expectancy; the neonatal deaths; the ruination of eggs and ovaries; were done to them with knowledge aforethought, and that, in many cases relating to fertility, the means for healing the bodies of women is not clear.
The novel Children of Men, by P.D. James, seems prescient. If you haven’t read it, you should. The movie based on this novel is to be ignored. As we lose population, tyranny will advance with greater rapidity.
Saint Louis Catholic 