Nope. No Resemblance to Our Days at All…

“Both St. Paul and St. Peter give us some account of the evil state of men at the Apostasy. St. Paul writes (2 Tim.iii):

Know also this, that in the last days, shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: Having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

St. Peter gives a description which seems to apply with a special aptness to our own moment, as he speaks of

those especially, who follow the defiling appetites of their corrupt nature, and make light of authority. . . . Their eyes feast on adultery, insatiable of sin; and they know how to win wavering souls to their purpose, so skilled is all their accursed brood at gaining its own ends. . . . Using fine phrases that have no meaning, they bait their hook with the wanton appetites of sense, to catch those who have had but a short respite from false teaching. What do they offer men? Liberty. And all the time they themselves are enslaved to worldly corruption. (2 Peter ii).”

Excerpt From Theology and Sanity, by Frank Sheed

Grateful

For the Mass. For the Faith. For Our Mother.

A Little Daydream of Winter on the Camino

On this feast of Our Lady of the Snows. And Happy Birthday to my little Isabel!

“My Chalice Indeed You Shall Drink”: The Feast of Santiago

The quote in the title is by Our Lord to Saint James and his brother, from today’s Gospel; it is followed by the admission that to sit on His right or left is not His decision to make.  In short, yes, you will suffer for Me, but do it for love of Me and not for any reward.

In fact, this exchange reminds me of the poignant interview between the Mother of God and King Alfred in Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse:

“The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.

“But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.”

“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”

In this vein, St. Paul speaks so beautifully about the mission of the apostles in today’s epistle from First Corinthians:

[9] For I think that God hath set forth us apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. [10] We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honourable, but we without honour.

[11] Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode; [12] And we labour, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it. [13]We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now. [14] I write not these things to confound you; but I admonish you as my dearest children. [15] For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you.

Dear Readers, in these days of woe, we are all called to the same task as the apostles, as Santiago himself, as King Alfred: Do we love and labor manfully, without (worldy-speaking) hope of success, as the waves grow higher?

Santiago Matamoros, ora pro nobis!

Mystery and Manners Indeed

Yes, this is my third post in 23 days. No, it’s not like the old days. Heavy workload and the mind-melting stupefaction of the suicide of civilization have rendered orderly posting difficult. But I read this article in May and have wanted to repost it for awhile now. It holds up Bob Dylan as an example (of course!) of the need we have to read and internalize the great literary works.

This generation is indoctrinated, ignorant, and dangerous.

___________

Several years ago, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. While many, including Dylan himself, found it a bit odd to honor a folk singer with the premier prize for literature, there it was. After a curious gap between the committee’s breathless announcement and Dylan’s reluctant acceptance, the seventy-five-year-old artist reflected on just how much his writing was born out of his studied immersion in folk music and the budding progenitors of rock and roll including Buddy Holly, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and the New Lost City Ramblers. Dylan would elaborate,

I had all the vernacular down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went over my head—the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries—and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When I started writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I used it.

In a few words, folk music became a part of his marrow. But then he went on,

But I had something else as well. I had principles and sensibilities and an informed view of the world. And I had had that for a while. Learned it all in grammar school. Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest—typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.

Dylan’s speech would continue with a whirling exegesis on three of the most influential books—all classics—in his life: Moby Dick, All Quiet On the Western Front, The Odyssey. Now, I don’t know anyone who is reading these novels in grammar school (which is generally considered Kindergarten through eighth grade) anymore. And, sadly, there is hardly anyone anywhere who is reading them at any age, unless so compelled by some witchy, fun-hating college professor. 

Read the rest here.

So, I asked Geddy Lee…

“Do you have a favorite Bob Dylan album?”

He answered, “Highway 61 Revisited.”

Right answer.

What to Do at the End of the World?

Re-read Lord if the Rings, of course.

“His Love Which Forced Him to Put on a Mortal Body”: the Feast of the Sacred Heart

Cogitationes Cordis ejus in generatione et generationem: ut eruat a morte animas eorum et alat eos in fame. * Exsultate, justi, in Domino, rectos decet collaudatio.

The thoughts of His Heart are to all generations: to deliver their souls from death and feed them in famine. * Rejoice in the Lord, ye just: praise becometh the upright.

(Introit from Psalm 32:11,19,1)

From a beautiful essay on today’s feast at Liturgia Latina:

The solemnity of the Sacred Heart sums up all the phases of the life of Jesus recalled in the liturgy from Advent to the Feast of Corpus Christi.

It constitutes an admirable triptych giving us in abridgment all the mysteries, joyous, sorrowful and glorious, of the Saviour’s life devoted to the love of God and men. This feast is indeed placed on a height from which may be contemplated the redeeming labours of the Saviour on earth and the glorious victories He will, by the working of the Holy Ghost, achieve in souls until the end of the world.

Coming after the feasts of Christ, this feast completes them, concentrating them in one object which is materially Jesus’ Heart of flesh, and formally the unbounded charity symbolised by this Heart. This solemnity therefore does not relate to a particular mystery of the Saviour’s life, but embraces them all; indeed the devotion to the Sacred Heart celebrates all the favours we have received from divine charity during the year (Collect), and all the marvellous things that Jesus has done for us (Introit, Tract, Alleluia). It is the feast of the love of God for men, a love which has made Jesus come down on earth for all by His Incarnation (Epistle), which has raised Him on the Cross for the Redemption of all and which brings Him down every day on our altars by transubstantiation, in order to make us benefit by the merits of His death on Calvary.

These three mysteries, which manifest to us the divine charity in a more special way, sum up the spirit of the feast of the Sacred Heart. It is ” His love which forced Him to put on a mortal body” (Hymn at Matins). It is His love which willed that the Sacred Heart should be pierced on the cross (Gospel and Communion), in order that from the wound should flow a spring (Preface) we might draw from joyfully (f at 2nd Vespers), whose water cleanses us from our sins in baptism and whose blood nourishes bur souls in the Eucharist. And as the Eucharist is the continuation of the Incarnation and the sacrifice of Calvary, Jesus asked that the feast should be placed immediately after the Octave of Corpus Christi.

They Have No Idea What They’re Doing

In order to understand this post, it is essential that you understand that I mean no judgement of any person involved in what I saw. I claim no superiority, and am all too aware of my own failings. It would not surprise me to see any of these people in heaven before me, and above me. But truth is truth…

Due to the need to travel this weekend, I was forced to attend the novus ordo to fulfill my Sunday obligation. Even worse, it was the Saturday vigil Mass. what I witnessed made me weep.

First of all, and I will never do this again, we went to our former territorial parish. It used to be considered a “conservative” parish (whatever that means–which is nothing), and I wanted to get out of this thing as unscathed as possible. The problem is that the parish is a microcosm of the destruction of the Church at large.

I went to Mass here once or twice since my “trad”version in 2005, but I don’t remember anything dramatic about those times. But today I was immediately struck by two things:

First, a church that holds about 700 people, and that even as late as 2002 used to be full, was at most about 25% full. Nearly every head that had hair was grey. Maybe 150 people, and that included the family of a couple that was renewing their marriage vows on their 50th anniversary (and thus several guests).

I counted 7 people under 18 years of age. That fact alone was as depressing as I can relate. Where did all our friends go? Where were the families we remembered?

Gone with the wind.

Second, the change from what I knew to what is left me unspeakably depressed. I have had to endure the novus ordo from time to time in the last fifteen years, but it was a mistake to go back to the old parish. I was able to cope with how bad, how alien, the experience of it was by being in an alien locale. Almost like, well, this is horrible, but this is a foreign place with a weird, horrible, but valid rite approved by Rome. Going back to the old parish was like returning the Shire, taken over by Saruman.

Today all I saw is what we have lost. Whom we have lost. How unspeakably horrible it is. This isn’t Catholic. These people have been sold a bill of goods.

In my heart, I was convicted of my own sinfulness. I know that in some mystical, but more real than I can see way, my sins contributed to this. That was the word I received at Mass today. I held back tears.

That today was the feast of Corpus Christi made it even worse. Why? Well, the novus ordo’s changes really highlight the apostasy of the last 60 years. The epistle is the same, to a point. But it cuts out the passage about whoever eats and drinks unworthily being guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. I suppose that could make someone feel bad. And the Gospel was a switch– instead of Christ insisting that His Body was real food and His Blood was real drink, we have the sign that precedes the Eucharist: the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

And, to make it all more horribly real, a top ten of crap songs. Table of Plenty. Canticle of the Sun. Taste and See. All screeched like the proverbial barn owl. I needn’t mention the sign of peace, because you already know. The priest, over-explaining everything, because even though it’s in English so we can understand it, it needs explaining, like a bad cooking show.

But the saddest thing, to me, was during the consecration of the Precious Blood. After the “this is the chalice of My Blood” but before the “mystery of faith”, the cantor decided to throw in the Tantum Ergo, in Latin, breaking up the order of consecration in the Missal. It just got stuck there, just because. Like somebody thought, “Hey, let’s throw in some Latin!” It stuck out like a second head, and I couldn’t help but whisper to my wife, “They have no idea what they’re doing.” I didn’t mean that as a condemnation. I didn’t mean it like the prayer of the Pharisee, thanking God that I wasn’t like the rest of men.

No, I meant exactly what I said: they have no idea. No idea what they’ve lost. No idea what they’re doing. No idea of their own patrimony.

It was stolen from them. It was stolen from us.

There are few of us left. Catholics, that is. There will be no one left to complain when Leviathan throws us in a hole to die.

As never before, I beheld Christ on the Cross.

God have mercy on my soul. May I have the grace to never more abandon Him. And God willing, may I never have to endure the novus ordo to satisfy my Sunday obligation. Please, God, restore the Mass to Your starving, dwindling faithful.

If You Only Read One Story about the Blues’ Season

The NYT provides it here. Great and thorough summary.