This victory is sweet, and not just for Djokovic. He could have two or three more slams than the official count, and Vaxxboy should have one fewer. No matter. People know the truth when they see it.
This is a good time to repost the quote of St. Athanasius at the bottom of this blog. The Mass is the hill we die on. It cannot be abrogated and any attempt must be resisted:
YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE HAPPY; YOU WHO REMAIN WITHIN THE CHURCH BY YOUR FAITH, WHO HOLD FIRMLY TO THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAITH WHICH HAS COME DOWN TO YOU FROM APOSTOLIC TRADITION. AND IF AN EXECRABLE JEALOUSY HAS TRIED TO SHAKE IT ON A NUMBER OF OCCASIONS, IT HAS NOT SUCCEEDED. THEY ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE BROKEN AWAY FROM IT IN THE PRESENT CRISIS. NO ONE, EVER, WILL PREVAIL AGAINST YOUR FAITH, BELOVED BROTHERS. AND WE BELIEVE THAT GOD WILL GIVE US OUR CHURCHES BACK SOME DAY.
A must read. I repost it here in full. Oremus pro invicem:
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Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine, et benedic hereditati tuæ. Et rege eos, et extolle illos usque in æternum. Save your people, Lord, and bless your inheritance. Govern and uphold them now and always. – Hymn. Te Deum
In these last hours that mark the conclusion of the civil year, each of us is preparing to take part in the solemn functions with which the Church raises to the Divine Majesty the praises of thanksgiving contained in the hymn Te Deum.
Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur. We praise you, O God: we acclaim you as Lord. In the plural “we,” one perceives the august voice of the Bride of the Lamb, adorned with the precious jewels of the Sacraments and the most precious gems of her royal crown: the most august Sacrament of the Altar, the Sacrosanct Sacrifice of the Mass and the Order of the Priesthood. And it is before the Most Blessed Sacrament that we all, standing as befits victors who are on our feet with Christ on the day of triumph, give thanks to God for the year that is drawing to a close.
Let us therefore consider that for which we must give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity.
We thank the Lord God for punishing us for our lukewarmness, our silence, our inclination to compromise, our hypocrisies, our yielding to the spirit of the world and the errors of the dominant ideologies. It was these sins and shortcomings that have allowed those who today impose the tyranny of the New World Order to flourish in the civil world, and those who excommunicate a pro-life priest and scandalously promote corrupt and heretical prelates and clerics to prevail in the ecclesiastical world. They have allowed, in the civil world, democracy to be transformed into the apostasy of nations and the cruel slaughter of the innocent. They have allowed, in the ecclesial body, the Second Vatican Council to introduce the principles of the Revolution into the Church, as a subversive lever to destroy it from within. They have allowed sin and vice be encouraged in the civil world, while honesty, integrity, and Christian morality are mocked and trampled upon, if not criminalized. They have allowed, in the ecclesiastical world, the persecution of the faithful and clerics who ask to profess the Catholic Faith and to celebrate it in the Apostolic Rite, while the Vatican Sanhedrin worships an infernal idol at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. They have allowed, in both the civil and ecclesiastical world – significantly allied on this point – the health mark of the Beast to be imposed on billions of people, in the name of a delirious plan of global population control, using as a pretext a disease that has proven to be curable and not fatal only after the prohibition of appropriate treatments had caused a sufficient number of deaths to terrorize the masses. They have allowed an operation, long time planned, carried out with impunity by NATO to provoke a war against an “invader” and in order to destroy the economy of Western nations, while it is evident that the Ukrainian crisis is instrumental to the realization of the Great Reset; no more and no less than COVID-19, as well as being as an expedient for Joe Biden to hide the evidence of the corruption of his family and the presence of biolaboratories linked to the Pentagon. They have allowed, in both civil and ecclesiastical institutions, officials to be more blackmailed the more they ascend in their careers, and that neither citizens nor believers demand that the corrupt and perverted be removed and prosecuted.
What we are witnessing today is the inevitable outcome of a series of small steps, each of which could have been prevented if only we had exercised a minimum of critical judgment and raised our voice, if we had protested in order to defend our rights that have been violated by those who should have been the first to protect them. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia, sodomy, gender ideology, leftist or right-wing liberalism, immigrationism, cancel culture, globalism, the health dictatorship, Malthusian environmentalism, ecumenism, synodality. . . Each time, we could and should have denounced the threat that loomed, and yet we were silent, so as not to be called “conspiracy theorists” or branded as “fundamentalists,” so that we would not suffer social and ecclesial ostracism because of our ideas or our Faith. “Each person is free to do what he wishes, so long as this also allows me to be Catholic and to go to the Latin Mass,” say those who have allowed themselves to be contaminated by liberal thought. But it is precisely this “doing whatever one wants” that has allowed the manipulators of the masses to change society and to make us strangers in our homeland, both in our own Nations and also within the Church.
Yet we knew very well that the project of Masonic liberalism ought to have been opposed by Catholics, following the repeated alarms and multiple condemnations of the Roman Pontiffs. We knew that liberals give their tolerance to everyone except Catholics, and that their worst enemy is Christ the King of the Nations, because wherever He reigns, the enemies of God and mankind are in shackles and not at the head of governments. We knew very well that rebellion against God in temporal and spiritual matters could only lead to either dictatorship or anarchy, yet we have allowed the trampling down of Justice in our courts and workers’ rights in our businesses, the prevention of treatment in our hospitals, the spreading of lies in our media, the corruption of young people’s morals in our schools, and the contradiction of the Magisterium from our pulpits.
Those who up until now have held positions of authority have done so by usurping power for the opposite purpose to that for which it exists. As I said earlier: we feel treated as if we are foreigners, indeed, although we are citizens we are treated like enemies of the State, and although we are members of the faithful we are treated as enemies of the Church, while the true foreigners and enemies of the State are welcomed, honored, and obeyed in the delirious “humanitarian” and “philanthropic” projects of the elite who have usurped authority. And some of us, in the face of this operation of social and religious engineering, have given up fighting, or even sided with the conspirators: they have chosen to please the powerful, to support their subversive plans in our Parliaments, in the halls of international institutions, in our cathedrals and even right under the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica. Conformism, cowardice, obsequiousness; with the hope that today’s betrayal by which they crush our neighbor – whether it is a citizen who asks for honest rulers or one of the faithful who asks for holy shepherds – can somehow spare us from subsequent decimation. They forget that the Revolution devours its own children like Saturn, and that none of the accomplices of the first hour are spared the gallows, either in reality or in the media.
The Lord is our Father, and as Father He punishes us so that we understand our faults, repent of them, and change our lives. Deus, qui culpa offenderis, pœnitentia placaris, says a prayer of Lent: O God, who is offended by guilt and appeased by penance. Wherever there is guilt, wherever the Majesty of God is infinitely offended, there is the need of a punishment. Flagella tuæ iracundiæ, quæ pro peccatis nostri meremur: the scourges of Your indignation, which we merit because of our sins – just as so often happened to the people of Israel.
Blessed be this chastisement, which has lasted for over two years, and which is destined to endure if we do not make ourselves worthy of being spared, giving signs of conversion, repentance, expiation, and reparation. Blessed be this most inauspicious year that we now leave behind, during which the pandemic farce has shown itself in its criminal nature by revealing the project of death of the globalist elite; during which the ruthless cynicism of international organizations has manifested itself in hypocritical propaganda in favor of governments led by those who are most corrupt and subservient to the Great Reset, showing what lies those who do not recognize the transcendent principle of Truth are capable of telling, deluding themselves that they can erase the very work of the Creator by transhumanism, in whose image and likeness we have been made. Blessed be the boldness with which the tyrants of the New World Order have shown us the horrors that await us if we remain inert, passively enduring their health, environmental, energy, economic or war blackmails. Blessed is the arrogance of the Bergoglian sect, the accomplice of power and the servant of Masonic ideology, which with its compliance towards the wicked and its pharisaic severity against the good reveals – even to the simple – its apostasy and uncovers the gangrene of its vices. Like Job, let us bless the Lord above all in moments of tribulation, because in those trials – even in the most arduous and painful – we ought to see the intervention of Providence, the loving hand of God who does not abandon us to our own devices, we who have ended up much worse than watching over pigs, as happened to the prodigal son.
Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri. Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te. Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us. May thy mercy be upon us, Lord, in the measure that we have hoped in You. Have mercy on your children who have been abandoned by their rulers and shepherds. Have mercy on those who, precisely because they do not wallow in the false illusions of this age but live by the blessed Hope of your holy help, find in You the strength to fight the good fight, whether conducted in the family or in the workplace, from the seats of Parliament or from the editorial offices of a newspaper, from the pulpit of a country church or from the cell of a convent. Have mercy on those who do not resign themselves to the establishment of the hell on earth of the New World Order, nor to the no-less-infernal apostasy of irenic ecumenism.
And if we ask for an end to the scourges of this 2022, preparing to invoke with the Veni Creator the gifts of the Paraclete at the beginning of 2023, let us do so with the trusting humility of the prodigal son: Father, I have sinned against Heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son (Lk 15:21). We do this by renewing our determination to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29), when men abuse their authority by offending and disobeying Him in temporal and spiritual things.
The Te Deum is a hymn of thanksgiving for victory, a song of triumph. But this triumph is not the passing triumph of men. Rather it is the eternal triumph of the Son of God, who conquered Satan, not with armies and angelic hosts, but by dying on the Cross, an instrument of ignominy transformed into a banner of glory by the Blood of the Lamb. Christ’s victory – Ego vici mundum, I have overcome the world, Our Lord assures us (Jn 16:33) – is accomplished on the triumphal way to Calvary, which the entire Mystical Body must follow, even to the passio Ecclesiæ, following the example of the Divine Redeemer, its Head. If we do not unite ourselves to the Passion of Christ, we will not be able to rise with Him and sit at His right hand in the blessed glory of Heaven. If we do not fight against sin under the banner of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, we will not be able to celebrate the final triumph over the ancient Serpent and his followers. If we do not rouse ourselves from torpor but instead remain simply watching the scoundrels who rage against the Church and humanity, seeking to cancel every trace of Christ, we have no reason to thank the Lord by singing the Te Deum, because we will have remained insensitive to His punishments and to the many warnings that He deigns to send us to urge us to reciprocate His love, that perfect and infinite love which enabled the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity to become Incarnate in order to redeem us. Then we will be deserving of that dystopian nightmare which the servants of Masonic globalism have been preparing for us for years and of which we have had a terrifying foretaste in the recent past.
Let us therefore sing this Te Deum with a renewed heart and with the intention of witnessing to our fidelity to the Lord, regardless of our abilities, trusting in His holy help, which is all the more powerful the greater and more ferocious is the assault of the Enemy: In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in æternum.
And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop 31 December 2022 S. Silvestri Papæ et Confessoris
A repost tradition, from Dan England and the Noonday Devil, by the late, great Myles Connelly. In this depraved age, yet in this still-beautiful time, while God yet offers us His Mercy, we are all travelers in the strange, cold, dead world of modernity. Followers of Him Who is all the world:
There would be tea brewing on the stove in the kitchen. The coals would show red with thin blue flames where one of the stove covers had been tilted. Then, there would be a candle, perhaps two, for there could only be candles on Christmas Eve. They would be burned down pretty low now, it being after eleven o’clock when he would reach home. About ten minutes past eleven, he always reached home. His stamping the snow off his shoes on the steps outside would be the signal for the handful of tea to be dropped into the pot. There would be candles in the next room, too, the dining room they called it. And then beyond that, another candle or two. Always candles on Christmas Eve. Not many candles. A few candles, but good candles special for the vigil. They would spear the dark with steady yellow flames, and make long, rich shadows on the walls and on the pictures on the walls. The ceiling would be lighted without shadows.
There were never shadows like these Christmas Eve candle shadows. They gave mystery to the house, and a soft strangeness that you never found on any other night.
The Boy would throw his hat and coat on the chair by the kitchen stove. Then, he would go on through the dining room, as they called it, into the other room. She would meet him, as she got up from the floor where she would be setting out the presents before the tiny crib. Her knees would be stiff, he knew, and her poor body tired, but she would get up with her white face happy in spite of its whiteness, and her always bright eyes brighter, and she would turn to him for a glance of appreciative pleasure. He knew she would look for that, though she had made the house clean, had washed and mended the old lace curtains, had scrubbed the floors–hadn’t he noticed the kitchen floor, white with the grain showing?– had swept and dusted not so much for his pleasure this night, but because God was coming. But she would look to see if he were happy. He would scowl. It was defensive, or perverse. But he would scowl, and while he scowled he would notice how white her hair showed on the side that caught the light of the candles.
“My poor boy is tired,” she would say.
Then he could hold the scowl no longer. He would say:
“Ma, the crib is beautiful.”
Then he would get down on his knees beside it. There would be a little red sanctuary lamp on the floor before it, with the white wick floating in oil. At twelve o’clock the lamp would be lighted. If you should happen into the room–the parlor they called it– in the early hours when the candles would be out, you would see only this, the red lamp with its tiny light flickering. It would cast a spell over you, this unsteady small light showing red on the floor beneath you. You would stand there and look at it, unstirring, unthinking, for minutes.
So, the Boy would get down on his knees beside the crib. It would be the same little crib they had last Christmas, and the Christmas before that. There would be the little imitation thatch shed, open in front. Outside, would be three shepherds with two sheep, kneeling. Inside, would be St. Joseph with his brown cloak and white beard and our Mother with her blue dress. In back would be the ox and the ass, the ox with his head low. And in the center, on a few wisps of hay– real hay that the peddler fed his horse–would be the tiny figure of Him who was all the world.
He would kneel there, before the shed that was not a foot high, and move the figures about a bit. He always liked to have the ox and ass close to the crib. Then, he would study the presents, laid out before the crib as tenderly as the Wise Men must have laid out their gifts. They would still be in their boxes. He would not touch them, not until daybreak. Then, they would all stop for a swift minute on their way out to Mass.
Afterward, after Mass and Communion, they, with their glass of water drunk but not yet with breakfast, would strew the floor with red strings and wrapping paper and boxes. How much colorful rubbish a few little things could make! For there were but a few things before the crib: a fountain pen, a tie, two books, a box of handkerchiefs… He could recognize everything from their boxes, thin square boxes for handkerchiefs, long boxes for gloves and ties. . . . But he knew, anyway. He and his mother had conspired together for the family. He had his gifts, too. But they would not be put out until he was safely in bed….
Then, she would call from the kitchen. He had better hurry. It was getting close on midnight. So he would have his cup of tea, and a slice of brown-crusted white bread that had come from the oven that afternoon. And maybe a piece of the fruit cake, the rich, dark fruit cake heavy with spice and raisins that was always in the house on Christmas Eve. She would have her cup of tea with the cream– for they would use the cream tonight– showing brown gold on top. But she would have only tea for it was the vigil of Christmas.
That would be beautiful. He would tell her all that had happened at work. How old Nelson was worried because his little girl was ill, and it was Christmas Eve. How the yardmaster who cursed constantly was quiet today, and swore only when he was mad. How Big Mike had gone down to St. Mary’s to confession with him, and how the church was crowded. Everything, everything. . . .
And then he would empty his pockets of all his money, including the gold piece the firm had given him for Christmas. That would be his supreme moment– to give over every dollar, every cent. He had been doing that so long now but it never, for some strange reason, failed to make him gulp with happiness. Hadn’t they bought the piano together, his mother and he, the upright piano with the green covering that came with it? Hadn’t thy bought the new heavy rug for the parlor, the two of them, conspiring this way? Weren’t they saving now to buy the house?– the house out of town a little distance, the house with a garden, quiet, but near the church.
How happily she would look at him. How proudly. And he would drain his teacup so that he could hold the cup high and hide his eyes, his moist eyes. . . .
That would be beautiful, beautiful.
“Pray for those poor souls who have no home on Christmas Eve,” she would say, as always she had said.
And the Boy would pray.
The Pullman porter gave a quick turn to the Young Man’s chair. The Young Man who had been dozing sat up abruptly.
“Grand Central, suh.”
The porter was holding his overcoat.
The Young Man was dazed.
Wasn’t there tea brewing, and a red fire showing where the stove corner had been tilted? And across from him. . . .
Across from him was a row of Pullman chairs. Empty, of course. Who else but a harried reporter would be traveling thus into New York at eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve?
The porter took his tip and was gone. The Young Man made his way hazily out into the station.
And there were candles, one or two that spotted the room with yellow flames and threw long shadows. . . .
“Reservation?” asked the room clerk in the hotel.
The Young Man nodded and wrote his name. A tall bald-headed man in a dinner jacket staggered across the heavily ornate hotel lobby. Two gaudy young women tittered.
Candles, a few candles. . . .
“Front!”
A thin, small, ageless bellboy, in blue uniform and silver braid, appeared mechanically. He took his bags and led the way to the elevator.
And she was there, rising from the crib on the floor. How white her hair showed where it caught the light of the candles. . . .
“The heat on, sir?” The bellboy was turning the valve on the radiator. The steam began to pound through the pipes.
The Young Man moved to the window. Twenty stories below him the city was stirring out of its newly laid cover of snow. Even in the dark, the roofs were white, the cornices and window ledges were white. Far, far down, the streets were white, white spotted with black, streaked with black.
“Looks like a white Christmas.”
The bellboy spoke impatiently. The Young Man gave him his tip. He banged the door as he left.
The Young Man turned back to the window.
It was the same little crib with its imitation thatch, and the few wisps of hay– real hay the peddler fed his horse. . . .
The Young Man looked down. Everywhere there were lights, ragged lights, pointed lights, clustered lights, solitary lights, white, red, yellow lights. But the Young Man did not see. He drew the shade and turned from the window.
And there was St. Joseph in his brown cloak and our Lady in her blue dress and the tiny figure of Him who was all the world. . . .
The Young Man still had on his overcoat. Under the mirror of the dresser was a collar button of a former guest which the maid, in her cleaning, had missed. He fixed his eyes on it but did not see. He was without heart and his mind whirred. Where, he was asking himself dazedly, where in this world’s maze of people and places, where in this wilderness of stars and philosophies, where is Home?
Hadn’t they bought the piano together, and the rug….
The Young Man threw himself on the bed.
“Dear Jesus! Dear Mother of God!”
His sobbing filled his cell in the mountain of earth and steel, glass and stone.
“Dear Mother of God!”
And she would say, “Pray for those poor souls who have no home on Christmas Eve…”
12:5 And you have forgotten the consolation which speaketh to you, as unto children, saying: My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord: neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him.
12:6 For whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth: and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
12:7 Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with his sons. For what son is there whom the father doth not correct?
My oldest son moved out of the house and began his real-man life today. A proud moment for me, and exciting for him. He is out of law school and into a real career.
My oldest daughter got married and left 6 years ago. Another daughter moved to Ft. Worth for her career this Summer. And this Fall, yet another daughter went off to college.
That leaves four at home. Four down, four to go. I miss them all, though obviously their moving on is a very good thing.
With children ranging from 8 to 28, we have been living for a while now in this weird dual life with young children but also with adult children and grandchildren. The house has always seemed full, though, as there have been still seven children at home until this August. Then boom-boom-boom—three more are gone.
Now the place seems empty, and I see how this all ends. Makes me feel a little wistful, if you couldn’t tell. Compounding the feeling today is a freeze warning for our area, which has caused us to bring in ALL the tomatoes, green to red, to prevent them from being lost.
I suppose there is a metaphor there. You have a plan, you see it through, but you don’t expect the end when it comes. And it comes quickly.
I’m grateful. But as I’ve written in the past when friends have departed my life, I can feel that Christ is reminding me that in the end I must detach myself from all creatures and give myself entirely to Him. Thus I can possess Him for all eternity, and gain all else with it.
My hiking boots are, that is to say. I walked the Starkenburg pilgrimage today, 12 weary miles to this flabby old man, but immensely satisfying. My confessor today said to me, “You sound like a man in need of a religious pilgrimage.”
And I did.
Public thanks to Our Lady of Sorrows, honored at this shrine. Thanks, too, to my wonderful bride for rearranging things on our busy schedule to make it possible for me to get away. It was great to see so many friends, old and new, and to have the chance to focus on the important things.
I believe that Russia will be the scourge of us, and then, after its conversion, will be the tool used by Our Lady to save us from the reign of evil under which we now suffer.
Read in full the speech Mary Ann posted over at Les Femmes the Truth blog. Read it with an eye to Fatima. Read it in light of the vision which the Third Secret, still unreleased, explains. Read it in light of the Bishop in White whom the children took to be the pope, and in light of the Holy Father walking through the half-ruined city of Rome on the way to his execution.
Pray that the Holy Father will at long last consecrate Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart as she requested.
Please, Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us and deliver us!
[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.
Saint Louis Catholic 