Aug 2, 2009
Jan 5, 2009
To hell in a hand basket filled with hand grenades ...
I felt I needed to add on to the old adage because our new and improved times need new and improved ways of expressing how just how newly improved the modern world's methods are for destroying itself.
With the election of an man who I can describe with no more fitting word than: "evil", as the next President of the United States I think now the question is no longer "if" the United States is going to collapse, but "when". Our President elect will surely become the greatest mass murder the world has ever seen if he has his way with liberalizing abortion in the United States. That is not even taking into the account the very real danger of a persecution on Christianity and in particular the Catholic Church the likes of which haven't been seen since the days of the Co-Emperors Maximian and Diocletian of the Roman Empire during the late 3rd Century.
This threat goes even farther than the United Sates. A persecution has already started and is only building momentum in a country known for persecution of Catholics: the United Kingdom. In this once Catholic country, and later then thoroughly Protestant, the Islamic Sharia Law has been legally instituted. Preaching Jesus Christ is now considered "hate speech" in this once Christian Country.
In France there are Muslims who are third generation French citizens who are behind all kinds of domestic terrorism. France... the eldest daughter of the Church, which once was ruled by a Catholic Saint: King Louis IX who enacted a law that every person who uttered a blasphemy in his country was to be branded on the mouth. When a nobleman was found guilty of this and many pleaded with the King to not carry out the sentence he replied that he would sooner be branded on the mouth himself than allow Blasphemy to be uttered in France. What has happened?
The scariest thing for me, however, is the rumblings in Russia. A close relative of mine who works for the NSA told me a few weeks ago that they are very worried about Russia and that we really need to be watching them closely or something very bad could happen. They agreed with me entirely on the observation I made some time ago when the hammer and sickle returned to the Russian National flag.... that this is a sign of bad things to come from Russia.
Our Lady of Fatima asked that Russia be Consecrated to Her Immaculate heart, but this has not happened. Contrary to popular belief among Catholics today the Consecration of Pope John Paul II was not the consecration asked for by our Lady. Sister Lucy first gave the message from our Lady on June 13th 1929: "The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father to make, and to order that in union with him and at the same time, all the bishops of the world make the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart." What Pope John Paul II along with his predecessors: Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Blessed Pope John XXIII, and Pope Paul VI all did was consecrate the "world" to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and many countries followed suit (including the United States), but there has never been a specific consecration of Russia itself by the Pope and in union with the Bishops. This needs to happen... as well as the proclamation of the 5th Marian Dogma. I pray that Pope Benedict who has given us so much already will give us at least one of these two things as well and if we are so blessed even both at the same time.
Ultimately though, what makes this whole situation so dangerous is the predicament of the Church at present. The Church has suffered persecution before, that is for sure, but never has the Church been in such a weakened state as it is now, with the possible except of the Arian Heresy, which might be the only thing we can compare to the situation today. Catholics today simply aren’t ready and able to deal with a serious persecution. Most don’t even accept the basic tenants of the faith (of course if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your not Catholic, but that doesn’t stop people from claiming to be and coming up to receive communion every Sunday… if they even come to Mass at all).
Catholics today are so worried and consumed with social justice to the point they completely miss the great importance of not just the physical life each one of us possess but also the spiritual life. Liturgy has gone all to heck just about universally in the Roman Rite at least, and no one seems to be interested in teaching the actual teachings of the Catholic Church anymore.
People seem to forget the words of our Lord I never tire of repeating these days: “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt 10:28)
What does it matter if we cloth and feed people and they still lose their soul? Most Catholics today have completely misplaced their priorities in what it really means to help people.
Not to mention these so called “ecumenical gatherings” where in some instances pagan rituals (in other words: the worship of demons) is allowed to go on even actually at Catholic Altars! Where everyone gets together and is “nice” to each other and celebrate “togetherness”… whatever the hell that means. I hate to break it to you but being “nice” isn’t a virtue. The virtue you are looking for is Charity and true Charity consists in doing everything you can to help others get to heaven. And if you are Catholic then you must believe that the infallible teaching of the Church that there is no salvation apart from the Catholic Church and thus THE most Charitable thing we can do for anyone is convert them to the Catholic Church and enable them to have access to the plenitude of graces made available by our Lord Jesus Christ when He died upon the Cross on Mount Calvary. Even for those who are baptized in the various protestant sects it is extremely difficult for them to get to heaven with out the many graces one can receive in the reception of the Holy Eucharist as well as the Sacrament of Penance and the other sacraments.
So we must pray and pray much, and do much penance for the whole Church and in particular Priests, Bishops, the Holy Father, sinners, heretics, schismatics, pagans, as well as the poor souls in purgatory who when released will be of great aid to you and to all.
We must remember to use the great prayers given to the children at Fatima by the two Angels and our Lady…
EUCHARISTIC PRAYER
Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, My God, I love You in the Most Blessed Sacrament. (3 times)
PARDON PRAYER
MY GOD, I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love Thee! I ask pardon for for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust and do not love Thee. (3 times)
SACRIFICE PRAYER
Our Lady of Fatima said: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrific: O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
DECADE PRAYER
(To be said after the Glory Be at the end of each decade of the Rosary)
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need of Thy mercy.
ANGEL'S PRAYER
(Given to the three children by the Angel who preceded Our Lady's first appearance to them.)
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners. (3 times)
And I would also highly recommend both of these prayers for conversion of the United States in particular...
PRAYER OF CONVERSION TO OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
O Holy Mary, Virgin Mother of God, who as Our Lady of Guadalupe didst aid in the conversion of Mexico from paganism in a most miraculous way, we now beseech thee to bring about in these our times the early conversion of our modern world from its present neo-paganism to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of thy divine Son, Jesus Christ, starting in the Americas and extending throughout the entire world, so that soon there may be truly "one fold and on shepherd," with all governments recognizing the reign of the Son, Jesus Christ the King. This we ask of the Eternal Father, through Jesus Christ His Son Our Lord and by they powerful intercession--all for the salvation of souls, the triumph of the Church, and peace in the world. Amen.
PRAYER OF BLESSED POPE PIUS IX FOR THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA
O Mary, Mother of Mercy and Refuge of sinners, we beseech thee, be pleased to look with pitiful eyes upon poor heretics and schismatics. Thou who art the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten the minds that are miserably enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly know that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which neither holiness nor salvation can be found. Finish the work of their conversion by obtaining for them the grace to accept all the truths of our Holy Faith, and to submit themselves to the Supreme Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth; that so, being united with us in the sweet chains of Divine charity, there may soon be one only fold under the same one Shepherd; and may we all, O Glorious Virgin, sing forever with exultation: Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou only hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world. Amen. (Raccolta, No. 626, p. 499, 1957 Edition)
With the election of an man who I can describe with no more fitting word than: "evil", as the next President of the United States I think now the question is no longer "if" the United States is going to collapse, but "when". Our President elect will surely become the greatest mass murder the world has ever seen if he has his way with liberalizing abortion in the United States. That is not even taking into the account the very real danger of a persecution on Christianity and in particular the Catholic Church the likes of which haven't been seen since the days of the Co-Emperors Maximian and Diocletian of the Roman Empire during the late 3rd Century.
This threat goes even farther than the United Sates. A persecution has already started and is only building momentum in a country known for persecution of Catholics: the United Kingdom. In this once Catholic country, and later then thoroughly Protestant, the Islamic Sharia Law has been legally instituted. Preaching Jesus Christ is now considered "hate speech" in this once Christian Country.
In France there are Muslims who are third generation French citizens who are behind all kinds of domestic terrorism. France... the eldest daughter of the Church, which once was ruled by a Catholic Saint: King Louis IX who enacted a law that every person who uttered a blasphemy in his country was to be branded on the mouth. When a nobleman was found guilty of this and many pleaded with the King to not carry out the sentence he replied that he would sooner be branded on the mouth himself than allow Blasphemy to be uttered in France. What has happened?
The scariest thing for me, however, is the rumblings in Russia. A close relative of mine who works for the NSA told me a few weeks ago that they are very worried about Russia and that we really need to be watching them closely or something very bad could happen. They agreed with me entirely on the observation I made some time ago when the hammer and sickle returned to the Russian National flag.... that this is a sign of bad things to come from Russia.
Our Lady of Fatima asked that Russia be Consecrated to Her Immaculate heart, but this has not happened. Contrary to popular belief among Catholics today the Consecration of Pope John Paul II was not the consecration asked for by our Lady. Sister Lucy first gave the message from our Lady on June 13th 1929: "The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father to make, and to order that in union with him and at the same time, all the bishops of the world make the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart." What Pope John Paul II along with his predecessors: Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Blessed Pope John XXIII, and Pope Paul VI all did was consecrate the "world" to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and many countries followed suit (including the United States), but there has never been a specific consecration of Russia itself by the Pope and in union with the Bishops. This needs to happen... as well as the proclamation of the 5th Marian Dogma. I pray that Pope Benedict who has given us so much already will give us at least one of these two things as well and if we are so blessed even both at the same time.
Ultimately though, what makes this whole situation so dangerous is the predicament of the Church at present. The Church has suffered persecution before, that is for sure, but never has the Church been in such a weakened state as it is now, with the possible except of the Arian Heresy, which might be the only thing we can compare to the situation today. Catholics today simply aren’t ready and able to deal with a serious persecution. Most don’t even accept the basic tenants of the faith (of course if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your not Catholic, but that doesn’t stop people from claiming to be and coming up to receive communion every Sunday… if they even come to Mass at all).
Catholics today are so worried and consumed with social justice to the point they completely miss the great importance of not just the physical life each one of us possess but also the spiritual life. Liturgy has gone all to heck just about universally in the Roman Rite at least, and no one seems to be interested in teaching the actual teachings of the Catholic Church anymore.
People seem to forget the words of our Lord I never tire of repeating these days: “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt 10:28)
What does it matter if we cloth and feed people and they still lose their soul? Most Catholics today have completely misplaced their priorities in what it really means to help people.
Not to mention these so called “ecumenical gatherings” where in some instances pagan rituals (in other words: the worship of demons) is allowed to go on even actually at Catholic Altars! Where everyone gets together and is “nice” to each other and celebrate “togetherness”… whatever the hell that means. I hate to break it to you but being “nice” isn’t a virtue. The virtue you are looking for is Charity and true Charity consists in doing everything you can to help others get to heaven. And if you are Catholic then you must believe that the infallible teaching of the Church that there is no salvation apart from the Catholic Church and thus THE most Charitable thing we can do for anyone is convert them to the Catholic Church and enable them to have access to the plenitude of graces made available by our Lord Jesus Christ when He died upon the Cross on Mount Calvary. Even for those who are baptized in the various protestant sects it is extremely difficult for them to get to heaven with out the many graces one can receive in the reception of the Holy Eucharist as well as the Sacrament of Penance and the other sacraments.
So we must pray and pray much, and do much penance for the whole Church and in particular Priests, Bishops, the Holy Father, sinners, heretics, schismatics, pagans, as well as the poor souls in purgatory who when released will be of great aid to you and to all.
We must remember to use the great prayers given to the children at Fatima by the two Angels and our Lady…
EUCHARISTIC PRAYER
Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, My God, I love You in the Most Blessed Sacrament. (3 times)
PARDON PRAYER
MY GOD, I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love Thee! I ask pardon for for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust and do not love Thee. (3 times)
SACRIFICE PRAYER
Our Lady of Fatima said: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrific: O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
DECADE PRAYER
(To be said after the Glory Be at the end of each decade of the Rosary)
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need of Thy mercy.
ANGEL'S PRAYER
(Given to the three children by the Angel who preceded Our Lady's first appearance to them.)
Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners. (3 times)
And I would also highly recommend both of these prayers for conversion of the United States in particular...
PRAYER OF CONVERSION TO OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
O Holy Mary, Virgin Mother of God, who as Our Lady of Guadalupe didst aid in the conversion of Mexico from paganism in a most miraculous way, we now beseech thee to bring about in these our times the early conversion of our modern world from its present neo-paganism to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of thy divine Son, Jesus Christ, starting in the Americas and extending throughout the entire world, so that soon there may be truly "one fold and on shepherd," with all governments recognizing the reign of the Son, Jesus Christ the King. This we ask of the Eternal Father, through Jesus Christ His Son Our Lord and by they powerful intercession--all for the salvation of souls, the triumph of the Church, and peace in the world. Amen.
PRAYER OF BLESSED POPE PIUS IX FOR THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA
O Mary, Mother of Mercy and Refuge of sinners, we beseech thee, be pleased to look with pitiful eyes upon poor heretics and schismatics. Thou who art the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten the minds that are miserably enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly know that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which neither holiness nor salvation can be found. Finish the work of their conversion by obtaining for them the grace to accept all the truths of our Holy Faith, and to submit themselves to the Supreme Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth; that so, being united with us in the sweet chains of Divine charity, there may soon be one only fold under the same one Shepherd; and may we all, O Glorious Virgin, sing forever with exultation: Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou only hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world. Amen. (Raccolta, No. 626, p. 499, 1957 Edition)
Oct 25, 2008
Viva Christo Rey!
It is just over a week now until the Presidential election here in the United States. And with the great feast of Christ the King tomorrow according to the Traditional Roman Rite Calendar one has to wonder about the American Government.
I've made no bones about it in recent days... I don't believe in democracy anymore... the great experiment has failed. Our society believes they can rule themselves and completely forget that all power and all authority comes for our Lord Jesus Christ the King. As our Lord told Pilate: "Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above." (John 19:11).
Unfortunately in our culture dominated by anti-Catholicism and ruled by Masonic and Communistic principles I don't see a recovery of Catholic Monarchies any times soon.
I find some Catholics, especially in the United States, are horrified at the idea that there might actually be something wrong with Democracy. And even more so are they repulsed by the idea of a Monarchy. But Monarchy is not bad, in fact, far from it since it is the system God chose to govern the Universe. So those who are against Monarchy as a system are against God. Still the legacy of the French Revolution and ultimately the ideas of the Freemasons pervade our society.
We must not forget the many holy Kings, Emperors, Queens, and Princesses such as Blessed Karl von Hapsburg of recent memory, Blessed Emperor Charlemagne, Saint Henry II king of the Holy Roman Empire, Saint Louis IX king of France, Saint Edgar the Peaceful, Saint Edward King of England, Saint Edmund of East Anglia, Saint Edwin King of Northumbria, Saint Olaf II King of Norway, Saint Stephen King of Hungary, Saint Casimir of Poland, Saint Dagobert II, Saint Hedwig Queen of Poland, Saint Clotilde Queen of Burgundy, Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland, Saint Adelaide Princess of Upper Burgundy, Saint Dymphna daughter of a pagan Irish Chieftain, Saint Matilda of Saxony, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and her niece the princess Saint Elizabeth of Portugal. Not to be forgotten we can add King Solomon, King David, and even Saint Joseph since he indeed was the rightful King of Israel and Herod was but a pretender to the throne.
How can anyone say that monarchy is wrong? What Saints have been leaders of Democratic country? And do not be shortsighted and say think that democracies have only been around a little while and that there just hasn't been time for there to be a Saint. My own heritage speaks to the fact this is not so. Switzerland has been a democratic country since it's inception in 1291 and never has there been a leader who has been a Saint. Though, Saint Nicholas von der Flue (one of the patron Saints of Switzerland) did have a major hand in helping straighten out some problems in the governance of the country. Still even that country which was founded upon the blood of Martyrs (Saint Maurice and his companions) was lost in large part to the lies of John Calvin and have additionally suffered from being so incredibly prosperous for so very long.
This all being said I realize that living in a country that is a democracy I must be subject to their authority in as much as it comes from Christ. However, I will not and Catholics must not be subject to the evil laws and decrees of and evil government. For example: the unconstitutional and besides that purely evil laws protecting people's "right" to slaughter the unborn is not just and need not be respected.
What is needed is that we fully submit ourselves to Christ the King and pray that the world as individuals and as whole governments will do the same.
Litany of Christ the King
(For Private Use Only.)
The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and Divinity and wisdom and strength and honor; To Him be glory and empire forever and ever.
V. He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
R. All kings shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ the King, hear us.
Christ the King, graciously hear us.
Thou Who didst receive crowns and tribute from the Magi, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst rule by love the Holy Family of Nazareth, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who as King, served Thy people in the example of filial obedience, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who drawest to Thy realm the fishermen to be fishers of men, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Whose Kingdom is not of the spirit of this world, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who art King not of the Jews alone but of all creation, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast mocked in false purple by the little rulers, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast crowned with piercing thorns, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast nailed to Thy throne on Golgotha, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst ransom Thy people by the royal Sacrifice of Calvary, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst purchase Thy Kingdom with the Blood of the Atonement, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who in Thy Resurrection wert the First-born from the dead, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who in Thy glorified Body art risen triumphant, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who art enthroned and crowned at the right hand of The Father, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
In Whom are all created things in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Beneath Whom are all thrones and dominations. May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Beneath Whom are all principalities and powers, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
By Whom all things subsist, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
To Whom all the nations of the earth are subject, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Through Whom all things are reconciled unto Thy Father, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
V. His power shall be an everlasting power,
R. And His Kingdom a kingdom that shall not be destroyed.
That the peoples of this world may know themselves subject to Thee, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may put off their vainglory, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may dispel the evils laicism has brought upon society,We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may hearken to Thy fiat, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may bow their heads before Thee, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may know Thy reign is eternal, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may submit to Thy just and gentle rule, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may recognize Thy Vicar on earth, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may freely accept his rule for Thy sake, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may know that Thy Church, being Thee Thyself, cannot die as nations die, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That the Gentiles may be restored to mercy, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That to Christ the King all things may be restored, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That in the Prince of Peace true peace may by all be found, We beseech Thee, hear us.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Christ our King.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Hear us, O Christ our King.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.
V. His power shall be an everlasting power,which shall not be taken away,
R. And His Kingdom shall not decay. Alleluia.
Let Us Pray.
Almighty, everlasting God, Who in Thy beloved Son, King of the whole world, hast willed to restore all things anew, grant in Thy mercy that all the families of nations,
rent asunder by the wound of sin, may be subjected to His most gentle rule, Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
I've made no bones about it in recent days... I don't believe in democracy anymore... the great experiment has failed. Our society believes they can rule themselves and completely forget that all power and all authority comes for our Lord Jesus Christ the King. As our Lord told Pilate: "Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above." (John 19:11).
Unfortunately in our culture dominated by anti-Catholicism and ruled by Masonic and Communistic principles I don't see a recovery of Catholic Monarchies any times soon.
I find some Catholics, especially in the United States, are horrified at the idea that there might actually be something wrong with Democracy. And even more so are they repulsed by the idea of a Monarchy. But Monarchy is not bad, in fact, far from it since it is the system God chose to govern the Universe. So those who are against Monarchy as a system are against God. Still the legacy of the French Revolution and ultimately the ideas of the Freemasons pervade our society.
We must not forget the many holy Kings, Emperors, Queens, and Princesses such as Blessed Karl von Hapsburg of recent memory, Blessed Emperor Charlemagne, Saint Henry II king of the Holy Roman Empire, Saint Louis IX king of France, Saint Edgar the Peaceful, Saint Edward King of England, Saint Edmund of East Anglia, Saint Edwin King of Northumbria, Saint Olaf II King of Norway, Saint Stephen King of Hungary, Saint Casimir of Poland, Saint Dagobert II, Saint Hedwig Queen of Poland, Saint Clotilde Queen of Burgundy, Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland, Saint Adelaide Princess of Upper Burgundy, Saint Dymphna daughter of a pagan Irish Chieftain, Saint Matilda of Saxony, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and her niece the princess Saint Elizabeth of Portugal. Not to be forgotten we can add King Solomon, King David, and even Saint Joseph since he indeed was the rightful King of Israel and Herod was but a pretender to the throne.
How can anyone say that monarchy is wrong? What Saints have been leaders of Democratic country? And do not be shortsighted and say think that democracies have only been around a little while and that there just hasn't been time for there to be a Saint. My own heritage speaks to the fact this is not so. Switzerland has been a democratic country since it's inception in 1291 and never has there been a leader who has been a Saint. Though, Saint Nicholas von der Flue (one of the patron Saints of Switzerland) did have a major hand in helping straighten out some problems in the governance of the country. Still even that country which was founded upon the blood of Martyrs (Saint Maurice and his companions) was lost in large part to the lies of John Calvin and have additionally suffered from being so incredibly prosperous for so very long.
This all being said I realize that living in a country that is a democracy I must be subject to their authority in as much as it comes from Christ. However, I will not and Catholics must not be subject to the evil laws and decrees of and evil government. For example: the unconstitutional and besides that purely evil laws protecting people's "right" to slaughter the unborn is not just and need not be respected.
What is needed is that we fully submit ourselves to Christ the King and pray that the world as individuals and as whole governments will do the same.
Litany of Christ the King
(For Private Use Only.)
The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and Divinity and wisdom and strength and honor; To Him be glory and empire forever and ever.
V. He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
R. All kings shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ the King, hear us.
Christ the King, graciously hear us.
Thou Who didst receive crowns and tribute from the Magi, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst rule by love the Holy Family of Nazareth, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who as King, served Thy people in the example of filial obedience, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who drawest to Thy realm the fishermen to be fishers of men, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Whose Kingdom is not of the spirit of this world, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who art King not of the Jews alone but of all creation, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast mocked in false purple by the little rulers, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast crowned with piercing thorns, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who wast nailed to Thy throne on Golgotha, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst ransom Thy people by the royal Sacrifice of Calvary, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who didst purchase Thy Kingdom with the Blood of the Atonement, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who in Thy Resurrection wert the First-born from the dead, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who in Thy glorified Body art risen triumphant, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Who art enthroned and crowned at the right hand of The Father, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
In Whom are all created things in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Beneath Whom are all thrones and dominations. May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Beneath Whom are all principalities and powers, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
By Whom all things subsist, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
To Whom all the nations of the earth are subject, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
Through Whom all things are reconciled unto Thy Father, May all nations serve Thee, O Lord.
V. His power shall be an everlasting power,
R. And His Kingdom a kingdom that shall not be destroyed.
That the peoples of this world may know themselves subject to Thee, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may put off their vainglory, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may dispel the evils laicism has brought upon society,We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may hearken to Thy fiat, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may bow their heads before Thee, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may know Thy reign is eternal, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may submit to Thy just and gentle rule, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may recognize Thy Vicar on earth, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may freely accept his rule for Thy sake, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That they may know that Thy Church, being Thee Thyself, cannot die as nations die, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That the Gentiles may be restored to mercy, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That to Christ the King all things may be restored, We beseech Thee, hear us.
That in the Prince of Peace true peace may by all be found, We beseech Thee, hear us.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Christ our King.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Hear us, O Christ our King.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.
V. His power shall be an everlasting power,which shall not be taken away,
R. And His Kingdom shall not decay. Alleluia.
Let Us Pray.
Almighty, everlasting God, Who in Thy beloved Son, King of the whole world, hast willed to restore all things anew, grant in Thy mercy that all the families of nations,
rent asunder by the wound of sin, may be subjected to His most gentle rule, Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Sep 6, 2008
"O name of the Mother of God, thou art my love."
These are the words of the great Franciscan Doctor of the Church Saint Bonaventure, but they are also very much so the words written on my heart. I have such a deep are great love for the Blessed Virgin Mary our Mother and Queen I hardly know how to articulate it. This love is not something that can be attributed to my own merit however. This love is in fact a great and fantastic gift give to me by our Lady's Son our Lord Jesus Christ the King of all the Universe and Savior of all.
I think now with my birthday approaching how very blessed I have been by being put in the special care of the Blessed Virgin even from the very day of my birth on the feast of Her own Nativity. From the very day I was born I belonged to Her as Her special child. It would be more than eighteen years before I properly recognized this myself when I consecrated myself to our Blessed Lady according to the method of the great devoted son of the Blessed Virgin: Saint Louis Marie de Montfort.
Ever since my consecration my love for our Blessed Mother has grown greater with each passing day. How much She has done for me and continues to do for me. I am astonished, looking back over the past few years, how much I have changed for the better and how much I have grown closer to our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lady has been ever faithful in drawing me closer to Her Son and devotion to Him in ever way but especially in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
I count this great love for our Blessed Mother the greatest gift after by birth into this world and my birth into Christ in Baptism. I count this gift so highly because I know that my salvation will most certainly be assured because of the intercession of our Blessed Lady. As much of a sinner as I am our Lady will not let me be lost. I have seen proof of this by the fact that She has been ever faithful in bringing me to the Sacraments of Holy Mother Church.
To quote another one of the great Franciscan Doctors of the Church Saint Anthony of Padua:
"Seek refuge in Mary because she is the city of refuge. We know that Moses set up three cities of refuge for anyone who inadvertently killed his neighbor. Now the Lord has established a refuge of mercy, Mary, even for those who deliberately commit evil. Mary provides shelter and strength for the sinner."
The great Father and Doctor of the Church Saint Hilary of Poitiers:
“No matter how sinful one may have been, if he has devotion to Mary, it is impossible that he be lost."
And how necessary is devotion to Mary to our Salvation! I'm totally certain that without devotion to Mary it is nearly if not totally impossible to be saved. This comes from the constant teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church.
But I don't wish to put it so much in that perspective that if you don't have devotion to Mary then you wont be saved. Though I think some do need to hear that, I would rather speak of how wonderful devotion to Mary is and why everyone should want to have a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is easy to see from the example of the Saints that they were all without fail devoted to Mary and the greatest Saints were those most devoted to Her.
How much Mary does for those who are devoted to Her. Saint Alphonsus Liguori recounts, in his great work The Glories of Mary, many examples of incredible graces given to those who showed even the tiniest devotion to our Blessed Lady. Our Lady revealed to a number of Saints the many graces that can be won simply by praying three Hail Mary's in the morning and at night. And how great are the promises that our Lady gave to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan for those who will pray the Rosary faithfully until death. So too how great are the wonderful promises to those who wear the Brown Scapular are preform those things necessary to grain the Sabatine
With these few examples of how much can be gained by such small devotions to our Lady when one discovers the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the great Saint Louis Marie deMontfort it is easy to see how incredible it can seem how very much can be gained by this most perfect and greatest of all devotions. And as I mentioned above I made the Consecration prescribed by Montfort in his book and only after that did I begin to preform all of the above devotions.
What a grace I was given to discover this devotion! And not only did I discover this devotion and simply preform the Consecration on the appointed day and then that was that. On the contrary, my life was completely and utterly transformed from the day of my Consecration. How much I owe God for blessing me so much in this way. I feel I am so very unworthy of this great grace.
I think that if I am indeed meant to be a Priest then this special devotion to our Lady that I have been so Blessed with only makes perfect senes. Not that all Catholics shouldn't have a great devotion to Mary and should Consecrate themselves to Her, but it is esspecially important that Priests are particularly devoted to Mary. This point is made quite clear in Saint Alphonsus Liguoris great work Dignities and Duties of the Priest: "For without devotion to the Divine Mother it is morally impossible for anyone to be a good priest."
What makes me so very sad is to see so many Catholics being lukewarm about devotion to Mary or even worse they utterly reject it as somehow detracting from devotion to Jesus. Even some I know who have consecrated themsevles to Mary seem to be quite lax in their devotion to our Blessed Lady, or at least at any rate come no where close to what Montfort spoke of in True Devotion. This great sadness was to be found also in the greatest apostle of total consecration to Mary after Montfort: Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe said the following: "Nothing causes me more suffering than the mediocrity of souls vowed to the Blessed Virgin. I would give my life a thousand times over to sanctify them."
I fearly greatly for those who call themselves Christian or even Catholic and reject their Heavenly Mother and Queen. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church were quite clear that those who rejected devotion to Mary were rejecting Christ and were certain to be lost. Oh how I long for and desire the hearts of these people to be changed and that they may love our Mother as they ought and that they would be saved.
So we must pray and pray hard and offer up sacrifices that all may come to know and love their Blessed Mother and in so doing they will most assuredly be drawn ever closer to our Lord Jesus Christ and Salvation.
"We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour Him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son."
-Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
I think now with my birthday approaching how very blessed I have been by being put in the special care of the Blessed Virgin even from the very day of my birth on the feast of Her own Nativity. From the very day I was born I belonged to Her as Her special child. It would be more than eighteen years before I properly recognized this myself when I consecrated myself to our Blessed Lady according to the method of the great devoted son of the Blessed Virgin: Saint Louis Marie de Montfort.
Ever since my consecration my love for our Blessed Mother has grown greater with each passing day. How much She has done for me and continues to do for me. I am astonished, looking back over the past few years, how much I have changed for the better and how much I have grown closer to our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lady has been ever faithful in drawing me closer to Her Son and devotion to Him in ever way but especially in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
I count this great love for our Blessed Mother the greatest gift after by birth into this world and my birth into Christ in Baptism. I count this gift so highly because I know that my salvation will most certainly be assured because of the intercession of our Blessed Lady. As much of a sinner as I am our Lady will not let me be lost. I have seen proof of this by the fact that She has been ever faithful in bringing me to the Sacraments of Holy Mother Church.
To quote another one of the great Franciscan Doctors of the Church Saint Anthony of Padua:
"Seek refuge in Mary because she is the city of refuge. We know that Moses set up three cities of refuge for anyone who inadvertently killed his neighbor. Now the Lord has established a refuge of mercy, Mary, even for those who deliberately commit evil. Mary provides shelter and strength for the sinner."
The great Father and Doctor of the Church Saint Hilary of Poitiers:
“No matter how sinful one may have been, if he has devotion to Mary, it is impossible that he be lost."
And how necessary is devotion to Mary to our Salvation! I'm totally certain that without devotion to Mary it is nearly if not totally impossible to be saved. This comes from the constant teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church.
But I don't wish to put it so much in that perspective that if you don't have devotion to Mary then you wont be saved. Though I think some do need to hear that, I would rather speak of how wonderful devotion to Mary is and why everyone should want to have a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is easy to see from the example of the Saints that they were all without fail devoted to Mary and the greatest Saints were those most devoted to Her.
How much Mary does for those who are devoted to Her. Saint Alphonsus Liguori recounts, in his great work The Glories of Mary, many examples of incredible graces given to those who showed even the tiniest devotion to our Blessed Lady. Our Lady revealed to a number of Saints the many graces that can be won simply by praying three Hail Mary's in the morning and at night. And how great are the promises that our Lady gave to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan for those who will pray the Rosary faithfully until death. So too how great are the wonderful promises to those who wear the Brown Scapular are preform those things necessary to grain the Sabatine
With these few examples of how much can be gained by such small devotions to our Lady when one discovers the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the great Saint Louis Marie deMontfort it is easy to see how incredible it can seem how very much can be gained by this most perfect and greatest of all devotions. And as I mentioned above I made the Consecration prescribed by Montfort in his book and only after that did I begin to preform all of the above devotions.
What a grace I was given to discover this devotion! And not only did I discover this devotion and simply preform the Consecration on the appointed day and then that was that. On the contrary, my life was completely and utterly transformed from the day of my Consecration. How much I owe God for blessing me so much in this way. I feel I am so very unworthy of this great grace.
I think that if I am indeed meant to be a Priest then this special devotion to our Lady that I have been so Blessed with only makes perfect senes. Not that all Catholics shouldn't have a great devotion to Mary and should Consecrate themselves to Her, but it is esspecially important that Priests are particularly devoted to Mary. This point is made quite clear in Saint Alphonsus Liguoris great work Dignities and Duties of the Priest: "For without devotion to the Divine Mother it is morally impossible for anyone to be a good priest."
What makes me so very sad is to see so many Catholics being lukewarm about devotion to Mary or even worse they utterly reject it as somehow detracting from devotion to Jesus. Even some I know who have consecrated themsevles to Mary seem to be quite lax in their devotion to our Blessed Lady, or at least at any rate come no where close to what Montfort spoke of in True Devotion. This great sadness was to be found also in the greatest apostle of total consecration to Mary after Montfort: Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe said the following: "Nothing causes me more suffering than the mediocrity of souls vowed to the Blessed Virgin. I would give my life a thousand times over to sanctify them."
I fearly greatly for those who call themselves Christian or even Catholic and reject their Heavenly Mother and Queen. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church were quite clear that those who rejected devotion to Mary were rejecting Christ and were certain to be lost. Oh how I long for and desire the hearts of these people to be changed and that they may love our Mother as they ought and that they would be saved.
So we must pray and pray hard and offer up sacrifices that all may come to know and love their Blessed Mother and in so doing they will most assuredly be drawn ever closer to our Lord Jesus Christ and Salvation.
"We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour Him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son."
-Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
Aug 22, 2008
"God was Worshipped Here Today"
The quote I have taken as the title of this post comes from an article from this past may. It was concerning a particularly special Mass said at a historic parish in New Orleans that has constantly said the Traditional Latin Mass throughout it's history. After the end of this particularly special Mass, which was to commemorate the 175 anniversary of the Parish, one old woman said those words.
Now I have found more and more in the past few years that often one remark or comment will stick with me for some reason and I just keep coming back to it and thinking about it and meditating on it in a sense. Often it serves to help me refine in my mind how I look at things and work out things that are troubling me.
In this case, as would make sense, this comment has stuck with me and has caused me to think long and hard about what it truely means to properly worship God. The Liturgy of the Roman Rite, as anyone who knows me can attest, has consumed my free time for the last 2 years. I have read many different things and talked with many people who are quite knowledgeable.
In the last 3 years I have gone to Mass around 1000 times and around 100 of those were the Traditional Latin Mass along with around 10 Eastern Rite Liturgies (Melkite and Ruthenian Rites). Those 100+ non Novus Ordo Liturgies were also all in the last 1.5 years. So I should like to think I am somewhat well versed in the typical Novus Ordo and also being in the second most conservative Diocese in the United States I do believe I have seen a much higher quality Novus Ordo than you might find in the rest of the country and probably most of the world. So when I talk about the "average Novus Ordo" I am not talking about those truely horrendous monstrosities people try to call Mass, which I think are more often than not quite invalid.
That said I believe that the Novus Ordo is simply not what Christ envisioned the Mass to be nor does it properly fulfill the four ends of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Adoration, Thanksgiving, Atonement, and Impetration or the offering up of prayers.
Before I go any further I would like to make it very clear that I DO NOT believe the Novus Ordo is invalid. I do think it is most often celebrated in some way illicitly which leads to a tendency of many more invalid Masses than we have had in the past. That said I will now lay out the major reasons for my beliefs...
The first reason I believe that the Novus Ordo is wrong is simply that when I go to the Novus Ordo and when I go to the Traditional Roman Rite Mass there is a clear and distinct difference in the orientation and attitude of the Priest and congregation. There is a fundamental disorientation of focus the Mass as being principally a Sacrifice to being some sort of communal meal where everyone gathers around and more often than not end up essentially worshiping themselves instead of God. This was most evident to me in the music often used in the Novus Ordo, particularly the so called "praise and worship" music often employing a guitar, that clearly is not focused on God. I wonder if people realize that often times the music they are singing is praising and worshiping themselves more than God. Just read some of these songs and then read the wonderful old Latin Hymns composed by the great Saints. The focus of these new songs are usually "we we we... me me me... you you you... us us us"... only referring to themselves and how they are going to worship God and going to do all of these wonderful things for Him. Instead of actually worshiping God there and then and talking only about Him and never mentioning themselves.
The second reason is that the Novus Ordo follows up the first... I know that many will make the argument something to the effect of "well but you are judging the Novus Ordo by it being done improperly" and yes I am in this case, but then as I have said it is essentially never said properly. I have only every seen the Novus Ordo said properly at one parish by the priests there and that was only once a week at night and that regular Mass has now been replaced by the Traditional Roman Rite Mass. And I know that there were in fact others like this where the Mass was said properly and that means the Priest facing Versus Deum or toward God in the same direction as the people and the Mass was said entirely in Latin and the Mass in general was said in an incredibly reverent way as Mass should always be done. So can the Novus Ordo be said reverently? Yes it can... but it has been my experience and the experience of priests I have talked to and have read accounts of that it is extremely difficult to said the Novus Ordo as reverently as the Mass should be said because of the very nature of the Novus Ordo. I know also that there were other places doing the same as what I have described this parish I went to was doing. But every single one without fail has now converted those extremely reverent and properly said Novus Ordos into saying instead the Traditional Roman Rite Mass. And I have to ask myself... Why is that? I believe the answer is that even when properly said that by its very nature and the inferiority of it's prayers and general structure that the Novus Ordo is still defective when compared with the Liturgy as it has been for all the history of the Church before 1969.
My third reason is as follows... I have long been very interested in the Eastern Rites and when I became interested in studying the Liturgy of the Roman Rite I was very interested in witnessing an Eastern Rite Liturgy. Nearly one year ago now on my birthday the Nativity of the Theotokos I attended a Divine Liturgy in the Melkite Rite of the Catholic Church. This experience was very powerful and my first impression of it and the subsequent development after further experience was that it was clearly nothing like the Novus Ordo and while radically different in some ways was actually very similar to the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass. This of course makes sense... as both of these Liturgies developed from the same common point... the Last Supper. The Novus Ordo was written by an Archbishop (who was later suspected of being a Freemason by Pope Paul VI) with the help of 6 protestant ministers. Though I could quote many many things here I will leave it at two... one form the Archbishop and the other from our current Holy Father...
"We must discard from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything that could constitute the slightest risk of obstacle or displeasure for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."
-Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, principal author of the Novus Ordo liturgical reforms, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965
"What happened at the Council was something else entirely: in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living, process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it - as in a manufacturing process - with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product."
-Pope Benedict XVI, From the preface to the French edition of "Reforms of the Roman Liturgy Its Problems and Background" 1993
The glorious Liturgy that had been instituted by Christ and then developed through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the years was replaced with a "a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product." Incidentally this has had far reaching consequences namely the fact that we have severely wounded our relations with our schismatic Eastern brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Church. Thankfully there does seem to be a great deal of hope now that our Holy Father Pope Benedict has put forth his Moto Proprio Summorum Pontificum. This act of restoring the Traditional Liturgy of the Roman Rite has in fact greatly improved our relations with the Eastern Orthodox and I hope and pray that it does, in the end, lead to their return to the One True Church.
The fourth reason is simply that the Novus Ordo should never have existed in the first place. I will give anyone a million dollars if they can find in any Vatican II document that said an entirely new Mass should be written with an entirely new reading cycle that was radically different from any other form of Catholic Liturgy that had every existed. And in addition that there would be an entirely new version of the Divine Office (now called the Liturgy of the Hours), and a host of other things I don't care to get into right here. I say that... because there is no such thing in any of the documents. The Liturgical reform of the Council was realized in the 1965 Missal. I have one.... its nothing like the Novus Ordo... it is the Traditional Roman Rite Mass... with a few changes. Yet when that reform of the Liturgy was released almost at the same time Bugnini began to write a whole new Mass that would be promulgated in 1969 and would then result in the illegal banning of the Traditional form of Mass in 1971. This of course caused many many to leave the Catholic Church... this I know from from people who actually lived through the times.
The fifth and final reason... as I have said before I have spent the past 2 years studying the Traditional Roman Rite Liturgy. I have read many different things about this issue from both sides and have even taken great pains to look closely at the actual text of the Novus Ordo and its prayers and then compare them to the text and prayers of the Traditional Roman Rite. I found the differences shocking and scandalous, but thanks be to God my faith always remained strong in the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. Sadly I cannot say the same for many I know who have left the Church. Even my best friend was on the brink of leaving the Church because of this and thanks be to God he was preserved from that terrible evil most assuredly through the intercession of our Blessed Lady who I know preserved me as well. And so the more I read and the more I studied the more I began to believe that there was something wrong with the Novus Ordo. I think though that just about everything I have read and all of my reasons for believing all that I have stated above can be narrowed down to four incredible books:
-"The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy" by Adrian Fortescue
-"Explanation of the Holy Mass" by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.
-"How Christ Said the First Mass" by Father James L. Meagher D.D.
-"The Reform of the Roman Liturgy" by Monsignor Klaus Gamber (a personal friend of Cardinal Ratzinger who wrote the preface to the French edition of the book... part of which I quote above)
These three books show clearly as I stated that the Novus Ordo is simply not what Christ envisioned the Mass to be. I would highly recommend them to anyone who wants to really know something about the Liturgy and what it is suppose to be.
This is God being properly worshiped...
Traditional Roman Rite
Dominican Rite Mass
Eastern Rite Divine Liturgy
Now I have found more and more in the past few years that often one remark or comment will stick with me for some reason and I just keep coming back to it and thinking about it and meditating on it in a sense. Often it serves to help me refine in my mind how I look at things and work out things that are troubling me.
In this case, as would make sense, this comment has stuck with me and has caused me to think long and hard about what it truely means to properly worship God. The Liturgy of the Roman Rite, as anyone who knows me can attest, has consumed my free time for the last 2 years. I have read many different things and talked with many people who are quite knowledgeable.
In the last 3 years I have gone to Mass around 1000 times and around 100 of those were the Traditional Latin Mass along with around 10 Eastern Rite Liturgies (Melkite and Ruthenian Rites). Those 100+ non Novus Ordo Liturgies were also all in the last 1.5 years. So I should like to think I am somewhat well versed in the typical Novus Ordo and also being in the second most conservative Diocese in the United States I do believe I have seen a much higher quality Novus Ordo than you might find in the rest of the country and probably most of the world. So when I talk about the "average Novus Ordo" I am not talking about those truely horrendous monstrosities people try to call Mass, which I think are more often than not quite invalid.
That said I believe that the Novus Ordo is simply not what Christ envisioned the Mass to be nor does it properly fulfill the four ends of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Adoration, Thanksgiving, Atonement, and Impetration or the offering up of prayers.
Before I go any further I would like to make it very clear that I DO NOT believe the Novus Ordo is invalid. I do think it is most often celebrated in some way illicitly which leads to a tendency of many more invalid Masses than we have had in the past. That said I will now lay out the major reasons for my beliefs...
The first reason I believe that the Novus Ordo is wrong is simply that when I go to the Novus Ordo and when I go to the Traditional Roman Rite Mass there is a clear and distinct difference in the orientation and attitude of the Priest and congregation. There is a fundamental disorientation of focus the Mass as being principally a Sacrifice to being some sort of communal meal where everyone gathers around and more often than not end up essentially worshiping themselves instead of God. This was most evident to me in the music often used in the Novus Ordo, particularly the so called "praise and worship" music often employing a guitar, that clearly is not focused on God. I wonder if people realize that often times the music they are singing is praising and worshiping themselves more than God. Just read some of these songs and then read the wonderful old Latin Hymns composed by the great Saints. The focus of these new songs are usually "we we we... me me me... you you you... us us us"... only referring to themselves and how they are going to worship God and going to do all of these wonderful things for Him. Instead of actually worshiping God there and then and talking only about Him and never mentioning themselves.
The second reason is that the Novus Ordo follows up the first... I know that many will make the argument something to the effect of "well but you are judging the Novus Ordo by it being done improperly" and yes I am in this case, but then as I have said it is essentially never said properly. I have only every seen the Novus Ordo said properly at one parish by the priests there and that was only once a week at night and that regular Mass has now been replaced by the Traditional Roman Rite Mass. And I know that there were in fact others like this where the Mass was said properly and that means the Priest facing Versus Deum or toward God in the same direction as the people and the Mass was said entirely in Latin and the Mass in general was said in an incredibly reverent way as Mass should always be done. So can the Novus Ordo be said reverently? Yes it can... but it has been my experience and the experience of priests I have talked to and have read accounts of that it is extremely difficult to said the Novus Ordo as reverently as the Mass should be said because of the very nature of the Novus Ordo. I know also that there were other places doing the same as what I have described this parish I went to was doing. But every single one without fail has now converted those extremely reverent and properly said Novus Ordos into saying instead the Traditional Roman Rite Mass. And I have to ask myself... Why is that? I believe the answer is that even when properly said that by its very nature and the inferiority of it's prayers and general structure that the Novus Ordo is still defective when compared with the Liturgy as it has been for all the history of the Church before 1969.
My third reason is as follows... I have long been very interested in the Eastern Rites and when I became interested in studying the Liturgy of the Roman Rite I was very interested in witnessing an Eastern Rite Liturgy. Nearly one year ago now on my birthday the Nativity of the Theotokos I attended a Divine Liturgy in the Melkite Rite of the Catholic Church. This experience was very powerful and my first impression of it and the subsequent development after further experience was that it was clearly nothing like the Novus Ordo and while radically different in some ways was actually very similar to the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass. This of course makes sense... as both of these Liturgies developed from the same common point... the Last Supper. The Novus Ordo was written by an Archbishop (who was later suspected of being a Freemason by Pope Paul VI) with the help of 6 protestant ministers. Though I could quote many many things here I will leave it at two... one form the Archbishop and the other from our current Holy Father...
"We must discard from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything that could constitute the slightest risk of obstacle or displeasure for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."
-Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, principal author of the Novus Ordo liturgical reforms, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965
"What happened at the Council was something else entirely: in the place of the liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living, process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it - as in a manufacturing process - with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product."
-Pope Benedict XVI, From the preface to the French edition of "Reforms of the Roman Liturgy Its Problems and Background" 1993
The glorious Liturgy that had been instituted by Christ and then developed through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the years was replaced with a "a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product." Incidentally this has had far reaching consequences namely the fact that we have severely wounded our relations with our schismatic Eastern brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Church. Thankfully there does seem to be a great deal of hope now that our Holy Father Pope Benedict has put forth his Moto Proprio Summorum Pontificum. This act of restoring the Traditional Liturgy of the Roman Rite has in fact greatly improved our relations with the Eastern Orthodox and I hope and pray that it does, in the end, lead to their return to the One True Church.
The fourth reason is simply that the Novus Ordo should never have existed in the first place. I will give anyone a million dollars if they can find in any Vatican II document that said an entirely new Mass should be written with an entirely new reading cycle that was radically different from any other form of Catholic Liturgy that had every existed. And in addition that there would be an entirely new version of the Divine Office (now called the Liturgy of the Hours), and a host of other things I don't care to get into right here. I say that... because there is no such thing in any of the documents. The Liturgical reform of the Council was realized in the 1965 Missal. I have one.... its nothing like the Novus Ordo... it is the Traditional Roman Rite Mass... with a few changes. Yet when that reform of the Liturgy was released almost at the same time Bugnini began to write a whole new Mass that would be promulgated in 1969 and would then result in the illegal banning of the Traditional form of Mass in 1971. This of course caused many many to leave the Catholic Church... this I know from from people who actually lived through the times.
The fifth and final reason... as I have said before I have spent the past 2 years studying the Traditional Roman Rite Liturgy. I have read many different things about this issue from both sides and have even taken great pains to look closely at the actual text of the Novus Ordo and its prayers and then compare them to the text and prayers of the Traditional Roman Rite. I found the differences shocking and scandalous, but thanks be to God my faith always remained strong in the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. Sadly I cannot say the same for many I know who have left the Church. Even my best friend was on the brink of leaving the Church because of this and thanks be to God he was preserved from that terrible evil most assuredly through the intercession of our Blessed Lady who I know preserved me as well. And so the more I read and the more I studied the more I began to believe that there was something wrong with the Novus Ordo. I think though that just about everything I have read and all of my reasons for believing all that I have stated above can be narrowed down to four incredible books:
-"The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy" by Adrian Fortescue
-"Explanation of the Holy Mass" by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.
-"How Christ Said the First Mass" by Father James L. Meagher D.D.
-"The Reform of the Roman Liturgy" by Monsignor Klaus Gamber (a personal friend of Cardinal Ratzinger who wrote the preface to the French edition of the book... part of which I quote above)
These three books show clearly as I stated that the Novus Ordo is simply not what Christ envisioned the Mass to be. I would highly recommend them to anyone who wants to really know something about the Liturgy and what it is suppose to be.
This is God being properly worshiped...
Traditional Roman Rite
Dominican Rite Mass
Eastern Rite Divine LiturgyJul 20, 2008
"The Wonderful Latin Mass"
Who would guess that the title of this post is a quote from the satanic rocker Jerry Garcia. But the truth cannot be hidden. It is just as it was when the Saints have forced demons to confess the truths of the faith as is related by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort in his The Secret of the Rosary telling an event in the ministry of the great Saint Dominic...
“There is another related in the Chronicles of St. Dominic. Near Carcassonne, where St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary, there was an unfortunate heretic who was possessed by a multitude of devils. These evil spirits to their confusion were compelled at the command of our Lady to confess many great and consoling truths concerning devotion to her. They did this so clearly and forcibly that, however weak our devotion to our Lady may be, we cannot read this authentic story containing such an unwilling tribute paid by the devils to devotion to our Lady without shedding tears of joy.”
I have talked so much about the history and the evolution of the Liturgy and all of the various aspects of the old Rite and the new and how they compare. What I want to talk about, however, is something that was said by the great catholic historian Hilaire Belloc wrote in his wonderful work: "The Great Heresies"...
"Now against the great heresies, when they acquire the driving power of being the new and fashionable thing, there arises a reaction within the Christian and Catholic mind, which reaction gradually turns the current backward, gets rid of the poison and re-establishes Christian civilization. Such reactions, begin, I repeat, obscurely. It is the plain man who gets uncomfortable and says to himself, "This may be the fashion of the moment, but I don't like it." It is the mass of Christian men who feel in their bones that there is something wrong, though they have difficulty in explaining it. The reaction is usually slow and muddled and for a long time not successful. But in the long run with internal heresy it has always succeeded; just as the native health of the human body succeeds in getting rid of some internal infection."
I believe this very thing is happening today in the Church in a way that has never happened before, because the Church has never been in a worse position in it history... except maybe when 11 of the first 12 Bishops deserted our Lord... and one of them in fact totally betrayed him... and even the first Pope was among those that deserted Christ.
But today when there is so much evil in the Church and has been for so long and yet nothing is being done about it by anyone... not the Priests... and not the Bishops and certainly not the Popes up until Pope Benedict. I think Pope Benedict said it plainly just before his election...
"How much Christ suffers in his own Church. How often is the Holy Sacrament of His real presence abused. How often must He enter empty and evil hearts. How often do we celebrate only ourselves without even realizing that He is there. How often is His word twisted and misused. What little faith is present behind so many theories and so many empty words. How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those in the priesthood who should belong entirely to Him. How much pride. How much self complacency. What little respect for the sacrament of reconciliation where He waits for us to raise us up whenever we fall. How much filth there is. How much filth."
But our Holy Father is doing his best to fix these problems. Yet he is still being resisted by nearly all the Bishop and openly defied by a number of them. And I look at how bad things have gotten where 90% of lay Catholic School Religion Teachers are not Catholic because of the fact that they descent on essential Church teaching. And after listening to a retreat he gave for Priests I was just totally struck by the thoughts of the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen... he (in th 1970s) was talking about how he believe we were headed for much smaller Church that will be the remnant of the many "Catholics" we see out there today. He compared it to the story of Gideon in the old Testament.
The scary thing is that I see so many who are dissenting from the essential teachings of the faith or at best they are extremely confused, misled, or simply totally ignorant. And I am so terrified for them and I pray like crazy and I try to talk to them and to inform them... but either my delivery is bad or they simply do not want to hear the truth... they are hard truths and I can understand why they would struggle with them... but at some point we have to grow up and face reality and start trusting in God and accepting truth... which He has been so gracious to give to us via His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
I want no one to go to hell... despite what some have said... I pray every single day for the salvation of all of my family, friends, the whole Church, and for the whole world. But I am so sad and lament as did the great Saints and Doctors of the Church...
“For many are called but few chosen.”
-Matthew 20:16
“What do you think? How many of the inhabitants of this city may perhaps be saved? What I am about to tell you is very terrible, yet I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that!”
-St. John Chrysostom, Father and Doctor of the Church
“Those who are saved are in the minority.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas,Doctor of the Church
“So vast a number of miserable souls perish, and so comparatively few are saved!”
-St. Philip Neri
“Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.”
-St. Jerome, Father and Doctor of the Church
“Yes, indeed, many will be damned; few will be saved.”
-St. Benedict Joseph Labre
“A great number of Christians are lost.”
-St. Leonard of Port Maurice
“The common opinion is that the greater part of adults is lost.”
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“The number of the elect is so small — so small — that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief: one here and there, scattered up and down the world!”
-St. Louis Marie de Montfort
“St. Teresa, as the Roman Rota attests, never fell into any mortal sin; but still Our Lord showed her the place prepared for her in hell; not because she deserved hell, but because, had she not risen from the state of lukewarmness in which she lived, she would in the end have lost the grace of God and been damned.”
-St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“They who are to be saved as Saints, and wish to be saved as imperfect souls, shall not be saved.”
-Pope St. Gregory the Great, Father and Doctor of the Church
“We were so fortunate to be born in the bosom of the Roman Church, in Christian and Catholic kingdoms, a grace that has not been granted to the greater part of men, who are born among idolaters, Mohammedans, or heretics. [...] How thankful we ought to be, then, to Jesus Christ for the gift of faith! What would have become of us if we had been born in Asia, in Africa, in America, or in the midsts of heretics and schismatics? He who does not believe is lost. He who does not believe shall be condemned. And thus, probably, we also would have been lost.”
-St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“Taking into account the behavior of mankind, only a small part of the human race will be saved.”
-Lucy of Fatima
So pray and pray fervently and follow all of the true teachings of the Church... and to do this make sure you actually read the infallible declarations from the Popes and Councils and please... please... use good orthodox sources like the Roman Catechism... and please don't rely on the extremely confusing teaching of Vatican II and the New Catechism. And please go to the old Roman Rite Mass and the traditional Eastern Rite Liturgies and open yourself to the traditions of the Church... they have been producing Saints for nearly 2000 years.
"Do not innovate anything. Rest content with Tradition."
-Pope Saint Stephen
“Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
“There is another related in the Chronicles of St. Dominic. Near Carcassonne, where St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary, there was an unfortunate heretic who was possessed by a multitude of devils. These evil spirits to their confusion were compelled at the command of our Lady to confess many great and consoling truths concerning devotion to her. They did this so clearly and forcibly that, however weak our devotion to our Lady may be, we cannot read this authentic story containing such an unwilling tribute paid by the devils to devotion to our Lady without shedding tears of joy.”
I have talked so much about the history and the evolution of the Liturgy and all of the various aspects of the old Rite and the new and how they compare. What I want to talk about, however, is something that was said by the great catholic historian Hilaire Belloc wrote in his wonderful work: "The Great Heresies"...
"Now against the great heresies, when they acquire the driving power of being the new and fashionable thing, there arises a reaction within the Christian and Catholic mind, which reaction gradually turns the current backward, gets rid of the poison and re-establishes Christian civilization. Such reactions, begin, I repeat, obscurely. It is the plain man who gets uncomfortable and says to himself, "This may be the fashion of the moment, but I don't like it." It is the mass of Christian men who feel in their bones that there is something wrong, though they have difficulty in explaining it. The reaction is usually slow and muddled and for a long time not successful. But in the long run with internal heresy it has always succeeded; just as the native health of the human body succeeds in getting rid of some internal infection."
I believe this very thing is happening today in the Church in a way that has never happened before, because the Church has never been in a worse position in it history... except maybe when 11 of the first 12 Bishops deserted our Lord... and one of them in fact totally betrayed him... and even the first Pope was among those that deserted Christ.
But today when there is so much evil in the Church and has been for so long and yet nothing is being done about it by anyone... not the Priests... and not the Bishops and certainly not the Popes up until Pope Benedict. I think Pope Benedict said it plainly just before his election...
"How much Christ suffers in his own Church. How often is the Holy Sacrament of His real presence abused. How often must He enter empty and evil hearts. How often do we celebrate only ourselves without even realizing that He is there. How often is His word twisted and misused. What little faith is present behind so many theories and so many empty words. How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those in the priesthood who should belong entirely to Him. How much pride. How much self complacency. What little respect for the sacrament of reconciliation where He waits for us to raise us up whenever we fall. How much filth there is. How much filth."
But our Holy Father is doing his best to fix these problems. Yet he is still being resisted by nearly all the Bishop and openly defied by a number of them. And I look at how bad things have gotten where 90% of lay Catholic School Religion Teachers are not Catholic because of the fact that they descent on essential Church teaching. And after listening to a retreat he gave for Priests I was just totally struck by the thoughts of the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen... he (in th 1970s) was talking about how he believe we were headed for much smaller Church that will be the remnant of the many "Catholics" we see out there today. He compared it to the story of Gideon in the old Testament.
The scary thing is that I see so many who are dissenting from the essential teachings of the faith or at best they are extremely confused, misled, or simply totally ignorant. And I am so terrified for them and I pray like crazy and I try to talk to them and to inform them... but either my delivery is bad or they simply do not want to hear the truth... they are hard truths and I can understand why they would struggle with them... but at some point we have to grow up and face reality and start trusting in God and accepting truth... which He has been so gracious to give to us via His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
I want no one to go to hell... despite what some have said... I pray every single day for the salvation of all of my family, friends, the whole Church, and for the whole world. But I am so sad and lament as did the great Saints and Doctors of the Church...
“For many are called but few chosen.”
-Matthew 20:16
“What do you think? How many of the inhabitants of this city may perhaps be saved? What I am about to tell you is very terrible, yet I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that!”
-St. John Chrysostom, Father and Doctor of the Church
“Those who are saved are in the minority.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas,Doctor of the Church
“So vast a number of miserable souls perish, and so comparatively few are saved!”
-St. Philip Neri
“Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.”
-St. Jerome, Father and Doctor of the Church
“Yes, indeed, many will be damned; few will be saved.”
-St. Benedict Joseph Labre
“A great number of Christians are lost.”
-St. Leonard of Port Maurice
“The common opinion is that the greater part of adults is lost.”
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“The number of the elect is so small — so small — that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief: one here and there, scattered up and down the world!”
-St. Louis Marie de Montfort
“St. Teresa, as the Roman Rota attests, never fell into any mortal sin; but still Our Lord showed her the place prepared for her in hell; not because she deserved hell, but because, had she not risen from the state of lukewarmness in which she lived, she would in the end have lost the grace of God and been damned.”
-St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“They who are to be saved as Saints, and wish to be saved as imperfect souls, shall not be saved.”
-Pope St. Gregory the Great, Father and Doctor of the Church
“We were so fortunate to be born in the bosom of the Roman Church, in Christian and Catholic kingdoms, a grace that has not been granted to the greater part of men, who are born among idolaters, Mohammedans, or heretics. [...] How thankful we ought to be, then, to Jesus Christ for the gift of faith! What would have become of us if we had been born in Asia, in Africa, in America, or in the midsts of heretics and schismatics? He who does not believe is lost. He who does not believe shall be condemned. And thus, probably, we also would have been lost.”
-St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori, Doctor of the Church
“Taking into account the behavior of mankind, only a small part of the human race will be saved.”
-Lucy of Fatima
So pray and pray fervently and follow all of the true teachings of the Church... and to do this make sure you actually read the infallible declarations from the Popes and Councils and please... please... use good orthodox sources like the Roman Catechism... and please don't rely on the extremely confusing teaching of Vatican II and the New Catechism. And please go to the old Roman Rite Mass and the traditional Eastern Rite Liturgies and open yourself to the traditions of the Church... they have been producing Saints for nearly 2000 years.
"Do not innovate anything. Rest content with Tradition."
-Pope Saint Stephen
“Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
Jul 14, 2008
Another wierd dream...
Well the last time I blogged about a dream I had was over a year ago on the feast of Corpus Christi and that was a horrible dream. But today on the Feast of Saint Bonaventure I have another dream to relate that was not so much horrible as it was just very strange.
I have long had very strange and interesting dreams (at least interesting to me) and I know we cannot put much stock in our dreams since even if they are suppose to mean something we aren't Joseph son of Isaac who was given the wisdom to figure out the meaning of the dreams given to Pharao. But since dreams are suppose to be our thoughts working themselves out while we sleep I usually try to figure out what my mind was thinking when it mushed all my thoughts together into a dream.
So for the dream... this morning I woke up at 5am when my alarm went off but promptly fell back asleep for about 30 mins...
I was sitting in some sort of a small conference hall or something with a small stage and someone was giving a talk about something. My mother was sitting in the chair next to me which seemed somewhat strange considering what I would find out next in my dream. When I looked back up to the person speaking I saw that it was in fact the wonderful Catholic speaker Matthew Kelly. Now while he is certainly not a Traditionalist he seems like a great guy and is right on the money when it comes to the problems in the Church, but seems to miss the point when it comes to why there are problems in the Church and what the real valid solutions are. So this too made little sense that it was him when I then noticed he was wearing a very strange outfit.... he was wearing a long brown robe like thing that looked almost like a habit, but then I realized it was actually a Cassock... but a brown Cassock... very odd since I've never seen anything other than a Black (Priest), Purple (Bishop), Red (Cardinal), or White (Pope) Cassock. And then even more strange he had a Black T-Shirt on over it with a picture on it that was one of those that look like an ink stamp... and the picture was of the Old Mass and I believe said something like: "Traditional Latin Mass" on it or something.
I don't really remember anything else about it and I woke up and need to run off to get to Mass and work though it turned out that I couldn't go to work since the building was closed for the day because of a fire last night.
In any case here are my thoughts on the dream... I think first of all that the brown cassock conveys my inner turmoil about whether I should be a secular Priest (and where a regular black Cassock) or become a Carmelite Monk (and where a brown habit) even though I'm becoming more and more certain that I am called to the Priesthood out in the world. I think there are a lot of reasons for the Latin Mass T-Shirt (I actually woke up and thought I would make one because I liked the idea so much), but it could be maybe that Matthew Kelly was a symbol of the Church and the T-Shirt symbolized the return of the Church to Tradition by our Holy Father Pope Benedict. But then I also think that Matthew Kelly might symbolize Australia as that is where he is from and where World Youth Day is currently being held. I really am not sure about my mother and why she was there exactly... maybe it is a symbol of my hope that good orthodox teachers of the faith will eventually convert her... or maybe it has nothing to do with anything.... who knows.
So I just thought I would share... since I always love hearing about a good dream... especially when it involves me saying Mass in Red Fiddleback *wink*.
God Bless you all and please pray for me!
The T-Shirt looked kinda looked like this... but this wasn't the picture because it was a lot bigger and showed an entire Church full of people and it was a Solemn High Mass not a Low Mass.
I have long had very strange and interesting dreams (at least interesting to me) and I know we cannot put much stock in our dreams since even if they are suppose to mean something we aren't Joseph son of Isaac who was given the wisdom to figure out the meaning of the dreams given to Pharao. But since dreams are suppose to be our thoughts working themselves out while we sleep I usually try to figure out what my mind was thinking when it mushed all my thoughts together into a dream.
So for the dream... this morning I woke up at 5am when my alarm went off but promptly fell back asleep for about 30 mins...
I was sitting in some sort of a small conference hall or something with a small stage and someone was giving a talk about something. My mother was sitting in the chair next to me which seemed somewhat strange considering what I would find out next in my dream. When I looked back up to the person speaking I saw that it was in fact the wonderful Catholic speaker Matthew Kelly. Now while he is certainly not a Traditionalist he seems like a great guy and is right on the money when it comes to the problems in the Church, but seems to miss the point when it comes to why there are problems in the Church and what the real valid solutions are. So this too made little sense that it was him when I then noticed he was wearing a very strange outfit.... he was wearing a long brown robe like thing that looked almost like a habit, but then I realized it was actually a Cassock... but a brown Cassock... very odd since I've never seen anything other than a Black (Priest), Purple (Bishop), Red (Cardinal), or White (Pope) Cassock. And then even more strange he had a Black T-Shirt on over it with a picture on it that was one of those that look like an ink stamp... and the picture was of the Old Mass and I believe said something like: "Traditional Latin Mass" on it or something.
I don't really remember anything else about it and I woke up and need to run off to get to Mass and work though it turned out that I couldn't go to work since the building was closed for the day because of a fire last night.
In any case here are my thoughts on the dream... I think first of all that the brown cassock conveys my inner turmoil about whether I should be a secular Priest (and where a regular black Cassock) or become a Carmelite Monk (and where a brown habit) even though I'm becoming more and more certain that I am called to the Priesthood out in the world. I think there are a lot of reasons for the Latin Mass T-Shirt (I actually woke up and thought I would make one because I liked the idea so much), but it could be maybe that Matthew Kelly was a symbol of the Church and the T-Shirt symbolized the return of the Church to Tradition by our Holy Father Pope Benedict. But then I also think that Matthew Kelly might symbolize Australia as that is where he is from and where World Youth Day is currently being held. I really am not sure about my mother and why she was there exactly... maybe it is a symbol of my hope that good orthodox teachers of the faith will eventually convert her... or maybe it has nothing to do with anything.... who knows.
So I just thought I would share... since I always love hearing about a good dream... especially when it involves me saying Mass in Red Fiddleback *wink*.
God Bless you all and please pray for me!
The T-Shirt looked kinda looked like this... but this wasn't the picture because it was a lot bigger and showed an entire Church full of people and it was a Solemn High Mass not a Low Mass.Jul 13, 2008
God is good...
When you actually stop worrying about everything in your life and all the things that could go wrong and all the things you don't really have control over and just put your full trust in God things immediately get better. If you are living you life by adhering to the teachings of Christ and the precepts of His holy Catholic Church and working hard to grow in holiness then you really don't have anything to worry about anyway. God will take care of you - of that I have no doubt. I have seen God do so very much for me in my just over two decades of life in this earth and I image that if it is His will for me to be here for yet a few more then there will be many more things done for me by Him.
As my patron the great Saint Luke, inspired by the Holy Ghost, writes in his Gospel:
"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows. And I say to you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God." (Luke 12:6-8)
The more I have learned about the faith in recent days I have found the more I wonder at the immense graces God has showered upon me. I also realize just how very much I've needed these graces. When I tell people about my family after already knowing me as far as my faith and devotion, and especially if they know I'm planning on entering a Traditional Catholic Seminary, they are shocked that I am even Catholic at all. And I too wonder at that fact that I am where I am today. Nothing short of an incredible outpouring of grace has preserved me through my life and especially High School and College.
God has seen fit to always put just the right people at the right time in my life. I think of the amazing friends I've had that I was so very close to for a time when I most needed them and then suddenly they disappeared, in a sense, from my life, and just when this would happen a new friend would step in and fill their place.
I am certain that by far the greatest grace God has bestowed upon me is giving me the grace to have such a powerful devotion to our Lady. I know I have been placed in here care from the moment of my birth. Born on the Feast of her Nativity I have always shared a special bond with our Blessed Mother. It was not until May 7th, 2005 that I would totally give myself to our Lady in a total Consecration to her which absolutely changed my life. And I think of all the many small events that had to connect together in order that I should do this consecration which I did not really understand the importance of when I was first asked to do it and then not even until about a month or two after I had completed it.
I know that by this special gift of His Blessed Mother too me in such an amazing way Jesus has assured me my salvation. I am in our Ladies care and I know she will make sure I live a Holy life and become a Saint even despite what I may do to put up barriers in her way.
It is as two of my favorite Saints and also Doctors of the Church say:
No matter how sinful one may have been, if he has devotion to Mary, it is impossible that he be lost."
-Saint Hilary of Poitiers - Bishop, Father, and Doctor of the Church
"Seek refuge in Mary because she is the city of refuge. We know that Moses set up three cities of refuge for anyone who inadvertently killed his neighbor. Now the Lord has established a refuge of mercy, Mary, even for those who deliberately commit evil. Mary provides shelter and strength for the sinner."
-Saint Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church
After I had done my consecration and I actually went back and read the entirety of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort I was utterly shocked at what God had done for me. Then when I went on to read the Glories of Mary by the great Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in which were described the tiniest of devotions to our Lady that have secured for those who did them incredible grace and ultimately their salvation, I could only be so very grateful to the good God that He had not only given me the grace and inspiration to make small acts of love and devotion to our Lady only but to completely give my life to her in a total consecration to her.
Oh, how much I owe God. And I have believed very strongly, for a long time, another thing my patron wrote in his Gospel: "And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more." (Luke 12:48). I think that now that my vocation to the Priesthood has come to light that this strong belief has been realized. If indeed all that our Lord has given me is an indication of the great things He is expecting of me then my call the the greatest calling of the Priesthood certainly makes sense.
I am certainly unworthy for the great task of the Priesthood, but if it is God's will I know He will supply what is lacking in me. So again I would just like all those who read this to please pray for me that I may do the will of God.
Blessed Miguel Pro, ora pro nobis!
Saint Isaac Jogues, ora pro nobis!
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, ora pro nobis!
Saint Vincent Ferrer, ora pro nobis!
Blessed (soon to be Saint) Father Damian, ora pro nobis!
Saint John Vianney, ora pro nobis!
Saint Charbel Makhlouf, ora pro nobis!
Saint Anothony Mary Claret, ora pro nobis!
Saint Padre Pio, ora pro nobis!
Saint Paul the great Apostle and companion of Saint Luke my patron, ora pro nobis!
As my patron the great Saint Luke, inspired by the Holy Ghost, writes in his Gospel:
"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows. And I say to you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God." (Luke 12:6-8)
The more I have learned about the faith in recent days I have found the more I wonder at the immense graces God has showered upon me. I also realize just how very much I've needed these graces. When I tell people about my family after already knowing me as far as my faith and devotion, and especially if they know I'm planning on entering a Traditional Catholic Seminary, they are shocked that I am even Catholic at all. And I too wonder at that fact that I am where I am today. Nothing short of an incredible outpouring of grace has preserved me through my life and especially High School and College.
God has seen fit to always put just the right people at the right time in my life. I think of the amazing friends I've had that I was so very close to for a time when I most needed them and then suddenly they disappeared, in a sense, from my life, and just when this would happen a new friend would step in and fill their place.
I am certain that by far the greatest grace God has bestowed upon me is giving me the grace to have such a powerful devotion to our Lady. I know I have been placed in here care from the moment of my birth. Born on the Feast of her Nativity I have always shared a special bond with our Blessed Mother. It was not until May 7th, 2005 that I would totally give myself to our Lady in a total Consecration to her which absolutely changed my life. And I think of all the many small events that had to connect together in order that I should do this consecration which I did not really understand the importance of when I was first asked to do it and then not even until about a month or two after I had completed it.
I know that by this special gift of His Blessed Mother too me in such an amazing way Jesus has assured me my salvation. I am in our Ladies care and I know she will make sure I live a Holy life and become a Saint even despite what I may do to put up barriers in her way.
It is as two of my favorite Saints and also Doctors of the Church say:
No matter how sinful one may have been, if he has devotion to Mary, it is impossible that he be lost."
-Saint Hilary of Poitiers - Bishop, Father, and Doctor of the Church
"Seek refuge in Mary because she is the city of refuge. We know that Moses set up three cities of refuge for anyone who inadvertently killed his neighbor. Now the Lord has established a refuge of mercy, Mary, even for those who deliberately commit evil. Mary provides shelter and strength for the sinner."
-Saint Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church
After I had done my consecration and I actually went back and read the entirety of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort I was utterly shocked at what God had done for me. Then when I went on to read the Glories of Mary by the great Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in which were described the tiniest of devotions to our Lady that have secured for those who did them incredible grace and ultimately their salvation, I could only be so very grateful to the good God that He had not only given me the grace and inspiration to make small acts of love and devotion to our Lady only but to completely give my life to her in a total consecration to her.
Oh, how much I owe God. And I have believed very strongly, for a long time, another thing my patron wrote in his Gospel: "And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more." (Luke 12:48). I think that now that my vocation to the Priesthood has come to light that this strong belief has been realized. If indeed all that our Lord has given me is an indication of the great things He is expecting of me then my call the the greatest calling of the Priesthood certainly makes sense.
I am certainly unworthy for the great task of the Priesthood, but if it is God's will I know He will supply what is lacking in me. So again I would just like all those who read this to please pray for me that I may do the will of God.
Blessed Miguel Pro, ora pro nobis!
Saint Isaac Jogues, ora pro nobis!
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, ora pro nobis!
Saint Vincent Ferrer, ora pro nobis!
Blessed (soon to be Saint) Father Damian, ora pro nobis!
Saint John Vianney, ora pro nobis!
Saint Charbel Makhlouf, ora pro nobis!
Saint Anothony Mary Claret, ora pro nobis!
Saint Padre Pio, ora pro nobis!
Saint Paul the great Apostle and companion of Saint Luke my patron, ora pro nobis!Jun 21, 2008
And life goes on...
Now finally being essentially being done with college (just one last class to finish up) I have had to face more and more of real life. Working full time and having to pay for my own insurance and things like that. I've been very blessed in a way that I've been so taken care of my whole life, but sometimes I wonder how things might have been different had not been so provided for and if I had to work harder to get to where I am now.
I have been struggling lately with where God is calling me to serve Him. Does He want me to be a Carmelite Monk offering my life in prayer and mortification for the whole world? Or does He want me to offer my life as a total sacrifice rather out in the world as a secular priest for the Fraternity of Saint Peter? Going back and forth I see the incredible challenges of both as well as the wonderful beauty of each calling. I love our Lady so much and I would love to be one of her devoted Carmelite sons offering my whole life in a way so similar to her last days living with Saint John. But so too would I love to be able to preach of our Lady often and to spread devotion to her and especially total Consecration to her as was taught most powerfully by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort and Saint Maximilian Kolbe and practiced by countless other Saints.
It would seem that after going back and forth for some months now that I am leaning toward the Fraternity which I believe could be the better route if I need to choose one or the other since the first year at the FSSP Seminary is a year of discernment especially which I think would serve me well in figuring out whether God wishes me to stay there and serve Him in that manner or if he is calling me indeed to the contemplative life.
It would seem too that the general consensus among my trusted friends and members of the clergy that I may be better suited to the secular Priesthood. And after reading the Autobiography of Saint Anthony Mary Claret just recently as well as a short Biography of Saint Vincent Ferrer not long before that I was quite inflamed with a desire to go out and preach. Also at the same time to live an extremely austere life that might even be closer to the practices of a Carmelite Monk as opposed to the average secular Priest.
I will be happy with whatever God is calling me to do because I know that is how I will best serve Him and be able to most easily grow in holiness and attain my everlasting reward. I just need to pray and listen yet for a while to know exactly what He wants me to do.
Please pray for me and for my discernment. Thanks and God Bless to anyone who might be reading this.
The two Priests on the right hand side are my friends Father Dennis Gordon (second from right) and Father Jonathan Romanoski (far right) who were just ordained a few weeks ago by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. I was blessed to have since been able to attend two Solemn High Masses said by Father Romanoski. Both of these Masses were historic events: the first was the first Solemn High Mass said in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Washington DC in 40+ years and the second was the first in as many years in the Cathedral in Harrisburg Pennsylvania just a block away from an FSSP Church.
I have been struggling lately with where God is calling me to serve Him. Does He want me to be a Carmelite Monk offering my life in prayer and mortification for the whole world? Or does He want me to offer my life as a total sacrifice rather out in the world as a secular priest for the Fraternity of Saint Peter? Going back and forth I see the incredible challenges of both as well as the wonderful beauty of each calling. I love our Lady so much and I would love to be one of her devoted Carmelite sons offering my whole life in a way so similar to her last days living with Saint John. But so too would I love to be able to preach of our Lady often and to spread devotion to her and especially total Consecration to her as was taught most powerfully by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort and Saint Maximilian Kolbe and practiced by countless other Saints.
It would seem that after going back and forth for some months now that I am leaning toward the Fraternity which I believe could be the better route if I need to choose one or the other since the first year at the FSSP Seminary is a year of discernment especially which I think would serve me well in figuring out whether God wishes me to stay there and serve Him in that manner or if he is calling me indeed to the contemplative life.
It would seem too that the general consensus among my trusted friends and members of the clergy that I may be better suited to the secular Priesthood. And after reading the Autobiography of Saint Anthony Mary Claret just recently as well as a short Biography of Saint Vincent Ferrer not long before that I was quite inflamed with a desire to go out and preach. Also at the same time to live an extremely austere life that might even be closer to the practices of a Carmelite Monk as opposed to the average secular Priest.
I will be happy with whatever God is calling me to do because I know that is how I will best serve Him and be able to most easily grow in holiness and attain my everlasting reward. I just need to pray and listen yet for a while to know exactly what He wants me to do.
Please pray for me and for my discernment. Thanks and God Bless to anyone who might be reading this.
The two Priests on the right hand side are my friends Father Dennis Gordon (second from right) and Father Jonathan Romanoski (far right) who were just ordained a few weeks ago by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. I was blessed to have since been able to attend two Solemn High Masses said by Father Romanoski. Both of these Masses were historic events: the first was the first Solemn High Mass said in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Washington DC in 40+ years and the second was the first in as many years in the Cathedral in Harrisburg Pennsylvania just a block away from an FSSP Church.
Mar 15, 2008
Best Springbreak ever...
Well I spent my spring break at the Fraternity of Saint Peter Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton Nebraska. It was an amazing and wonderful experience. I learned so much and realized how little I really know about so many things. I hope that one day, if it is God's will, I may enter into this seminary. The priests and seminarians there are a great group of men. There are very very few places today where you can find the caliber of solid doctrine and traditional Liturgy.
I think the most intense experience of the whole week was my last morning there when I served for a private Low Mass. It was my first time serving any Mass. I was so blessed to have this first experience serving on a day of commemoration of our Lady as well. Since the Friday of Passion week is also the commemoration of the Seven Sorrows of our Lady. The proper feast of the seven sorrows is of course on the 15th of September in the month devoted to our Lady of Sorrows. Wearing the black Scapular of our Lady of the Seven Dolors makes this even more special. Serving the Mass was just a very humbling experience. It was far more intricate than I had first thought. Essentially I had to learn how to serve a Low Mass in four days. Only by the grace of God I was at all ready to do it. I hope I can continue to serve more now before I one day return to the Seminary or possibly enter a monastery somewhere.
The most interesting experience of the whole week was easily my hour long chat with the venerable Father Bisig, FSSP now the Rector of the Seminary and formerly the Superior General of the FSSP and before that a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. He is Swiss which makes him even greater in my eyes as I am a first generation decedent from a Swiss native. We had much to talk about but in the area of Switzerland, but also in that of traditional things. Are conversation turned toward the SSPX and Sedevacantism. At this point is where Father Bisig told me something that completely shocked me. I have held for some time now that Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre was a modern day Athanasius and thus my favorable feelings for him bled over into an admiration for the SSPX. Recently however I have seen the Society take a turn for the worse and have learned some things about them that leaves me with little respect for them. Yet I still held Lefebvre as my hero... that was until Father Bisig told me that in 1986 in an Easter Homily to the Econe Seminary Lefevbre publicly admitted to his essentially being Sedevacantis. Apparently his words that day in that homily caused great dismay among the seminarians and many even walked out of the Church. Just two years later he would cause a schism in the Church. I believe he did a great thing in preserving Tradition, but I believe what he started in 1969 has not been preserved in the SSPX, but what he started has been preserved in the Fraternity. Nothing was lost in their creation and no compromises were made. The true Catholic faith has been preserved, but not in the SSPX.
All the SSPX is now is a hotbed for Sedevacantism. All of the people I know who are Sedevacantis were first in the SSPX. SSPX priest's today discourage people from going to so called "motu proprio" Masses said by Novus Ordo Priests. There is a problem in the SSPX, and I would suggest everyone stay away from them.
The SSPX isn't Catholic. As my Pastor says of the Sedevcantis: "They're just protestants who speak latin."
Stay away from the SSPX. If you want true traditional Catholicism go to the Fraternity of Saint Peter.
Priests of the Fraternity of Saint Peter
I think the most intense experience of the whole week was my last morning there when I served for a private Low Mass. It was my first time serving any Mass. I was so blessed to have this first experience serving on a day of commemoration of our Lady as well. Since the Friday of Passion week is also the commemoration of the Seven Sorrows of our Lady. The proper feast of the seven sorrows is of course on the 15th of September in the month devoted to our Lady of Sorrows. Wearing the black Scapular of our Lady of the Seven Dolors makes this even more special. Serving the Mass was just a very humbling experience. It was far more intricate than I had first thought. Essentially I had to learn how to serve a Low Mass in four days. Only by the grace of God I was at all ready to do it. I hope I can continue to serve more now before I one day return to the Seminary or possibly enter a monastery somewhere.
The most interesting experience of the whole week was easily my hour long chat with the venerable Father Bisig, FSSP now the Rector of the Seminary and formerly the Superior General of the FSSP and before that a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. He is Swiss which makes him even greater in my eyes as I am a first generation decedent from a Swiss native. We had much to talk about but in the area of Switzerland, but also in that of traditional things. Are conversation turned toward the SSPX and Sedevacantism. At this point is where Father Bisig told me something that completely shocked me. I have held for some time now that Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre was a modern day Athanasius and thus my favorable feelings for him bled over into an admiration for the SSPX. Recently however I have seen the Society take a turn for the worse and have learned some things about them that leaves me with little respect for them. Yet I still held Lefebvre as my hero... that was until Father Bisig told me that in 1986 in an Easter Homily to the Econe Seminary Lefevbre publicly admitted to his essentially being Sedevacantis. Apparently his words that day in that homily caused great dismay among the seminarians and many even walked out of the Church. Just two years later he would cause a schism in the Church. I believe he did a great thing in preserving Tradition, but I believe what he started in 1969 has not been preserved in the SSPX, but what he started has been preserved in the Fraternity. Nothing was lost in their creation and no compromises were made. The true Catholic faith has been preserved, but not in the SSPX.
All the SSPX is now is a hotbed for Sedevacantism. All of the people I know who are Sedevacantis were first in the SSPX. SSPX priest's today discourage people from going to so called "motu proprio" Masses said by Novus Ordo Priests. There is a problem in the SSPX, and I would suggest everyone stay away from them.
The SSPX isn't Catholic. As my Pastor says of the Sedevcantis: "They're just protestants who speak latin."
Stay away from the SSPX. If you want true traditional Catholicism go to the Fraternity of Saint Peter.
Priests of the Fraternity of Saint PeterFeb 8, 2008
Flos Carmeli...
Well after feeling certain about joining the Fraternity of Saint Peter (if they would have me) now I wonder if God had been really telling where I was suppose to be for almost the entire 7 years it's been since I started seriously thinking about my Vocation...
I had always felt drawn to the monastic life. The Benedictines and Saint Benedict always had a special place in my heart since I had been given a Saint Benedict's Medal at my first Communion by my grandparents (who regularly attended the Traditional Latin Mass and did even when I was little). I never really felt called to the priesthood... at least in the sense of a Novus Ordo Parish priest. I always felt more drawn to the monastic life... this was intermittent however with feeling called to marriage.
These thoughts of the religious life just kept popping back up and I kept thinking about it. Finally came the summer of 2006 when I had again a strong call to the monastic life right around the time of the feast of Saint Benedict on July 11. For the remainder of the summer I felt that it may indeed be where I was to end up. I only realize now how amazing it is that the Pastor at my Church (a conservative Novus Ordo priest) pointed me toward the Traditional Benedictine Order in Clear Creek Oklahoma who use all of the traditional Benedictine Liturgy. Of course it wouldn't be until the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that I was finally brought by our Lady back to the Traditional Latin Mass for the first time since I was very little. Still when my pastor told me they were the only "real" Benedictines who did everything in Latin still I was extremely excited and decided I needed to start memorizing psalms in English and Latin... I didn't get very far on that however... and sometime during the start of the fall semester I met with the Vocations Director of my Diocese and I turned away from the religious life to marriage... yet again.
Since my introduction to the old Mass as an older and more mature person my vocation to the religious life (of some sort) has become very apparent to me. And it was after attending only a handful of Traditional Latin Masses that just about a year ago now in the spring of 2007 I decided I wanted to enter the new Carmelite Monastery in Wyoming with monks who followed the primitive Carmelite Rule and used the old Carmelite Liturgy. This only lasted for about a week when I suddenly had second thoughts about leaving my family and friends and everything I had every known. I then turned back to marriage once again not long later.
I have related in earlier posts what would happen in the summer that would follow (this past summer) and so I will refer you to that instead of restating that here.
So now were have been brought up to the present. I have been certain of my vocation to the Priesthood and more specifically the the Fraternity of Saint Peter. I am even going to be visiting them in March. But then in early January I watched the movie Into Great Silence. For those who don't know this is a FANTASTIC movie about the Carthusian Monks in France. (Interesting side note... Saint John of the Cross who helped reform the Carmelite Order with Saint Teresa of Avila nearly left the Carmelite Order of the Carthusians before he was approached by Saint Teresa) After watching the movie I couldn't get the Carmelites of Wyoming out of my head and so I went back on their website which I found to have been completely redone and I immediately started wondering if I had made a mistake in rejecting them before...
As the weeks passed I couldn't get it out of my mind and one day I sat down and read the page on their website called: "A day in the Life"... and I realized... it was basically my perfect day.
You might be saying... hey hey what happened to the Benedictines? Well for me... the Carmelites are Benedictines who are totally devoted to our Blessed Mother in every way. I know this really isn't all that accurate and that Benedictines love our Lady too. But I think my great love for our Blessed Lady makes the Carmelites absolutely the perfect place for me.
In the past week or so I'd basically come to the conclusion that I was indeed meant to become a Carmelite and I was so happy with this thought and began to delve myself into everything about Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila (another side note: I've had a very strong devotion to Saint Therese of Lisieux ever since I read her autobiography and I have an image of her hanging next to my bed and I pray to her every single day for myself and my two sisters) With this new study I found myself loving the Carmelite Order more and more and my longing to join became greater and greater.
This was until two nights ago when I suddenly had another crisis just as I had had about a year ago worrying about leaving my family and especially my little sister who I worry need me to be in their lives as my mother is not Catholic... my Father is not the Catholic he should be... and both of my sisters are suffering because of my parents lack of good example. I worry for my little sister who is going to be confirmed in just a few months. How can I leave her?
I've recovered now from this but I still don't know what to do. Am I suppose to go to the Fraternity?... which will separate me from my family to a great degree... no doubt about that... but it wont be with the totality and finality of entering Carmel. Or am I suppose to enter Carmel and give myself totally and fully to our Lord through His Blessed Mother Mary as I believe I have longed to do for so long now even if it has mostly been subconsciously?
I need prayers. I need many many prayers that I may know what to do. That I may be able to do Gods will and do what is most pleasing to Him and will be best for my salvation and for my families.
"Flower of Carmel, Tall vine blossom laden; Splendor of heaven, Childbearing yet maiden. None equals thee."
-Saint Simon Stock, given the brown Scapular by our Lady
I had always felt drawn to the monastic life. The Benedictines and Saint Benedict always had a special place in my heart since I had been given a Saint Benedict's Medal at my first Communion by my grandparents (who regularly attended the Traditional Latin Mass and did even when I was little). I never really felt called to the priesthood... at least in the sense of a Novus Ordo Parish priest. I always felt more drawn to the monastic life... this was intermittent however with feeling called to marriage.
These thoughts of the religious life just kept popping back up and I kept thinking about it. Finally came the summer of 2006 when I had again a strong call to the monastic life right around the time of the feast of Saint Benedict on July 11. For the remainder of the summer I felt that it may indeed be where I was to end up. I only realize now how amazing it is that the Pastor at my Church (a conservative Novus Ordo priest) pointed me toward the Traditional Benedictine Order in Clear Creek Oklahoma who use all of the traditional Benedictine Liturgy. Of course it wouldn't be until the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that I was finally brought by our Lady back to the Traditional Latin Mass for the first time since I was very little. Still when my pastor told me they were the only "real" Benedictines who did everything in Latin still I was extremely excited and decided I needed to start memorizing psalms in English and Latin... I didn't get very far on that however... and sometime during the start of the fall semester I met with the Vocations Director of my Diocese and I turned away from the religious life to marriage... yet again.
Since my introduction to the old Mass as an older and more mature person my vocation to the religious life (of some sort) has become very apparent to me. And it was after attending only a handful of Traditional Latin Masses that just about a year ago now in the spring of 2007 I decided I wanted to enter the new Carmelite Monastery in Wyoming with monks who followed the primitive Carmelite Rule and used the old Carmelite Liturgy. This only lasted for about a week when I suddenly had second thoughts about leaving my family and friends and everything I had every known. I then turned back to marriage once again not long later.
I have related in earlier posts what would happen in the summer that would follow (this past summer) and so I will refer you to that instead of restating that here.
So now were have been brought up to the present. I have been certain of my vocation to the Priesthood and more specifically the the Fraternity of Saint Peter. I am even going to be visiting them in March. But then in early January I watched the movie Into Great Silence. For those who don't know this is a FANTASTIC movie about the Carthusian Monks in France. (Interesting side note... Saint John of the Cross who helped reform the Carmelite Order with Saint Teresa of Avila nearly left the Carmelite Order of the Carthusians before he was approached by Saint Teresa) After watching the movie I couldn't get the Carmelites of Wyoming out of my head and so I went back on their website which I found to have been completely redone and I immediately started wondering if I had made a mistake in rejecting them before...
As the weeks passed I couldn't get it out of my mind and one day I sat down and read the page on their website called: "A day in the Life"... and I realized... it was basically my perfect day.
You might be saying... hey hey what happened to the Benedictines? Well for me... the Carmelites are Benedictines who are totally devoted to our Blessed Mother in every way. I know this really isn't all that accurate and that Benedictines love our Lady too. But I think my great love for our Blessed Lady makes the Carmelites absolutely the perfect place for me.
In the past week or so I'd basically come to the conclusion that I was indeed meant to become a Carmelite and I was so happy with this thought and began to delve myself into everything about Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila (another side note: I've had a very strong devotion to Saint Therese of Lisieux ever since I read her autobiography and I have an image of her hanging next to my bed and I pray to her every single day for myself and my two sisters) With this new study I found myself loving the Carmelite Order more and more and my longing to join became greater and greater.
This was until two nights ago when I suddenly had another crisis just as I had had about a year ago worrying about leaving my family and especially my little sister who I worry need me to be in their lives as my mother is not Catholic... my Father is not the Catholic he should be... and both of my sisters are suffering because of my parents lack of good example. I worry for my little sister who is going to be confirmed in just a few months. How can I leave her?
I've recovered now from this but I still don't know what to do. Am I suppose to go to the Fraternity?... which will separate me from my family to a great degree... no doubt about that... but it wont be with the totality and finality of entering Carmel. Or am I suppose to enter Carmel and give myself totally and fully to our Lord through His Blessed Mother Mary as I believe I have longed to do for so long now even if it has mostly been subconsciously?
I need prayers. I need many many prayers that I may know what to do. That I may be able to do Gods will and do what is most pleasing to Him and will be best for my salvation and for my families.
"Flower of Carmel, Tall vine blossom laden; Splendor of heaven, Childbearing yet maiden. None equals thee."
-Saint Simon Stock, given the brown Scapular by our Lady
Jan 12, 2008
New Blogs...
For the select few of you who actually read my blog I just wanted to let you know I've decided to start up a video blog. I hope to continue with this blog to some extent but I think making videos will be faster and easier and allow me to post more often. So for whoever is interested...
Slave of the Immaculata
Thanks in advance to those who will watch.
Also I've started a new blog which is called Catholic Quotes. I am putting together series of quotes on various important subjects of the faith. I especially focus on those teachings which I see most disobeyed and ignored today by Catholics. I hope you may find it useful as a reference as well as somewhere you can point others.
God bless.
Slave of the Immaculata
Thanks in advance to those who will watch.
Also I've started a new blog which is called Catholic Quotes. I am putting together series of quotes on various important subjects of the faith. I especially focus on those teachings which I see most disobeyed and ignored today by Catholics. I hope you may find it useful as a reference as well as somewhere you can point others.
God bless.
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