Saint Robert Bellarmine's sermon on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Agony in the Garden was published as an appendix in an article on this site on Passion Sunday this year. 

As Saint Robert Bellarmine's sermon is so penetrating that no Catholic heart can fail to be pierced with remorse for his own sins and his gratitude to Our Lord for undertaking the events that unfolded once in time and are now being commemorated with Holy Mother Church's most solemn liturgical rites. 

Mindful that many of those who read these articles may not have access to those beautiful ceremonies where they live in this time of apostasy and betrayal, I thought that it would be useful service to those who view this site to publish Saint Robert Bellarmine's sermon to assist in their devotional lives during these days of days.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Robert Bellarmine, S. J., pray for us.

This article, written in 2008 and revised over the years, is a reflection on the suffering that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ endured in the Garden of Gethsemane atop the Mount of Olives.

It is now the hour of darkness. Our Lord suffers in His Sacred Humanity as He contemplates the horror of coming into contact with the very antithesis of His Sacred Divinity, our sins. He sees all of the sins of  all men from the beginning until the end of time as He agonized in the Garden as the same three Apostles who accompanied Him to the top of Mount Thabor as He was Transfigured in glory before their very eyes, Saints Peter, James and John, fell fast asleep. May we stay awake and alert during this night as we keep Our Lord company in His Real Presence on the Altar of Repose (if at all possible in this time of apostasy and betrayal) as we render unto him acts of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and petition through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

A reflection on Good Friday will be posted in about twelve hours.

Finally, one way to keep Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother company during these hours when He was betrayed, brought before the Jewish leaders for a mock trial and then imprisoned before being brought before Pontius Pilate is to read Chapters XII through XXIX of The New English Edition of the Mystical City of God: The Transfixion, Book Six: The Transfixion.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Today is Maundy Thursday.

The Paschal Triduum of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection actually began with the Office of Tenebrae yesterday evening, and it will end on Easter Sunday.

These are the holiest days are the zenith of Holy Mother Church’s liturgical year. This is the day on which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper for our sanctification and salvation. Although Our Lord would enter deep into His Passion immediately after the completion of the Last Supper as He suffered His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He wonderfully gave us the Holy Priesthood of the New Dispensation as He instituted the New and Eternal Covenant that He would ratify by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross tomorrow, Good Friday. We must express our gratitude to Him at all times for giving us the Priesthood so that we can have access on a daily basis to His own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion, made present for us on altars of Sacrifice by true bishops and true priests in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

This is a day to keep watch with Our Lord in His Real Presence at the Altar of Repose, remembering most importantly to beg Our Lady to make more and more voluntary sacrifices to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son through her own Immaculate Heart for our sins and those of the whole world.

Additionally, though, I am providing those who access this site with a sermon written by Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., who was an Austrian missionary to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century after the revolutions that shook Central Europe in 1848.

Father Weninger was a fearless defender of the Holy Faith and a prolific writer. One of his most important books was Protestantism and Infidelity.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes his work as follows:

Jesuit missionary and author, born at Wildhaus, Styria, Austria, 31 October, 1805; died at Cincinnati, Ohio, 29 June, 1888. When already a priest and doctor of theology, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1832 and in 1841 was sent to Innsbruck, where he taught theology, history, and Hebrew. As the Revolution of 1848 impeded his further usefulness at home, he left Europe and went to the United States. During his forty years he visited almost every state of the Union, preaching to vast multitudes in English, French, or German, as best suited the nationality of his hearers. In the year 1854 alone he delivered nearly a thousand sermons, and in 1864 he preached about forty-five missions. His zeal also prompted Father Weninger to win souls with the pen and he published forty works in German, Sixteen in English, eight in French, three in Latin. Among his principal works are: "Manual of the Catholic Religion" (Ratisbon, 1858); "Easter in Heaven" (Cincinnati, 1862); "Sermons" (Mainz, 1881-86). (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J.)

Omitted from this list, however, is Father Weninger’s Protestantism and Infidelity, which is a superb critique of Protestantism’s complete infidelity to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Sacred Deposit of Faith.

As Our time and our heart belong entire to Our Lord and His Paschal Triduum as we keep ever close to Our Lady, who was with Him every step of the way as he participated the Queen of Martyrs in His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday, I will not post any orginal article until Easter Monday or Easter Tuesday. Republished reflections, such as the one published a short while ago (scroll below), will be posted throughout the Triduum, including two early this evening of Maundy Thursday. 

A most blessed Paschal Triduum to you all. 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Today is Maundy Thursday

We entered the Paschal  Triduum of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ last evening with the praying of the Office of Tenebrae.

This is the day on which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper for our sanctification and salvation. Although Our Lord would enter deep into His Passion immediately after the completion of the Last Supper as He suffered His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He wonderfully gave us the Holy Priesthood of the New Dispensation as He instituted the New and Eternal Covenant that He would ratify by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross tomorrow, Good Friday. We must express our gratitude to Him at all times for giving us the Priesthood so that we can have access on a daily basis to His own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion, made present for us on altars of Sacrifice by true bishops and true priests in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

This is a day to keep watch with Our Lord in His Real Presence at the Altar of Repose, remembering most importantly to beg Our Lady to make more and more voluntary sacrifices to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son through her own Immaculate Heart for our sins and those of the whole world.

Our time and our heart belong entire to Our Lord and His Paschal Triduum as we keep ever close to Our Lady, who was with Him every step of the way as she participated as the Queen of Martyrs in His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

A sermon by Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., for this day will republished shortly, and two other posts will follow this evening on the Passion of Our Lord. Thank you

A most blessed Paschal Triduum to you all. 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

As today is Wednesday of Holy Week, which is commonly known as Spy Wednesday, I thought it appropriate to republish an commentary about the conciliar fascination with the salvation of the traitor named Judas Iscariot. 

The Office of Tenebrae this evening commences the Paschal Triduum of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Passion, Death, and Resurrection, May Our Lady send us all the graces we need to retreat from the world and its distractions so that we can be focused solely on all that her Divine Son's sufferings that our sins, having transcended time, imposed upon His Sacred Humanity. Indeed, it was the fearful thought of coming into contact with sin, which is the very antithesis of His Sacred Divinity, that caused Our Lord to sweat droplets of His Most Precious Blood in His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemani. Our Lord did all of this in perfect obedience to His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal God the Father and out of the ineffable love for us stupid, self-centered, ungrateful and erring sinners from the depths of His Most Sacred Heart, which Itself was formed out of the Immaulate Heart of Mary that would be pierced through and through with the sword of suffering that had been prophesied by the aged Simon in the Temple at her Purification. 

Additionally, of course, we must remember that Our Lady suffered a martyrdom of her most pure soul as she shared perfectly in the sufferings of her Divine Son, which was the subject of yesterday's republished commentary on this website: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the Biggest Fool of Them All.

Dom Prosper Guranger's reflection on Wednesday of Holy Week, which concentrates on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour's love for us sinful creatures, is appended below, and appended below that is a tribute to the great son of Spain, Saint Hermegild, written by Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who counted Saint Leander as one of his closest friends. Saint Hermegild refused communion with heretics and he refused to take Holy Communion from heretics. Herein lies a lesson for us all.  (All feasts, including tomorrow's of Saint Justin Martyr, are suppressed because of the Paschal Triduum and the first three days of the Easter Octave, thereafter being commemorated rather than celebrated through Low Sunday.)

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Although I am very much mindful that this is Holy Week, this republished commentary from last year is very apropos for this week of weeks in which Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, wrought our salvation for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday as it deals with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s repeated disparagement of Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix of the human race.

Indeed, this commentary is very appropriate for Holy Week as it includes the following passage from Father Francis X. Weninger’s First Sermon for Good Friday speaks to the point of doctrine Bergoglio called “foolishness” on December 12, 2019, very directly:

As it seemed good to the Lord to place a helpmate by the side of the earthly Adam, so we behold at the side of Jesus, the heavenly Adam, Mary, the Eve of the New Law; that, as by the fall of the first Adam and Eve the whole human race was plunged into an abyss of woe, so through the second — Jesus and Mary — rescued man was led to hope for heaven.

It is true that, in the abstract, it was the merits of Christ alone which effected our redemption, yet, that its fruits might be imparted to man individually, Jesus was pleased to place by his side a mother — Mary — for the consolation and assistance of the human race.

Therefore, God filled her heart with the most fervent affection for us, who have been born in sin, ensnared by numberless temptations, walking in the path to heaven, it may be, but in constant danger of going astray, and persecuted by the enemies of our salvation who rejoice when we make but one false step, hoping thereby that we will become their prey forever. Mary's heart is filled with the most unspeakable compassion for us; and no mother, of her own natural inclination, so fondly loves a child, so tenderly cares for its welfare, so untiringly watches over it in every danger, as does Mary in regard to the children of men; especially if they have had the happiness of receiving baptism as members of the Holy Catholic Church. "Come ye all to me, and be filled with my fruits." Thus does Holy Church cry out to those who zealously walk under her protection and patronage in the way of perfection, the path which leads to the joys of heaven. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Original, Short and Practical Sermons for Every Feast of the Liturgical Year: Three Sermons for Every Feast, published originally by C. J. H. Lowen, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1882, pp. 279-287.)

This commentary is divided into the following parts:

1. An Overview of Bergoglio’s Blasphemy
2. The Theology of Redemptive Suffering is Excluded by Denying Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix
3. The Meaning of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix
4. Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J. On the Infallibility of Papal Teaching
5. Summary
6. An Act of Reparation
7. Appendix: Father Francis Weninger’s First Sermon for Good Friday

The material from Father Francis X. Weninger's book on papal infallibility is absolutely priceless. Consider this one excerpt:

In compliance with an ordinance from the Pope, the holy Doctor forbade the troublesome Jovinians the Episcopal city of Milan.

In a funeral oration on his brother Satyrus, he [Saint Ambrose] eulogized the zeal of the deceased in the cause of the Roman Church, and alluded, with undisguised satisfaction, to his custom of inquiring from all, whom he chanced to meet, whether they were in communion with the See of Peter. If Satyrus discovered that they had failed in this respect, he rebuked them, because he considered that thereby they had cut themselves loose from the communion of the whole Church.

In his forty-seventh sermon, the Saint advanced the principle: “Where Peter is, there is the Church.” “Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia.” If this axiom is once admitted, it is plain that Peter and his successors, when acting as vicars of Christ, can never err in doctrinal decisions. If they could, the Church herself would be in error. But this supposition destroys the very idea of the church. Therefore, according to St. Ambrose, Peter and his successors can never lapse into error. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., On The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope When Teaching the Faithful, and On His Relation to a General Council, Third Edition. New York: Sadlier and Company, 1890; Cincinnati, Ohio: John P. Walsh, 1890.)

Truth is simple, which is why I rue the fact that it took me until 2006 to see it but am nevertheless grateful for the fact that I was led to the truth, which demands our adherence no matter what criticism will come our way and remembering, as always, that seeing it makes us not one whit better than anyone else nor does it guarantee us final perseverance in a state of Sanctifying Grace. We must always cling to Our Lady as we rreat all others as we would treat her Divine Son in the very flesh.

There will be another republished article tomorrow. (The need for non-tax-deductible donations remains. Thank you.)

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Herewith is a brief reflection on what is today, April 11, 2021, Monday in Holy Week, on the commemorated Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.

The readings for Matins contained in today’s Divine Office summarize the nature of the purity of the papacy as the absolute guarantor of doctrinal orthodoxy at all times:

When the Lord, as we read in the Evangelist, asked His disciples Who did men, amid their divers speculations, believe that He, the Son of Man, was; blessed Peter answered and said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, Which is in heaven and I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Thus therefore standeth the ordinance of the Truth, and blessed Peter, abiding still that firm rock which God hath made him, hath never lost that right to rule in the Church which God hath given unto him.

In the universal Church it is Peter that doth still say every day, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesseth that Jesus is Lord is taught that confession by the teaching of Peter. This is the faith that overcometh the devil and looseth the bands of his prisoners. This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. This teaching it is, my dearly beloved brethren, which maketh the keeping of this Feast to-day to be our reasonable service, even the teaching which maketh you to know and honour in myself, lowly though I be, that Peter who is still entrusted with the care of all other shepherds and of all the flocks to them committed, and whose authority I have, albeit unworthy to be his heir.

When, therefore, we address our exhortations to your godly ears, believe ye that ye are hearing him speak whose office we are discharging. Yea, it is with his love for you that we warn you, and we preach unto you no other thing than that which he taught, entreating you that ye would gird up the loins of your mind and lead pure and sober lives in the fear of God. My disciples dearly beloved, ye are to me, as the disciples of the Apostle Paul were to him, (Phil. iv. 1,) a crown and a joy, if your faith, which, in the first times of the Gospel, was spoken of throughout the whole world, Rom. i. 8, abide still lovely and holy. For, albeit it behoveth the whole Church which is spread throughout all the world, to be strong in righteousness, you it chiefly becometh above all other peoples to excel in worth and godliness, whose house is built upon the very crown of the Rock of the Apostle, and whom not only hath our Lord Jesus Christ, as He hath redeemed all men, but whom also His blessed Apostle Peter hath made the foremost object of his teaching. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)

Well, it is all there, isn’t it?

One must engage in all kinds of intellectual gymnastics to believe that the contagion of heresy is not rife within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is why all those who are not yet convinced of the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal should re-read these words:

This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has esteemed the symbols of idolaters. So have Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and “Saint John Paul II” before his own election as the head of the false conciliar sect on March 13, 2013, and Bergoglio has shown repeatedly that he has no belief in the integrity of the Catholic Faith. So have his predecessors in the past sixty-two and one-half years.

There is also a very brief reflection about Monday in Holy Week contained at the end of this briefest of commentaries.

Republished articles will be posted tomorrow and Spy Wednesday.

See below for recent articles,

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Pope Saint Leo the Great, pray for us.

This contains a few reflections for your consideration on the Way of the Cross that might be useful for this great week of weeks, Holy Week. These reflections were written many a moon ago and have been revised slightly over the past three decades. 

My annual Holy Week reflection has been posted below. Readers can find part seven of "Sin: More Deadly Than the Coronavirus" below "From Eden to Palm Sunday."

Finally, as explained below in the introduction to part seventeen of "Sin: More Deadly Than the Coronavirus," there is a need for non-tax-deductible financial gifts at this time. Thank you for your consideration.

A blessed Palm Sunday and Holy Week to you all.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Today is Palm Sunday.

We have now entered into the most solemn week of the year as we withdraw more and more from the world and its false allurements to unite ourselves as never before with the events of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion and Death prior to experiencing the glory of His Resurrection following the Mass on Holy Saturday, April 16, 2022, and on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022, thus beginning a marvelous celebration of the Octave of Easter and the Easter season.

We need Our Lady’s help to keep and to intensify our Lenten penances this week. May our reliance upon the Most Sorrowful Mysteries of her Holy Rosary aid us in understanding what our sins did to her Divine Son and to her and how grateful we must be for being the unmerited beneficiaries of the Mercy won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and for being given from that Cross so great and wonderful and perfect a mother as she, Our Blessed Mother, is to us by Our Divine Redeemer Himself.

"From Eden to Palm Sunday" is a substantial revision of a reflection that I wrote for the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in 1997. Given the vastness of the subject, this reflection is pitifully, woefully inadequate. The revised article is really a condensed version of what was gone into in greater detail in the Living in the Shadow of the Cross lecture program. About half of the lecture program dealt with material condensed in the current article. Obviously, Holy Week is not a time to watch this lecture program! However, it is there for those who are interested at some point during the months that follow.

To greet Christ the King this Palm Sunday and every day of our lives, we must not let anything get in the way of letting Him treat us according to the tender mercies of His Most Sacred Heart, remembering that nothing anyone does to us, says about us or causes us to suffer is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His fearful Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that caused those Swords of Sorrow to be pierced through and through the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

Our fervor during this week of weeks must be genuine, and we must beg Our Lady, especially by meditating upon the Sorrowful Mysteries of her Most Holy Rosary, to help us persist in this fervor moment by moment, day by day, week in and week out, month after month, year after year until the time when we meet Christ the King, Our Crucified and Risen Saviour, at the moment of our Particular Judgment.

An original article, Sin: More Deadly Than the Coronavirus, part seventeen, was published early on the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Friday, April 8, 2022.  I once again ask readers to make a non-tax-deductible financial gift if at all possible

A blessed Palm Sunday and a blessed Holy Week to you all.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

As is usually the case these days, articles take a lot longer to complete than they used to. Gone are the days when I could kick out two or three articles a day, and a commentary such as this one just gets completed at its own pace.

This commentary is broken down into the following sections:

I. Introduction

II. A Scam at the Beginning

III. More Vaccines at the Ready as the Toll of the Dead and Injured Continue to Rise

IV. Jorge Mario Bergoglio: Antichrist’s “Papal” Enabler of the Global Reset

V. As Always, To See All Things in Light of the Holy Faith

There is much contained in each section of this commentary, which will “be there” for those who want to concentrate, as I will be doing, on spiritual reading as we enter into Holy Week with First Vespers for Palm Sunday on Saturday evening, April 9, 2022.

Although there is a lot going on in the world of bread and circuses (Hunter Biden, the Durham investigation, the continuing war in Ukraine with Russian atrocities aplenty and Ukrainian “revenge” atrocities that are being dismissed by its governmental officials), these matters can wait until after the Paschal Triduum of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. I will get to each in due course but permit me to give you two spoiler alerts: nothing will ever happen to Hunter Biden or Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton even if either or both get indicted by a Federal grand jury and convicted at trial. They might even be given preemptory pardons by the “big guy” in the White House.

Remember, there is justice in eternity, not here.

Our time is spent in this coming week on the events that made possible our salvation, not on the marathon news alerts about the things of a world that is in a mess because it pays no attention to the events of Holy Week in which the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Cross, paid back in His own Sacred Humanity the debt of our sin that was owed to Him in His Divinity as God.

I will be working on revising my annual reflections for Holy Week and will republish a reflection on Pope Leo the Great, whose feast is commemoration on Monday of Holy Week, but will otherwise not be posting new commentaries until Easter Monday.

With respect to this article, suffice it to say that I have gone to great lengths to provide readers with a variety of information from different sources. One of those sources is the Children’s Health Defense organization, which has done superb work on vaccines in general and on the CCP/Wuhan/China/Chinese/Covid-19/Coronavirus. This having been noted, however, I need to hasten a cautionary note about the organization, which has ties to theosophist “thinkers.” One of those was highlighted on the organization’s home page recently in an article entitled “The Evolved Mind and the Earth are One Community." This not vitiate the organization's great work on vaccines. However, readers should be cautioned to remember that even though Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.., has doen excellent work on vaccines in general and the entire coronavirus scamdemic, anyone who can believe that there is such as "the evolved mind" is not of one mind with the Holy Faith.

In the meantime, as our rural roads have claimed yet another tire and other unexpected expenses have overtaken us once again, I would like to ask for non-tax-deductible financial gifts if anyone has the financial wherewithal and willingness to do so. Thank you.

Finally, I was all set to publish this commentary several hours ago before the Drupal platform decided to “eat” its entire formatted text as though I had never spent three hours working on the formatting. Oh well, it is Lent. Penance is better than ever in 2022, especially in Passiontide and especially on this, the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My republished reflection on this feast can be found by scrolling below.

Our Lady of the Sorrows, pray for us.