Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part nine

There will never be peace in the Middle East—or anywhere else in the world for that matter—until everyone converts to the Catholic Faith and exclaims “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Hosanna in Excelsis. Benedict, qui venit in Nomine Domini. Hosanna in Excelsis.”

Men whose souls are steeped in Original Sin are slaves to the devil even though they do not realize that is the case. Such men are prone to vicious hatred of those they deem to be their enemies, whether real or imagined, and to seek “justice” by means of wanton attacks upon innocent civilians in order to avenge past injustices done to them without realizing for a second that cycles of barbaric madness can never be ended absent a conversion of souls to the true Faith, which is the sine qua non for forgiving and rectifying injustices while seeking a true path of reconciliation after having been reconciled to the true God of Divine Revelation in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

The terrible, barbaric acts committed by Hamas on Saturday, October 7, 2023, the Feast of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary are indeed execrable. Such acts are inspired by the devil to incite massive retaliations that he knows will generate new generations of Mohammedan “freedom fighters,” who, inspired by the blasphemous Koran, will be combatted by new generations of other devil worshippers, namely those who adhere to the blasphemous Talmud. Untold numbers of souls, made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the shedding of every drop of His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son’s Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday, are being sent to hell to curse each other without cease for all eternity as they suffer in hellfire and are deprived of the glory of the Beatific Vision of the Most Holy Trinity of God the Father. God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity. That is the real tragedy of the Middle East since the Jews were dispersed by the Romans in 70 A.D. as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ used the cruel pagans to chastise the once chosen people after giving them a period of mercy to respond to the preaching of the Apostles over the course of thirty-seven years.

With this in mind, therefore, it is perhaps quite useful to remember this unending conflict between two sets of unbelievers who are united in their rejection of the Most Holy Trinity and the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was enkindled anew over one hundred years ago when the founder of international Zionism, sought to convince European Talmudists to move to the Holy Land from which their Biblical ancestors had been expelled as a just punishment for their disbelief in Catholicism and to which they were not meant to return.

Herzl’s influence was felt long after his death on May 3, 1904, a little over three months after Pope Saint Pius X told him that the Catholic Church would never sanction the return of the Jews to Palestine and that she would open up churches to baptize them all if they did return, and it was during the needless, unjust and barbaric World War I that Lord Arthur Janes Balfour was convinced of the “need” to resettled Jews in Palestine-Trans-Jordan that had fallen into British hands because of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire:

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours,
Arthur James Balfour (The Balfour Declaration.)

The England of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry was a natural ally of Zionism, which gained impetus after the tragic events of World II were exploited as a just cause for imposing a sense of “collective guilt” upon nominal “Christians” so that Jews could move into Palestine without opposition from the leaders of Western nations.

The Zionist State of Israel was entirely invented out of the fantasies of Theodore Herzl, the founder of International Zionism (with the help of the Masons in the United Kingdom such as Lord David Balfour, of course) to relocate the Talmudists in the very land from which the actual descendants of Abraham were expelled by the Romans in 70 A.D. as God used the pagan Romans as the instrument to chastise the Jews for their obstinate refusal to accept the preaching of the Gospel in their midst after He had mercifully permitted them a thirty-seven year period of reprieve following their role in calling down the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, upon them and their children. God expelled the Jews from the Holy Land in 70 A.D., and they were not meant to return, certainly not to found a nation based in a false, blasphemous religion, less yet to do so by violent means and the constant use of raw terror and the murder of countless thousands of innocent Palestinian Arabs, both Christians and Mohammedans.

The State of Israel was created by the shedding the blood of the innocent and by the stealing of the homes and land of the Palestinian Arabs who had been living there for centuries upon centuries as they, the Palestinian Arabs, were rounded up and sent to "detention centers" (concentration camps), all with the support of the government of the United States of America (which has its own interesting history of targeting civilians, including the members of various Indian tribes who simply wanted to retain custody of their own lands and, of course, the horrific fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, on February 13-14, 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on, respectively, August 6 and 9, 1945, to say nothing of the innocent civilians killed in the moral and geopolitical disasters that were this country’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afin Iraq and Afghanistan).

I know several Palestinians, including a former colleague of mine at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, who had their homes invaded by Zionist soldiers, rounded up like dogs and then herded to detention centers to be kept as prisoners who had been stripped of their land, their houses, their property, and, of course, their dignity as human beings.

Here, for example, is a summary of some of the brutal methods used by the late Ariel Sharon during his days in the leadership of the Israeli Defense Force:

AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians."

But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don't happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss.

From the beginning to the end of his career, Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants — men, women and children — still inside, to the ruinous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air.

As a purely gratuitous bonus, Sharon and his army later facilitated the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and in all about 20,000 people — almost all innocent civilians — were killed during his Lebanon adventure.

Sharon's approach to peacemaking in recent years wasn't very different from his approach to war. Extrajudicial assassinations, mass home demolitions, the construction of hideous barriers and walls, population transfers and illegal annexations — these were his stock in trade as "a man of courage and peace."

Some may take comfort in the myth that Sharon was transformed into a peacemaker, but in fact he never deviated from his own 1998 call to "run and grab as many hilltops" in the occupied territories as possible. His plan for peace with the Palestinians involved grabbing large portions of the West Bank, ultimately annexing them to Israel, and turning over the shattered, encircled, isolated, disconnected and barren fragments of territory left behind to what only a fool would call a Palestinian state.

SHARON'S "painful sacrifices" for peace may have involved Israel keeping less, rather than more, of the territory that it captured violently and has clung to illegally for four decades, but few seem to have noticed that it's not really a sacrifice to return something that wasn't yours to begin with.

His much-ballyhooed withdrawal from Gaza left 1.4 million Palestinians in what is essentially the world's largest prison, cut off from the rest of the world and as subject to Israeli power as before. It also terminated the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict by condemning Palestinians to whiling away their lives in a series of disconnected Bantustans, ghettos, reservations and strategic hamlets, entirely at the mercy of Israel.

That's not peace. As Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull would have recognized at a glance, it's an attempt to pacify an entire people by bludgeoning them into a subhuman irrelevance. Nothing short of actual genocide — for which Sharon's formula was merely a kind of substitute — would persuade the Palestinian people to quietly accept such an arrangement, or negate themselves in some other way. And no matter which Israeli politician now assumes Sharon's bloody mantle, such an approach to peace will always fail. (The Whitewashing of Ariel Sharon, UCLA International Institute; see also Timeline: The Palestinian and Israeli Conflict, Explained.)

This is a very accurate summary of the brutal conditions that have plagued the Palestinians since the creation of the State of Israel on May 1, 1948.

Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced between 1948 and 1949, and many of them wound up eventually in the Gaza Strip, which came under the control of the Zionist State of Israel following the 1967 Six Day War and thereafter to be treated as so much human refuse of the sort that Donald John Trump believes are responsible for having their own homes and their livelihoods destroyed by the Israelis after the Hamas attack upon Israel on October 7, 2023, just because they live in area where hardened terrorists who souls are as captive to the devil by means of Original Sin as are those of the murderous Zionists themselves:

TEL AVIV—President Trump said he wants to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and urged Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees either temporarily or for the long term, a move that has been rejected by Arab countries since the war began.

The president said he told King Abdullah II of Jordan in a phone call on Saturday that he wants the monarch’s country to receive Palestinians. He said he expected to make a similar request of Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, in a coming phone call. 

“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” the president told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday. “You know over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”

The comments and other recent moves by his administration reflect a sharp change in policy toward the conflict in Gaza compared with under former President Joe Biden.

A day earlier, the president said that he had released a hold on 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration had withheld from Israel over concerns about the civilian death toll in Gaza. His administration also lifted sanctions on Israeli settler organizations and individuals in the West Bank imposed by the Biden administration. 

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, dismissed the idea of refugees from Gaza moving to his country.

“Our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and unwavering, and is necessary to achieve the stability and peace that we all want,” Safadi said during a joint news conference Sunday with the U.N.’s senior coordinator for humanitarian affairs and reconstruction in Gaza, Sigrid Kaag.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the country rejects any relocation or transfer of Palestinians to Egypt, whether temporary or permanent, adding that it risks stability and threatens to further spread the conflict in the region.

Meantime, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, one of the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the idea “inhumane” and said that officials need to focus on the cease-fire.

“President Trump’s consideration of a policy of mass expulsions of Palestinians from Gaza is ludicrous, and must be rejected out of hand. It’s as inhumane as it is impractical,” the New York lawmaker said. “What the new Administration must focus on is the full implementation of the current ceasefire agreement, return of the hostages, and rehabilitation of Gaza.”

The issue of Palestinians leaving Gaza has been politically sensitive. Many Palestinians fear if they leave the enclave, Israel will never allow them to return. There are several million Palestinian refugees, scattered mostly in Arab countries since Israel’s founding in 1948, and their future has been at the heart of the conflict.  

Egypt and Jordan so far have rejected the idea of taking in Palestinians from Gaza, fearing a flood of refugees could destabilize their own countries. Leaders of both countries have said they want Gazans to be able to stay in the enclave. The Biden administration also advocated keeping Gazans inside the strip. 

Most of Gaza’s more than two million residents have fled their homes at least once during the 15-month-long war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched deadly attacks on southern Israel. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting began, according to local health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. 

Much of the enclave has been destroyed during the war, and many of the displaced are currently living in tent encampments. 

“It is literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.  

He said Gazans could live in Egypt or Jordan “temporarily or could be long term.”

Hamas said it categorically rejects any plans to expel or displace Palestinians from their land.

“We call on the U.S. administration to halt such proposals, which align with Israeli plans and clash with the rights and free will of our people,” the U.S.-designated terrorist organization said in a statement.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs most Palestinians in the West Bank, said it condemns “any projects aimed at displacing our people from the Gaza Strip.”

Trump’s comments came as thousands of Palestinians who had expected to return to northern Gaza on Sunday as part of a cease-fire agreement were refused entry by Israeli forces. Israel said it wouldn’t allow Palestinians to return north after Hamas failed to release a civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, on Saturday, per the terms of the deal, an Israeli official said. 

The Qatari Foreign Ministry said early Monday, local time, that an agreement has been reached to release Yehoud and five more Israeli hostages in the coming days. And Arab mediators said three more hostages were due to be released Thursday.

In return, Israel will open the Gaza Strip’s Netzarim corridor starting Monday, which would allow Gazans to return to the northern part of the strip.

Arab mediators also said that Hamas had delivered a status update on the condition of the 26 remaining hostages slated for release in the first weeks of the phased deal. Most on that list are alive, they said.

In Lebanon, where Israel is part of a separate agreement to halt its conflict with the Hezbollah militia, a delay in the Israeli military’s withdrawal from some villages left at least 22 people dead and more than 120 injured, according to the Lebanese health ministry, when some residents tried to return to their homes in areas where Israeli troops were still stationed.

Later in the day, the White House said the cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel, monitored by the U.S., would be extended beyond the initial 60 days and in effect until Feb. 18.

The Israeli military said it fired warning shots at people approaching troops and apprehended others for questioning. It accused Hezbollah of sending people to those areas to inflame tensions.

Hezbollah said attempts by Lebanese residents to push past Israeli troops and return to their homes “embodies the highest meanings of steadfastness, resilience, and triumph.”

Israeli far-right leaders have been pushing for what they call “voluntary migration” from Gaza, and praised Trump’s remarks on the issue. 

“The idea to help them find other places to start a new and better life is a great idea,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in an X post on Sunday. 

Israel’s government has promised to allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes once the fighting is over. 

On the issue of Palestinians leaving Gaza, King Abdullah II has said he opposes such a move. 

“No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt,” he told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in late October 2023. 

More than half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, including almost 2.4 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations. 

A sharp increase in the number of Palestinians there would risk upending the country’s demographics and potentially sparking instability.

Jordan fears the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being resolved at its own expense by turning the country into a de facto alternative homeland for Palestinians. It has long opposed absorbing more Palestinian refugees, a topic that again came into focus after the war displaced most of Gaza’s residents internally and raised calls for their resettlement abroad. (Trump Says He Wants to ‘Clean Out’ Gaza, Send Refugees to Egypt and Jordan.)

This is all so very monstrous.

While President Donald John Trump says he is concerned about the “demolition site” that is Gaza, he seems to be not in the least concerned about the fact the demolition was caused by his Israeli allies, who have thought nothing of bombing apartment complexes and villages without regard for the loss of Palestinian lives as the not-so-secret belief of many in the Israeli government and who serve in the genocidal Israeli Defense Force is that all Arabs, but especially Palestinians, are sub-humans. Previous parts of this series have provided documentation of the brutal torture that the Israeli Defense Force has used upon innocent civilians.

As this is not enough, Donald John Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, believes that a “cleaned up” Gaza would be great for real estate investment and development:

Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 15 February. The interview was posted on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, earlier this month.

Kushner was a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency and was tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East. Critics of the plan, which involved Israel striking normalisation deals with Gulf states, said it bypassed questions about the future for Palestinians.

His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told his interviewer, the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative, Prof Tarek Masoud. Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.

“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

Masoud replied that there was “a lot to talk about there”.

Kushner also said he thinks Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.

He said that if he were in charge of Israel his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern city of Rafah, and that “with diplomacy” it could be possible to get them into Egypt.

“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.” (Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’.)

From the Israeli perspective, Jared, eh?

Who cares if the Israelis don’t want the Palestinians to return?

How would Jared Kushner feel if a foreign government decided to relocate him to say, the Mojave Desert?

Then again, Kushner probably would move there if there was a buck to made.

Sure, just bomb civilian population centers, destroy civilian residences, displace hundreds of thousands of people, and then decide just as arbitrarily now as in 1948 that Palestinians should not return to their homes.

This what happens when men are blinded by Original Sin and thus are incapable of treating others as they would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the very Flesh as it is relatively easy for those who deny His Sacred Divinity to surrender to a diabolical hatred that dehumanizes the objects of hatred and makes them ready victims for slaughter to full a “righteous cause.”

Neither President Donald John Trump nor Jared Kushner understand their support of Israeli’s demolition of Gaza to root out those who belong to the Hamas terrorist group is (a) creating the seedbed for future members of Hamas; and (b) to believe in the displacement of “bothersome” people to get eradicate “terrorists” open oneself up to having the same treatment visited upon him one day.

That is, imagine if someone suggested that entire American cities should be displaced to get eradicate known terror cells.

What do I mean?

Well, I am referring to the terrorists in white coats and smocks who live amongst each of us.

These terrorists prescribe pills to prevent the conception of children and, in most instances, actually kill children after they have been conceived.

These terrorists prescribe pills that are designed specifically to kill children after they have been conceived.

These terrorists kill babies by using a vacuum machine that is twenty-nine times more powerful than a home vacuum cleaner or by administering a saline solution that kills the baby by burning him to death or by carving him up in the womb (dilation and evacuation) or by performing a partial Caesar section to expose the child’s head and neck so that the neck can be twisted until the baby dies (hysterotomy) or by partially delivery child so his skull can be crushed with forceps (intact dilation and extraction—crushed skull or “partial-birth” abortion).

Others of these terrorists use their own industry’s manufactured myth called “brain death” either to dispatch a patient to death and save the costs of treatment during a prolonged recovery or, more commonly, to vivisect their victims of their vital organs so that they can be used in the profit-making trade of bodily organ transplantation.

Quite a few medical terrorist resort to the starvation and dehydration of patients who are alleged to be brain damaged, thus subjecting their victims to a painful death of thirst and hunger that might take as long as seven to ten days of sheer torture to complete.

Still others of these terrorists use a so-called “quality of life” standard to “ease” patients out of their “misery” by recommending a “hospice” plan for them that determines the length of time that their victims and/or family members that “comfort care” is to be used before a “merciful” death.

What about the medical terrorists who mutilate unsuspecting boys and girls after they have been brainwashed into believing that they can “change” their gender?

What about the pharmaceutical terrorists who continue to develop “vaccines” derived from the poisoned tree of aborted babies and contain all manner of contaminants that can, does, and will continue to injure and kill those who are convinced that there is some “benefit" to be derived from getting “jabbed”?

This could go on and on, obviously.

While the Zionists in Israel and their sycophantic supporters here in the United States of America justify a “final solution,” of sorts, for the Palestinians, whose only crime was having lived for centuries upon the land from which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had expelled their Biblical ancestors in 70 A.D. after He had given them a thirty-seven-year period of mercy to respond to the preaching of the Apostles. The Talmudists and Zionists seized land that God Himself had taken from the Biblical Jews, and these latter day disbelievers in Christ the King have not only seized land to which they had no right from Him to claim as their own but to treat those who had been living on that land for centuries as interlopers worthy of contempt, dispossession, displacement, torture and, if necessary, outright execution.

In response to callous disregard for the humanity non-Jews, of course, and for the Mohammedan disregard for the lives of innocent Catholics and Jews, we have recourse to prayer, especially by means of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary as also call upon the intercession of the saint whose feast was celebrated yesterday, Monday, January 27, 2025, Saint John Chrysostom, who denounced Judaism as a false religion, and Saint Peter Nolasco, who sought to ransom Christians who had been captured by the Mohammedan hordes:

Let that be your judgment about the synagogue, too. For they brought the books of Moses and the prophets along with them into the synagogue, not to honor them but to outrage them with dishonor. When they say that Moses and the prophets knew not Christ and said nothing about his coming, what greater outrage could they do to those holy men than to accuse them of failing to recognize their Master, than to say that those saintly prophets are partners of their impiety? And so it is that we must hate both them and their synagogue all the more because of their offensive treatment of those holy men." (Saint John Chrysostom, Fourth Century, A.D., Saint John Chrysostom: Eight Homilies Against the Jews.)

Many, I know, respect the Jews and think that their present way of life is a venerable one. This is why I hasten to uproot and tear out this deadly opinion. I said that the synagogue is no better than a theater and I bring forward a prophet as my witness. Surely the Jews are not more deserving of belief than their prophets. "You had a harlot's brow; you became shameless before all". Where a harlot has set herself up, that place is a brothel. But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts. Jeremiah said: "Your house has become for me the den of a hyena". He does not simply say "of wild beast", but "of a filthy wild beast", and again: "I have abandoned my house, I have cast off my inheritance".But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who says so? The Son of God says so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father". Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place. (Saint John Chrysostom: Eight Homilies Against the Jews)

Saint Peter Nolasco, whose feast is celebrated today, Tuesday, January 28, 2025 (on which is also commemorated the second feast of Saint Agnes)  founded The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives, known officially as Order of the Virgin Mary of Mercy of the Redemption of Captives, with King James I of Aragon and Saint Raymond of Pennafort in 1218 after Our Lady had appeared to each of them, asking them found and Order to rescue Christians who were being held captives by the Mohammedans. Our Lady of Ransom showered Saint Peter Nolasco with favors as he went about his work of freeing the captured Christians.

Dom Prosper Gueranger gave us this summary of Saint Peter Nolasco’s noble work, to which he had been called by Our Lady herself:

The Ransomer of Captives, Peter Nolasco, is thus brought before us by the Calendar, a few days after having given us the Feast of his master, Raymund of Pegnafort. Both of them offer to the Divine Redeemer the thousands of Christians they ransomed from slavery. It is an appropriate homage, for it was the result of the charity, which first began in Bethlehem, in the heart of the Infant Jesus, and was afterwards so fervently practised by these two Saints.

Peter was born in France, but made Spain his adopted country, because it offered him such grand opportunities for zeal and self-sacrifice. In imitation of our Redeemer, he devoted himself to the ransom of his brethren; he made himself a prisoner to procure them their liberty; and remained in exile, that they might once more enjoy the happiness of home. His devotedness was blessed by God. He founded a new Religious Order in the Church, composed of generous hearted men, who, for six hundred years, prayed, toiled, and spent their lives, in obtaining the blessing of liberty to countless Captives, who would else have led their whole lives in chains, exposed to the imminent danger of losing their faith.

Glory to the Blessed Mother of God, who raised up these Redeemers of Captives! Glory to the Catholic Church, whose children they were! But above all, glory be to our Emmanuel, who, on his entrance into this world, thus spoke to his Eternal Father: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, neither are they pleasing to thee—but a Body thou hast fitted unto me. Then, said I, behold I come: that is, Behold, I come to offer myself as a Sacrifice. The Divine Infant has infused this same spirit of love for mankind (for whom he so mercifully became the Ransom) into the hearts of such men as the Saint of today: they saw what God had done for man, and they felt it a necessity to go and sacrifice themselves for the redemption of their suffering fellow creatures.

Our Lord rewarded St. Peter Nolasco, by calling him to heaven, at that very hour, wherein, twelve hundred years before, himself had been born in Bethlehem. It was on Christmas Night that the Redeemer of Captives was united to Jesus, the Redeemer of Mankind. Peter’s last hymn on earth was the 110th Psalm; and as his faltering voice uttered the words: He hath sent Redemption to his people; he hath commanded his covenant for ever, his soul took its flight to heaven. . . .

Thou, O Jesus ! earnest to cast fire upon the earth, and thy desire is that it be enkindled in the hearts of men. Thy desire was accomplished in Peter Nolasco, and the children of his Order. Thus dost thou permit men to co-operate with thee in the designs of thy sweet mercy, and, by thus restoring harmony between man and his Creator, thou hast once more given to the earth the blessing of fraternal love between man and man. Sweet Infant Jesus! we cannot love thee, without loving all mankind; and thou, who art our Ransom and our Victim, wiliest that we, also, be ready to lay down our lives for one another.

Thou, Peter ! wast the Apostle and the model of this fraternal charity; and our God rewarded thee by calling thee to himself on the anniversary of the Birth of Jesus. That sweet Mystery, which so often encouraged thee in thy holy labours, has now been revealed to thee in all its glory. Thy eyes now behold that Jesus as the great King, the Son of the Eternal Father, before whom the very Angels tremble. Mary is no longer the poor humble Mother, leaning over the Crib, where lies her Son; she now delights thy gaze with her queenly beauty, seated as she is on a throne nearest to that of the divine Majesty. Thou art at home amidst all this glory, for heaven was made for souls that love as thine did. Heaven is the land of love, and love so filled thy heart even when on earth, that it was the principle of thy whole life.

Pray for us, that we may have a clearer knowledge of this love of God and our neighbour, which makes us like to God. It is written, that he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him (1 John 4:16); intercede for us, that the Mystery of Charity, which we are now celebrating, may transform us into Him, who is the one object of all our love during this season of grace. May we love our fellow-creatures as ourselves; bear with them, excuse their weaknesses, and serve them. May our good example encourage them, and our words edify them; may we comfort them and win them to the service of God by our kindness, and our charities.

Pray for France, which is thy country, and for Spain, where thou didst institute thy grand Order. Protect the precious remnants of that Order, by whose means thou didst work such miracles of charity. Console all prisoners and captives. Obtain for all men that holy Liberty of Children of God, of which the Apostle speaks, (Romans 8:21) and which consists in obedience to the law of God. When this liberty is in man’s soul, he never can be a slave; but when the inner man is enslaved, the outward man never can be free. Oh! pray that the fetters of false doctrines and passions may be broken, and then the world will enjoy that true Liberty, which would soon put an end to tyranny, and make tyrants impossible. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Peter Nolasco, January 28.)

It is instructive to highlight the last paragraph in Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer to Saint Peter Nolasco:

Obtain for all men that holy Liberty of Children of God, of which the Apostle speaks, (Romans 8:21) and which consists in obedience to the law of God. When this liberty is in man’s soul, he never can be a slave; but when the inner man is enslaved, the outward man never can be free. Oh! pray that the fetters of false doctrines and passions may be broken, and then the world will enjoy that true Liberty, which would soon put an end to tyranny, and make tyrants impossible.

True liberty consists in that liberty of the “Children of God” and “which consists in obedience to the law of God” as “when this liberty is in man’s soul, he can never be a slave; but when the inner man is enslaved, the outward man can never be free.”

Also, Consider the account of Saint Peter Nolasco’s order's founding as provided by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., in The Liturgical Year for the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, which falls on September 24:

The Office of the time gives us, at then close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. Those heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honour of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the world.

'Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, who hast wrought salvation by the hand of a woman;' the Church introduces the history of the heroine, who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai's niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and by her intercession. The Queen of heaven, in her peerless perfection, outshines them both, in gentleness, in valour, and in beauty. Today's feast is a memorial of the strength she puts forth for the deliverance of her people.

Finding their power crushed in Spain, and in the east checked by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the Saracens, in the Twelfth Century, become wholesale pirates, and scoured the seas to obtain slaves for the African markets. We shudder to think of the numberless victims, of every age, sex, and condition, suddenly carried off from the coasts of Christian lands, or captured on the the high seas, and condemned to the disgrace of the harem or the miseries of the bagnio. Here, nevertheless, in many an obscure prison, were enacted scenes of heroism worthy to compare with those witnessed in the early persecutions; here was a new field for Christian charity; new horizons opened out for heroic self-devotion. Is not the spiritual good thence arising a sufficient reason for the permission of temporal ills? Without this permission, heaven would have for ever lacked a portion of its beauty.

When, in 1696, Innocent XII extended this feast to the whole Church, he afforded the world an opportunity of expressing its gratitude by a testimony as universal as the benefit received.

Differing from the Order of holy Trinity, which had been already twenty years in existence, the Order of Mercy was founded as it were in the very face of the Moors; and hence it originally numbered more knights than clerks [clerics] among its members. It was called the royal,l military, and religious Order of our Lady of Mercy for the ransom of captives. The clerics were charged with the celebration of the Divine Office in the commandaries; the knights guarded the coasts, and undertook the perilous enterprise of ransoming Christian captives. St. Peter Nolasco was the first Commander or Grand Master of the Order; when his relics were discovered, he was found armed with sword and cuirass.

In the following lines the Church gives us her thoughts upon the facts which we have already learnt.

At the time when the Saracen yoke oppressed the larger and more fertile part of Spain, and great numbers of the faithful were detained in cruel servitude, at the great risk of denying the Christian faith and losing their eternal salvation, the most blessed Queen of heaven graciously came to remedy all these great evils, and showed her exceeding charity in redeeming her children. She appeared with beaming countenance to Peter Nolasco, a man conspicuous for wealth and piety, who in his holy meditations was ever striving to devise some means of helping the innumerable Christians living in misery as captives of the Moors. She told him it would be very pleasing to her and her only-begotten Son, if- ia religious Order were instituted in her honour, whose members should devote themselves to delivering the captives from Turkish tyranny. Animated this heavenly vision, the man of God was inflamed with burning love, having but one desire at heart, viz: that both he and the Order he was to found, might be devoted to the exercise of that highest charity, for the laying down of life for one's friends and neighbours.

That same night, the most holy Virgin appeared also to blessed Raymond of Pengnafort, and to James king of Aragon, telling them of her wish to have the Order instituted, and exhorting them to lend their aid to so great an undertaking. Meanwhile Peter hastened to relate the whole matter to Raymund, who was his confessor; and finding it had been already revealed to him from heaven, submitted humbly to his direction. King James next arrived, fully resolved to carry out the instructions he also had received from the blessed Virgin. Having therefore taken counsel together and being all of one mind, they set about instituting an Order in honour of the Virgin Mother, under the invocation of our Lady of Mercy for the ransom of captives.

On the tenth of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and eighteen, king James put into execution what the two holy men had planned. The members of the Order bound themselves by a fourth vow to remain, when necessary, as securities in the power of the pagans, in order to deliver Christians. The king granted them licence to bear his royal arms upon their breast, and obtained from Gregory IX the confirmation of this religious institute distinguished by such eminent brotherly charity. God himself gave increase to the work through his Virgin Mother; so that the Order spread rapidly and prosperously over the whole world. It soon reckoned many holy men remarkable for their charity and piety who collected alms from Christ's faithful, to be spent in redeeming their brethren; and sometimes gave themselves up as ransom for many others. In order that due thanks might be rendered to God and his Virgin Mother for the benefit of such an institution, the apostolic See allowed this special feast and Office to be celebrated, and also granted innumerable other privileges to the Order.

Blessed be thou, O Mary, the honour and the joy of thy people! On the day of thy glorious Assumption, thou didst take possession of thy queenly dignity for our sake; and the annals of the human race are a record of thy merciful interventions. The captives whose chains thou hast broken, and whom thou hast set free from the degrading yoke of the Saracens, may be reckoned by millions. We are still rejoicing in the recollection of thy dear birthday; and thy smile is sufficient to dry our tears and chase away the clouds of grief. And yet, what sorrows there are still upon the earth, where thou didst drink such long draughts from the cup of suffering! Sorrows are sanctifying and beneficial to some; but there are other and unprofitable griefs, springing from social injustice: the drudgery of the factory, or the tyranny of the strong over the weak, may be worse than slavery in Algiers or Tunis. Thou alone, O Mary, canst break the inextricable chains, in which the cunning price of darkness entangles the dupes he has deceived by the high-sounding names of equality and liberty. Show thyself a Queen, by coming to the rescue. the whole earth, the entire human race, cries out to thee, in the words of Mardochai: 'Speak to the king for us, and deliver us from death.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Time After Pentecost, Volume 14, pp. 261-266.)

We need to pray to Our Lady of Ransom—Our Lady of Mercy—and to Saint Peter of Nolasco (and to Saint Raymond of Pennafort, whose feast was celebrated five days ago now, that is, on Thursday, January 23, 2025), to ransom us from the perils of this present time of apostasy and betrayal as we seek shelter in her loving arms and as we have recourse in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance to the mercy that has been won for us by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, on the wood of the Holy Cross so that we may be ransomed from our attachment even to the slightest Venial Sin and as we seek to live in a more penitential way each day by making sincere acts of reparation for our sins, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state in life permits, remembering that there can be no genuine peace in the hearts of men and thus anywhere in the world, including the Middle East, until all men exclaim with joy:

“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Hosanna in Excelsis. Benedict, qui venit in Nomine Domini. Hosanna in Excelsis.”

Our Lady of Ransom, pray for us.

Saint John Chrysostom, pray for us.

Saint Peter Nolasco, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.