On the Last Day of the Liturgical Year in 2022

Today is the last day of the year, the liturgical year, that is. It is also a very short day, liturgically speaking, as is the case with almost every Saturday of the liturgical year. Our current liturgical year ends with First Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent this evening. A new liturgical year is ushered in with the penitential Season of Advent in which we call to mind our daily preparation for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Coming for us at the moment of our Particular Judgments--and His Second and Last Coming at the end of time--as we prepare for our annual commemoration of His First Coming as a helpless babe in the cradle in the stable in the cave in Bethlehem. Far from being a time of immersion into the commercialism of the world in what has become the pagan "Holiday" season, this time of moderate penance is a time of  withdrawal from the world as we prepare ourselves each day for our own deaths and as we prepare to celebrate worthily and with great festivity the Christmas season of joy that runs through the Epiphany and concludes with the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Candlemas, Thursday, February 3, 2023.

The best way, of course, that we can prepare for Our Lord's Coming us at the end of our lives as we prepare for our annual Christmas celebration that begins with First Vespers on Saturday, December 24, 2022, is to assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass if this is possible, which, of course, it is not for many Catholics around the world in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Those who do have access to the true Mass should make every sacrifice imaginable to so arrange our lives that we have access to the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross, at which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour comes to us by means of His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament by means of Holy Communion. There is nothing more important, especially in this time of apostasy and betrayal, than having access to daily Mass so that we can be purged of all worldliness as we keep Our Lady--and all of the angels and saints--company at the unbloody re-presentation of her Divine Son's Sacrifice to His Co-Equal Father in Spirit and in Truth in atonement for our sins.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass places us at the sorrows of Calvary and at the same time is a foretaste of Heavenly glories. No human attachment in this passing world matters more than the Mass. It is at Holy Mass where we can fulfill our obligations of Charity for the Living and Dead as we pray for each in the respective Mementos in the Canon of the Mass, as well as in our Thanksgiving after Holy Mass and the time that we spend each day before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament in prayer. A love of and devotion to daily assistance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will increase our ardor for the Most Blessed Trinity as our immortal souls are filled with the graces won for us by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Incarnate in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb. This ardor for God will detach us more and more from the things, people and places of this mortal vale of tears, inclining us more and more to have zeal for His greater honor and glory and for the salvation of the souls of all men.

A love of Holy Mass will inspire us to pray more for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, especially those anonymous souls who have been forgotten even by their own relatives, in no large measure because so many "priests" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have assured the relatives of these poor souls at their "Masses of Christian Burial" that they are in Heaven and have no need of our prayers here in the Church Militant on earth. We must take up the slack and pray fervently for these Poor Souls every day of our lives.

Although the month of November ended yesterday, Friday, November 30, 2018, the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, we are called to pray for the Poor Souls every day of our lives, remembering that Saint Francis de Sales wrote that we can fulfill all of our obligations of Charity by praying for these souls who suffer so much in the hell fires of Purgatory and who will be so grateful to us for our remembering them. Every offering of Holy Mass offers relief to the Poor Souls. We can expedite their release from Purgatory and thus their entrance into Heaven if only we take the time, especially during Holy Mass, to pray for them, naming as many of these souls as is possible for us to recall. All of our good works can be fulfilled by praying for the Poor Souls

A love of Holy Mass will help us to see the world more clearly through the eyes of the true Faith. A life that is lived well in conjunction with the glories of the liturgical year will not be anxious about the events of the present time, coming to understand through the lives of the saints, especially those who have been martyred for the Faith, that we have nothing at all to fear from the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil. The saints sought to flee from the false attractions of the world as they immersed themselves in First and Last Things. We must do no less. And the saints sought to fly to the heights of sanctity by flying unto the patronage of the Mother of God, whose glories and sorrows are commemorated during the liturgical year and reflected in the lives of those saints. We must do no less, especially by means of Total Consecration to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.

A love of Holy Mass will help us to be "immunized," so to speak, from peer pressure and from human respect. We will come to consider it to be a great privilege to be humiliated and misunderstood and rejected and ostracized, if not hated, by our relatives and friends and former associates. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was treated in like manner, was He not? He offered Himself up to the Father on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem us, suffering all manner of humiliation and opprobrium as a result of the effects of our own sins. Holy Mass will help us to want to be treated as our sins caused Our Lord to be treated during His Passion Death and as our sins caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with those Seven Swords of Sorrow.

Sadly, however, most Catholics today are not breaking down the doors of those Catholic churches where they could find true offerings of the Holy Mass.

No, so many Catholics, steeped in a worldliness whose spirit has taken greater hold on their immortal souls because there are indeed so few true offerings of Holy Mass in this time of apostasy and betrayal, are willing to wait hours upon hours overnight for the opening of retail outlet, such as WalMart, whose shelves are stocked with goods made for American-based multinational corporations by the sweat of virtual slave labor in Red China at the beginning of the second week of the "holiday" season. It is quite a telling sign of our barbarous times, when most people, including most Catholics, are quite sanguine about the daily slaughter of the preborn by means of surgical abortions, will inconvenience themselves by waiting in cold weather overnight for a retail store to open but they would consider it as "abnormal," if not just a little "crazy," to get up during the middle of the night and adore their Creator as He is Exposed in His Real Presence).

The prophetic voice of the Catholic Church has been muted in the midst of this naturalism as the men who are considered to be, albeit falsely, its "shepherds" have made their "reconciliation" with the anti-Incarnational spirit of Modernity. Only a handful of "priests" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism ever preach against the ways of the modern world, and many of those who do suffer for doing so at the hands of their conciliar "bishops."

Insist on Our Lady's Fatima dress code?

Explain that it is a Mortal Sin to watch almost anything on television, including "news" programs that feature the advertising of products that should never be mentioned publicly and/or featuring gross immodesty and "rock "music"?

Tell people not to shop until they drop?

Tell people not to worship at the altar of collegiate and professional sports?

Make advertence to the encyclical letters of the true popes who warned us about the abyss into which we are plunged at the present time?

It is rare, if not altogether forbidden in most venues of the counterfeit church and even, so very sadly, in many fully traditional venues where some priests believe that would "lose" their people if they were "harsh" on these issue, to find a  conciliar "priest" who understands that he has a responsibility before God to draw His people out of the popular culture.

Pope Leo XIII explained to us in Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888, that we are not to spend our days immersed in the search for material pleasures:

Now the whole essence of a Christian life is to reject the corruption of the world and to oppose constantly any indulgence in it; this is taught in the words and deeds, the laws and institutions, the life and death of Jesus Christ, "the author and finisher of faith." Hence, however strongly We are deterred by the evil disposition of nature and character, it is our duty to run to the "fight proposed to Us," fortified and armed with the same desire and the same arms as He who, "having joy set before him, endured the cross." Wherefore let men understand this specially, that it is most contrary to Christian duty to follow, in worldly fashion, pleasures of every kind, to be afraid of the hardships attending a virtuous life, and to deny nothing to self that soothes and delights the senses. "They that are Christ's, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences"-- so that it follows that they who are not accustomed to suffering, and who hold not ease and pleasure in contempt belong not to Christ. By the infinite goodness of God man lived again to the hope of an immortal life, from which he had been cut off, but he cannot attain to it if he strives not to walk in the very footsteps of Christ and conform his mind to Christ's by the meditation of Christ's example. Therefore this is not a counsel but a duty, and it is the duty, not of those only who desire a more perfect life, but clearly of every man "always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus." How otherwise could the natural law, commanding man to live virtuously, be kept? For by holy baptism the sin which we contracted at birth is destroyed, but the evil and tortuous roots of sin, which sin has engrafted, and by no means removed. This part of man which is without reason -- although it cannot beat those who fight manfully by Christ's grace -- nevertheless struggles with reason for supremacy, clouds the whole soul and tyrannically bends the will from virtue with such power that we cannot escape vice or do our duty except by a daily struggle. "This holy synod teaches that in the baptized there remains concupiscence or an inclination to evil, which, being left to be fought against, cannot hurt those who do not consent to it, and manfully fight against it by the grace of Jesus Christ; for he is not crowned who does not strive lawfully." There is in this struggle a degree of strength to which only a very perfect virtue, belonging to those who, by putting to flight evil passions, has gained so high a place as to seem almost to live a heavenly life on earth. Granted; grant that few attain such excellence; even the philosophy of the ancients taught that every man should restrain his evil desires, and still more and with greater care those who from daily contact with the world have the greater temptations -- unless it be foolishly thought that where the danger is greater watchfulness is less needed, or that they who are more grievously ill need fewer medicines. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

Pope Leo XIII explained is not a "counsel but a duty" to walk in the footsteps of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and conform our minds to His as seek to live in a penitential manner and refuse to be drawn into a spirit of worldliness, especially during the season of Advent into which we enter in but a few hours. We are not to have the false spirit of the world within our hearts, which must beat in unison with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

As can be seen from final few sentences of the paragraph quoted above from Exeunte Iam Anno, Pope Leo XIII explained the we need the Catholic Faith to overcome the concupiscence of our fallen human nature. He emphasized that very point again and again in his writings, especially in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, and Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, teaching us that we need the Catholic Faith to fight against sin and as we seek to keep the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

This is not what is taught by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, whose leaders tell us that false religions can contribute to the cause of order within nations and peace among them. It is no wonder that Catholics feel free to act as Saracens in shopping malls when the likes of the late Jean-Louis "Cardinal" Tauran, who was the President of the "Pontifical" Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue at the time, congratulated the modern-day Saracens fifteeen ago now on helping to restore "God" to Europe! No, I am not making this up:

PARIS (Reuters) - A senior Vatican cardinal has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe and said believers of different faiths had no option but to engage in interreligious dialogue.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic Church's department for interfaith contacts, said religion was now talked and written about more than ever before in today's Europe.

"It's thanks to the Muslims," he said in a speech printed in Friday's L'Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Vatican. "Muslims, having become a significant minority in Europe, were the ones who demanded space for God in society."

Vatican officials have long bemoaned the secularisation of Europe, where church attendance has dwindled dramatically in recent decades, and urged a return to its historically Christian roots. But Tauran said no society had only one faith.

"We live in multicultural and multireligious societies, that's obvious," he told a meeting of Catholic theologians in Naples. "There is no civilisation that is religiously pure."

Tauran's positive speech on interfaith dialogue came after a remark by Pope Benedict prompted media speculation that the Vatican was losing interest in it. Some Jewish leaders reacted with expressions of concern and the Vatican denied any change.

The "return of God" is clearly seen in Tauran's native France, where Europe's largest Muslim minority has brought faith questions such as women's headscarves into the political debate after decades when they were considered strictly private issues.

Tauran said religions were "condemned to dialogue," a practice he called "the search for understanding between two subjects, with the help of reason, in view of a common interpretation of their agreement and disagreement."

That seemed to clarify Benedict's statement on Sunday that interfaith dialogue was "not possible in the strict sense of the word". Church officials said a strict definition would include the option that one side is ultimately convinced by the other.

Dialogue participants could not give up their religious convictions, Tauran said, but should be open to learning about the positive aspects of each others' faith.

"Every religion has its own identity, but I agree to consider that God is at work in all, in the souls of those who search for him sincerely," he said. "Interreligious dialogue rallies all who are on the path to God or to the Absolute."

The uncertainty about the Vatican view coincided with increasing contacts among world religions.

Early this month, the Vatican held a pioneering conference with a delegation from the "Common Word" group of Muslim scholars who invited Christian churches to a new dialogue.

A week later, Saudi King Abdullah gathered world leaders at the United Nations as part of a dialogue he launched with a conference of faith leaders in Madrid last July.

Christianity and Islam are the world's two largest faiths, with two billion and 1.3 billion followers respectively. The latest interfaith efforts are meant to counter growing tensions between these two after the Sept. 11 attacks.

An Indian prelate, speaking after the Mumbai attacks began, said in Rome that a lack of courage to meet across faith lines was often behind religious violence in his country.

Archbishop Felix Machado of Nashik diocese, just east of Mumbai, told Italian priests the violence was caused by "inequality, a lack of justice and understanding and, above all, a lack of courage to dialogue," the Vatican daily reported. (Vatican thanks Muslims for returning God to Europe.)

I repeat: I did make this up. This was a real story from the Reuters news service from six years ago. Please tell me that Pope Saint Pius X would be "thanking" Mohammedans for returning "God" to Europe. The Mohammedans have been able to proliferate in large numbers in Europe precisely because the counterfeit church of conciliarism has abandoned the the Faith and driven millions upon millions of Catholics out of the Church altogether by means of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and its embrace of one false religion after another. Why should one practice the Catholic Faith when one can believe in anything else and still get to Heaven? Why should one not use contraception, live immorally and believe in the legal right to kill preborn babies by surgical means when what is seen to be the Catholic Church is so "open" to the falsehoods of false religions that are hated by God, Who wants these false religions wiped off the face of this earth and their mosques an synagogues transformed into Catholic churches as their adherents are converted unconditionally to the true Faith?

Jean-Louis "Cardinal" Tauran's speech in support of "inter-religious dialogue" came about a week after a letter had been written by the now retired false "pontiff," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, when he was the Prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Senate, surfaced in a book, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, that was somewhat critical of such "dialogue." Tauran was thus dispatched on a mission by the false "pontiff" to make sure that the leaders of false religions understood that the Vatican in conciliar captivity is fully committed to this exercise in syncretism, which is what it is despite all conciliar protests to the contrary, as part of its effort to combat "secularism" and "relativism" in Europe and other parts of the world. This is madness. It is insanity. The Catholic Church has never taught that false religions have any role to play in combating secularism and relativism.

This conciliar insanity was reflected by the absolutely absurd, delusional comments of Jorge Mario Bergoglio yesterday in Ankara, Turkey (see accompanying article, "In the Shoes of Antichrist"), about the necessity of "interreligious dialogue" to foster "understanding" as a means of combatting "fundamentalism," thus showing himself yet again to utterly unwilling to face the reality that the false, blasphemous religion called Mohammedanism is violent of its very perverse nature. Adherents of religions that deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ are steeped in Original Sin, meaning that they are more inclined to hate others and to engage in acts of violence against those they hate. It is really this simple. The solution: renew the spirit of Saint Thomas the Apostle (whose feast day this year is celebrated on Wednesday, December 21, 2022, and Saint Francis Xavier (whose feast day is this year is Saturday, December 3, 2022) to convert adherents of Mohammedanism in Pakistan and Hinduism in India to the true Faith.

Nothing has changed since Saint Francis Xavier provided this description to his Jesuit superiors of the dreadful nature of the Indian people as they were steeped then (as they are steeped now) in their worship of devils, which ensnares their immortal souls all the more to the devil as they are provoked to thoughts of hatred and acts of violence against others (and as they are steeped in all manner of sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments):

We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people. They give out publicly that the gods command certain offerings to be made to their temples, which offerings are simply the things that the Brahmins themselves wish for, for their own maintenance and that of their wives, children, and servants. Thus they make the poor folk believe that the images of their gods eat and drink, dine and sup like men, and some devout persons are found who really offer to the idol twice a day, before dinner and supper, a certain sum of money. The Brahmins eat sumptuous meals to the sound of drums, and make the ignorant believe that the gods are banqueting. When they are in need of any supplies, and even before, they give out to the people that the gods are angry because the things they have asked for have not been sent, and that if the people do not take care, the gods will punish them by slaughter, disease, and the assaults of the devils. And the poor ignorant creatures, with the fear of the gods before them, obey them implicitly. These Brahmins have barely a tincture of literature, but they make up for their poverty in learning by cunning and malice. Those who belong to these parts are very indignant with me for exposing their tricks. Whenever they talk to me with no one by to hear them they acknowledge that they have no other patrimony but the idols, by their lies about which they procure their support from the people. They say that I, poor creature as I am, know more than all of them put together.

They often send me a civil message and presents, and make a great complaint when I send them all back again. Their object is to bribe me to connive at their evil deeds. So they declare that they are convinced that there is only one God, and that they will pray to Him for me. And I, to return the favor, answer whatever occurs to me, and then lay bare, as far as I can, to the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ. (St. Francis Xavier: Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome, 1543.)

"Thanking" the Mohammedans for bringing God, Who is blasphemed by the Koran and offended by the false worship of the Mohammedans, "back" into Europe? Claiming that a "lack of courage" to engage in "inter-religious dialogue" is responsible for the terrorism in Mumbai, India? It is no wonder that Catholics can participate in a stampede on Long Island when the leaders of the counterfeit church of conciliarism trample on God Himself every day by means of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and by means of their assault upon doctrinal truth that has helped to paganize the world and to plunge ordinary people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, into the abyss of naturalism and all of its attendant evils.

We must work to restore Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order in the world  An impossible task? No more impossible now than it was on the first Pentecost Sunday as the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, descended in tongues of fire upon the Apostles and our dear Blessed Mother, thereby starting the missionary work of the Church that would result in the conversion of men and kingdoms to the true Faith. Are thee graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls any the less powerful or efficacious now than they were then?

Pope Saint Pius X was not uttering ethereal platitudes when he wrote the following in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X,nNotre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

The insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants are to be found today in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Their apostasies from the Catholic Faith have done incredible damage to the souls of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, thus furthering, whether wittingly or unwittingly, the anti-Catholic agenda of the Judeo-Masonic lords of naturalism who profit handsomely from the immersion of Catholics into the worldliness of the moment. We cannot be part of this stampede against the Holy Faith.

As we start this Advent, therefore, let us withdraw more and more from the world and its false attractions as we attach ourselves more and more to First and Last Things, starting with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Eucharistic piety and a deep and tender devotion to the Mother of God, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary. We do not need to see tangible results of our efforts to give all to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is enough that we plant the seeds and water it as best we can by our prayers and sacrifices and mortifications and humiliations and penances as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, conscious of our need at all times to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world.

We must sow seeds for the restoration of Christendom with generosity and with good cheer, never being at all discouraged by the difficult circumstances of the moment, each of which has arisen in God's Holy Providence and is an occasion for us to prosper spiritually unto our dying breaths as we cooperate with the graces sent to us through the loving hands of the Mediatrix of All Graces, Mary our Immaculate Queen:

Now this I say: He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly: and he who soweth in blessings, shall also reap blessings. Every one as he hath determined in his heart, not with sadness, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound in you; that ye always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work, As it is written: He hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor: his justice remaineth for ever. And he that ministereth seed to the sower, will both give you bread to eat, and will multiply your seed, and increase the growth of the fruits of your justice:

That being enriched in all things, you may abound unto all simplicity, which worketh through us thanksgiving to God. Because the administration of this office doth not only supply the want of the saints, but aboundeth also by many thanksgivings in the Lord, By the proof of this ministry, glorifying God for the obedience of your confession unto the gospel of Christ, and for the simplicity of your communicating unto them, and unto all. And in their praying for you, being desirous of you, because of the excellent grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift. (2 Cor. 6: 9-15.)

The last day of the liturgical year ends in a few hours. The dawning of a new day and a new liturgical year is upon us. Let us use this Advent well as the servants of Our Lady to keep vigil with her for the many "comings" of her Divine Son into our hearts and souls by means of Sanctifying Grace, preparing us to celebrate Christmas with true joy and with true gratitude for the blessings of the true Faith that have been poured into our hearts and souls.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Sylvester the Abbot, pray for us.

Saint Peter of Alexandria, pray for us.