Part Three
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Jorge Mario Bergoglio's nonstop party celebrating fifty years of "renewal" represented by the "Second" Vatican Council is a constant source of both amazement and tears. (It is also a cause of great physical exhaustion for those who comment on the nonstop flow of verbal and written pollution from inside the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River.)
It is nothing other than astounding to read Jorge Mario Bergoglio's denunciations of "adolescent progressivism" and of those who "abuse" the "spirit" of the "Second" Vatican Council as he is the very living embodiment of the most revolutionary strains of Modernism known and has taken the "spirit" of the "Second" Vatican Council to dimensions that shocked some of his "conservative" conciliar confreres in Argentina and the Vatican prior to being chosen by his brother apostates on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, to be the universal public face of apostasy. It stands to reason that there are even some in various conciliar chancery offices and parishes and inside of the Vatican itself who are indeed very shocked by the extent to which Bergoglio has taken the conciliar revolution.
Actually, of course, there is nothing much about which to be shocked as Jorge Mario Bergoglio is simply present the the "doctrines" of the "Second" Vatican Council in a cruder, more course, vulgar, profane and unrestrained manner that his predecessors did between October 28, 1958, and March 13, 2013. Bergoglio's exhibitionism, which surpasses even that of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, and his "nobody is humbler than me" act are the only things that really distinguish him from his predecessors, admitting that there are some differences around the margins, especially in the staging of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is simply an "orthodox" conciliar apostate.
As has been demonstrated on this site quite frequently, each of Bergoglio's Commissars was chosen because they share his own revolutionary views, although they have different styles in the ways their carry and express themselves. The one, however, who is the intellectual muscle behind the false "pontiff's" plans to tear down the last removing bastions of recognizable Catholicism from the counterfeit church of conciliarism is none other than Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez, the coordinator Bergoglio's Council of Commissars (conciliar "cardinals). For those of you with short memories, here links to the four part series that I wrote to comment on identical lectures he gave in Irving, Texas, on October 25, 2013, and then in Miami, Florida, on October 28, 2013: Commissar of Antichrist Speaks, part one, Commissar of Antichrist Speaks, part two, Commissar of Antichrist Speaks, part three and Commissar of Antichrist Speaks, part four).
Oscar has been a busy boy lately, enjoying his own limelight as the "brains" behind his fellow Latin American, Jorge, finding time out of his busy schedule prior to his work as the Chief Commissar to speak with Vatican Insider on Tuesday, November 19, 2013. the Feast of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Pontianus, to give an interview to Vatican Insider, which prompts the question as to who is minding the store back in the conciliar-held Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Here is an excerpt:
Could you point some out? The ones you think require the Church’s involvement the most at this moment in Latin American history.
“Economic dependency and social inequality continue to seriously
plague our countries. While some are in a position to satisfy its needs
and and can afford to squander money, the majority of the population
lives in conditions of extreme poverty. The concentration of wealth,
land ownership, power and education in the hands of a select few is what
is hindering progress in Latin America...”
But you said that the aim of the meeting is not to find solutions...
Of course, because we have met as men of faith who, in the presence
of Our Lady of Guadalupe, want to regain an awareness of how to move,
act and of what the urgently needed “new evangelisation” is, in order to
finally, personally meet Christ. We are not searching for an idea of
Christ, a doctrine on the Son of God, but for a person who can renew the
mandate mentioned at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go everywhere and
announce the Message of God's good news to one and all.”
My understanding is that it is also a criterion for the reforms
which you and the other cardinals are working on at the Pope’s
request...
“It is one of the points which Pope Francis keeps insisting on and
which cannot be ignored. Judging by the essence of the Church’s mission
after Aparecida and now the “Francis phenomenon”, I would say that we
need to rely more on the religiosity of our people, develop a more
ecumenical theological programme, renew grassroots communities,
strengthen the option for the young and give mercy and permanent
dialogue with culture, central roles.”
Were the consultations the Pope began at the start of November -
the 38 questions related to moral, family and ethics-related issues –
warmly welcomed? Do you feel that those to whom the questions were
addressed, at least in Latin America, began working on these points in
the spirit that the Pope had hoped for?
“I received a great deal of feedback and I listened to
many entities; we will speak more about this at the meeting at the start
of December; we expect to draw conclusions at the end of January, but I
can certainly say one thing: There was one thing I particularly liked
about the way the Holy Father arranged the consultations. He doesn’t
want consultations to focus solely on the “choir singers”; what he is
aiming for, as far as possible, is to go beyond the familiar boundaries
and also involve non believers who have something to say. Because the
current situation regarding the family affects them a great deal too.” (Francis’ reforms and the Guadalupe method.)
Anyone who cannot see by now that Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez is bereft of the Catholic Faith or that he was chosen by Jorge Mario Bergoglio to "coordinate" the so-called "Council of Cardinals" precisely because he has no ties to the "past" ought just to go on to some other destination in cyberspace as the effort below, which will be very brief as I have no more time to waste on the Honduran apostate who "discharged his mind" to us very thoroughly last month, will do nothing to convince him to the contrary.
Suffice it for the moment to note that Maradiaga Rodriguez's efforts to distance Our Lord from His Sacred Doctrine nothing new. It is simply yet another expression of the same Modernist precept that was near and dear to the heart of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and is near and dear to the heart of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. To assert that we need to "search" for the "Person of Jesus" that Holy Mother Church's teaching on His doctrine has occluded is both heretical and blasphemous on its face.
Ratzinger/Benedict himself, of course, said the exact same thing just recently in a letter that he wrote to an atheist correspondent, Piergiorgio Odifreddi:
The pope also gave Odifreddi
some recommended readings to address the mathematician's doubts about
being able to know anything for certain about the historical figure of
Jesus.
Just because there is shoddy research out there
"doesn't compromise the importance of serious historical research,"
which has brought real and certain knowledge about the figure of Jesus,
the pope said.
He said "historical-critical exegesis is necessary
for faith, which doesn't propose myths" out of historical figures and
events, but demands a history that is based on truth and facts, and
presents such findings with scientific rigor.
"All of my efforts have been aimed at showing how
the Jesus described in the Gospels is also the real historical Jesus;
that it is history that has really taken place," Pope Benedict said,
referring to his writings on Jesus of Nazareth.
The pope ended his letter admitting he may have
been harsh in some of his criticisms, but that "frankness is part of
dialogue." (See Retired Uber Apostate Benedict challenges atheist, says he never hid abuse cases.)
Thus it is that Ratzinger/Benedict, dismissing the ability of
Saint Thomas Aquinas and of those of his fellow Modernists who employ
what he believes to be a too "rigid" reliance upon the
historical-critical method of Biblical exegesis, believe that he has "discovered" the hermeneutic that makes it possible
for men of this time to "encounter" and to "attain sure knowledge of
the real historical figure Jesus." This is a blasphemous and heretical contention that implies
that Holy Mother Church has not done this for nearly two millennia
under the infallible guidance of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity,
God the Holy Ghost, and with the assistance of her Fathers and
Doctors whose works she has held in such high esteem and which have been
relied upon by the council fathers of her true councils, including the
Council of Trent and the [First] Vatican Council, to reflect upon the
meaning of the truths contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith as they
have conducted their deliberations under the infallible guidance of the
same God the Holy Ghost.
Pope Saint Pius X explicated this Modernist approach to Divine Revelation in Pascendi Dominici Gregis,
stressing the fact that Modernists must assess everything about the
Faith in term of their own interior feelings and experiences, incapable
of accepting the Tradition of Holy Mother Church as It has been passed
down from time immemorial under the infallible guidance of God the Holy
Ghost as they must "revise" and "reinterpret" that which does not
correspond to their own interior dispositions and feelings:
In all this process, from which, according to the Modernists, faith and
revelation spring, one point is to be particularly noted, for it is of capital
importance on account of the historicocritical corollaries which they deduce
from it. The unknowable they speak of does not present itself to faith as
something solitary and isolated; hut on the contrary in close conjunction with
some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to the realms of science or history,
yet to some extent exceeds their limits. Such a phenomenon may be a fact of
nature containing within itself something mysterious; or it may be a man, whose
character, actions, and words cannot, apparently, be reconciled with the
ordinary laws of history. Then faith, attracted by the unknowable which is
united with the phenomenon, seizes upon the whole phenomenon, and, as it were,
permeates it with its own life. From this two things follow. The first is a sort
of transfiguration of the phenomenon, by its elevation above its own true
conditions, an elevation by which it becomes more adapted to clothe itself with
the form of the divine character which faith will bestow upon it. The second
consequence is a certain disfiguration -- so it may be called -- of the same
phenomenon, arising from the fact that faith attributes to it, when stripped of
the circumstances of place and time, characteristics which it does not really
possess; and this takes place especially in the case of the phenomena of the
past, and the more fully in the measure of their antiquity. From these two
principles the Modernists deduce two laws, which, when united with a third which
they have already derived from agnosticism, constitute the foundation of
historic criticism. An example may be sought in the Person of Christ. In the
Person of Christ, they say, science and history encounter nothing that is not
human. Therefore, in virtue of the first canon deduced from agnosticism,
whatever there is in His history suggestive of the divine must be rejected.
Then, according to the second canon, the historical Person of Christ was
transfigured by faith; therefore everything that raises it above historical
conditions must be removed. Lastly, the third canon, which lays down that the
Person of Christ has been disfigured by faith, requires that everything should
be excluded, deeds and words and all else, that is not in strict keeping with
His character, condition, and education, and with the place and time in which He
lived. A method of reasoning which is passing strange, but in it we have the
Modernist criticism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio has, of course, expressed himself similarly about "searching" for the "significance" of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the midst of a changed set of historical circumstances, focusing on issues of economic "justice" and the betterment of social conditions rather than on the salvation of souls, which is pretty much taken for granted by most conciliar revolutionaries, who do not quite believe in "universal salvation" as they do not think that "restorationists" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. No matter how much circumstances in the world change, however, Christ the King is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Conciliarism is simply Modernism by way of The Sillon and the "new theology." It is not Catholicism.
Our Lord is inseparable from His Holy Doctrine. Indeed, He taught us that His Doctrine is that of His Co-Eternal, Co-Equal God the Father in Heaven:
[11] The Jews therefore sought him on the festival day, and said: Where is he? [12] And there was much murmuring among the multitude concerning him. For
some said: He is a good man. And others said: No, but he seduceth the
people. [13] Yet no man spoke openly of him, for fear of the Jews. [14] Now about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. [15] And the Jews wondered, saying: How doth this man know letters, having never learned?
[16] Jesus answered them, and said: My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. [17] If any man do the will of him; he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. [18] He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh
the glory of him that sent him, he is true, and there is no injustice
in him. [19] Did Moses not give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? [20] Why seek you to kill me? The multitude answered, and said: Thou hast a devil; who seeketh to kill thee? (John 7: 11-20.)
Anyone who contends that the "idea" of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is separable from His doctrine is a heretic. Saint John the Evangelist explained how we are to deal with such devils:
[6] And this is charity, that we walk according to his commandments. For
this is the commandment, that, as you have heard from the beginning, you
should walk in the same: [7] For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist. [8] Look to yourselves, that you lose not the things which you have wrought: but that you may receive a full reward. [9] Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath
not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the
Father and the Son. [10] If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you. (2 John 1: 6-10.)
As has been noted many times on this site, Antichrist is not going to give us his calling card. We need to use the reason that God has given us in conjunction with the sensus fidei to recognize words and deeds that are opposed to the immutable doctrine of the Divine Redeemer. We need to understand that those who revolteth against the doctrine of Our Lord belong to the devil. It is that simple. Bergoglio's desire to seek the "views" of the "people," including nonbelievers, to see what they have to "say" is just part of this diabolical work.
The false "pontiff's" desire for everyone to party hearty (or hardy) extends even to the United Kingdom, where the "Chemin Neuf Community" is going to take up residence in the Anglican-held Lambeth Palace to fulfill their particular "charism" of "ecumenical prayer:"
A group founded by Catholics has been invited to establish a community of prayer at Lambeth Palace.
Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury has invited four members of Chemin Neuf to live at the palace from January.
The group will include an Anglican married couple, a Lutheran studying to be a pastor and a Catholic. They will replace a community of Anglican nuns who, for the last 24 years, have lived at the palace.
A statement issued by Lambeth Palace said the community will share in the daily round of prayer that underpins the ministry of Archbishop Welby and will “further the ecumenical and international dimensions of his work.”
The Chemin Neuf group will pray three times a day in the crypt of the palace to hold the ministry of Archbishop Welby in nearly constant prayer.
In the press statement, the archbishop said: “The Church is constantly called to realise its God-given unity. The Holy Spirit blows through our lives and our structures and impels us into new ways of learning to love each other as Christ loves us.
“I am deeply moved that in God’s grace, Chemin Neuf have agreed to this radical and exciting new step of coming to live as a community of prayer, hospitality and learning at Lambeth Palace. We pray that this step of obedience will bear fruit among us and for the Church.”
Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, welcomed the announcement.
“I salute this initiative which brings the riches of a number of Christian traditions of prayer to the life of the palace,” he said.
“This is a clear and bold sign of the importance of prayer in the search for visible Christian unity. Such unity is a gift we are most likely to receive on our knees in prayer.”
Chemin Neuf grew out of a prayer group in Lyon, France, in 1973 and now has some 2,000 members in 30 countries. It describes itself as a “Roman Catholic community with an ecumenical vocation” made up of married couples, families and celibate individuals. Its members are drawn from different Christian denominations and are united by their faith and the desire to serve the church, the Gospel and the world. (Archbishop Welby invites Catholic-founded group to live at Lambeth Palace.)
Chemin Neuf is just another of the garden-variety "lay movements" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism whose "charisms" are not those sanctioned by God the Holy Ghost and are founded in doing the devil's bidding by treating false religions as valid and pleasing to God and by engaging in "interreligious prayer.
A good way to contrast the desire of the Chemin Neuf community to take up residence in the Lambeth Palace, which was taken away from the Catholic Church in 1534, at the behest of a man who should be considered a layman by the conciliar authorities as Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curae, September 15, 1896, on the invalidity of Anglican orders has not been abrogated on a de jure basis by the conciliarists (although the conciliar "popes" and their officials have treated Apostolicae Curae as no longer "relevant" on a de facto basis by treating the non-ordained clergy of the Anglican sect as valid and by attempting to give "joint blessings" with them), is to present the story related by Blessed Edmund Campion, who was cruelly drawn and quartered upon the orders of Queen Elizabeth I on December 1, 1581, to his Jesuit superiors in Rome:
Father Campion worked
through Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, always stopping at
the house of some prominent Catholic, where he was welcomed in the
following fashion. This account is taken from a letter written to Rome
and telling how the Jesuits made their way through the countryside.
"When a priest comes to the houses of the
Catholic gentry, they first salute him as a stranger unknown to them,
and then they take him into an inner chamber where an oratory is set up,
where all fall on their knees and ask his blessing. Then they ask how
long he will remain with them, and pray him to stop as long as he may.
If he says he must go on the morrow, as he usually does--for it is
dangerous to remain longer--they all prepare for confession that
evening; the next morning they hear Mass and receive Holy Communion;
then after preaching and giving his blessing a second time, the priest
departs and is conducted on his journey by one of the young gentlemen.
"No one in these parts is to be found who
complains of the length of the services; if a Mass does not last nearly
an hour, many are discontented. If six, eight or more Masses are said in
the same place, and on the same day (as often happens when there is a
meeting of priests), the same congregation will assist. When they can
get priests, they confess every week . . . A lady was lately told that
she should be let out of prison if she would just once allow herself to
be seen walking through an Anglican church. She refused. She had come
into prison with a sound conscience and would depart with it, or die. In
Henry's day [King Henry VIII], the whole kingdom, with all its bishops
and learned men, abjured its faith at one word of the tyrant. Be now, in
his daughter's days [the daughter was Queen Elizabeth], boys and women
boldly profess their faith before the judges and refuse to make the
slightest concession even at the threat of death.
"The adversaries are very mad that by no cruelty
can they move a single Catholic from his resolution, no, not even a
little girl. A young lady of sixteen was questioned by the sham bishop
of London about the Pope, and answered him with courage, and even made
fun of him in public, and so was ordered to be carried to the public
prison . . . One the way she cried out that she was being carried to
that place for her religion."
These were the brave people
whom the missionaries had come back home to help, and if they were brave
before, they were doubly brave after they had seen the example of the
daring priests. Both Father Campion and Father Persons knew full well
the dangers they ran. Father Campion writes in another letter to Rome:
"I cannot long escape
the hands of the heretics; the enemies have so many eyes, so many
tongues, so many scouts and crafts. I am in apparel [in disguise, he
mean] to myself very ridiculous; I often change it, and my name also. I
read letters sometimes myself that in the first front tell news that
Campion is taken, which, noised in every place I come, so fill my ears
with their sound, that fear itself had taken away all fear." [Father Harold Gardiner, S.J., Edmund Campion, Hero of God's Underground, Vision Books: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pp. 80-83.]
Yes, everything that Chemin Neuf is doing at the invitation of a man whose false sect is about to approve women "bishops" (see Anglican synod vote 'paves way' for female bishops) and with the approval of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the conciliar authorities in the United Kingdom stands condemned. There is really no need yet again to quote from Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, or Bishop George Hay's The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion as I did so nearly four weeks ago now in Rabbi Bergoglio.
This is a time of chastisement, a time of making reparation for our sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is not a time for having any kind of association with the party being put on by Bergoglio and his friends.
We must, though, rejoice in each and every cross that we are sent by the loving hand of God, Who has fastened each cross for us from all eternity with great exactitude. This is our joy and our consolation. Our Lord chose us to live in these difficult times, meaning that the graces He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for our needs. This must be our consolation and our joy.
Today is the great Feast of the Presentation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
Today's great feast will thus go unnoticed by most
people, including most Catholics, in the world this day. We know,
however, that to dishonor the Blessed Mother is dishonor her Divine Son.
It cannot be this way with us. We must honor Our Lady as we pray to
her, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, that she will present
us to her Divine Son at the moment of our deaths.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., wrote the following about the history of this great feast day in his The Liturgical Year,
teaching us that the King of France, Charles V, understood that nations
must give public honor and glory to the Mother of God:
The East had been celebrating for seven
centuries at least the entrance of the Mother of God into the temple of
Jerusalem, when in 1372 Gregory XI permitted it to be kept for the first
time by the Roman court at Avignon. Mary in return broke the chains of
captivity that had bound the Papacy for seventy years; and soon the
successor of St. Peter returned to Rome. The feast of the Visitation, as
we saw on July 2, was in like manner inserted into the Western calendar
to commemorate the re-establishment of unity after the schism which
followed the exile.
In 1373, following the example of the Sovereign Pontiff, Charles
V of France introduced the feast of the Presentation into the chapel of
his palace. By letters dated November 10, 1374, the masters and
students of the college of Navarre, he expressed his desire that it
should be celebrated throughout the kingdom: "Charles, by the grace of
God king of the Franks, to our dearly beloved: health in Him who ceases
not to honour His Mother on earth. Among other objects of our
solicitude, of our daily care and diligent meditation, that which
rightly occupies our first thoughts is, that the blessed Virgin and most
Holy Empress be honoured by us with very great love and praise as
becomes the veneration due to her. For it is our duty to glorify her;
and we, who raise the eyes of our soul to her on high, know what an
incomparable protectress she is to all, how powerful a mediatrix with
her blessed Son, for those who honour her with a pure heart. . . .
Wherefore, wishing to excite our faithful people to solemnize the said
feast, as we ourselves propose to do by God's assistance every year of
our life, we send this Office to your devotion, in order to increase
your joy."
Such was the language of princes in
those days. Now just at the very time the wise and pious king, following
up the work begun at Bretigny by our Lady of Chartres, rescued France
from its from its fallen and dismembered condition. In the State, then,
as well as in the Church, at this moment so critical for both our Lady
in her Presentation commanded the storm, and the smile of the infant
Mary dispersed the clouds.
Imagine if
we had such rulers today as France had in the glories of Christendom!
Public honor and glory given to the Mother of God on her feast days.
That would be something worth praising!
Dom Gueranger explained the mystical significance of this day:
Through the graceful infant now mounting the temple
steps He takes possession of that temple whose priests will hereafter
disown Him; for this child whom the temple welcomes to-day is His
'throne.' Already His fragrance precedes and announces Him in the Mother
in whose bosom He is to be 'anointed with the oil of gladness' as the
Christ among His brethren; already the angels hail her as the Queen
whose fruitful virginity will give birth to all those consecrated souls
who keep for the divine Spouse the 'myrrh' and the incense of their
holocausts, those 'daughters of kings' who are to form her court of
honour.
But our Lady's Presentation also opens new horizons
before the Church. On the Cycle of the saints, which is not so
precisely limited as that of the Time, the mystery of Mary's sojourn in
the sanctuary of the Old Covenant is our best preparation for the
approaching season of Advent. Mary, led to the temple in order to
prepare in retirement, humility, and love for her incomparable destiny,
had also the mission of perfecting at the foot of the figurative altar
the prayer of the human race, of itself ineffectual to draw down the
Saviour from heaven. She was, as St. Bernardine of Siena says, the happy
completion of all the waiting and the supplication for the coming of
the Son of God; in her, as in their culminating-point, all the desires
of the saints who had preceded her found their consummation and their
term.
Through her wonderful understanding of the
Scriptures, and her conformity, daily and hourly, to the minutest
teachings and prescriptions of the Mosaic ritual, Mary everywhere found
and adored the Messias hidden under the letter; she united herself to
Him, immolated herself with Him in each of the many victims sacrificed
before her eyes; and thus she rendered to the God of Sinai the homage
hitherto vainly expected of the Law understood, practised, and made to
fructify in all the fullness that beseemed its divine Legislator. Then
could Jehovah truly say: 'As the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and return no more thither, but soak the earth and water it, and make
it to spring: . . . so shall My word be. . . it shall not return to Me
void, but it shall do whatsoever I please.
Supplying thus for the deficiencies of the Gentiles
as well as of the Synagogue, Mary behold in the bride of the Canticle
of the Church of the future. In our name she addressed her supplications
to Him whom she recognized as the Bridegroom, without, however, knowing
that He was to be her own Son. Such yearnings of love, coming from her,
were sufficient to obtain from the divine Word pardon for the
infidelities of the past and the immorality into which the wandering
world was plunging deeper and deeper. How well did this ark of the New
Covenant replace that of the Jews, which had perished with the first
temple! It was for her, though he knew it not, that Herod the Gentile
and continued the construction of the second temple after it had
remained desolate since the time of Zorobabel; for the temple, like the
tabernacle before it, was but the home of the ark destined to be God's
throne; but greater was the glory of the second temple which sheltered
the reality, than of the first which contained but the figure. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)
We must never look to anyone
for "advice" on First or Last Things who cannot make these words of Dom
Prosper Gueranger his own, who cannot make his own this prayer uttered
by the great Benedictine of the Nineteenth Century:
'Congratulate me, all ye that love the Lord,
because when I was a little one I pleased the Most High.' Such is the
invitation thou addressed to us, O Mary, in the Office chanted in thy
honour; and on what feast couldst thou do so more appropriately?
When, even more little in thy humility than by thy
tender age, thou didst mount, in thy sweet purity, the steps of the
temple, all heaven must have owned that it was henceforth just for the
Most High to take His delight in our earth. Having hitherto lived in
retirement with thy blessed parents, this was thy first public act; it
showed thee for a moment to the eyes of men, only to withdraw thee
immediately into deeper obscurity. But as thou wast officially offered
and presented to the Lord, He Himself doubtless, surrounded by the
princes of His court, presented thee not less solemnly to those noble
spirits as their Queen. In the fullness of the new light that then burst
upon them, they understood at once thy incomparable greatness, the
majesty of the temple where Jehovah was receiving a homage superior to
that of their nine choirs, and the august prerogative of the Old
Testament to have thee for its daughter, and to perfect, by its
teachings and guidance during those twelve years, the formation of the
Mother of God.
Holy Church, however, declares that we can imitate
thee, O Mary, in this mystery of thy Presentation, as in all others.
Deign to bless especially those privileged souls who, by the grace of
their vocation, are even here below dwellers in the house of the Lord;
may they be like that fruitful olive enriched by the holy Spirit, to
which St. John Damascene compares thee. But is not every Christian, by
reason of his Baptism, an indweller and a member of the Church. God's
true sanctuary, prefigured by that of Moriah? May we through thy
intercession, follow thee so closely in thy Presentation even here in
the land of shadows, that we may deserve to be presented after thee to
the Most High in the temple of His glory. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)
We must offer up our prayers
and our sacrifices and humiliations and mortifications and penances to
the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life
permit, so that every human being on the face of this earth will recognize
in the Mother of God the Singular Vessel of Devotion without whose
intercession we cannot get to Heaven and whose Immaculate Heart will indeed triumph in the end.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, 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.
