Wallpaper That Glows in the Dark

by Thomas A. Droleskey

As I have admitted many times in the past, I watched television almost non-stop as a child. I watched television whenever I was not studying as an adolescent and a college student, although my television watching declined considerably once Ironside ended on Thursday, January 16, 1975, as I was ending a visit to my parents in Harlingen, Texas (where they had move from Long Island in early-1973) before returning to Albany, New York, for the final few months of preparation for my comprehensive examinations for my doctorate starting on Monday, April 28, 1975, and ending on Friday, May 9, 1975.

Although I recognize now that I had wasted my time on naturalism when I should have been reading books about the lives of the saints, I can't take back the past. I can only make reparation for it, noting also that my time "home alone" in the 1960s probably kept me out of a whole lot of trouble. I was content to be a "homebody" as I did my homework and then watched television in my bedroom in high school and college, doing the same in graduate school until early-1975. Burnished forever in my cerebral "website," if you will, are a lot of memorable moments from an early life wasted on naturalism, moments that provide for the few "cultural" references that are made on this site. Some writers refer to the great classics to make their points. I am left to refer to such things as The Honeymooners, Car 54, Where Are You?, The Lone Ranger, and, of course, Ironside.

Some of the best writing for television in its early days was done by those who wrote for The Honeymooners. Although it is said that Jackie Gleason liked to improvise a lot as Gotham Bus Company driver Ralph Kramden, the thirty-nine episodes of the 1955-1956 season, the only year that the series, which was a sketch of varying lengths on the Cavalcade of Stars (1951-1952) on the old Dumont television network and then the Jackie Gleason Show on the Columbia Broadcasting System network from 1952-1955 and 1956-1957 (later revived from 1966 to 1969 on the Jackie Gleason Show when it originated, as announced Johnny Olsen told us, from the "sun and fun capital of the world, Miami Beach, and featuring Sheila MacRae, instead of Audrey Meadows, as Alice Kramden, and Jane Kean, instead of Joyce Randolph, as Trixie Norton), stuck pretty close to the scripts, which were full of excellent byplay between the actors, who delivered their lines with aplomb.

The seventh episode of the "classic thirty-nine" was entitled, "Better Living through Television, broadcast on Saturday, November 12, 1955. The episode involved one of Ralph Kramden's "get rich quick" schemes. This one centered on a kitchen device, the Handy Housewife Helper, that could open cans or "core a apple" or scale fish or sharpen knives in a "zip, zip, zip" as compared to the "old-fashioned" way. Kramden convinced his pal and upstairs neighbor in a tenement building said to be in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York (the address, 328 Chauncey Street, Gleason's own childhood address, was in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn) to buy advertising time during a broadcast of a motion picture on a local television station in New York City to sell the device in what today would be called an "infomercial."

The episode contains a truly hilarious scene of Kramden freezing when he went before the camera as it was broadcasting live. Billed as "The Great Chef of the Future," Kramden, dressed in a chef's cap and white apron, could only hold the kitchen device up in one hand and stutter and stammer in his famous, "homina, homina, homina, homina" pattern. It still delivers its laughs fifty-three years after it was made and even though you know what's coming and when. (The Honeymooners-Better Living Through TV Part 6.)

One of the scenes in the early part of the episode involved Ralph Kramden trying to convince his wife that this scheme would be different, that this one would make money, saying that "nobody can be one hundred percent." Alice responded by saying, "You are. You've been wrong every time." Alice then reminded him of his past money-making schemes, such as "wallpaper that glows in the dark," an invention (which is now possible, by the way!) to save on the costs of electricity in a house at night, and "no cal pizza." (The scene that you can view here,The Honeymooners-Better Living Through TV4, shows the utter naturalism of television in the 1950s--as well as how Ralph and Alice Kramden treated each other with such sarcasm and cruelty, a sad fact of life in a land of naturalism even in the years of "plenty" in the 1950s.)

Well, a lot of wallpaper that glows in the dark was sold by investments trader Bernard Madoff, who, by his own admission, ran a gigantic Ponzi scheme for forty-eight years that has cost those who trusted him the staggering sum of $50 billion. The Ponzi scheme operated on Madoff's paying "interest" on investments he supposedly made for his clients with monies invested by new clients with him. As Madoff seemed to be a likable and a very trustworthy man and produced dividends both in good and bad economic times, most of his clients never bothered to do any real research into how his "investments" made money when the stock market was in decline (a "bear" market). Some were suspicious and reported their suspicions to the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose investigators did nothing to investigate the matter. The Ponzi scheme then continued until Madoff was faced with requests from clients of a total of $7 billion from their accounts, which he did not have and could not raise. It was then that he realized that his goose was cooked. The wallpaper that glowed in the dark glowed no more. (Sort of sounds like the Supplemental Security Income--Social Security--system, doesn't it?)

Madoff was most direct about what had happened when he realized that he could not raise the funds to pay out the monies that were being demanded of him by his clients:

Just days earlier, Mr. Madoff had told another senior executive he was struggling to raise cash to cover about $7 billion in requested withdrawals from his clients, and he had appeared “to have been under great stress in the prior weeks,” according to the S.E.C. complaint.

So on Wednesday [December 10, 2008], the senior executive visited Mr. Madoff’s office, maintained on a separate floor with records kept under lock and key, and asked for an explanation.

Instead, Mr. Madoff invited the two executives to his Manhattan apartment that evening. When they joined him there, he told them that his money-management business was “all just one big lie” and “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”

The senior employees understood him to be saying that he had for years been paying returns to certain investors out of the cash received from other investors.

In that conversation, according to the criminal complaint, Mr. Madoff “stated that he was ‘finished,’ that he had ‘absolutely nothing.’ ”

By this account, Mr. Madoff told the executives he intended to surrender to the authorities in about a week but first wanted to distribute approximately $200 million to $300 million to “certain selected employees, family and friends.”

On Thursday morning, however, he was arrested on a single count of securities fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $5 million.

According to the S.E.C., Mr. Madoff confessed to an F.B.I. agent that there was “no innocent explanation” for his behavior and he expected to go to jail. He had lost money on his trades, he told the agent, and had “paid investors with money that wasn’t there." (Prominent Trader Accused of Defrauding Clients.)

 

Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme was not the only "lie" involved her. The whole economic and monetary system that made possible such a scheme is based on the lie of a capitalism that has sprung from the ethos of John Calvin and been fueled by the ancient enemies of the Sacred Divinity Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Church by means of their control of banks, other financial institutions and a good deal of international commerce. Our economy is fueled by usury, which is one of the four crimes that cry to Heaven for vengeance as it defrauds the day laborer of his wages. The whole Madoff' scheme, which preyed almost exclusively on the trust that his co-religionists put in his "word," was made possible by the naturalistic and anti-Incarnational lies of Modernity, including the lie of the separation of Church and State, that have been accepted as but a "logical progression" in "humanity's "evolution" by the scions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Here is where, you see, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's recent New Theology musings about Original Sin meet the reality of what he denies: fallen human nature. Fallen human nature wreaks its effects upon each of us. The vestigial after-effects of Original Sin and our Actual Sins incline us all the more to sin if we do not make efforts to amend our lives by making a good, integral Confession and then, in addition to completing penance assigned to us by a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, we live penitentially and attempt to make reparation to God for our sins through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Each of the problems in the world, bar none, is caused by Original Sin and our own Actual Sins. There is no way to ameliorate the problems caused by Original Sin and our Actual Sins other than the conversion (or re-conversion) of souls to the true Faith. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's belief that "human problems" can be resolved by "inter-religious" dialogue and "cooperation" is a figment of his own Modernist imagination.

Those who do not believe in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ do not understand that there is salvation only in and through the Catholic Church, that the purpose of life is to know, to love and serve God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church so as to be ready to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace at all times and thus to enjoy the glory of Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Such people must seek their Heaven on earth. Many seek it principally by means of the pursuit of what is considered to be financial wealth, an exercise that consumes most of their waking (and even sleeping) moments. Some have a sense of natural morality. Others have none. Many can rationalize away whatever natural sense of morality they might have in order to achieve a particular goal. Such is the dark, murky world that those whose immortal souls have not been liberated from Original Sin and thus regenerated in the very inner life of the Most Blessed Trinity in the Baptismal font.

Those who do not have the true Faith and seek their Heaven on earth must place all of their trust in the world of other human beings. Obviously, it is not unreasonable to put trust in the word of someone you know, someone who you know to be trustworthy. Our children trust us implicitly with their very lives, both spiritual and physical, which is why we must live up to that trust by keeping them, as far as is humanly possible in cooperation with the graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. A Catholic, however, does not place his total trust in other human beings or in any created things, including the "riches" of this passing, mortal vale of tears. Others, most unfortunately, do.

Bernard Madoff's biggest selling point was his apparent trustworthiness. He befriended his fellow adherents of the Talmud in country clubs and recruited them to be his clients. Press reports indicate that he wiped out the net worth of about a third of the Palm Beach (Florida) Country Club. Many prominent people lost substantial amounts of money as a result of investments they made with Madoff, including the principal owner of the New York Daily News, and the principal owners of the New York Mets, Fred Wilpon (and his son Jeff Wilpon) and Saul Katz. Various Jewish "charitable" organizations have lost millions upon millions of dollars. Each of the persons interviewed thus far said that the liked Madoff and trusted him implicitly, never even bothering to question how he was able to earn them the money that he paid out to them.

A report in yesterday's edition of The New York Times summarized the breadth and the depth of the losses that have resulted from Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme:

Charities, individual investors, universities, hedge funds and banks have already reported losses of more than $20 billion in the case. On Wednesday, Hadassah, a Jewish women’s charity, became the latest group to report falling victim to Mr. Madoff, saying it had lost $90 million. (Authorities Ease Madoff’s Bail Terms.)

 

As my dear wife Sharon asked, "How can  a Jewish's women's charity have $90 million to invest? That's amazing. Where did they get that money? Those little cans at the bagel shops rake in ninety million dollars? They could be making sandwiches for the poor with that money. What are they doing 'investing' it with Bernard Madoff?"

Members of the Palm Beach, Florida, Country Club were aghast at the initial reports of their losses. One man invested $11 million with Madoff:

“He just didn’t make mistakes,” said Richard Spring, 73, from Boca Raton. “He was just a sound, smart, reasonable guy.”

Mr. Spring recounted meeting Mr. Madoff in the early 1970s when they shared a helicopter each day commuting from Long Island to Wall Street.

He said he vividly recalled one commute when Mr. Madoff “bawled out” one of his traders for sloppy work, not protecting against a downturn.

Impressed, he later invested with Mr. Madoff, over time putting more than $11 million into the firm, virtually every cent of his savings, he said.

“I’m taking care of my sick mother-in-law. My wife has cancer. I just can’t deal with it,” Mr. Spring said, only barely choking back tears. “I’m cooked.” (A Palm Beach Enclave, Stunned by an Inside Job.)

 

As I told Sharon when I first read this story, "You mean to say that $11 million wasn't enough for him to live on? He had to 'invest' his money to get more?"

The amount of money involved in this "wallpaper that glows in the dark" scheme is staggering. Staggering. Mind-boggling. Indeed, I was often tempted during our time in Connecticut when Lucy was iin school there to stop at one of the huge homes that we saw Connecticut Route 59 that runs from Easton to Westport and ask, "How do you make your money? Can you give me a job? I write, I speak, I teach, I can do research, and I cook a decent pizza and make a pretty mean ice-box cake. Please, just let me know how you make your money."

My late father was a hard working small animal veterinarian who made a decent living from 1946 to 1972, making it possible for us to have a "comfortable" life. The most income that my father ever grossed in one year was $70,000 in 1970, which, after expenses, produced net income of around $25,000, which was not bad for 1970. Even accounting for inflation, however, I just can't fathom how anyone can have the amount of money that was lost by some of the "investors" who lost money with Bernard L. Madoff. The most I ever made in any one year of college teaching was $34,000 in 1994-1995 when serving as a visiting associate professor at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in between my stints of adjuncting (getting paid per course rather than a full-time salary) there between 1991 and 1994 and again between 1995 and 2003.). How do these people make their money? It's unfathomable, at least it is to me, who probably couldn't sell the real wallpaper that glows in the dark that is on the market now!

It is, unfortunately, only too natural (emphasis on natural, my friends) for those of us who do not have the huge sums of money as those who were bilked by Bernard Madoff to gloat just a little bit at the gullibility of those who had achieved financial "success" in the world. It is also too natural for some to take glee in the fact that many of those who were bilked by one of their own co-religionists contributed millions upon millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way and B'Nai Brith and the United Nations and Unicef related organizations to promote all manner of evils under cover of civil law and in popular culture here and around the world. As was the case in my commentary (When Shoes Say More Than Words) about Muntader al-Zaidi's throwing shoes at President George Walker Bush five days ago now, we must respond as Catholics, which means that we must pray for the conversion of those who have placed their entire hopes and dreams what turned out to be the illusory fortunes of this passing world.

Mind you, I am just as prone as the next person to succumb to these naturalistic instincts. A man in the conciliar priesthood, who tended to respond strictly on the natural level to current events, told me in 1991 during riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that erupted in the wake of the accidental death of seven-year old Gavin Cato when he was hit by a car driven by an Hasidic Jew named Yosef Lifsh, "In matters of this sort, Tom, I maintain a policy of strict neutrality." It was a funny line on the purely natural level.

None of us, however, can be neutral when human beings are hurt or injured. While it is true that God does send His just punishments in this life to those who have done evil to try to effect their conversion to the Faith or the re-conversion to Its practice if they have strayed away, it is for God to know who is punished for what. We must help those who suffer unexpected reversals of fortune in this passing, mortal vale of tears to recognize that suffering is indeed the price each of us must pay for our sins and that God never permits any of us to suffer beyond our capacity to cooperate with the graces that He won for us on Calvary by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Believing Catholics know that each cross that they have been asked to bear has been fashioned for them from all eternity by the very hand of God Himself. We suffer sometimes as a result of our sins and our mistaken judgments. We suffer sometimes because of the sins of others. We suffer because the Royal Road of the Cross is the path to Heaven. There is no escaping the Cross in our lives. We must be grateful for each and every Cross that comes our way as we give whatever merit we earn from our patience endurance of our sufferings and daily difficulties and penances to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. And we called to help others carry their own crosses as Simon of Cyrene, the father of Rufus and Alexander, was pressed into service to carry the Cross of Our Divine Redeemer, a Cross whose very shadow hung over the Crib in Bethlehem as He lay with his infant arms outstretched in a symbol of love that would be expressed for us thereupon:

And the soldiers led him away into the court of the palace, and they called together the whole band: And they clothe him with purple, and platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon him. And they began to salute him: Hail, king of the Jews. And they struck his head with a reed: and they did spit on him. And bowing their knees, they adored him. And after they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, and put his own garments on him, and they led him out to crucify him.

And they forced one Simon a Cyrenian who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and of Rufus, to take up his cross. And they bring him into the place called Golgotha, which being interpreted is, The place of Calvary. And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh; but he took it not. And crucifying him, they divided his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. (Mark 15: 16-24)

 

We must not mock others as they carry their crosses, no, not even if their crosses are entirely self-made. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died to redeem us. He wishes to use the sufferings that come our way to help us to make reparation for our sins as we become more and more attached to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father's Divine Will for us, as we become more patient and resigned in the midst of our sufferings, as we become more detached from the allurements of worldly pleasures, honors, riches and power.

We must help others understand this for themselves as we pray for the conversion of people whose sufferings and travails we might read about in the newspapers but may never meet in this life. A Catholic is supposed to be saddened, not gleeful, in the midst of the sufferings of others, overcoming the natural impulses of mockery and scorn and self-satisfaction to rise supernaturally to be prompted to pray for the conversion of the unjust and the worldly, remembering that many of our own thoughts and words and actions have been all too unjust and worldly, that we have been the unmerited beneficiaries of the merits of Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer as applied upon our immortal souls by true priests in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. We must help the lost sheep find their to the True Sheepfold that is the Catholic Church and to help the strayed sheep to return thereto. Three of the Spiritual Works of Mercy are, after all, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubting and to admonish the sinner.

We must remember also that we have permitted ourselves to buy lots and lots of "wallpaper that glows in the dark." That is, many of us have accepted all too readily the lies we have told ourselves about the "minor" nature of our sins and offenses, the lies that we have told ourselves about our worldliness or our impurity or our impatience or our immodesty of speech or dress or our desire to "succeed" at all costs. Many of us have accepted all too readily the lies of Modernity, believing that it is possible to retard the evils of the day by some inter-denominational, non-denominational, naturalistic, ideological or "philosophical" method or program or system, continuing to believe these lies even in the face of all evidence that the state of souls and thus the state of the world continues to worsen with each election cycle as men convince themselves that there is something short of Catholicism that can serve as the foundation of personal and social order.

Moreover, many of us, myself included for far, far too long, bought the "wallpaper that glows in the dark" from the counterfeit church of conciliarism, believing that outright contradictions of the perennial, immutable teaching that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the God-Man, has entrusted to His true Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, could be somehow "reconciled" if we suspended our rationality or engaged in perverse exercises of rationalization by attempting to dismiss that teaching by the use of various rhetorical devices (claiming that apparent contradictions aren't contradictions because we have to understand the allegedly "subjective" nature of the expressions of dogmatic truth, claiming as the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar did, that truth contains within itself the seeds of its own internal contradictions as it "splinters" into a thousand pieces, claiming that outright contradictions can be reconciled by viewing them in terms of "creative tensions," exercises that are nothing other than rank positivism unknown and indeed rejected by any mind trained in the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, Scholasticism). Many of us, myself included, have bought the "wallpaper that glows in the dark" represented by the "resist and recognize" approach to our ecclesiastical situation that makes a mockery of the infallibility our spotless Mother on earth, Holy Mother Church.

Yes, before we become too smug or too gleeful in the sufferings of adherents of the Talmud caused by the trust they placed in one of their co-religionists, Bernard Madoff, we ought to take a step back and remember that only a handful of us, myself not included this time, have been so wise or so holy or so prudent as to not to have gotten up all too frequently in the various "Ponzi schemes" that originate from the devil and are designed to ensnare us in lives of sin and/or despair to keep us away from the Sacraments and thus to die in a state of Final Impenitence. We have much reparation to make for our sins and those of the whole world, especially today and tomorrow, Ember Friday and Saturday in Advent.

We don't want others to take glee in our own sufferings even when those sufferings are the result of our sins and mistakes, although the humiliation we suffer as a result of such glee that others take in our sufferings is certainly an occasion to be united more fully with the humiliation that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ suffered during His Passion and Death as a result the mockery imposed upon Him by our own sins. We must not, therefore, take glee in the sufferings of others even as we attempt to point out to them as best we can that suffering is the path of our salvation and that those who trust in the "princes" of this world (whether in commerce or finance or politics or entertainment or false ecclesiastical officials)  will always be disappointed and will usually pay quite a price temporally for their misplaced trust. To offer a word of correction to others in the midst of their sufferings is not to "mock" them or to take "glee" in their sufferings. It is to help them recognize that suffering is a gift sent to us from Go Himself to help us to return to Him through His Catholic Church as the consecrated slaves of His Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

For our part, however, we must stop buying the "wallpaper that glows in the dark" that is being sold to us by the conciliarists and their apologists. We must refuse to participate any further in any offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whether valid or invalid, that concedes the legitimacy of conciliarism or its false "pontiff" and false "bishops" who have sold Catholics and non-Catholics alike a gigantic Ponzi scheme of lies that have offended and blasphemed Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and denied hundreds of millions of Catholics the graces of the Sacraments.

We can help others to be faithful only if we are faithful. And we can be faithful in this time of apostasy and betrayal only if we entrust our immortal souls to true bishops and true priests in the catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism at all, men who have been attempting to warn us of the conciliar Ponzi scheme that has robbed Catholics and non-Catholics alike of something far more valuable than all of the billions of dollars lost by adherents of the Talmud by their trusting in their co-religionist, Bernard L. Madoff: the truths of the Holy Faith and Sanctifying Grace in their immortal souls.

The irony here is really inescapable: Bernard Madoff traded on the trust that his co-religionists put in his "word" to bilk them of their money. The conciliarists have traded on the trust that Catholics of their very nature want to place in men seen to be their shepherds to bilk them of the true Faith and to convince them that offenses and blasphemies against the honor and glory of God actually represent "stages of progress" in humanity just as Bernard Madoff convinced his investors that they had "made" money when he paid them out of the monies invested by others.

The "O Antiphon" for today concerns the Root of Jesse. The line of King David, the root of Jesse, was chosen, to be the one from which Our Blessed Lord Saviour Jesus Christ would assume His Sacred Divinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost:

O Root of Jesse, that stands for an ensign of the people, before whom the kings keep silence and unto Whom the Gentiles shall make supplication: Come, to deliver us and tarry not. Amen

 

The prayer that the late Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., wrote in The Liturgical Year for this day is quite apropos of the ecclesiastical situation in which we find ourselves:

At length, O Son of Jesse! Thou art approaching the city of Thy ancestors. The Ark of the Lord has risen, and journeys, with the God that is in her, to the place of her rest. 'How beautiful are thy steps, O thou daughter of the Prince', now that thou art bringing to the cities of Juda their salvation! The angels escort thee, thy faithful Joseph lavishes his love upon thee, heaven delights in thee, and our earth thrills with joy to bear thus upon itself its Creator and its Queen. Go forward, O Mother of God and Mother of men! Speed thee, thou propiatory that holdest within thee the divine Manna which gives us life! Our hearts are with thee, and count thy steps. Like thy royal ancestor David, 'we will not enter into the dwelling of our house, nor go up into the bed whereon we lie, nor give sleep to our eyes,nor rest to our temples, until we have found a place in our hearts for the Lord whom thou bearest, a tabernacle for the Go of Jacob. Come, then, O Root of Jesse! thus hidden in this Ark of purity; Thou wilt soon appear before Thy people as the standard round which all that would conquer must rally. Then their enemies, the kings of the world, will be silenced, and the nations will offer Thee their prayers. Hasten thy coming, dear Jesus! come and conquer all our enemies, and deliver us.

 

His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan was kind enough to provide me with some photocopies of pages from Father Benedict Baur's The Light of the World, a latter day version of Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year, that contain reflections that are most relevant to the theme of this article and of the "O Radix Jesse" for Vespers this evening.

Christ the King, the Lord! Divine Wisdom, Adonai, the powerful God, is at the same time man in the flesh and blood of the house of Jesse, the father of King David. Verily, the right of kingship has now passed from the house of David. The glory that once clothed the royal family has faded and withered, leaving only a blighted and withered root. But from this root is to spring a glorious blossom, the King of the world. "He shall rule from sea to sea and from river unto the ends of the earth. Before Him, the Ethiopians shall fall down and His enemies shall lick the ground. The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall serve Him" (Ps. 71: 8-11). To Him God has said, "Thou has My Son. . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Ps. 2:7 f.).

"He shall be great, . . . and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David, His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of His Kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:32 f.). In the face of Roman power He shall declare, "I am a King" (John 18:37). On the throne of the cross they shall proclaim His kingship in the three universal languages of the time: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (John 19:19). He will send forth apostles, for all power is given Him "in heaven and in earth." Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matt. 29:18-20). Before Him a Herod, a domitian, and a Diocletian shall tremble. A Julian will be obliged to confess, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered."

He will establish His kingdom in the world, a kingdom of truth, of justice, and of grace. He who was cast off by men and fastened to the cross, will make that cross a throne. The Lord rules as a king from His cross. He is remembered gratefully and loved by millions who leave all earthly things, father and mother and all else, to follow Him. they devote their health, and their life, even their blood, to His service. Root of Jesse, Thou standest as an ensign of the nations, and kings are silent in reverence before Thee.

"Come to deliver us and tarry not." The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the Prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. He exercises his lordship very efficiently, and has led many men into apostasy and idolatry, and has brought them into temples where he himself is adored. He even dared to approach our Lord, after His fast of forty days in the desert, to tempt Him to fall down before him and adore him. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. "The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet. 5: 8). Like a bird of prey he hovers us waiting for a favorable opportunity to seize us and lead us into sin. Often enough he transforms "himself into an angel of light: (1 Cor. 11: 14). The sworn enemy and adversary of Christ and of all that is good, he devotes his entire energy and his great intelligence to the task of establishing a kingdom of sin and darkness which is opposed to God and to Christianity.

Stan establishes his power over deluded men in a way that is perfectly obvious. When he has gained control over the body of a man, he uses it for his own purposes, as though it were he who actually controls and animates the body in the place of the human soul. He often exerts his influence over men by harassing them and hindering them by his external works, as is so evident in the live of some some holy men and women. In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, and when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Apoc. 20:2; Matt. 24:24.)

"Come, tarry not." Observe how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, They kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. "Come, tarry not." "Thy kingdom come."

 

Bernard Madoff and the souls who invested their monetary fortunes with him have believed in the devil's lies from their birth. The scions of Modernity have propagated the lie that the Incarnation and Nativity and Redemptive Act of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb is a matter of indifference to happiness with the souls of men and thus order within nations. The lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have made their "reconciliation" with the lies of Modernity. WIn the midst of this darkness we need apostles for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen! We need to break free of the fetters of the devil's chains of naturalism once and for all.

May we pray to Our Lady in these days of her expectant waiting as her Most Chaste Spouse, Good Saint Joseph, leads her and her unborn Son to Bethlehem, that our annual celebration of the Nativity of her Divine Son will indeed be seen by His enemies, both those in the world and those in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, will be conquered and that we, who have been His enemies all too frequently by means of our sins, will be conquered once and for all by His ineffable grace to eschew the honors and riches of this world to be faithful to Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.

May each of the Joyful Mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary we pray in the next six days prior to Christmas help us to receive Him more worthily and fervently in Holy Communion so that our hearts and souls will be better able to lead all others to the true Manger from which He gives us Himself as our Spiritual Flesh and Drink, the Holy Cross as the Sacrifice He offered thereon is re-presented in an unbloody manner by a true bishop or a true priest in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, 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 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.

See also: A Litany of Saints