Weep and Make Reparation
by Thomas A. Droleskey
The following story from the April 12, 2008, edition of the The New York Times is a cause of great weeping for anyone who loves God and wants to defend His honor and majesty. The story speaks volumes about the extent to which the conciliar revolutionaries must make of what they purport is the Holy Mass--that is, the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service--into an extravaganza that must rely upon Hollywood producers, most of whom are not, shall we say, believing Catholics, and "political advance operatives," most of whom support the slicing and dicing of little babies in their mothers' wombs, to coordinate mammoth profanations offered, albeit falsely and legitimately, in the name of the Catholic Church:
The pope will straddle second base in Yankee Stadium, but stand over center field at Nationals Park in Washington. There are 100,000 ponchos on hand in the Bronx in case of rain, while three Polish nuns have dusted off a gold and silver garment, hand-woven more than a century ago, for the pontiff to wear at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the capital.
Tickets for the stadium Mass, many of them allocated to parishes based on average Sunday attendance and distributed by lottery, have been issued only to people who gave their names, addresses and dates of birth; a government-issued photo identification is required, and selling the tickets is forbidden.
With all its spiritual, political and cultural significance, the six-day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Washington and New York next week is also a daunting logistical operation involving everything from candles and catering to cellphones and ciboria, the metal receptacles that hold communion wafers. Coordinating these and other details are high-ranking clergy, Hollywood producers and veterans of political advance teams, who will communicate in New York via two-way radios that double as cellphones and are equipped with global positioning satellite devices.
Among the profound — and mundane — questions they are confronting: How do 530 priests and deacons give communion to 57,000 people in 14 minutes?
“I just want to make sure it’s done reverently and safely,” the Rev. Msgr. Wallace A. Harris, the event coordinator for the Sunday afternoon Mass at Yankee Stadium on April 20, said at a practice Wednesday afternoon.
For starters, the priests — who are coming from as far away as Australia and Alaska — are assigned based on dates of birth, with the youngest (and most able-bodied) assigned to the upper deck, where stairs are narrow and steep and the winds are strongest. Leading priests on the upper deck will be the Rev. Kevin Malick, 28, who is from Staten Island, was ordained last May, works in a parish in New City, N.Y., and is a Mets fan. “I have a level head and a lot of common sense,” Father Malick said. “I’m not book smart, but I’m good at yelling at people.”
His counterpart on the field level, where the eldest priests are assigned, the Rev. Joseph E. Franco, who works at a Yankee-loving Bronx parish, warned five other priests at Wednesday’s rehearsal: “Remember, this isn’t a Yankees game, this is going to be an older crowd.”
From the moment the pope lands at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Tuesday afternoon to his departure Sunday evening from Kennedy International Airport in Queens, every movement will have been the subject of months of planning by two Roman Catholic archdioceses, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, numerous law enforcement agencies, the White House, the State Department and the United Nations. The Vatican does not have its own plane, but whatever jet the pope boards is called Shepherd One. (He usually flies Alitalia, on an Airbus A320 or Boeing 737.)
He will be accompanied on this trip by an entourage of about 30 Vatican officials and 70 journalists. The Archdiocese of Washington estimates that the pope’s three-day visit there will cost at least $3 million, financed by wealthy Catholic donors; the Archdiocese of New York would not provide a cost estimate but said that it, too, would rely on contributions from parishioners.
In Washington, the pope will stay at the Vatican Embassy, on Massachusetts Avenue NW, and in New York at the East 72nd Street residence of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the papal nuncio to the United Nations.
He will celebrate his 81st birthday on Wednesday, when he is scheduled to visit the White House; three days later, 26,000 young people with fete him with “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück,” the German version of “Happy Birthday,” following the phonetic spelling projected on a giant screen outside St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, where paths have been widened to accommodate the Popemobile.
Church officials in the two cities have issued nearly 150,000 tickets to see Benedict at his public events, which will not only be televised live but shown and archived on church Web sites (in New York alone, they have printed up 1.2 million keepsake prayer cards). Those in attendance will also hear the tenor Plácido Domingo (before the Mass for 46,000 at Nationals Park on Thursday morning) or Harry Connick Jr. and Kelly Clarkson (at Yankee Stadium).
A. Blayne Candy, an event producer who has worked with President Bush and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is handling logistics for the Washington Mass, along with Global Event Partners, a Washington company that handles meetings and conventions. Stig Edgren, a Beverly Hills-based producer who organized an inaugural ball for President Bill Clinton and concerts for Cher, Barbra Streisand and Gloria Estefan, is coordinating three big public events in New York.
Benedict, who was invested in 2005, is the third pope to visit the United States; Paul VI came to New York in 1965 and John Paul II was in the United States seven times, including New York and Washington in 1979 and New York again in 1995 (two of his visits amounted to refueling stops in Alaska in 1981 and 1984).
On the 20th floor of the New York Catholic Center in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan is a cramped conference room that will serve as a command center for the visit. It is where Mark G. Ackermann, a retired hospital executive, coordinates a 50-member task force.
Mr. Ackermann began planning in August, months before the official confirmation of the visit in November; aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg joined in October, with a focus on arranging routes and parking for 850 chartered buses to funnel the faithful to Mass at the stadium.
“New York City hosts major events on a regular basis,” said Evan Korn, who directs the mayor’s Office of Citywide Events Coordination. “You could be a block away from a major event and not know it’s going on. That’s when we know we’re doing a good job.”
But anyone in the vicinity of the pope’s path will likely feel his presence — and not just spiritually. The New York Police Department plans to cordon off traffic around each of the six scheduled stops in the city, at four major landmarks and a synagogue and a church on the Upper East Side.
Organizers have studied archival records and news accounts from previous visits, but are coordinating this time by BlackBerry, not fax machines. There are lower-tech preparations as well: The basilica in Washington has been busy with what its rector, the Rev. Msgr. Walter R. Rossi, called “a lot of spring house cleaning.”
Dead trees and flowers have been replaced, and workers have painted, varnished and waxed interior surfaces and have washed the marble and mosaic interior of the crypt church, built in 1926, where the pope is to lead 350 bishops in the Liturgy of the Hours on Wednesday while seated on a hand-carved wooden chair commissioned from a liturgical workshop in suburban Philadelphia. He will wear a cope, a liturgical vestment, which was woven before 1905 and worn by the archbishop of Baltimore at the basilica’s dedication in 1920. The nearly 3,000 priests, deacons and members of religious orders invited to 9:15 a.m. Mass on Saturday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral have been asked to gather two hours beforehand at the Palace Hotel across Madison Avenue, where they will pass through magnetometers like those used in airports and then a “frozen zone” to enter the cathedral. On Monday, as the Archdiocese tried to electronically distribute 5,000 tickets to watch the pope arrive at St. Patrick’s from fenced-off pedestrian pens along Fifth Avenue, its Web site crashed.
By far the most daunting logistical mountain is Sunday’s Mass at Yankee Stadium, where two previous popes have presided (Paul VI in 1965 and John Paul II in 1979). Gates will open at 9 and close at noon — the stadium prohibits backpacks, strollers, video cameras, tripods, metal, glass and plastic containers, and outside food or drink. “Please note diaper bags are permitted,” reads a memo sent to parishes.
Hudson Scenic, which designs sets and lighting for Broadway shows, and Mountain Productions, which provides grandstands and stages for parades and rallies, will build an elaborate platform to fit over the baseball diamond. The pope will stand at second base, the Vatican seal will cover the pitcher’s mound, and yellow and white streamers — Holy See colors — will radiate out to cover the infield.
A two-hour “Concert of Hope,” including a 58-piece orchestra and 250-member choir, precedes the pope’s 2:10 p.m. arrival. The Popemobile will cruise the “warning track” around the edge of the field — the Yankees’ one request was to keep off the grass — before Mass, which is scheduled to end at 5:30 p.m.
The Archdiocese has commissioned 530 specially engraved ciboria for the Mass, each of which will hold no more than 150 hosts. A total of 60,000 whole-wheat wafers, each 1.125 inches in diameter, were produced by the Cavanagh Company of Greenville, R.I., and donated by the Corpus Christi Monastery, a contemplative order of Dominican nuns in the South Bronx.
Catholics believe that the altar bread, once consecrated and transubstantiated into the body of Christ, must be consumed. So leftover wafers will be put in fabric-lined carts in the stadium concourse and consumed, eventually, during regular Masses.
(Candles, Clergy, and Communion for 57,000.)
The only consolation in all of this is that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not present in those hosts, although He will be greatly offended by the travesties that will be presented to the public, Catholic and non-Catholic alike in His Holy Name and under what is alleged to be the authority of His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. There is cause for great weeping. Even those who are as of yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and have not lost their sensus Catholicus entirely have cause for weeping over the events that are about to take place in the context what purports to be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass during the upcoming visit of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to the United States of America.
Indeed, a priest, who shall not be named, in the conciliar structures wrote about ten years ago in what was then called The Latin Mass magazine that he be began to question the conciliar agenda when he saw what he believed (and probably still believes) were validly consecrated hosts "consecrated" at Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's "papal" Mass at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, October 2, 1978, being carried away in burlap sacks after the extravaganza was over. The priest's eyes moistened quite a bit when he recounted this story in various talks that he gave over the years. He was truly sorrowful over the profane, sacrilegious way that Our Lord's Real Presence, which he presumed to be in the Novus Ordo hosts, was treated. It will be no different this time as what purports to be Our Lord's Real Presence is dumped into "fabric lined carts" in the Yankee Stadium concourse! Ah, yes, the "pope" of "tradition," our "only friend in the Vatican," the "reformed" (or transformed "ecclesistical termite," strikes again.
All of this has been carefully coordinated with the new "papal" master of ceremonies, "Father" Guido Marini. It is a travesty that Joseph Ratzinger will use the papal staff of Pope Pius IX, whose Syllabus of Errors he believes has been countered by the texts of the "Second Vatican Council, at events that Pope Pius IX would condemn in the strongest terms possible. Open air "Masses," no less "Masses" that are in se profanations against God and an incorporation of Protestant and Masonic principles? Distribution of what purports to be Holy Communion in the hand? The invasion of the laity, both male and female, including women dressed as men, into the Hollywood-produced "sanctuary?" The use of Protestant hymns? The replacement of the traditional Offertory with "table prayers" from the Christophobic Talmud? Consultations with Hollywood producers and pro-abortion political "advance teams" as to how to "stage" a "papal Mass."
Pope Pius IX would approve of any of this? Any of this? Please, it is a travesty against the memory of Pope Pius IX, who condemned religious liberty and separation of Church and State, both of which are near and dear to the Modernist heart of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, to use any of his papal regalia in the context of a false "Mass" to promote the tenets of a false religion that he spent thirty-two years warning us about in the strongest terms possible. Pope Pius IX would rail against the gigantic "masquerade party" purporting to represent the Catholic Church while the very propositions he condemned in Quanta Cura, 8, 1964, and the Syllabus of Errors are promoted with great enthusiasm.
Just as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this is what Joseph Ratzinger wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology:
Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 381.)
Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 391)
Pope Leo XIII, writing in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, condemned as an exercise in Masonry any effort to "reconcile" the Church with the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational principles of Modernity:
Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.
The evil that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, no matter what form it takes, whether in Latin or in the vernacular, and no matter where it is offered, whether at the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican or at Nationals Park in Washington, District of Columbia, or Yankee Stadium in the Borough of the Bronx in the City of New York, New York. The Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is meant indeed to show "respect for all religions" as it craves "to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution," seeking to "reconcile Christ and Belial, praising in the name of the Church of God the heresy of the "state without God." Liturgists can "dress up" and attempt to disguise the Novus Ordo all they want, as a long ago former friend of mine of longstanding in the conciliar priesthood was wont to say in his days as a curate. Hollywood producers and political advance teams can "stage" it quite elaborately. No matter how it is "produced" or "staged," however, the Novus Ordo is in se a great offense against God and comes complete with profanations and sacrileges in the "best" of settings as the laity invade the sanctuary and as prayers that do not communicate the fullness of the Catholic Faith are "offered," making said "liturgies" as offensive to God as any other form of false worship.
There can be no compromise with the Novus Ordo. This is why many older priests, including a lot who never came to accept the illegitimacy of the conciliar "pontiffs," refused to offer the Novus Ordo even once or stopped offering it at some point, sacrificing career honors, peer respect and income by so doing. Were these priests, among whom could be numbered the late Father Harry Marchosky and the late Father Frederick Schell, S.J., and the late Father Thomas Ross, O.F.M., and the late Father Francis LeBlanc, and the late Father Gommar DePauw, and the late Father Hugh Wish, and the late Father Lawrence Brey and the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the late Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, among so many, many others, wrong to have acted as they did? Has something changed to make the Novus Ordo less offensive to God now that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has issued Summorum Pontificum and termed the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Novus Ordo as "two forms" of the "one Roman Rite"?
It is certainly the case that the travesties that will be "produced" and "staged" during the upcoming American visit of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI prove that nothing has changed to make the Novus Ordo anything other than what it has been from its Protestant and Masonic inception as the work of Annibale Bugnini's Consilium, which was "advised" by six liberal Protestant theologians: a monstrous offense in the sight of God that has resulted in a massive loss of the Faith, the loss of souls to Protestant sects, the loss of belief in the sacerdotal priesthood, the nature of the Mass as a propitiatory offering for human sins, belief in the Real Presence of Out Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, a loss of respect for modesty of attire in the context of what purports to be Mass, and an incorporation of various pagan and New Age rituals into "liturgies" in the name of the "inculturation of the Gospel" (see paragraphs 395-397 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal). Only those who want to close their eyes to these truths can deny the reality of the evil that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service
We must weep, therefore, as we make reparation for our own sins and for those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit. The whole conciliar agenda will be on full display in the next eight days: Modernism, a little bit of Catholic truth, sometimes expressed with great eloquence, and lots of lots of error, expressed unapologetically and in the name of a "respect" for the "dignity" of all peoples and their "faith traditions." Grave sacrileges (noted in Many Acts of Evil Demand Many Acts of Reparation) will be on full display. God will be greatly offended. Souls will be greatly harmed. People will be reaffirmed in false religions. Catholics will participate in liturgical travesties.
Once again, let us take to heart His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan's call for Rosaries of reparation next Friday, April 18, 2008:
"Your assistance is urgently needed on Friday April 18th. On this day the head of the One-World Church, Joseph Ratzinger, will be meeting with the leaders of the One-World Government, the United Nations, in New York City. No good will come from this, but rather great offense to God with the advancement of the agenda of the One- Worlders. A full Rosary for reparation and protection will be prayed at church before the Blessed Sacrament exposed at 4:45 Friday afternoon. Please come and pray with us, or at least organize rosary groups of family and friends to repair God’s honor and protect His Church on this very sad day. Please spread this message to as many souls as possible."
A DOUBLE DAY
"For the third year, we will celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Consolation by hosting a pilgrimage right here in our own church, venerating the beautiful image of Our Lady of Consolation we are privileged to possess. This year’s observance will combine the pilgrimage (procession, special Mass & prayers, a meal) with a day of recollection (special spiritual talks, and the meditated rosary).
"The opening procession and devotions are at 8:15 AM on Saturday, April 19th. High Mass is at 9:00 AM, and is followed by a brunch. The spiritual conference will then be given, with closing devotions in church. The day will conclude a little after noon. Please come! Please spread the word and invite others to do so."
We can take consolation in these times of apostasy and betrayal from Father Frederick Faber's The Precious Blood. Although the quotation below was used a little over three weeks ago in
Enter the Passion, it is worth repeating again:
There are saints in heaven. They are the heights of the Church of Christ. There are newly-converted sinners upon earth. These are the lowest depths in the happy land of redeeming grace. But the light upon those mountain-tops is the glory of the Precious Blood, and the sunshine in those valleys is the kindness of the selfsame Blood. There are sufferers in purgatory, dwelling in a mysterious region of pain and quietude, of patience and of love. They live beneath the earth, yet are upon their road to heaven. Their land is vast and populous. It is a territory won from hell by the Precious Blood, and its pain made uneternal. It is a detention, not an exile--a detention which is a marvellous artifice of mercy, one of the many compassionate devices of the Precious Blood. There are sufferings on earth, sufferings by which hearts are cleansed, sins swiftly expiated, merits rapidly accumulated: sufferings in which grace comes, sufferings which are likenesses of Jesus, sufferings which are secret loves of God. These earthly sufferings also the Precious Blood alleviates, illuminates, sanctifies, crowns, glorifies, and knows how to render delectable that they who have drunk deep of the Precious Blood get a strange new nature, and thirst for more suffering still. Thus both these extremities of suffering, beneath the earth and on it, belong to the empire of the Precious Blood. If we look outside ourselves, we see everywhere the empire of the Precious Blood stretching away in interminable vista. The whole Church is its legitimate inheritance. The priesthood its army of officials. The catholic hierarchy is its venerable administration. The loft tiara, that most sovereign thing on earth, gleams with it like the polar star of nations. The Blessed Sacrament, multiplied a hundred thousand times, is its own adorable self, its Heart-fountain, and its Five Free Wells, worshipful in union with the Godhead, the beautiful amazing Created Life of the Uncreated Word. If we look within ourselves, there is still the self-same empire of the Precious Blood. There is the character of Baptism, its still inexhuasted grace, its title unforfeited or re-conferred, its infused habits, its heroic Spirit-gifts. There are the footprints of so many Absolutions, the abiding fragrance of such reiterated Communions, perhaps the character of Order and its fearful powers, perhaps the mysterious traces of Extreme Unction, certainly the signet of the Holy Ghost in Confirmation, and nameless graces, nameless vestiges where Divine Feet have gone, and where Divine Virtue still resides. There also is that most innermost sanctuary of the soul, which so few reach on this side of the grave, the secret cabinet where the Holy Trinity dwells blessedly, in the very centre of our nature, up from whose secret recesses joys shall one day break and flow, such as we never dreamed of, such as would look to us now far beyond the possibilities of our nature. All this, outside us or within us, is the empire of the Precious Blood.
But it is only in heaven that its supremacy is tranquil and complete. We must mount thither in spirit, where we hope one day to mount in all the jubilee of an incredible reality, if we would see in its full grandeur the royalty of the Precious Blood. Countless saints are there, various in the splendors of their holiness. They are all kings now, who once were serfs, but were redeemed by the Precious Blood. They are the children of many generations, the natives of many lands. They were of all degrees on earth, and in their fortunes the diversity was endless. But they were all bought by the same Blood, and all own the lordship of that Blood in heaven. Whey they sing their songs of praise, songs of a human sweetness which the angels greatly love, they sing of the Lamb slain and of the triumphs of his Blood. When their potent intercessions win hourly graces for their clients who are still struggling upon earth, it is their desire to spread the empire of the Precious Blood, which throws such loyal intensity into their powers. Shall they forget their Ransom, whose freedom is their endless joy?
Cast your eye over that outspread ocean, whose shores lie so faintly and far off in the almost infinite distance. It gleams like restless silver, quivering with one life and yet such multitudinous life. It flashes in the light with intolerable magnificence. Its unity is numberless. Its life is purest light. Into the bosom of its vastness the glory of God shines down, and the universe is illuminated with its refulgence. It is an ocean of life. Who can count the sum of being that is there? Who but God can fathom its unsearchable caverns? What created eye but is dazzled with the blazing splendor of its capacious surface? It breaks upon its shores in mighty waves; and yet there is no sound. Grand storms of voiceless praise hang over it forever, storms of ecstatic lightning without any roll of thunder, whose very silence thrills the sols of the human saints, and is one of their celestial joys--that deep stillness of unsounding worship. This is the world of angel. There too the Precious blood reigns supreme. The angels have needed no ransom. Amid their almost countless graces there is no redeeming grace. But there is not a grace in all that sea of grace which was not merited for them by the Precious Blood. They too owe all they are, and all they have, to its blissful royalty. They too sing anthems in its praise, though not the same anthems as the Redeemed. Jesus is Head of angels as well as men; and it is as Man that he is Head of angels. Thus the whole of that marvellous world of glorious intelligence, profound gladness, gigantic power, and beautiful holiness, is a province of the empire of the Precious Blood.
Who can doubt its sweet constraints over the immaculate heart of Mary? She is queen of heaven and earth. Far and wide her empire stretches. Its boundaries are scarce distinguishable from those of the Precious Blood itself: so closely and so peacefully do the two sovereignties intertwine. Mary holds sway over the Precious Blood It does her bidding, and she commands with a mother's right Ye she too is a subject of the Precious Blood, and rejoices in her subjection. Out of her very heart that Blood first came; and out of that Blood came also her Immaculate Conception. It was the very office of her Divine Maternity to minister that Blood; and it was that Blood which from all eternity had merited for her the Divine Maternity. It was the Precious Blood which made her suffer; but it was the Precious Blood also which turned her suffering into dignities and crowns. She owes all to the Precious Blood, to whom the Precious Blood owes its very self. Yet the river is greater than the fountain. The Precious Blood is greater than Mary; nay, it is greater by a whole infinity, because the waters of the Godhead have assumed its uncommingled stream unto themselves. Mary sits upon her throne to magnify the Precious Blood. Her power is used for the propagation of its empire. Her prayers dispense its grace Her holiness, which enchants all heaven, is the monument and trophy of that victorious Blood.
Shall it rule also over the Divine Perfections? Behold that inexorable justice, which an infinite holiness stands by as assessor! Can endless worlds of mere creatures satisfy those claims, or appease that adorable wrath? Yet the Precious Blood has done it. A mercy that is limitless, and a justice that is insatiable--will not sin set these attributes at strife? Who shall be peace-maker in such unspeakable debate? The Precious Blood! Justice and mercy have met together, and have kissed each other in the Precious Blood. How shall the decrees of the Creator comport with the continued liberty of the fallen creature? The Precious Blood, heavenliest of inventions! has found a way. The unchangeableness of God shall condescend to wait upon the mutabilities of the fickle creature, and yet its own repose be all the more glorified the while; for this too shall be one of the secrets of the Precious Blood. If greater good comes out of evil, it is through the alchemy of the Precious Blood. If all the Divine Perfections combine in some resplendent work of the Most Holy Trinity, whether it be Creation, Redemption, or the Blessed Sacrament, it is the Precious Blood in which the combination has been made, and which the attributes of God delight to magnify, while it with its adoring ministries is magnifying them. If any of the Divine Perfections will come down from heaven, and walk amidst the nations of men, and give light and scatter peace and healing as it goes, it first puts on the vesture of the Precious Blood, in order that it may not slay but make alive. Justice is occupied in crowning saints. Mercy is forever traversing its empire as if in pure delight at its immensity. Holiness is adorning its infinite purity with the little sanctities of feeble and imperfect souls. Immutability is hourly adapting itself to the changeful needs of innumerable hearts. Omnipotence is putting itself at the disposal of created weakness, as if it were some generous beast of burden serving a master whom it could easily destroy. Eternity is busy commuting time into itself. Love changes is eternal name, and only calls itself by the name of the Precious Blood. All these marvels belong to the empire of the Blood of Jesus. The peace of God is all activity to do the work of that dear Blood. The self-sufficiency of God is toiling as if nothing could suffice it, except the salvation of its creatures. All this is the sovereignty of the Precious Blood. Nay, the dread sovereignty of the Everlasting King seems to be forever passing into the created Kingship of the Precious Blood.
Inside the Unity of God, within the life of the Threefold Majesty, even there we find the tokens of the Precious Blood; even there it seems to rule. The Son, who has assumed it, owns the gladness of its love. The Holy Ghost, who fashioned it at first, and now works with it his sanctifying work, broods dovelike with complacency upon its deeps. The Eternal Father chose it as the one thing to appease him; for he too owns the mastery of its exceeding beauty. It seems, if with becoming reverence we may say so, to have widened his Fatherhood. It has added fresh treasures to those inexhaustible treasures which he had in his Eternal Son. But these are thoughts for silence rather than for words. May his infinite Majesty pardon the freedoms which the ignorance of our love has been taking with his perfection! It is of his own goodness that we cannot help loving, even while we tremble.
There is one corner of creation, where the empire of the Precious Blood is not what we would have it to be. It is our own hearts. Yet is it not our one work to subject ourselves to it in all. We desire to have no instincts, but the instincts of the Precious Blood. We wish to esteem nothing, but as the Precious Blood esteems it. It desires nothing so much as to be loved. We desire nothing so much as to love it. Why then is it that our weakness and our want of courage so sadly keep our grace in check? Alas! we are inverting the right order of things. We are ruling the Precious Blood by limiting its empire. It longs to rule over us' it longs with a masterful sweetness. The day shall come, when its longing shall be satisfied. Neither shall it be a distant day. for we will begin this very day to love and serve our dearest Lord as we have never loved and served him heretofore. Always and in all things shall his Blood rule and guide us. Its rule is blessedness even upon earth. It shall rule, not our spiritual life only, but all our temporal circumstances. It shall rule our love of those we love, and it shall make our love of them a doing to them spiritual good. How shall we die unless at that moment the Precious Blood is reigning in our hearts? If it rule us not then, we are lost forever. But how shall we better secure its empire at our deaths, than by establishing it over our lives? The past will not do. Jesus must be more victorious in our souls, more a conqueror, and more a king. Oh that the Precious Blood might so work in our hearts that life should seem to have only one possible gladness, the gladness of having Jesus to reign over us as King! Oh Grace! Grace! would that we were altogether conquered! But we will be of good cheer; for the time is coming when we shall be completely and eternally vanquished by victorious love. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 124-129.)
The final victory belongs to Christ the King as a result of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. May Our Lady help us to be faithful to her Fatima Message in our own lives so that it can be our privilege to plant a few seeds for the conversion of souls to the true Faith as we make reparation for our own many sins, which have most assuredly worsened the situation facing the Church Militant on earth, and for those of the whole world, clinging only to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, men who think nothing of giving offense to God as they engage in actions that make the apostates of the past seem meek and submissive Catholics by way of comparison.
The saint commemorated today, the Third Sunday after Easter (which is the External Solemnity of Saint Joseph in some traditional venues), Saint Hermenigild, refused to take Holy Communion from the Arian heretics, suffering martyrdom as a result. We must refuse all communion with the heretics and apostates of the counterfeit church of conciliarism as they seek to propagate a false religion that is offensive to God and harmful to the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
