SUBJECT: PERSONAL!!!

I just received word that my first cousin and her family lost their home and all their material possessions last night in a house fire. I can't even begin to imagine what they are going through right now. Praise God everyone is safe. Thank God for His promises of Divine Mercy.

Please remember this family in your prayers.

Blessings,

Papa Z

SUBJECT: RELIGION!!!

On the "Per Christum" blog, where I am an occasional contributor, I have posted some ruminations on Eastern Orthodox apologetics which, for reasons which escape me, I have been unable to properly format here on Blogger!

So I would like to direct my (up to eight 1/2) readers to the following post on the "Per Christum" site.

Comments are accepted both here and on the "Per Christum" site. Please be charitable in discussion, even when in disagreement. No flaming permitted! :-)

Blessings,

Papa Z

SUBJECT: RELIGION -- AND POLITICS!!!

One of my favorite commemorations in the liturgical calendar is the memorial of St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr in 1170, celebrated on December 29th. St. Thomas was martyred, essentially, for refusing to let the will of the State suppress the rightful prerogative of the Church. As we approach Inauguration Day, and a new President who has vowed to immediately sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would completely remove all restrictions on all abortions overriding the laws of all 50 states; would remove all rights of conscience for health care providers; and would require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, it would be wise to review the bold statement the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has made: (see my earlier blog post of November 12th) -- and to consider St. Thomas Becket, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher and all the other martyrs of the faith who realized that as patriotic as one is, one's duty to God comes first -- before one's duties to the State. And that there may well be times when one's duties to God can get one in trouble!

For your reading pleasure, I present Archbishop Becket's Christmas Sermon from T. S. Eliot's play "Murder in the Cathedral":

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear children of God, my sermon this Christmas morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should meditate in your hearts the deep meaning and mystery of the Christmas Day mass. For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, we offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will"; at this same time of the year we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overborne by mourning, or mourning will be cast out by joy; it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason.

Now think for a moment about the meaning of this word 'peace'. Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Did He mean peace as we think of it: The kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the king, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Christ's disciples knew so such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, "Not as the world gives, give I unto you." So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord's Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of us all.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world's is. A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of one's will to become a Saint, as one by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the design of God, because of His love for us, because of His desire to warn us and to lead us, and to bring us back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. So thus as on earth the church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, and are seen, not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you to-day, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ's birth day, to remember what is that Peace which He brought; and because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Blessings,

Papa Z

SUBJECT: RELIGION!!!

With best wishes for a blessed Epiphany season, I offer the following from T. S. Eliot:

Journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Blessings,

Papa Z

SUBJECT: RELIGION!!!

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

Go forth, O Christian soul out of this world.

In the Name of the Father who created you.

In the Name of the Son who redeemed you.

In the Name of the Spirit who sanctified you.

May your rest this day be in peace, and your dwelling be in the presence of God.

The Catholic world has lost a giant of the faith. Please see the following from Whispers in the Loggia

and

First Things

Blessings,

Papa Z

SUBJECT: RELIGION!!!

Dear friends,

As we wind down this Christmas season, I offer a portion of W.H. Auden's "Christmas Oratorio". I find it appropriate at this time.

Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes -
Some have got broken - and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week -
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted - quite unsuccessfully -
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”
They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God’s Will will be done,
That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

Blessings,

Papa Z