Fragrance

The Holy Scriptures,
Inspired by the Holy Ghost
Are fragrant with God.

St. Ambrose

Which week is it?

When one is blessed with such a large brood and extended family, something is always going on. St. Eva the Almost Good (yes, she was reduced to "almost" two weeks ago. I'll explain later) and I never have a week in which something is not happening..good or ill. Recently, Eva asked me when Gordon, III was being ordained to the diaconate in the Byzantine Ukrainian Catholic Church? "On the 11th of June,"says I. "No," says she, "that can't be right. I think that is the day for Ben's court appearance." "Ah, Yes," says I. " I got the ordination mixed up with the divorce."

Yes. Our life is never dull. As a matter of fact, I just arrived back home after a 1600 mile round trip to Indiana to be a moral support for Ben as his marriage to Rebecca was dissolved. It was never a sacramental union. They got married by a Justice of the Peace while standing on a porch outside the Carthage City jail. That should have been a sign from God right there!! But there is sadness when any marriage dissolves and this one was bittersweet. At least he will be able to have definitive visitation privileges with his daughter, who is the joy of his life.

And next week, it is off to Parma, Ohio where the Ukrainian Eparchy is located. We will celebrate Gordon's ordination to the permanent diaconate on Saturday, June 21. The Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church uses the ancient liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. It is very beautiful and sung from beginning to end. In the eastern church, the deacon plays a major roll in the Mass, while in the Roman rite, we still don't know what to do with these guys. The Ukrainian church reunited with Rome more than 500 years ago. In addition to a unique liturgy, they also have a married clergy. Gordo may be ordained a priest in June 2009. That remains to be seen.

Yes, I finally got a vocation out of this crowd. I have prayed for all these many years that someone would enter religious life. My prayer was answered. And I gave him this advice: a successful homilist never lets his sermon exceed 12 minutes. The story goes that while a deacon was preaching, he noticed that his wife was beating her watch with her fist during the sermon. After Mass, he told her that she didn't need to use such histrionics in order to let him know that he was a bit lengthy. "Well" she harrumphed, "it went on so long, I thought the battery had died."

Singing

We sing a new song
When we give ourselves to Christ.
A song 'twixt lovers.

The Vanishing White Man

For centuries, the only Christian church steadfastly opposed to contraception and artificial means of birth control has been the Catholic Church. In the early days of the Reformation, all Protestant sects taught the moral evils contained in contraception. This came to an abrupt end with the Lambeth Conference in the 1920's. Yes, our Anglican friends were the first to succumb to secular pressure and permit the abhorrent practice. Over the next few decades, one -by-one, the other Protestant denominations followed suit.

The 1960's were a heady time for the forces of artificial contraception. The Catholic Church came perilously close to abandoning its centuries old teachings. In fact, most of the radical cardinals and periti thought Pope Paul would cave- in with the eagerly awaited encyclical, Humanae Vitae

If there were ever an example of the veracity of Christ's promise to protect the Church from error through the Holy Spirit's constant presence, this is a textbook case. Pope Paul VI shocked the world with his letter proclaiming the ancient teaching on the purpose of the sexual act in the marriage covenant. Many Catholics, schooled in the protestant ethic of conscience and private interpretation of Scripture, disdained the teaching. After all, what does that old celibate know about our problems? Like Lucifer's' cry of "Non serviam" they elected to serve themselves and not God.

Humane Vitae was remarkably prescient in its predictions of the fruit of contraception. Abortion and euthanasia would soon follow, according to the Holy Father. And so they did. Even he, however, was not able to see how catastrophic the culture of death would be to the West, especially the white race.

Recent reports of the UN's study on population revealed the following:

----In 1950, whites were 28% of the world's population. In 2060, they will have fallen to 9.8%.
----Two hundred million white people, a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany---will vanish by 2060.
----By 2050, one-fourth of all the people in Eastern Europe will have vanished.
----In America, the Hispanic population will triple to 127 million by 2050. As Mexico's population increases to 130 million and based on statistics from the Pew Research Center, Patrick Buchanan notes that an "erasure of the U.S. border or merger of the two countries, or the linguistic, cultural and social annexation of the American Southwest by Mexico seems fated."

The consequences of the selfishness exemplified in contraceptive acts will have devastated Western Man and Western Culture. The great sadness remains that these demographic facts are inexorable. They cannot be changed even if the Western nations triple their birth rates. What is summarized here is our future. The sun has set on Western Civilization.

Ordinary


No one could have known
The Nazarene was Christus.
Too ordinary.

A Mother's Prayers

Several years ago on the 700 Club, I listened to the testimony of a big, burly truck driver about his conversion experience. He was involved in a serious traffic accident and was clinically dead. He saw himself hanging by thin strings over a smoking, sulphurous pit. A voice from above said , "The threads that are keeping you from falling into the abyss are the prayers of your mother."

Every family has probably had one or more of their children stray from the foundational teachings that were inculcated while they were at home. It is a source of great concern for parents. But prayer is the only hope, especially the prayers of a mother.

You may be familiar with this story. The son in question hated his father, who found him a disappointment. As a teen, he belonged to a gang of thieves who wandered the countryside committing unspeakable crimes. But his mother prayed for her son.

He fled his home, taking a prostitute with him, with whom he fathered an illegitimate child. Though very intelligent, he failed out of several colleges and universities. Still, his mother prayed. In fact she prayed for over 16 years for his conversion, which occurred one evening when he happened to open a Bible and read the Gospel of Matthew.

Filled with the spirit of repentance, he wrote the following testimony of his conversion:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.
Late have I loved you.
You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.
In my unlovliness, I plunged into the lovely things
which you created.
You were with me but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you;
Yet if they had not been in you, they would not have been at all.
You called...You shouted...you broke through my deafness.
You flashed..You shone..You dispelled my blindness.
You breathed your fragrance on me. I drew in breath
and now I pant for you.
I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more.
You touched me and I burned for your peace...
I make no effort to conceal my wounds...You are my physician
I am your patient.
You are merciful; I stand in need of mercy!!

The errant son was St. Augustine of Hippo, who became one of the great philosophers and theologians of the Church. The mother was St. Monica. What if Monica had prayed for just 15 years, 11 months and 29 days? It was her perseverance and love that moved the heart of God. And so I encourage parents to pray for their children. God is especially touched by a mother's prayer. His Mother's prayer...Pray for us, Oh Holy Mother of God. Hear our petitions and our necessities, and deliver us from all dangers, Oh ever glorious and ever blessed Virgin Mary.

Memorial Day

I want to express my gratitude to the Men and Women who currently serve in the US Military and my thanks for those who have paid the ultimate price:

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.