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Sunday 15 December 2013

The Quad-City Latin Mass

For those who are looking for a Tridentine Mass in the Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island area, there is one at St. Alphonsus at 2:00 on Sunday. On Christmas Day, the Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. That Mass will be a High Mass. I found out today that someone learned about the Latin Mass from my blog years ago. So I shall try and keep up with any changes. The three priests who celebrate the TLM are Father Apple, the pastor of St. Alphonsus, Fr. Thom Hennen, the Vocations Director, and Fr. Scott Lemaster, pastor of several parishes, including Charlotte, Iowa.


Peter O'Toole RIP

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/177701/Becket-Movie-Clip-Archbishop.html

Watch the clip on Peter O'Toole telling Richard Burton he will be Archbishop of Canterbury.

Good stuff

Peter O'Toole died today. Please pray for his soul. He was a great actor. He was also a fallen away Catholic. My old house in Sherborne, Dorset was in one of his movies-from the air-Goodbye Mr. Chips. Pray for Peter O'Toole



BTW, Lawrence of Arabia is my favorite movie. It is, in my mind, the best anti-war film ever made. I have seen it at least 20 times.

My second favorite is Ben-Hur. I like desert flicks.

Thoughts for The Third Sunday in Advent


A few thoughts connected to one of the readings of the day:

1) patience is humility and impatience is pride; impatience insists on its own way;

2) complaining is a lack of faith; it is not depending totally on Divine Providence;

3) judging is pride

from James in today's second reading.

Be patient, brothers and sisters,
until the coming of the Lord.
See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, 
being patient with it
until it receives the early and the late rains.
You too must be patient.
Make your hearts firm,
because the coming of the Lord is at hand.
Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, 
that you may not be judged.
Behold, the Judge is standing before the gates.
Take as an example of hardship and patience, brothers and sisters,
the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.



A New Gnosticism


Well, after several months of thought, and being a bit dense, I figured out that Christian Scientism was a new Gnosticism. I suppose other people have known this, but I have been in discussion with a friend who is a Christian Scientist and it finally dawned on me. She thinks that all reason is empiricism, so that is a confusion immediately seen.

To the Catholic, reason and faith are two pillars of our spiritual life.

For the Gnostic, the material world is evil. God is not part of the material. What the CS does with Genesis, in which we read that God created the world and everything in it and saw that it was good.

For the Catholic, creation was created good by a good God. For the Catholic, Christ was Incarnated, became Man, became material. The CS does not accept this. To them, God is a principle not a person.

CS emphasizes God as there to heal us, but says nothing about us loving God with all our hearts, minds, souls. Christ is not the Center, but the individual is.

All things material for the CS are not real, but fantasy. As I wrote earlier on this blog, all pain and all discomfort for the CS is not "real".

That is because such things are of the material. CS does not believe that suffering is real or that it is a result of Original Sin.

CS does not believe that suffering is God's Will. This is a denial of the Crucifixion.

The CS would not understand Blessed Mother Teresa, whose call was not to heal but to help people die with dignity.

The CS do not accept the Salvific Death of Christ on the Cross.

All spiritual ways either accept or reject the reality of Who Christ Is.

Christ is both True God and True Man.

Christ's Body is not a fantasy or a phantasm. This is the great Gift of God to us.

The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Whose Birth we await with penance and mortification in Advent, is the great sign of God the Father's love for us.

Pray for my CS friend, please. So many people who are CS are good, generous, kind people.

But, like the Greeks, their stumbling block is Christ Himself.

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness 1 Corinthians 1:23 DR



 



Love in the Darkness

Well, the Dark Night of the senses is brutal. Do not shy away from it. Sometimes, one is confused. That is fine.

The key is to keep the faith and working in faith, even in the darkness. The Dark Night of the Senses means we have no consolations and that we should not seek these.

Simple? No, our whole being cries out for love. But, the Love Who Is a Person wants to meet us in a new way.

It does not matter if we are completely alone, like St. John of the Cross in his cell.

It does not matter if we are known or understood. There is One Who Does know and understand us.

The purification of the senses means nada, nada, nada.

Do not run away from this trial.

The Light comes eventually, when one is ready and when God is ready.



Also, realize two things in the Dark Night.

One, if we are punished, like all sinners, we deserve it.

Two, God allows satan to sift us, through other people and circumstances.

Rest in His Plan.

How happy are the poor in spirit:
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Story, Part 20

It would be nice to end a story with a wedding, especially one which started with a wedding. But, this is not a Jane Austen novel, and the last two characters did not fall in love.

Mark Levi's fabulous Holocaust Museum not only was a great success, an architectural masterpiece, but earned him enough money to finish, neatly, his mass kit project. Carole and her great staff took a little over a year to finish the sewing of the linens and bags. The effort was nothing less than miraculous. 40,000 mass kits flew about the clerical world in North America (including Canada). The faithful could be nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ. Mark rewarded Carole generously. She was not sure what to do when it was all finished, and she did not want to go back to a DaisyChain revisited. Her little factory closed, and all the workers dispersed. James had left her the condo, which she sold for a nice profit, even in a depressed real estate market. Finally, after sitting about and petting Tomas for a few days before the sale of the condo went through, Carole decided what to do.

In February of 2017, Carole drove up to the large wooden doors of the Josephinum. She had two old embroidered bags, her favorites. Tomas was asleep in one. The other held a few embroidery things, her statue of Our Lady of Fatima, and a few clothes. She was let in and a priest came to meet her.

"May I help you, my dear?" Carole asked if Mrs. Collins was in. "Of course, let me find her for you."

The priest walked away and within minutes, Carole saw him returning with Anabelle and her little boy.

"Anabelle, would you and David like a roommate?"



The End.....




The Story, Part 19

Underground excavations began in the ruins of the Curia Pompey under the Largo di Torre Argentina, under the streets nearby. The opening of these ruins occurred back in 2013. The excitement of seeing, after so many long years, the actual site of the murder of Julius Caesar rushed through Rome like the sirocco. In a city which is cynical and not prone to excitement, this news was greeted with joy.

However, problems with the area forced the exact spot to shut down. It was not until July of 2016 that the real spot of the murder was opened up again. It was soon shut down because a startling discovery.

A body with a note, with a gun, and in a cassock shocked the archaelogists. The priest was finally identified as one who had been missing for a while. The Pope had been aware of the mystery of this missing priest and had, rightly so, assumed him to be kidnapped and possibly dead.

In fact, within days after the identification of the body, the Pope declared him one of the martyrs of the Church, hearkening back to his decree in his first encyclical, Consilium Dei coniugium, and in an action which was considered highly controversial, because of the connection between the two deaths, Pope Francis II declared both John Killiney, formerly Bishop of the Seaview Diocese, and Father Andrew Longley, his Vicar-General, martyrs of the Church. 

The note found with the body of Father Andrew indicated the reason for his death. This note was not published. But, archivists would be allowed to see it in seven years. 

The famous brother of the priest responded quickly to the finding of his lost brother. He had earlier resigned from the Senate, just before the news of the kidnapping hit the media. He had moved to Rome, and now, after a long time of looking and praying, was called upon to identify the corpse. By the end of the year, James Longely was installed in the Latroun Monastery near Jerusalem. He has finally made his promise a solemn vow.

The schism of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of America became a reality about the same time as Father Andrew's disappearance. Anabelle and David could no longer stay in their parish, which was one where the parish priest and those members who supported the new church were all excommunicated. More than 262 parishes, mostly in the eastern part of the States, followed the many bishops and priests, who led their sheep astray, into the darkness of separation from Holy Mother Church. 

After many discussions, in those hot summer days, David took Anabelle to the Catholic Bruderhof at the Josephinum. There, in October, little Andrew James Collins was born. He looked just like his dad. David was put in charge of all the computers and electricity, and slowly but surely, he made the entire site off-grid. The storm clouds swirled above the heads of this little community, but there, Anabelle, David and little Andrew could get to daily Mass and weekly confession. The little family felt privileged and grateful. Anabelle, one day told David a story. It was her old dream.

"The man behind the Bishop was Andrew. I knew, I knew he would die soon," she said quietly, looking at the sleeping baby in her lap. David put his arm around his wife and child. "May both of them intercede for us now, and at the hour of our death. Amen."

"Amen," replied Anabelle.

To be continued....