Professor Grillo: The first question contains numerous inaccuracies that undermine the very meaning of the question. I will try to illustrate them one by one. Those you call “traditionalists faithful to Rome” are actually people who, for various reasons, are at odds with Rome, and not in a relationship of fidelity. The point of contention does not simply concern a “ritual form” but a way of understanding relations inside and outside the Church. It all begins with the misunderstanding generated (in good faith, but through a completely wrong judgement) by the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, which had introduced a “ritual parallelism” (between the Novus Ordo and Vetus Ordo) that has neither a systematic nor practical foundation: it is not theologically sound and generates greater divisions than those that were present previously. The idea of “fidelity to Rome” must be challenged: to be faithful to Rome, one must acquire a “ritual language” according to what Rome has communally established. One is not faithful if one has one foot in two shoes. Having demonstrated this contradiction, the merit of Traditionis Custodes is that it re-establishes the one “lex orandi” in force for the entire Catholic Church. If someone tells me he is faithful at the same time to the Novus Ordo and Vetus Ordo, I reply that he has not understood the meaning of tradition, within which there a legitimate and insuperable progress that is irreversible.
From the Fairfield OCD hermits… I pray to complete even 20% of their direction. (apologies for the formatting)
The grave necessity and healing value of reparation for your sins
There are two obstacles for receiving divine grace in your life:
1) a lack of prayer and sacrifice to obtain grace.
2) a lack of reparation for sins, which are impediments to receiving the divine blessing.
Below you can learn the importance and healing power of reparation, and it only takes about 3 minutes to read.
After celebrating the gift of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the Church turns our attention to His Sacred Heart. The prayer of the feast of the Sacred Heart refers to our obligation of offering God reparation for sin. What is reparation and why is it one of the most important things for you and your loved ones?
“If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just: And he is the expiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. He who says that he knows him, and keeps not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But he that keeps his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected.”
-1 John 2:1-5
Because of the fallen condition of the human race, everyone reading this message is a sinner. All of your loved ones, both living and deceased, are deeply affected by sin, both in this world and when they depart from it.
Sin is your greatest problem, since it is the root cause of suffering, sadness, death, and eternal damnation, in addition to the offense that it offers to God. Therefore, the most important thing for you to do in your short life in this world is to:
1) Avoid all sin in the present and future, and…
2) Free yourself from the consequences of past sins.
How can you free yourself or others from the consequences sins, even those that have been confessed and sacramentally absolved? By offering to God fullreparation for them. Even after receiving forgiveness for sins, the damage from sins needs to be repaired, and this is the place of reparation.
How can you offer reparation to God? Through works of charity and religion in union with Christ and His saving Cross.
Therefore, you can rejoice to know that through Christ, you are able to offer atonement to God for the evils by which His goodness and holiness have been grievously offended, and by which you have damaged yourself and others. How can you accomplish this in your life?
“It is not enough to remove the arrow from the body. We also have to heal the wound caused by the arrow. It is the same with the soul; after we have received forgiveness for our sins, we have to heal the wound that remains through penance.”
–Saint John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.)
In His Sacrifice on the Cross, Christ Himself offered the fullness of expiation and atonement for your sins.
However, you must be personally united with Christ in His work of salvation to participate in its fruits and effects in your soul and in your daily living. His sanctity and merits must be applied to you personally for reparation from your sins or to make reparation for the sins of others. In the Sacrifice of the Mass, we present to God the merit, satisfaction and reparation that Christ accomplished on the Cross, uniting to His work of charity and sacrifice ourselves and our own works. As the priest states at Mass, the Sacrifice is offered to God for persons “whose faith and devotion are known to [Him]”.
By your works of faith (faith operates through charity, as St. Paul says) and devotion, you dispose yourself to more intimately and abundantly participate and communicate in the fruits of Christ’s Sacrifice, and thereby make reparation for sin.
Concretely, what are the fundamental works of reparation that are most effective? Sacred Scripture authoritatively tells us:
Prayer
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.” – James 5:15
Fasting
“Prayer is good with fasting and alms more than to lay up treasures of gold.” – Tobit 12:8
Almsgiving
“Thy prayers and thy alms are ascended for a memorial in the sight of God.” – Acts 10:4
Penance
“Do penance…for the remission of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit…Save yourselves from this perverse generation.” – Acts 2:38,40
Charity
“Purifying your souls in the obedience of charity, with a brotherly love, from a sincere heart love one another earnestly…for charity covers a multitude of sins” – 1 Peter 1:22,4:8
What if you think that you cannot do these things, or that you cannot do them enough to offer adequate reparation for sins? You should have recourse to others to offer an abundance of those works of reparation. This is because the different members of the Body of Christ, the Church, depend upon one another in their spiritual needs, just as the different organs and parts of the body depend on one another for their specific functions contributing to the life and vitality of the whole.
“I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance…unless you do penance, you shall perish.”
-Luke 5:32,13:3
The Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel are especially dedicated to the work of prayer, sacrifice, and reparation in the heart of the Church. They offer to God intercession for the conversion of sinners and reparation for the many sins that plague the world today, including in your life and that of your loved ones. Through this vital work in intimate union with Christ, they help bring divine redemption to many persons in their deepest needs. They accomplish this by daily offering to God the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, their many hours of prayer throughout the day and in much of the night, nearly constant fasting, perpetual abstinence from meat, hard manual labor, and the life-long privation of many comforts and most modern conveniences in an austere life of religious poverty and penance.
You can be encouraged to know that you can always count on the Hermits interceding for you personally as well as your loved ones. They are praying for you and for the world, presenting to God the works of reparation and constant intercession that are so gravely needed today.
5 Ways You Can Offer Sacrifice and Reparation in imitation of the Discaled Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel:
1. Fast on Fridays, imitating the Hermits who fast most of the year.
3. Abstain from eating meat for a week. You can do this monthly, quarterly, or annually, as the Hermits perpetually abstain from eating meat.
4. Resolve to pray kneeling with more frequency, as the Hermits pray many hours on their knees on the bare floor.
5. Rise 30 minutes earlier in the morning, and consecrate this time to God, in imitation of the Hermits who rise at midnight to pray to God for you and your loved ones.
Spring Update on the Hermits
All of the Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel continue to pray for the persons entrusted to their intercession during their Lenten observances.
These months of spring have been filled with continued work on the community’s monasteries in Pennsylvania and Colorado. Even amidst the full vigor of their contemplative religious observance, the hours of manual labor in their monastic schedule have been filled with a variety of successful works: wood milling, preparing timber frames, and more intricate woodworking, in addition to stone wall building, making candles to provide light for the monastery during the night Offices, gardening, landscaping, and even blacksmithing.
Several groups of discerning aspirants have visited the community throughout the last months. Another large group of approximately 14 Postulants will be admitted to the ranks of the community in the winter, and so the Hermits have also been busy sewing additional Habits, finishing monastic Cells, and preparing other materials for their newest Brothers. The daily period of manual labor is a fruitful opportunity for the Hermits to exercise selfless charity towards their neighbor and practice other virtues that deeply enrich their contemplative life at the service of the entire Church. You can join your sacrifice to theirs!
Do you want to see more about this community?
What Are you Willing to Die For? is a short but reverent look into the life of the Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Click Here to Watch
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One o the most interesting things about secular leftists is their terrible fear that people who disagree with them will use coercion or force. But actually, if you look at secular left regimes throughout history, it’s the secular leftists who love to resort to coercion and even violence to force people who disagree with them into silence or compliance or worse.
Here’s the latest article from Christopher Rufo, writing for City Journal, the journal of the center-right Manhattan Institute.
He writes:
A few years ago, Texas Children’s Hospital made no secret of its support for transgender medicine. Its doctors proudly administered puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and other medical interventions to children who self-identified as “trans.”
Then the tone shifted. In the face of public pressure, CEO Mark Wallace announced that he was shutting down the child gender clinic. But doctors at the hospital, including Richard Ogden Roberts, David Paul, and Kristy Rialon, never stopped.
The public would not have known if not for a courageous surgeon, Eithan Haim, who felt morally obligated to expose the subterfuge. He contacted me about how the hospital had lied about terminating the transgender medicine program, and that doctors were, in fact, continuing to perform sex-change procedures on children as young as 11.
The story rocketed across the world. The hospital immediately went on the defensive. Within a week, Texas legislators passed a bill confirming that transgender medical procedures for minors were illegal.
But the story also attracted attention from another powerful source: federal prosecutors. The Department of Justice has not shied from targeting political opponents of the Biden administration: former President Trump; conservative school board protesters; persons praying outside of abortion clinics; and now, doctors who dissent from transgender ideology.
On the morning in June 2023 that Haim was to graduate from Texas Children Hospital’s residency program, federal agents knocked on his door. They had identified him as a potential “leaker,” presumably through forensic examination of the hospital’s computer systems. Shortly thereafter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari began threatening Haim with prosecution.
Now, Ansari has made good on those threats. Earlier this week, U.S. marshals appeared at Haim’s home and summoned him to court to face an indictment on four felony counts of violating HIPAA. His initial appearance is next Monday, where he will learn more about the charges against him.
It’s important for Christians and conservatives to understand that secular leftists are not just Christians with the God removed. They have no rational foundation for free will. They have no rational foundation for objective morality. And they have no rational basis for human rights, like religious liberty. When their will to power runs up against your conscience, then anything is possible…
Today is the Feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus in the pre-1955 liturgy, Thursday within the Octave of the Sacred Heart. This feast was not merely downgraded, but rather completely suppressed (as was the Octave wherein it resided), while the Feast of the Sacred Heart was retained as a Solemnity, yet not transferred to Sunday nor made a holy day of obligation. +Bugnini had already become head of the liturgical reform by then, and almost surely not believing in Eucharist nor the Sacred Heart, his diabolical intent is all over this. However, by divine will, I just happen to be in possession of a 1948 Bugnini-free missal, so let’s talk about the Heart.
“I understood that devotion to the Sacred Heart is a last effort of His love towards Christians of these latter times, by proposing to them an object and means so calculated to persuade them to love Him… This devotion was the last effort of His love that He would grant to men in these latter ages, in order to withdraw them from the empire of Satan which Jesus desired to destroy, and thus to introduce them to the sweet liberty of the rule of His love, which He wished to restore in the hearts of all those who should embrace this devotion.” St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, vision of the Sacred Heart, 1673
“An object and means so calculated.” Thus did St. Margaret Mary introduce to the world a special weapon reserved for these latter days. It is very compelling as a means of amending your life. Have you ever set aside time and reflected on the Sacred Heart? On what it means? How it so fully expresses God’s love for us, in a very special way? Spend some time on it, because it’s really helpful. It’s a deeper meditation on the reality of the Incarnation: That God himself stitched together His own physical human heart, with the specific intent of having it pierced by us, for our sake.
Pierced by you, for your sake. You can find a good article HERE.
“The sweet liberty of the rule of His love.” The heart is where we discover the intimacy of Jesus’ love for us. It is very important to understand that this love is not simply for all mankind collectively, but for each one of us individually and specifically. He loves you personally, one-on-one, and more than anyone else loves you. His love is not just in real time, but throughout time. He loved you before He created the universe, He loved you from the Cross, and He loves you now. He desires to have His love reciprocated. We do this by adoring him in praise and thanksgiving, and by ordering our lives according to His Word. If you’ve never understood that thing about having a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” this is exactly what it’s all about. When you really love someone, you try really hard not to hurt them, especially in the things They’ve told you hurt Them most.
“The heart stands for love. The human heart of Jesus stands both for His human love and for the infinite love of His divine Person. His love was not just a shimmering, dreamy softness; it was wisely strong and true to its eternal purposes. Despite the anguish of Gethsemane, His love yielded His human life to crucifixion. His love had all the majesty and fullness of God, a height and a depth that make paltry the wisdom of men. Every mystery of His life, every miracle, sermon, and kindness, was a new revelation of divine love that enlightens and warms mankind.” (quote from a hand missal, Feast of the Sacred Heart)
His love for us burst forth physically in the spilling of His Sacred Blood. Not just in a general sense all through His Passion and death, but rather acutely as the lance, the Spear of Destiny, pierced his side and reached His heart. That lance is you.
“They dug therefore, and they dug through not only His hands, but also His feet, yea, and His side also; and the very recesses of His most sacred Heart, they pierced with the spear of rage, though it had already been wounded with the spear of love. ‘Thou hast wounded,’ says the Spouse in the Canticles of love, “thou hast wounded my Heart, my sister, my spouse.’ O Lord Jesus, Thy spouse, Thy love, Thy sister has wounded Thy Heart. Why then was it necessary that that Heart should be wounded further by Thine enemies?” -St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Vitis Mystica
Here is our Lord again instructing St. Margaret Mary; note whom He cites as hurting Him most:
“Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love; and in return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love. But what I feel most keenly is that it is hearts which are consecrated to Me, that treat Me thus.”
The thing that most strikingly ties these two feasts together is the ontology of the Eucharist itself: Not only is it truly the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord and Savior, but it is literally the Heart of Jesus, the Heart of God. Yes, that’s right, and there have indeed been examples of the host turning into visible flesh, and this flesh has been confirmed scientifically as actual heart muscle. Reflect on this as you read Pope Benedict XV on the institution of the Feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, 9 November 1921:
“The chief reason of this feast is to commemorate the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the mystery of the Eucharist. By this means the Church wishes more and more to excite the faithful to approach this sacred mystery with confidence, and to inflame their hearts with that divine charity which consumed the Sacred Heart of Jesus when in His infinite love He instituted the Most Holy Eucharist, wherein the Divine Heart guards and loves them by living with them, as they live and abide in Him. For in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist He offers and gives Himself to us as victim, companion, nourishment, viaticum, and pledge of our future glory.”
And finally, a short reflection on the Feast of the Eucharistic Heart from a priest at a Benedictine Priory who apparently has permission to celebrate it:
“The adorable mystery of the Eucharist sums up, contains, and communicates to us the entire mystery of Christ: His incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. If you seek the open Side of the glorious ascended Christ, you will find it in the Eucharist. If you seek the pierced Heart of Christ, beating with love for the Father and with mercy for sinners, you will find it in the Eucharist. The Communion Antiphon of the Mass of the feast is meant to be repeated and treasured. It is, at once, a promise and an invitation: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world””HERE
You can read about Eucharistic miracles and the human heart muscle HERE.
History of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart HERE.
“O Lord Jesus Christ, Who hast poured forth the riches of Thy love for men in instituting the Sacrament of the Eucharist: help us, we beseech Thee, to love Thy most loving Heart and ever to make worthy use of so great a Sacrament.” -Collect for the Feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus
According to satellite images published by navigation trackers, the Eisenhower was seen sailing north off the coast of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, heading to the far north of the Red Sea, more than 1,100 kilometers from Yemen. The Eisenhower had noticeably repositioned over the past two days, moving from off the coast of Qunfudhah in southern Saudi Arabia to off the coast of Jeddah before moving further north.
This retreat coincided with two ballistic and cruise missile attacks and drone strikes launched by Yemeni Armed Forces on the aircraft carrier since Friday, in response to recent American and British assaults that resulted in the deaths and injuries of 58 civilians. This escalation prompted Sana’a to vow a “firm and deterrent” response, according to the Supreme Political Council.
The blatant retreat of Eisenhower has put the United States in an extremely embarrassing position after attempting to cover up the Yemeni attacks on the carrier through silence. Many activists have sparked a wide debate regarding Eisenhower’s status following the attacks, leading Captain Chaudhary Hill to release a video to calm public opinion. However, the video showing a fighter jet taking off from the carrier turned out to be an old clip from March, reinforcing suspicions that Eisenhower might have sustained significant damage from the Yemeni attacks.
I, and many other observers, have long predicted that it would be the sinking of a US aircraft carrier that would definitively mark the end of US global military supremacy. However, I’d always assumed it would probably be a Chinese hypersonic missile, or possibly a Russian hypersonic missile, that would provide the historical coup de grace.
But the fact that it might be a lowly desert people taking down the mighty symbol of one of the most powerful empires to ever dominate the planet would be both fitting and ironic. There is too much disinformation and misinformation to confirm the rumors yet, but the longer the USS Eisenhower stays dark, the more it looks as if the USA has passed its Syracuse Moment.
Welcome to the new bizarro world, where left is right, right is wrong, and everything is upside down and topsy-turvy. To set the dining table, recall that last week, without a shred of public discussion and without consulting anyone except his traditional neocon toadies, in secret, Biden armed the Ukrainian army with missiles to shoot into Russian cities. Apparently unsatisfied with having dared the Russians to object to U.S. missiles flying across their breakfast tables, completely spoiling Russians’ morning blini, Biden is still sprinting the wrong way up the nuclear war escalator.
Azov recruitment poster
The alleged President of the United States, the free world’s bastion of freedom and democracy, the shining light upon the hill, the country that saved the world from the German Chancellor with the funny mustache, is now officially andliterally arming nazis.
In a story describing Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion only as “a one-time militia with a checkered past,” the Washington Post ran this understated headline: “U.S. lifts weapons ban on Ukrainian military unit.”
A military unit! Not even a “controversial” military unit!
The article competed for being WaPo’s shortest story, offering only a few terse paragraphs. There’s so much that could have been said about Azov, including easily obtained, eye-popping visuals like the one I included above, all fussily ignored by WaPo’s editors…
Moderna on Monday said its combination vaccine that targets both Covid-19 and the flu was more effective than existing standalone shots for those viruses in a late-stage trial.
The biotech company is the first to release positive phase three data on a Covid and flu combination shot, giving it a potential lead over rival vaccine makers Pfizer and Novavax.
Moderna plans to file for regulatory approval for its combination jab this summer in the U.S. and hopes it can enter the market in 2025, the company’s CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview.
Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax have said that combination shots will simplify how people can protect themselves against respiratory viruses that typically surge around the same time of the year. The added convenience is critical as fewer Americans roll up their sleeves to get vaccinated against Covid.
Bancel added that combination shots could reduce the burden of respiratory viruses on pharmacists and the broader U.S. health-care system, which has been grappling with a labor shortage that has many workers stretched thin.
Moderna’s messenger RNA combination shot, called mRNA-1083, is made up of both the company’s vaccine candidate for seasonal influenza and a newer, “next-generation” version of its Covid shot. Both of those experimental vaccines – mRNA-1010 and mRNA-1283 – have shown positive results in separate phase three trials.
