Philadelphia Freedom: All indoor gatherings strictly prohibited; sports cancelled, gyms closed, dining rooms closed, five of you can go to church

And yes, the Karens will obey, rant on social media, and snitch. Where are the men? Oh, that’s right… “men” are the worst karens of all.

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Philadelphia leaders have announced sweeping new restrictions as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise in the city.

Mayor Jim Kenney and Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced the measures during a news conference on Monday afternoon.

“I know these restrictions are tough. People are going to be put out of work, and some businesses may go under. We also know that the consequences to health of not doing it are really bad,” Farley said. 

The following restrictions will take effect for Philadelphia on Friday, November 20 and will last through January 1, 2021:

RESTAURANTS

*Indoor dining prohibited

*Outdoor dining only by members of the same household

*Maximum table size of four seats

INDOOR GATHERINGS

*Prohibited indoors of any size, at any location

*Includes both public and private events

*For example: Indoor parties, group meals, football watching groups, visiting between households, weddings, funerals, baby showers are prohibited

OUTDOOR GATHERINGS

*Gatherings limited at 10% occupancy or 10 persons per 1,000 square feet

*Masks must be worn at all times

*No food or beverages served at outdoor gatherings to ensure people can wear masks

RETAIL STORES

*Allow with limit of five people per 1,000 square feet

*Enforcement of mask use by customers and employees

OFFICES

*Employees must work from home unless not possible

SPORTS (Youth, school and community)

*All are prohibited

BUSINESS AND ACTIVITY CLOSURES

*Theaters, including movie theaters, and other performance spaces must close

*Bowling alleys, arcades, and game spaces must close

*Museums must close

*Libraries must close

*Casinos must close

*Recreational activities and sports for youth, community groups, and schools are prohibited

*Gyms and indoor exercise classes must close

*Senior day services (senior centers and adult day care centers) remain closed

RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

*No more than five percent occupancy or five per 1000 square feet

https://6abc.com/health/philly-announces-sweeping-new-restrictions-amid-covid-19-surge/8005756/

“The heart of a happy life, of a true life, is friendship with the Lord Jesus. And this friendship is learned in love for Sacred Scripture, in love for the Liturgy, in profound faith, in love for Mary, so as to be ever more truly acquainted with God himself and hence with true happiness”

Today is the Feast of St. Gertrude the Great. After twenty years in the convent, she nearly lost her faith out of pride. Think about that, and be ever mindful.

The title quote of this post is really like a mini-catechism. It comes from the last paragraph of Pope Benedict’s 6 October 2010 General Audience, which I reprint here.

St. Gertrude, pray for us.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

St Gertrude the Great, of whom I would like to talk to you today, brings us once again this week to the Monastery of Helfta, where several of the Latin-German masterpieces of religious literature were written by women. Gertrude belonged to this world. She is one of the most famous mystics, the only German woman to be called “Great”, because of her cultural and evangelical stature: her life and her thought had a unique impact on Christian spirituality. She was an exceptional woman, endowed with special natural talents and extraordinary gifts of grace, the most profound humility and ardent zeal for her neighbour’s salvation. She was in close communion with God both in contemplation and in her readiness to go to the help of those in need.

At Helfta, she measured herself systematically, so to speak, with her teacher, Matilda of Hackeborn, of whom I spoke at last Wednesday’s Audience. Gertrude came into contact with Matilda of Magdeburg, another medieval mystic and grew up under the wing of Abbess Gertrude, motherly, gentle and demanding. From these three sisters she drew precious experience and wisdom; she worked them into a synthesis of her own, continuing on her religious journey with boundless trust in the Lord. Gertrude expressed the riches of her spirituality not only in her monastic world, but also and above all in the biblical, liturgical, Patristic and Benedictine contexts, with a highly personal hallmark and great skill in communicating.

Gertrude was born on 6 January 1256, on the Feast of the Epiphany, but nothing is known of her parents nor of the place of her birth. Gertrude wrote that the Lord himself revealed to her the meaning of this first uprooting: “I have chosen you for my abode because I am pleased that all that is lovable in you is my work…. For this very reason I have distanced you from all your relatives, so that no one may love you for reasons of kinship and that I may be the sole cause of the affection you receive” (The Revelations, I, 16, Siena 1994, pp. 76-77).

When she was five years old, in 1261, she entered the monastery for formation and education, a common practice in that period. Here she spent her whole life, the most important stages of which she herself points out. In her memoirs she recalls that the Lord equipped her in advance with forbearing patience and infinite mercy, forgetting the years of her childhood, adolescence and youth, which she spent, she wrote, “in such mental blindness that I would have been capable… of thinking, saying or doing without remorse everything I liked and wherever I could, had you not armed me in advance, with an inherent horror of evil and a natural inclination for good and with the external vigilance of others. “I would have behaved like a pagan… in spite of desiring you since childhood, that is since my fifth year of age, when I went to live in the Benedictine shrine of religion to be educated among your most devout friends” (ibid., II, 23, p. 140f.).

Gertrude was an extraordinary student, she learned everything that can be learned of the sciences of the trivium and quadrivium, the education of that time; she was fascinated by knowledge and threw herself into profane studies with zeal and tenacity, achieving scholastic successes beyond every expectation. If we know nothing of her origins, she herself tells us about her youthful passions: literature, music and song and the art of miniature painting captivated her. She had a strong, determined, ready and impulsive temperament. She often says that she was negligent; she recognizes her shortcomings and humbly asks forgiveness for them. She also humbly asks for advice and prayers for her conversion. Some features of her temperament and faults were to accompany her to the end of her life, so as to amaze certain people who wondered why the Lord had favoured her with such a special love.

From being a student she moved on to dedicate herself totally to God in monastic life, and for 20 years nothing exceptional occurred: study and prayer were her main activities. Because of her gifts she shone out among the sisters; she was tenacious in consolidating her culture in various fields.
Nevertheless during Advent of 1280 she began to feel disgusted with all this and realized the vanity of it all. On 27 January 1281, a few days before the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, towards the hour of Compline in the evening, the Lord with his illumination dispelled her deep anxiety. With gentle sweetness he calmed the distress that anguished her, a torment that Gertrude saw even as a gift of God, “to pull down that tower of vanity and curiosity which, although I had both the name and habit of a nun alas I had continued to build with my pride, so that at least in this manner I might find the way for you to show me your salvation” (ibid., II, p. 87). She had a vision of a young man who, in order to guide her through the tangle of thorns that surrounded her soul, took her by the hand. In that hand Gertrude recognized “the precious traces of the wounds that abrogated all the acts of accusation of our enemies” (ibid., II, 1, p. 89), and thus recognized the One who saved us with his Blood on the Cross: Jesus.

From that moment her life of intimate communion with the Lord was intensified, especially in the most important liturgical seasons Advent-Christmas, Lent-Easter, the feasts of Our Lady even when illness prevented her from going to the choir. This was the same liturgical humus as that of Matilda, her teacher; but Gertrude describes it with simpler, more linear images, symbols and terms that are more realistic and her references to the Bible, to the Fathers and to the Benedictine world are more direct.

Her biographer points out two directions of what we might describe as her own particular “conversion”: in study, with the radical passage from profane, humanistic studies to the study of theology, and in monastic observance, with the passage from a life that she describes as negligent, to the life of intense, mystical prayer, with exceptional missionary zeal. The Lord who had chosen her from her mother’s womb and who since her childhood had made her partake of the banquet of monastic life, called her again with his grace “from external things to inner life and from earthly occupations to love for spiritual things”. Gertrude understood that she was remote from him, in the region of unlikeness, as she said with Augustine; that she had dedicated herself with excessive greed to liberal studies, to human wisdom, overlooking spiritual knowledge, depriving herself of the taste for true wisdom; she was then led to the mountain of contemplation where she cast off her former self to be reclothed in the new. “From a grammarian she became a theologian, with the unflagging and attentive reading of all the sacred books that she could lay her hands on or contrive to obtain. She filled her heart with the most useful and sweet sayings of Sacred Scripture. Thus she was always ready with some inspired and edifying word to satisfy those who came to consult her while having at her fingertips the most suitable scriptural texts to refute any erroneous opinion and silence her opponents” (ibid., I, 1, p. 25).

Gertrude transformed all this into an apostolate: she devoted herself to writing and popularizing the truth of faith with clarity and simplicity, with grace and persuasion, serving the Church faithfully and lovingly so as to be helpful to and appreciated by theologians and devout people.

Little of her intense activity has come down to us, partly because of the events that led to the destruction of the Monastery of Helfta. In addition to The Herald of Divine Love and The Revelations, we still have her Spiritual Exercises, a rare jewel of mystical spiritual literature.

In religious observance our Saint was “a firm pillar… a very powerful champion of justice and truth” (ibid., I, 1, p. 26), her biographer says. By her words and example she kindled great fervour in other people. She added to the prayers and penances of the monastic rule others with such devotion and such trusting abandonment in God that she inspired in those who met her an awareness of being in the Lord’s presence. In fact, God made her understand that he had called her to be an instrument of his grace. Gertrude herself felt unworthy of this immense divine treasure, and confesses that she had not safeguarded it or made enough of it. She exclaimed: “Alas! If you had given me to remember you, unworthy as I am, by even only a straw, I would have viewed it with greater respect and reverence that I have had for all your gifts!” (ibid., II, 5, p. 100). Yet, in recognizing her poverty and worthlessness she adhered to God’s will, “because”, she said, “I have so little profited from your graces that I cannot resolve to believe that they were lavished upon me solely for my own use, since no one can thwart your eternal wisdom. Therefore, O Giver of every good thing who has freely lavished upon me gifts so undeserved, in order that, in reading this, the heart of at least one of your friends may be moved at the thought that zeal for souls has induced you to leave such a priceless gem for so long in the abominable mud of my heart” (ibid., II, 5, p. 100f.).

Two favours in particular were dearer to her than any other, as Gertrude herself writes: “The stigmata of your salvation-bearing wounds which you impressed upon me, as it were, like a valuable necklaces, in my heart, and the profound and salutary wound of love with which you marked it.
“You flooded me with your gifts, of such beatitude that even were I to live for 1,000 years with no consolation neither interior nor exterior the memory of them would suffice to comfort me, to enlighten me, to fill me with gratitude. Further, you wished to introduce me into the inestimable intimacy of your friendship by opening to me in various ways that most noble sacrarium of your Divine Being which is your Divine Heart…. To this accumulation of benefits you added that of giving me as Advocate the Most Holy Virgin Mary, your Mother, and often recommended me to her affection, just as the most faithful of bridegrooms would recommend his beloved bride to his own mother” (ibid., II, 23, p. 145).

Looking forward to never-ending communion, she ended her earthly life on 17 November 1301 or 1302, at the age of about 46. In the seventh Exercise, that of preparation for death, St Gertrude wrote: “O Jesus, you who are immensely dear to me, be with me always, so that my heart may stay with you and that your love may endure with me with no possibility of division; and bless my passing, so that my spirit, freed from the bonds of the flesh, may immediately find rest in you. Amen” (Spiritual Exercises, Milan 2006, p. 148).

It seems obvious to me that these are not only things of the past, of history; rather St Gertrude’s life lives on as a lesson of Christian life, of an upright path, and shows us that the heart of a happy life, of a true life, is friendship with the Lord Jesus. And this friendship is learned in love for Sacred Scripture, in love for the Liturgy, in profound faith, in love for Mary, so as to be ever more truly acquainted with God himself and hence with true happiness, which is the goal of our life. Many thanks.

http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101006.html

Sidney Powell: “I will unleash the Kraken”

Folks, there is much more to come. The Dominion software vote switching apparatus is about to be exposed. There are unconfirmed reports today that Delta/JSOC raided and captured Dominion servers overseas. Delta/JSOC is capable of taking orders directly from POTUS, bypassing chain of command (this is an established fact, but not sure if this happened in this case.)

Watch this interview between Lou Dobbs and Sidney Powell for seven minutes.

04:30: (Powell) “This is essentially a New American Revolution.”

04:38: (Powell) “Anybody who wants this country to remain free needs to step up right now.”

05:25: (Dobbs) “This looks like the endgame in the effort against (Trump).”

05:48: (Powell) “I am going to release the Kraken.”

I know mine, and mine know me

Today is the Feast of St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr.

“Josaphat, apostle and a martyr of Church unity was baptized John Kuncevyk. When he was 16, in 1595, the Ruthenian Church, to which he belonged, was officially united with Rome. As a young apprentice-merchant with a monastic vocation, he devoted his spare time to learning Church Slavonic, in order to assist more intelligently at the Liturgy and to recite some of the Divine Office each day. As soon as possible he entered the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Vilna. Made Archbishop of Polotsk in 1617, he fought tirelessly to preserve the union with Rome against fierce opposition from many of the people and a schismatic hierarchy. He was beaten to death in a riot incited by his opponents in 1623.” https://tridentine-mass.blogspot.com/

St. Josaphat never ceased in working toward conversion and unity from the schismatic Orthodox. One Shepherd, One Faith. He nearly pulled it off, too.

But instead they murdered him for it, and if you’ve not yet begun preparing for the same, start now. Because if you are a serious Catholic, you have a smartphone, unencrypted emails and texts, you are on social media… then you are already on a list. The mob are licking their collective chops to tear us apart. They cannot wait to transform their unfettered rage into physical violence, whilst the defunded police stand down.

St. Josaphat, pray for us.

COLLECT 
O Lord, infuse into your Church the Spirit that filled the blessed martyr bishop Josaphat when he gave his life for his flock. May that Spirit move and strengthen us through the prayers of this saint so that we may fearlessly sacrifice our lives for our brothers.

GOSPEL St. John 10:11-16
At that time, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth: and the wolf casteth and scattereth the sheep, And the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd: and I know mine, and mine know me. As the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for my sheep. And other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring. And they shall hear my voice: And there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”

OFFERTORY St. John 13:13
Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends.

SECRET 
O Most Merciful God, bless these gifts of ours, and deepen in us that faith which Your blessed martyr bishop Josaphat upheld even at the cost of his life.

COMMUNION  St. John 10:14
I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and mine know me.

POSTCOMMUNION 
O Lord, may the food of heaven which we have taken fill us with the spiritual strength of Your blessed martyr bishop Josaphat, which made him victorious in defending the Church.

Truth or Consequences

Well said, but…

Joe Biden COULD become Catholic, and we should be praying for his conversion. If you’ve never tried praying for your enemies, you really should, and you will be strengthened .

However, Bruce Jenner can NEVER be a woman. The trans lie is the lie of our time. He needs our prayers too.

Truth, or consequences.

Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, pray for us!

Mother Cabrini was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, 7 July 1946. Today is her feast day, and the primary Mass of the day in the dioceses of the United States. Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Collect: “O Lord, Jesus Christ, You enkindled the fire of Your Sacred Heart in the holy virgin Frances Xavier so that she might win souls for You in many lands, and establish a new religious congregation of women in Your Church. Grant that we too may imitate the virtues of Your Sacred Heart through her intercession, so that we may be worthy of the haven of eternal happiness.”

Let us also continue to invoke our special Pennsylvania saints, St. Katherine Drexel and St. John Neumann. SS Katherine and John, pray for us!