Yes.  It has finally happened.  I have joined the New Black Panther Party.  Y’all dirty crackers can call me Queen Beyonce Shabazz henceforth.  Hotep.

Nah, I just want to take this opportunity to put one of the more edifying books of scripture in front of y’all dirty crackers, er, excuse me, sorry — in front of y’all gentle people as we all navigate these dark and frightening days in the Church.

If you aren’t familiar with the Canticle of Canticles, aka the Song of Songs, aka the Song of Solomon, dude, get about it.  The depth and aching beauty of this love poem, and the jaw-dropping prophecy in every single phrase is something that could, by itself, convert people, if only people would explain it and talk about it.

Yes, it is erotic poetry.  Darn right, because as I have tried to explain many, many times, love, sex, boy-girl and then husband-wife relationships and all of that good stuff is of enormous importance and is one of the most powerful means that God uses to help us understand Him and His relationship to us in our earthly lives.  The reason why satan uses these very same things as his number one tool in destroying lives and ruining souls is precisely because erotic love and the marital sex act itself are so good and powerful, and thus able to be corrupted and turned into such horrific evil, to wit: sodomy.  The best way to combat satan in his use of the marital embrace  and erotic love is NOT to pretend that sex doesn’t exist, or that it is intrinsically evil.  The best way to combat satan is to explain it so that people can see the beauty and most especially the POTENTIAL HOLINESS uniquly imbued into erotic love and the marital embrace.  Sadly, I think most Christian people today have a warped view of the marital embrace as an embarrassing yet necessary physical process akin to the elimination of waste.  And don’t get me started on how the feminist culture has nearly destroyed courtship and marriage.

Anyhow, the Canticle of Canticles is a dialog between Jesus Christ and His Bride, The Church.  Again, most people don’t know this, and the dialog isn’t demarcated so you have to pay close attention to catch the shifts in the voice between Our Lord and His Bride.

I post this today because literally the very first verses in the Canticle speak directly to those of us who are looking at what is going on in the Church today, namely the chastisement that is Pope Francis, the Vicar of Christ and the Successor to the See of Peter, and the majority of bishops and priests today who are themselves also a “most terrible castigation” upon the world, to quote St. John Eudes, and may be tempted to despair.

The first thing I would remind one and all of is the fact that we richly, richly deserve this.  As I said back in March when Francis was elected, if we had gotten the Pope we actually deserve, we would now have Pope Snoop Dogg.  God is Just.  And God is angry.  Very, very angry.  With us.  The world slaughters at least 50 million innocent babies per year, with cheerleader and financier numero uno being the Former United States of America.  Sodomy is everywhere, with cheerleader and financier numero uno being the Former United States of America.  Fornication is everywhere.  Blasphemy is everywhere.  Apostasy is everywhere, with cheerleader and financier numero uno being the Former United States of America.  What do you expect?  What kind of God would He be if He not only sat back and allowed all of this, but continued to BLESS His faithless, degenerate, apostate people in the Former U.S. and everywhere else in the now-defunct “Christian World” who haven’t just turned their backs on Him, but are actively in league with satan, fighting Him tooth and nail?  And since basically NO ONE is doing any penance or making any real effort to seriously fight evil and turn back to God, y’all can expect things to get MUCH, MUCH worse.

Second, Our Lord told us that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against His Church.  If there was ever anything that one could “take to the bank”, that’s it.  Now, we have our faces smushed up against the gates, and it seems like more and more pressure is being exerted and the smushing is getting more and more intense, but the Church Militant will exist, uninterrupted, until Our Lord returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, no matter what Francis says or does, and guys, I suspect there are things coming from Bergoglio that are going to make it appear that he is literally attempting to dismantle the Church from the inside out.  More on that soon.

And now to the Canticle:  I’ll paste the key bit here with the footnotes, but I really encourage you to go over to DRBO.org and read the whole thing WITH THE FOOTNOTES, which truly illuminate the allegorical phophecy and make clear which voice – Our Lord or The Church – is speaking.

Let me add one header note – and this is so cool.  Whenever mention is made of “breasts” or “two breasts”, that is referring to the two Great Commandments:  Love God and Love thy Neighbor.

This is chapter one, verses one through five and is The Church speaking to Christ:

Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine, smelling sweet of the best ointments. Thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee. Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee. 
I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept.

[1] Let him kiss me: The church, the spouse of Christ, prays that he may love and have peace with her, which the spouse prefers to every thing delicious: and therefore expresses (ver. 2) that young maidens, that is the souls of the faithful, have loved thee.

[3] Draw me: That is, with thy grace: otherwise I should not be able to come to thee. This metaphor shews that we cannot of ourselves come to Christ our Lord, unless he draws us by his grace, which is laid up in his storerooms: that is, in the mysteries of Faith, which God in his goodness and love for mankind hath revealed, first by his servant Moses in the Old Law in figure only, and afterwards in reality by his only begotten Son Jesus Christ.

[4] I am black but beautiful: That is, the church of Christ founded in humility appearing outwardly afflicted, and as it were black and contemptible; but inwardly, that is, in its doctrine and morality, fair and beautiful.

Is that not just amazing?  Oh, man.  “The sons of my mother have fought against me…” says the Church to Our Lord.  It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  And then you think about all of the poor ignoramuses who have fallen for the “black church” con-artists like Jackson, Sharpton and Wright using this passage as some sort of black supremacy battlecry, and it is JUST. SO. PATHETIC.

Yes, some foolish people are probably going to apostasize over Francis.  Those are the same people who deep down probably don’t believe in the Real Presence (er, how could anyone possibly abandon Our Lord in the Eucharist if they actually believe and know that He is there?), and go to Mass as a mere vector for socializing and/or personal glorification.

But, if you get blue, as will be only natural, I strongly, strongly recommend reading the Canticle of Canticles for a reminder of just how much Our Lord loves His Church, no matter how blackened she may be made by those men inside her fighting against her.