Dear Ann,

Could you please explain the Trinity?

Signed,
Unreasonably High Expectations

————————————

Dear Unreasonably High Expectations,

In a word:

No one can. It is a mystery. And I find this consoling. Frankly, the fact that the Church says straight-out that there are certain things about God Almighty which are simply unable to be comprehended by human beings is a testament to the legitimacy of the Church as a teaching authority. Never trust any human being or group of human beings who claim to “know everything”. Anyone who claims to know everything or have all of the answers is, by definition, a liar right out of the chute, because only God knows everything.

There are several huge mysteries of faith: the Trinity (one God in Three Divine Persons), the Incarnation (Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the aforementioned Triune Godhead, being both fully God and fully man) and the Eucharist (bread and wine being transubstantiated into the physical substance of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ).

How can God be One in Being, but Father, Son and Holy Ghost? I dunno. It’s a mystery.

How can Jesus be both fully God and fully Man? I dunno. It’s a mystery.

How can something that was bread a few minutes ago, and still looks like bread, and still smells and tastes like bread actually be the Substance of God? And how did that change occur? I dunno. It’s a mystery.

Regarding the Trinity, here is what we do know. The primary point and revelation of God in the Old Testament is the reality that there is not a “pantheon” of many gods, but that there is, in fact, only ONE God. If you had to pin down what the point of the Old Testament is – that’s it in a very, very oversimplified simple nutshell. GOD IS ONE.

The Torah, or the first five books of the Old Testament, were written by Moses. The entire point of Moses’ life was to bear witness to the fact that there is only ONE GOD. There was absolutely no ambiguity about this. None. But, if we look at literally the FIRST CHAPTER of the book of Genesis, we see something amazing. Verse 26:

“And He said: Let Us make man to Our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.”
(Et ait: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram….)

Moses spent most of his adult life in interface with (I refuse to use the word “encounter” anymore.  It has been rendered utterly trite by those who speak in Modernist, post-Conciliar gibber-babble) and witnessing to The ONE TRUE GOD. And yet Moses can’t get more than a couple hundred words into his written record and he is using PLURAL PRONOUNS – “Us” and “Our” – when quoting the ONE TRUE GOD. SURELY Moses, of all people, wouldn’t make the sloppy mistake of using plural pronouns. SURELY someone around Moses, and for the centuries upon centuries afterward, would say, “Hey! You’ve got plural pronouns here! Shouldn’t we fix that? Afterall, it completely undercuts the whole “GOD IS ONE” thing we are trying to communicate here.”

Nope. Not only did Moses write it that way, but it STAYED that way for all of these centuries.  I find Genesis 1:26 to be one of the most compelling proofs of the Divine Inspiration of scripture and of the proactive work of the Holy Ghost in not only revealing truth, but also protecting and maintaining that deposit of revealed truth.  Think of all of those centuries before Our Lord’s Incarnation when the Jews COULD have singularized those two little pronouns – and no one ever did.

One of the most important points about the Triune Godhead is this: God is RELATIONAL to Himself. God is Love – and what is love? Love is the complete giving of one’s self, and love is the act of fully RECEIVING and then returning love. Soooo . . . if God is NOT relational to Himself, how could He have existed as Existential Love “before” the creation of the universe? Who was He loving? Was He sitting around pondering Himself? How does inward-turned naval gazing constitute a GIFT of self? What love was He receiving? How could God receive love if He was the only thing that existed?

Again, these are the questions that any thinking person slams up against fairly early in any genuine conversion or reversion experience, and yes, we all SHOULD be asking these questions because we cannot love that which we have not first apprehended with our intellects.  And, the more we intellectually apprehend something, the more we can then love it.  The asking of questions – whether they be concerning the natural world, other people, or God Himself – is, at its root, an act of love.  Remember that the next time you’re in the company of a three year old: “Why? Why? Why?”  Beware the man who asks no questions, for that is a man bereft of love.

How could God receive love if He was the only thing that existed? Because God is, in Himself, able to relate to Himself. Christ revealed to us that God is Three Divine Persons, all distinct but yet completely One in Being. Got your head around that? No, of course not. We can’t FULLY grasp that existential reality any more than we can grasp and explicitly describe what a fifth dimension would look like. But Christ did give us names for the Three Persons in Matthew 28:19 so that we could relate a little bit to the Trinity. Those names are: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The words “Father and Son” are not a perfect analogue because the Father did not exist before the Son, as in the human case. The Three Divine Persons of the Trinity are co-eternal. The best partial-analogy of this is fire.  When a match is struck, the flame, the light from the flame and the heat from the flame all coexist concurrently.  The flame does not pre-exist the light and the heat, nor does the heat pre-exist the light or the flame.  We can grasp this, but what is impossible for the human mind to grasp on this mortal coil (and probably beyond, too) is the eternity of God.  No one can explain that. No one can explain or fully comprehend eternity. All we can do is name it, and then get on with living. Also, there is the issue of gender, which is another post (The one about… WHY PRIESTS CAN ONLY EVER BE MEN), but suffice it to say that God contains “femaleness” in the sense that He receives and then returns love, which is the essence of femininity, and women are not a foreign mystery to Him.

So, God the Father gives Himself fully to God the Son. God the Son then fully receives that love, and then returns it to God the Father fully. This infinite back-and-forth of love is so existentially perfect that it yields a Third, which Jesus taught us to call “The Holy Ghost”. The big human clue-in to all of this is human procreation. A man loves his wife and gives himself to her fully and completely. The wife loves her husband and thus receives his gift of himself in the form of his DNA and offers her own DNA in return. The two gifts of self are so perfect and complete that they actually become a third person (with the essential involvement of God).

Thus, the Triune Godhead is the foundational reality, and human marriage and procreation is the DERIVATIVE, which points back to the underlying reality of the Trinity.  This is why marriage, the marital act and procreation are so utterly sacred, and thus so destructive when perverted, sadly in these dark days with the consent and even cooperation of the very shepherds who should be laying down their very lives to protect the sacrosanctity of marriage and sexuality.  But, who am I to judge.  I need to quit obsessing, and focus on what’s truly important, like youth unemployment.  But I digress.

And yes, eventually every derivative expires, and upon expiry there is a delivery and the books get settled and squared. That would be “death” and “judgment”. As a (former) futures broker, I like that part. 🙂

Here is a classic secular song that touches on the crux of what real, Trinitarian love is: “Nature Boy”, best performed by Nat King Cole.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return.”

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Steadily compiling the soundtrack of moi.  Tarantino, eat your heart out.

(Originally penned and posted on April 18, ARSH 2011.  I have added some precisions.  This is one of the most common questions I receive, as any thinking person slams up against the seeming contradiction of an omnipotent God Who is Perfect Good and the presence of evil in the world almost immediately when any sort of conversion or reversion process begins.  Priests, if I may offer some advice, THESE are the kinds of questions that people need explanations to.  PLEASE, just explain this stuff from the pulpit so screeching harpies like me don’t have to do it.)

Reader question:

Ann,
There are a couple of things that have always greatly troubled me about Christianity. And let me state for the record that I do believe in God and I do believe that He sent His Son to Earth to be our Savior. But, how can it be claimed that God is in absolute control of EVERYTHING, including all of those fusion reactions, in this universe? In order to accept that notion, one must accept that God is in ABSOLUTE control of all evil, not just all good. And if God absolutely controls all evil, and nothing happens in this universe without his consent, permission and “go ahead”, well, where does that leave us? Logically, If God exists (and he does) and Satan exists (and he does) and God has absolute and complete control of everything Satan has, does, thinks and wants, doesn’t the line of separation between the two get blurred? And by even thinking that blasphemous thought have I committed the Cardinal Sin?

RB

FANTASTIC question. How can God be all-powerful and still allow evil? If God is all-powerful, aren’t we all just little chess men being moved around on a chess board?

First, we have to pin down the concept of free will. Because God LOVES His creation, most especially sentient beings, He gave all sentient beings FREE WILL. He didn’t want us to be his “toys” or “pets”, because toys are mere objects and animals have no rational nature.  Since that which is loved must FIRST be first apprehended by the rational intellect, animals lack the ability to truly LOVE.  No debate will be entertained on this point.  Lassie does NOT love Timmy.  Lassie may be attached to Timmy, but I will not permit any debasing of love, TRUE LOVE, by giving any quarter to the Modernist lie that animals are capable of it.  This is pure, sentimentalist lying nonsense which has bubbled up from the pit of hell in order to convince MEN that they are animals.

Men are NOT animals. God created us as SUBJECTS. He wants to interact with us and have a dynamic relationship with us. He wants to love us, and for us to love Him in return.  The way He did this was to bestow upon us individual sovereignty, or free will. We can choose. We can, through our decisions and actions, alter the timeline. In fact, every decision and action we take does just that. As we travel through linear time, we are constantly shaping and directing, through our free decisions, how the timeline unfolds.

Now a quick precision about these “sentient beings” that God created. There are two populations within that set. The first is human beings, who are spirits joined to a body. We are BODY-PERSONS. The other population is referred to as angels. Yes, angels are very real, as Our Lord makes REPEATED, SPECIFIC reference to them in the Gospels, and they are present throughout the canon of scripture, which was, of course, authored ultimately by God the Holy Ghost. Angels are PURE SPIRIT. They do not have physical bodies. They have, on occasion, made themselves manifest to people by taking on the appearance of a body, but that is done purely for our benefit. They are pure spirit.

Satan is in this population, along with what we call “demons”. These are pure spirits who chose to rebel against God. Why did they rebel? Angels exist, like God, outside of time. They saw that it was God’s will, one way or another, to Incarnate and take on human flesh so that He could love us AS one of us. A certain percentage of the angels were repulsed by this – repulsed at the idea of bowing down and worshiping a mere Man, even if that Man was God Incarnate, and so they rebelled. Since God made them free sovereigns, they were permitted to do this. Think about it. If God just started snuffing beings out of existence when they made a choice that wasn’t in accord with His will, wouldn’t that cheapen all life and existence to the point of meaninglessness? Wouldn’t all rational beings just be mere object-playthings at that point? Yep. Love means putting up with the periodic insufferable behavior of the beloved. Most ESPECIALLY for God.  The corollary to this is the following fact:  No matter what you do, you will always, always, always exist.  God loved you into existence, and loves you because you exist, and will never stop loving you, and will never, ever snuff you out of existence, no matter what.  If you reject Him, that is your free choice, but understand, you will continue to exist FOREVER after you have rejected God.  Every one of us will exist and exist forever – either in Heaven (inside of the Trinity, the Beatific Vision), or completely cut off from Him.  F.O.R.E.V.E.R.  That’s hell.  There is no “snuffed out of existence feeling neither happiness nor pain” option.  So disabuse yourself of that lie right now.

So, that explains how evil entered into the world and is allowed to persist. Now a little recreational physics. I have always LOVED physics, even though my math education was horrible. When I was in the 8th grade, my grandmother bought Steven Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” for me with her senior discount card at Waldenbooks. Oh, I was so happy. One of the concepts that Hawking explained was the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In a nutshell, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know the exact position AND velocity of any particle, because in order to observe a particle, you have to bounce a photon off of it – which then alters its position and velocity. Now, you might think that is no big deal, but it is a HUGE deal. You’re just going to have to take my word for this for the moment, but what this means is that when a particle travels from point A to point B, it traverses EVERY POSSIBLE PATH SIMULTANEOUSLY. I’m not kidding. This is experimentally proven.  Hey!  Here’s a video of it!  Stay with this to the very end.  The final punchline is a mindblower…

SHUT UP!  Is that not the COOLEST THING?

What does this have to do with God and free will? God in His omniscience knows and sees not only the Reality Timeline, which is the result of all of our individual decisions, but he also knows and sees all of the, what I call, “Heisenberg Timelines” which are constantly and infinitely shooting and branching off from the Reality Timeline. In other words, the Heisenberg Timelines are the timelines that WOULD have happened IF we had made a different choice. When we say that God is INFINITE and ALL-KNOWING, we really don’t comprehend the real scope of what we are saying. Infinite means infinite – not limited in any way. Hence, the infinite number of Heisenberg Timelines fit very easily into that set.  God has provided not just for the decisions that we actually make (Reality), but also for every possible decision that we COULD have made.  

What God does is constantly execute His Providence and drive forward Reality from among the infinite dataset that is His Perfect Will and Providence after every decision every person makes.  Let’s say that right now in this moment His will is for Ann to do action Y, which is in accord with His Perfect Will, but I instead choose to do action Z, which is a sin. After I choose and execute action Z, He then executes the specific plan from within His Divine Providence dataset given action Z. If action Z was a sin, His Perfect Will and Providence in the Reality Timeline is that I confess and repent of that sin, but the timeline continues given the reality of Action Z, which I freely chose. If I choose action Y, He drives the Reality Timeline forward given the dataset and Providence that results from my action Y.

I cannot emphasize enough the infinite love, patience and condescension we are talking about here. There just aren’t words.  Not only has He Provided for our salvation, but He has Provided for it in infinite upon infinite upon infinite possible paths so that we can have free will, and thus be able to love Him as our own free choice – which is the only kind of love there is.

So what we see is that God is in an unending and infinite dance of love manifested in freedom with all of us. His Will is always for perfect good, but in His love for us, He allows us to act freely, and then in His Mercy, He Provides a path to Salvation given our choices. He allows us to, in a sense, cooperate with Him in authoring reality. This is why wonderful things tend to come out of bad situations. Think of all of the husbands and wives who have met and fallen in love . . . because of a war. How many times have you heard a person recall a terrible childhood, or a terrible accident, and then say, ” . . .but I wouldn’t change a thing.” Now you know why.

Does God ever enter into the timeline and “nudge” events? Oh, yes. Many times these “nudges” are barely perceptible and exist almost entirely within the conscious or sub-conscious mind. But He does also on occasion physically enter into spacetime to nudge the timeline, and those instances, when recognized, are called “miracles”.

And yes, He is managing to do all this while driving 1.659 novemdecillion fusion reactions per second.  The truth is that 1.659 novemdecillion fusion reactions per second in all of the stars in the universe is NOTHING compared to the enormousness of the dataset that contains every possible decision and its consequence, and its consequence, and its consequence… that could be made by every single human being ever, and the corresponding Divine Provision for every possible decision, just so that a few of us might, in whatever feeble and pathetic way, look upon a Crucifix, or upon Him, physically and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and say freely without any coercion whatsoever in the Reality Timeline, “I love You, too.”

I hope this helps you.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts.”
–Isaiah 55:8-9

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Today’s Gospel is the healing of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends.  We all know the story, but have you ever really stopped and thought about it?  Have you thought about the persistence and masculine initiative on display here?  Can you imagine strapping your paralyzed friend to a board, CUTTING A HOLE IN SOMEONE’S ROOF, and then lowering your buddy down through the hole you just cut with ropes, because, by golly, we have GOT to get him into the presence of Jesus?  Oh, to have been a fly on that wall.

“Um, Lord, there is someone on the roof.”
“It’s cool.  Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, they seem to be cutting a hole now.”
“It’s all good.  Cool out.  Everything’s fine.”
“There is now a six by three foot hole in the roof.”
“So there is.”
(awkward silence as paralyzed dude strapped to a board slowly descends into the room)
“Hi.  Sorry about this, but there was no other way in, and I’m paralyzed, and you’re God, and I REALLY need you to help me.  Please.”

That’s faith.  Not just by the paralyzed dude, but also by his boys that executed this bold and excellent plan.  The verse in Mark 2 says, “And when Jesus had seen their faith…”  THEIR faith.  Plural.  Not just the paralyzed dude, but also the paralyzed dude’s BOYS.  It’s good to have boys.  Boys with saws and plenty of rope.  And persistent faith.  Our Lord likes that.

“Your sins are forgiven.  That’s the important part, but just to show you that I AM God and I do indeed have the power to forgive sins, get up, take your bed, and go on home now.”
(paralyzed dude gets up, whereupon his boys on the roof freak out)
“YAY!!!!!”

Yay, indeed.  Well done, Boys.

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter is one of the major orders specializing in the pre-Vatican II Mass.  They are flourishing and their two seminaries are packed.  But a terrible crime has occurred at their parish in Phoenix.  Armed men broke into the rectory and shot both priests – killing one and gravely injuring the other.  The priest that was killed was only 28 years old, having been ordained in ARSH 2012.

In your charity, please pray for the repose of the soul of young Fr. Kenneth Walker, and for the healing of Fr. Joseph Terra, and for their families.

Oremus: O God, Who didst give to thy servant, Kenneth, by his sacerdotal office, a share in the priesthood of the Apostles, grant, we implore, that he may also be one of their company forever in Heaven. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Requiem Aeternam dona ei, Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescat in pace.

Fr. Kenneth Walker celebrating his first Mass in June 2012.

(There’s nothing like being beaten about the head and shoulders with your own rhetoric.  MANY people emailed me this post from November 5, ARSH 2012 in response to my “considering quitting” piece.  I had forgotten it.  Obviously.  Nock’s points are certainly edifying, but I’m still not enthusiastic about providing sparkling color commentary on the death of western civilization, which I know will be consumed as entertainment.  Still thinking…)

The big, final economic presentation is on film. Thank goodness that’s done. I didn’t say everything I wanted to say, and am kicking myself for a few conceptual omissions, but it still ran two and a half hours. I can fill in any gaps in writing here, if need be. Here is an email from one of the handful of invited attendees who was present to give me a small human audience so I didn’t have to play just to a camera.

Good morning, Ann. I’m glad I was able to attend your presentation. The two and a half hours plus flew by and produced an impact that had an immediate effect on my thinking and understanding of not only our present economic situation but on our future as individuals and as a nation. I have known for sometime that our Republic is dead and that its ghost will soon be gone as well. It is the truth and you shared the truth, making sense to the complicated world of rhetoric that we all navigate through in our daily quests. You did an excellent job making your points and fueling my thirst to do what is right.

In the same email was sent along a link to an outstanding essay by Albert Jay Nock, who was an Episcopalian from the turn of the 20th century. It was penned in ARSH 1936 and is on Isaiah and the vocation of prophesying to the Remnant – NOT the masses. I’m not a prophet, but I can sure relate to the concepts laid out in this essay. Do read the whole thing, but I’ll just get you started with a few key excerpts. Remember, this was penned in ARSH 1936:

In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet [Isaiah] to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.” Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job, in fact, he had asked for it, but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so, if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start, was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

Er, can you see why I’m liking this essay? Oh, but there’s so much more. Emphases mine:

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

Nock neglects to mention grace, the flowing of which is unquestionably reduced in these dark days in which the Church has seen more than 90% of its members apostatize since the Second Vatican Council in ARSH 1965 and the attempted desecration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and as a direct corollary western civilization has embraced sodomy, child sacrifice, and rampant theft and fraud.  But be that as it may, the overall point still holds.  I spoke to this point in my presentation, calling out the intellectually and morally superior people in society to reassert themselves and wrest back control of society from the imbeciles and psychopaths.

Did you just squirm at my use of the phrase “intellectually superior”? I’ll bet you did. We have all been taught and inculcated to believe that any acknowledgement of intellectual superiority of anyone over anyone else is RACIST, and this capitulation to self-loathing and lack of character is why civilization is collapsing. Believe it or not, this is actually a failure in HUMILITY. Humility is NOT self-loathing or false modesty. The root of the word humble means HONEST. Humility is being HONEST about one’s self. The vast majority of the time this means acknowledging one’s faults, but in other areas it means being honest about and acknowledging the POSITIVE aspects of one’s self. Hence I can make the following two statements about myself and BOTH are humble:

I, Ann Barnhardt, am of above-average contemporary human intelligence.
I, Ann Barnhardt, am a horrific, miserable sinner and am intellectually less-than-nothing compared to God.

Both statements are true. The key is to stay on the middle of the road between them and not go off into the ditch on either side of the road. Dishonesty in the form of false modesty or self-loathing will stifle potential and suppress one’s vocation to serve God according to the gifts He has bestowed. On the other hand, a dishonest and inflated sense of self leads to megalomania. But balance is not only possible, it is expected. Our model for this is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who provided the perfect model for humility in her Magnificat in Luke 1: “And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Mary can state boldly “all generations shall call me blessed” precisely because she is perfectly HUMBLE. She didn’t run around and lyingly berate herself to others in a manipulative self-serving effort to prove how morally superior she was. That’s what WE do, and have been trained to do, thus creating an intellectual and moral vacuum that has been filled by the stupid and the morally depraved, and that’s why our society is collapsing.

If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit … Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favor, and answerable only to his august Boss.

That dynamic sure sounds familiar. Do read the whole essay. It is well worth your time. Or, you can listen to an audio version of it at the link at the very bottom under the biography.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

1.  Pork tenderloin, mozzarella cheese (the wet kind, not the dry pizza kind), sun dried tomatoes, mayonnaise and a little bit of sweet pickle relish.  On a nice, crusty bread.  That’s a good sammich.  It’s even better with a beer.

2.  On the topic of food.  Look, I am probably going to die a horrific, unnatural death in the upcoming war, and therefore I am going to eat whatever the heck I want, just making sure that I don’t get fat.  So spare me all emails about the carbs in the bread (mmm… bread) and the soybean oil in the mayo and all other dietary advice.  Not only do I NOT want to live forever, I’m planning on dying young.  And I’m still a size 4, and my quads are still cut.  I’ve known plenty of people who obsessed about food, and blew fortunes that they didn’t have on bee-ess “organic” (one of the bigger scams of the last quarter century, by the way), and you know what?  They were all total hypochondriacs and, most importantly, complete ingrates.  So yes, I’d love a sammich, and yes, I’d love extra mayo, and I’ll be thinking, “Thank you, Jesus” before, during and after.  Burn more than you consume (do calisthenics) and live while you’re alive.  And when you bring out the Hellman’s you bring out the best.

3.  Thank you for all of the very kind and moving feedback.  I especially appreciated hearing from those of you who were received into the Church at the Easter Vigil this year.  Welcome to the meat grinder o’ love. After you get used to it, it sorta feels like a massage.  An excruciatingly painful massage involving a meat grinder, but a massage.  It is okay to scream in pain every once and a while, but try to relax into it.  I used to get sports massages to help undo the weightlifting/CrossFit adhesions and trigger points that would rack up.  It was always extremely amusing to hear the massage lady say, “Um, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but you’re carrying the stress of a small city in your traps and neck.”  NOOOOOO.  YOU DON’T SAY.  WHATARYA TOKKIN’ ABOUT???

If you go to Eucharistic Adoration, pray the Rosary  and go to Daily Mass, well, let’s just say that long-term planning probably isn’t the wisest thing.  Especially now.

4.  If you’re expecting a tale about how over Pentecost the Holy Ghost dun’ spoke to me and I’m a new, rejuvenated person, I’m afraid I must disappoint you.  I still feel exactly the same.  I am peddling in “rage porn”, providing a form of mere ENTERTAINMENT, the titillation from which people use to delude themselves into believing they are “doing something”.

I read Ann Barnhardt last night, and I got all mad and then made a frowny-face, and then I even went the extra mile of spamming the link to her essay to all of my contacts, 99% of which will never read it, and 100% of which will think I’m nuts, so I totally did something, and everything’s gonna be fine, Obama’s gonna be totally impeachededed, and Morning in America and Market-priced Unicorn Farts and the New Springtime is just around the corner.  Either that or the Rapture.  

5.  So what is going to change?  I’m not sure.  I still have no idea.  The only thing I know for sure is that there WILL be more cowbell.

6.  And here, for the first time in a “mainstream” media source, is reportage of the fact that the Taliban have been armed by the Obama/Clinton machine through Benghazi with stingers and MANPADs, which have been and will continue to be used against the poor guys who have found themselves unwittingly in the military wing of the Iniquitous Gutter Kleptarchy that flies this flag:

Now, let’s go through and list the true premises vis-a-vis the Obama regime that NY Post still refuses to acknowledge:

A.) The Obama regime is the explicit, sworn enemy of the former United States and is at war with it.
B.) The Obama regime is explicitly allied with islam as both political systems seek to create a super-rich tyrannical oligarchy over a massive, destitute underclass.
C.) The Libyan incursion and establishment of a beachhead and depot there in March of ARSH 2011 was done specifically to arm muslims throughout Africa and Asia, and eventually Europe, who would overthrow secular governments and advance the reforming of the Caliphate, as well as fight against and kill US military.  The Taliban being armed with these munitions isn’t a “backfire” or a bug, it’s a feature and the original goal.
D.) The Obama regime is happy to see highly-skilled elite forces, such as SEALS, Rangers and Marines killed because they know and fear that such men MAY ultimately be counter-revolutionary and/or junta risks.  Remember the “SEAL Team 6” massacre of 30 of the US’s top fighting men, packed, against protocol, into a mere National Guard cargo Chinook, and delivered on a platter for the kill by the Taliban, five months after the Libyan weapons depot was established.
E.) The Obama regime looks forward to the inevitable use of stingers and MANPADS against passenger jets – because that’s precisely what MANPADs are designed for –  and will use the terror and “crisis” to expand its power.
F.) The Obama regime never had any expectation that the released Taliban 5 from Gitmo would do anything but be immediately freed to return to the front.  They were released because the Obama regime is allied with and deeply sympathetic to the musloid political system.

I think that probably covers the above NY Post piece.  Only when you operate under the previous TRUE premises can TRUE conclusions be reached.  If you start with a false premise, the truth table is utterly corrupted, and thus all output flowing from said truth table will be false.  If you take the latest Fields Medal-winning mathematical dissertation and begin with the premise that 0=1, you can still run all of the equations… it’s just that the results will be utter, complete gibberish.  And if you try to use that gibberish in an applied field, like physics, your structure will collapse and everyone in it will die, because REALITY ALWAYS WINS.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

I like the juxtaposition of Our Lady, standing serenely and confidently erect, looking up toward her Divine Spouse, the Holy Ghost, with the man in the right foreground, face in the dirt with hands clasped pleadingly above his head.