Monthly Archives: April 2023
Easter Morning Sunrise Cocktail: The Cimabue
Breakfast of champions, right here. A glorious pick-me-up, and for those who might have had gin after the Vigil, a bit of the hair of the dog. (I did not – I had bubbly 🍾🥂)
And yes, we heard ALL. TWELVE. PROPHECIES. last night. It was… glorious.
Happy Easter! Christ is truly risen!!!!!!
The Cimabue:
Juice of a red grapefruit or blood orange, freshly squeezed
Stout Splash of Cointreau or Grand Marnier
Top with any bubbly white or rosé: Prosecco, Franciacorta (Italian Champagne) or Champagne
And here’s the non-negotiable kicker:
Finish with SALT, preferably freshly ground.
The salt gives it not only incredible flavor, but needful electrolytes.
Remember, this is called the “Cimabue” (CHEE-ma-BOO-ay).
I have served it in Champagne coupes, martini glasses and large flutes. Even a large format red glass with a stem would work well. And don’t forget the SALT!!!
The Overshadowing Shoulders of the Resurrection

The Resurrection, Francesco Buoneri (“Cecco del Caravaggio”), ARSH 1619-1620, Art Institute of Chicago.
This is my favorite image of the Resurrection. I have seen it in person as it is now housed in the Art Institute of Chicago. If you get the chance to see it, do. The overshadowing strength and virility of Our Risen Lord is indeed breathtaking as you stand before this enormous canvas. Remember the “overshadowing shoulders” discussion? That was in the context of the Crucifixion. Now here are OVERSHADOWING SHOULDERS in the context of the Resurrection – full circle.
But what is equally striking about this image as you stand before it is the angel. He is pointing upwards, but looking straight out at the viewer, and let me tell you, when you are standing in front of it, it feels like that angel is looking at your very soul. His piercing yet benevolent gaze makes you blush.
And now what has become one of my very favorite pieces of music, good ol’ Cherubic Hymn No. 7. The words are sublime (even if the translation is a bit of a fudge), paired with sublime polyphony.
Happy Easter to one and all. Christ is truly risen! Yay!
Come, let us cast off all earthly care
And forget every vain employ
For the King of All comes in triumph
By unseen hosts of angels brought
To us that bid Him welcome
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
Nostalgia for times past…
Antipope Bergoglio declared Thursday at the Chrism Mass he polluted with his presence that “nostalgia for times past” is a “sin against the Holy Spirit.”
And since the Antipope and very possibly False Prophet Forerunner of the Antichrist is the poster child for error, inversion and lies, let us engage in some nostalgia. I give you the skyline of Manhattan, Easter, ARSH 1958. The three crosses of Calvary.
If New York survives, hopefully we can live to see the day when things like this are done again.
Today is Good Friday and able-bodied adults SHOULD EAT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and take only zero-caloric liquid.
He was scourged until skinned, severely enough to kill any other man, then marched several kilometers carrying a huge piece of wood, then crucified while already in shock, and then hung asphyxiating for three hours, in your place, out of completely gratuitous love for you, personally.
How about, just for today, not eating? Out of penance, and respect for Our dying Lord and Savior. Just drink water. Zero food. I promise you won’t die. Jesus died. But you won’t, because not eating for 24 hours isn’t exactly being scourged and crucified.
The traditional fasting discipline for Good Friday (and Ash Wednesday) is a total Fast from food, that is for able-bodied adults to eat absolutely nothing. Nothing.
Something beautiful… and heartbreaking.
Here is a picture of the Palm Sunday Procession of the St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Philadelphia in ARSH 1958.
Every layman in this picture is black. St. Charles Borromeo was, at that time, in a black neighborhood. For those who know Philly, it’s at 20th and Christian on the South Side.
THIS is what black inner-city Philly was like in ARSH 1958.
The world today is so fallen, so impoverished, that if any one of us were to be transported there, for just a few hours, we would think that we had experienced a foretaste of heaven. There is nowhere left on this planet today that has 1% of the class and Christian civility that you see in this picture of inner-city Philadelphia, sixty-five years and five days ago. Look at how the people are dressed, and how the lad servers are comported. Consider how within seven years, LBJ’s Great Society was at full war against American blacks, in twelve years, it was all gone, and within fifty years… well. Some things are so foul and reprehensible that they can hardly be discussed, and the Rap/HipHop anti-culture is near the top of that list.
Never before in postdiluvian human history has so much been lost so fast.
Hard Boiled MEMEs
Jesus Christ, Economist (Gospel of Monday in Holy Week)
The weekend before His Passion, Jesus went and stayed with His friend Lazarus (whom He had raised from the dead) and Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary. Mary brought out a very expensive flask of ointment for the dead and applied it to Jesus’ feet with her hair. The whole house was filled with the sweet smell of that ointment. And guess who gets all mouthy about this? Yep. Judas Iscariot – who already was planning to sell out Jesus, and had been planning on cashing in on Him since the miracle of the loaves and fishes a few days earlier. Specifically, when Our Lord told the people that they must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, and kept repeating it over and over and over again to be sure that everyone understood that He meant it literally, Judas (with urging from satan) decided that Our Lord was nuts and started planning to betray Him and profit from it. That whole episode is in John chapter 6. Read it.
Back to Lazarus’ house in John 12. Judas gets all holier-than-thou and complains that the flask of ointment could have been sold for 300 pence and “given to the poor”. Does this not sound like the godless Marxist liberals of today who are so quick to tell everyone else what they should be doing with their money and assets, all in the name of the poor, of course?

Then, an absolutely delightful verse – verse 6:
“Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things therein.”
Um, hello? The Holy Ghost is talking to us. Are we listening? That verse should make the hair on your arms stand up. Is this not a PERFECT mapping to our contemporary situation?
You have a “disciple” who doesn’t really believe in Jesus or what He says – he just pretends to because he thinks he can gain power and wealth by associating with Jesus for now. He’s just working the “Jesus angle”. But everything he is doing behind the scenes is working in direct opposition to Our Lord. Now, this “disciple” starts trying to appear pious and devout by pontificating that all wealth and resources should, by definition, be redistributed to “the poor”. But in truth, he is just a thief.

Now here is the key passage from Jesus Himself:
“Jesus therefore said: Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of My burial. For the poor you have always with you; but Me you have not always.”
First of all, Our Lord says, “Let her alone.” (Sinite illam.)
Judas has appointed himself the arbiter of wealth and asset distribution and has decided that Mary’s flask of ointment (or the cash value thereof) should have gone to “the poor”. And Our Lord says, “Let her alone.”
It is hers to do with as she (and her family) sees fit, and they have seen fit to use it to anoint their beloved Jesus.
Judas, sit down and shut your proto-Marxist piehole. THWAP!

In the next phrase, Our Lord explains economics in eight words (FIVE in Latin):
“For the poor you have always with you.”
(Pauperes enim semper habetis vobiscum.)
What does He mean? Does He mean, “Bah, forget the poor! Live it up!”
Absolutely not. What He is explaining is that in all morally sane societies, wealth will always exist within a SPECTRUM.
Let’s compare a “poor” person in the U.S. to a “poor” person in Bangladesh. A poor person in Bangladesh lives in the gutter without so much as a cardboard shelter to sleep under. They are sick from malnutrition and starvation. They probably dress in rags, and certainly do not own a pair of shoes. Bathing only occurs when they can immerse themselves in a river, which is opaque with sewage. They own nothing except the rags that they wear. Every day is a struggle to get a bit of clean water and enough food to merely survive. That’s a poor person in Bangladesh.
What constitutes a “poor” person in the former U.S.? A poor person in the former U.S. does not have cable. A poor person in the U.S. might not have a laptop, ONLY a smartphone. A poor person in the U.S. receives food stamps, medicaid and a welfare check. A poor person in the U.S. is probably significantly OVERweight, and smokes cigarettes. A poor person in the U.S. drives a car that is so old that it came with a factory in dash CD player. A poor person in the U.S. lives either in a trailer or a HUD apartment complex. A poor person in the U.S. almost certainly DOES have a smart phone with high speed internet connectivity.
Understand that on a percentage level, these two descriptions are equivalent. A “poor” person in the U.S. has a standard of living that would be considered luxurious in Bangladesh and other impoverished countries. The notions of “wealth” and “poverty”, by logical and mathematical definition, exist within a SPECTRUM. And no matter what we do, that spectrum will always, always exist. That is what Our Lord is saying. There will always be a top-end, and there will always be a bottom-end.
In some nations (like Bangladesh), that spectrum is very broad and reaches very far down into poverty, indeed. There are billionaires in Bangladesh, and there are people starving in the gutters in rags. In the former U.S., we certainly have a wealth spectrum, but the low end is much higher and the spectrum is much narrower. We have many billionaires, but our lower-end is nowhere NEAR as low as Bangladesh’s.
The point is, no matter how much you bring up the bottom-end, there will ALWAYS, by mathematical definition, BE a bottom-end. If the bottom-end were a $100,000 per year household income and a $300,000 home in today’s dollars, then a household with a $100,000 income and a $300,000 home would be considered “poor”, called “poor”, and Marxists would tell those “poor” that they were being “oppressed” and “deserved” and were “entitled to” a $500,000 annual household income and an $800,000 home. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Someone is always going to have more money and assets than somebody else. It is impossible to have a free society wherein every person has exactly the same level of wealth. Someone has to be the business OWNER, and someone has to be the EMPLOYEE. Someone has to be the wage PAYER and someone has to be the wage EARNER. If everyone in a culture were economically equal at all times, there would be zero employment because no one would work for anyone except themselves. You can’t have a company with 1000 CEOs. Conversely, you can’t have a company that is nothing but entry-level laborers. Someone has to be responsible. Someone has to sign the paychecks. Someone has to determine the course of the business. Someone has to risk their assets and wealth to start-up the company in the first place. And, at the other end, someone has to scrub the toilets.
The only way to get true, complete equality of wealth would be to KILL EVERYBODY.

Since we know from Our Lord that there will always be a wealth spectrum, it is obviously disordered to eliminate said spectrum and collapse it down to a single point of “economic equality”. To do that would collapse the society itself and result is chaos and poverty for ALL. (Ahem, MARXISM, TYRANNICAL OLIGARCHY, VENEZUELA, cough, cough.)
The ideal is a healthy wealth spectrum that is always moving higher through growth and moral technological advancements and innovations, is open-ended on the top side, but has an intrinsic morality such that the top-end of the wealth spectrum always makes certain that the bottom end advances apace and that the spectrum maintains its proportional width – or even narrows a bit. This is achieved through personal charity AND through a moral, lawful, CHRISTIAN society that allows for movement both up AND down the spectrum. Yes, up AND DOWN.
The top-end cooperates with the bottom end to enable upward mobility for those who work hard, and are innovative. Conversely, if someone on the top-end does not work hard or is dishonest in his dealings, he can and will fail and slide back down the spectrum.
This freedom of movement within the spectrum – both up AND down – is essential. Trapping people on the low-end (ahem, cough, WELFARE STATE, CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY, FREEMASONIC-BERGOGLIAN ANTIPAPACY, cough) is equally as immoral as the disgusting oligarchical upper-classes who think themselves immune from morality, the rule of law or personal responsibility (ahem, cough, SOROS, PALO ALTO, AND ENTIRE POLITICAL CLASS, cough, cough).
So, there you go. Economics as explained by our Blessed Lord in five little words while He was hanging out at His friends’ house having supper the weekend before He suffered and died to redeem mankind. And proof that Judas Iscariot was the intellectual father of Marxism and of scumbag thieving politicians in general.
I hope this helps.
Have a blessed Holy Week!
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Palm Sunday and Fear of the Lord

Christ’s Entry Into Jerusalem, Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, ARSH 1842-48, Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris
Zoom in on this fresco of Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Look at the faces. Look at the people in the crowd. Look at the slack-jawed awe, and for some of them, fear – for example the man whose head is immediately to the right of the she-ass’ forehead – that dude is SCARED. And so should we all be.
So. Should. We. All. Be.
For the Lord is high, terrible: a great king over all the earth.
Quoniam Dominus excelsus, terribilis, rex magnus super omnem terram.
-Psalm 46: 3