You loved me from all eternity,
therefore You created me.
You loved me after You had made me,
therefore You became Man for me.
You loved me after You became Man for me,
therefore You lived and died for me.
You loved me after You had died for me,
therefore You rose again for me.
You loved me after You had risen for me,
therefore You went to prepare a place for me.
You loved me after You had gone to prepare a place for me,
therefore You came back to me.
You loved me after You came back to me,
therefore You desired to enter into me and be united to me.
This is the meaning of the Blessed Sacrament.
The mystery of love.
– Archbishop Goodier

…”The great and generous thoughts of Catholic heroism are conceived, or rather inspired, at the altar where the Adorable Sacrament reposes; there, depend upon it, in silent prayer the noble damsel in heart rejects the world and its vanities, and plights her troth to the Spouse of her chaste heart; there the young ecclesiastic, bowing in meditation calm and sweet, muses on the triumphs of his schoolmates over the swords and red-hot pincers of Tonquin, and resolves to share in their crown of martyrdom; there whatever is planned for the Church of God that requires zeal and persevering energy is matured and resolved.”

– A Victorian reflection from the writings of Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman (1802-1865) on the Blessed Sacrament & Catholic Heroism

Meditation of St. Francis of Assisi
Let everyone be struck with fear,
the whole world tremble,
and the heavens exult
when Christ, the Son of the living God,
is present on the altar in the hands of a priest!
O wonderful loftiness
and stupendous dignity!
O sublime humility!
O humble sublimity!
The Lord of the universe,
God and the Son of God,
so humbles Himself
that He hides Himself
for our salvation
under an ordinary piece of bread!
See the humility of God, brothers,
and pour out your hearts before Him!
Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by Him!
Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves,
that He Who gives Himself totally to you
may receive you totally!

Dear Ann,

I have a question maybe you can answer or refer me to the answer. Why is it during the Latin Mass you sit during the Gloria and Creed? And why does the server kiss the priest’s hat (biretta)? Today was the 1st time I have attended a traditional Mass, and when it was over my 3 year old turned to me and said that was a long Mass. Mind you I have been attending daily mass with my girls for almost 2 years.

And an other question, if you have time. In John Chp 6 our Lord says we must eat His Body. From my understanding the Greek states to eat like an animal. Throughout the OT there are references to eating but it is more like consume and devour. My question is how should one to receive the Lord? Chew or not to chew is I guess a way to phase it.

Thank you,
K

Folks, these are the sorts of questions that all TLM goers should be cheerfully ready to answer.  Remember that the demonic spirit of oppression that began in earnest with the World War I generation, and fertilized the seedbed for everything that came after, is the spirit of INCOMMUNICATION.  People stopped explaining stuff – most especially to their children.  So, let’s explain!

Question #1: Why do we sit down during the Gloria and Creed at High Mass?

This question applies to HIGH MASSES, that is, SUNG Masses.  Our interlocutor went to a Sunday Mass, which, as is typical, was a HIGH MASS.  During a High Mass, for the Gloria and Creed the Priest Celebrant INTONES the first phrase: “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and “Credo in Unum Deum”, and then the priest quietly says the rest of the Gloria and Creed at the Altar.  At the same time, the choir, OR if the Mass is an orchestral setting, the orchestra proceeds with the Gloria, and Creed.  This can take several minutes.  The Gloria from Mozart’s Coronation Mass is something like 4:30.  So, when the Priest finishes speaking the Gloria and Creed, he and the other ministers and servers in the sanctuary go and sit down while the chant/polyphony/orchestral setting continues.  When the priest is seated, the faithful then also sit.  So, liturgically speaking, the Gloria and Creed are already finished in the Sanctuary.  The action in the Sanctuary then pauses while the choir/orchestra finish the chant/setting.

Here are three examples of the Gloria.  The first is Orchestral – from Mozart’s Coronation Mass. 4:40.  The second is a polyphonic setting – Palestrina. 5:30.  The third is Gregorian chant. 3:20.

Question #2 – OSCULATIONS (the ceremonial “kissing” rubrics)

The ceremonial “kissing” of objects and hands when handing objects to and receiving objects from the priest is called OSCULATION.  “Os” in Latin means “mouth”. Many servers don’t actually touch their mouth to the priest’s hand, but just graze with the nose, or just get close enough for it to look like a kiss.  This is not dissimilar to having a gentleman take a woman’s hand and “kiss” it without actually touching his lips to her skin.  In my personal experience of being greeted by European aristocrats, they have never actually touched their mouths to my hand.  Some people, particularly Europeans, will greet a priest with a cross-grip (right hand to right hand) bow and osculation handshake.  Bottom line: this is a SIGN OF RESPECT.  In terms of the priest, it is a sign of respect for his priesthood, and specifically the fact that he touches and holds the Host and Chalice in his consecrated hands.  The sign of respect is for the Eucharist, which the priest confects in his hands.  In short, this is about the most non-gay thing in the world.

Here is a brief post from the Latin Mass society about Osculations.

It should also be mentioned another misunderstood rubric: the server lifting the hem of the priest’s cassock and alb as the priest ascends the steps to the altar.  This has nothing to do with groveling or femininity.  Most traditional albs have some quantity of lace around the hem, which is ankle-length, along with the black cassock beneath.  With some albs, the lace goes all the way from the ankle up to the waist.  Others are more reserved and the lace border is only a few inches high.  Either way, back in the day before the industrial revolution, all lace was HAND MADE.  Lace for liturgical purposes was generally made by nuns.  Lace for secular use was almost exclusively the domain of housewives and young ladies who would work at lace making for a short period every day as an income supplement to the household.  Either way, lace making is an extremely time-intensive endeavor.  For an alb with a 30+ inch high lace border, a nun would have worked thousands of hours to make it.  So one alb represented one, one and a half or even two full man-years of work (2000++ hours).  The reason the server lifts the priest’s hem is to ensure that the priest doesn’t accidentally STEP ON THE HEM AND RIP OUT THE LACE as he ascends the first step.  Even if a priest today has an alb with machine-made lace, he still doesn’t want to put his foot through his alb.  (I remember reading on Fr. Z’s blog once that it is a BAAAAD feeling when it happens. One can imagine.)

Question #3: Reception of the Host – Does one chew?

In John Chapter 6, the Greek verb that Our Lord uses in the fourteen-fold repetition of the literal meaning of what He is saying about His Real Substantial Presence in the Eucharist does change from “eat” to “gnaw or chew” as the discourse progresses.

Here is the general convention for reception of the Host: let Him sit on your tongue and soften, then fold Him with your tongue and swallow.  Chomping on the Host immediately after reception is… slightly awkward.  If you do chew the softened Host a bit, just bear in mind that some of the Host might remain in the crevices of your molars.  The Church gives us a guideline that the Real Presence of Our Lord continues inside our bodies for approximately 15 minutes.  One should remain in thanksgiving and prayer with Our Lord for a minimum of 15 minutes after reception of the Eucharist anyway, but for the sake of thoroughness, one should NOT, for example, brush one’s teeth or do anything that would dislodge or eject any particle of the Host from your body in those 15 minutes.  Sometimes, when I am sick with a cough, if I should cough within that 15 minutes after receiving the Eucharist, I will check my hand (which I specifically put up to my mouth should I cough immediately after receiving the Eucharist, NOT my normal method of coughing into the crook of my elbow) to ensure that no particle of the Host was ejected from my mouth or throat when I coughed.  IF you should see a Particle of Our Lord on your hand, IMMEDIATELY consume Him by licking your hand.  But this is quite rare.

Thank you K for your excellent questions!

I hope this helps.

(I originally wrote and posted this on June 23, ARSH 2010, almost a full year before I went viral. Wow. It’s almost as if you could see this all coming, or something. Actually, I have seen this coming since the late summer of ARSH 2008 when I realized that the United States was about to elect and install a Communist plant who wasn’t even an American citizen. Things like that tend to end . . . badly.  If California, Oregon and Washington secede, there will be Chinese Red Army boots on the ground within a year, easily, invited in as “peacekeepers” and “health safety enforcers.”  Many leftists today are Maoists.  They WANT to be under Chinese rule.  I remember so very well saying “If Obama usurps, it will end with Chinese boots on the ground in North America” to a friend in Denver over drinks in the Chili’s at Arapahoe & Parker in the summer of ARSH 2008 and watching his face fall in the “she’s crazy” sense. Being a Cassandra is not for the overly-sensitive.  I think my old friend, from my RCIA class no less,  still lives in Denver.  Say a prayer for him and his safety.  Denver is spinning out of control fast, from what I’ve been told.)

I have received many emails and have heard much talk about the U.S. breaking into two countries ‐ one Constitutional Republic built on a foundation of Christian principles consisting of the Mountain, Central and Southern states (essentially a Second American Republic), and a Marxist‐Socialist‐Atheist confederation consisting of the Pacific Coast states, the Upper Midwest (IL, MI, WI) and the New England states.

While it is sorely tempting to think about drop‐kicking the liberal states and going our separate ways, the reality is that this would be a MASSIVE mistake, and would almost certainly set in motion a chain of events that would end Western Civilization.

If this sort of “divorce” were to happen, we all know that the Second American Republic (SAR) would thrive while the Marxist Confederation (MC) would quickly fail catastrophically. When that failure happened, the MC would come begging to the SAR to bail it out. Now, you might be thinking, “Screw ‘em. They made their bed, now they can sleep in it. They’ll get no help from us.” That’s a knee‐jerk reaction, and it would be the WRONG reaction. Why? Because if the SAR turned down the MC’s requests for help, who would be the ONLY other nation capable of bailing out the MC? China. And as we should all understand with crystal clarity, the liberals in the MC states would be, without question, idiotic enough to actually INVITE the Chinese to take over their economy, and eventually their land ‐ purely as a “peacekeeping force” to control the food shortage riots, you understand. So, in order to stave off Chinese involvement in North America, we would have to bail the MC out anyway. It’s a textbook “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

In the event of a divorce wherein the SAR didn’t prop up the MC, the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle would be completely vulnerable, and eventually would be thrown wide open to a cold invasion by the Chinese – almost certainly by invitation. The same could also be said for the East Coast ports. Boston, New York and Washington D.C. would be vulnerable and/or invite a “peacekeeping force” from the U.N., probably led by Russia.

Now we need to talk military tactics. Assume that what I have just laid out actually came to pass. The SAR and Constitutionalist refugees from the MC states are now compressed into the geographic center of the continent. To the west lies the Chinese Army. To the east lies the UN/Russian army.

This is called a “Strategic Flanking”. In fact, this would be the largest strategic flanking in world history. To be “flanked” is very, very bad. If you are fighting any sort of battle, you want to keep your adversary in front of you at all times and your sides CLEAR. You must NEVER allow the adversary to move along your sides (flanks). Combat tacticians are CONSTANTLY looking for a way to move their troops in such a way so that they “gain the flanks”. Once a force loses its flanks, it becomes nearly impossible (without a massive advantage in weaponry) to escape. The most famous tactical flanking in history was executed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. With fewer than 40,000 men, Hannibal drew the Roman army of 90,000 men into his center, and then wrapped around their flanks on both sides, thus forming a semi‐circle around the Romans. By doing this, Hannibal was able to COMPLETELY DESTROY the Roman army with fewer than HALF the number of men.

The most famous strategic flanking to date is probably the flanking of Nazi Germany by the Soviet army to the east and the Allies to the west. While this involved the entire European continent, the flanking I describe above on the North American continent would dwarf the Nazi flanking in size and scope. It is not hard to imagine a massive Chinese force pushing and compressing the SAR from the west, eventually wrapping around the northern flank, with a UN/Russian force compressing from New England in a southwesterly direction, pushing the people of the SAR south towards the Gulf of Mexico – which is at this moment being taken out of strategic play by the Russians via the cold lodgements of Cuba and Venezuela – and utter defeat.

Given these obvious tactical realities, I hope that one and all now see that the TERRITORIAL BOUNDARIES OF THE FIRST AMERICAN REPUBLIC MUST BE PRESERVED. Integrated sovereignty MUST remain intact from “sea to shining sea”. Amicable divorce is NOT an option. We can not allow Marxism to establish any quarter, even in the spirit of “compromise” and the avoidance of possible hostilities, because that “compromise” and “avoidance” would be to sign our own death warrants, and the death warrant of Western Civilization. It would be far better to fight a civil war of territorial preservation than to fight a war against a conquering Sino‐Russian invasion.

How sick is it that I have to post this crap? I’m a 33 year old single woman (when this was written). I should be planning my next business move, or thinking about recreational travel. Instead, I’m standing here, mid‐morning on a Wednesday, writing essays on secession dynamics and military tactics for the North American theater. This is the living, breathing definition of FUBAR. God save us.

Ann Barnhardt
June 23, AD 2010

——————————

Because this clip can never, ever be posted too much, here is Larry Grathwohl, the man who infiltrated the Weather Underground, outlining Bill Ayers’ and Bernadine Dohrn’s plan for balkanizing the former U.S. territory after overthowing and collapsing the Republic, and delegating administration of the quadrants of the landmass to Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. Since Cuba and Vietnam are mere satellites, the dynamic today is clearly that of a Sino-Russian axis.

Bill Ayers, you will remember, wrote Obama’s fictional “autobiography” Dreams From My Father, and Ayers’ family supported and groomed Obama for the Presidency from the time he was a teenager. It appears that Chicago Communist Frank Marshall Davis handed Obama off to the Ayers group, partnered with the satanist faggot Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in Chicago in the early 1980s. Bernadine Dohrn’s fingerprints are also all over Obama’s course syllabus when he was an adjunct lecturer at the University of Chicago. And of course, Obama’s entire adult life and political career has had Ayers and Dohrn as the main enablers and drivers.

Oh, and just as an aside, Grathwohl’s eyewitness testimony confirms that Ayers and Dohrn have planned on and anticipated the need to murder fully 10%-15% of the population as “unreformable, die-hard capitalists.” In the early 1980s when this interview was recorded, the population of the U.S. was 250 million, thus Grathwohl’s number of 25 million that Ayers and Dohrn were planning on killing. Today, that number would be 30-45 million Americans that will need to be “eliminated” in order to quash the “counter-revolution.”

Clive Staples Lewis, ARSH 1948

“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things— praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

The same idea applies to the Second Coming of Our Lord. If we knew for a fact that He were returning in glory tomorrow, what would we do today? We would do whatever our duties and stations in life would otherwise be. If that notion is somehow troubling, then perhaps one should, by definition, modify and improve one’s quotidian life. What exactly is it about your life or your normal activities that you would NOT want the Lord to find you doing when He returns, or when you return to Him…?

Dear Ann,

Could you please explain the Trinity?

Signed,
Unreasonably High Expectations

————————————

Dear Unreasonably High Expectations,

No.

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. But we know that it IS.

How can Jesus be both fully God and fully Man? I dunno. It’s a mystery. But we know that it IS.

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. But we know that it IS.

Regarding the Trinity, here is what we do know and can articulate. 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 Bergoglian 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/verb conjugations – and no one ever did.

One of the most important points about the Triune Godhead is this: God is RELATIONAL to Himself.

Priest’s view from the High Altar of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome. Shamelessly lifted from Fr. Z.

God is Love – and what is Perfect Love? Perfect Love is the complete giving of one’s self, and Perfect 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 Perfect Existential Love “before” the creation of the universe? Whom was He loving? Was He sitting around pondering Himself? How does inward-turned singular “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 and weren’t RELATIONAL to Himself from all eternity and beyond?

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 before the creation of rational intellects – angels and men? 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 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 beyond, too, because finite beings can never fully grasp the Infinite) is the eternity of God. No one can explain that. No one can explain or fully comprehend eternity. Only the Eternal can fully comprehend the Eternal. All we can do is name it, and then get on with living, singing His praises.

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”.

(**Fascinating addition: It has been explained to me by philosophers that ONLY GOD is capable of the “total gift of self” that is the cornerstone of John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”. The reason why “Theology of the Body” is deeply problematic and slides almost instantly into personalist phenomenology (the philosophical school that JPII subscribed to, which denies that objects exist outside of human consciousness of them, and thus that the mind of man is the supreme arbiter of existence… or some absolute nonsense like that.  Yeah.  Pray for his soul, because his canonization, done by Antipope Bergoglio, will be walked back when this situation resolves) is because it is built on the false premise that a human man can “give himself completely” to his wife, and that the woman can receive “the total gift of self” from her husband and then return it as a “total gift of herself” to him.  WRONG.  A man contributing his DNA, and a woman contributing her DNA is not even remotely close to “a total gift of self”, nor is any unitive joy of the conjugal act even close to “total gift of self”.  No, make no mistake, only THE MOST HOLY TRINITY can do that.  Not even St. Joseph and Our Lady Ever Virgin, as much as they loved each other and were united in this world, ever got anywhere close to “total gift of self” because it simply is not possible for human beings to do this.  We cannot “fall through each others’ souls” or anything even remotely close to that.  

We can love, and must love, but we cannot delude ourselves into believing that “we are like God” and are able to “make a total gift of self”, and we certainly can’t delude ourselves into thinking, as many, many TOB followers do, that the marital sex act IS THE TOTAL GIFT OF SELF.  It is not, PERIOD. This is common sense. But guys, lots of these TOB people actually think this, and use it as justification for sins of the highest gravity, including sacrilegious fornication and even sodomy between spouses. Believe me, after the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart, there will be NO MORE “Theology of the Body” on this planet.  So, I would advise going ahead and trashing everything you own that is TOB-based, in anticipation of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart!

Long story short, TOB places “the unitive good of the spouses” on an equal plane as the procreation and rearing of children, instead of having procreation alone at the top, with the unitive benefits to the spouses as a secondary, subordinated priority.  This mis-ordering combined with personalism, has led as direct logical corollaries to the winking acceptance by the infiltrators of The Church of divorce, contraception, abortion, sodomy, transsexualism and whatever damn filthy perversion is next, which we all know is pedophilia.)

The big human metaphor to all of this is human procreation.

A man loves his wife and gives his DNA to her. The wife loves her husband and thus receives his DNA and offers her own DNA in return. The gifts of DNA then becomes a third person (with the essential involvement of The Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life- Dóminum et vivificántem).  But this is obviously only an analogy – it is useful and important, but not an equivalence. Not even close.

Thus, the Triune Godhead is the foundational reality, and human marriage and procreation is the DERIVATIVE, which points back in analogical form to the underlying and infinitely greater reality of the Trinity.

This is why marriage, the marital act and procreation are so utterly sacred – even though they are only an analogy, 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 lives to protect the sacrosanctity of marriage and sexuality. It’s enough to make one suspect that almost all of them by now are actually wolves….

So there are a few points to ponder today, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. And remember, if you’re troubled by the fact that you don’t fully understand the nature of God, just remember that a God that our pea-brains could fully comprehend would be… no God at all. The fact that God is infinite and inexhaustible in the depths of His goodness, beauty, justice, mercy and LOVE is the ultimate consolation and incentive to hope.

As always, I hope this helps.

Dom Reginald-Marie Garrigou-Lagrange. Most assuredly NOT a mediocre man.

“The truly mediocre man admirers everything a little and nothing with warmth… He considers every affirmation insolent, because every affirmation excludes the contradictory proposition. But if you are slightly friendly and slightly hostile to all things, he will consider you wise and reserved. The mediocre man says there is good and evil in all things, and that we must not be absolute in our judgements. 

If you strongly affirm the truth, the mediocre man will say that you have too much confidence in yourself.

The mediocre man regrets that the Christian religion has dogmas. He would like it to teach ethics, and if you tell him that its code of morals comes from its dogmas as the consequence comes from the principle, he will answer that you exaggerate…If the word ‘exaggeration’ did not exist, the mediocre man would invent it.

The mediocre man appears habitually modest. He can not be humble, or he would cease to be mediocre.

The humble man scorns all lies, even where glorified by the whole earth, and he bows the knee before every truth…If the naturally mediocre man becomes seriously Christian, he ceases absolutely to be mediocre…

The man who loves is never mediocre.”

Reginald-Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
The Three Ages of the Interior Life : Prelude of Eternal Life Volume. 1

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 exchange high-fives)
“YAY!!!!!”

Yay, indeed.  Well done, Boys.

St. Peter Canisius:

“As the Sacred Scripture says, the Sodomites were wicked and exceedingly sinful. Saint Peter and Saint Paul condemn this nefarious and depraved sin. In fact, the Scripture denounces this enormous indecency thus: ‘The scandal of Sodomites and Gomorrhans has multiplied and their sins have become grave beyond measure.’ So the angels said to just Lot, who totally abhorred the depravity of the Sodomites: ‘Let us leave this city….’ Holy Scripture does not fail to mention the causes that led the Sodomites, and can also lead others, to this most grievous sin. In fact, in Ezechiel we read: ‘Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and the poor. And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me; and I took them away as thou hast seen’ (Ezech. 16: 49-50).

Those unashamed of violating divine and natural law are slaves of this never sufficiently execrated depravity.”

-St. Peter Canisius, Summa Doctrina Christianae, III a/b, p. 455

Note what St. Peter Canisius says here quoting Ezechiel: that the CAUSES that LED to this most grievous sin (sexual perversion) are, in a nutshell, a lack or absence of Charity.  Sexual perversion is a DERIVATIVE PATHOLOGY. It doesn’t “just happen”.  You have to have the self-purgation of love from the soul FIRST.  Then the sexual perversion follows.  This is why there is no such thing as a “psycho-spiritually healthy” sex pervert.  Sexual perversion in any form is, by definition, a monstrosity. Yes, MONSTROSITY.  This is why there is no such thing as a “benign” sodomite.  Because of the antecedent pathology of lovelessness (aka Diabolical Narcissism), ALL SODOMITES, BOTH MALE AND FEMALE, ARE A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to others, but most especially children.

And, this quote from St. Peter Canisius should probably be framed and hanging in every home:

“Better that only a few Catholics should be left, staunch and sincere in their religion, than that they should, remaining many, desire as it were, to be in collusion with the Church’s enemies and in conformity with the open foes of our faith.”