Fr. Nix Sermon: Feast of Christ the King

Today's sermon delivered at Immaculate Conception Basilica in Jacksonville can be accessed by clicking on the below link:

http://padreperegrino.org/2017/10/29/cksermon17/

Sundays are for Beauty: Chinese Redux

First posted here on September 6, 2009.  More than 8,000 Likes on YouTube.  Brought back today at request of Molly.

Fr. Rutler's Weeknly Column: October 29, 2017

Father Rutler's Weekly Column

October 29th, 2017

The Roman magistrate Appius Claudius Caecus, who died in 273 B.C., accomplished much despite physical infirmities: “caecus” means blind. His greatest monuments were Rome’s first aqueduct (Aqua Appia) and first highway (Via Appia), which is still in use today. He was also a literary man, who wrote of the working man (homo faber) and gave moral significance to the human ability to build: “Every man is the architect of his own fortune.”

   

In his youth Saint John Paul II had been a factory worker in a chemical plant, virtually a slave laborer under the Nazis, an experience that gave poignancy to his encyclical on work, Laborem Exercens, written in 1981: “ ‘In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread’ (Genesis 3:19). These words refer to the sometimes heavy toil that from [Eden] onwards has accompanied human work . . . And yet, in spite of all this toil—perhaps, in a sense, because of it—work is a good thing for man. . . . through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes ‘more a human being.’ ”

 

  Made in the image of God, human beings do not merely toil, for they can use their imagination and reason to design and create. New York City is a virtual hymn to that ability, symbolized by the Empire State Building right up the street from our church. Despite the Depression and lack of the advanced power tools we have today, it took only 410 days to finish in 1931; in one spurt, fourteen floors went up in ten days. Thousands of workers, including Mohawks who have a talent for managing heights, completed it for $41 million, $19 million less than estimated. Hard hats were not used in those days, yet remarkably only five workers were killed—five too many, but still a tribute to skill and caution.

  

Our church is now in the heart of the largest building development in our nation’s history. Sixteen skyscrapers are rising in this Hudson Yards project, one taller than the Empire State Building. It will bring 12,700,000 square feet of office, residential and retail space, and an estimated 65,000 visitors daily. The sacrifices involved to build this cannot be overstated. In recent days three young workers were killed, and hundreds of devout laborers asked me to gather with them in the midst of the steel girders and concrete to lead them with prayers and Holy Water, for their work is more than mere toil.

   

Our Lord, who was a carpenter, certainly challenges all of us to do his work in this gigantic new chance to let his light shine. With all this engineering and commercial display, “homo faber” can only know himself rightly by knowing that he is a helper of God the Creator. “Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1).

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Fr. Mark Pilon: The Fruits of Soft Discipline

Fr. Mark Pilon posted this essay today on The Catholic Thing Blog:

When I was in the seminary in the early 1960s, we were indoctrinated in the notion that the harsh discipline of the Church over the centuries would be a thing of the past following Vatican II. Supposedly, none of this harshness had ever really worked to safeguard the teaching of the Church, so a new softer approach was needed. 

A half-century later, the results are in – and it’s indisputable that the softer approach didn’t work. In addition to the exodus of priests, nuns, and religious, there’s been a massive loss of knowledge among ordinary lay people about what the Church teaches. And no wonder, since there’s been little effort to make Church teachings clear in the flight from the bad old days of “harsh discipline.”

To continue, click on the below link:

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/10/26/the-fruits-of-soft-discipline/

Bishop Barron on Grace and Karma

FR. Lankeit's Homily for October 22, 2017: "Gay Marriage"

LEFEBVRE: The Athanasius of our Time???

Fr. Nix Sermon: 20th Sunday after Pentecost

Today's sermon from Fr. Nix can be accessed by clicking on the below link:

http://www.padreperegrino.org/2017/10/22/20dpp17/

CATHOLIC IDENTITY CONFERENCE 2017: Available Online

Midnight Watch

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column, October 21, 2017

Father Rutler's Weekly Column

October 22nd, 2017

“Use your brain” is a maxim often heard, but often resented. Such was the case when our Lord confronted professional debaters. At the age of twelve his rhetorical skill astonished the rabbis, who presumably thought that he was just a child prodigy. But later on, the legal experts were not amused when he challenged their logical fallacies; yet he came into the world to win souls and not to win debates. Those experts did not think their souls needed saving, so they cynically used syllogisms to “entrap him in speech” (Matthew 22:15). They posed a trick question about paying taxes, to which Christ responded that they should use their brains: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

  Using the brain to figure out things of Caesar and of God does not easily answer the question, but it does establish some solid principles. Take for instance the neuralgic challenges to capital punishment. Well-used brains have understood that the death penalty belongs to the just domain of the government. The Catechism affirms this (CCC #2267).

  

This principle belongs to natural law, which in classical philosophy, is “. . . the universal, practical obligatory judgments of reason, knowable by all men as binding them to do good and avoid evil.” Saint Paul appealed to natural law: “Ever since the creation of the world, [God’s] invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Romans 1:20).

Governments exist to maintain “the tranquility of order.” When popes governed the Papal States, they measured out punishments including death. One papal executioner, Giovanni Battista Bugatti, served six popes, including Blessed Pius IX, and personally executed 516 felons.

   

That was the civil side of ruling; the spiritual side did everything possible to bring the guilty to confession and a state of grace before meeting God, because happiness is the realization of the purpose of life and is not mere pleasure; and unhappiness is the contradiction of that purpose, and not mere pain. Without that perspective, the death penalty seems an arrogant violation of life, and that is why today opposition to the death penalty increases as religious faith decreases. That dangerous alchemy substitutes emotion for truth and platitudes for reason. Such lax use of the brain is to theology what Barney the Dinosaur is to paleontology.

  

  Two professors, Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, have published an excellent book: By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed. Such right use of the brain explains that abuses of punishment are intolerable, and the application of mercy is a permissible use of prudential opinion. But to posit the death penalty as intrinsically evil contradicts laws natural and divine, and no authorities, be they of the State or the Church, have the right to deny what is right by asserting that.

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L. Todd Wood: Whose Fault Is It?

This essay was published today at ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT.

L. Todd Wood, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, flew special operations helicopters supporting SEAL Team 6, Delta Force and others. After leaving the military, he pursued his other passion, finance, spending 18 years on Wall Street trading emerging market debt, and later, writing. The first of his many thrillers is “Currency.” Todd is a contributor to Fox Business, Newsmax TV, Moscow Times, the New York Post, the National Review, Zero Hedge and others. For more information about L. Todd Wood, visit LToddWood.com

By L. Todd Wood – – Tuesday, September 26, 2017
ANALYSIS/OPINION: 

I know of no white person alive today in the United States who has ever legally owned a black slave, or any slave for that matter. Almost 700,000 mostly white men died 160 years ago to end slavery. Jim Crow ended generations ago. Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship. Why? 

Is it because America is racist? Is it because of some overhanging white privilege supremacy? Is it because of the Illuminati?

No, unfortunately, it is because of black culture and LBJ’s War On Poverty in January 1964, and the adoption of the Progressive Democratic Party’s BIG government dependency. 

We have just had eight years of the first black president. Black athletes, and entertainers, routinely earn multi-million dollar incomes. I can easily name several black billionaires without even trying too hard. A large percentage of black America is very successful. But, it is not enough. Too many black youth are being left behind.

And it is no one but black America’s fault.
No one can solve this problem but black America. No one can throw enough money at it. We’ve been doing that since 1964, to the tune of $22,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion with a T). Black America needs to look in the mirror and stop blaming others, especially white people.

I am obviously white and conservative, and I served in the military, which, during my time, was as color blind as you could be. I can also honestly say I don’t give a damn what color your skin is, neither do any of my friends. I do care about your actions. 

Blacks are around 15 percent of the population. Depending on what study you look at, they commit around 40 percent to 50 percent of violent crimes in America (mostly against each other). Of course, there is going to be a problem with police. And, of course, there are some bad policemen. However, those bad apples do not kill black people statistically anymore than they kill white people. Even Harvard University research said that recently. If you were a cop, and you had to work in a neighborhood infested with crime and murder, wouldn’t you act differently than in a neighborhood where there was little to no crime? The most effective thing black America could do to improve its relationship with police is to significantly reduce violent crime where they live. Yes, that means change the culture of where you live and your community. 

I for one am tired of being blamed. I am tired of dealing with people who only want something from others I don’t oppress anyone. I don’t hold anyone down. I’m tired of getting on the D.C. metro and seeing white people being harassed by roaming gangs of black youth with their pants around their knees. Yes, you want a white person uncomfortable? That makes me uncomfortable. It’s our nation’s capital and it’s embarrassing. 

Blacks have nothing but opportunity in America. Try finding the same opportunity anywhere else in the world. If you are born in America, you’ve won life’s economic lottery. Take advantage of it. 

The problem is this generation has been taught an agenda of social justice and cultural Marxism by our public education system. They’ve been taught to be a victim, and it’s still going on. All you have to do is watch the young black, female student at Yale screaming at the college president to understand that. Blacks in America don’t even know how good they got it. 

Don’t kneel when my anthem is played. Too many people died for that flag. You are free to protest but not then. I am free to not watch, or pay to watch you play if you do that. The NFL should make it a rule that you stand for the national anthem. There is no free speech to disobey a private employer on private property. This would solve the problem immediately.

The NFL has deeply offended most of America. They will pay an economic and reputational price, as they should.

We have a real cultural problem in this country, the result of the Progressive Democratic-Socialist- Communist-Leftist multicultural agenda. Multi-ethnicity is perfect and should be encouraged. Having more than one American culture is destroying the country. But then again, that is exactly what the Progressive Democratic Party Leftists want and encourage.

Christopher Akers: Moral Progress?

From The Catholic Thing Blog today:

It hasn’t helped that the way in which we perceive morality has undergone a major shift. In a world of NGOs and Twitter, the idea of individual moral improvement – or moral decline –has been almost completely eclipsed and replaced by abstract gestures. Our moral standing is now thought to be assured if we make anti-Trump statements on social media or agitate about boycotting Israel

Monsignor Alfred Newman Gilbey, the one-time Catholic chaplain to Cambridge University, understood this change well. He once remarked to the British philosopher Roger Scruton that “we are not led to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of the Christian is not to leave the world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man.” Most of us may still hope that what we do will benefit those whose lives we touch, but the internal struggle is already a heavy enough task.

To read the whole essay click on the link below;

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/10/21/moral-progress/

Ramirez: The Uranium One Scandal

National Anthem: 2017 Kentucky Music Educators Convention

Please watch on YouTube to read the story of what is happening here.

500 high school choir students sing the US National Anthem in a high-rise hotel.

Each night before curfew, they gather to sing the Star-Spangled Banner from the balconies of the 18-story atrium at Louisville's downtown Hyatt. This is part of the Kentucky Music Educators convention.

KILLING STATUES: Christophobic Mobocracy in America

Death to the Death Panel - Maybe

Finally, it looks like the "death panel" might die.  This is from today's Daily Signal:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=482733621165398840#editor/target=post;postID=8870181689740650422

For additional background on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, also known as the "death panel," see the earlier blog posts on the subject:

https://wwwpopblogger.blogspot.com/search?q=death+panel

Fr. Schall on The Paris Statement

Fr. Schall writing today at Crisis Magazine on The Paris Statement.  The first link is to Fr. Schall's piece; the second is to The Paris Statement.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/paris-statement-defends-old-europe-values?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

https://thetrueeurope.eu/a-europe-we-can-believe-in/

17. The false Europe also boasts of an unprecedented commitment to equality. It claims to promote non-discrimination and the inclusion of all races, religions and identities. Here, genuine progress has been made, but a utopian detachment from reality has taken hold. Over the past generation, Europe has pursued a grand project of multiculturalism. To demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion, has been thought a gross injustice. A commitment to equality, we have been told, demands that we abjure any hint that we believe our culture superior. Paradoxically, Europe’s multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable form. It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is being born.

Fr. Nix Sermon: 19th Sunday after Pentecost

Today's sermon by Fr. David Nix (Padre Peregrino) at Immaculate Conception Basilica, Jacksonville, Florida.

http://www.padreperegrino.org/2017/10/15/19dpp17/

Fr. Heilman: Satan's Elite Fighting Force

From Fr. Heilman's Blog: Roman Catholic Man, October 14, 2017:

This is the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. Consequently, it wound up that Nobody told Anybody, so Everybody blamed Somebody.

https://www.romancatholicman.com/satans-elite-fighting-force-may-surprised/

On October 13, in my parish, we had a record crowd for diocesan TLMs as we celebrated a Pontifical Mass at the Throne with our Bishop Robert Morlino. WOW!! And to think I couldn’t be seen with a rosary, when I was a seminarian.

Things are improving. Could it be that the scales are now tipping in favor Christ as Lord and Savior, rather than man as his own lord and savior?

I think we have a long way to go, but maybe … just maybe … God likes the direction it is heading.

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column, October 14, 2017

Father Rutler's Weekly Column

October 14th, 2017

A bit of unintentional black humor made its way into the news some days ago, in an account of people panicking at rush hour on a commuter train in southwest London outside Wimbledon Station. Rail power lines were cut, disrupting train traffic for nearly twelve hours. The cause? Some sort of evangelist had stood up in one of the carriages and began to read aloud from the Bible.

  

In our neuralgic society, nervous about terrorism, we might empathize with the passengers, especially if the preacher was shouting. In New York our urban protocol is simply to avoid eye contact with people like that. But the first offense was the police description of passengers “self-evacuating.” As neologisms go, this conjured up some pretty frightful images; one expects better from the land that gave us our glorious English language. The bigger problem is that the unhappy passengers “self-evacuated” because the evangelist intoned “Death is not the end.”

 

  In a more tranquil moment of human history, these words would be a consolation. In paraphrase they were the comforting motto of Mary Queen of Scots. T.S. Eliot used the words in his Four Quartets, and the crooner Bob Dylan made it the title of one of his most popular songs, but it caused none of his fans to self-evacuate.

   The utter non-finality of death, the promise of life everlasting, is Good News for those who will listen. But for those who translate the meaning of life according to their limited narcissistic vocabulary, the good news of eternal glory is no more vital than ramblings in the Qur’an or Upanishads.

   Saint Thomas More said that to be a real Christian is always to be surprised by the Resurrection. The essence of human response to the Resurrection is astonishment: it was not expected. That should be the psychology and flushed complexion of every encounter with Christ. It explains why the first words of the Risen Lord were not formulas for physics or cures for cancer, but “Peace. Don’t be afraid.” Awe, as holy fear, casts out the ignorance of servile fear. In the same vein, Saint John Vianney said that if we really understood what happens in the Mass, we would die, not out of fear but out of love. So one hyperventilating woman who jumped onto the tracks outside Wimbledon, was not altogether wrong when she said that the Bible the man was carrying was a bomb.

   Perhaps it is because people do not love enough, that they panic when someone says that death is not the end. Our Lord said something more radiantly harsh than that: “And fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Some who first heard that adored him, but a great many self-evacuated.

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Like what you're reading? If so, please consider making a special donation to the Church of St. Michael the Archangel at 424 West 34th Street, so that we can afford to continue distributing the column! If you have Parish Pay, you can also contribute to the column here: http://www.stmichaelnyc.com 

The Brilliance of The Fatima Prayer

From The Catholic Herald today, the 100th Anniversary of The Miracle of the Sun:

The prayer reminds us of the reality of hell and the need for humility.

Today, 13th October, is the centenary of the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima to the three little shepherd children, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta. How appropriate that Stephen Bullivant, with the co-authorship of Luke Arredondo, has written O My Jesus (Paulist Press £9.99), an insightful study of the meaning of the famous Fatima prayer.

Our Lady revealed this short prayer to the children on July 13th 1917, soon after she had given them a terrifying glimpse of hell, directing them to say it after each decade of the Rosary. She had asked for the Rosary to be recited daily, which makes the prayer, as Bullivant observes, the most commonly recited after the Our Father, Hail Mary and the Glory Be. It is a mere 29 words: “O My Jesus/ Forgive us our sins/Save us from the fires of hell/And lead all souls to heaven/Especially those in most need of Thy mercy/Amen.”

Each petition is packed with significance and it is worth meditating on them in detail. Bullivant draws attention to much that we unthinkingly repeat, such as that the opening address “O My Jesus” is highly intimate, one that would have been used by Our Lady herself. Indeed, it was never used by the disciples, which gives a particularly poignant power to the prayer of the Good Thief: “Jesus, Remember me…”

“Forgive us our sins” reminds us that sin is common to us all, and that although we are saved as individuals our own salvation is bound up with charity towards others. As the late Pope John Paul II said, “We are all really responsible for all” or as the poet John Donne wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me…” The plea speaks to us of our common flawed human nature.

The reference to hell in the next line reminded me of my blog on Monday, drawing attention to the sombre tone of the Old Rite Requiem Mass, in contrast to the New Rite. As Bullivant wryly notes, “Hell” is not popular today, even among Catholics, despite the fact that Jesus mentions it “an awful lot.” As the author points out, the Cure of Ars was known to have spent up to 15 hours a day in the confessional for years on end, solely to help penitents to understand the grave importance of avoiding sin and hell – the logical consequence of a determined, final refusal to kneel in sorrow for sin.

The sentence “Lead all souls to heaven” has led some, following the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, to the speculation of “universalism” – the notion that everyone might be saved. Bullivant tells me that he disagrees with von Balthasar; alluding to St Thomas Aquinas, he writes that “God really does will that all people be saved, even if not all people end up being saved.” How could God not will this? Yet at the same time he respects our free will. We should hope for, but not presume on, salvation, our own as well as others’.

When we pray “Especially those in most need of Thy mercy” we are tempted to believe we are praying for others; but as Bullivant makes clear, it is we who are in “most need”; a reminder of the need for humility.

All in all, the book is well worth pondering, for the implications of this Fatima prayer concern the deepest themes of our faith.

Remnant TV: Mike & Chris in Black & White

Anthony Esolen: "Open Your Eyes Fr. Martin"

Anthony Esolen writing today at CrisisMagazine.Com:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/open-eyes-father-martin?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29

Branco: Pence Offence

Fr. Schall: On Hatred

From The Catholic Thing Blog, October 9, 2017:

Where did this “hate language” business come from anyhow? Its origin was in the now largely successful endeavor to overturn the moral structure of civil society. Generally speaking, this transformation was accomplished through the deft usage of “rights talk.” What was once called, on rational grounds, a disorder or vice became first tolerated, then finally a “right.” Once it became a “right,” then for anyone to call it a sin or evil became a slander, an attack on transformed human dignity and pride.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/10/09/on-hatred/

Fatima and the Filial Correction of Pope Francis

Hundreds of thousands pray rosary at Polish border

From The Catholic Herald today:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/10/08/hundreds-of-thousands-pray-rosary-at-polish-border/

Fr. Nix: Mary: God's First Love

From the Blog of Fr. Nix today:

http://www.padreperegrino.org/2017/10/07/mary-first-love/

One last time, St. Bonaventure’s quote: “God could make a bigger world or a wider sky, but He could not raise a pure creature higher than Mary.” This means that Mary’s soul was planned before the creation of earth to be so beautiful that it would outdo the combined beauty of the souls of all the saints, all the heroic acts of the martyrs, all the beauty of a newly born baby, all the beauty of uncharted planets with their own unknown Grand Canyons and even more glorious than the invisible world of angels. Such is the soul of Mary.

LOST CAUSES: Filial Correction, Battle of Lepanto

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column October 8, 2017

Father Rutler's Weekly Column
October 8th, 2017 

When a mathematical problem stumped Professor Einstein, he played Mozart on his violin to put him “in touch with the harmony of the cosmos,” and often the solution followed. It does not require genius to sense that all relations in the creation are harmonious. Only because of celestial harmony is there a human intuition that wrong is wrong and right is right.
  
“Music” first meant being charmed by what Greeks like Hesiod called the Muses. To climb up to their mount, Helicon or Olympus, was to be “amused,” and to return from that peak was to bring happy harmony to a dissonant world. Wanting to be amused is a desire to become part of the cosmic harmony. In physics six centuries before the Incarnation, Pythagoras discovered how harmonies issue from the ratios of vibrating strings, concluding that music, based on ratios of numbers, is the definitive principle ordering the world. Two centuries later, Aristotle figured out that the planets and stars, arranged in harmonic ratios, produce the “music of the spheres.”
  
The Eternal Ratio, or Logos, is Christ, and the noisy darkness, to paraphrase St. John, has never overcome him. Union with Christ is, in reality and not myth, like climbing the mount to meet the Muses: “But you are come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22).

  Although Plato did not think in terms of evil, he did think of ignorance and confusion as the opposites of harmony. In the sixth century after the Resurrection, Boethius said in Platonic terms that morality is harmony with the music of the spheres. In the Eucharist, as the Second Vatican Council taught, the song of the Heavenly Jerusalem is brought to our earthly altars, like the singing angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder (Sulam Yaakov). Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “Liturgy presupposes . . . that the heavens have been opened . . . If the heavens are not open, then whatever liturgy was is reduced to role playing and, in the end, to a trivial pursuit of congregational self-fulfillment in which nothing really happens.”
 
 Last week as we celebrated the feast of our patron, Saint Michael the Archangel, in the Hammerstein Ballroom just a two-minute walk east of our church, a “Heavy Metal Anti-Christ Superstar” who calls himself a “Priest of the Church of Satan,” screamed noise, for which the audience paid up to four hundred dollars to be amused. Now a bit long in the tooth, he said in 1996:  “Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity.” A collapsing stage set ended his performance by knocking him unconscious.

  I do not play the violin as well as Einstein, but as a priest, in contrast to the “Honorary Priest of Satan,” even my faltering voice can bring the song of the Heavenly Jerusalem to our altar in Hell’s Kitchen.

Subscribers,
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E-Mail from Fr. Maximilian Mary of Jesus Crucified Oct 7, 2017

A photo from my Temporary Profession as a Diocesan Hermit on Sept. 12th. I'm lying prostrate as the Nuns sing the Te Deum in thanksgiving to God for the grace of my Profession. Bishop Ronald Gainer is to the left with Fr. John Szada (Chaplain to the Nuns), 2 altar servers from the Academy of St. Louis De Montfort, and Mr. Byron Whitcraft (one of the 2 witnesses to sign my Profession of Vows).


Ave Maria!
Feast of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary
  Dear Novena Family,

    Thank you to all who have enrolled in the All Souls Latin Mass Novena and to the many who made donations. May God and His Holy Mother reward you!
    Those who have not enrolled yet, but would like to, can go to www.novenamasses.org or click on the link below. I will send out a final alert towards the end of October.
In Corde Matris,

Fr. Maximilian Mary of Jesus Crucified
P.S. I've included some spiritual commentary on the Las Vegas massacre below for those who might be interested.
 
ALL SOULS
LATIN MASS NOVENA

Click HERE to Enroll now
A photo from my Temporary Profession as a Diocesan Hermit on Sept. 12th. I'm lying prostrate as the Nuns sing the Te Deum in thanksgiving to God for the grace of my Profession. Bishop Ronald Gainer is to the left with Fr. John Szada (Chaplain to the Nuns), 2 altar servers from the Academy of St. Louis De Montfort, and Mr. Byron Whitcraft (one of the 2 witnesses to sign my Profession of Vows).

Be assured of my poor prayers and please pray for me...
   What I am about to share, and admittedly I was hesitant to do this, is not primarily about the Las Vegas shooter or the victims or myself; rather, I recount this because I think it illustrates how God gently, but concretely calls upon us to pray and do penance for the conversion of poor sinners in simple, concrete ways.
  
On Sunday, Oct. 1st, after praying Compline, I went to sleep peacefully in my hermitage cell. Slightly after 1am (E.T.) I woke up with heartburn. I offered it up for the triumph of Mary's Immaculate Heart and got up to take an antacid. Since I clearly was not going to be able to go back to sleep right away I went to the Chapel, greeted Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and took my Breviary back to my cell. I propped my pillow against the wall and sat up in my bed. I glanced at the clock; it was 1:08am. Then I began Matins and Lauds for Oct. 2nd, Feast of the Guardian Angels.
  
Regem Angelorum Dominum, Venite, adoremus was the Invitatory Antiphon: "Come, let us adore the King and Lord of the Angels."
  
Little did I know that as I was offering up this minor discomfort and saying my Divine Office there were over 20,000 souls under attack by a shooter in Las Vegas. Around 10:15, only 10 minutes after the shooting had begun - and it's obvious that killer intended to keep shooting - the terrorizing bullets stopped. Apparently things didn't unfold the way the gunman had thought they would; in fact a security guard named Jesus Campos had come to his door. That would have happened when I was praying this Antiphon:
  
Deus meus misit Angelum suum, et conclusit ora leonum, et non nocuerunt mihi - "My God sent His Angel, and He closed the lions' mouths, and they did not harm me."
  
For me, there was nothing extraordinary about what I was doing - I was just a useless servant fulfilling his priestly duty; but the next morning when a priest told me what had happened in Las Vegas and when I saw the timeline of events, I couldn't help but marvel. To be sure, I wasn't the only one led to pray and offer sacrifices at that fatal hour; but Our Lord allowed me to see the correlation of my own prayers and sacrifices with what was happening in Las Vegas.

Lesson: fulfilling our daily Christian duties has impact on the fate of the world.

Another lesson: God wants our love, prayers and sacrifices; these give Him glory and unleash graces for poor sinners.
  
As we finish this year, 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima, Our Lady seems to be inviting us now - as she did the little shepherd children then - "Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: 'O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.' " Sr. Lucia explains, "Many persons, feeling that the word penance implies great austerities, and not feeling that they have the strength for great sacrifices, become discouraged and continue a life of lukewarmness and sin." But Our Lord explained to her that "the sacrifice required of every person is the fulfillment of his duties in life and the observance of My law. This is the penance that I now seek and require."
  
Let me quote the sobering words I myself uttered after Sept.11th, 2001, in an article printed by the National Catholic Register: "If life is not safe in its mother's womb - which, naturally speaking, should be the safest place for human life in the entire universe - then it is not safe anywhere." Or, to quote St. Teresa of Calcutta speaking to President Clinton and company at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., in 1997: "What is taking place in America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" That is our situation and without conversion of mind and heart what happened in Las Vegas can and will repeat itself with horrifying variations. The victims of abortion are not only the unborn child and its mother, but the whole of society.
  
In conclusion, events like this are never without hope. In reflecting upon the tragedy I couldn't help but think of the words of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, "Love is stronger than hatred." He used to repeat this to his confreres before he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Indeed, the love of Christ Crucified and Risen from the dead endures; His light shatters the darkness; His victory over sin, Satan and eternal death is definitive. Let us enter into His victory of light, love and life and do our part to usher in the triumph and reign of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

"In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!"
Our Lady of Fatima (July 13, 1917)
 

PONTIFICAL HIGH MASS, SHRINE CHURCH OF ST THOMAS OF CANTERBURY & ENGLISH...

From Fr. Z's Blog yesterday:

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2017/10/an-avant-garde-bishop-raises-an-english-church-to-new-life/

Anthony Esolen: The Pleasures of Virtue

From The Catholic Thing today:

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/10/05/the-pleasures-of-virtue/

Virtue, as the perpetual adolescent known as modern man will not understand, is not a restraint upon freedom but a liberating power. If you abuse your knees you will not enjoy an alternative form of walking. You will be a cripple. If you abuse your moral powers, you will be a moral cripple.

THE ROSARY: Spiritual Sword of Our Lady (Trailer)

From Fr. Heilman today:

This was filmed in my parish – St. Mary of Pine Bluff – before nearly 500 people on September 8, 2017 – The Nativity of Mary.

I’ve tried to describe the evening to many … it was the weight of the Holy Spirit as I have rarely seen in my life. Fr. Donald Calloway’s talk went almost two hours, and nobody moved. They were riveted and filled with the power of God’s grace. 

This video, set to appear in February of 2018, is going to be a game changer.

Cardinal Burke & the SSPX: The Big Picture

Fr. Nix Sermon Today: The Rosary Will Triumph Over Abortion

Podcasts, Sermons, Talks

The Rosary Will Triumph Over Abortion

Audio 2017-10-01 Father David Nix

In the TLM calendar, today is the external feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  Although this sermon deals with abortion, I tried to avoid extremely graphic descriptions of the violence.  In fact, the families with whom I inquired after Mass had no problem with my vocabulary in preaching.  Nevertheless, I would highly encourage parents to preview this sermon in order to first determine the level of age-appropriate listening in your family.
Nota Bene:  Future sermons will probably be released on Mondays, blog posts on Thursdays.

http://www.padreperegrino.org/2017/10/01/rosary-unborn-sermon/