The Vision of St. Maximilian Kolbe

Despite a discrepancy in reports regarding time, St. Maximilian Kolbe, either when he was nine or twelve, depending on the source, had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She held out to him two crowns, one of white roses, which symbolized virginity, and the other of red roses, symbolizing martyrdom.

Our Lady Mary asked him to choose one and the saint-to-be chose both.

White roses have long been a symbol of purity, as red have been of love and martyrdom.

This saint grew in contemplation and seriousness, developing a great love for the "Immaculata".

If you have not seen the superb DVD play of St. Maximilian, I highly recommend this.

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MAXIMILIAN KOLBE SAINT OF AUSCHWITZ: Actor Leonardo Defilipis DVD

Another Disapora

As I came into the airport, next to me, waiting for a shuttle, was a Jewish couple from France, with seven very large suitcases. They were speaking French.

It was clear to me that they are among the 1,000 of Jews leaving France. Read my other posts on this.

God bless this young couple.

Persecution Watch

http://anglicanmainstream.org/faith-schools-must-teach-gay-rights/

http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/education/parents-and-pupils-to-march-on-london-as-hundreds-defend-sunderland-free-school-1-7076781

Grindon School in Sunderland and Durham Free School are being possibly closed for not teaching anti-Christian views on lgtb issues.

We shall see which "Catholic" schools are really Catholic.

Religious schools, as I have written on this blog for years, must be totally independent of all government money.

GB needs something like NAPCIS schools.

Ah, New York

Passing through New York, I saw a television blurb that the University of New York system does not want professors calling students Miss or Mrs, or Mr. as this offends the lgtb community. I never let my students call me by my first name and I always addressed them formally. No more "manners" and sense of hierarchy here.

Also, Fox just hired the first transgender reporter on tv, which I refuse to capitalize.

Fact and Fiction

http://www.gebetsliga.com/english/

When I put the Knights of Karl into my last story, I did not realize there was a League of Prayer dedicated to Blessed Karl.

Check this out. Blessed Karl is another saint for our time.

"The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God's will in all things. The Christian statesman, Karl of Austria, confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as "something appalling." Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my Predecessor, Benedict XV.

From the beginning, the Emperor Karl conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!"

Homily of  Saint John Paul II at the Beatification Mass of Emperor Karl I of Austria.
Sunday 3rd October, 2004.

Voice of The Family News

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/voice-of-the-family-submits-proposals-to-synod-consultation

Papal News

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-approved-family-synods-controversial-mid-term-report-before-pu

Why No Community In America?

Mark 10:29-30

29 Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

It has finally dawned on me why there are so few Catholic communities in America and why people resist building community.

Four reasons, quickly.

1)  Status and family pride are more important that Christian community. People are hung up on genealogies and cultivating family over any other type of gatherings or sacrifice.

2)  The Kingdom of God is not a priority as Christ intended it to be. The early Church left the pagan families and joined community. Catholics are not leaving pagans who refuse to convert and thereby, weaken their own faith and neglect the building of real Catholic communities.

So, this is not happening. Catholics insist on spending too much time with unbelievers who may even abuse them and their faith.

3) "Rugged individualism", another false American ideal, interferes with the creation of community.

I am afraid that many will fall away and be lost in the coming tribulation because they had the time to create Catholic communities and did not do so.

Remember, Christian communities grew because the pagans saw how the Catholics loved one another. This is not the case in the States in areas where there are no communities.

One last point. 

4) Americans have chosen to live in fear. We now have a culture of mistrust and fear. Part of this is the lack of the development of the gift of knowledge, which brings discernment, given in Confirmation.

Without community, the remnant will be very small, indeed.

Goodbye to Ireland, where economics run politics

The soul of Ireland is gone.

The country that has sold virtual space to other nations...

and has lost its sovereignty . The Irish have institutionalized rebellion. And, lost individual rebellion.

If the individual is rebellious, that is a healthy.

But, what happens when a government becomes rebellious?

The government is not beholding to anyone and is a reverse democracy, which is an illiberal democracy or an inverse totalitarianism.

If you do not get this, read this from wiki:

In Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, inverted totalitarianism is described as a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and where economics trumps politics.^[5] In inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse as the citizenry is lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government through excess consumerism and sensationalism.^[6][7]

Read more here on the US as well, but this has happened already in Ireland.


The book by Wolin mentioned in this article is key.Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Managed democracy

Wolin believes the democracy of the United States is sanitized of political participation, and describes it as managed democracy: "a political form in which governments are legitimated by elections that they have learned to control".^[13] Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant impact on policies adopted by the state through the continuous employment of public relations techniques.^[14]

Wolin believes the United States resembles Nazi Germany in one major way without an inversion: the essential role propaganda plays in the system. According to Wolin, whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in Nazi Germany, in the United States it is left to highly concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a "free press".^[15] According to this model, dissent is allowed, though the corporate media serve as a filter, allowing most people, with limited time available to keep themselves apprised of current events, to hear only points of view that the corporate media deem "serious".^[16][4][17]

According to Wolin, the United States has two main totalizing dynamics:

• The first, directed outward, finds its expression in the Global War on Terror and in the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars. This amounts to the United States seeing as illegitimate the attempt by any state to resist its domination.^[18][17][4]
• The second dynamic, directed inward, involves the subjection of the mass of the populace to economic "rationalization", with continual "downsizing" and "outsourcing" of jobs abroad and dismantling of what remains of the welfare state created by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Thus neoliberalism is an integral component of inverted totalitarianism. The state of insecurity in which this places the public serves the useful function of making people feelhelpless, thus making it less likely they will become politically active, and thus helping maintain the first dynamic.^{[19][20][4][17]}

and more

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers expressed the view that:^[7]

"We are living in a time of Inverted Totalitarianism, in which the tools used to maintain the status quo are much more subtle and technologically advanced ... These include propaganda and major media outlets that hide the real news about conditions at home and our activities around the world behind distractions ... Another tool is to create insecurity in the population so that people are unwilling to speak out and take risks for fear of losing their jobs ... Changes in college education also silence dissent ... Adjunct professors ... are less willing to teach topics that are viewed as controversial. This, combined with massive student debt, are tools to silence the student population, once the center of transformative action."^[7]

This is what happens when the Lord God is set aside for the god, Mammon.

UPDATE: I am reminded of what a holy hermit said over a year ago. Under the Druids, satan tried to get Ireland for himself. Now, he is succeeding. 

.

Just for fun...

This is a bomb-detecting dog.

The Chinese is like Latin...in word order..

Must reads and guess where I am today?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/22/adult-incest-ban-new-jersey/22152025/

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/01/incest_qa_daughter_plans_to_marry_dad.html

Illuminative State Again

One of yesterday's readings in the Divine Office reveals the movement into the Stage of Illumination.

Let John the Serene share this with all of you. John the Serene was the Bishop of Naples in either the 5th or 6th Century.

Love the Lord and walk in his ways

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? How great was that servant who knew how he was given light, whence it came, and what sort of man he was when he was favoured by that light. The light he saw was not that which fades at dusk, but the light which no eye has seen. Souls brightened by this light do not fall into sin or stumble on vice.

  Our Lord said: Walk while you have the light in you. What other light did he mean but himself? For it was he who said: I came as a light into the world, so that those who have eyes may not see and the blind may receive the light. The Lord then is our light, the sun of justice and righteousness, who has shone on his Catholic Church spread throughout the world. The prophet spoke as a figure of the Church when he cried: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

  The spiritual man who has been thus illumined does not limp or leave the path, but bears all things. Glimpsing our true country from afar, he puts up with adversities; he is not saddened by the things of time, but finds his strength in God. He lowers his pride and endures, possessing patience through humility. That true light which enlightens every man who comes into the world bestows itself on those who reverence it, shining where it wills, on whom it wills, and revealing itself according to the will of God the Son.

  When this light begins to shine upon the man who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, in the darkness of evil and the shadow of sin, he is shocked, he calls himself to account, repents of his misdeeds in shame, and says: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Great is this salvation, my brethren, which fears neither sickness nor lethargy and disregards pain. We should then in the fullest sense not only with our voice but with our very soul cry out, The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? If he enlightens and saves me, whom shall I fear? Even though the dark shadows of evil suggestions crowd about, The Lord is my light. They can approach, but cannot prevail; they can lay siege to our heart, but cannot conquer it. Though the blindness of concupiscence assails us, again we say: The Lord is my light.For he is our strength; he gives himself to us and we give ourselves to him. Hasten to this physician while you can, or you may not be able to find him when you want him.john