The Miraculous St. Joseph Staircase in Santa Fe

Today is the mid-point of Lent!

Battle on Christian soldiers!

Looking forward, dearly beloved brethren, to the hope of the Passion and Resurrection of the Son of God, as also to the manifestation of the glory of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: resume your strength and courage. Be not daunted by the labour you have to go through, but remember the solemnity of the holy Pasch, for which you are so ardently longing. One half of holy Lent is over: you have gone through the difficulties of the past, why should you not be courageous about the future fast? Jesus who deigned to suffer fatigue for our sake, will give strength to them that are fatigued. He that granted us to begin the past, will enable us to complete the future. Children! He will be with us to assist us, who wishes us to hope for the glory of His Passion. Amen.  
(from the Mozarabic Liturgy)

Crane School of Music Informance

Our National Strings Project kids showing off their mid-semester progress at the March Informance.  NSP in the North Country is primarily made up of homeschoolers.  According to their website: ​The National String Project Consortium (NSPC) is a coalition of String Project sites based at colleges and universities across the United States. The NSPC is dedicated to increasing the number of children playing stringed instruments and addressing the critical shortage of string teachers in the US.

It is a terrific program and a great deal for parents.

Catch-up: 2017 25th Anniversary, Renewing our Marriage Vows

#7, Joshua, serves Fr. Stephen Soos, FSSPX

When my beautiful bride and I were courting back in the college days, I can't help but recall the time when a street person knocked on the window of our car while we were sitting at a train station in NJ.  With a big smile on his face this complete stranger proclaimed that we were going to "have lots of babies!".   This out-of-the-blue statement from a complete stranger seemed rather crazy and humorous at the time -- and maybe a little embarrassing.  While I cannot say for sure that the supernatural was directly involved in that event, looking back it could be interpreted as a signal grace or foreshadowing of some sort, perhaps one of the first of many sign posts that would begin to guide us through the years.

Where we are now would be totally unimaginable to me 25+ years ago.  For some mysterious reason, Christ works year-by-year in us, through us, and sadly too often despite us.  There is still much work to be done.  May God continue to illumine our path.

With our #2, Meghan

Unless the Lord build the house: they labour in vain who build it...  As arrows in the hand of the mighty: so the children of them that have been shaken.  Blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them: he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate. 

(Psalm 126)

Feast of the Annunciation

Those, therefore, who allege that He took nothing from the Virgin do greatly err, since, in order that they may cast away the inheritance of the flesh, they also reject the analogy between Him and Adam.... Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.  

-St. Iranaeus (115 AD)

Catch up: Sophia's Confirmation 2018

The Razing of Western Civilization

Following these few paragraphs is just one of many daily headlines of similar character.  The social revolutionaries and global government elites are pushing hard on the gas peddle for sure with little in the way of organized resistance to stop them.  The conditioning of our youth over the last several decades in secular atheism, self indulgence and media-driven shallow thinking has created fertile ground for the rise of some truly frightening, evil, figures in global politics.

Many youth of today will gladly vote themselves into an equality of squalor and a government controlled prison for the promise of some free treats from the oligarch -- and to feel like they are part of the club.  This is where the sting of the current crisis in the Church is so sorely felt, for a greater part of her human element has deprived our young people of a supernatural vision and guiding purpose, leaving them prey to any huckster peddling green Utopian visions and a natural path to Nirvana.

Christ IS the only answer.  The only thing that will be achieved if He is thrown aside will be hell on earth, a fact that history has repeatedly borne out for all who have eyes to see.  Some of these very same youth may, by God's grace, in time awaken and see that they have been duped -- hopefully before it is too late.  Those who still have the faith should pray and fast hard for this, particularly in this season of Lent.

Just in from Canada:

A crucifix that has hung on the wall of Montreal’s City Hall since 1937, reminding city officials to let God guide their decisions, will be taken down for a renovation project, never to be put back, local sources have reported. 

City councilor Laurence Lavigne-Lalonde made the announcement at an executive council meeting this week. 

“The crucifix was installed during an era that was completely different than the one we live in today,” Lavigne-Lalonde told the council, according to CTV News Montreal. 

“We now live in a society that has evolved and is represented by democratic institutions that must be secular, neutral and open to all citizens,” Lavigne-Lalonde added.

Just what have we "evolved" to I wonder?   In National Socialist fashion we, even against all scientific evidence to the contrary, declare unborn children at all stages of gestation to be something less than (or even other than!) human and undeserving of rights, ripping them literally limb-from-limb from their mother's wombs by the tens of thousands annually.  Naturally following, the elderly, infirm, and sick of all ages are now targeted for a similar end in the name of compassion.

We are now "open to all citizens"... except those we find embarrassing or inconvenient.  For those, our evolved compassion will help set them free.  We are really not far at all from Hitler in principle, nor Joseph Stalin nor Mao.   When I was a younger man, I could not fathom how the German people could ever have voted Hitler into office.   Now I am beginning to see and understand.    It is happening again, though the violence so far is different -- conducted more discreetly in clinics and comfortable hospital rooms all over the world.   Few lift a finger let alone raise a voice.   Those that do are not heard.

Just in from the UK:

Another woman in Britain is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence – because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender. 

So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a journalist over words that she published.

Caroline Farrow, 44, is the subject of an investigation by Surrey Police over tweets she sent referring to the adult child of Susie Green, head of Mermaids, a charity concerned with transgender children.  Farrow says the investigation arises because she ‘misgendered’ the child, who was born male but now identifies as female.

The philosopher Etienne Gilson in an address given in 1948 titled "The Terrors of the Year 2000" offers some sobering and prophetic insight:

The entire human order totters on its base.  Antichrist is still the only one who knows this, the only one who foresees the appalling cataclysm of the "reversal of values" which is in the making, for if the totality of the human past depended on the certitude that God exists, the totality of the future must needs depend on the contrary certitude, that God does not exist.
... 

Have we understood at last?  That is not certain, because the announcement of a cataclysm of such magnitude ordinarily leaves but a single escape: to disbelieve it, and in order not to believe it, to refuse to understand it.  If Nietzsche speaks truly, it is the very foundations of human life which are to be overthrown... 

"He who would be creator, both in good and evil, must first of all know how to destroy and wreck values" [Nietzsche writes].  They are in fact, being wrecked around us, and under our feet, everywhere.  We have stopped counting the unheard of theories thrown at us under names as various as their methods of thought, each the harbinger of a new truth which it promises to create shortly, joyously busy preparing the brave new world of tomorrow by first annihilating the world of today.... 

Since men have refused to serve God, there is no longer an arbiter between them and the State which dominates them.  It is no longer God, but the State which judges them.  But who, then, will judge the state?

Art Class Cardinals

The children draw one of my favorite birds!  Beautiful job!

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons

With humble thanks to St. Joseph for all that he has done and continues to do for this little Catholic family, happy Feast of St. Joseph!

Our Last First Communion

I am catching up after a multi-year hiatus.   More to follow, but I will begin with Emilia's First Holy Communion last year -- it is almost unimaginable to me that we have reached the last of our First Holy Communion's for our children.   It will now be our grandchildren.   Emilia was also chosen to crown Our Blessed Mother at last year's May Crowning.

The Dragon's Mist

The Dragon's blistering mist

seethes through every crack,

fire upon fire

creeps on lighted track.

Sweet discord to the senses,

fanning heart's unrest,

twists us from the Holy Wood

and from our Savior's breast.

Michael O'Brien on Literature and Culture

Wonderful insight on literature and its transformative effect (for good or ill) on mind, soul, and culture from one of my favorite modern authors.