Aristotle begins "Nature makes nothing in vain"...

                   St. Thomas Aquinas concludes:                                  

"and Grace perfects nature." 

 

EVERY life ... is precious

Without Christ there is no hope

There is no foundation.  All is opinion.  Life has no true meaning. Suffering has no meaning.  Everyone becomes dispensable to the ideology of the day and the lust for power.  Reason falls and chaos reigns.  Children can be murdered in their mother's wombs if they are inconvenient.  The elderly can be lethally injected because they have lost their utility.  The lame can be gassed because they have no "quality of life".   No life is sacred and inviolable. The Satanist's slogan "do as thou wilt" provokes human action to fleeting pleasures and a degrading selfishness that will never satisfy.  The Mob and guillotine rule.  Despair overcomes.  This is Atheism.  This is Naturalism.  This is 1789. This is Liberalism.

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light" ... to deny Christ is to call Him a fraud.  

To deny Christ, one must explain why the disciples, hard working simple men, dropped their nets to follow a madman,

To deny Christ one must explain why these first Apostles went to their martyrdoms after first despairing of His crucifixion and returning to their former way of life,  

To deny Christ, one must explain Paul,

To deny Christ, one must explain why for the first three centuries A.D., thousands happily bore a death sentence to be baptised into this faith,  

To deny Christ, one must explain a woman in the first century who would rather be burned alive as a human torch along a Roman road than even give the impression of denying her faith,

To deny Christ, one must explain the courage of little children standing before Emperors, refusing to burn incense to Roman gods, and as a result, getting ripped apart by wild beasts in the circus,  

To deny Christ, one must explain the courage of the Martyrs for the last 2,000 years undergoing some of the most horrific deaths,  

To deny Christ, one must explain the conversion of Constantine,

To deny Christ, one must explain how this faith subdued nations,

To deny Christ, one must explain the saints,

To deny Christ, one must explain the victory at Lepanto,

To deny Christ, one must explain why many of the greatest minds in history professed and defended this faith (eg. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine,  Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, etc, etc,.),

To deny Christ, one must explain Sir Thomas More and John Fisher going to the block rather than take the Oath of Succession of Henry VIII,

To deny Christ, one must explain Englishman and ladies going to Tyburn to be drawn and quartered for harboring priests in their homes so that they could have the true sacraments,

To deny Christ, one must explain how the Catholic Church could have possibly survived 2,000 years amidst persecution from without and within,

To deny Christ, one must explain Joan of Arc,

To deny Christ, one must explain Christendom and the magnificent development of Western Civilization, 

To deny Christ, one must explain the splendor of a gothic Cathedral and the motivations for building it, 

To deny Christ, one must explain the courage of the Vendee during the bloody Reign of Terror in France,

To deny Christ, one must explain 2,000 years worth of Miracles that no one, no science, has yet explained (eg. Eucharistic Miracles, the Tilma of Juan Diego, thousands of miraculous healings throughout the ages, Lourdes, Fatima, Padre Pio etc., etc.),

To deny Christ, one must explain Therese of Liseux,

To deny Christ, one must explain away the thousands of converts in the last couple of centuries alone, many who started as Christ's and the Church's mortal enemies (e.g. the militant atheist Jew, Ratisbonne), 

To deny Christ one must explain why it is the Christian faith and in particular the Catholic Church is the insistent target of persecution, and ridicule.  Christianity is the only creed incessantly mocked and vilified by the "tolerant liberal", why?  

To deny Christ, one must explain the Cristeros and Jose Sanchez,

This list could go on nearly forever...

In the end, to deny Christ, is to deny or at least suspend reason, for if one applies the mind to the study of these truths, the evidence of their veracity cannot be denied.

"Blessed are they who have believed and have not seen"

William Kurelek - The power of bad influence

Not long ago in a galaxy near, near to here...

Inspiration for a Homestead Saturday workday

I found this too beautiful not to put up on the blog this morning.   True living is in the simple and the God given.  Spring in Azerbaijan and the making of Lilac Syrup...

I regret ... not truly grasping sooner the gift and potential that is our home and land

I am thankful ... I finally have

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed," said Francis Bacon.  As nature is the work of infinite intelligence; and as men of the highest human genius can give us only a work of finite intelligence it follows that a return from human artificiality to the divine simplicity of nature is alone Progress.

Unfortunately the speed-and-noise-stunned world refuses "to go back" to such simplicity--although it is not a going back but a going on; and although Jesus of Nazareth is the only Redeemer of a lost world.

Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P. 

The long awaited pastured poultry electric fence

Josh has waited for this one for at least a good five years when he starter watching Justin Rhodes and his chicken adventures as a youngster.  I turned it over to him to get it all setup.  The significance for the family homestead?  It allows us to frequently move the chickens around which 1) is better for their health as it keeps fresh what lives under their feet  2) puts them to work tilling garden spaces and digging up grubs and 3) helps with soil fertility.  We will learn this system and fine tune as we go.  We also need some sort of portable "chick-shaw" so that we keep the chickens in place at night versus pied-pipering them to and from the main coop at dawn and dusk.  Though, I must admit, the pied-pipering is humourous to watch.

Praying for my mom and dad.  Dad is sick in the hospital with Covid-1984 and Mom is sick at home with the same.

Pius V, True Reformer, Defender of Europe and Christendom, Dominican

Pope St. Pius V (1504-1572)

Today we honor a great and holy pope.  One who quite literally preserved Christendom from a multi-pronged attack in the sixteenth century.  We remember Trent.  We remember Lepanto (as we celebrate that great victory on October 7th).  We hold to the Mass of All Times.  Few could express the significance of this papacy better than the nineteenth century Benedictine abbot Dom Gueranger:

The whole life of Pius V was a combat. His pontificate fell during those troubled times when Protestantism was leading whole countries into apostasy. Italy was not a prey that could be taken by violence: artifice was therefore used, in order to undermine the Apostolic See and thus develop the whole Christian world in the darkness of heresy. Pius defended the Peninsula with untiring devotedness from the danger that threatened her. Even before he was raised to the Papal Throne he frequently exposed his life by his zeal in opposing the preaching of false doctrines. Like Peter the Martyr, he braved every danger and was the dread of the emissaries of heresy. When seated on the Chair of Peter, he kept the innovators in check by fear, roused the sovereigns of Italy to energy and by measures of moderate severity drove back beyond the Alps the torrent that would have swept Christianity from Europe had not the Southern States thus opposed it. From that time forward, Protestantism has never made any further progress: it has been wearing itself out by doctrinal anarchy. We repeat it: this heresy would have laid all Europe waste, had it not been for the vigilance of the pastor who animated the defenders of truth to resist it where it already existed, and who set himself as a wall of brass against its invasion in the country where he himself was the master.

Another enemy, taking advantage of the confusion caused in the West by Protestantism, organized an expedition against Europe. Italy was to be its first prey. The Ottoman fleet started from the Bosphorus. This again would have meant the ruin of Christendom but for the energy of the Roman Pontiff, our Saint. He gave the alarm, and called the Christian Princes to arms. Germany and France, torn by domestic factions that had been caused by heresy, turned a deaf ear to the call. Spain alone, together with Venice and the little Papal fleet, answered the summons of the Pontiff. The Cross and Crescent were soon face to face in the Gulf of Lepanto. The prayers of Pius V decided the victory in favour of the Christians, whose forces were much inferior to those of the Turks. We shall return to this important event when we come to the Feast of the Rosary in October. But we cannot omit to mention to-day the prediction uttered by the holy Pope, on the evening of the great day of October 7, 1571. The battle between the Christian and Turkish fleets lasted from six o'clock in the morning till late in the afternoon. Towards evening, the Pontiff suddenly looked up towards heaven, and gazed upon it in silence for a few seconds. Then turning to his attendants, he exclaimed: ' Let us give thanks to God! The Christians have gained the victory!' The news soon arrived at Rome; and thus, Europe once more owed her salvation to a Pope! The defeat at Lepanto was a blow from which the Ottoman Empire has never recovered: its fall dates from that glorious day.

The zeal of this holy Pope for the reformation of Christian morals, his establishment of the observance of the laws of discipline prescribed by the Council of Trent and his publication of the new Breviary and Missal have made his six years' pontificate to be one of the richest periods of the Church’s history. Protestants themselves have frequently expressed their admiration of this vigorous opponent of the so-called Reformation.

‘I am surprised,’ said Bacon, ‘that the Church of Rome has not yet canonized this great man.’ Pius V did not receive this honour till about a hundred and thirty years after his death; so impartial is the Church, when she has to adjudicate this highest of earthly honours even to her most revered Pastors!

Cabbages and Child-rearing

Planting season really creeps up on us quickly in our climate.  We go from snow to spring weather in a day practically.  Our Cabbage Starts, seeded just a few weeks ago, are out hardening off already.   I am hoping to get them in the ground later this week, weather permitting as always.   

As I was thinking about these robust looking starts this morning, it reminded me how often Our Lord with good reason used agrarian images in His parables.  Since we all participate in the natural order, whether plants, animals, or human beings, we are all subject to its laws, its order, and its disorder as a result of the Fall of our First Parents.   

Yesterday I was cleaning off the rows where these cabbages are to fight with fickle weather and natural enemies to attain their final end -- salads, ferments, coleslaw, and cabbage rolls!   There is plenty of mole activity that will threaten the root systems and stability of these plants if the moles cannot be controlled.  So too, there were plenty of beetles last year whose offspring in the soil will chew on the roots of these vigorous youngsters this year if not controlled by the Milky Spore that I applied last week.   Then there are the weeds that, surer than an April snow in the North Country, will grow, begin to choke and steal away the soil nutrients for themselves if the gardener gets lazy.

Similarly goes our child-rearing, yes?  Even if we managed to do well, despite our own faults and by the grace of God, to give our children strong roots systems -- root systems that are well established in the reality and fertility of natural and divine law, how they must fight to grow and thrive aright once out of the family garden!  Pests (and often very alluring ones) will come from within and without who want to eat away those roots, to obfuscate the sun, to drain them of life and vitality.  How well will each fight to survive and hold to what is true?  Will they even choose to fight at all?

Setting plants out and "setting children out" are two very different things of course.  But they produce similar anxiety (at least in me) distinguished mostly by gravity and scale -- I am not as anxious losing a cabbage as I am losing a child!  I can continue to work the soil if my cabbage transplants are attacked by weeds and natural predators. I do not have that analogous capability with grown children.  But here is the rub: the gardener parent instinct never leaves whether they are young or grown.  When I see them wilting, in danger, malnourished, and I cannot amend or I do not know how best to amend or an attempted amendment turns out to be wrong and makes things worse or it simply has no effect,  sometimes I feel powerless, paralyzed -- even rejected.  Sometimes I am even tempted toward despair.  It is a supreme test of faith.  And it is an exercise in hope.