20 November 2024
Gaslighting: How Even the Sane Can Question their Reality...
And Catholics are being gaslighted by our sociopathic "shepherds".
A Comment Received on "Italian Judge Upholds Blasphemy Case Against Archbishop, Painter of Sacrilegious Exhibit"
From Facebook on this post:
This case well illustrates the hypocrisy that exists in the Church today. If someone somewhere advocates for the old mass, the result is immediate censure. Yet the most extreme blasphemies that may be said and depicted are met with silence or tacit approval. One cannot view these paintings and fail to see the message that sexual experimentation is part of the faith. Certainly many bishops have engaged in carnal excess - that is simply human nature and history, and the remedy for prelate and layman is the same. But that a bishop would have the temerity to lie about it - to go so far as to defend it as moral - - is truly lamentable. It reflects a profound loss of mission as well as a contempt for Christian decency that is shameful. It is telling that a prosecutor, and not the bishop's brothers in the episcopacy, brings the denunciation. It rings a bell that is painful to hear.The Original Sin of Transhumanism: The Desire to Be Like God
"Transhumanism is a product of liberalism—... the idea that an individual can determine what is moral and what is true as if these were subjective and not objective categories."
From CrisisBy Matija Štahan
Transhumanism is a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a science or an ideology or a philosophy or a secular religion. It is the spirit that pervades our time and that spirit is anti-Christian.
With the first successful implementation of Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface, Neuralink, at the beginning of the year, perhaps we will one day consider that the era of transhumanism was officially begun in 2024. What is transhumanism, though? It is a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to science. It’s not just an ideology either. Nor is it a philosophy or even (only) a hidden secular religion. Transhumanism is all that and more—it is the spirit that pervades numerous phenomena of our time. As I will try to demonstrate, that spirit is anti-Christian.
Let’s start with the etymology. One of the paradoxes of our era is that we define ourselves less by nouns—let’s leave pronouns aside for now—and more by their prefixes. A decade or two ago, the prefix post was dominant; in the last ten years, it was replaced by the prefix trans. Post meant recognizing the fact that, as a civilization, we are no longer what we once were; instead, we are now postmodern, post-Christian, post-metaphysics, post-secular, post-truth, and so on. Trans, however, could be interpreted as an attempt to actively manage what we will become. In transhumanism, humanism is less important than trans because it is not the foundation that matters but constant change. That is the core of the current brand of progressivism.
Although today there are concepts such as transage, transrace, and transgender, the term transhumanism surpasses them by its importance. So, what is the definition of transhumanism? I think that it could most succinctly be: an attempt at human self-transcendence through technology. And what is its goal? In my interpretation: first to dehumanize a human being, and then to deify him. How is this achieved? In today’s context, through three main ideas: transcending gender with the help of technology (here transgenderism morphs into transhumanism), transforming man from organic to cyborg being, and trying to achieve earthly immortality.
If we want to understand transhumanism from a Christian perspective, there are a few points that we need to keep in mind.
First, transhumanism is not so new an idea—or, better, it is new only in its technological aspect. Different philosophers of modernity advocated some kind of proto-transhumanism in one way or another, regardless of their differences of opinion.
For example, Descartes radically separated the spirit from the body. Nietzsche conceived a “superman” or “Übermensch” driven by the will to power. Sartre established that “existence precedes essence,” which is why man creates his own essence (a particularistic echo of his universalistic thought is offered by Simone de Beauvoir, claiming that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”—which acquires a somewhat dark undertone within the framework of transgender ideology), while Foucault understood man as a historically given concept that will disappear over time.
Perhaps the most apt phrase that captures the essence of transhumanism is that offered by Yuval Noah Harari: homo deus. Harari—although as a thinker considerably weaker than the aforementioned—argues that the man of the future will be as different from the man of today as homo sapiens is from the homo erectus, developing abilities that we would consider divine from today’s perspective. (Although, it should be said that, in Harari’s view, the divine powers are more like the Greek gods than the Abrahamic vision of God; but that is of secondary importance in this analysis.)
Second, transhumanism should be distinguished from the worship of technology as a golden calf. An example of this is the now-defunct “church” Way of the Future, which was started by former Google employee Anthony Levandowski. Or, after all, Google founder Larry Page’s dream of creating a “digital god” as an entity linked to the idea of a superior artificial intelligence that—like God—knows us better than we know ourselves, as well as to the idea of the omniscient “internet of things” or the “singularity” as a moment in to which the power of artificial intelligence irreversibly surpasses human intellect, thus becoming godlike.
Transhumanism is not that; it is more dangerous because it does not simply imply the worship of technology as a deity but the conception of man united with technology as a deity. (Harari’s homo deus is a religious concept, even if Harari is not aware of it.)
Third, in the political sense, transhumanism is a product of liberalism—extreme self-love, egoism, and hedonism, but also in the idea that an individual can determine what is moral and what is true as if these were subjective and not objective categories. However, the idea of the “new man” that lies at the foundation of transhumanism is not only characteristic of liberalism but of all political projects of modernity, such as National Socialism (an adaptation of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”) or Communism (the “new Soviet man”).
In this context, the political perspectives of transhumanism—mostly in the part that concerns transgenderism, at least for now—acquire the threatening outlines of new totalitarianism. Broadly speaking, the idea of the “new man” in the West is an inversion and perversion of the new man—or person, or creature—in Christ, as articulated by St. Paul (2 Corinthians 5:17). The problem, of course, is that the transhumanist “new man” is a parasite on the body of Christianity, desacralizing the element of salvation and turning it into a path to destruction.
It could also be said that it turns Christianity upside down, thus making itself similar to the pre-Christian paganisms. After all, what is paganism than relativization of the man-God relationship by making God perceived as too manlike and man perceived as too godlike? Christianity turns the pagan logic upside down by making a clear distinction between God and man and then transcending that distinction with Jesus of Nazareth. Homo deus brings us back to the pagan logic again.
This brings us to the final and most important point: the oldest polemic against transhumanism is already contained in the Bible.
The concept of homo deus immediately evokes several biblical associations. The first is the Garden of Eden, the second is the appearance of Jesus Christ, and the third is the apocalypse. Let’s start from the Book of Genesis: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Because man commits original sin by listening to the serpent, who tells him that he can become “like God” (Genesis 3:5), God takes away man’s capacity of reaching earthly immortality (Genesis 3:22). By the anthropology derived from the Bible, man is not immortal in the earthly domain; he exists only as a male or female, and—of course—is not God. It is God who creates man and determines the limits of his nature. Man is not a self-builder who can override these fundamental limitations.
Trying to transcend the limitations that God imposes on His beings is a Luciferian trait. In the Book of Genesis, it is the serpent—defined in the Book of Revelation as “the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9)—who leads man to commit original sin. And all the elements of the original sin can be boiled down to trying to surpass the God-given limits of human beings. And every human characteristic that is determined in the Book of Genesis—be it the difference of the sexes, mortality, or being made “in the image of God” but not being “like God”—are the key limits that transhumanism seeks to overcome.
After the Bible offers us a distinction between what man is and what he is not—and explicitly names the advocate of the transformation of man into what he is not as the devil—the polemic of the biblical authors with transhumanism does not end but continues through the presentation of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ.
All the implications of the phrase homo deus were recognized a hundred years ago by Nikolai Berdyaev, writing in his work The New Middle Ages that “against the God-man is not a man(…), but a man-god, a man who has placed himself in the place of God.” Of course, Berdyaev’s point is derived from the warning uttered by St. Paul about “the man of lawlessness” who “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).
Here, then, is the crux of the matter. According to the Bible, Jesus Christ is the only true Homo Deus, and every other “homo deus” is not a God-man but could more precisely be described as a “man-god,” or—in biblical terms—Antichrist. Because, after all, who is the one that can determine the limits of his own nature, of his own existence; who can determine what is true and what is false by the sheer power of his will—who can determine and proclaim what is good and what is evil? Only God can do that. When man tries to do it, he is doing Antichrist work.
All this does not mean that the Antichrist will be transhuman in the banal sense of the word—remember that St. John writes about “many antichrists” (1 John 2:18), in the plural —but it means that transhumanism as seen by Harari and many others is one of the historical manifestations of the Antichrist’s logic. It also does not mean that we can say that at this moment we are on the threshold of the end times because the “day and hour” of the end of the world are not known (Matthew 25:13), but it means that it is grounded in the Bible to believe that the appearance of Antichrist from the Book of Revelation will be substantially connected to the impulse that lies at the foundation of transhumanism—that is, the attempt to transcend one’s humanity in order to reach godliness.
When we think about transhumanism today, we are facing again the temptation that the serpent put Adam and Eve through. It’s just that the serpent appears in different forms today. So, when existentialist philosophy wants to present man as a supreme self-builder of his own nature, or when gender theory promotes “non-binary” and the multiplicity of “gender identities,” or when Silicon Valley wants to turn a man into an omnipotent cyborg or annul aging or defeat death, they collectively perform the function that the serpent performed in the Book of Genesis. In today’s vocabulary, they entice humankind by telling us: you will become homo deus.
Are we going to give the wrong answer again?
Why Central Europe Must Unite
Mr Coulombe makes an impassioned plea for the Blessed Emperor Karl's dream of a federated Central European State. Let it be under his namesake & Grandson, Karl!
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From The European Conservative
By Charles Coulombe, KC*SS, STM
The mutual resentments of the past two centuries must be dropped if these countries are to retain their own identities.
There, in Kakania, that state since vanished that no one understood, in many ways an exemplary state, though unappreciated, there was a tempo too, but not too much tempo. Whenever one thought of that country from someplace abroad, the memory that hovered before one’s eyes was of white, wide, prosperous-looking roads dating from the era of foot marches and mail coaches, roads that crisscrossed the country in every direction like rivers of order, like ribbons of bright military twill, the paper-white arm of the administration holding all the provinces in its embrace. And what provinces they were! Glaciers and sea, Karst limestone and Bohemian fields of grain, nights on the Adriatic chirping with restless cicadas, and Slovakian villages where the smoke rose from chimneys as from upturned nostrils while the village cowered between two small hills as if the earth had parted its lips to warm its child between them.
–Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities.
That Europe as a whole is in a bad way, from Ireland to the Urals (or San Francisco to Vladivostok, in Otto von Habsburg’s memorable phrase) will be readily apparent to the vast majority of the readers of these pages. The European Union, three of whose founders (Adenauer, de Gasperi, and Schuman) were or are candidates for beatification by the Catholic Church, has become something of a nightmare of secularising woke oppression—though to be fair, in this it reflects most of the governments of Western Europe, including His Majesty’s new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer. Integral to these governments’ policies are the repression of the natives’ freedom of speech and a permissiveness towards the actions of increasingly restive foreign immigrants. Not surprisingly, many of those whom the ruling establishments label ‘far right’ have little use for the EU. Given what the establishment embraces in terms of evil conduct, it is very easy to understand this feeling.
Yet, it must be admitted that the original vision of the founders remains compelling, especially in the face of both the ongoing moral degradation espoused by the Americano-European elites, and also the threat emanating from Russia. Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi’s 1949 speech, given when he accepted the Karlspreis in Aachen, contains a memorable paragraph, typical of the notions in vogue at the time:
The ‘Union Charlemagne’ should […] be established not as an economical union but as a six-state confederacy: Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg. We are dealing with no less than the renewal of the Carolingian Empire on a democratic, federal and social basis. […] Therefore I appeal to all those of good will to bring a movement to life for the total reconciliation between the Germans and the French through the renewal of the Empire of Charlemagne as a confederacy of free nations. Today this Charlemagne movement should stem from Aachen in the memory of that German–French emperor, to transform Europe from a battlefield of recurring world wars to a peaceful and blooming worldly empire of free people!
Heady stuff, if utterly irrelevant in the Brussels of to-day. Yet Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-European Union soldiers on, thanks to the life breathed into it by the late Otto von Habsburg, the son of the last Austrian Emperor to date. As their Austrian branch tells us:
For us, Europe is not just a geographical term that covers the area between the Atlantic and the Urals. Due to their centuries-long common fate, the peoples of our continent form a spiritual unity, which must now finally be followed by politics, so that Europe can exist in peace and freedom as an equal partner of the great powers. The soul of this continent is Christianity. Anyone who removes it from political action turns Europe into a soulless body, a fragile construction that is exposed to all influences and currents of the zeitgeist. Austria, which has already been a European factor of order once in history, can show the way how a community of peoples could master the common problems of the present and future in brotherly coexistence. For the old nation states are only capable of managing the permanent crisis.
This vision, adopted by Archduke Otto after the Second World War, appeared to end any hope for a Habsburg Monarchical restoration in the then-primarily Soviet-occupied Central Europe. At the same time, it seemed to have a tangible base in the six nations Coudenhove-Kalergi pointed out in his speech. Dominated by Christian Democrats at a time when both of those labels were truly accurate, and when the Catholic Church’s hierarchy still believed in specifically Christian politics, it seemed like an achievable vision.
To-day, with the partial exception of Italy, those countries and their establishment parties have rushed to the forefront of jettisoning anything that might be recognised as either “Christian” or “democratic.” This is particularly true of the remaining “Christian Democratic” parties, as shown by their expulsion of Hungary’s Fidesz party from the European People’s Party. Needless to say, anything remotely resembling the vision of the EU’s founders, Coudenhove-Kalergi, or the Archduke Otto has absolutely no chance with the Eurocrats in Brussels. At first look, that vision seems as unachievable as anything else.
But not necessarily. Orban’s Hungary, constantly harassed by the Eurocracy as it is, offers refuge to the Otto von Habsburg Foundation. Partly funded by Prime Minister Orban’s own office and by the Bethlen Gabor Fund, the Foundation obviously operates within the parameters of Orban’s approval. According to its website, “The Foundation’s primary purpose is to preserve the tangible and intangible heritage of Otto von Habsburg in a dignified manner, arrange it into a single collection, process it and provide access to it. The Foundation also aims to support the creation of a future-oriented European ideology based on the work of Otto von Habsburg.”
This may be a revelation, since Orban and his allies in Hungary are consistently portrayed as being anti-European. The truth is a bit different. Back in 2019, when speaking about the persecution of Christians around the world, Orban declared:
The greatest mistake a European person can make hearing about the persecution of Christians is to say that this could never happen to him in his country. However, terror has struck Europe repeatedly, Europe’s Western countries have given the Islamic State many soldiers, and masses following radical Islam have come to Europe as part of illegal and uncontrolled migration flows. According to demographic forecasts, in the not very distant future there will be European countries where religious and cultural ratios will swiftly change. Europe can only be saved from this if it can find its way back to its Christian identity.
For Orban, Otto von Habsburg’s vision of a United Christian Europe is not a nice idea, but a political, economic, cultural, and indeed religious necessity, whose urgency is ever increasing as Islamic, Western elitist, and Russian pressure builds.
But how to get from here to there? It is necessary to go back before World War II to Otto’s original vision, which he had inherited from his father, Bl. Emperor-King Karl, who had in turn received it from his uncle, the murdered heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There is an irony here, in that for many Hungarians to-day, Franz Ferdinand is considered to be the acme of the anti-Magyar. He certainly was opposed to Hungary’s ruling Liberal Party and its dominant Tisza family (who ironically have given their name to one of the parties opposing Orban). Franz Ferdinand stood against the Liberals’ Magyarising policies toward the Slovak, Ruthenian, Romanian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Serb minorities. But he was close to the Hungarian Catholic Party led by the Zichy clan. During his time as an army officer in the Hungarian town of Gyor, he mingled with the townspeople, who called him “our Archduke.” It was there that he began to learn Hungarian under the tutelage of Fr. Josef Lanyi. The beloved Hungarian cleric would baptise Franz Ferdinand’s children; and, as a bishop, he would gain somewhat grisly fame for a prophetic dream he had of the murder at Sarajevo on the night before it happened.
Having dispensed with the myth of Franz Ferdinand’s anti-Magyarism, it remains to examine his ideas about the internal reorganisation of the Monarchy that he was to inherit. The Kingdom of Croatia was in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary, much as Hungary was in personal union with Austria. During the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, the minorities—including the Croats—had rallied to the dynasty and the Apostolic Crown against Kossuth’s republicans. Due to his defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph felt constrained to make some sort of compromise with the more restive element of the Hungarians. This Ausgleich, as it was called, made Hungary an equal party with the collection of territories called Austria; but the dominance of Hungary by the Tszas led to the aforementioned Magyarising policies. Initially, it occurred to Franz Ferdinand and his advisers to make Croatia an equal third party, and to add to it the Austrian territories inhabited by Croats, such as Dalmatia.
However, this “Trialism” not only left out the other minorities in Hungary, it also failed to deal with those in Austria. As the early years of the 20th century progressed, Franz Ferdinand gathered a group of scholars and politicians around him—a ‘kitchen cabinet,’ as we would say to-day. In 1906, this coterie, spearheaded by ethnic Romanian Aurel Popovici, came up with a proposal for a “United States of Greater Austria,” which would transform the Dual Monarchy into a multinational federation. It would, of course, be a federation of Monarchies under the Habsburg Emperor-King as constitutional head, albeit retaining enough power—in the pithy phrase of Franz Joseph—to “protect my people from their politicians.” These plans were sidelined when the man who sought to advance them was so brutally murdered.
But they were not lost. Franz Ferdinand had impressed upon his nephew Karl—who became heir to the throne after Sarajevo—the need for these reforms. Becoming Emperor in the midst of a war in which he had no part, Karl soon realised—as a valiant combat veteran himself—that ending the war must be his first priority. But his second priority was federating the Empire; and the Kings of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wuertemmberg even showed interest in joining such a postwar, Prussia-free union. Karl failed in both efforts; betrayed by those who should have stood by him, and literally driven from office by a vengeful Woodrow Wilson. But even in Swiss exile, as Zoltan Becsi’s recent volume, Forbidden Federalism relates, Karl continued to work to this end. He saw the federation as of a piece with his Restoration; had either of his attempts to retake the Hungarian throne in 1921 succeeded, it would doubtless have led to a regrouping of Central European States in equality but around a common centre. This was a goal he maintained to his death. On the very day of his passing, Karl declared that he was suffering “that my peoples might come back together.”
Unsurprisingly, those intentions remained the goal for his empress, Zita, when she acted as regent over a sort of phantom realm for young Otto. When he came of age in 1930, he took it up himself. During World War II, when he advised FDR, he initially persuaded the American president to see the utility of the dream which Winston Churchill came to share. But Roosevelt eventually became enamoured of Josef Stalin as an advisor, and the result was the Soviet-American dyarchy over Europe. As we saw, the impossibility of achieving his original goal under these circumstances, and the emergence of the six nation Christian Democratic EU appeared to be the best way to fulfil his familial quest. Communism fell in 1991, and Otto died in 2011.
To this writer, it ironically seems that the best way to achieve Otto’s later goal is to try to tackle his earlier one first—a Central European Federation. An FPO-dominated Austria joined with Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia would make an enormous amount of sense, and Orban is very sensibly reaching out to Slovakia, whose relationship with Hungary is a bit like Ireland’s with Great Britain. But the mutual hatreds and resentments of the past two centuries must be dropped if these countries are to retain their own identities into the future. None of the six must seem dominant over the others. Traditionally, there have been two glues which held these disparate folk together: Christianity—particularly Catholicism—and the House of Habsburg.
As different as these countries are from each other, the mark of Habsburg-era influence is easily visible in each. Rather than being a mere memory, this shared heritage will be most effective if it is living. With the Head of the House of Habsburg as sovereign over each of the six countries, in a modernised version of what has been sought for so long, there would be a power not to be trifled with in Central Europe. Their combined population at the moment is over 41 million, and their joint economies and armed forces could not be ignored, whether this Federation stayed in or withdrew from the EU as it now stands. In short, they could not be bullied. The role of the joint Monarch would be to maintain impartiality.
In a panel discussion commemorating the 750th anniversary of the Habsburgs coming to power, Otto’s son, Archduke Karl, was asked what he would do if he were reigning Emperor. The heir replied that it was a meaningless question, in terms of specifics—“I would not say something like, ‘There shall be no more dinners on Tuesday.’” But he then said, “I would try to defend my peoples from the demons,” comparing his statement to Franz Joseph’s 1905 definition of his role of protecting his people from their politicians. Whether Karl or another of his immediate family one day ascends the thrones of their fathers, such a role for the family would be essential in building trust amongst Central Europe’s peoples so that they might once again work together as once they did. Such a Federation would itself be a tangible thing around which the rest of Europe could in time coalesce, achieving the kind of Christian unity for which the founders of the EU, Coudenhove-Kalergi, the Archduke Otto—and yes, Viktor Orban—have all striven.
Bishop Challoner's Meditations ~ November 21st
ON THE PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
Quae est ista quare processit sicut sol, et formosa tamquam Jerusalem?
Consider first, that the church celebrates on this day the early dedication which the blessed Virgin made of herself to God, and to his eternal love and service; when, as we learn by pious tradition, she was presented by her holy parents, St. Joachim and St. Ann, in the temple of the Lord, and remained there in the company of other virgins, in an apartment allotted for that purpose in one of the courts of the temple. Learn, my soul, from this presentation of the blessed Virgin, the great advantages of early piety, and the happiness of dedicating one's self from one's childhood to divine love; as also the duty incumbent on all parents to present their children to God; to keep them at a distance from the contagion of bad company, and from all the false maxims and corrupt ways of a wicked world; and to train them up in the love and fear of God. The blessed Virgin was brought by divine inspiration to the house of God, where she lived remote from the noise and distractions of the world, because she was to be the house where the Son of God himself would be incarnate, and the living temple in which he would live. Christians, do you desire that your souls should be also the house of God, and the living temples of his glory? It is by withdrawing yourselves as much as possible from the tumult and confusion of the world: it is by continually presenting yourselves to God in his inward temple, by a spirit of recollection and mental prayer, that you are to attain to this happiness.
Consider 2ndly, in this presentation of the blessed Virgin - on the one hand, the voice of God calling her to his house, (in order to the disposing of her soul for the great things he was to work in her,) in the words of Psalm xliv., 'Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear, and forget thy people and thy father's house; and the king shall greatly desire thy beauty; for he is the Lord thy God, and him they shall adore;' - and, on the other hand, the devotion and fervour with which she corresponds with the call; the resolution with which she ascends the fifteen degrees or steps that lead to that temple, resolving to ascend in like manner by all the degrees of virtue, to the very top of perfection; the profound adoration with which, prostrating herself upon the ground, she adored his divine majesty at her first coming into the house, and the oblation she there makes of her whole self to his perpetual service. Learn, Christian souls, the like correspondence with divine grace, when it calls you to God; the like devotion, fervour, and resolution in his service; the like adoration and oblation of yourselves to him. In this sacred retreat the blessed Virgin gave the first example of a consecration of herself to God, by a vow of perpetual virginity, (as she was inspired to do by the Spirit of God,) desiring in all things to choose the better part, and to render the sacrifice she made of her soul and body more perfect, more firm, and secure, by the means of her vow. Learn of her a love of purity and chastity, and a resolution of preserving it with all the perfection that thy condition of life shall allow of, and for this end daily beg the assistance of her prayers.
Consider 3rdly, the exercise which the blessed Virgin followed in the temple, for she certainly was not idle there. As the Holy Ghost continually visited and solicited her with his heavenly inspirations and graces, so she, who never received the grace of God in vain, continually opened the door of her heart to these visits, and co-operated with these graces with all her strength, and by these means every day of her life, as she increased in age, so she grew in virtue, grace, charity, and sanctity. And as to the employment of her time whilst she was in the temple, her whole life there was spent in ascending or descending by the mystical ladder of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 12, which reacheth from the earth to heaven, and has God at the top of it. She ascended this ladder by employing a great part of her days in spiritual reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation, which are named by St. Bernard for the steps or degrees of this heavenly ladder. And she descended again by the humble exercises of working with her hands for the service of the temple, for the use of her companions, or for the benefit of the poor. Yet so, that even whilst her hands were employed at work, her heart was still with God by prayer and love. O how holy, O how happy, is this kind of ascending and descending by Jacob's ladder! Lord, give us grace to follow this great example, and to be always upon this ladder which conducts to heaven.
Conclude, O my soul, to imitate this presentation of the blessed Virgin by frequent oblations, at least, of thyself to God every day of thy life. Be cautious indeed how thou engagest thyself by vow, without taking good counsel, and mature deliberation, because of thy frailty; but as to making an offering of thy whole heart and soul to thy God, with all thy thoughts, words, and actions, it is what thou canst not do too often.
21 November, Antonio, Cardinal Bacci: Meditations For Each Day
1. The Evangelists describe how Jesus got into a boat one day along with His Apostles and set out across the lake of Genesareth. Suddenly a great storm arose, so furious that the waves covered the tiny vessel and threatened to submerge it. The Apostles were terrified and turned to Jesus, but He was asleep. They woke Him, crying out: “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He sat up and said to them: “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He rebuked the wind and the sea, and immediately all was calm again. His followers were astonished. “What manner of man is this,” they asked one another, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mt. 8:23-26; Mk. 4:36-40; Luke 8:22-25)
We also are often subjected to the tempests of life. Sometimes these storms are purely interior, as when our lower impulses threaten to overcome our good resolutions and to submerge our purity of soul. In these serious crises we should turn humbly and fervently to Jesus for help. Sometimes, perhaps, Jesus will seem to be asleep and deaf to our anguished entreaties. But it is never so. He simply wishes to test us, as He tested His Apostles on the lake of Genesareth.
We must persevere. We must tell Him that we do not wish to lose His grace, that we do not wish to fall into sin, but desire to go on loving Him. If our prayers are humble and insistent, we may rest assured that after our moment of trial Jesus Christ will speak to us. At the sound of His voice the tempest will be stilled and there will come a great calm. Then we shall experience the peace which only God can give.
2. At other times, however, the tempest will come from outside ourselves and will have a shattering effect on our spiritual life. It may be some insult which has seriously wounded us. There may be somebody near to us who has grown quite insufferable. Or perhaps suffering will come to us in the guise of illness, disgrace, or loss of our dear ones. We shall feel lonely and abandoned in the midst of the storm. To whom shall we have recourse in our hour of need? Shall we turn to our fellow-men? Perhaps there will be nobody able to understand us perfectly, or if there is somebody who sympathises with us he may be able to do nothing for us save to utter a few kind words.
3. Let us turn, therefore, to Jesus on the Cross, and to Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist.
The Crucifix will teach us how to suffer with resignation and with love. We shall look upon the Son of God made man in order to take on Himself our sins, to expiate them and to wash them away by His Precious Blood. Before this mystery of infinite love all our anguish and unrest will give way to a Christian acceptance of suffering.
If this is not enough, let us turn to Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist. Let us invite Him into our hearts to calm the tempest and to give us His divine grace, which will conquer every temptation and heal every wound.
Eastern Rite ~ Feasts of 21 November AM 7533
Today is the Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of our Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary.
According to Holy Tradition, the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple took place in the following manner. The parents of the Virgin Mary, Saints Joachim and Anna, praying for an end to their childlessness, vowed that if a child were born to them, they would dedicate it to the service of God.
When the Most Holy Virgin reached the age of three, the holy parents decided to fulfil their vow. They gathered together their relatives and acquaintances and dressed the All-Pure Virgin in Her finest clothes. Singing sacred songs and with lighted candles in their hands, virgins escorted Her to the Temple (Ps. 44/45:14-15). There the High Priest and several priests met the handmaiden of God. In the Temple, fifteen high steps led to the sanctuary, which only the priests and High Priest could enter. (Because they recited a Psalm on each step, Psalms 119/120-133/134 are called “Psalms of Ascent.”) The child Mary, so it seemed, could not make it up this stairway. But just as they placed Her on the first step, strengthened by the power of God, She quickly went up the remaining steps and ascended to the highest one. Then the High Priest, through inspiration from above, led the Most Holy Virgin into the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest entered once a year to offer a purifying sacrifice of blood. Therefore, all those present in the Temple were astonished at this most unusual occurrence.
After entrusting their child to the Heavenly Father, Joachim and Anna returned home. The All-Holy Virgin remained in the quarters for virgins near the Temple. According to the testimony of Holy Scripture (Exodus 38; 1 Kings 1: 28; Luke 2: 37), and also the historian Josephus Flavius, there were many living quarters around the Temple, in which those who were dedicated to the service of God dwelt.
The earthly life of the Most Holy Theotokos from Her infancy until She was taken up to Heaven is shrouded in deep mystery. Her life at the Jerusalem Temple was also a secret. “If anyone were to ask me,” said Saint Jerome, “how the Most Holy Virgin spent the time of Her youth, I would answer that that is known to God Himself and the Archangel Gabriel, Her constant guardian.”
But there are accounts in Church Tradition, that during the All-Pure Virgin’s stay at the Temple, She grew up in a community of pious virgins, diligently read the Holy Scripture, occupied Herself with handicrafts, prayed constantly, and grew in love for God. From ancient times, the Church has celebrated the Feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. Indications that the Feast was observed in the first centuries of Christianity are found in the traditions of Palestinian Christians, which say that the holy Empress Helen (May 21) built a church in honor of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century, also mentions this Feast. In the eighth century Saints Germanus and Tarasius, Patriarchs of Constantinople, delivered sermons on the Feast of the Entry.
The Feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple foretells God’s blessing for the human race, the preaching of salvation, the promise of the coming of Christ.
DISCOURSE ON THE FEAST OF THE ENTRY
OF OUR MOST PURE LADY THEOTOKOS
INTO THE HOLY OF HOLIES
by Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica
If a tree is known by its fruit, and a good tree bears good fruit (Mt. 7:17; Luke 6:44), then is not the Mother of Goodness Itself, She who bore the Eternal Beauty, incomparably more excellent than every good, whether in this world or the world above? Therefore, the coeternal and identical Image of goodness, Preeternal, transcending all being, He Who is the preexisting and good Word of the Father, moved by His unutterable love for mankind and compassion for us, put on our image, that He might reclaim for Himself our nature which had been dragged down to uttermost Hades, so as to renew this corrupted nature and raise it to the heights of Heaven. For this purpose, He had to assume a flesh that was both new and ours, that He might refashion us from out of ourselves. Now He finds a Handmaiden perfectly suited to these needs, the supplier of Her own unsullied nature, the Ever-Virgin now hymned by us, and Whose miraculous Entrance into the Temple, into the Holy of Holies, we now celebrate. God predestined Her before the ages for the salvation and reclaiming of our kind. She was chosen, not just from the crowd, but from the ranks of the chosen of all ages, renowned for piety and understanding, and for their God-pleasing words and deeds.
In the beginning, there was one who rose up against us: the author of evil, the serpent, who dragged us into the abyss. Many reasons impelled him to rise up against us, and there are many ways by which he enslaved our nature: envy, rivalry, hatred, injustice, treachery, slyness, etc. In addition to all this, he also has within him the power of bringing death, which he himself engendered, being the first to fall away from true life.
The author of evil was jealous of Adam when he saw him being led from earth to Heaven, from which he was justly cast down. Filled with envy, he pounced upon Adam with a terrible ferocity, and even wished to clothe him with the garb of death. Envy is not only the begetter of hatred, but also of murder, which this truly man-hating serpent brought about in us. For he wanted to be master over the earth-born for the ruin of that which was created in the image and likeness of God. Since he was not bold enough to make a face to face attack, he resorted to cunning and deceit. This truly terrible and malicious plotter pretended to be a friend and useful adviser by assuming the physical form of a serpent and stealthily took their position. By his God-opposing advice, he instils in man his own death-bearing power, like a venomous poison.
If Adam had been sufficiently strong to keep the divine commandment, then he would have shown himself the vanquisher of his enemy and withstood his deathly attack. But since he voluntarily gave in to sin, he was defeated and was made a sinner. Since he is the root of our race, he has produced us as death-bearing shoots. So, it was necessary for us, if he were to fight back against his defeat and to claim victory, to rid himself of the death-bearing venomous poison in his soul and body, and to absorb life, eternal and indestructible life.
It was necessary for us to have a new root for our race, a new Adam, not just one Who would be sinless and invincible, but one Who also would be able to forgive sins and set free from punishment those subject to it. And not only would He have life in Himself, but also the capacity to restore to life, so that He could grant to those who cleave to Him and are related to Him by race both life and the forgiveness of their sins, restoring to life not only those who came after Him, but also those who already had died before Him. Therefore, Saint Paul, that great trumpet of the Holy Spirit, exclaims, “the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).
Except for God, there is no one who is without sin, or life-creating, or able to remit sin. Therefore, the new Adam must be not only Man, but also God. He is at the same time life, wisdom, truth, love, and mercy, and every other good thing so that He might renew the old Adam and restore him to life through mercy, wisdom and righteousness. These are the opposites of the things which the author of evil used to bring about our ageing and death.
As the slayer of mankind raised himself against us with envy and hatred, so the Source of life was lifted up [on the Cross] because of His immeasurable goodness and love for mankind. He intensely desired the salvation of His creature, i.e., that His creature would be restored by Himself. In contrast to this, the author of evil wanted to bring God’s creature to ruin, and thereby put mankind under his own power, and tyrannically to afflict us. And just as he achieved the conquest and the fall of mankind by means of injustice and cunning, by deceit and his trickery, so has the Liberator brought about the defeat of the author of evil, and the restoration of His own creature with truth, justice and wisdom.
It was a deed of perfect justice that our nature, which was voluntarily enslaved and struck down, should again enter the struggle for victory and cast off its voluntary enslavement. Therefore, God deigned to receive our nature from us, hypostatically uniting with it in a marvellous way. But it was impossible to unite that Most High Nature, Whose purity is incomprehensible for human reason, to a sinful nature before it had been purified. Therefore, for the conception and birth of the Bestower of purity, a perfectly spotless and Most Pure Virgin was required.
Today we celebrate the memory of those things that contributed, if only once, to the Incarnation. He Who is God by nature, the Co-unoriginate and Coeternal Word and Son of the Transcendent Father, becomes the Son of Man, the Son of the Ever-Virgin. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8), immutable in His divinity and blameless in His humanity, He alone, as the Prophet Isaiah prophesied, “practiced no iniquity, nor deceit with His lips” (Is. 53: 9). He alone was not brought forth in iniquity, nor was He conceived in sin, in contrast to what the Prophet David says concerning himself and every other man (Ps. 50/51: 5). Even in what He assumes, He is perfectly pure and has no need to be cleansed Himself. But for our sake, He accepted purification, suffering, death and resurrection, that He might transmit them to us.
God is born of the spotless and Holy Virgin, or better to say, of the Most Pure and All-Holy Virgin. She is above every fleshly defilement, and even above every impure thought. Her conceiving resulted not from fleshly lust, but by the overshadowing of the Most Holy Spirit. Such desire being utterly alien to Her, it is through prayer and spiritual readiness that She declared to the angel: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto Me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38), and that She conceived and gave birth. So, in order to render the Virgin worthy of this sublime purpose, God marked this ever-virgin Daughter now praised by us, from before the ages, and from eternity, choosing Her from out of His elect.
Turn your attention then, to where this choice began. From the sons of Adam God chose the wondrous Seth, who showed himself a living heaven through his becoming behaviour, and through the beauty of his virtues. That is why he was chosen, and from whom the Virgin would blossom as the divinely fitting chariot of God. She was needed to give birth and to summon the earth-born to heavenly sonship. For this reason, also all the lineage of Seth were called “sons of God,” because from this lineage a son of man would be born the Son of God. The name Seth signifies a rising or resurrection, or more specifically, it signifies the Lord, Who promises and gives immortal life to all who believe in Him.
And how precisely exact is this parallel! Seth was born of Eve, as she herself said, in place of Abel, whom Cain killed through jealousy (Gen. 4:25); and Christ, the Son of the Virgin, was born for us in place of Adam, whom the author of evil also killed through jealousy. But Seth did not resurrect Abel, since he was only a type of the resurrection. But our Lord Jesus Christ resurrected Adam since He is the very Life and the Resurrection of the earth-born, for whose sake the descendants of Seth are granted divine adoption through hope, and are called the children of God. It was because of this hope that they were called sons of God, as is evident from the one who was first called so, the successor in the choice. This was Enos, the son of Seth, who as Moses wrote, first hoped to call on the Name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26).
In this manner, the choice of the future Mother of God, beginning with the very sons of Adam and proceeding through all the generations of time, through the Providence of God, passes to the Prophet-king David and the successors of his kingdom and lineage. When the chosen time had come, then from the house and posterity of David, Joachim and Anna are chosen by God. Though they were childless, they were by their virtuous life and good disposition the finest of all those descended from the line of David. In prayer, they besought God to deliver them from their childlessness and promised to dedicate their child to God from its infancy. By God Himself, the Mother of God was proclaimed and given to them as a child so that from such virtuous parents the all-virtuous child would be raised. So in this manner, chastity joined with prayer came to fruition by producing the Mother of virginity, giving birth in the flesh to Him Who was born of God the Father before the ages.
Now, when Righteous Joachim and Anna saw that they had been granted their wish and that the divine promise to them was realized in fact, then they on their part, as true lovers of God, hastened to fulfill their vow given to God as soon as the child had been weaned from milk. They have now led this truly sanctified child of God, now the Mother of God, this Virgin into the Temple of God. And She, being filled with Divine gifts even at such a tender age, ... She, rather than others, determined what was being done over Her. In Her manner She showed that She was not so much presented into the Temple, but that She Herself entered into the service of God of her own accord, as if she had wings, striving towards this sacred and divine love. She considered it desirable and fitting that she should enter into the Temple and dwell in the Holy of Holies.
Therefore, the High Priest, seeing that this child, more than anyone else, had divine grace within Her, wished to set Her within the Holy of Holies. He convinced everyone present to welcome this since God had advanced it and approved it. Through His angel, God assisted the Virgin and sent Her mystical food, with which She was strengthened in nature, while in body She was brought to maturity and was made purer and more exalted than the angels, having the Heavenly spirits as servants. She was led into the Holy of Holies not just once but was accepted by God to dwell there with Him during Her youth so that through Her, the Heavenly Abodes might be opened and given for an eternal habitation to those who believe in Her miraculous birth-giving.
So it is, and this is why She, from the beginning of time, was chosen from among the chosen. She Who is manifest as the Holy of Holies, Who has a body even purer than the spirits purified by virtue, is capable of receiving ... the Hypostatic Word of the Unoriginate Father. Today the Ever-Virgin Mary, like a Treasure of God, is stored in the Holy of Holies, so that in due time, (as it later came to pass) She would serve for the enrichment of, and an ornament for, all the world. Therefore, Christ God also glorifies His Mother, both before, and also after His birth.
We who understand the salvation begun for our sake through the Most Holy Virgin, give Her thanks and praise according to our ability. And truly, if the grateful woman (of whom the Gospel tells us), after hearing the saving words of the Lord, blessed and thanked His Mother, raising her voice above the din of the crowd and saying to Christ, “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps Thou hast sucked” (Luke 11:27), then we who have the words of eternal life written out for us, and not only the words, but also the miracles and the Passion, and the raising of our nature from death, and its ascent from earth to Heaven, and the promise of immortal life and unfailing salvation, then how shall we not unceasingly hymn and bless the Mother of the Author of our Salvation and the Giver of Life, celebrating Her conception and birth, and now Her Entry into the Holy of Holies?
Now, brethren, let us remove ourselves from earthly to celestial things. Let us change our path from the flesh to the spirit. Let us change our desire from temporal things to those that endure. Let us scorn fleshly delights, which serve as allurements for the soul and soon pass away. Let us desire spiritual gifts, which remain undiminished. Let us turn our reason and our attention from earthly concerns and raise them to the inaccessible places of Heaven, to the Holy of Holies, where the Mother of God now resides.
Therefore, in such manner, our songs and prayers to Her will gain entry, and thus through her mediation, we shall be heirs of the everlasting blessings to come, through the grace and love for mankind of Him Who was born of Her for our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory, honour and worship, together with His Unoriginate Father and His Coeternal and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Troparion — Tone 4
Today is the prelude of the goodwill of God, / of the preaching of the salvation of mankind. / The Virgin appears in the temple of God, / in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all. / Let us rejoice / and sing to her: / "Rejoice, O Fulfillment of the Creator's dispensation."
Kontakion — Tone 4
The most pure Temple of the Savior; / the precious Chamber and Virgin; / the sacred Treasure of the glory of God, / is presented today to the house of the Lord. / She brings with her the grace of the Spirit, / therefore, the angels of God praise her: / “Truly this woman is the abode of heaven.”
✠✠✠✠✠
When the Most Holy Virgin reached the age of three, the holy parents decided to fulfil their vow. They gathered together their relatives and acquaintances and dressed the All-Pure Virgin in Her finest clothes. Singing sacred songs and with lighted candles in their hands, virgins escorted Her to the Temple (Ps. 44/45:14-15). There the High Priest and several priests met the handmaiden of God. In the Temple, fifteen high steps led to the sanctuary, which only the priests and High Priest could enter. (Because they recited a Psalm on each step, Psalms 119/120-133/134 are called “Psalms of Ascent.”) The child Mary, so it seemed, could not make it up this stairway. But just as they placed Her on the first step, strengthened by the power of God, She quickly went up the remaining steps and ascended to the highest one. Then the High Priest, through inspiration from above, led the Most Holy Virgin into the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest entered once a year to offer a purifying sacrifice of blood. Therefore, all those present in the Temple were astonished at this most unusual occurrence.
After entrusting their child to the Heavenly Father, Joachim and Anna returned home. The All-Holy Virgin remained in the quarters for virgins near the Temple. According to the testimony of Holy Scripture (Exodus 38; 1 Kings 1: 28; Luke 2: 37), and also the historian Josephus Flavius, there were many living quarters around the Temple, in which those who were dedicated to the service of God dwelt.
The earthly life of the Most Holy Theotokos from Her infancy until She was taken up to Heaven is shrouded in deep mystery. Her life at the Jerusalem Temple was also a secret. “If anyone were to ask me,” said Saint Jerome, “how the Most Holy Virgin spent the time of Her youth, I would answer that that is known to God Himself and the Archangel Gabriel, Her constant guardian.”
But there are accounts in Church Tradition, that during the All-Pure Virgin’s stay at the Temple, She grew up in a community of pious virgins, diligently read the Holy Scripture, occupied Herself with handicrafts, prayed constantly, and grew in love for God. From ancient times, the Church has celebrated the Feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. Indications that the Feast was observed in the first centuries of Christianity are found in the traditions of Palestinian Christians, which say that the holy Empress Helen (May 21) built a church in honor of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century, also mentions this Feast. In the eighth century Saints Germanus and Tarasius, Patriarchs of Constantinople, delivered sermons on the Feast of the Entry.
The Feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple foretells God’s blessing for the human race, the preaching of salvation, the promise of the coming of Christ.
DISCOURSE ON THE FEAST OF THE ENTRY
OF OUR MOST PURE LADY THEOTOKOS
INTO THE HOLY OF HOLIES
by Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica
If a tree is known by its fruit, and a good tree bears good fruit (Mt. 7:17; Luke 6:44), then is not the Mother of Goodness Itself, She who bore the Eternal Beauty, incomparably more excellent than every good, whether in this world or the world above? Therefore, the coeternal and identical Image of goodness, Preeternal, transcending all being, He Who is the preexisting and good Word of the Father, moved by His unutterable love for mankind and compassion for us, put on our image, that He might reclaim for Himself our nature which had been dragged down to uttermost Hades, so as to renew this corrupted nature and raise it to the heights of Heaven. For this purpose, He had to assume a flesh that was both new and ours, that He might refashion us from out of ourselves. Now He finds a Handmaiden perfectly suited to these needs, the supplier of Her own unsullied nature, the Ever-Virgin now hymned by us, and Whose miraculous Entrance into the Temple, into the Holy of Holies, we now celebrate. God predestined Her before the ages for the salvation and reclaiming of our kind. She was chosen, not just from the crowd, but from the ranks of the chosen of all ages, renowned for piety and understanding, and for their God-pleasing words and deeds.
In the beginning, there was one who rose up against us: the author of evil, the serpent, who dragged us into the abyss. Many reasons impelled him to rise up against us, and there are many ways by which he enslaved our nature: envy, rivalry, hatred, injustice, treachery, slyness, etc. In addition to all this, he also has within him the power of bringing death, which he himself engendered, being the first to fall away from true life.
The author of evil was jealous of Adam when he saw him being led from earth to Heaven, from which he was justly cast down. Filled with envy, he pounced upon Adam with a terrible ferocity, and even wished to clothe him with the garb of death. Envy is not only the begetter of hatred, but also of murder, which this truly man-hating serpent brought about in us. For he wanted to be master over the earth-born for the ruin of that which was created in the image and likeness of God. Since he was not bold enough to make a face to face attack, he resorted to cunning and deceit. This truly terrible and malicious plotter pretended to be a friend and useful adviser by assuming the physical form of a serpent and stealthily took their position. By his God-opposing advice, he instils in man his own death-bearing power, like a venomous poison.
If Adam had been sufficiently strong to keep the divine commandment, then he would have shown himself the vanquisher of his enemy and withstood his deathly attack. But since he voluntarily gave in to sin, he was defeated and was made a sinner. Since he is the root of our race, he has produced us as death-bearing shoots. So, it was necessary for us, if he were to fight back against his defeat and to claim victory, to rid himself of the death-bearing venomous poison in his soul and body, and to absorb life, eternal and indestructible life.
It was necessary for us to have a new root for our race, a new Adam, not just one Who would be sinless and invincible, but one Who also would be able to forgive sins and set free from punishment those subject to it. And not only would He have life in Himself, but also the capacity to restore to life, so that He could grant to those who cleave to Him and are related to Him by race both life and the forgiveness of their sins, restoring to life not only those who came after Him, but also those who already had died before Him. Therefore, Saint Paul, that great trumpet of the Holy Spirit, exclaims, “the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).
Except for God, there is no one who is without sin, or life-creating, or able to remit sin. Therefore, the new Adam must be not only Man, but also God. He is at the same time life, wisdom, truth, love, and mercy, and every other good thing so that He might renew the old Adam and restore him to life through mercy, wisdom and righteousness. These are the opposites of the things which the author of evil used to bring about our ageing and death.
As the slayer of mankind raised himself against us with envy and hatred, so the Source of life was lifted up [on the Cross] because of His immeasurable goodness and love for mankind. He intensely desired the salvation of His creature, i.e., that His creature would be restored by Himself. In contrast to this, the author of evil wanted to bring God’s creature to ruin, and thereby put mankind under his own power, and tyrannically to afflict us. And just as he achieved the conquest and the fall of mankind by means of injustice and cunning, by deceit and his trickery, so has the Liberator brought about the defeat of the author of evil, and the restoration of His own creature with truth, justice and wisdom.
It was a deed of perfect justice that our nature, which was voluntarily enslaved and struck down, should again enter the struggle for victory and cast off its voluntary enslavement. Therefore, God deigned to receive our nature from us, hypostatically uniting with it in a marvellous way. But it was impossible to unite that Most High Nature, Whose purity is incomprehensible for human reason, to a sinful nature before it had been purified. Therefore, for the conception and birth of the Bestower of purity, a perfectly spotless and Most Pure Virgin was required.
Today we celebrate the memory of those things that contributed, if only once, to the Incarnation. He Who is God by nature, the Co-unoriginate and Coeternal Word and Son of the Transcendent Father, becomes the Son of Man, the Son of the Ever-Virgin. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8), immutable in His divinity and blameless in His humanity, He alone, as the Prophet Isaiah prophesied, “practiced no iniquity, nor deceit with His lips” (Is. 53: 9). He alone was not brought forth in iniquity, nor was He conceived in sin, in contrast to what the Prophet David says concerning himself and every other man (Ps. 50/51: 5). Even in what He assumes, He is perfectly pure and has no need to be cleansed Himself. But for our sake, He accepted purification, suffering, death and resurrection, that He might transmit them to us.
God is born of the spotless and Holy Virgin, or better to say, of the Most Pure and All-Holy Virgin. She is above every fleshly defilement, and even above every impure thought. Her conceiving resulted not from fleshly lust, but by the overshadowing of the Most Holy Spirit. Such desire being utterly alien to Her, it is through prayer and spiritual readiness that She declared to the angel: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto Me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38), and that She conceived and gave birth. So, in order to render the Virgin worthy of this sublime purpose, God marked this ever-virgin Daughter now praised by us, from before the ages, and from eternity, choosing Her from out of His elect.
Turn your attention then, to where this choice began. From the sons of Adam God chose the wondrous Seth, who showed himself a living heaven through his becoming behaviour, and through the beauty of his virtues. That is why he was chosen, and from whom the Virgin would blossom as the divinely fitting chariot of God. She was needed to give birth and to summon the earth-born to heavenly sonship. For this reason, also all the lineage of Seth were called “sons of God,” because from this lineage a son of man would be born the Son of God. The name Seth signifies a rising or resurrection, or more specifically, it signifies the Lord, Who promises and gives immortal life to all who believe in Him.
And how precisely exact is this parallel! Seth was born of Eve, as she herself said, in place of Abel, whom Cain killed through jealousy (Gen. 4:25); and Christ, the Son of the Virgin, was born for us in place of Adam, whom the author of evil also killed through jealousy. But Seth did not resurrect Abel, since he was only a type of the resurrection. But our Lord Jesus Christ resurrected Adam since He is the very Life and the Resurrection of the earth-born, for whose sake the descendants of Seth are granted divine adoption through hope, and are called the children of God. It was because of this hope that they were called sons of God, as is evident from the one who was first called so, the successor in the choice. This was Enos, the son of Seth, who as Moses wrote, first hoped to call on the Name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26).
In this manner, the choice of the future Mother of God, beginning with the very sons of Adam and proceeding through all the generations of time, through the Providence of God, passes to the Prophet-king David and the successors of his kingdom and lineage. When the chosen time had come, then from the house and posterity of David, Joachim and Anna are chosen by God. Though they were childless, they were by their virtuous life and good disposition the finest of all those descended from the line of David. In prayer, they besought God to deliver them from their childlessness and promised to dedicate their child to God from its infancy. By God Himself, the Mother of God was proclaimed and given to them as a child so that from such virtuous parents the all-virtuous child would be raised. So in this manner, chastity joined with prayer came to fruition by producing the Mother of virginity, giving birth in the flesh to Him Who was born of God the Father before the ages.
Now, when Righteous Joachim and Anna saw that they had been granted their wish and that the divine promise to them was realized in fact, then they on their part, as true lovers of God, hastened to fulfill their vow given to God as soon as the child had been weaned from milk. They have now led this truly sanctified child of God, now the Mother of God, this Virgin into the Temple of God. And She, being filled with Divine gifts even at such a tender age, ... She, rather than others, determined what was being done over Her. In Her manner She showed that She was not so much presented into the Temple, but that She Herself entered into the service of God of her own accord, as if she had wings, striving towards this sacred and divine love. She considered it desirable and fitting that she should enter into the Temple and dwell in the Holy of Holies.
Therefore, the High Priest, seeing that this child, more than anyone else, had divine grace within Her, wished to set Her within the Holy of Holies. He convinced everyone present to welcome this since God had advanced it and approved it. Through His angel, God assisted the Virgin and sent Her mystical food, with which She was strengthened in nature, while in body She was brought to maturity and was made purer and more exalted than the angels, having the Heavenly spirits as servants. She was led into the Holy of Holies not just once but was accepted by God to dwell there with Him during Her youth so that through Her, the Heavenly Abodes might be opened and given for an eternal habitation to those who believe in Her miraculous birth-giving.
So it is, and this is why She, from the beginning of time, was chosen from among the chosen. She Who is manifest as the Holy of Holies, Who has a body even purer than the spirits purified by virtue, is capable of receiving ... the Hypostatic Word of the Unoriginate Father. Today the Ever-Virgin Mary, like a Treasure of God, is stored in the Holy of Holies, so that in due time, (as it later came to pass) She would serve for the enrichment of, and an ornament for, all the world. Therefore, Christ God also glorifies His Mother, both before, and also after His birth.
We who understand the salvation begun for our sake through the Most Holy Virgin, give Her thanks and praise according to our ability. And truly, if the grateful woman (of whom the Gospel tells us), after hearing the saving words of the Lord, blessed and thanked His Mother, raising her voice above the din of the crowd and saying to Christ, “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps Thou hast sucked” (Luke 11:27), then we who have the words of eternal life written out for us, and not only the words, but also the miracles and the Passion, and the raising of our nature from death, and its ascent from earth to Heaven, and the promise of immortal life and unfailing salvation, then how shall we not unceasingly hymn and bless the Mother of the Author of our Salvation and the Giver of Life, celebrating Her conception and birth, and now Her Entry into the Holy of Holies?
Now, brethren, let us remove ourselves from earthly to celestial things. Let us change our path from the flesh to the spirit. Let us change our desire from temporal things to those that endure. Let us scorn fleshly delights, which serve as allurements for the soul and soon pass away. Let us desire spiritual gifts, which remain undiminished. Let us turn our reason and our attention from earthly concerns and raise them to the inaccessible places of Heaven, to the Holy of Holies, where the Mother of God now resides.
Therefore, in such manner, our songs and prayers to Her will gain entry, and thus through her mediation, we shall be heirs of the everlasting blessings to come, through the grace and love for mankind of Him Who was born of Her for our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory, honour and worship, together with His Unoriginate Father and His Coeternal and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Troparion — Tone 4
Today is the prelude of the goodwill of God, / of the preaching of the salvation of mankind. / The Virgin appears in the temple of God, / in anticipation proclaiming Christ to all. / Let us rejoice / and sing to her: / "Rejoice, O Fulfillment of the Creator's dispensation."
Kontakion — Tone 4
The most pure Temple of the Savior; / the precious Chamber and Virgin; / the sacred Treasure of the glory of God, / is presented today to the house of the Lord. / She brings with her the grace of the Spirit, / therefore, the angels of God praise her: / “Truly this woman is the abode of heaven.”
IN LUMINE FIDEI: 21 NOVEMBER – THE PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRG...
21 November, The Chesterton Calendar
NOVEMBER 21st
Shallow romanticists go away in trains and stop in places called Hugmy-in-the-Hole, or Bumps-on-the-Puddle. And all the time they could, if they liked, go and live at a place with the dim, divine name of St. John's Wood. I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir-trees, afraid to come upon a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings of the eagle. But all these things can be imagined by remaining reverently in the Harrow train.
'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'
21 November, The Holy Rule of St Benedict, Patriarch of Western Monasticism
CHAPTER XLIII. Of those who come late to the Work of God, or to table
22 Mar. 22 July. 21 Nov.
At the hour of Divine Office, as soon as the signal is heard, let every one, leaving whatever he had in hand, hasten to the Oratory with all speed, and yet with seriousness, so that no occasion he given for levity.
Let nothing, then, be preferred to the Work of God. And should any one come to the Night-Office after the Gloria of the ninety-fourth Psalm (which for this reason we wish to be said very slowly and protractedly), let him not stand in his order in the choir, but last of all, or in the place set apart by the Abbot for the negligent, so that he may be seen by him and by all, until, the work of God being ended, he have made satisfaction by public penance. The reason why we have judged it fitting for them to stand in the last place, or apart, is that, being seen of all, they may amend for very shame. For, if they were to remain outside the Oratory, some one perchance would return to his place and go to sleep, or at all events would sit down outside, and give himself to idle talk, and thus an occasion would be given to the evil one. Let him therefore enter, that he may not lose the whole, and may amend for the future. At the day Hours, let him who cometh to the Work of God after the Verse,* and the Gloria of the first Psalm which followeth it, stand in the last place, as ordered above, and not presume to join with the choir in the Divine Office, until he hath made satisfaction: unless perchance the Abbot shall permit him so to do, on condition, however, that he afterwards do penance.
22 November, The Roman Martyrology
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Décimo Kaléndas Decémbris Luna vicésima Anno Dómini 2024
November 22nd 2024, the 20th day of the Moon, were born into the better life:
At Rome, the holy Virgin and martyr Cecily. She brought her husband Valerian and his brother Tiburtius to believe in Christ, and nerved them to suffer martyrdom. After their martyrdom, Almachius, Prefect of the city under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, caused her to be arrested, and, after she had overcome fire, gloriously to finish her sufferings with the sword.
At Colossae, in Phrygia, the holy martyrs Philemon and Apphia, the disciples of the holy Apostle Paul, (unto whom he addressed an Epistle.) During the reign of the Emperor Nero, the Gentiles broke into the Church upon the feast day of Diana. The rest of the faithful escaped, but these were taken, and by command of the President Artocles they were flogged, buried up to the middle, and stoned to death.
Likewise, at Rome, the holy martyr Maurus, who came from Africa to visit the graves of the Apostles, and suffered under the Emperor Numerian, and the Prefect of the city, Celerinus.
At Antioch, in Pisidia, in the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, the holy martyrs Mark and Stephen.
At Autun, (in the sixth century,) the holy Confessor Pragmatius, Bishop (of that see.)
℣. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
℟. Thanks be to God.
At Rome, the holy Virgin and martyr Cecily. She brought her husband Valerian and his brother Tiburtius to believe in Christ, and nerved them to suffer martyrdom. After their martyrdom, Almachius, Prefect of the city under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, caused her to be arrested, and, after she had overcome fire, gloriously to finish her sufferings with the sword.
At Colossae, in Phrygia, the holy martyrs Philemon and Apphia, the disciples of the holy Apostle Paul, (unto whom he addressed an Epistle.) During the reign of the Emperor Nero, the Gentiles broke into the Church upon the feast day of Diana. The rest of the faithful escaped, but these were taken, and by command of the President Artocles they were flogged, buried up to the middle, and stoned to death.
Likewise, at Rome, the holy martyr Maurus, who came from Africa to visit the graves of the Apostles, and suffered under the Emperor Numerian, and the Prefect of the city, Celerinus.
At Antioch, in Pisidia, in the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, the holy martyrs Mark and Stephen.
At Autun, (in the sixth century,) the holy Confessor Pragmatius, Bishop (of that see.)
℣. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
℟. Thanks be to God.
UK Government Officials “Regret” Chaotic Assisted Suicide Legislation
Starmer's commitment to killing the innocent is astounding! Even though members of Cabinet are sounding the alarm, he's pushing ahead.
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From The European Conservative
By Michael Curzon
MPs will not be given an impact assessment, and will have just five hours to debate the practice.
The Labour government’s rushed and “unconstitutional” approach to dangerous assisted suicide legislation has led to some officials regretting that it has been introduced in the first place.
Senior figures in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s team reportedly believe, according to Sky News, that the “miscalculation” over the handling of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill means “there will be few tears shed in influential parts of Downing Street” if legislation “fails its first Commons test and ends its journey there.”
One of the most serious errors was telling ministers not to take part in the public debate. Former Tory justice secretary Robert Buckland described this effective gag order as “unconstitutional,” adding that it could have resulted in MPs voting on legislation without knowing all the facts, and “on false pretences.”
Given this, it is a good job that a handful of government officials have ignored this order—most notably health secretary Wes Streeting, whose department would be most affected by legalisation. He has warned that the dire state of palliative care in the UK means new legislation could see people being “coerced” into ending their lives.
MPs have also heavily criticised the fact that neither a consultation nor an impact assessment will be conducted before the vote next Friday, which will take place after a debate of just five hours, given Starmer’s refusal to allocate more time.
And while parliamentarians have been told officially that they are free to vote how they like on November 29th, The Times has revealed that a “full-on whipping operation” is underway to make assisted suicide legal, “with spreadsheets for each intake of Labour MPs and highly active WhatsApp groups.” As part of this campaign, “hundreds of MPs were sent personalised notes with detailed constituency-level polling highlighting support for the change,” which the campaign to change the law believes to be “one of its strongest cards.” So much for this being a vote of conscience.
In case this was not enough, Sir Alan Campbell—who, as Labour chief whip, is responsible for ensuring Labour MPs follow the party line—said he is voting in favour of legalisation, prompting former Tory MP Mark Jenkinson to note that “all Labour MPs will be under no illusion which way they’re expected to vote if want to get on.”
The parliamentary campaign against assisted suicide has, on the other hand, “been far less organised, with little apparent grip on numbers and many MPs choosing to make interventions at times of their own choosing rather than in a co-ordinated manner,” according to the Times.
And, as Labour justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has made clear, once the law has been changed, it will be incredibly difficult to turn back.
Pictured: the Rt Hon. Keir Starmer, KCB, KC, MP
Biased BBC Sides With Labour Government Against British Farmers
BBC = British Bashing Corporation. It lost its neutrality long ago and became the propaganda arm of the Labour Party and the Left in general.
From The European Conservative
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By Michael Curzon
The broadcaster has become “the mouthpiece of this infernal Labour government,” says TV personality and farmer Jeremy Clarkson.
Britain's main broadcaster has echoed the Labour government’s disputed claim that just hundreds—rather than tens of thousands—of family farms will be hit by inheritance tax reforms, prompting furious claims of bias.
BBC ‘Verify,’ a fact-checking service regularly bashed over its “record of failure,” yesterday claimed the National Farmers’ Union’s view that this new levy will impact up to 70,000 farms is “almost certainly an overestimate,” adding that the “true share of farms affected going forward is likely to be much closer to the Treasury estimates.”
But campaigners say the government relied on phoney figures while drafting this so-called “tractor tax,” which will do a great amount of damage to farmers across the country. Tory MP Stuart Andrew complained that “the government is refusing to say how many family farms are subject to their tax raid, only offering partial and out-of-date statistics which fail to account for the full scale of their reforms.”
The taxpayers pay for the BBC to be independent and free from bias, not for them to regurgitate Labour lines. This matter should be immediately looked into and corrected.”
The Verify unit, which boasts a team of 60 investigative journalists, has been forced to correct an error in one of its fact-checking articles after it confused hectares for acres.
BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire also did her best to focus on personality rather than politics in a much-criticised interview with TV personality-turned-farmer Jeremy Clarkson during yesterday’s protest
outside Parliament.
Migration Watch’s Mike Jones highlighted online that the BBC “never uses this line of questioning with BLM protesters or the array of environmental activists.”
BBC Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine then designated much of his show on Wednesday to a discussion on whether Clarkson was a good representative of the farmer movement, rather than on the far more important issue of how the tax will impact Britain’s food security.
It is no surprise, then, that Clarkson received the warm reception he did when he asked at the London demonstration: “Since when was the BBC the mouthpiece of this infernal government?”
While France now looks set to vote against the treaty between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc following fresh protests by farmers, Starmer says he would stand by the budget which saw this levy imposed on farmers “all day long.” In order to keep up the pressure, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has urged farmers to protest not just in London but “in market towns all across the country, especially in ones that have small Labour majorities.”
Pictured: Jeremy Clarkson
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