Purgatory - Foothills of Heaven

Rapidly approaching the Month of Holy Souls, here is your review sheet on Purgatory, compliments of Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Monsignor Ronald Knox, remember, had thoughts on the subject too. Like this: " ... death strips us; puts away the toys we cherished. Shrouds have no pockets; a cheque signed by a dead man is no longer honoured."

Collins PRB

Convent Thoughts (1851) - Charles Allston Collins

Knox - Purgatory

YOU AND I, MAYBE, after death, will find ourselves in the twilight state known as purgatory. Saved (please God) by faith in the risen Christ, we shall not yet be partakers in the glory of his Resurrection.

Preachers who discuss the conditions of that intermediate state are apt to lay stress on the severity of the divine punishments. They may be right; it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Only, I dare to hope that the severity of it will be relieved by something we had no right to expect, something we had never been told about, the influence of our blessed Lord's passing, on Easter Eve, through the place of departed spirits. The holy water still glistens on your table when the priest has come and gone; what if our Lord, on that first Holy Saturday, blessed it once for all with the lustration which time can never efface? I like to think of purgatory, however long and however dreary it be, as consoled in some measure by the consciousness that he has been there before us; as a process of passing onwards from room to room, always with the sense that the presence of one we love has only just been withdrawn. Not strong enough, yet, to follow him out into the sunlight, we shall follow him eagerly through the dark. Is that fanciful?

At least let me say this: I think we do well ... to remember our dead. No, do not exclaim that I am a kill-joy, clouding your festival with sad thoughts ... But consider, when you see our Lord represented as rising from the tomb with a banner in his hand, it is the symbol of a military penetration; he, the Victor, in rolling back the stone has made a breach in the enemy's lines, for what? So that the army of his redeemed may pour through at his heels. Or, if you will use St Paul's metaphor, his is the first birth out of death; he has opened the barren womb of extinction, not for himself only but so as to be the first-born of many brethren. Vidi aquam - our Lord's Resurrection is the opening of the springs; the full river has yet to flow. It broadens out, reaches its fulfillment, in ours.

- Ronald A. Knox

The Curse

As Notre Dame got stomped by Navy (again), one sees with how much intensity Navy plays.

Notre Dame used to play with a chip on its shoulder; as though something set it apart from everybody else.

You don't suppose that as Notre Dame has whittled off the edges of its Catholic faith and morals, the intensity it once possessed - what made Notre Dame distinct, different, set apart - has dwindled on the playing field, do you?

They LOOK big, strong, well-fed, and well-funded. Too bad looks don't translate into wins.

Consequential Judgment - Nations

Not that I am advocating extremism that can lead deplorably to the dehumanization of scapegoating; rather, I am saying simply that abortion is - absolutely, categorically, magisterially - demonic. But this category has been cast out with the bathwater by materialists - along with the baby, I hasten to add. Abortion and its industry of easy, disposable human life has been swept clean even the possibility of personal evil. They have made their charnel house clinically-clean and sanitized; empty and awaiting that which they deny even exists.

The poor, besotted secularist atheists who live their cool and detached lives of quiet lack of charity need to read and digest Matthew 12, 43-45 vvery carefully.

And, as theologican Peter Kreeft points out here, abortion IS demonic.

The Right Way to be a Catholic

IT IS EASY TO get a name for broad-mindedness and good-fellowship by setting out to be a Catholic with a difference, half-agreeing with all the prejudices of your Protestant friends, making out that you are really paying rather a compliment to our holy religion by belonging to it; you who take it all so very calmly, so far removed from bigotry or fanaticism. But that is not the right way to be a Catholic. The right way to be a Catholic is to feel yourself all the time, a member of the Church Militant, a limb, living with the life of the whole, sharing its well-being and its discomforts, belonging to it, not talking as if it belonged to you. The right way to be a Catholic is to be associated with the essential activity of the Church, through prayer for the triumph of the truth and the conversion of sinners; as our Lord was when he kept his last appointment in Gethsemani, tempted, once more, by the prince of the powers of darkness.

- Ronald A. Knox

Invitation - Ora et labora

Are you acquainted with the Apostleship of Prayer? Many join with the Holy Father in these intentions in a Morning Offering each day. Indeed, with the two other conditions, this is crucial to fulfilling the requirements for a plenary indulgence.

And, while I am at it, you are cordially invited to join at no cost (yet at all cost) an international organization dedicated to Marian chivalry, the renewal of Christendom and the family, and praying for the Holy Father called Corpus Christianum.

I assure you: chivalry, prayer, and the life abundant are quite alive. You are invited to this needful vocation.

Millais PRB

A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857)

Sir John Everett Millais

Millais PRB

The Ransom (1860-2) - John Everett Millais

Blatty - Dimiter and More

I started and put aside the new novel of William Peter Blatty, Dimiter, this summer (Academy Award for 'The Exorcist,' co-writer of the Pink Panther screenplay, 'A Shot in the Dark') and just returned to a slower, more in-depth read. Below is the beginning of an interview with Blatty. I think you will find him, and his deep Catholic faith, riveting:

St. Teresa of Avila

Entering Stella Maris Monastery Chapel atop Mt. Carmel that looks graciously down upon Haifa in Israel, a stillness prevails. One painting honors St. Teresa of Avila, the saint whose feast day is today. Other famous Carmelites are honored there also.

My first in-depth time with St. Teresa came when two monks of Holy Cross Abbey, Father Edward and Father Andrew, led an ecumenical group of clergy in a read-through of her Interior Castle. For two Cistercians introducing a variety of Christian ministers to the practice of contemplative prayer, it was a natural choice.

Pray for us, St. Teresa, that we may learn to be still in a world of distractions.

Hymn

O Loveliness exceeding

All loveliness I know,

In exile here below.

What more, I pray Thee, Jesus,

What more have I to learn?

Save yet to love increasingly,

With pure love to yearn,

Save yet to love Thee ever,

With deeper love to burn.

O bind me ever closer,

My nothingness transcend,

May I be never parted

From Being without end.

What more can I desired now

Save, Lord, to see Thy Face

And there at last in heaven above

To build my nesting place,

And there at last forever

To find my resting place.

St Teresa of Jesus

Tr. Teresa of Jesus, O.C.D.

Taken from Carmelite Proper of the Liturgy of the Hours, Rome, Institutum Carmelitanum 1993.

A Heresy in Haut-relief

A timely piece by Conrad Black on the realities of the Scimitar here.

Millais PRB

Autumn Leaves (1856) - John Everett Millais

Rossetti PRB

Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (1855) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Compare and Contrast

Today's PARADE Magazine lead story from Lincoln, Nebraska, We've Found Peace in This Land, on the one hand, and this story from Saudi Arabia, Conditional Release for 12 Filipinos accused of Proselytizing.

Thus, PARADE shows that it now believes it can lead popular opinion for the reason, I hazard to surmise, that it thinks Americans have reached the tipping point regarding religion: it just doesn't matter.

Far more important is that threadbare notion of liberal multiculturalist doctrine, "immigration". But, whatever you do, keep far away from any substantive theological discussions with your new neighbor from the Middle East. You will find that your belief in the Holy Trinity is an abomination to the Scimitar.

And, while I'm at it, your Vice Liberal Multiculturalist President still pulls out some Christian theological terms occasionally for the benefit of his threadbare party here.