This is the day that our sins transcended time and played their significant parts in putting God to death. The greatest crime in the history of the world was committed this day, Deicide, and we were among the guilty parties putting God on trial and then subjecting Him to horrible and painful humiliations and scourgings before we nailed Him to the wood of the Holy Cross, upon which He paid back to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father the debt of our sins.

Yes, there is no greater crime than Deicide. There is also no greater act of love in all of human history as Love Incarnate took upon Himself the guilt of our sins though He was guilty of nothing. It was out of love for His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father's Holy Will and His matchless love for us that He, Who had instituted the Priesthood and the Eucharist last evening at the Last Supper, that He subjected Himself to the hands of us sinful men, even going so far as to make excuses for us, His executioners, as He hung on the gibbet of the Holy Cross.

This great act of sacrificial, redemptive love of the God-Man, Who had become Incarnate in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost, is re-presented in an unbloody manner on altars of Sacrifice by true bishops and true priests every day of the year except for today, Good Friday. Our focus today is on mourning for our sins and expressing our gratitude that we have been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as we ask Our Lady to help us to grow in a greater fervor for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as we grow more and more detached from even our Venial Sins and come to despise them as much as we despise any Mortal Sins that, God forbid, we may have committed.

This is a day of solemnity and sobriety, a day of total withdrawal from the world and its madness. We spend our time in church today as we keep Our Lord company at the Altar of Repose prior to noon and as we participate in the Mass of the Presanctified. Our sins put God to death. We helped to murder God in the very Flesh.

How does God repay us ungrateful and frequently lukewarm sinners? He gives us the true Church, born out of the Blood and Water that flowed forth from His wounded side when It was pierced by Saint Longinus's lance, making possible our regeneration in the Baptismal font and in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, making it possible for us therefore to receive His very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion. And he give us His Blessed Mother, she who is our Co-Redemptrix, our Mediatrix and our Advocate, to be our Blessed Mother as He entrusts her to Saint John the Evangelist, whose fidelity to Our Lord on this day is meant to foreshadow our own fidelity by means of assisting at daily Mass frequently and of persevering until the point of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace by remaining a as close to Our Lady as he was.

Will we repay Our Divine Redeemer Who was nailed to the Cross this day with a true effort to amend our lives? Will we repay Our Divine Redeemer Who shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood this day with a greater effort to take seriously our consecration to His Most Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary? Will we seek to live at all times in light of First and Last Things as we bear our own crosses with love and joy and gratitude?

Our Lady stands ready to help us to bring us to Calvary every day. Sure, we must make the same kind of effort as Saint Helena made to find the site of the True Cross in the Fourth Century as the Mass has indeed been taken away by spiritual robber barons. However, Our Lady does indeed stand ready to fortify us in our resolve never to return to the muck and the mire of a false church whose "pope" mocks the Holy Cross and makes of It an instrument of socialistic "justice" and Judeo-Masonic globalism.  

May we give thanks and praise to Our Lord through His Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart this day for the wondrous mystery of His love that has made possible our eternal salvation.

I call your attention also to Father Francis X. Weninger's Three Good Friday Sermons.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

In addition to my own wholly inadequate reflections during this Paschal Triduum, I am endeavoring those who access this website reflections written by spiritual masters, and it is for this reason that I am hereby publishing on this most solemn day of the year Father Francis X. Weninger’s three sermons for Good Friday.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

This article, written in 2008 and revised over the years, is a reflection on the suffering that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ endured in the Garden of Gethsemane atop the Mount of Olives.

It is now the hour of darkness. Our Lord suffers in His Sacred Humanity as He contemplates the horror of coming into contact with the very antithesis of His Sacred Divinity, our sins. He sees all of the sins of  all men from the beginning until the end of time as He agonized in the Garden as the same three Apostles who accompanied Him to the top of Mount Thabor as He was Transfigured in glory before their very eyes, Saints Peter, James and John, fell fast asleep. May we stay awake and alert during this night as we keep Our Lord company in His Real Presence on the Altar of Repose (if at all possible in this time of apostasy and betrayal) as we render unto him acts of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and petition through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Finally, one way to keep Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother company during these hours when He was betrayed, brought before the Jewish leaders for a mock trial and then imprisoned before being brought before Pontius Pilate is to read Chapters XII through XXIX of The New English Edition of the Mystical City of God: The Transfixion, Book Six: The Transfixion.

I have also republished Saint Robert Bellarmine's Sermon on Our Lord's Agony in the Garden.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Mindful that many of those who read these articles may not have access to those beautiful ceremonies where they live in this time of apostasy and betrayal, I thought that it would be useful service to those who view this site to republish Saint Robert Bellarmine's sermon to assist in their devotional lives during these days of days.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Today is Maundy Thursday.

The Paschal Triduum of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection actually began with the Office of Tenebrae yesterday evening, and it will end on Easter Sunday.

These are the holiest days are the zenith of Holy Mother Church’s liturgical year. This is the day on which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Priesthood and the Eucharist at the Last Supper for our sanctification and salvation. Although Our Lord would enter deep into His Passion immediately after the completion of the Last Supper as He suffered His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He wonderfully gave us the Holy Priesthood of the New Dispensation as He instituted the New and Eternal Covenant that He would ratify by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross tomorrow, Good Friday. We must express our gratitude to Him at all times for giving us the Priesthood so that we can have access on a daily basis to His own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion, made present for us on altars of Sacrifice by true bishops and true priests in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

This is a day to keep watch with Our Lord in His Real Presence at the Altar of Repose, remembering most importantly to beg Our Lady to make more and more voluntary sacrifices to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son through her own Immaculate Heart for our sins and those of the whole world.

Additionally, though, I am providing those who access this site with a sermon written by Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., who was an Austrian missionary to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century after the revolutions that shook Central Europe in 1848.

Father Weninger was a fearless defender of the Holy Faith and a prolific writer. One of his most important books was Protestantism and Infidelity.

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes his work as follows:

Jesuit missionary and author, born at Wildhaus, Styria, Austria, 31 October, 1805; died at Cincinnati, Ohio, 29 June, 1888. When already a priest and doctor of theology, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1832 and in 1841 was sent to Innsbruck, where he taught theology, history, and Hebrew. As the Revolution of 1848 impeded his further usefulness at home, he left Europe and went to the United States. During his forty years he visited almost every state of the Union, preaching to vast multitudes in English, French, or German, as best suited the nationality of his hearers. In the year 1854 alone he delivered nearly a thousand sermons, and in 1864 he preached about forty-five missions. His zeal also prompted Father Weninger to win souls with the pen and he published forty works in German, Sixteen in English, eight in French, three in Latin. Among his principal works are: "Manual of the Catholic Religion" (Ratisbon, 1858); "Easter in Heaven" (Cincinnati, 1862); "Sermons" (Mainz, 1881-86). (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J.)

Omitted from this list, however, is Father Weninger’s Protestantism and Infidelity, which is a superb critique of Protestantism’s complete infidelity to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Sacred Deposit of Faith.

As our time and our heart belong entire to Our Lord and His Paschal Triduum as we keep ever close to Our Lady, who was with Him every step of the way as he participated the Queen of Martyrs in His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday, no original articles will appear until Easter Monday.

My own republished reflection on Maundy Thursday can be found by scrolling below.

A most blessed Paschal Triduum to you all. 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us,

The Last Supper that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shared with His Apostles in the Upper Room on the first Maundy Thursday marked the beginning of the New and Eternal Testament of the New Moses Who is Himself, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Today is Wednesday in Holy Week, also known as Spy Wednesday, the day on which Judas Iscariot betrayed His Divine Master, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to the Jews for thirty pieces of silver.

How many times have we played the role of Judas Iscariot in our lives, and for far, far less than thirty pieces of silver?

Unlike the traitor Iscariot, however, we do not despair of our salvation as we trust in, without ever presuming, the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the unceasing prayers of Our Queen of Mercy, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our Lord stands ready to forgive us if we seek Him out in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance with a sincere heart, a right intention, and with a full and perfection contrition for our sins, and He even stands ready to forgive today’s Talmudists and Zionists today who are actively persecuting the relatively small number of His followers in Gaza if only they convert, repent, and are received into the bosom of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

We pray for the day when one and all will exclaim una voce dicentes:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus, Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus, qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, pray for us.

This is an exhortation to rise above the agitation of the world and all the forgettable men of history whom the adversary uses to distract us throughout the course of our lives and especially during Holy Week. 

Most of this brief exhortation uses Father Maurice Meschler's reflection on Palm Sunday as contained in Volume II of his The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Another original article will appear on Spy Wednesday, April 16, 2025.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Justin Martyr, pray for us.

Saints Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus, pray for us.

Holy Week will begin with the praying or singing of First Vespers for Palm Sunday this evening, Saturday, April 12, 2025.

We will be entering into the most solemn week of the year as we withdraw more and more from the world and its false allurements to unite ourselves as never before with the events of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion and Death prior to experiencing the glory of His Resurrection following the Mass on Holy Saturday, April 19, 2025, and on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, thus beginning a marvelous celebration of the Octave of Easter and the Easter season.

We need Our Lady’s help to keep and to intensify our Lenten penances this week. May our reliance upon the Most Sorrowful Mysteries of her Holy Rosary aid us in understanding what our sins did to her Divine Son and to her and how grateful we must be for being the unmerited beneficiaries of the Mercy won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and for being given from that Cross so great and wonderful and perfect a mother as she, Our Blessed Mother, is to us by Our Divine Redeemer Himself.

"From Eden to Palm Sunday" is a substantial revision of a reflection that I wrote for the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in 1997. Given the vastness of the subject, this reflection is pitifully, woefully inadequate. The revised article is really a condensed version of what was gone into in greater detail in the Living in the Shadow of the Cross lecture program. About half of the lecture program dealt with material condensed in the current article. Obviously, Holy Week is not a time to watch this lecture program! However, it is there for those who are interested at some point during the months that follow.

To greet Christ the King on Palm Sunday tomorrow and every day of our lives, we must not let anything get in the way of letting Him treat us according to the tender mercies of His Most Sacred Heart, remembering that nothing anyone does to us, says about us or causes us to suffer is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His fearful Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that caused those Swords of Sorrow to be pierced through and through the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

Our fervor during this week of weeks must be genuine, and we must beg Our Lady, especially by meditating upon the Sorrowful Mysteries of her Most Holy Rosary, to help us persist in this fervor moment by moment, day by day, week in and week out, month after month, year after year until the time when we meet Christ the King, Our Crucified and Risen Saviour, at the moment of our Particular Judgment.

A new commentary will be posted tomorrow, Palm Sunday. 

I once again ask readers to make a non-tax-deductible financial gift if at all possible.

A blessed Palm Sunday and a blessed Holy Week to you all.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Herewith is a brief reflection on the Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great, which is downgraded to commemoration on this Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Passiontide today, Friday, April 11, 2025.  

The readings for Matins contained the Divine Office for the Feast of Pope Saint Gregory the Great summarize the nature of the purity of the papacy as the absolute guarantor of doctrinal orthodoxy at all times:

When the Lord, as we read in the Evangelist, asked His disciples Who did men, amid their divers speculations, believe that He, the Son of Man, was; blessed Peter answered and said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, Which is in heaven and I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Thus therefore standeth the ordinance of the Truth, and blessed Peter, abiding still that firm rock which God hath made him, hath never lost that right to rule in the Church which God hath given unto him.

In the universal Church it is Peter that doth still say every day, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesseth that Jesus is Lord is taught that confession by the teaching of Peter. This is the faith that overcometh the devil and looseth the bands of his prisoners. This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. This teaching it is, my dearly beloved brethren, which maketh the keeping of this Feast to-day to be our reasonable service, even the teaching which maketh you to know and honour in myself, lowly though I be, that Peter who is still entrusted with the care of all other shepherds and of all the flocks to them committed, and whose authority I have, albeit unworthy to be his heir.

When, therefore, we address our exhortations to your godly ears, believe ye that ye are hearing him speak whose office we are discharging. Yea, it is with his love for you that we warn you, and we preach unto you no other thing than that which he taught, entreating you that ye would gird up the loins of your mind and lead pure and sober lives in the fear of God. My disciples dearly beloved, ye are to me, as the disciples of the Apostle Paul were to him, (Phil. iv. 1,) a crown and a joy, if your faith, which, in the first times of the Gospel, was spoken of throughout the whole world, Rom. i. 8, abide still lovely and holy. For, albeit it behoveth the whole Church which is spread throughout all the world, to be strong in righteousness, you it chiefly becometh above all other peoples to excel in worth and godliness, whose house is built upon the very crown of the Rock of the Apostle, and whom not only hath our Lord Jesus Christ, as He hath redeemed all men, but whom also His blessed Apostle Peter hath made the foremost object of his teaching. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)

Well, it is all there, isn’t it?

One must engage in all kinds of intellectual gymnastics to believe that the contagion of heresy is not rife within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is why all those who are not yet convinced of the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal should re-read these words:

This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has esteemed the symbols of idolaters. So had Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and “Saint John Paul II” before Bergoglio's own election as the head of the false conciliar sect on March 13, 2013, and Bergoglio has shown repeatedly that he has no belief in the integrity of the Catholic Faith. So have his predecessors in the past sixty-four and one-half years.

Our Lady of the Sorrows, pray for us.

Pope Saint Leo the Great, pray for us.