Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, part seventeen

Although I have used the following passages from Pope Leo XIII’s Tametsi Futuris Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, endlessly over the decades, the craven executions of two employees of the Israeli Embassy to the United States of America in Washington, District of Columbia, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, on Wednesday evening, May 22, 2025, by a nihilist named Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, provides yet another opportunity to remind readers what happens when men and their nations do not subordinate everything in their lives, both personally and collectively, to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Permit me to highlight several of the sentences I have placed into bold type:

What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

Without belief in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church, the Catholic Church, men will more the easily fall prey to the devil and thus seek to “avenge” various injustices, whether real or imagined, personal or social, by the use of violence against those they deem guilty, if only by association, of the injustice they seek to rectify by the shedding of innocent blood. This blind irrationality is rampant in today’s world as so many people are either slaves to the devil by means of Original Sin and/or by the objective effects of their own Mortal Sins even though they may be unaware that there are such things or that they darken the intellect, weaken the will and inflame their passions with a diabolic rage and hatred.

We see this in the personal lives of otherwise private individuals who seek to settle scores against their own spouses by means of “social media,” including public revelations of alleged acts of marital infidelity, and we see this socially with the irrational vandalism of Tesla vehicles and assaults upon those who wear some kind of “Make American Great Again” paraphernalia. They are even deranged black racialists who have been given free rein by Soros-back prosecutors to attack white people, including elderly women and children, solely because their skin has a different pigmentation. Those who engage in such crimes see in other human beings objects of hate who are fair game for attack, not the image of the Divine Redeemer Himself and thus to be treated as we would treat Him in the very Flesh.

Thus, even though they came to this tragic realization at their Particular Judgments, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were victims of the anti-Incarnational world of Modernity made by possible by the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry in its wretched wake. Their assassin, Elias Rodriguez, is but a product of a diabolical system of civil government whose constitution admits of no higher law other than its own text that has fostered socialism, anarchy, and nihilism in the name of “freedom of speech” and “religious freedom.” Atheism, anti-Theism, Christophobia, and even satanism have the same standing legally in the United States of America and elsewhere in the “free world,” an arrangement that is used by the adversary to continue to fool those blinded by pride and hate into slaying other human beings as Cain slew his brother Abel:

[1] And Adam knew Eve his wife: who conceived and brought forth Cain, saying: I have gotten a man through God. [2] And again she brought forth his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, and Cain a husbandman. [3] And it came to pass after many days, that Cain offered, of the fruits of the earth, gifts to the Lord. [4] Abel also offered of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat: and the Lord had respect to Abel, and to his offerings. [5] But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect: and Cain was exceedingly angry, and his countenance fell.

[6] And the Lord said to him: Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? [7] If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it. [8] And Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go forth abroad. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and slew him.[9]And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother Abel? And he answered, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? [10] And he said to him: What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth.

[11] Now, therefore, cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand. [12] When thou shalt till it, it shall not yield to thee its fruit: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth. [13] And Cain said to the Lord: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. [14] Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and a fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore, that findeth me, shall kill me. [15] And the Lord said to him: No, it shall not be so: but whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him. (Genesis 4: 1-15.)

Although the disease of hatred can always infest the souls of Holy Mother Church’s children because of the vestigial aftereffects of Original Sin, the widespread hatred we are witnessing in this world of Modernity is a phenomenon that would make some of the barbaric tribes of antiquity seem downright brotherly by way of comparison.

On the contrary, however, and as has been discussed on this site endlessly, it is no act of hatred to exhort sinners to quit their lives of unrepentant sin, nor to unequivocally oppose the prevailing moral evils of our day, nor to seek with urgency the unconditional of all non-Catholics, including those, such as Jews, Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists and others, who deny the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity and thus the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Thus, of course, it is no act of anti-Semitism to state the plain truth that all types of Judaism are false and it is no act of Islamophobia to criticize Mohammedanism as a false religion, and quite unlike what is being contended by President Donald John Trump and Attorney General of the United States of America Pamela Bondi as well as countless Congressional Republicans, it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the murderous policies of the Zionist State of Israel, especially concerning the ongoing genocidal annihilation of the Palestinian people living in Gaza.

There are, however, honest-to-goodness hard core anti-Semites who hate Jewish people and others who not only hate Jews but who seek to target them for violence because they are Jews and/or because of the Zionist aggression in Gaza. Elias Rodriguez is one such genuine anti-Semite:

Two staff members from the Israeli embassy were shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC on Wednesday night by a gunman who shouted "free Palestine" during his arrest.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were a couple, who the embassy said were in the "prime of their lives". Mr Lischinsky was reportedly about to propose to Miss Milgrim.

The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, 30, is now in custody and the FBI is investigating whether the attack was linked to terrorism or a hate crime.

Israel's foreign minister said the shooting was a direct result of "toxic antisemetic incitement" since the 7 October 2023 attack that prompted Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

The couple were leaving a networking event at the Capital Jewish Museum, organised by the American Jewish Committee, at about 21:08 (local time) when a man opened fire with a handgun at a group of four people.

The suspect then went inside the museum. Witnesses said that they initially thought the man was distressed and gave him water.

"We heard gunshots and then a guy came in... we thought he needed help," eyewitness Katie Kalisher told the BBC, referring to the suspect before they realised he was the alleged shooter.

Footage then captures the suspect shouting "free, free Palestine" while being detained by police.

Metropolitan Police Department chief Pamela Smith said officers "have not had any prior interactions" with the suspect, who is from Chicago, and did not see anything in his background "that would have placed him on our radar".

Analysis by BBC Verify suggests Elias Rodriguez has been working at the American Osteopathic Information Association since 2024.

The Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, told reporters that Mr Lischinsky had just bought an engagement ring and was planning to propose to Miss Milgrim next week in Jerusalem.

"They were a beautiful couple."

Both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have condemned the attack.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: "These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA."

Netanyahu has spoken with the parents of both victims, according to a statement from his office.

He has promised increased security at Israeli embassies around the world following the attack.

"My heart aches for the families of the beloved young man and woman, whose lives were cut short by a heinous antisemitic murderer," he said.

"We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against the state of Israel."

The sentiment was echoed by his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar who accused European countries of "incitement".

"This incitement is also done by leaders and officials of many countries and international organisations, especially from Europe."

His comments follow pressure this week from the UK, EU and France over Israel's military action and control over humanitarian aid in Gaza, where experts have warned of a looming famine.

The shooting, which happened in a downtown area of the city that has numerous tourist sites, museums and government buildings, triggered a major police response and shut down several main streets.

American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement that the organization was "devastated" by the attack.

The event was billed as a networking opportunity to bring Jewish young professionals and the diplomatic community together. Its description said humanitarian aid organisers responding to humanitarian crises in the Middle East, including Gaza, were invited.

The Capital Jewish Museum, like many other Jewish institutions in the US, has struggled with security issues amid rising antisemitism.

"Jewish institutions all around town, all around the country, are concerned about security due to some very scary incidents that some institutions have faced and because of a climate of antisemitism," executive director Beatrice Gurwitz told NBC News in a separate news report before the attack on Wednesday.

The museum recently received a grant to upgrade its security in part, she said, because of a new exhibit on LGBT pride. (Two Israeli embassy staff shot dead outside Jewish museum in Washington DC.)

Apart from deliberately taking the lives of two human beings who posed no direct or indirect threat to himself or to anyone else, Elias Rodriguez made it possible for the President of the United States of America to once again falsely equate international outrage over the Israeli policy of mass and of targeted bombardment of civilian population centers and the denial of all but a trickle of humanitarian aid into Palestine that is resulting in mass nutrition and starvation of innocent Palestinians with “anti-Semitism” and to contend that such outrage is “incitement” to violence.

To be sure, the murders of the cohabiting young man and woman who had just attended an event in a museum that, as reported in the news story, has an exhibit celebrating perversity, which just happens to be condemned very clearly in the Old Testament, are tragic reminders of what happens when in a world where men do not see in each other the Divine impress and thus are prone to be unforgiving and merciless towards others, including those simply belong to a false religion in whose names the leaders of a civil state are acting in a genocidal manner.

Most “leftists” believe in “group guilt,” making of one mind and heart with all social revolutionaries, in including the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Maoists, and with Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime. Most ironically, of course, leftists such as Elias Rodriguez, view all Jews, for whose conversion Catholics must pray daily and with whom we must comport ourselves with kindness, charity, and genuine Catholic joy in all our contacts—business, personal, professional, social—with them, as the Zionists view the Palestinians.

The Israeli mass extermination of Palestinians in Gaza does not create a license to kill any and all Jews, Israeli nationals, Zionists (including Christian Zionists), nor anyone else supportive of the Zionist Israeli cause. People are judged by God individually, not collectively, whey die, and no one can take upon Himself to “avenge” crimes committed by others. Only a duly constituted authority (viz., a civil state) can put to death a person or persons adjudged guilty after the exhausting of the due process of committing grievous crimes.

The documentation of what is happening in Gaza currently is vast and to claim that international outrage over Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people is undeniable. The most example of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza involves an Israeli air strike the home of medical doctor in Gaza:

An Israeli air strike on Gaza hit the home of a doctor and killed nine of her 10 children, the hospital where she works in the city of Khan Younis says.

Nasser hospital said one of Dr Alaa al-Najjar's children and her husband were injured, but survived.

Graeme Groom, a British surgeon working in the hospital who operated on her surviving 11-year-old boy, told the BBC it was "unbearably cruel" that his mother, who spent years caring for children as a paediatrician, could lose almost all her own in a single missile strike.

Israel's military said its aircraft had struck "a number of suspects" in Khan Younis on Friday, and "the claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review".

A video shared by the director of the Hamas-run health ministry and verified by the BBC showed small burned bodies lifted from the rubble of a strike in Khan Younis.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its "aircraft struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure adjacent to IDF troops in the area of Khan Younis".

"The Khan Younis area is a dangerous war zone. Before beginning operations there, the IDF evacuated civilians from this area for their own safety," the Israeli military said.

In a general statement on Saturday, the IDF said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza over the past day.

The health ministry said at least 74 people had been killed by the Israeli military over the 24 hour-period leading up to about midday on Saturday.

Dr Muneer Alboursh, director of the health ministry, said on X that the al-Najjars' family house was hit minutes after Dr al-Najjar's husband Hamdi had returned home after driving his wife to work.

Dr Alboursh said the eldest of Dr al-Najjar's children was aged 12.

Mr Groom said the children's father was "very badly injured", in a video posted on the Instagram account of another British surgeon working at Nasser hospital, Victoria Rose.

He told the BBC that the father had a "penetrating injury to his head".

He said he had asked about the father, also a doctor at the hospital, and had been told he had "no political and no military connections and doesn't seem to be prominent on social media".

He described it as an "unimaginable" situation for Dr Alaa al-Najjar.

Mr Groom said the surviving 11-year-old boy, Adam, was "quite small" for his age.

"His left arm was just about hanging off, he was covered in fragment injuries and he had several substantial lacerations," he told the BBC.

"Since both his parents are doctors, he seemed to be among the privileged group within Gaza, but as we lifted him onto the operating table, he felt much younger than 11."

"Our little boy could survive, but we don't know about his father," he added.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, said on Telegram on Friday afternoon that his teams had recovered eight bodies and several injured from the al-Najjar house near a petrol station in Khan Younis.

The hospital initially posted on Facebook that eight children had been killed, then two hours later updated that number to nine.

Another doctor, Youssef Abu al-Rish, said in a statement posted by the health ministry that he had arrived to the operating room to find Dr al-Najjar waiting for information about her surviving son and tried to console her.

In an interview recorded by AFP news agency, relative Youssef al-Najjar said: "Enough! Have mercy on us! We plead to all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us.

"We are exhausted from the displacement and the hunger, enough!"

On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that people in Gaza were enduring what may be "the cruellest phase" of the war, and denounced Israel's blockade on humanitarian aid imposed in March.

Israel partially lifted the blockade earlier this week. Israeli military body Cogat said 83 more trucks carrying flour, food, medical equipment pharmaceutical drugs entered Gaza on Friday.

The UN has repeatedly said the amount of aid entering is nowhere near enough for the territory's 2.1 million people - saying between 500 to 600 trucks a day are needed - and has called for Israel to allow in much more.

The limited amount of food that trickled into Gaza this week sparked chaotic scenes, with armed looters attacking an aid convoy and Palestinians crowding outside bakeries in a desperate attempt to obtain bread.

A UN-backed assessment this month said Gaza's population was at "critical risk" of famine.

People in Gaza have told the BBC they have no food, and malnourished mothers are unable to breastfeed babies.

Chronic shortages of water are also worsening as desalination and hygiene plants are running out of fuel, and Israel's expanding military offensive causes new waves of displacement.

Israel has said the blockade was intended to put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages still held in Gaza.

Israel has accused Hamas of stealing supplies, which the group has denied.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas's cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 53,901 people, including at least 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry. (Israeli strike kills nine of Gaza doctor's children, hospital says.)

In other words, the Israeli Defense Force deliberately targeted Dr. Alaa al-Najjar and her family for execution. Monstrous.

The wanton Israeli campaign against Palestinians includes a hatred of their children to prevent any future “problems” with these hated people:

The hatred of some in Israel for the people of Gaza – even for little children – is just astounding. If they have even a tiny bit of belief in God, they should pray for forgiveness.

Unfortunately, NPR reported last Thursday (May 15) on “deadly airstrikes, killing more than 150 people in the past day, including dozens of children.”

On May 9 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and many other publications reported on a meeting of a subcommittee of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The hearing in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, was not about concern for children who were starving or who had to have amputations without anesthesia. It was about concern over the public relations harm to Israel.

One of the witnesses was Dr. Sharon Shaul from NATAN, a worldwide humanitarian aid charity.

Dr. Shaul said, “I believe that none of the people sitting around this table are concerned that a suffering child cannot receive painkillers or even minimal medical treatment.”

Then the story said that Knesset member Amit Halevi from Netanyahu’s Likud Party “interrupted her angrily saying, ‘I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman.’”

The doctor then replied that she hoped the member would not oppose “a four-year-old child” undergoing an amputation receiving pain medication. “I hope you have that compassion,” Dr. Shaul said.

However, Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech “pointed at the doctor and said ‘the only treatment that should be given is to you.’” Another member shouted, “You are the sickest doctor I have ever seen.”

Elad Barashi, a producer at Israel’s Channel 14, surpassed even this hatred by writing on social media in early May: “Good morning. Let there be a holocaust in Gaza.”

In another post, he wrote: “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas chambers … or train cars … and finish this story. Let there be a holocaust in Gaza.”

He added: “Men, women and children – by any means necessary we must simply carry out a Shoa against them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T!”

He said there were 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza and wrote: “Without fear, without weakness – just Crush. Eliminate. Slaughter. Flatten. Dismantle. Smash. Shatter.”

The fanatic Netanyahu has been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet he is a hero in our Congress because of campaign contributions. The rest of the world is overwhelmingly against the genocide in Gaza.

In my column two weeks ago, I wrote of the letter signed by the 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which criticized what it called this “most extremist of Israeli governments” and said, “We stand against the war.”

Even more significant – in fact, almost shocking – is the column Thomas Friedman, the longtime New York Times columnist, published on May 9 entitled “This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally.”

Friedman said Netanyahu has placed personal political survival before his nation’s and U.S. interests and wrote, “Netanyahu is not our friend.”

He added that “a permanent Israeli military occupation, whose unstated goal will be to pressure all Palestinians to leave is a prescription for a permanent insurgency – Vietnam on the Mediterranean.”

Israel has never had any prominent media voice more supportive than Friedman has been over the years. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1981.

President Trump wrote that the release of the American hostage Edan Alexander a few days ago was “a step taken in good faith toward the United States and the efforts … to put an end to this very brutal war…”

Axios reported that “Israel was not directly involved … and initially learned about it from its intelligence services who spy on Hamas.” This gives credence to the many reports that Trump is tired of being manipulated by Netanyahu.

CNN reported on May 12 that Trump “blindsided Israel several times already – announcing talks with Iran, a deal with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and direct talks with Hamas,” plus not stopping there on the president’s latest Middle East trip.

Maybe Friedman’s column and some of the statements and actions by Trump will finally give some members of Congress the courage to speak out against Israel’s cruelty in Gaza. (Israeli Hatred for Children in Gaza Is Shocking.)

How is this not a “final solution”?

Nonetheless, however, despite whatever misgivings President Donald John Trump may have about the plight of the Palestinian people, he still talks about putting them elsewhere because there is nothing left in Gaza City but rubble while being somehow unable or unwilling to state publicly that there is nothing but rubble left in Gaza City because the Israelis have destroyed it systematically in their "war on terrorism” that just happens to include all two and one-half million Palestinians. Additionally, Trump made it clear when he stopped in various Arab countries recently that they should join the “Abraham Accords” and recognize the State of Israel. The forty-seventh president may have his “regrets” about what has happened in Gaza, but those “regrets” do not outweigh his overall support for Israeli hegemony in the Middle East with the exception of Gaza, upon which he has set his eyes to transform into a “freedom zone” and “Riviera of the Mideast” (Trump says US should take Gaza and transform it into a 'freedom zone').

The Israelis are, in addition to bombing Gaza’s entire infrastructure, torturing the Palestinians there by means of starvation:

One of the talking points Israel apologists like to regurgitate is that Israel can’t possibly be acting with genocidal intent in Gaza, because if they had wanted to exterminate the Palestinians they could have easily done so in a matter of days.

As luck would have it, leaders from the Israeli government have just helpfully come out and debunked that talking point with a few shockingly frank public admissions.

Explaining the decision to allow a minuscule amount of aid into Gaza after months of deliberate starvation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel is now allowing “minimal humanitarian aid” on the insistence of western officials so that they will support Israel’s murderous operation to conquer the enclave.

Jeremy Scahill reports the following for Drop Site News:

“We’re going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu vowed Monday in a video released by his office announcing that Israel would begin delivering “minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.” Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention. “Our best friends in the world — senators I know as strong supporters of Israel — have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said. “They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war… but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine,’” Netanyahu added. To continue the war of annihilation, he asserted, “We need to do it in a way that they won’t stop us.”

As usual, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further in saying the quiet part out loud and giving the whole game away, explaining that Israel is providing just enough aid to maintain western support and avoid war crimes charges while advancing its ethnic cleansing operation in the Gaza Strip, boasting about the government’s skillfulness in “navigating” that line.

Some choice Smotrich quotes, courtesy of the aforementioned Drop Site News write-up:

Smotrich said the aid scheme would allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”
“The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount. A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate.”
“Truth be told, until the last of the hostages returns, we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip. But the reality is that if we do that, the world will force us to halt the war immediately, and to lose. It would be winning the battle, and losing the war. I’m committed to winning the war.”
“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding. You know why they aren’t succeeding? Because we are navigating [the campaign] responsibly and wisely, and that’s how we’ll continue to do [it].”
Smotrich said that the Israeli forces are initiating a campaign to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history — nothing less.”

Smotrich also praised the IDF for deliberately targeting civilians and civil infrastructure, saying “The IDF is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas… eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and figures in the economic and governmental apparatus.”

So there you have it, spelled out in plain language. There is no need to wonder why Israel has been dragging out its genocidal atrocities over a year and a half instead of just brazenly annihilating all the Palestinians in one swift scorched-earth campaign. Israel has told us why. They have opted for their slow-motion strangulation approach because that’s what’s necessary to maintain essential western support and avoid war crimes tribunals.

This comes as the governments of France, Canada and the UK publicly issue a warning to Israel saying that they may begin imposing targeted sanctions on Tel Aviv if it does not begin allowing in more aid to Gaza and curbing the abuses in the West Bank. So Israel is currently acutely aware that it is walking a delicate line between (A) making Gaza an unlivable hellhole for Palestinians and (B) maintaining western support. So it is making the smallest concessions it thinks it can get away with in order to keep both A and B.

The western pushback against Israel’s criminality has thus far been feeble, pathetic, and entirely inadequate. Australia’s denunciation of Israel’s starvation warfare is even more toothless than that of France, the UK and Canada. But we are seeing some movement, which shows that these western governments are not entirely unresponsive to internal pressures from their citizenry.

I just saw a tweet from the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi which reads as follows:

“Something is happening. The number of government officials from around the world who I’ve heard in private conversations call Israel’s slaughter in Gaza a genocide — without qualifications and caveats — has increased dramatically in just the past weeks. The dam is breaking.”

Keep pushing. (Israeli Officials Explain Balancing Act Between Overt Genocide and Maintaining Western Support.)

Whatever criticism the cowardly lions of the West have been able to mumble with reluctance about the plight of the Gazan Palestinians is more than outweighed by their refusal to openly state categorically that the Israeli regime has been and continues to be engaged in genocidal acts that grow more depraved by the day, including a renewed ground invasion of Gaza to “kill terrorists”:

The Israeli military has launched a large-scale ground operation across the Gaza Strip over the weekend as part of a major new offensive against Hamas.

“Over the past day, IDF troops in the Southern Command, both the standing army and reserves, began a broad ground operation throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip, as part of the start of Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

The latest assault is aimed at destroying Hamas’ weapons deports, terror cells, tunnel network and anti-tank launch sites, the IDF said.

So far, the IDF claims to have killed “dozens of terrorists” and dismantled many of Hamas’ bases above and below ground.

The new wave of airstrikes killed at least 103 people, including children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, whose estimates do not differentiate between civilians and terrorists.

Seven children and one woman were among those killed in a strike by the Jabaliya refugee camp, according to Gaza’s emergency services.

The heavy bombardments also forced northern Gaza’s main operational medical facility, the Indonesian Hospital, to shut down, with the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza reporting another 48 deaths after a bomb hit shelters in Khan Younis.

The Israeli military blamed the civilian casualties on Hamas over the group’s practice of operating in residential areas.

The IDF said the weekend assault will allow the military to seize vast territory across the Gaza Strip after taking control of nearly half the Palestinian enclave last month.

The large-scale occupation plan would cause hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to relocate yet again to other parts of the war-torn enclave.

The renewed incursion occurred as negotiations were heating up in Qatar over the 58 hostages who remain in Hamas custody.

Israel has reiterated that it will use military pressure to secure the hostages’ release and the destruction of Hamas.

The renewed incursion occurred as negotiations were heating up in Qatar over the 58 hostages who remain in Hamas custody.

Israel has reiterated that it will use military pressure to secure the hostages’ release and the destruction of Hamas.

The terror group, however, maintains that no hostage will be freed unless both sides agree to a cease-fire and lay the groundwork for an end to the war, which has raged on for more than 19 months.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was open to discussing an end to the war, but only on the condition that Hamas demilitarize and exit Gaza forever, which the terror group has slammed as a non-starter. (Israel launches new major ground offensive in Gaza Strip.)

Yet, as was seen in part sixteen of this series, Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that rescuing the hostages is secondary to the Israeli “war on terrorism. This monster, who is making the Ariel Sharon seem like a veritable humanitarian (here is a “reality check” about the career of Ariel Sharon, by the way: Moral Monsters), wants to annihilate the Palestinian people, and he is without a qualm of conscience as to how he achieves his genocidal goals:

Anyone who says Gaza will be at peace if Hamas just surrenders and releases the hostages is either knowingly sowing disinformation or ignorantly sowing misinformation. We need to make sure everyone’s clear on this so nobody can say they didn’t know after history unpacks this one.

Netanyahu has made it completely and unambiguously clear that even if Hamas surrendered today and released every single hostage, Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan will still need to be implemented as a precondition for ending the mass slaughter. To be absolutely 100 percent clear, Trump’s plan for Gaza is that “all” Palestinians be removed on a “permanent” basis, never allowed to return.

There is no way to permanently remove all Palestinians from a Palestinian territory without material coercion — meaning more mass scale violence and siege warfare. There is also no way to argue that this mass displacement would be voluntary even without further violence, since Israel has been deliberately and systematically making the Gaza Strip uninhabitable by destroying civilian infrastructure. Forcing them to choose between starvation in an uninhabitable wasteland or submit to ethnic cleansing is exactly the same as forcing them out at gunpoint.

It was obvious that this was Israel’s plan for Gaza in October 2023; plans to move the civilian population out of the enclave were already being circulated within days of the onslaught. But that wasn’t Israel’s official and openly stated policy until the Trump administration; now that Israel is clearly and explicitly stating this agenda in public, there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to continue circulating the lie that the suffering of the people of Gaza ends if Hamas surrenders. What happens is that their homeland will be permanently taken away from them as they are shipped off to a foreign land, and Gaza will cease to exist as a Palestinian territory.

That’s not peace. Or if it is it’s the peace of an empty room; the peace of a room full of corpses. Saying you made peace by removing the Palestinians from Palestine is like saying you settled an argument by decapitating one of the arguers.

That’s the only “peace” the people of Palestine will experience if Hamas lays down its arms. Losing everything they’ve ever known forever, on pain of death.

That is the inconvenient truth people are trying to hide when they say “This all ends when Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages.” That is the deception they are sowing.

Israel bombed the home of two married doctors in Gaza on Friday, killing nine of their children and critically injuring their sole surviving son. The father of the children was also severely injured in the attack, while their mother, while still working at the nearby hospital, received the charred bodies of her children. They were too badly burned to be recognized. (It’s A Complete Lie To Say Gaza Can Have Peace If Hamas Surrenders.)

Now, this having been stated, Hamas, which was, if you will recall, propped up by the Israeli Mossad in 2013 in attempt to make it a counterweight to Fatah, the political arm of the former Palestine Liberation Organization, that constitutes the Palestinian Authority, which still exercises what has maintained a fictional “legal” control West Bank Region A and West Bank Region B, is led by Mohammedans whose souls are just as much captive to the devil by means of Original Sin as are the Israeli Zionists, and it is thus unsurprising that one of Hamas’ senior officials is as indifferent to the suffering of the masses in Gaza as are the Israelis and their sycophantic Western enablers, especially among the caste of unfortunates known as “Christian Zionists”:

A fat cat senior Hamas official is facing backlash within Gaza after he claimed the growing Palestinian death toll is nothing more than “material calculations” for the terror group.

In an interview that has now gone viral inside the enclave, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, 58, said the latest estimates of more than 53,000 dead in Gaza are not a concern for his group, the Times of Israel reported.

“The martyrs [killed in the war] — the wombs of Gaza’s women will give birth to twice as many,” he proclaimed. “This is the price that must be paid.

“If we thought in material terms, we would not be able to hold onto our land,” Zuhri added.

Abu Zuhri made the comments about the conditions in Gaza while living 1,100 miles away in Qatar.

The spokesman’s comments echo those of slain Hamas chief and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, whose leaked messages revealed that he thought of the civilian casualties in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices.”

Hamas’ casualty estimates, made by the health ministry, do not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.

While Zuhri’s remarks were first recorded on March 30 for Libyan TV, the clip has recently gained traction in Gaza as Palestinians continue publicly protesting Hamas’ rule of Gaza and refusal to disarm and end the war with Israel.

The video even triggered dozens of residents to march around the southern city of Khan Younis on Monday as they slammed Zuhri as a “disgrace.”

“A man outside the Strip says that everyone who was killed can simply be replaced. This is someone deluded beyond reason — he’s not one of us,” one Palestinian man posted himself saying on social media.

“Hamas leadership says — so what if 60,000 people died?” another Gaza resident said, referring to the official number that includes those who are presumed dead and buried in the rubble of the ruined enclave.

Bottom of Form

“Abu Zuhri, you’re speaking from outside the Strip. Your children are outside the Strip. You ignite this war, and we are the fuel?!” the outraged resident added.

The outrage comes as Israel stepped up its ground operation in Gaza on Sunday, with a goal of taking complete control of the entire Palestinian enclave to eliminate Hamas.

The intense military incursion included heavy bombardments across the Strip, with the latest strikes killing more than 55 people, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between civilians and terrorists. (Hamas faces backlash in Gaza after top official dismisses war dead as 'price that must be paid'.)

Sami Abu Zuhri is as much of a monster as Benjamin Netanyahu, which proves the point that I made throughout the course of this series, namely, that innocent human beings will always be at risk from men whose souls are held captive to the devil by means of Original Sin and/or Mortal Sins, which I why I will never tire of reminding readers of this simple truth contained in Pope Pius XI’s Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:

20. Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

Yes, we must reform our own lives with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. In order to do this, of course, we love God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church with our whole mind, our whole soul, our whole body, our whole heart and our whole strength. We must love others for love of Him, Who wills the good of all men, which is the salvation of their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, we live in a topsy-turvy world that is suffering the effects of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent rise and triumph of Judeo-Masonry and its multiplicity of "ideas" that have enshrined naturalism as the foundation of personal and social life. Men fall prey to sentimentality and emotionalism, illogic and passion. They are prone to believe everything except the true religion, prone to make excuses for their own sins and to seek to enable family members and friends who are living lives of unrepentant sin.

As the devil hates God but knows that he cannot destroy Him, he wants to do the next best thing: to convince men to hate God and His Holy Church and the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law so that they will wind up hating themselves and their fellow men, becoming instruments of disorder and violence in the world.

Catholicism is not a panacea for personal and social order. Each of us is wounded by the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin and our own Actual Sins. The Middle Ages of Christendom was marked with various episodes of wars among Catholic kingdoms and even against popes themselves, The fact that individual Catholics fail to cooperate with the graces won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Christ the King, Our Divine Redeemer, and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, is to the discredit of individual Catholics who added to social disorder by means of their sins, not to the discredit of the Faith or any of Its immutable doctrines, including the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Pope Pius XII made this point in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:

It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)

Living in a world that has been deprived of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the barren liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, most men today are "catechized" by television or the internet or what passes for "entertainment" in popular culture. They are tossed about from one thing to another without having any clear, coherent understanding of their identity as redeemed creatures and that each of us will have to make an accounting of our lives at the moment of our Particular Judgments. Men who lack the Catholic Faith, you see, must descend more and more into a coarseness of life and culture that produces a class of neo-barbarians who are not only at the gates but who are well inside of the fort of the city.

We are living a world that was born of Modernity’s bloody revolution against the true Church five hundred years ago and has been nurtured and sustained in blood as one social revolution after another has based its particular prescriptions for a “just world” on hate, and what is happening in the Holy Land in the never-ending killing of innocents being committed at the commands of both Vladmir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky in the Russo-Ukrainian War demonstrate very clearly that there can never be any kind of true peace in world when men at a war with Christ the King and His true Church and thus at war with their own human nature, which was made to know, love, and serve God in this life as members of His true Church who are consecrated to Our King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary so as to enjoy an unending Easter Sunday glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost in Heaven.

Although it may be seem trite to keep repeating this point, we must keep praying to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to console the good God, as Francisco Marto loved to do before he died, and to make reparation for our own many sins as we seek to plant a few seeds for the conversion of men to the true Faith before they die.

Remember, we must never look for results. We must simply remain faithful to our prayers and be content to give everything to Our Lord through Our Lady to be disposed of for the good of souls as she sees fit. It is our privilege to be her servant in this effort, and we must pray to her to send us the graces to do all that we can to usher in the day when all men everywhere 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 the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Philip Neri, pray for us.

Pope Saint Eleutherius, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Saint Philip Neri

As we have already said, Joy is the leading feature of the Paschal Season—a supernatural Joy, which springs from our delight at seeing the glorious triumph of our Emmanuel, and from the happiness we feel at our own being delivered from the bonds of death. This interior Joy was the characteristic of the Saint whom we honor today. His heart was ever full of a jubilant enthusiasm for what regards God; so that we could truly apply to him those words of Scripture: A secure mind is like a continual feast. (Proverbs 15:15)

One of his latest disciples, the illustrious Father Faber, tell us in his beautiful treatise, Growth in Holiness, that Cheerfulness is one of the chief means for advancing in Christian perfection. We will therefore welcome with gladness and veneration the benevolent and light-hearted Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, and one of the greatest Saints produced by the Church in the 16th Century.

Love of God—but a love of the most ardent kind, and one that communicated itself to all that came near him—was our Saint’s characteristic virtue. All the Saints loved God; for the Love of God is the first and greatest of the Commandments: but Philip’s whole life was, in an especial manner, the fulfillment of this divine precept. His entire existence seemed to be but one long transport of Love for his Creator; and, had it not been for a miracle of God’s power and goodness, this burning Love would have soon put an end to his mortal career. He was in his twenty-ninth year; when one day—it was within the Whitsun Octave—he was seized with such a vehemence of divine charity that two of his ribs broke, thus making room for the action of the heart to respond freely to the intensity of the soul’s love. The fracture was never made good; it caused a protrusion which was distinctly observable; and owing to this miraculous enlargement of the region of the heat, Philip was enabled to live fifty years more, during which time he loved his God with a fervor and strength which would do honor to one already in heaven.

This Seraph in human flesh was a living answer to the insults heaped upon the Catholic Church by the so-called Reformation. Luther and Calvin had called this holy Church the harlot of Babylon; and yet she had, at that very time, such children as Teresa of Spain and Philip Neri of Rome to offer to the admiration of mankind. But Protestantism cared little or nothing for piety or charity; its great object was the throwing off the yoke of restraint. Under pretense of Religious Liberty, it persecuted them that adhered to the True Faith; it forced itself by violence, where it could not enter by seduction; —but as for leading men to love their God, this was what it never aimed at or thought of. The result was that, wheresoever it imposed its errors, devotedness was at an end—we mean that devotedness which leads man to make sacrifices for God or for his neighbor. A very long period of time elapsed after the Reformation before Protestantism ever gave a thought to the infidels who abounded in various parts of the globe; and if, later on, it organized what it calls its Missions, it chose a strange set of men to be the apostles of its Bible Societies. It has made a recent discovery—it has found out that the Catholic Church is prolific in Orders and Congregations devoted to works of Charity. The discovery has excited it to emulation; and among its other imitations, it can now boast of having Protestant Sisters of Charity. To a certain point, success may encourage it to persevere in these tardy efforts; but anything like the devotedness of Catholic Institutions is an impossibility for Protestantism, were it only for this reason—that its principles are opposed to the Evangelical Counsels, which are the great sources of the spirit of sacrifice, and are prompted by a motive of the Love of God.

Glory, then, to Philip Neri—one of the worthiest representatives of Charity in the 16th Century! It was owing to his zeal that Rome, and Christendom at large, were replenished with a new life by the frequentation of the Sacraments and by the exercises of Catholic Piety. His word, his very look, used to excite people to devotion. His memory is still held in deep veneration, especially in Rome, where his Feast is kept with the greatest solemnity on this twenty-sixth day of May. He shares with Saints Peter and Paul the honor of being Patron of the Holy City. His Feast is there kept as a day of obligation. The Pope goes, with great solemnity, to the Church of Saint Mary in Vallicella, and pays the debt of gratitude which the Holy See owes to the Saint who accomplished with great things for the glory of our Holy Mother the Church.

Philip had the gift of miracles; and, though seeking to be forgotten and despised, he was continually surrounded by people, who besought him to pray for them, either in their temporal or spiritual concerns. Death itself was obedient to his command, as in the case of the young prince Paul Massimo. The young Prince, when breathing his last, desired that Philip should be sent for, in order that he might assist him to die happily. The Saint was saying Mass at the time. As soon as the Holy Sacrifice was over, he repaired to the palace—but he was too late; he found the father, sister and the whole family in tears. The young Prince had died after an illness of sixty-five days, which he had borne with most edifying patience. Philip fell upon his knees; and after a fervent prayer, he put his hand on the head of the corpse, and called the Prince by his name. Thus awakened from the sleep of death, Paul opened his eyes, and looking at Philip, said to him: “My Father!” He then added these words: “I only wished to go to Confession.” The assistants left the room, and Philip remained alone with the Prince. After a few moments, the family were called back; and in their presence, Paul began to speak to Philip regarding his mother and sister who had been taken from him by death, and whom he loved with the tenderest affection. During the conversation, the Prince’s face regained all it had lost by sickness. His animation was that of one in perfect health. The Saint then asked him if he would wish to die again?—“Oh! yes:” answered the Prince, “most willingly; for I should then see my mother and sister in heaven.” “Take then,” said Philip, “take thy departure for heaven, and pray to the Lord for me.” At these words, the young Prince expired once more, and entered into the joys of eternal life, leaving his family to mourn his departure, and venerate a Saint such as Philip.

He was almost continually visited by our Lord with raptures and ecstasies; he was gifted with the spirit of prophecy, and could read the secrets of the conscience. His virtues were such as to draw souls to him by an irresistible charm. The youth of Rome, rich and poor, used to flock to him. Some he warned against danger; others he saved, after they had fallen. The poor and sick were the object of his unceasing care. He seemed to be everywhere in the City by his works of zeal, which gave an impulse to piety that has never been forgotten.

Philip was convinced that one of the principal means for maintaining the Christian spirit is the preaching the word of God: hence he was most anxious to provide the Faithful with apostolic men who would draw them to God by good and solid preaching. He established, under the name of The Oratory, (not to be confounded with the Oratoire de France) an institution, which still exists, and whose object is to encourage Christian piety among the people. By founding it, Philip aimed at securing the services, zeal and talent, of priests who are not called to the Religious Life, but who, by uniting their labors together, would produce great good to the souls of men.

Thus did he afford to Priests, whose vocation does not lead them to the Religious State, the great advantages of a common rule and mutual good example, which are such powerful aids both in the service of God and in the exercise of pastoral duties. But the holy apostle was a man of too much Faith not to have an esteem of the Religious Life as a State of perfection. He never lost an opportunity of encouraging a Vocation to that holy State. The Religious Orders were indebted to him for so many members, that his intimate friend and admirer, St. Ignatius of Loyola, used playfully to compare him to a bell, which calls others to Church, yet never goes in itself!

The awful crisis of the 16th Century, through which the Christian world had to pass, and which robbed the Catholic Church of so many provinces, was a source of keenest grief to Philip during the whole of his life. His heart bled at seeing so many thousand souls fall into the abyss of error and heresy. He took the deepest interest in the efforts that were made to reclaim those that had been led astray by the pretended Reformation. He kept a watchful eye on the tactics wherewith Protestantism sought to maintain its ground. The “Centuries of Magdeburg,” for example, suggested to his zeal a counterbalance of truth. The “Centuries” was a series of historical essays whereby the Reformers sough to prove that the Roman Church had changed the ancient Faith, and introduced superstitious practices in the place of those that were used in the early ages of Christianity. A work like this, with its falsified quotations, its misrepresentation and, not unfrequently, its invention of facts, was destined to do great injury; and Philip resolved to meet it by a work of profound erudition—a true history, compiled from authentic sources. One of the fathers of his Oratory, Cæsar Baronius, was just the man for such an undertaking; and Philip ordered him to take the field against the enemy. The Ecclesiastical Annals were the fruit of this happy thought; and Baronius himself, at the beginning of his 8th Book, acknowledges that Philip was the originator of the work. Three centuries have passed away since then. It is easy for us, with the means which science now puts into our hands, to detect certain imperfections in the Annals; at the same time, it is acknowledged on all sides that they form by far the truest and finest History of the Church of the first twelve hundred years—which is as far as the learned Cardinal went. Heresy felt the injury it must needs sustain by such a History. The sickly and untrustworthy erudition of the Centuriators could not stand before an honest statement of facts; and we may safely assert that the progress of Protestantism was checked by the Annals of Baronius, which showed that the Church was then, as she had ever been—the pillar and ground of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:15) Philip’s sanctity, and Baronius’ learning, secured the victory. Numerous conversions soon followed, consoling the Church for the losses she had sustained. And if, in these our own days, there are so many returning to the ancient Faith—it is but fair to attribute the movement, in part at least, to the success of the historical method begun by the Annals.

Let us now read the Liturgical account of the virtues and holy deeds of the Apostle of Rome in the 16th Century.

Philip Neri was born at Florence, of pious and respectable parents. From his very childhood, he gave evident promise of future sanctity. While yet a young man, he gave up an ample fortune which he inherited from an uncle, and went to Rome, where he studied theology and philosophy, and devoted himself wholly to the service of Christ Jesus. Such was his abstemiousness, that he frequently passed three days without eating anything. He spent much time in watching and prayer. He frequently made the visit of the Seven Churches of the City, and was in the habit of spending the night in the Cemetery of Calixtus, in the contemplation of heavenly things. Being ordained priest out of obedience, he devoted himself without reserve to the saving souls, and, even to the last day of his life, he was assiduous in hearing confessions. He was the spiritual father of a countless number of souls, and in order to nourish them with the daily food of God’s word, with the frequency of the Sacraments, with application to prayer, and with other pious exercises, he instituted the congregation of the Oratory.

He was ever languishing with the love of God, wherewith he was wounded. Such was the ardor that glowed within him, that, not being able to keep his heart within its place, his breast was miraculously enlarged by the breaking and expansion of two of his ribs. Sometimes, when celebrating Mass, or in fervent prayer, he was seen to be raised up in the air, and encircled with a bright light. He looked after the needy and the poor with an all-providing charity. He was once rewarded by a visit from an Angel, who appeared to him in a beggar’s garb, and Philip gave him an alms. On another occasion, when carrying loaves to the poor, during the night, he fell into a deep hole, but was drawn forth by an Angel without having sustained any injury. So humble was he, that he had an abiding dread of everything that savored of honor; and he was most resolute in refusing every ecclesiastical dignity, though the highest offices were more than once offered to him.

He possessed the gift of prophecy, and could miraculously read the inmost thoughts of others’ souls. Throughout his whole life, he preserved his chastity unsullied. He had also a supernatural power of distinguishing those who were chaste from those who were not so. He sometimes appeared to persons who were at a distance, and assisted them in moments of danger. He restored to health many that were sick and at death’s door. He also restored a dead man to life. He was frequently favored with apparitions of heavenly Spirits and of the Blessed Mother of God. He saw the souls of several persons ascending, amidst great brightness, into heaven. At length, being in his eightieth year, he slept in the Lord; it was in the year of our Redemption 1595, the eights of the Calends of June (May 25th), the feast of Corpus Christi, after having said Mass with extraordinary spiritual joy, and at the very hour which he had foretold—which was shortly after midnight. The miracles, wherewith he had been honored, being authentically proved, he was canonized by Pope Gregory XV.

Thy whole life, O Philip, was one long act of Love of Jesus; but it was also one untiring effort to make others know and love him, and thus secure the End for which they were created. Thou was the indefatigable Apostle of Rome for forty years, and no one could approach thee without receiving something of the divine ardor that filled thy heart. We, too, would fain receive of thy fullness of devotion; and therefore we pray thee to teach us how to love our Risen Jesus. It is not enough that we adore him and rejoice in his triumph; —we must love him: for he has permitted us to celebrate the various Mysteries of his Life on earth, with a view to our seeing more and more clearly how deserving he is of our warmest love. It is Love that will lead us to the full appreciation of his Resurrection—that bright Mystery which shows us all the riches of the Sacred Heart. The New Life, which he put on by rising from the Tomb, teaches us more eloquently than ever how tenderly he loves us, and how earnestly he importunes us to love him in return. Pray for us, O Philip, that our heart and our flesh may rejoice in the Living God! (Psalms 83:2) Now that we have relished the mystery of the Pasch, lead us to that of the Ascension; prepare our souls to receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; and when the august mystery of the Eucharist beams upon us, with all its loveliness in the approaching Festival—the very day that ushered thee into the unveiled vision of thy Jesus—intercede for us, that we may receive and relish that Living Bread, which giveth Life to the world! (John 6:33)

The Sanctity that shone in thee, O Philip, was marked by the impetuosity of thy soul’s longing after her God; and all they that held intercourse with thee, quickly imbibed thy spirit—which, in truth, is the only one that contents our Redeemer’s Heart. Thou hadst the talent of winning souls, and leading them to perfection by the path of confidence and generosity. In this great work, thy method consisted in having none; thus imitating the Apostles and ancient Fathers, and trusting to the power of God’s own word. It was by thee that the frequenting the Sacraments was restored—that surest indication of the Christian spirit. Pray for the faithful of our times, and come to the assistance of so many souls that are anxiously pursuing systems of spirituality which have been coined by the hands of men, and which but too frequently retard or even impede the intimate union of the Creature with his Creator.

Thy love of the Church, O Philip, was most fervent: there can be no true sanctity without it. Though thy contemplation was of the sublimest kind, yet did it not make thee lose sight of the cruel trials which this holy Spouse of Christ had to endure in those sad times. The successful efforts of heresy stimulated thy zeal: oh! get us that keen sympathy for our holy Faith, which will make us take an interest in all that concerns its progress. It is not enough for us that we save our own souls; we must, moreover, ardently desire, and do our utmost to obtain the advancement of God’s Kingdom on earth, the extirpation of heresy, and the exaltation of our holy Mother the Church: if these are not our dispositions, how can we call ourselves Children of God? May thy example urge us to take to heart the sacred cause of our common Mother. Pray, too, for the Church militant, of which thou wast one of the bravest soldiers. Shield with thy protection that Rome which loves thee so devoutly because of the services which she received at thy hands. Thou didst lead her children to holiness during thy mortal career; bless her and defend her now that thou art in heaven. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Philip Neri, May 26.)

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Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, part seventeen

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