Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part thirty-one

Holy Week begins ten and one-half days from now, that is, with the praying or singing of First Vespers on Saturday, March 28, 2026, and the Paschal Triduum begins two weeks from now with Tenebrae on Wednesday evening, April 1, 2026.

The readings in the Divine Office and in Holy Mass are calling our attention more and more to the events of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and they will intensify even more with the start of Passiontide at First Vespers on Saturday, March 20, 2026, as we read about Our Lord’s dramatic confrontation with the vipers who demanded Who refused to accept His Sacred Divinity as the long-awaited Messias Who would redeem the human race from its sins and not restore the Jewish concept of Israel to what the Pharisees believed to be its “rightful” place politically and territorially.

Here is but one example of the confrontation about which we will read throughout Passiontide:

At that time, Jesus said to the crowds of the Jews: Which of you can convict Me of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God. The Jews therefore in answer said to Him, Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan, and have a devil? Jesus answered, I have not a devil, but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. Yet, I do not seek My own glory; there is One Who seeks and Who judges. Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keep My word, he will never see death. The Jews therefore said, Now we know that You have a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and You say, ‘If anyone keep My word he will never taste death.’ Are You greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom do You make Yourself? Jesus answered, If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing. It is My Father Who glorifies Me, of Whom you say that He is your God. And you do not know Him, but I know Him. And if I say that I do not know Him, I shall be like you, a liar. But I know Him, and I keep His word. Abraham your father rejoiced that he was to see My day. He saw it and was glad. The Jews therefore said to Him, You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am. They therefore took up stones to cast at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out from the temple. (John 8: 46-49.)

Our Lord clearly proclaimed Himself to be God to the Jews in this discourse, and they did not believe Him. Well, it is perhaps more accurate to say that they did not want to believe Him as they, mere mortals, knew that believing in Him would mean an end their pretentiously cruel use of the Mosaic laws to lord it over others without regard for the spirit of those laws, which is why that they had to accuse Him of blasphemy. The leaders of the Jews refused to bend their knees before their very God, Whom they knew full well had said the following to Moses when charging him with the responsibility to liberate the Hebrew people from their captivity to the Egyptians:

[11] And Moses said to God: Who am I that I should go to Pharao, and should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? [12] And he said to him: I will be with thee: and this thou shalt have for a sign, that I have sent thee: When thou shalt have brought my people out of Egypt, thou shalt offer sacrifice to God upon this mountain. [13] Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? what shall I say to them? [14] God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you. [15] And God said again to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me to you: This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. (Exodus 3: 1-15.)

The Jews knew that Our Lord was proclaiming Himself to be God. They knew also that He had performed miracles and had taught more authoritatively than anyone before Him. Blinded by their pride and their obstinacy, they, presaging the high priests and priestesses of the Judeo-Masonic world of Modernity, were constitutionally incapable of bowing down to acknowledge their very God when He appeared and spoke to them in the very Flesh.

Father Maurice Meschler explained the encounter as follows:

In proportion as He reveals Himself more fully, the Jews grow more bitter in their rage and hatred. We see their increasing irritation in their more and more frequent and excited contradiction; in the scorn and derision which now marks their retorts and with which they respond to our Lord’s prediction with regard to His decease (John viii. 22), here with far more malevolence than on the Feast of the Tabernacles (John vii. 35); lastly, in the open affront and curse which they hurl in His face before all the people, calling Him a Samaritan and a demoniac (John viii. 48, 52, vii. 20), Our Lord a more severe in His language, and upbraids them with very bitter truths, predicting their impatient death and temporal and eternal ruin (John vii. 34; viii. 44). The severe and humiliating defeat in connection with the adulterers must already have excited and exasperated these perverse hearts to the very utmost, and now that our Lord so unsparingly castigates their national and personal pride, their hatred and fury breaks out into a wild act of violence, and they wish to stone Him in the Temple. Our Saviour’s divine power alone frustrates their attempt. It is as though we see the combat between light and darkness actually before our eyes, and as if the word of St. John: “The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (i. 5) were here enacted in a living scene (Keppler). The Jews are not only the real adulterers, by their violation of the covenant with their God, but also His persecutors and murderers; they wish to stone their Messias in the midst of His Temple, and thus to extinguish the Light of the World with their own hands. How marvelouslly beautiful and majestic the figure of our Saviour appears against this dark background, in His calmness and self-possession, His childlike fidelity and love to His Father; in His pure zeal for the honour and mandate of His Heavenly Father; and lastly, in the courage He displays in the midst of the infuriated people, and in His divine power, since He does not flee or bend down to avoid the stones cast at Him, but simply withdraws from them like the light, which cannot be seized and stoned! The Godhead was His shield and refuge. But the situation had become so strained by the preceding events that a crisis was unavoidable. (Father Maurice Meschler, S.J., The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Son of God, in Meditations, Volume I, Freiburg Im Breisgau, 1928 Herder & Co., Publishers to the Holy Apostolic See, pp. 599-600.)

Yes, the confrontation has begun.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has proclaimed Himself to be what He is, God in the very Flesh, and they did not want to believe Him. Instead, of course, much like the Talmudists, Kabbalists, Zionists and other naturalists and rationalists of our day, the Jews who were denounced by Our Lord used epithets to try to distract the people from the fact that Truth Himself was announcing to them all that the time of the Old Covenant was coming to an end.

The Jews preferred the blindness.

So do most people, including most Catholics today, which is why career politicians, civil servant apparatchiks, lawyers, educators, talking heads and the other blathering, babbling naturalists of the commentariat class, scientists, medical “professionals,” leaders of multinational corporations and other businesses, bankers and others who become wealthy from charging usurious rates of interest to keep the peons who must purchase automobiles and other major expenses on credit in states of perpetual slave bondage and poverty can never see the truth about anything, especially on matters of life and death. Merchants of lies can never see the Divine impress in others, and they can never admit that there are truths that exist in the nature of things that do not depend upon human acceptance for their binding force and validity and that bind the consciences of all people at a times in all circumstances and in all places.

Tragically, the attention of most people around the work, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is riveted on a needless, unjustified, and immoral war—excuse me, military excursion or intervention—started by an American president, who ran on a campaign of waging no more foreign wars, at the behest of the uber Zionist Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Joseph Robinette “Autopen” Biden, Jr., after the later claimed “victory” in the November 3, 2020, presidential elections.

President Donald John Trump thought he was going to achieve a quick victory in Iraq as had occurred in Venezuela, on January 3, 2026. Although he was warned by his generals and a few other advisers that it was not possible to achieve such a quick victory over the Iranian Mohammedans, Trump trusted his “gut” without clearly delineated goals and then has kept changing his mind ever since the attacks upon Iran began on Saturday, February 28, 2026. He was even warned about the possibility that the Iranians might close the Strait of Hormuz to American flag bearing oil tankers as well those of the Persian Gulf War nations somewhat allied with the United States now (see Trump was warned Iran could retaliate across the Persian Gulf).

The worldwide crisis that has ensued since then has driven energy costs through the roof here in the United States of America and around the world while whoever is running the Iranian military continues to wage asymmetrical warfare against American targets in the Persian Gulf and the Persian Gulf states themselves, and despite efforts by the Israeli government to censor reports of the damage done in Israel by Iranian missile and drone attacks, enough information is known to state that Israel has suffered far more damage that its officials are comfortable admitting.

Additionally, members of the Hezbollah terrorist group in southern Lebanon began lobbing missiles and drones into northern Israel, which the Israelis took as the excuse to bomb the living daylights out of southern Lebanon, forcing over 700,000 human beings to flee their homes, many of which been destroyed by Israeli bombs in the same manner as continue to occur to the Palestinian people of Gaza. Beirut, which was once known as the Paris of the Mediterranean, has been attacked almost daily by Israeli bombing, which is doing no more to eliminate Hezbollah than the Israeli bombing of Beirut in 1982 did to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization, the remnant of which are the “official” government of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, the latter of which, however, has been under the de facto control of the Hamas terrorist group for at least the past thirteen years:

Israel has destroyed a bridge in southern Lebanon and dropped leaflets over Beirut warning the country faces the same scale of destruction visited upon Gaza, as its military campaign against Hezbollah enters a devastating new phase.

The Zrarieh Bridge spanning the Litani River was struck early on Friday, with the Israeli military claiming Hezbollah fighters were using it to move between the country’s north and south, though it offered no evidence to support this.

It marked the first time Israel had openly acknowledged striking civilian infrastructure since the current offensive began.

Defence Minister Israel Katz made clear more such strikes would follow, saying the Lebanese government would face “increasing costs through damage to infrastructure and loss of territory” for as long as Hezbollah remained armed.

Israeli attacks on Friday also hit areas of Beirut not previously targeted in this conflict. A drone struck a residential building in the Bourj Hammoud district in the city’s northeastern suburbs, while separate strikes hit the Jnah and Nabaa neighbourhoods.

Nine people, including five children, were killed in Arki near Sidon, and eight more died in the Fawwar area. An ambulance was also struck in the south.

Israel’s latest offensive on Lebanon was triggered on March 2, after Hezbollah launched drones and rockets into northern Israel following Israel’s attacks on Iran which killed the Iranian supreme leader.

Since then, Israeli attacks have killed at least 773 people and wounded 1,933 more, including 103 children, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said on Friday. More than 800,000 people, roughly one in seven of the population, have been forced from their homes.

The leaflets dropped over Beirut on Friday carried an explicit warning, invoking Israel’s two-year assault on Gaza, which has left much of the territory in ruins and displaced nearly its entire population, as a model for what Lebanon could face.

“In light of the great success in Gaza, the newspaper of the new ⁠reality arrives to Lebanon,” the flyer said.

According to the latest satellite analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre, about 81 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.

Another flyer called on Lebanese to strip Hezbollah of its weapons. It featured two QR codes to links on WhatsApp and Facebook, accompanied by a message telling Lebanese to make contact if they want ⁠to see “real change” in their country.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Beirut, said that the Lebanese army has warned people not to scan the QR codes because they connect to the Israeli secret services who are trying to recruit people.

“[It’s] part of the sort of psychological pressure Israel wants to put on the Lebanese,” he said.

He added: “[Israel has] been striking buildings outside the traditional Hezbollah strongholds, which risks stoking sectarian conflict here in Lebanon. It’s a deeply sectarian society split on sectarian lines.

“This adds to that psychological pressure.”

Lebanon ‘approaching a breaking point’

The Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmad al-Hajjar said the scale of displacement had overwhelmed the state.

“No matter how many shelters are opened in Beirut, they cannot accommodate all the displaced,” he said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said the country is “approaching a breaking point” as displacement accelerates.

“Israel’s evacuation orders have now engulfed 1,470 square kilometres [some 570 square miles], or 14 percent of Lebanon, including south Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburb, and parts of Bekaa,” the international NGO said.

It also described conditions in collective shelters as desperate, saying that in one school housing 1,200 people, 15 people were “crammed” into each classroom, with no showers and one toilet shared between 23 people.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Beirut on Friday, saying Lebanon had been “dragged into” a war not of its choosing, and called for $325m in emergency humanitarian funding.

UN agencies warned that 11,600 pregnant women had been displaced, with about 4,000 expected to give birth in the next three months, many cut off from medical care. Some 55 hospitals and clinics have been forced to shut.

A group of 12 independent UN human rights experts, including Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese,  said evacuation orders issued to residents of south Lebanon and southern Beirut were “blatantly illegal”.

They warned that the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, combined with heavy bombardment, “would constitute yet another war crime” by Israel. (Israel destroys bridge in Lebanon and threatens Gaza-scale devastation.)

The leaders of the Zionist State of Israel continue to attack its neighbors without ever learning the simple fact that they are no more secure now than they were when then Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon launched an attack upon the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, on June 7, 1981:

On the evening of Saturday, June 7, 1981, US Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis received an unexpected phone call from Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister.

The ambassador’s staff had traced Lewis to the Hilton Hotel, where he was prepping William Butcher, the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, for a Ministry of Finance dinner later that night. He accepted the call while perched on the edge of a bed in Butcher’s suite, unprepared for the short, stunning message that Begin delivered. Lewis explained what had occurred in a flash cable to Washington:

At 1940 local (1740 ZULU) Prime Minster Begin contacted me and asked me to convey the following message to you as quickly as possible. Commence text. Today our air force carried out a raid on the atomic reactor near Baghdad. According to the reports of our pilots the target was completely destroyed. All our planes returned safely. End text.

Additional details of Operation Opera slowly trickled in. Fourteen American-built F-16 fighter aircraft had taken off from an Israeli airstrip in the Negev, cutting through Jordanian and Saudi airspace as they raced towards Iraq. With no possibility of an emergency landing, the pilots flew low and evaded detection by US Airborne Early-Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) temporarily stationed in Saudi Arabia.

In less than an hour, they reached their target: Iraq’s Tamuz 1 reactor site, located 10 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. While Israeli ministers tracked the operation from Begin’s home in Jerusalem, eight of the pilots dropped a dozen or so 2000-pound bombs upon the cement reactor shell below. In under two minutes, Iraq’s fledgling nuclear program was destroyed.

In 1991, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney praised the “outstanding” Israeli operation for “ma[king] our job much easier in Desert Storm.” Ten years earlier, however, American officials had a much different take on Operation Opera.

Embassy staff in the region warned of Arab retaliation. The raid, one official confided to the press, had evoked “institutional memories of what happened in 1967,” when an Israeli attack on Egypt’s air force sparked a major regional conflict and led several states to sever relations with the United States. Some US officials, unsure if the Tamuz reactor had gone ‘hot,’ also scrambled to determine whether radioactive material was leaking from the damaged facility.

In his diary, even President Ronald Reagan voiced extreme pessimism: “I swear I believe Armageddon is near.”

The risk of escalation faded quickly, but the raid’s consequences for the United States did not. The strike occurred three days after an Israeli-Egyptian summit, forcing an increasingly isolated Anwar Sadat, then President of Egypt, to defend himself against accusations of collusion. Similarly, the operation derailed negotiations in Lebanon, where an Arab Conciliation Council was working on the United States’ behalf to de-escalate a dangerous Israeli-Syrian standoff in the Beqaa.

The “chorus of invective,” in one ambassador’s words, quickly focused on the United States’ presumed complicity with the Israeli operation. The effects were wide-ranging. As a July intelligence assessment summarized:

On balance, this attack has hurt US interests. It has complicated the search for a coherent strategic approach in the Persian Gulf area, strengthened the hand of the more radical Arabs, provided more grist for Soviet propagandist, and driven a potential wedge between the United States and its moderate Arab partners.

The Reagan administration was put on the defensive. In an effort to assuage Arab anger, it suspended the delivery of six F-16 aircraft to Israel and voted in support of a UN Security Council resolution condemning the raid, infuriating Israeli officials who insisted that they had acted in self-defense. The administration doubled down on a controversial arms package to Saudi Arabia in the early fall, provoking a bruising congressional battle that deepened the gulf between Washington and Jerusalem.

As a result, the Reagan administration’s influence over Israel’s foreign policies weakened just as Prime Minister Begin embarked on a series of dramatic military operations, including the bombing of PLO headquarters in Beirut in July 1981, the annexation of the Golan Heights in December 1981, and the sudden invasion of Lebanon in June 1982—all of which heightened tensions and weakened the United States’ position in the region.

The June 7 attack on the Tamuz 1 reactor and the subsequent chain of events were not inevitable. The archival record suggests that the Reagan administration should have had sufficient information at its disposal to predict—and perhaps prevent—the Israeli raid. Indeed, as Lewis delicately explained in a cable to Secretary Haig on June 9, Israeli officials had indicated their intention to strike the Israeli reactor multiple times during nearly a year of high-level negotiations with the Carter administration. These talks, the ambassador wrote, “left me with no doubt that before the Iraqi reactor became operational, the Israeli forces would destroy it.”

Lewis highlighted three specific incidents in the year before the attack, and even provided the cable numbers of relevant embassy cables for verification. On July 17, 1980, Begin had summoned Lewis to his home. The Israeli Prime Minister requested that the ambassador transmit an “emotional personal message” appealing to the Carter administration to “do everything possible to stop further enriched uranium shipments to Iraq before it was ‘too late.’” Alarmed, Lewis ended his message to Washington with a prescient warning:

We must anticipate that [Israel] will feel compelled in the not too distant future to take some kind of unilateral action to thwart the Iraq nuclear plans well before the Iraqis actually possess a weapon. And by the ‘very near future,’ I mean within the next six months.

Additional evidence of an impending Israeli operation piled up throughout the fall of 1980, prompting Lewis to warn of “a number of thinly veiled straws” in the wind. In mid-December—three weeks after Reagan’s election—the ambassador received authorization from Secretary of State Thomas Pickering to meet with Begin to stress the need for restraint. The meeting was unsuccessful, and in a summary report to Washington Lewis noted that the Israeli military command was “press[ing] Begin hard” to take military action. “To maintain any kind of influence over the very dangerous possibility for direct Israeli military preventive moves,” he wrote, “it is vital that we continue to carry on a frank dialogue with Begin or his successor. At some point, the new administration should be carefully briefed.”

Lewis’ warning fell on deaf ears. Although he personally contacted the transition team to draw attention to the dangers, his reports were either lost or dismissed by the incoming Reagan administration. Moreover, the president’s selection of Alexander M. Haig, Jr., as Secretary of State isolated many career civil servants and Foreign Service Officers, who eyed the unusually ideological White House and ex-Nixon official with suspicion. The channels of communication linking embassy staff to Foggy Bottom narrowed, limiting the opportunities for senior policymakers to learn of the problem. As a result, consultations with the Israelis lagged. Begin, who felt in the winter of 1981 that he enjoyed the new administration’s natural sympathies, likely viewed Washington’s silence as implied consent.

Had Lewis’ warnings been heeded, the Reagan administration may still have been unable (or unwilling) to dissuade Israeli policymakers from bombing the Iraqi nuclear facility. Yet knowledge of the Carter administration’s negotiations and the warning signs would have—at minimum—allowed US policymakers to influence the timing and nature of the Israeli operation and limit the political fallout for the United States.

Instead, as Lewis noted pessimistically, the Israeli selection ensured the “strike occurred at a moment when it could scarcely have been more damaging.” (A Lesson from the 1981 Raid on Osirak.)

The 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak, Iraq, nuclear reactor was undertaken at a time when King Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be on his yacht, and they used subterfuge when he tried to warn Iraq’s Saddam Hussein that he had seen Israeli F-15s and F-16s flying towards Iraq:

The attack on Osirak involved the need for the F-16 attack aircraft and their F-15 escort fighters to fly at low level over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to avoid radar detection. King Hussein, who was ruling Jordan at the time, had close ties to Saddam Hussein and almost wrecked the Israeli operation.

Air Force Magazine in 2012 noted, "King Hussein of Jordan, aboard his yacht in the Gulf of Aqaba, saw the F-16s pass by, headed east. Hussein, a pilot himself, recognized what they were. He sent a warning message to Iraq, but it was never received by anyone in authority."

Israeli versions of the King Hussein episode vary. Israel Defense, a defence website, in 2011 claimed King Hussein's call was intercepted by Israeli intelligence. "He [King Hussein] rushed a call through from this yacht to the Jordanian military staff in Amman and ordered them to warn the Iraqis that Israeli planes were screaming in their direction. The other side affirmed that it received the message and promised to convey it to the Iraqis. Hussein did not know, according to foreign sources, that the person on the other end of the line was not a Jordanian officer, but an Arabic-speaker from Israeli intelligence. The warning, probably, never reached its destination," Israel Defense claimed. (40 years ago, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor. How it changed the world.)

The Israeli attack on the Osirak, Iraq, nuclear reactor nearly forty-five years prompted former President Richard Milhous Nixon to comment that “Israel cannot go on forever attacking its neighbors and expect there to be peace.” Well, here we are forty-five years later, and the Israelis keep attacking their neighbors, doing so openly now in pursuit of the Greater Israel” project

Israel’s latest manipulation of the United States of America has not resulted in a quick victory and has seen a defensively defiant President Donald John Trump to contradict himself about the “excursions” goals even within the same sentence (What Are Trump’s Positions on Iran? They Can Change by the Sentence) and, after long opposing the use of ground troops in the Middle East and had avoided doing so in Venezuela except for the efficient removal of Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2006, now says that he is not afraid of a the use of ground troops in a Vietnam style conflict:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is 'not afraid' to deploy US ground troops within Iran, further emphasizing the lengths he is willing to go in his Middle East war. 

Speaking from the Oval Office alongside Ireland's Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, the President fielded many questions about the Iran war. 

'Are you afraid that if you put boots on the ground in Iran, it could be another Vietnam?' one reporter asked.

No,' Trump shot back, adding, 'I'm not afraid of anything.' 

The President has previously said that he would deploy ground troops if 'necessary,' but he has offered few details on what scenario would prompt a boots-on-the-ground invasion. 

He also said during the sit-down with the Taoiseach that the US has contemplated destroying Iran's energy infrastructure. 

'We could take out their electric capacity in one hour,' he said, adding, 'there's nothing they can do.'

Though the President said the war should only last weeks, there is concern among administration officials that the offensive could last much longer. 

Three sources familiar with the matter told Axios that the Middle East could run into September, a much longer timeline than Trump has ever discussed publicly.   

The President was also confronted about the news that his top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, resigned over the war. 

'I always thought he was a nice guy, but I thought he was very weak on security. Very weak on security. I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy,' Trump said.

'But when I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out, because he said Iran was not a threat.' 

Kent resigned early on Tuesday and published a letter publicly noting how he 'cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.'

'Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,' Kent said in his dramatic public break-up with the administration. 

Evidence that the US is considering a ground invasion in Iran is mounting. 

Last week, the military ordered 2,000 US Marines and their equipment, along with several Naval vessels, to be deployed to the Middle East from the South Pacific near the Philippines. 

Three sources familiar with the matter told Axios that the Middle East could run into September, a much longer timeline than Trump has ever discussed publicly.   

The President was also confronted about the news that his top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, resigned over the war. 

'I always thought he was a nice guy, but I thought he was very weak on security. Very weak on security. I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy,' Trump said.

'But when I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out, because he said Iran was not a threat.' 

Kent resigned early on Tuesday and published a letter publicly noting how he 'cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.'

'Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,' Kent said in his dramatic public break-up with the administration. 

Evidence that the US is considering a ground invasion in Iran is mounting. 

Last week, the military ordered 2,000 US Marines and their equipment, along with several Naval vessels, to be deployed to the Middle East from the South Pacific near the Philippines. (Trump says he's 'not afraid' of Vietnam-style ground combat in Iran.)

Donald John Trump has lost his mind, even mindlessly echoing President George Walker (“God told me to go get Saddam, George” by saying that his “excursion would end when he, Trump “feels it my bones” ("When I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.” (Headquarters on X: "Trump on when war with Iran will end: "When I feel it. When I feel it in my bones" https://t.co/liUZkdnSfe" / X), which is the same phrase that Bush the Lesser used at a Cabinet meeting in the White House on December 14, 2001, when he said that “I feel it in my bones” that Hussein was behind the September 11, 2001, events, something that he admitted three years later was not factual, just a “gut feeling.”

As many of his most fervent supporters have come to realize, President Trump has been captured by a new crop of neoconservative war hawks, led by United States Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina), United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the bitterly anti-Catholic United States Secretary of War, and Peter Hegseth, who recently invited his own anti-Catholic, Chrisitan Zionist Protestant “pastor” to speak at the Pentagon (a subject to be explored in the next original commentary for this website) and who has called for “death and destruction” in Iran (How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness), to say nothing of the influence of rabid Talmudic Zionist Mark Levin and the nattering nabob of visceral ignorance named Sean Hannity (see Lame Excuses Never Die), both of whom are ready shills for Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald John Trump is not the same man who was President of the United States of America from January 20, 2017, until January 20, 2021, nor the man who campaigned for a second, non-consecutive term in 2023 and 2024, nor even the man who was sworn into office on January 20, 2025. (For other useful commentary in this regard, please see: Just Get Out! Now! And Is Having No War Plan Trump’s ‘Plan’?)

This is why the Trump administration’s Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joseph Kent, submitted his resignation to the president yesterday, Tuesday, March 17, 2025, the Feast of Saint Patrick and the Commemoration of Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent:

President Trump,

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.

In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Soleimani and by defeating ISIS.

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.

This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was clear path to a swift victory.

This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.

As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.

I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.

It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation.

Joseph Kent

Director, National Counterterrorrism Center.  (Read the scathing resignation letter from Trump’s now former counterterrorism chief: ‘We cannot make this mistake again’.)

This is an excellent statement and a brilliant summary of the simple fact that no casus belli existed for the United States of America to start military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which  posed no imminent threat of attacking the United States of America any more than Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” had posed to this country twenty-three years ago this very week when the unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional American invasion and occupation of Iraq began that made that country’s formerly secure borders with Iran porous enough to thousands of Iranian operatives to wreak havoc upon Chaldean Rite Catholics and American military personnel for over a decade.

Now, to restate the obvious once again, absolutely none of this is to indemnify the mass murdering Mohammedan despots of Iran, who has thought nothing of slaughter their own people by the thousands and sponsoring terrorism throughout the world. Of course not.

Mohammedanism and Talmudism are both tools of the devil, who readily uses men whose immortal souls are captive to him by means of Original Sin to use the hatred of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, that brews in their darkened souls to hate and to act violently upon those they blame for their problems, which is why we must always pray to Our Lady every day for the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Faith.

Yes, of course, the Islamic Republic of Iran is an outlaw nation as is the Zionist State of Israel, which as will be discussed below, is still killing Palestinians in Gaza and denying them basic humanitarian assistance and looking the other way as their own illegal “settlers” on the West Bank continue to steal the property of Palestinian and Christian property owners to drive them off of their own lands in their own supposedly “unauthorized” version of the Greater Israel project.

The Zionists, who stole the property and possessions of Palestinians in the Holy Land in 1948 during the first phase of the “Greater Israel” project and seem to have a ceaseless desire to continue displacing Palestinians whenever and wherever they desire, including in Gaza and the West Bank in recent years, have accelerated their displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in the past year:

Israel has forcibly displaced more than 36,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in one year, the United Nations says, warning that illegal Israeli settlement expansion and a push to annex the territory are accelerating.

Tuesday’s report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented 1,732 incidents of Israeli settler violence causing casualties or property damage from November 2024 to the end of October last year.

That amounts to a 24-percent increase from the 1,400 incidents reported over the same period a year earlier.

“Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct,” the report found.

The settler attacks, combined with Israeli forced displacement orders, home demolitions and military violence, have pushed tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes across the West Bank, the UN rights chief also said.

That includes about 32,000 Palestinians who were forced out of the Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams and Far’a refugee camps in the north of the territory during an Israeli army operation.

“The displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank represented the mass expulsion of Palestinians on a scale previously unseen, amounting to unlawful transfer that is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the report said.

“The displacement in the occupied West Bank, which coincides with the extensive displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, at the hands of the Israeli military appears to indicate a concerted Israeli policy of mass forcible transfer throughout the occupied territory, aimed at permanent displacement, raising concerns of ethnic cleansing.”

“We are deeply concerned that initial information and testimonies suggest the attack may amount to an extrajudicial execution,” Morayef said.

The Israeli government also has drawn international condemnation after it approved plans to extend its authority over more of the West Bank – a move that experts denounced as de facto annexation and a violation of international law.

The UN previously warned that Israel’s annexation push “will undoubtedly accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and their forcible transfer, and lead to the creation of more illegal Israeli settlements”. (Israel carrying out ‘mass expulsion of Palestinians’ in West Bank, UN warns.)

Moreover, Israeli attacks continue in Gaza as well as the West Bank:

With the eyes of the world on the United States and Israel’s war in Iran, Israeli strikes and raids in Gaza and settler attacks and military operations in the occupied West Bank have continued unabated.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,000 people in its genocidal war on Gaza, the majority of them women and children, and reduced almost the entire enclave to rubble. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel and more than 250 taken captive in the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel led by Hamas.

In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians, since the start of the Gaza war, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health figures. At least 45 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the region in the same period, according to official Israeli figures.

Here’s what we know of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank since the war in Iran began on February 28:

Gaza

• Border closed: On March 1, Israel closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said the move was a part of “several necessary security adjustments” that have been implemented in the region due to the war with Iran. The Rafah crossing is considered vital for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of critically ill patients from Gaza.
• Panic buying: The war and the closure of the Rafah crossing have caused panic buying in Gaza, where residents who have already endured nearly two and a half years of war fear food shortages. Ali al-Hayek, a member of the Palestinian Businessmen Association in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that closing the crossings could halt aid distribution to struggling families and operations at charity kitchens.
• Call to reopen crossing: On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for Israel to reopen Gaza’s border crossings. On March 2, Israeli authorities said they would reopen the Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis, to allow for the “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the territory.
• Father and daughter killed: On Saturday, an Israeli drone attack killed a father and his daughter in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. In a separate attack later that day in Khan Younis, another person was killed and a girl wounded, according to Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground.
• Gas shortage: A prolonged shortage in cooking gas and fuel since the beginning of the war has affected many in Gaza. Supplies of gas coming in, even since a ceasefire was declared, are well below the population’s actual needs, according to official sources in Gaza and United Nations agencies.
• Amnesty report about women: Global rights group Amnesty International released a report saying Palestinian women in Gaza have been “denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely” by Israel. The report says pregnant women, as well as those suffering from terminal illness, lack adequate health services in the territory.

Al-Aqsa Mosque closed to worshippers: Israeli forces have continued the closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and also cancelled Friday prayers. The Israeli Civil Administration chief, Hisham Ibrahim, told media that the decision was taken in light of Iran launching retaliatory strikes at “Israel and the entire region”.

Raid on Askar refugee camp: On Tuesday, Israeli forces raided the Askar refugee camp east of Nablus, closing its entrances and searching several homes.

Israeli settler attacks: Israeli settlers have continued terrorising Palestinians in small hamlets and villages across rural areas of the West Bank.

Restrictions on movement: Over the past 10 days, Israeli authorities have distributed leaflets to rural communities with orders banning movement between West Bank governorates, proclaiming “terrorism and terrorists bring only death, destruction and devastation.”

Two brothers killed: Two Palestinian brothers were killed on March 2 by settlers in Qaryut, 4km (2.5 miles) west of Duma, where they were videotaped shooting live fire at Palestinian homes.

Settlers kill Palestinian: On Saturday, Palestinian Amir Muhammad Shanaran was killed by Israeli settlers during an attack in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Three Palestinians killed: On Sunday, at least three Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in attacks across the West Bank, Wafa reported. Israeli settlers shot two of the Palestinians – Fare Jawdat Hamayel and Thaer Farouq Hamayel – in the head in an overnight attack in the village of Khirbet Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, Wafa reported, citing a statement from the Palestinian Health Ministry. The third resident, named Muhammad Hassan Murrah, died later that day after inhaling fumes from a tear gas canister fired by Israeli soldiers who accompanied the settlers, Wafa reported.

Missile debris hits a house: Shrapnel or debris from a missile damaged a house in the town of Biddya, in the northern occupied West Bank, according to news reports on Thursday.

Israel closes multiple town entrances: Israeli forces closed entrances to several towns in the provinces of Ramallah and Nablus on Friday morning. They also tightened military restrictions around the city of Nablus, Wafa reported.

Israeli settlers set fire to poultry farm: Wafa also reported that Israeli settlers set fire to a poultry farm in Bethlehem on Friday.  (What’s happened in Gaza and the West Bank since the start of the Iran war?)

The Israelis are also systematically denying basic humanitarian assistance that none of the neoconservative war hawks seem to notice, perhaps considering the Palestinians as much as subhumans as do many Israeli rabbis and decision-makers:

Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip have been “denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely” by Israel amid its genocidal war on the enclave, according to Amnesty International, a wglobal rights group.

Amnesty warned on Tuesday that women and girls in Gaza have been pushed “to the brink” as the Israeli war has spurred a series of hardships, from mass displacement to the destruction of the local healthcare system.

Pregnant women, as well as those who need treatment for cancer and other illnesses, have been particularly hard-hit by the lack of adequate health services in the territory, Amnesty said in a statement.

“This systematic erosion of their rights to health, safety, dignity and a future is not an unfortunate by-product of war; it is a deliberate act of war targeting women and girls,” the group said.

“It is also the foreseeable consequence of Israel’s calculated policies and practices of multiple mass displacement, deliberate restrictions on basic and essential items, as well as humanitarian relief, and two years of relentless bombardment that have devastated Gaza’s health system and decimated entire families.”

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Israeli attacks have continued despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” that came into effect in October of last year, killing more than 600 people, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Israel also continues to impede the steady flow of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced across the Strip due to the Israeli bombardment.

Last week, the United Nations humanitarian office (OCHA) said the health sector in Gaza remains “under significant constraints” as a result of the restrictions on medical supplies and equipment, as well as fuel.

“Sexual and reproductive health services remain severely disrupted due to damaged infrastructure, shortages of essential medicines and supplies and limited referral capacity,” OCHA said, noting that as many as 180 women give birth daily in Gaza.

“Severe bed shortages mean women undergoing major procedures, including Caesarean sections, are often discharged within hours and return to overcrowded displacement settings, increasing risks of complications and infection,” the agency said.

Maternal, neonatal health problems

That was echoed by Amnesty, which said on Tuesday that medical workers in Gaza reported “an exponential increase in maternal and neonatal health conditions over the past 29 months” as a result of Israel’s genocide.

That includes pre-term births, low-weight babies and babies suffering from respiratory conditions, malnutrition of pregnant women, and postpartum depression, the rights group said.

“Displacement conditions have led to infectious diseases,” Dr Nasser Bulbol, a neonatologist at Al Helou Hospital hospital in Gaza City, told Amnesty, noting that there has been an increase in high-risk pregnancies due to conditions in the Strip.

“And most women come here under stress, trauma and uncertainty, having suffered multiple displacements, lost loved ones, unable to obtain the nutritious food they require.”

A 22-year-old Palestinian woman originally from the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza said she weighed only 43 kilogrammes (94 pounds) when she gave birth to a son in mid-January.

“My baby was born with lung infection in both lungs; he spent several days in the intensive care unit and now is a bit better, but still cannot breathe properly on his own and is in an incubator,” said the woman, who is displaced and living in southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi area.

“I am afraid he will get sicker because I live in a tent by the sea, and it has been very cold, and there is no way to keep warm. I also have another baby aged 18 months, and he too has been sick from the cold,” she told the rights group. (Israel denies women in Gaza ‘conditions to live’: Amnesty | Israel-Palestine conflict News.)

This is monstrous, of course, but with the world’s attention riveted the situation in Iran, the Israelis will continue to do whatever it is they want to do, especially as long as they are  indemnified by the likes of Donald John Trump, Peter Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz, and so many others in the so-called “Christian Zionist” camp, which has made its own quite official declaration war against Catholicism.

Mind you, with the systematic Israeli assassinations of Iran’s top leadership, including the much-feared security chief Ali Larijani, who supervised the slaughter of thousands of Iranian protesters two months ago, and Basij force commander Gholamreza Soleimani, Israeli and American forces are wiping out much of the Iranian leadership structure in addition to doing extensive damage to the Iranian infrastructure. Additionally, the Israelis have been bombing Iranian “citizen checkpoints,” which might encourage ordinary Iraqis to take to the streets once again, although even the Israelis themselves believe that they could be slaughtered by the remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (see Israel urges Iranians to revolt but foresees they’ll be ‘slaughtered).

However, there is also the possibility of those American “boots on the ground” and an “excursion” may last until September or longer:

Donald Trump has given another timing update on the US-Iran war, as oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has come to a standstill, though some are warning the war could last most of the year. 

The average gas price for a gallon of regular has risen to $3.72, according to AAA, up from $2.93 a month ago. 

Speaking to PBS News on Monday, the President said he called the inflated gas prices 'a very small price to pay' and that 'the oil prices will drop like a rock as soon as it's over.'

'I don't believe it will be long,' he said when asked about how much longer the war will drag on.

But three sources familiar with the matter told Axios that the Middle East could bleed into September, a much longer timeline than Trump has ever discussed publicly. 

It's dangerous territory for the President with the midterm elections just weeks later. Americans largely oppose the conflict, according to an exclusive Daily Mail/JL Partners poll.

Thirteen US troops have been killed so far in the war, and 200 troops have been injured, including 10 'seriously,' Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said Monday.

Trump first told the Daily Mail in a phone interview that the war could last up to four weeks. Later, he indicated it could last up to five. 

Since then, the President has been cagey on the exact timing of the conflict, not wanting to show his hand to the media ahead of any actions regarding Iran. He has also said the war will last as long as 'necessary,' without giving further explanation. 

His flip-flopping messaging on the war comes as Americans express skepticism over the fight and the midterms loom in November as Republicans on Capitol Hill seek to maintain their small majorities. 

'We are behind the eight ball as far as the electoral process,' Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told Fox Business last week. 

'If you add in high gas prices, high oil prices, and if we are still bombing Iran with kinetic action — people don’t want to call it war — if there’s still kinetic action that causes oil to be over $100, I think you’re going to see a disastrous election.'

Brent crude oil, the global oil benchmark, has risen over 40 percent since the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28, killing its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Analysts and energy executives have warned that gas and oil prices will rise further, and after Trump ordered strikes on Iran's energy chokepoint, Kharg Island, which accounts for some 90 percent of the country's exports, markets are expected to spike further. 

Still, the President is wary of how his military 'excursion' into Iran can impact the global economy. 

'Kharg Island is out of commission except for the pipes, which I left,' he told PBS. 'I didn't want to hit the pipes because, you know, it's years of work to put them together.'

On Friday, American forces struck military targets on the small island outpost off the Iranian coast. 

A couple of thousand individuals work on the island, many of them critical to maintaining the deepwater ports, used by heavy oil tankers, and the energy infrastructure critical to Iran's oil export industry. 

Trump told the outlet he asked the military to leave '100 yards' around 'anything having to do with oil' untouched in the strikes, noting how laborious it can be to rebuild critical oil infrastructure. 

He also disclosed he'd have no qualms with striking it again. 

'I told them openly, I'll knock the hell out of it.'  

Iran's UN ambassador ​says ⁠over 1,300 people have been killed in Iran in US and Israeli attacks. Israel says 12 people have been ⁠killed ​in Israel by Iranian attacks. ​The US says 13 of its troops have been killed. (Trump officials privately fear Iran war will grind on through SEPTEMBER as 200 troops injured.)

Maybe the war ends next week.

Maybe the war ends in a month.

Maybe it goes on for six months or longer.

However, even though President Trump believes that rising gasoline prices are a “small price to pay” to end a nonexistent nuclear threat from Iran by means of a preemptive war of choice with an imaginary casus belli, many working and middle class Americans do not believe that those rising gasoline and energy costs are a “small price to pay,” and Trump himself may pay a not-so-small price if these rising costs continue until November 3, 2026, and he wakes up on November 4, 2026, to find that Hakeen Jeffries will be the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives come Monday. January 4, 2027.

Sure, the Americans and Israelis might achieve a victory sooner or later, but it will be a purely pyrrhic one as nations cannot make themselves secure from enemies domestic and foreign as long as their people are at war with Christ the King by means of their unrepented sins and as nations indemnify any, if not all, of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance (willful murder, the sin of Sodom, withholding the day laborer’s wages, and defrauding the widow). Please see No One Has Killed More Israelis Than the Israelis Themselves, Donald John Trump's Genocide¸ and Memorandum from Silvio Cardinal Antoniano to President Donald John Trump.

As has been noted throughout the course of this long series, the path to true peace—that of souls in a state of peace with the Most Holy Trinity by means of Sanctifying Grace as members of His Catholic Church—runs through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and the fulfilment of her Fatima Message, which we can advance, of course, by means of fidelity to her Most Holy Rosary and shielding ourselves with her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate.

We need to storm Heaven by our supplications to the August Queen of Heaven, the very Mother of God, so that the radiant beams of the graces won for us by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that flow into our hearts and souls through her own loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces and thus overflow into the world in which no one will dare to oppose true Eucharistic Processions or processions in her own honor as our Co-Redemptrix, Advocate, and Mediatrix, our own Queen of Mercy, Mother of Perpetual Light and Our Lady of Prompt Succor.

Our Lady wants us to cooperate with the graces to bring about the day when all men, adorned prominently with her Miraculous Medal of Grace, 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.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

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 Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, pray for us.

Appendix

Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., on Saint Cyril of Jerusalem

St. Cyril, Bishop and Patriarch of Jerusalem, is justly honored and esteemed by the Catholic Church as one of the holiest and most learned defenders of the faith against the heretics, both by his sermons and writings. He was born of Catholic parents and piously brought up. In the reign of Constantine the Great, to escape the dangerous occasions of sin, he entered a monastery, where he led a most edifying life. In later years, owing to his great reputation for learning and sanctity, he was chosen patriarch of Jerusalem. In this exalted station he displayed the zeal and courage of an apostle. He took under his special care those whose instruction in the mysteries of the faith was defective. He was vigilant in defending the Catholic doctrine and refuting the errors of the heretics. The Arians were protected by Constantius, the successor of Constantine on the throne, and they therefore oppressed and persecuted the Catholics in every possible manner. The Holy Bishop opposed the impious followers of Arius with all his might, and was not in the least disturbed by their threats. His tenderness towards the poor was that of a kind father. At that time, a famine spread over the land, and fell most severely on the indigent. The compassionate Bishop offered all his revenues for their relief; but this was not sufficient; his kind heart being moved by the sufferings of the famishing people, he sold gold and silver vessels for bread. This act of charity served his enemies later as a subject of accusation.

It was also during his occupation of the episcopal chair, that a wonderful apparition of the Holy Cross took place. On the Feast of Pentecost, a cross, surrounded by great light and of extraordinary size, was seen over Mount Calvary. It was perceived by all the inhabitants, Christians as well as Jews, and it filled all with terror. St. Cyril minutely described the apparition, and sent the report to the Emperor, admonishing him to adhere more sincerely to Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us, and to desist from his protection and patronage of the enemies of Christ. The holy Bishop, on the feast of the Holy Cross, took that occasion to encourage and strengthen the Catholics in their faith and to refute the errors of the Arians, who, enjoying the favor of the Emperor, everywhere had the upper hand. This, however, served only to embitter the heretics against St. Cyril. They called a council composed entirely of Arian bishops, before whom the Saint was accused of sacrilege, because he had, as we related, sold the sacred vessels and other things belonging to the church. The heretics condemned St. Cyril, deposed him from his See and sent him into banishment, replacing him by Heraclius, an arch heretic. Acacius, a sworn enemy of the Saint, commended this unjust sentence to the Emperor for approval, and the holy Bishop was compelled to go into exile. Some years later, this sentence was revoked by a lawful council of the Church, and Cyril reinstated in his patriarchal chair. But he was again driven away. Finally, the Saint vanquished all his enemies, and governed his diocese in peace and with apostolic zeal.

After the death of Constantius, the imperial sceptre devolved on Julian the Apostate. He was favorable, not only to the heretics but also to the Jews, and was a most deadly foe to the Catholics. It was his intention to cover the Christians with confusion, by proving that Jesus was false in his prediction about the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. With this object in view, he commanded the Jews to rebuild the temple, offer up the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and observe the other rites and ceremonies of the Law. To defray the expenses, he furnished a large sum of money. The Jews, transported with joy at these orders, earnestly applied themselves to the restoration of the old temple. They had already raised the walls to a considerable height, when St. Cyril,came and, looking at their labors for a while, said: "Not one stone will remain on the other, for Christ has foretold it, and He cannot fail." The Jews laughed at the holy Bishop, but the sequel proved the truth of his words. The following night a destructive earthquake not only threw down the partly raised walls, but also ejected the very foundations and scattered them all over the ground. But this was not the end. As the Jews rushed together, and with grief and terror beheld the ruin of their work, a fire descended from heaven which consumed the tools and all the materials. Others say that a subterranean fire burst forth from the earth and injured many hundreds of the Jews. But a still more remarkable prodigy is recorded. On the following day small luminous crosses could be noticed on the garments of the Jews, which could be washed away neither by water nor by any other means. Such striking wonders brought many of the unbelievers to the true faith, but others were only hardened in their infidelity.

St. Cyril lived for some years after this event, and had the consolation of seeing the throne occupied by the virtuous Theodosius after the decease of the impious Constantius, Julian and Valens. Now he could govern his diocese in peace. In 386 the Lord was pleased to call to his heavenly reward this valiant defender of Catholic truth. All who knew him could not sufficiently admire the heroic patience with which he bore the many tribulations and persecutions suffered for the sake of the true faith. His writings supply the defenders of Catholic doctrine, even at the present day, with the most powerful weapons against the Calvinistic and Lutheran heresies. For these writings prove that there is a vast difference between the doctrine taught and believed in the time of St. Cyril, and those which non-Catholics now-a-days profess; though in their simplicity the latter pretend that there is a perfect agreement between the articles of their faith and those of the first ages of the Church.

Practical Considerations
 

The holiest deed of charity performed by St. Cyril in the time of famine is charged upon him as a crime. He is accused as a sacrilegious robber, and cast out of his Church. Yet the Saint was not in-consolably grieved. It is not new or strange that the perversity of man should maliciously interpret the holiest actions of the servants of God. It happens sometimes at the present day that he is decried as an impious man, who is in reality a faithful servant of Christ. What should you do under such circumstances. Ought you to yield to excessive sadness, and leave off doing good for fear of the judgment of men? By no means. On the contrary, revive your courage, persevere in your good works, do not trouble yourself about the malicious judgments of men, as I advised you a few days ago. "Do not fear the judgment of man, " says Thomas a Kempis, "when your conscience gives testimony of your piety and innocence;" and in another place: "Do not mind what men think of you, but let it be your care that God may be with you and that you have a good conscience." That is, if you have God and the testimony of your conscience on your side, that your motives are holy, let men think and say what they please. Do not fear, they can neither benefit nor injure you; for if you are innocent before God, though men judge you guilty, you will not be harmed in the least. But if you are guilty before God, whilst men consider you a saint, you will not be benefited. The malicious interpreters of your motives and conduct harm themselves alone. St. Augustine says: "The malicious judgment does not injure the person who is judged, but falls upon him who is guilty of the rash judgment."

But in what does this temerity or presumption consist? The Holy Father tells us that the presumptuous man arrogates to himself what belongs to God alone. For God is the Infallible Judge of the thoughts, words and deeds of men. He has reserved this judgment to Himself. "It is a sign of the greatest malice," says St. Chrysostom, "for mortal man to take upon himself the power, rights and office which the Lord has reserved to Himself." Do you think that this perversity will go unpunished? Listen to the words of St. Dorothy: "There is nothing which draws down the wrath of the Almighty, and imperils man more certainly, than rash and malicious judgment." Why so? I stated the reason above, but the venerable Didacus Stella repeats it: "Because the man who judges rashly, is bold and presumptuous enough to assume to himself the power belonging to God, and usurps the authority of the Supreme Ruler." (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Sermon on the Feast of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem.)