Saint John the Evangelist, a son of Zebedee, was the youngest of the twelve Apostles. He was a virgin, a man who offered to His Divine Master, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, pure love in a heart that was not sullied by the world, the flesh and the devil. This youngest Apostle with the purest heart was permitted to lean on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's chest, wherein beat His Most Sacred Heart, at the Last Supper. And it was this purity of heart possessed by Saint John the Evangelist that led him to be present at the foot of the Holy Cross and to be given the singular privilege by Our Divine Redeemer of caring for His own Most Blessed Mother until the time of her death and bodily Assumption into Heaven.

Despite what the now retired Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI contended blasphemously in his Jesus of Nazareth book concerning the "disputed" nature of the human authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Saint John the Evangelist is indeed the human author of the Fourth Gospel and of his epistles and the Book of the Apocalypse. Saint John is the Evangelist of the Incarnation of the Word whose Gospel provides us with Scriptural proofs for the doctrine of the Eucharist and for the Sacrament of Penance. And the Charity preached by Saint John the Evangelist was no exercise in empty sentimentality. For it was Saint John himself who wrote:

" Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. " (1 John 5: 1-3.)

This reflection has been revised and expanded in several places.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us to remain faithful to the Catholic Faith.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

The shadow of the Holy Cross hung over the cave in Bethlehem even as the shepherds who had been called by angels from the nearby fields adored the Infant King alongside the Mother of God and her Most Chaste Spouse, Saint Joseph. Holy Mother Church directs our attention to this fact today as we focus on the truth that the Birth of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Bethlehem on Christmas Day was to make possible our own spiritual rebirth in the Baptismal font and our birth unto eternal life at the moment of our deaths if we persist to the very end in states of Sanctifying Grace. The path to our salvation runs directly through the Holy Cross and it requires us to be willing to sacrifice riches and honors and pleasures and human respect and even our very lives to bear witness to Christ the King a He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through the Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr was willing to lay down his life as he preached the Gospel of the Divine Redeemer in an attempt to convert the Jews who were listening to him and engaging him in disputation. He exhibited the Virtue of Fortitude as he proclaimed the Gospel in the midst of insults an threats. And Saint Stephen the Protomartyr exhibited the Virtue of Charity as he prayed for his executioners, one of whom was the fire-breathing anti-Catholic zealot named Saul of Tarsus. Saint Stephen's prayers at the time of his martyrdom and from eternity thereafter won the conversion of Saul, who became the Apostle to the Gentiles, Saint Paul the Apostle.

Saint Stephen wanted to effect the conversion of his executioners. He did not seek to reaffirm them in their act of murder or to reaffirm them in the practice of Judaism. Saint Stephen did not dismiss or denigrate the gravity of their crimes. He simply did not hold those crimes against his persecutors as he prayed for their conversion.

We must pray always for those who hate us, for those who calumniate us, for those who have done us some injury in the past, for those who have rejected us for one reason or another. Praying for and forgiving those from whom we are estranged is not an option for a Catholic. It is an obligation of the interior life imposed directly by the God-Man Himself in the Sermon on the Mount. If He forgives us so readily in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, why are we so slow to forgive others who owe us but an infinitesimally small portion of what we owe Him for our own forgiven sins? As the late Father John Hardon, S.J., noted in a conference in Sterling Heights, Michigan, at which I gave two presentations, "God permits us to sin so that we can forgive each other. Let me repeat myself here: God permit us to sin so that we can forgive each other." A sinner who is contrite and thankful to God never withholds forgiveness from his fellow sinner. Saint Stephen teaches us that lesson today. Are we going to learn it once and for all?

A continued merry and most blessed Christmas to you all.

The conception and birth of a child changes the life of his parents forever. The death of a husband or a wife ends the sacramental bond of Holy Matrimony. Neither the death of a parent or his child ends the bonds between them that were forged at the moment of the child's conception. A parent has the solemn obligation to help his child get home to Heaven from the first moment he is aware of the child's existence in his mother's womb.

A very late overnight hour has been kept as this article simply was not going to be published if matters were not stretched a little bit. My apologies for the long delay.

The Articles page will be updated later today, the Vigil of Christmas, and links to several articles of interest will be provided at the same time.

A revised reflection, “Make Haste, the Lord is Nigh,” can be found by scrolling directly below.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is nigh today. He comes to us in Midnight in piercing cold in Bethlehem.

Have we prepared to "make haste," that is, to flee from the world and its false attractions and promises and "saviours" to welcome Him in our hearts and souls by means of Holy Communion?

Have we asked His Most Blessed Mother, Who brought Him forth miraculously in the cave when there was no room for Him in the inn, to help us to make room for Him in the "inns" of our hearts and souls.

Have we asked the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, Good Saint Joseph, to protect and to guide us as we seek out His Divine foster-Son as He is born for us on Altars of Sacrifice in the Catholic catacombs?

Are we prepared to make this day, Christmas Eve, the Vigil of Christmas, one final day of penance as we abstain from the eating of meat and as we have but one full meal?

Are we prepared to celebrate this Christmas with joy and with thanksgiving as the Word Who was made Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost beckons us to adore Him in His Real Presence day in and day out?

Make haste, the Lord is nigh.

Midnight is coming.

Are we ready?

Make haste.

Prepare well.

Our Saviour is to be born for us!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

This is a slightly revised—and very brief reflection—on the heroic missionary work of the saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, a naturalized citizen of the United States who is the first and thus far only citizen of this country to be canonized by a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter.

Let me try to put it to you this way: Mother Cabrini’s insistence on the highest standards of personal modesty and her concern about Italian immigrants being converted by the materialistic and decadent ways of Protestant and Masonic American culture, to say nothing of her love of mortifications and sufferings, would have earned her an “apostolic visitator” sent by Jorge Mario Bergoglio to “reform” her “Pelagian” ways if she lived at this time of apostasy and betrayal.

Well, the transcription of documentation for the next original article has been completed. I expect that the rest of the text will be completed today for posting by tomorrow as it is once again a late hour, although I might endeavor to do a very short, as in one page, commentary about Jorge’s address to his conciliar curia yesterday, after this revised reflection is published.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Work on an article about Mohammedanism and its institutional commitment to bloodshed to effect world domination, aided both historically, at least at times, and contemporaneously by Talmudists as a means of helping to de-Christianize what is left of the vestiges of Christendom in the supposedly "civilized" West, especially by making it a "thought crime" even to mention the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or to acknowledge His Nativity publicly, is taking a long time because of transcription of important documentation. I hope to have the work done in a few days.

Today's article is the reworking of one written in August of 2012 when United States Representative Paul Davis Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who is now the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, was selected by the man who gave us the prototype for ObamaCare, RomneyCare, namely, former Governor of the Commonwealth of Taxachusetts (excuse, Massachusetts) Willard Mitt Romney to be his vice presidential running mate. This one of two "I Told You So" articles that will be published in the next two days as there is nothing new about the farcical process of public policy decision-making that I can write. What has happened with the passage of the 2014 Omnibus Budget bill is entirely unsurprising. Indeed, it was completely predictable.

All must fall apart absent the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His Catholic Church, and there is no getting "Humpty Dumpty" back together again.

Today, Ember Saturday in Advent, is a day of fast and partial-abstinence.

Please continue to pray for the repose of the soul of the late +Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P., R.I.P.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Information on the Requiem Mass for +Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P.:

Here is the information on the PontificalI Requiem Mass for the late +Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P. (July 8, 1927-December 16, 2015; ordained to the priesthood on June 5, 1958; consecrated as a bishop on August 22, 1986):

This brief reflection on the life and priestly service, published yesterday, December 17, 2015, now contains a postscript with an addendum of prayers for the dying that we started to pray twenty minutes before His Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P., died on Wednesday, December 16, 2015, the Feast of Saint Eusebius and the Commemoration of Ember Wednesday in Advent. Another photograph, taken in June of 2008, has been added as well.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all of the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for thy faithful servant, Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P.