Today, the Fourth Day within the Octave of Christmas, is the Feast the Holy Innocents, the children who were put to death at the orders of the jealous titular King of Judea who had been installed by the Roman occupiers to pacify resistance to their unjust occupation of the Holy Land.

King Herod the Great, whose sons Herod and Philip were no less corrupt and violent than he was, wanted to kill the Baby King Whom he thought to be a threat to his own political suzerainty, such as it was as a puppet ruler under the Roman occupiers. It meant nothing to him to wipe out so many innocent children in his quest to kill the Baby King, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who was born in Bethlehem to save, his, Herod the Great's, own immortal soul by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

There have been imitators of Herod the Great throughout history who have sought to put to death the followers of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in an insane effort to wipe the Faith off of the face of this earth. The names of these imitators are legion. Their likes are to be found in our own midst today as politicians of both major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, believe that a just social order can be established and maintained while innocent preborn human beings are slaughtered under cover of law and while the Sovereignty of Christ the King is denied in favor of the sovereignty of men and their false, naturalistic, semi-Pelagian and anti-Incarnational ideas.

That having been noted, however, it is important to point out that the Holy Innocents are honored as saints because they died in the place of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as a political potentate drunk with his own self-importance sought to kill the Newborn Baby King with a furious rage. The slaughter of the innocent preborn today, as horrible as it is and as deserving of our attention especially by means of praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and by means of sidewalk counseling, is different in that the children being killed today are not being targeted specifically in the place of Our Lord.

Unlike the speculative conclusions offered by the "International Theological Commission" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in 2007, the Catholic Church has never held out "hope" that the souls of unbaptized infants go to Heaven, which is why the crime of the killing of the preborn is so monstrous as it kills the souls of those involved in the execution and denies the slaughtered babies the glory of the Beatific Vision. The Holy Innocents are saints because they were targeted quite specifically because of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thus shed their blood on His account.

We need to invoke the intercession of the Holy Innocents today and every day to stop the shedding of the blood of the innocent under cover of law, praying to them especially that Catholics blinded by the allure of various naturalistic "strategies" to end the social evils of the day will be reminded of this truth stated by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

For there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must reign as King of men and nations, my friends. Accept no naturalistic substitutes from the "Herods" of this world and their enablers in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who reject the Social Reign of the Newborn King, Our Divine Redeemer Whom Herod the Great sought to kill.

It is my hope to be able to resume work on my next original article today, Saturday, December 28, 2019. I have been busy the past two days sending out copies of To Live in Light of Eternity, Volume 1. Thirty-two copies remain. Get yours while they last. Thank you.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

The Holy Innocents, pray for us.

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 over the years.

The next original article for this site should be published at some point tomorrow, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. An effort will be made to finalize the article on the morning and early afternoon today before having to take Chase, our beagle, to the veterinarian to be euthanized as he is in the final stages of dying from a sarcoma that is the result of a rabies vaccination in January of 2014. Although I will write a reflection about the role of animals in the lives of those who choose to have them as pets at some point in the next week, suffice it for the moment that animals have mortal, not immortal souls, and that we give thanks to the good God for giving them to us and we give to thanks to Him for the time we have with them after they are dead. All things work for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity if we accept the events of our lives with perfect equanimity and acceptance of the Divine Will without hesitation or complaint. Deo gratias!

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 as 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 1996 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.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.

Human beings have been made by God to be happy. The happiness that God wishes to bestow upon his rational creatures, whose immortal souls are made in His own image and likeness, is not meant to realized in the mindless pursuit of the "pleasures" of this passing, mortal world.

Rejoice! Venite Adoremus! Our Saviour has been born for us of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Midnight in piercing cold. Venite Adoremus!

Surrounded by the host of Heavenly angels, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who was made Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, at the Annunciation nine months before is born for us this night. The long awaited Messiah comes as a helpless Infant, born in anonymity, poverty and humility. Bright radiant beams shine forth from His Holy Face, a Face that would be marred beyond all recognition by our sins as He walked on the Via Dolorosa on Good Friday to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross and thus make possible for us eternal life in Heaven in the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, Himself, the God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

Those bright beams that shone forth from the Newborn Baby Jesus this morning are meant to shine forth from our own souls as we grow in the graces that He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. There is no Holy Mass, where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is born under the appearances of bread and wine every time a true bishop or a true priest utters the terrible words of Consecration, without this holy night. Just as Our Lord obeyed His Heavenly Father to become Man, so does He obey mere men when they, whose immortal souls have been conformed to His Priesthood and Victimhood, utter the words of Consecration over the mere elements of this earth, making Him Incarnate to feed our bodies and souls unto eternal life.

There is no regeneration of souls in the Baptismal font or in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance without this holy night.

There is no hope for mankind without this holy night.

There is, as the first Pope, Saint Peter, teaches us, no "salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4: 12.) Only Christ the King is God. None other. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. None other.

We gather around Our Lady, out of whose Virginal and Immaculate Womb the Newborn Babe passed as light through crystal this morning, and her Most Chaste Spouse, Good Saint Joseph, to adore Our Saviour, the very Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world, including yours and, most especially, mine!

May the Joyful Mysteries we continue to pray during this Octave of Christmas help us to be ever thankful for the great, incomparable gift that Our Lady gave to us this night as she brought forth her Divine Son so that He, Who stretched out His holy arms in the Crib this night, could stretch out this holy arms on the wood of the Cross to embrace all men to lift them up to the Heavenly Father in Spirit and in Truth.

On behalf of my wife Sharon and our daughter Lucy, I wish each of you a most Blessed and Joyous Christmas. This greeting is extended to all who access this site. No matter the difficulties of the present moment as false ecclesiastical officials deny the Sacred Rights of the Social Reign of Christ the King and esteem the symbols of false religions that are hideous and loathsome in His sight, the peace of Christ the King that He has entrusted to the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother is something that a believing Catholic must will for everyone, praying fervently for all whom God's Holy Providence has placed in his path over the years, including those, of course, from whom various events have estranged us.

May each of us, united to the Merciful Heart of the Divine Redeemer that was formed out of us and is united yet to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, help us to pray for each other as we pray for the day with all Catholics will speak with one voce (una voce) and will think with but one mind, that of the Catholic Church, she who teaches the unchanging truths of the Immutable Triune God.

A number of things, including book projects, a case of the flu two weeks ago and, now, a mild concussion, have prevented me from completing two articles upon which I am working at this time.

As it was only two days ago that I learned about Jorge Mario Bergoglio's latest blasphemy of Our Lady, I did want to take a bit of time to complement the excellent analysis on this matter that was posted at  Novus Ordo Watch. 

(I have just learned that Bergoglio quoted the late heretic, Carlo Maria "Cardinal" Martini, S.J., as saying that the Catholic Church is "two  hundred years out of date." All right. There is more work to do before returning to those two other articles!)

Finally, a special page has been created to explain how to purchase To Live in Light of Eternity, Volume 1.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

What is this brief commentary about?

Well, a very prominent apostate who makes oodles and oodles babbling about his purely naturalistic “insights” twenty hours a week (fifteen on radio, five on television, whatever that is) has pronounced his “faith” stronger than ever since leaving the Catholic Church.

Although I have written about this commentators truly hollow understanding of Catholicism before, most notably in Let Truth Ring in the Ears of Hollow Men in 2007, this is an entirely new commentary, one that is perhaps even inferior to the one posted on March 15, 2007.

Remember, To Live in the Light of Eternity, Volume 1, is available for purchase. Scroll down for details. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Eusebius, pray for us.

Words are entirely insufficient to express my deep revulsion at the manner in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of revolutionary apostates, including those who parade around as “bishops” in the Federal Republic of Germany, promote the homosexual collective’s agenda.

This commentary is one that I would have preferred not to have put together. Indeed, I have been procrastinating doing so for four weeks since the false “pontiff” condemned unnamed politicians who speak against sodomy and its perverted vices.

However, the fact that the German “bishops” have felt free enough to state openly that sodomy is both “normal” and “unchangeable” required me to stop procrastinating.

May Our Lord have mercy on us all!

Finally, please scroll down for information on how to purchase To Live in Light of Eternity, Volume 1.”

Thank you.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

The saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Lucy, resisted all efforts made by the civil authorities to induce her to worship the idols when a suitor, who was angered by her rejection of him after she had given away her riches to the poor, betrayed her as Christian to the pagan officials of the Roman Empire in Syracuse, Sicily at the beginning of the Fourth Century A.D., in the year 304 A.D.

Saint Lucy could have saved her life if only she worshiped the idols. Unlike the conciliar "pontiffs," men who have esteemed the symbols of various and sundry false religions, with their own consecrated hands, Saint Lucy refused to do so and was immovable when taken to a house of sin. She refused even to look upon the vice that was before her.

May this immovable foe of religious liberty help us to see more clearly with the eyes of our immortal souls that the Catholic Church cannot be in the least responsible for the abominations and blasphemies and sacrileges and defections from the Faith perpetrated by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

May Saint Lucy, a model of purity and gentleness and grace and courage, help us to see so clearly that we flee to the catacombs where the Faith is protected without any concessions to conciliarism.

A blessed Feast of Saint Lucy to all who are named after this great witness to the Faith, especially my dear wife, who took Saint Lucy as her patron at Baptism, and our dear daughter, Lucy Mary Therese Norma, who has, of course, a special devotion to the virgin and martyr from Syracuse, Sicily.

I ask your prayers also for the repose of the soul of the late Father Salvatore V. Franco, who died on this day seventeen years ago now. Father Franco, who suffered from serious heart problems but died of a form of leukemia that he only found out he had weeks before he died, was good enough to offer us refuge in his kitchen in Westbury, Long Island, New York, in April of 2002 until November of 2002 as he offered the Immemorial Mass of Tradition for us each weekday.

Although I had long before abandoned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service on Sundays as I moved in "indult" circles, we made the decision to abandon all putative "offerings" of this abominable travesty during the week when Father Franco took ill and before he died. Father Franco, who was ordained as a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn in June of 1953, had a heart attack in 1963 at the age of thirty-seven, an act of God's Divine Mercy that kept him from being immersed in parish life as the conciliar revolution proceeded apace. Father Franco kept active, however, offering Mass and helping souls. We will be forever grateful to him for providing us with the refuge that he did in the months after Lucy's birth. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen. We miss you, Father!

Scroll down below for information about how to purchase To Live in Light of Eternity, Volume 1. The listed price for shipping and handling is, I should add, for shipping via Media Mail. Those desiring to have a copy of the book shipped via Priority Mail need to pay $16.00 for shipping and handling. The cost of shipping the book overseas will have to be calculated on a case-by-case basis. Thank you.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.