“If you’re not in control, something else is. And that’s dangerous.”
Lisa Kyle
Trad Youth in Rebellion?
“The Tridentine Mass will return because youth is always in rebellion.”
Laurence Lesser
No, Mr. Lesser was not famous. He was a family friend of my parents, who we always called Uncle Larry. I became close to him later in his life and would visit him in a nursing home upstate, NY. We would correspond, and in one of his letters (early 90’s, only several years after Pope John Paul II liberalized the old Mass and I started attending it), he wrote the above quote, which I have never forgotten. I found him a rare encouragement in the Faith and particularly in my interest in the Tridentine Mass. The very last time I visited him, he said he had lost his Rosary beads in the nursing home. I had a pair of white plastic ones in my car and ran out to get them. It was a very short visit, as we were pressed for time. I remember placing them in his hand and then saying “Goodbye.” What a beautiful memory and I feel so blessed to have been able to do that for him in his final days.
As we see young people flocking to the “Mass of the Ages,” looking for something with true meaning, it would seem Uncle Larry was a prophet. They are indeed rebelling against a culture of narcissism and nihilism. They want happy, faithful marriages. They want children. Quite frankly, they want a normal life. I personally know many of these young people. I’ve seen them grow and blossom as they practice a truly devout Catholic life. I’ve seen them lovingly holding their children in their arms. I am always captivated by the babies at Mass, knowing it is to them, that I have a responsibility-that is why I do this work. I have only to look at these holy innocents and it is enough of a motivation.
As modernists see their “utopic” vision vanishing before their very eyes, they are unleashing their final attack. They can’t quite handle the cognitive dissonance that the great “Age of Aquarius” they were mind-controlled into slavishly working toward…is dead and dying. They just can’t face up to the fact that their whole lives were a mistake…and that they fell for a lie. Modernism bore no fruit-it had no roots. The plant itself is withering. Who knew that those who despised tradition would one day cling with draconian rigidity to their own traditions? The future belongs to those of the counter-rebellion.
“Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.”
Matthew 7:20
That doesn’t mean we are in for a cakewalk. But it does mean there is hope and certainty, in fact…that what was purchased with the Blood of Christ will prevail, because it must.
Please keep dear Larry and his family in prayer-much thanks. Please know we do take prayer requests and will post them if you like.
Thought for the Day / Yeats' Famous Poem
“The Democratic Party — like the EU’s warmonger parties — has nothing left but violence against anything that looks like nationalism and traditional values.”
From recent article “The Widening Gyre”
Literate and consummate writer James Howard Kunstler evokes William Butler Yeats great poem “The Second Coming” in his most recent article about the emerging chaos of geopolitics. Here’s the poem…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight, somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
The Second Coming
Thoughts for the Day
“This is the first day of the rest of your life!”
I love this quote. You can change everything whenever you want. It’s very inspiring. And it goes hand in hand with this one…
“I can do all these things in Him who strengtheneth me.”
Philippians 4:13
And there’s this one, which is sort of related…
“What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.”
…Hey, ever wonder why the same people who always talk about diversity love to criticize the Tridentine Mass? This betrays their hypocrisy and true agenda. Let us pray for our traditional Catholic brethren in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, as they are undergoing an horrendous persecution right now. Let us pray for His Holiness Pope Leo XIV to eradicate “Traditionis Custodes” (what an ironic title for this Motu Proprio, please don’t get me started).
Thought for the Day
Integrity must be extremely strong when one is alone with oneself, when one is alone with one’s own thoughts and being. Because out there, all the winds and slippery streets, will tend to cause us to lose our footing.
Thought for the Day
The Devil at his worst, is at his most self-defeating.
Thought for the Day
“A phenomenon takes on meaning out of expectation.”
Michael Wann
Great Ayn Rand Quote
“[Man] is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival. To a living consciousness, every is implies an ought. Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.”
Ayn Rand
Happy Saint Patrick's Day / Thoughts for the Day
SAINT PATRICK, PRAY FOR US!
From today’s trad Mass:
O God, Who didst deign to send blessed Patrick, Thy confessor and bishop, to preach Thy glory to the nations, grant, through his merits and intercession, that those commands which Thou dost set before us we may by Thy mercy be able to fulfill.
Grant, we beseech Thee, O Almighty God, that, giving thanks for the favors we have received, we may, by the intercession of blessed Patrick, Thy confessor and bishop, obtain blessings still greater. Amen.
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I belong here because I am here.
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When you look beyond the horizon, the obstructions collapse.
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Envy is the inability to receive another person’s gifts, which were meant for you.
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The mystic surrenders his life to the Mystery.
The thoughts shared here which are not in quotes, are recent meditations of mine which I have crystallized into simple ideas. All writing on this site is by CF Mathews, unless otherwise noted.
Thoughts for the Day
You’ll never get at truth unless you extend a bit beyond it.
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Create the flow and stop the friction.
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Too much of one thing produces the opposite effect.