Blithe.
As in, joyous.
Did you hear me, Christian?
JOYOUS.

We should all be so joyous… so blithe… to DIE for the Gospel. To do, as St. Thomas More did; die for marriage!

I completely and wholeheartedly support St. Thomas More and his support for the traditional and TRUE meaning of marriage.

Mystical Experiences of Simone Weil
(1909 – 1943)

Only a few poems of Simone Weil were seen by the public in her life. After her death, 16 volumes of her writings on philosophy were published. Called by T.S. Eliot “a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints,” she was moved not only by her considerable intellectual prowess but by mystical experiences.

She had her first mystical experience at the Solesmes Monastery as she
listened to the monks chant. She later had another mystical experience in which she stated that “Christ himself came down and He took me” as she read George Herbert’s poem, “Love bade me welcome while my Soul drew back.” Here are excerpts from a letter written in Marseilles, France about May 15, 1942 to her close friend Father Perrin about these experiences:

“In 1938 I spent ten days at Solesmes, from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, following all the liturgical services. I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration I was able to rise above this wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all.

 

There was a young English Catholic there from whom I gained my first idea of the supernatural power of the sacraments because of the truly angelic radiance with which he seemed to be clothed after going to communion. Chance — for I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence — made of him a messenger to me. For he told me of the existence of those English poets of the seventeenth century who are named metaphysical. In reading them later on, I discovered the poem of which I read you what is unfortunately a very inadequate translation. It is called “Love”. I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I make myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me…Moreover, in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.

Until last September I had never once prayed in all my life, at least not in the literal sense of the word. I had never said any words to God, either out loud or mentally.
Last summer, doing Greek with T-, I went through the Our Father word for word in Greek. We promised each other to learn it by heart. I do not think he ever did so, but some weeks later, as I was turning over the pages of the Gospel, I said to myself that since I had promised to do this thing and it was good, I ought to do it.

 

I did it. The infinite sweetness of this Greek text so took hold of me that for several days I could not stop myself from saying it over all the time. A week afterward I began the vine harvest I recited the Our Father in Greek every day before work, and I repeated it very often in the vineyard. Since that time I have made a practice of saying it through once each morning with absolute attention. If during the recitation my attention wanders or goes to sleep, in the minutest degree, I begin again until I have once succeeded in going through it with absolutely pure attention.

 

Sometimes it comes about that I say it again out of sheer pleasure, but I only do it if I really feel the impulse. The effect of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition. At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence. Sometimes, also, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me.”

(Excerpted from Waiting for God by Simone Weil – Harper & Row, New York, 1951, translated by Emma Craufurd).

It’s alive!

Now say it like Dr. Frankenstein… and roll your hands together… and grin like a cheshire cat.

Muuuwwwaaaaaaha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Sorry ’bout that.

And so do I.

And so do these folks pumpin’ gas in Burbank.

This should make yer day.  And if it doesn’t?… well then, my friend, YOU suck.

Long live the 80′s.

God bless, y’all.

Purging.

The word could not be more appropriate.  And, as Steve succinctly points out, the act could not make more sense from the point of the perpetrators.

I’m a history graduate from the University of Western Ontario (excuse me if I refuse to refer to it by its adopted handle, Western University.  I don’t need chaps and 10-gallon hats with my purple mustang, thank you.)  I’m prone to recount one of the most eye-opening moments from my university days; a course I took called “Totalitarianism in the 20th Century”.  Heck.  ”Eye-opening” does no justice.

Needless to say, it was a semester spent delving into the dark corners of the human condition.  Some 20 years after my UWO commencement party, I’m left to wonder how far humanity is from a return to another ominous age.

But just as we – and when I say “we”, I mean “I” – teeter on the brink of despair, a pulling back comes in the form of… the hero.  The saint-to-be.

Fr. Emil Kapaun was one of them.  Is… one of them.

Needless to say, Anderson not only held his own but gave it back to the host and self-identifying lesbian guest who harped on sentiment and name-calling.

Instead of regurgitate that one-sided CNN appearance, I thought I’d embed more brilliance from the marriage and religious liberty researcher at the Heritage Foundation in his recent appearance on the 700 Club.