WDTPRS – 12th Ordinary Sunday: His Name – Holy Fear, Holy Consolation

Posted on 17 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

WDTPRS - 12th Ordinary Sunday: His Name - Holy Fear, Holy ConsolationThis coming Sunday’s prayers is wonderful sing!  It is stark and lavish and carefully balanced and quintessentially Roman.

This week’s Collect, also in 1962 Missale Romanum for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, was in the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary for the Sunday after the Ascension (Thursday).  It is also prayed after the Litany of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

Sancti nominis tui, Domine, timorem pariter et amorem fac nos habere perpetuum, quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis, quos in soliditate tuae dilectionis instituis.

Gubernatio means “a steering, piloting of a ship” or “direction, management”, which is where we get the word “government”.   A gubernator is the pilot of a ship.  Perpetuus, –a, -um is the adjective for “continuing throughout, continuous, unbroken, uninterrupted; constant,…” etc.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:

Make us to have, O Lord, constant fear and in equal degree love of Your Holy Name, for You never abandon with Your steering those whom You establish in the firmness of Your love.

Note the balancing of ideas: timor/amor (fear/love) and instituo/destituo (establish/abandon).   In instituo I hear a “setting down” in the sense of how God made us and by that making He takes us upon Himself.  He has our care and our governance.  God sets us down next to Himself, under His watchful eye, so that we don’t go wrong.  In destituo I hear a “setting down” in the sense of a setting to one side away from Himself, an abandonment of interest.  In gubernatio God is, our pilot, our steersman, keeping his hand on the wheel of our lives.  We are solid because His loving hand is firm.  Were He to abandon us, our ship would wreck and we would be “destitute”.  Amidst the vicissitudes of this world we depend in fear and love on His Holy Name.  We stand in the proper place before God’s fearful glance and under His guiding hand of love only through both love and fear His Name which points to His Person.

A name, in biblical and liturgical terms, refers to the essence of the one named.  The Divine Name made Moses put off his shoes.  Moses learned God’s Name to tell the captive Jews that the one who is Being Itself – “I AM” – would set them free (cf Exodus 2).  Once destitute, they were instituted as His People.  So sacred was the terrible Name of God for the Jews that they would not pronounce the four Hebrew letters used to indicate it in Scripture, substituting instead “Adonai”, “Lord”.

What does Our Lord says about His own Name?  In John 16:23 Jesus – Hebrew/Aramaic Yeshua from Yehoshua, “Yahweh saves” – reveals His unity with the Father and the power of His Name saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.”  In Mark 9:38-39 there is an exchange between the beloved disciple and the Lord about people casting out demons in Jesus’ name. Jesus said, ‘No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me.’” The Name “Jesus” can change hearts.  John 20:31 says, “these [signs] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name”.

His Name – His Person – is our path to everlasting life.

The Name of God, of God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ, God the Holy Spirit, is worthy of our fear and our love.

Many today want to stress only the love of the Name of Jesus without the holy fear which is its due.  We must not exclude reverential awe and fear of that which God’s Name implies.  In Scripture forms of words for “fear” occur hundreds and hundreds of times.  Scripture is imbued with loving fear of God, indeed, a fear leading to love and wisdom.

God’s Holy Name is sacred.  How we use or react to the Holy Name indicates our interior disposition.  Do we use it with reverential love?  Do we speak it with respect?   Is His Name, uttered by another during the day or by ourselves in the recesses of the night, a source of dread because we are destitute in our sins, terrified of the Judge?   Rather than deal with His Name, do we fill our lives with noise and clamor so that we need never hear a deep “GOD”, with all that God implies?

“God fearing” men and women need not have terror of the Lord.  His Name is a consolation.

Today’s prayer reveals a way out of the terror for God.  Through reverential fear of His Name and of who He is and what He has done, we move to the love that knows no fear (cf 1 John 4:16-18).

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, WDTPRS | Tagged , ,
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115 Spanish martyrs beatified – It happened before, in living memory, it can happen again.

Posted on 16 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I was recently in Spain.  We visited a lot of churches – as one does.  Time after time, we would encounter a church that was seemingly uncharacteristically bare, or where there were great gaps in decorations, only to find that something happened to the place in the 30’s.   We know what that was.

Today I read that Pope Francis beatified 115 Spanish martyrs of the Civil War.  HERE

The newest martyrs are Servants of God José Álvarez Benavides y de la Torre, Spanish dean of the Cathedral Chapter of Almería, and his 114 companions. They were killed between 1936 and 1938 during Spain’s brutal civil war.

[…]

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI beatified nearly 500 victims of religious persecution who were killed before and during Spain’s civil war. These included two bishops, 24 priests, 462 members of religious orders, a deacon, a sub-deacon, a seminarian, and seven lay Catholics. Collectively their ages ranged from 16 to 71. It was one of the largest mass beatifications in history.

In April 2011, Pope Benedict approved the beatifications of 22 martyrs from the period. In October 2013, another 522 martyrs from the Spanish Civil War era were beatified.

Friends, may I remind you that those events occurred within living memory.

And may I also remind you that if they happened before, they can happen again.

Human nature is fallen and it is not improved by technology or politics.

 

Posted in Modern Martyrs, Saints: Stories & Symbols, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices, The Last Acceptable Prejudice |
10 Comments

#ActonU – Day 2-3: Economics, Benedictine Option, and Physics

Posted on 16 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Day 2 (aka 1st full day) of Acton U was replete – as always – with great presentations.   In the afternoon, I went to a talk about the Benedictine Option.  This is not about the arrangement of candles and Crucifix on the altar as proposed by Pope Benedict.  This has to do with the idea that we might, or could, or should withdraw and live apart from mainstream society.   The talk drilled into what Rod Dreher has offered.  The presenter offered some insights, tactics from the life of John Paul II about how to deal with persecution that is here and that is coming.  She concluded with the proposal of a Marian Option.  There was a lively Q&A.

In the evening, we heard an address by Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith, which combined economics and, I’m not kidding, particle physics.  It was a tour de force.  Someone needs to get this talk to Benedict XVI, who would appreciate it enormously.

#ActonU - Day 2-3: Economics, Benedictine Option, and Physics
Today, this morning, we started out with a Sung Requiem Mass.

#ActonU - Day 2-3: Economics, Benedictine Option, and Physics

Sorry, the photo is a bit small:

IMG_0381

Mind you, there is also an Ordinary Form Mass going on at the same time down the hall, concelebration and all that.   I think there is also a Protestant prayer gathering, too.

Lot’s to do today, so I had better get to it.

Meanwhile, a glimpse of one of the book laden tables.  The titles tantalize.

#ActonU - Day 2-3: Economics, Benedictine Option, and Physics

Posted in On the road, What Fr. Z is up to | Tagged ,
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#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

Posted on 15 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This time, my view for a while involved a windshield and, for a long stretch of Illinois and Indiana, Krazy Kaplan discount fireworks signs. I mean, there were literally dozens of big billboards, one after another.

#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

A bird’s eye view of the complex where Acton U meets and has met for the last few years in Grand Rapids.  Just across the river is the Gerard Ford Presidential Library/Museum.  It’s really interesting.

#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

The speak at the first evening was a woman from Senegal who spoke about entrepreneurship and about how foreign aid has tended to create job killing, business dressing dependence.   We also saw the trailer for Poverty Inc, which I cam assure you is tremendous.   It is on Amazon (click below) and will soon be also on Netflix.   It is, as I write, the #5 in documentaries on Amazon.

#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

Click!

Sometimes the food at conferences isn’t so great. This was no rubber chicken. And they served over 1000 people from over 50 countries in no time.

#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

So, the first full day begins.  Note the first item in the daily email to participants.

#ActonU Day 1-2: For the study of religion and liberty

I am now off to Mass. At Acton U we have both Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms. I like to call the later the “Adult Mass”.

More later.

UPDATE:

Some photos were captured from Mass.  We had a good representation of the participants, from many countries.  Some priests came as well.

IMG_0363

IMG_0373

It was a nice, quiet way to begin (without the… you know… ).

Posted in On the road, What Fr. Z is up to | Tagged ,
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Our leadership: autocrats and authoritarians

Posted on 14 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This applies to priests as well.

From LifeSite:

Why some bishops behave the way they do

June 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Why can’t 40 Days for Life in my home town get any support from our local bishop? Why does Florida Bishop Robert Lynch interpret the terrible shootings there the very same way the Huffington Post and other enemies of the Faith do? Why did British generals sacrifice many soldiers’ lives with frontal attacks on the Western Front in the First World War?

Curiously, an answer to all these questions may be found in a single book, a 1976 masterpiece called On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, written by a psychologist named Norman Dixon who saw plenty of examples while serving in the British Army in the Second World War as a military engineer.

Interestingly, commentators like to focus on Dixon’s enumeration of the characteristics of bad leadership while ignoring what is the heart of Dixon’s book: “the psychology” of why military organizations promote into high command people incapable of the clear thinking and bold, confident, decisive action their positions require. Dixon said incompetent generals were often physically courageous under fire, but lacked the moral courage to develop unconventional winning strategies and tactics and to take risks.

That’s true of a lot of people, of course, but those people should certainly not be generals, right?…Or bishops?

Dixon, however, explained why so many are, by distinguishing between two kinds of leadership personalities: the autocrat, and the authoritarian.

[…]

Every alternative presents itself as an opportunity for failure. After all, the authoritarian already has reached the top. There isn’t as much upside to defeating the enemy as there is downside to defeat. So the authoritarian—incompetent—general may do nothing at all or he may do too little. He may do a little bit of everything so that no one could criticise him for failing to do anything. He sends some troops north to oppose the enemy but keeps most at home. He doesn’t warn the civilian population to build bomb shelters because he doesn’t want to admit there may soon be air attacks. He wants to be popular. He does not want to win so much as to avoid being criticised. The general who is not motivated by the desire to win is less likely to do so than the general who is.

This makes me think of many bishops. They rose through the ranks when Christians and Catholics were still popular, respected and even powerful. They took their leadership positions in large, military-like hierarchical organizations with the responsibility to preserve these organizations, not risk them—in other words, in peacetime.

For these men, there is no upside, no chance of a decisive victory over evil, secularism or social change—only the downside of unpopularity, criticism and conflict with society’s trendsetters and thought leaders, and quite possibly with civil authorities, quite possibly lawsuits and nasty headlines. If they are in Europe, they enjoy huge salaries on the government’s tab.

These smooth, plump men did not sign on for combat, did not sign on for marches, for vigils, for interrogations in courtrooms or for jail terms. As priests they were instantly deferred to and respected by their own flocks. As bishops they get even more of that from their faithful, plus real palaces. But they now find themselves targets for attacks from society at large. They are tasked with feeding their sheep at the same time as defending Christianity’s politically incorrect teachings on homosexuality, abortion and transgenderism, and Catholicism’s particular teachings on a male-only priesthood, divorce and in vitro fertilization.

[…]

Read the whole thing there.

Yes, the moderation queue is definitely ON.

Posted in Priests and Priesthood, The Drill | Tagged , ,
30 Comments

There are times when irony isn’t funny. This is one of them.

Posted on 14 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There are times when irony isn’t funny.  This is one of them.

I read this at FNC:

Orlando gunman made multiple visits to nightclub he attacked, reports say

Omar Mateen made multiple visits to Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in the weeks before he killed 49 people there early Sunday, according to several reports quoting regular patrons.

One man also said that he recognized Mateen from an app used to arrange dates and hookups for gay men, adding a new layer of complexity to the investigation of the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

The Orlando Sentinel cited four Pulse regulars who said they had seen the 29-year-old Mateen there before.

“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,” said Ty Smith, who claimed to have seen the gunman at Pulse at least a dozen times.

“We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times,” Smith added. “He told us he had a wife and child.”

Smith’s husband, Chris Callen, told the Canadian Press that Mateen had been to Pulse regularly for “at least three years.”

Jim Van Horn, 71, told the Associated Press he was a frequent patron at Pulse and said another “regular” there was Mateen.

“He was trying to pick up people. Men,” Van Horn said late Monday outside the Parliament House, another gay club.

[…]

Read the rest there.

What have we been hearing for the last couple days?

There is a tension in the MSM between this being an Islamic terror attack and being an “anti-‘gay’ hate crime”.  Some seem to want to diminish the terror aspect and emphasis the “anti-‘gay’ hate angle.

Now it seems that this was Islamist terror and a “gay” v “gay” crime, a barbaric mass murder perpetrated by a registered Democrat American citizen homosexual Islamic terrorist.  If he, apparently a Muslim homosexual, killed the homosexuals in the homosexual club that he frequented because he hated homosexuals, then this is pretty complicated and he was pretty screwed up.  Whatever else it is, it isn’t a simple case of a homosexual hater killing homosexuals because they are homosexuals.  It’s more than that.

Let’s see what the MSM does about this.

On another point…

This morning I awoke to the news that, in France, an Islamic terrorist murdered a cop, in front of his little son, and he streamed it live.  The police officer’s wife was also murdered.  The terrorist animal killed the cop with a knife… not a gun… a knife. The murderer pledged allegiance to ISIS three weeks ago and did so also during the steamed attack.  The boy survived. HERE

So much for French cuisine: all knives should be banned, right?

If terrorists want to kill you, they will use whatever is to hand, a knife, a pressure cooker, a Ford F-150, whatever.

That brings me to another point.

Less-than bright people in the MSM talk about the evil “assault weapon” used in the Orlando terror murders.  Some say it was an “automatic assault weapon”.

In one recording recovered from a victim’s phone you clearly hear the weapon being fired.  It wasn’t automatic fire.  You can’t tell if that was the handgun or the rifle.

The barbaric terrorist wacko had in the week prior purchased an AR-15.  If he bought an Ar-15 is wasn’t an automatic and it wasn’t an “assault weapon”.  “Assault weapon” or rifle is a phrase brilliantly applied to just about any rifle colored black by haters of the 2nd Amendment to distort the public’s understanding of rifles.

An “assault rifle” (the term might go back to WWII) can more accurately be applied to rifles that have a selective fire option, that is, they can be set to fire single shots with a single squeeze of the trigger, or multiple shots with a single squeeze.  An AR-15, unless it is subjected to significant modification, is not capable of selective fire.  An AR-15 gives you one shot per trigger pull.  An AR-15 is a “semi-automatic” long gun, or rifle, or carbine.  It is semi-automatic in that when you shoot a round, the case is extracted and ejected and, if there are still rounds in the magazine, another round is chambered and the mechanism is reset so that you can continue to fire with another squeeze of the trigger.  If you can squeeze the trigger quickly, you can fire quickly.  When you listen to the talking-heads, pay attention to the terms they use.  I think that some of the anti-2nd Amendment crowd get the difference, but they used the wrong terms to confuse and to warp.  Others just don’t know what they are talking about.

So… in the MSM coverage of the Orlando terror attack pay attention to the language that people use.

And let’s see if anything changes in the reportage or from, especially liberals and the homosexualist crowd, now that we know that the terrorist perp was himself often at the club seeking homosexual sex.  Will they still talk about “anti-gay hate”?

I am switching on the moderation queue for this.  Think before attempting the comment, please.  Also, I have some travel today, so I’ll not be checking the queue too often.

Finally… when you enter a business or any other place, make sure you know where the exits are and, having examined your conscience thoroughly…

GO TO CONFESSION.

UPDATE:

A thought.  It is assumed that he was “crazy”.  Maybe so, depending on your definition.  However, that doesn’t mean that he was stupid or that he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.  Maybe he wasn’t crazy.  Maybe he was just evil.  Maybe he was possessed.

Posted in Going Ballistic, The Drill |
65 Comments

Fr. Z’s Kitchen: Healthy and Not

Posted on 13 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In an earlier post, I affirmed my love of country. I think honorable men should love God, family and country.

Today I love America also because of this.

Last night at the parish we had a BBQ with a large group of men in part for one of the guys – in the Air Force – who is being deployed again (5th time?) to Jihadistan.  Yes, wife and little kids. He’s stoic.

One of the bonus of getting together with men only is that the FFLF* doesn’t figure.  Therefore, we can have food that goes straight to the Left Anterior Descending.

Behold: Bacon Pie.

Fr. Z's Kitchen: Healthy and Not

Cheese is not excluded.

The evening also included cigars and pipes and pints.  This cigar was given to me by one of the Swiss Guard on the evening of my 25th Jubilee supper in Rome.  Thanks!

Fr. Z's Kitchen: Healthy and Not

Meanwhile, on Friday my market has fishy things on sale.  I got some mussels at $3.95/lbs and made them with white wine, garlic, green onions, herbes de provence, tomatoes.

Fr. Z's Kitchen: Healthy and Not

This is easy, if you have never prepared them.  I keep them in the fridge until I need to work with them.  Then I fill a large pot with water and put them in: they tend to open and let go of sand and some seaweed.  Meanwhile, in a pot or pan that that you can cover with a lid that seals well, put a little white wine, and some veg like I mentioned, perhaps a dash of Pernod.  Turn the heat up so that you have a boil and then put the mussels in and cover it.  They will open fast.  Don’t overcook them.  You can sprinkle some parsley for flaver and personality.  Turn the whole batch into a large bowl and have a bowl for discarded shells.  Don’t try to eat the mussels that don’t open.  You can use connected shell halves like tweezers to eat the others.  Having some good bread to soak up the broth is not a bad idea.

 

Fr. Z's Kitchen: Healthy and Not

I roasted another bronzino and used as a garnish some of the veg and broth from the mussels.  Yum.

Fr. Z's Kitchen: Healthy and Not

See?  Bacon pie and cigars and healthy fish.  Right?

 

*FFLF – Female Fun Limitation Factor, defined as that effect produced on one or more males having fun when a female of any age asks in that special tone of voice, “Do you really think you should be doing that?”, and in all its variations, especially through The Look and other non-verbal signals.

Posted in Fr. Z's Kitchen | Tagged , , ,
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Just Too Cool: Bike thief meets cowboy!

Posted on 13 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I like the idea of sports that grew out of practical skills.  It’s fun to watch things like lumberjack competitions and rodeo.  As a kid, I spent summers in the Wild West and got a real taste for rodeo and riding skills.  Alas, it has been many years, but I digress.

Here is something for your Just Too Cool file.  This story has it all.

From NBC:

Just Too Cool: Bike thief meets cowboy!Cowboy Lassos Alleged Bike Thief in Wal-Mart Parking Lot

A hero on horseback saved the day after a man tried to make off with a bike that wasn’t his on Friday, and it all went down in the parking lot of an Oregon Wal-Mart.

Self-described “cowboy” Robert Borba was at the store in Eagle Point, Oregon, to pick up some dog food when he heard a woman yell out that someone had stolen her bicycle from a rack. Borba, a champion bull rider, took off on his trusty steed to give chase and rounded himself up a suspect.

Borba was able to wrap his lasso around the suspect’s ankle and hold the man until police arrived before heading back to the farm.

“I roped him and the rope went down around his feet and I just rode off like I would if I roped a cow or something,” Borba described to NBC affiliate KOBI.

“He did it so well I thought, man, he must be in a rodeo or something. It was perfect” onlooker Rob Roque said.

The suspect, Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, was charged with theft and taken to Jackson County Jail, Officer Chris Adams of the Eagle Point Police Department said.

Of course there’s video!

I love America.

I like to imagine what that bicycle thief was thinking as he lay there, trussed.  I suppose that each time he twitched, the horse backed a bit to keep the tension on.  People standing around, looking at him, making comments.  Were I the judge in that case, I might sentence the guy to muck out that horse’s stall for a few weeks.

Posted in Goat Rodeos, Just Too Cool, Lighter fare | Tagged ,
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Prayers and Points about the Terror in Orlando

Posted on 13 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Prayers and Points about the Terror in OrlandoI was drafting something along these lines, but Fr. John Hunwicke has expressed also many of the points I wanted to get across (with my emphases and comment):

Those who died in the most truly appalling events at Orlando … may they, through the all-atoning Sacrifice of our most sweet Redeemer and our suffrages, have remission of their sins: we pray this for them as we pray it for all the departed, since as Christians we believe that anyone who claims to be without sin is deceiving himself and the Truth is not in him. This, of course, goes equally for popes and for rent-boys and for you and for me.

Humanly, we may surely hope that many of those killed in a situation which prima facie may have been at least a proximate occasion of mortal sin, may, through their own ignorance, not have had that full knowledge and consent which would render their deeds and intentions as lethal subjectively as they are objectively. It is a sobering thought that it may be easier for us, who are instructed Catholics, to go to Hell than it is for the uninstructed. [And yet it would be a sin not to try to instruct and admonish and counsel.]

And we pray for the wounded; for the families, friends, survivors, witnesses of those who died. Perhaps a particular prayer is appropriate for those who were not aware that their sons or daughters were being drawn into intrinsically disordered actions: parents for whom the horror of so dreadful a bereavement may even be  increased by that realisation.

And I think we need to be aware that [NB] the Hierarchs of the Spirit of this Age will use this fearful atrocity for their own purposes. Treating the victims of a deranged murderer as martyrs for a noble cause is likely to become a stock element in the perverted parody of the moral high ground which the Powers of Evil seek to inculcate. And it will become part of a campaign which, if it succeeds, will lead to the increasingly violent persecution of anybody who articulates the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic Church (Catechism paragraphs 2357 and following). [And also persecution of those who defend civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution of these USA.]

What are the paragraphs of the CCC to which Father refers?

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

As far as civil liberties are concerned, I worry about the erosion of the freedom of religion and assembly, the right to bear arms, protection from illegal search and seizure, due process, the non-enumerated rights of the people and powers reserved to the states and the people.

It seems to me that what Fr Hunwicke calls the Hierarchs of the Spirit of this Age and also the Powers of Evil are attacking on all fronts through events like this. In times of confusion and crisis, the Hierarchs and Powers are expert at manipulation and exploitation.

Make a list of intentions, friends, and of people and then, with discipline, pray and fast for them. Use your Rosary. Invoke the help of the Guardian Angels of specific people.

This war – and it is a war – is to be fought on the spiritual level as well as in our temporal sphere.

The instrument of Satan Leon Trotsky quipped that you might not be interested in dialectic, but dialectic is interested in you.  Because of the relationship of dialectic and polemic, rooted in the Greek word for war, pólemos, Trotsky’s quip morphed into, “You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”  This is absolutely the case when it comes to the war the Enemy of the Soul wages on every one of us.

In the spiritual plane we have relentless and inescapable enemies in the World, the Flesh and the Devil.  In this temporal, earthly life we also have enemies.

Don’t for a moment imagine that they are not interested in you.

Posted in Four Last Things, Mail from priests, Our Catholic Identity, PRAYER REQUEST, Si vis pacem para bellum!, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices, The Religion of Peace, Urgent Prayer Requests | Tagged , , , , , ,
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Ready? Daily Carry Stuff and You.

Posted on 12 June 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

You can’t be perfectly prepared for every possible contingency, but you can be prepared for some of them, including injuries.

On some blogs you will at times see people post their “daily carry” stuff. Those posts often also involve “readiness” things that make loud noises. Those noise makers aren’t the only dimension of being ready.

There are also some medical items which might make a difference for yourself or for someone else.

NB: Just as it is necessary to have training with things that make loud noises, so too it is necessary to have training with medical supplies. It is one thing to have any of these items, but it is another to use them properly under stress. I would like even more training, and I am going to take steps to get it.

Here are shots of some daily carry things.  I confess that I don’t have this particular pack with me every time I go out.  I determine what I want to carry depending on where I am going, how, and what time of day it is.

Ready? Daily Carry Stuff and You.

What you see Z-Pack, gauze, sutures, prep pads, scalpel, Celox, mouth to mouth mask, scissors, nitrile gloves, tourniquets (set up to go over large shoe or boot), antibiotic ointment packs.  I haven’t figured out how to get the nasopharyngeal tube chest seal in yet, but I don’t know how to use that well … yet… but maybe some nearby would! Some band-aids, not shown, but they are less involved in getting someone stable, or closer it stable.

16_06_12_pack_01

I would add that you readers supplied most of these things, from my Amazon wish list.

Also, when I travel, most all of this goes in my carry-on back-pack.  Not the scalpel… I haven’t tried that yet.  Only once did I get a raised eye-brow and question from a TSA drone.  I ask him if he had ever watched someone bleed out and that ended that.  Alas, I have.  The times with the most blood were on a train-track and another time on a Roman street, directly in front of the Chiesa Nuova (rocketing motorcycle zooming between buses at stop light, pedestrians crossing… brrrrr).  I gave extreme unction both those times, since part of my “daily carry” also includes an IO stock.  I anointed on streets several times in Rome, over the years.

If you don’t think that these things can happen where you are, friends, then you are not living in reality.  To anoint is my primary role, but if I can stop bleeding too, well… I’d like to do that (including my own).

Suggestions from the well-experienced are welcome.  You can’t learn enough.

Everyone: You might consider gathering some basic items.  Keep them in your car, or bag, certainly in your dwelling.  Make sure you know how to use them.  Refresh perishables from time to time.

 

Posted in Semper Paratus, Si vis pacem para bellum! | Tagged ,
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