"You will know the hour of weakness and of poverty..."

Michael Snyder notes:


"All across America, store shelves are emptying and people are becoming increasingly frustrated because they can’t get their hands on needed supplies.  Most Americans are blaming 'hoarders' for the current mess, but it is actually much more complicated than that.  Normally, Americans get a lot of their food from restaurants.  In fact, during normal times 36 percent of all Americans eat at a fast food restaurant on any given day.  But now that approximately 75 percent of the U.S. is under some sort of a 'shelter-in-place' order and most of our restaurants have shut down, things have completely changed.  Suddenly our grocery stores are being flooded with unexpected traffic, and many people are buying far more than usual in anticipation of a long pandemic.  Unfortunately, our food distribution systems were not designed to handle this sort of a surge, and things are really starting to get crazy out there...

Meanwhile, our farmers are facing severe problems of their own.  The following comes from CNBC…

The U.S.-China trade war sent scores of farmers out of business. Record flooding inundated farmland and destroyed harvests. And a blistering heat wave stunted crop growth in the Midwest.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has dealt another blow to a vulnerable farm economy, sending crop and livestock prices tumbling and raising concerns about sudden labor shortages.

The chaos in the financial markets is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, and it is going to remain difficult for farm laborers to move around as long as 'shelter-in-place' orders remain in effect on the state level.

Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt told reporter Emma Newburger that 'we’ve stopped saying it can’t get worse', and he says that this coronavirus pandemic looks like it could be 'the straw that broke the camel’s back'…

'We were already under extreme financial pressure. With the virus sending the prices down — it’s getting to be the straw that broke the camel’s back,' said Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt.

'We were hoping for something good this year, but this virus has stopped all our markets,' he said.

Of course this comes at a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs and unemployment is shooting up to unthinkable levels.  Without any money coming in, many people are already turning to alternative sources of help in order to feed themselves and their families.

On Monday, hundreds of cars were lined up to get food from a food bank in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.  To many, this was eerily reminiscent of the 'bread lines' during the Great Depression of the 1930s."


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Our Lady told Fr. Stephano Gobbi on November 15, 1990, at Malvern Pennsylvania: "I announce to you that the hour of the great trial is on the point of arriving. The great trial has arrived for your country. How many times, as a concerned and sorrowing mother, have I endeavored to urge my children to follow the path of conversion and of return to the Lord. I have not been listened to. You have continued to walk along the way of rejection of God, and of His law of love. Sins of impurity have become ever more widespread, and immorality has spread like a sea which has submerged all things. Homosexuality, a sin of impurity which is against nature, has been justified; recourse to the means of preventing life have become commonplace, while abortions - these killings of innocent children, that cry for vengeance before the face of God - have spread and are performed in every part of your homeland.The moment of divine justice and of great mercy has now arrived.


You will know the hour of weakness and of poverty; the hour of suffering and defeat; the purifying hour of the great chastisement. The great trial has arrived for your Church. How great is your responsibility, O Pastors of the Holy Church of God! You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of the rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed...And then, there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart.

The great trial has arrived for all humanity. The chastisement, predicted by me at Fatima and contained in that part of the secret which has not yet been revealed, is about to take place. The great moment of divine justice and of mercy has come upon the world."

By their fruits you will know them..

From Gloria TV:


"The Vatican publishes in December the visitor numbers at Papal public encounters (liturgies, audiences, Angelus) of the current year. But in December 2017 this did not happen. In the last years, the numbers have been shrinking dramatically:

2014: 5.92 million visitors
2015: 3.21 million visitors
2016: 3.95 million visitors
2017: ???

The numbers of the pilgrims who care to see Pope Francis during the Wednesday General Audiences are even more disappointing:

2014: 1.2 million
2015: 0.7 million
2016: 0.8 million
2017: ???

The same was true for Francis' Chile visit. According to usnews.com the crowds were 'very thin, in many areas a single line of people.'"

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them." (Matthew 7: 15-20).

To see others...

"The man whose heart was hardened by wealth went to Rabbi Eisig. The Rabbi said to him: ''Look out of the window, and tell me what you see in the street.' 'I see people walking up and down .' Then he gave him a looking glass: 'Look in this and tell me what you see.' The man replied: 'I see myself.' 'So you do not see others anymore? Consider that the window and the mirror are both made of glass; but, since the mirror has a coating of silver, you only see yourself in it, while you can see others through the transparent glass of the window. I am very sorry to have to compare you to these two kinds of glass. When you were poor, you saw others and had compassion on them; but being covered with wealth, you see only yourself. It would be much the best thing for you to scrape off the silver coating so that you can again see other people.'"


- Jean de Menasce


Visited mom at therapy today as I do every day.  Mom's roommate is an elderly lady named Martha.  Martha's husband, also a veteran, died many years ago and is buried in Baldwinville. As mom and I talk, I always include Martha in the conversation.  Perhaps because I can appreciate the pain of feeling excluded or left out.  The three of us kid and joke and it's obvious that this brings her joy - her face lights up and radiates happiness.  I offer to get Martha a cup of coffee or cocoa when I get mom one.

These are little things.  But the difference we can make in a person's life is something we will never fully appreciate in this one,  only in eternity.

"By this will men know that you are My disciples.  That you have love for one another."

Meditation here.

Francis: "I do not know if I truly love Jesus.."

Francis just told a group of children, "I do not know if I truly love Jesus. I try to love him..."  See here.

What a shame. Saint Peter Julian Eymard reminds us that, "It was from the height of His Cross that our Lord first drew all the souls to Himself by
redeeming them. But when our Lord uttered these words, He certainly also had in mind His Eucharistic throne, to the foot of which He means to draw all souls so as to bind them there with the chains of His love.

Our Lord wants to instill in us a passionate love for Himself. Any virtue or idea which does not end by becoming a passion will never produce
anything great.

A child's affection is not love. A child loves by instinct and because it feels that it us loved; it loves itself in those who do it good.

A domestic servant may be devoted; his love will be real only if he is devoted out of affection for his master, without any thought of personal advantage.

Love cannot triumph unless it becomes the one passion of our life. Without such a passion we may produce isolated acts of love; but our life is not really won or consecrated to an ideal.

Unless we have a passionate love for our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, we shall accomplish nothing.

 Certainly, our Lord loves us passionately in the Eucharist; He loves us blindly without a thought for Himself, devoting Himself entirely for our good. We should love Him as
He loves us."

In John 21: 15-17, we read, "When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?' He said to him, 'Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.' He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
He then said to him a second time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?' He said to him, 'Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.' He said to him, 'Tend my sheep.' He said to him the third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?' Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, 'Do you love me?' and he said to him, 'Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.' [Jesus] said to him, 'Feed my sheep.'"

The Vicar of Christ is called to show his love for Jesus by feeding the sheep - and this with the food which is sound doctrine.  But he who sits on the throne of Peter is not offering such food.  No doubt because his love for the Lord Jesus is in question.

He even entertains doubts himself!

Richard Wagner wants us to know (gasp) that there have been homosexual priests and religious throughout the Church's history

Richard Wagner, a confused soul who resides in Seattle, Washington, has a brief biography at the website for the "Center for Progressive Christianity" which may be found here.  This lost soul says that he works to "heal" professionals including religious leaders and that he has facilitated "support groups for gay clergy of numerous denominations for many years."  Mr. Wagner offers his advice at a website titled drdicksexadvice.com.

Why am I even writing about him?  Because this lost soul who suffers from the psychopathology of homosexuality describes himself as a "gay priest."  His website, which may be found here,  and his Blog both offer the same old tired homosexual agitprop.  At his Blog, he asserts that, "For centuries homosexuals have been villified and persecuted by the Catholic Church, but throughout all of its history the Church has had a very inconvenient secret."

And what is this great secret?  That there have been clergy and religious men and women who were homosexual!  Gosh, who would have thought?  Saint Catherine of Siena, a great mystic and Doctor of the Church, fought for reform at a time when many clergy had succumbed to the vice of homosexuality.  So this doesn't exactly come as a news flash, unless of course you have been ignorant of the Church's history.  In her Dialogues, St. Catherine said that, "...these wretches not only do not bridle this fragility [of a weak nature], but do worse, committing that accursed sin against nature, and as blind as fools, with the light of their intellect darkened, they do not know the stench and misery in which they are."

Saint Peter Damian, another Doctor of the Church, a Cardinal and great reformer of the clergy, wrote an entire treatise entitled the Book of Gomorrah against the inroads made by homosexuality among the clergy.  In his important work, St. Damian describes the iniquity of homosexuality as well as its psychological and, more importantly, its moral consequences:

"Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices...It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything.  And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth....The miserable flesh burns with the heat of lust; the cold mind trembles with the rancor of suspicion; and in the heart of the miserable man chaos boils like Tartarus [Hell]....In fact, after this most poisonous serpent once sinks its fangs into the unhappy soul, sense is snatched away, memory is borne off, the sharpness of the mind is obscured.  It becomes unmindful of God and even forgetful of itself.  This plague undermines the foundation of faith, weakens the strength of hope, destroys the bond of charity; it takes away justice, subverts fortitude, banishes temperance, blunts the keenness of prudence.  And what more should I say since it expels the whole host of the virtues from the chamber of the human heart and introduces every barbarous vice as if the bolts of the doors were pulled out."

Because the soul en route to Hell has lost faith and is utterly miserable, it seeks company on its journey to final impenitence and, ultimately, eternal damnation.  Which is why Mr. Wagner advances the now exhausted argument that anyone who stands with the Church's moral teaching and opposes homosexuality because of divine revelation and or the natural moral law is a "homophobe" who secretly pines for a homosexual encounter.  He asserts that, "one's level of homophobia" is in direct proportion to one's own brutally closeted desire for homosexual sex."  Wagner argues that "the more you wail against something" the more likely it is that you are attracted to that thing.  Operating on this theory may we assume that those heroic souls who opposed National Socialism in general and the Nazi Party more specifically were closeted Nazis?  Perhaps Simon Wiesenthal hunted Nazi butchers because he secretly admired their genocidal mentality?  And what of those who railed against the Ku Klux Klan or Atheistic Humanism with its record of genocide and sheer brutality?

Wagner, as with many of his associates in the homosexual hate movement, employs this argument because he has nothing substantive to offer.  It is nothing more than a cheap attempt at intimidation: "If you oppose homosexuality I'll tell evreyone that you are a closeted homosexual."

If Richard Wagner was really a Catholic priest at one time, I'd like to know how and why he was ordained. But if this mental midget believes that he's telling us something we don't already know when he says that there have been priests and religious throughout the Church's history who were homosexual, he is deluding himself. 

What of it?  Alexander VI was a notorious sinner too.  Does that mean we should all join him?

What the anti-Catholic protesters in Madrid don't want you to know: World Youth Day was an economic boon for Madrid

As this article notes, anti-Catholic protesters took to the streets of Madrid and clashed with police, complaining about the 73 million dollare price tag of the Holy Father's visit and World Youth Day celebrations.  Of course, the same anti-Catholic bigots have nothing to say about the 230 million that WYD has brought into Madrid. 

I view that as a net of 157 million for Madrid.

It is easy to see what drives such complaints.  Protesters in Madrid were overheard chanting, "We are not the Pope's youth," "I am a sinner, sinner, sinner" and "Nazi, nazi," a hateful reference to Pope Benedict XVI having been an unwilling participant in the Hitler Youth movement.

Anti-Catholic protesters may not be honest.  But they are at least consistent in their tactics.  Remember the Holy Father's visit to England last year?  Anti-Catholic bigots there were suddenly concerned about the British taxpayer.

If you doubt that hatred is what drove the protests in Madrid, view these pictures and then we'll talk.