Listen, And I Will Tell You a Mystery

O Lord, pierce our hardened hearts, enlighten our blindness, and break the chains of our pride and self-deception, so that we may choose life.

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are--sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

The mighty rise, are fallen, and forgotten— but the word and the spirit endure.

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.

Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Primacy of Conscience

"All my life I have been fighting against the spirit of narrowness and violence, arrogance, intolerance in its absolute, merciless consistency.   I have also worked to overcome this spirit with its evil consequences, such as nationalism in excess, racial persecution, and materialism.  In regards to this, the National Socialists are correct in killing me.

I have striven to make its consequences milder for its victims and to prepare the way for a change.  In that, my conscience drove me – and in the end, that is a man's duty."

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke,  Executed in Plötzensee Prison on 23 January 1945

As journalist activist Carl von Ossietzky put it, 'we cannot hope to affect the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep.'

Heroic virtue shines across the vast seas of history like beacons to those in the troubled waters of general deception.

Stocks were led by a narrow group of big cap tech related stocks, with the NDX 100 driving all the gains.

Tomorrow we will have the CPI data, which *could* move the market. Some of the yield related futures are pricing in a four rate hike year. A strong CPI number may encourage that.

Gold and silver showed some mild strength, not as a flight to safety, but mostly off a slightly weaker dollar.

When traded as currencies, the precious metals are decoupled from their fundamental supply and demand dynamics as commodities.

Next week will be Jay Powell's first FOMC meeting. The Fed is widely expected to decide on a 25 bp rate hike.

This Friday is a stock option expiration. We may see some shenanigans on the precious metals related stocks.

The CBOE put-call ratio is back to the pre-meltdown levels.

Corruption and deception remain the coin of the realm in the halls of power in New York and Washington.

Have a pleasant evening.