“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do. Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow. It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
"Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and instruct me: for you are the God of my salvation; and I wait for you all the day. Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and loving kindness, as they have ever been of old."
Psalm 25:4-6
“What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words— we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world."
Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness
"Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice; show patience and consideration to all, for the Lord is always near. Let nothing make you anxious; but with prayer, and by supplication, and with thanksgiving, let your needs be made known unto God. And the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds, in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 4:4-7
"The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God,
no torment shall ever touch them.
In the eyes of the unbelieving they appeared to die,
their going looked like a tragedy,
their leaving us, like a desolation;
but they are at peace.
If they experienced hardship as the worldly see it,
their hope was rich with eternal life;
slight was their affliction, but great their blessing will be.
God has put them to the test
and proven them worthy to be with him;
he has tested them like gold in a furnace,
and accepted them as a sacred offering.
They who trust in him will understand the truth,
those who are faithful will live with him forever, in love;
for grace and mercy await those whom he has chosen."
Wisdom 3:1-6, 9
How are the mighty fallen...
But their shenanigans seem to endure.
Stocks were swinging away today once again, with the techs finishing nearly unchanged and the SP 500 and broader markets moved lower.
The Dollar moved higher.
Gold and silver were hit early and went out near the lows.
“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's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.
And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.
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.
There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it. There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past. They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.
To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed. They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them. If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.
Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?
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.
Every century is like every
other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society; in the news of the
day there is nothing of heaven; in the faces of the many, or of the
great, or of the rich, or of the busy, there is nothing of heaven; in
the words of the eloquent, or the deeds of the powerful, or the counsels
of the wise, or the resolves of the lordly, or the pomps of the
wealthy, there is nothing of heaven.
And yet the Ever-blessed Spirit of
God is here; the Presence of the Eternal Son, ten times more glorious,
more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh, is with us. Let
us ever bear in mind this divine truth,—the more secret God's hand is,
the more powerful—the more silent, the more awful.
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
"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.
This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.
God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs His wonders where one would least expect them.
Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.
We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small, and yet really not so small, blessings.
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
"The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows. Let no man pull you down so low as to hate him.”
Martin Luther King
It is now as it was then. You have been and are being called by name, to love and serve the Lord.
Lazarus, come forth.
Do not let yourself to fall away.
Do not lose heart, before the images and shadows of the world, and be left behind.
Do not face your eternity, with the most heart-breaking loss and regret that can be.
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warrior-like virtue, love of country, and faith in an idea. The aims of life are the best defense against death."
Primo Levi
“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”
C. S. Lewis
"The ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves— the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities."
Theodor Adorno
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire
"And Jesus said, 'The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all who do evil.'"
Matthew 13:36-40
"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."
J. H. Newman
"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism
The Jobs Report data this morning was a bit subdued, showing less employment than expected including downward revisions of past numbers.
Most of the adults had already left for their extended holiday weekend, so the market trade was light.
And apparently the word was out, to take the markets lower.
The Dollar soared on hawkish interest rate expections and gold and silver did a whipsaw retreat.
Wash-rinse-repeat.
US markets will be closed on Monday for Labor Day.
And so nominally ends the summer time of vacation.
Knowing the right thing to do is mostly obvious. And so we spend an enormous amount of time and energy convincing ourselves that we do not see it. Our love grows cold because we smother it.
"And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to come back from the dead.’”
Luke 16:31
This is the insidious perversity of sin. It is the foolishness that springs from pride, the impulse to reject life, and throw our own life away— for a quick thrill and a laugh and a lie.
It is no accident that the mob of January 6th embraced lawlessness with a carnival atmosphere. And afterwards were stunned when confronted with the consequences of their foolishness.
Many thought they were just worked up and fooling about, but in the end they were playing for blood— for deceivers, wicked and unworthy. It seems to be a recurring theme throughout history, of every twisted justification for a quick personal gain or even mass lawlessness and destruction.
“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction." Simone Weil
Some of our finest people are doing it. In certain circles it has become fashionable, a sign of sophistication, to lie and to cheat, and to mislead others into darkness.
But people never seem to see the consequences of evil in their own case, until judgement comes, and they are done.
The read words like those above, nod in assent, and then forget and turn away again, in the unthinking service of dark powers. They are enslaved, but do not see it, they become comfortable in it, and seek to spread it to those who trust and believe in them.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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