Christian – Sisyphus

The Smoke

There was a prayer rally Thursday at the site of a scheduled Satanic meeting for young children in a K-2 primary school on the southeastern corner of Virginia. A schedule of meetings was arranged under a “tenant” lease used to allow for meetings outside of the familiar teacher-sponsored club arrangements that most people have experienced. No teachers were sponsoring Satan in this instance.

The school principal and the school board approved the lease agreement allowing Satan’s group to hold meetings in the school. The group publicly deny that Satan exists, or at least started to when they picked up the meeting in schools with minors schtick a while back, but some of them still give the stiff-arm “Hail Satan” salute and slip into recitations of Satan’s “sterling” qualities. Many of them gave false names and addresses in order to speak at the school board meeting, where local community input on the matter of leasing space for Satan was considered, only to be found out at check-in when their fictitious addresses were found out and their ID, when presented, did not match. Satan has fallen on hard times, indeed, when he can’t even manage forged documents to avoid being caught in simple lies.

Satan has a preferred sparring partner in an established religious after-school club, a kind of Washington Generals to Satan’s Harlem Globetrotters. They claim to be Christian but are quoted in the press as welcoming Satan’s participation as a competing element in these schools. Saint Paul warned us of such. It is a neat little arrangement that likely draws dollars to both sides. It is a very old game.

The group I prayed with Thursday is not a participant in neat little arrangements. It was made up of children, parents, grandparents, neighbors, and priests who know full well the power of Satan active in the world today. The prayer rally lasted an hour, the hour of the scheduled meeting.

An interesting thing happened as we prayed the rosary. As part of the rosary, we meditate on different events from the gospels as we. In this case, as Jesus was carrying the cross to Golgotha, I smelled a whiff of smoke, and my eyes were irritated. By the time we reached the crucifixion, the smoke was strong, as if I were immediately downwind from a bonfire, and I was unable to open my eyes. As we moved on to the resurrection, the effect was quickly alleviated. There were no flames present, and the brisk Atlantic breeze would have quickly dissipated any smoke, but nonetheless, the smoke clung to my nose and lungs. The world is on fire, though few have noticed yet.

In this event, our prayers were answered. Satan’s side did not appear to exercise their tenancy. That leaves the group with much still to pray for. The administrators and politicians who willingly opened the doors to the greatest evil in creation have stained the whole community with their actions. And, of course, there is the problem that our entire legal system is geared to enable Satan wherever he presses in the name of equity. We need to plan for the post-public school world.

Happy Lord’s Day.

Satan Worship and Primary Schools

Not a joke, not the Babylon Bee, this is the flyer from a real school in Chesapeake, Virginia, just four minutes from the Walmart where a store manger killed six November 22nd before taking his own life. Shocked parents then received this from the school’s principal (emphasis mine):

Dear Families,

Chesapeake Public Schools (CPS) is committed to open communication and transparency with our families. For that reason, you are receiving this letter to ensure you have accurate information.

The School District has long held policies and procedures in place which allow varied community groups to use our publicly funded facilities outside of the school day. This is common practice among school districts around the state and nation. Over the years, different religious groups have requested and been allowed to rent our facilities after hours. By law, CPS cannot discriminate based on beliefs among groups wishing to rent our facilities.

Consistent with the law as detailed above and the criteria set out in the CPS Board policy, the School District has approved a building use request from an organization known as the “After School Satan Club” (ASSC) to host gatherings after school hours at B.M. Williams Primary School. Students must have parental permission to attend any after school event hosted by any outside organization.

It is important to note that CPS does not endorse any of the activities or content of groups that host events on school district property outside the instructional day. It is also important to note that the ASSC is not a School District-approved club, and no District employee is acting as a club sponsor.

We understand that this decision may be surprising and possibly even upsetting to some. Please know that we are committed to working to minimize any distractions this news may create, while ensuring our focus is always on providing a safe and secure learning environment for our students.

Sincerely,

Brighid Gates, Principal

Well, I guess if they minimize the distractions it’s all good. After all, it’s “tons of fun”.

It has been obvious for some time that our institutions no longer serve us. Now they begin to provide useful clarity on who they now serve. If government run schools provide these kinds of results, isn’t it time we moved on from the experiment? Would even voucher programs be sufficient for parents to address this? Will agitated parents addressing school board meetings in response to this be harassed as domestic terrorists by the Biden Justice Department? Should any parent be forced to send their child to a school where the Brighid Gates’ of this society facilitate the access of Satanists to our children?

Prayers are welcome and appreciated.

Father Amorth on Saint Pio

The late Father Gabriele Amorth was a protege to Saint Pio, the phenomenal figure who lived in a remote Italian monastery and who drew the umbrage and awe of bishops and cardinals. Accused of drumming up publicity for Padre Pio’s “act,” the monastery took extensive measures to discourage those who came to confess to the padre and attend his renowned masses, Latin, of course, which sometimes ran as long as four hours and which convinced many attendees seeing the ever-bleeding wounds on his hands and the depths of passion he brought to these occasions.

He spent years confined to his cell, by command of his bishop under the authority of ecclesial obedience. The Padre accepted his punishment and suffering as the will of his Lord and endured. Father Amorth wrote a biography of Saint Pio before he died, and St. Ignatius Press published an English translation in 2021.

It is a humbling thing to read. We live in a vestigial Christendom where, if the sacrament of confession is observed at all, it is likely to be entirely private, in a moment of silence and reflection before the absolution of the assembled en masse. When one understands Saint Pio’s gifts and his career, this modern adjustment comes to be seen not as an innocent modern streamlining but as a horrific crime against the congregants’ needs for spiritual development and sanctification.

To appreciate the Padre Pio phenomenon, I give you Father Amorth’s recollection of those days:

“How cold it was in front of that church! I was to suffer that cold many more times, with no shelter from a wind that whistled through the rocks on the hillside. I remember one winter when we stood huddled together like sheep, hoping in vain that the friar sacristan would have pity on us and open a bit earlier than usual. Not a chance.

Once inside, I hurried with the other men to the sacristy, behind the main altar. The Padre had already come down and begun to vest himself slowly for Mass, assisted by his spiritual sons who were already practiced in this and by a Capuchin friar who acted as his assistant. When he was vested and had the sleeves of his alb almost covering his hands, he took off the fingerless gloves, with that friar at the ready to secure them in his satchel.

“After a few minutes, the little church was full, so the main altar had been prepared for the celebration. Padre Pio usually celebrated at the side altar dedicated to Saint Francis. I was one of those who received Communion from the Padre, and I remember his attentiveness but also his fatigue on account of that Mass, which lasted an hour and forty-five minutes. After a brief thanksgiving came the confessions of the men in the sacristy, then of the women in the church. At the very end, I saw everyone lining up on both sides of the corridor that the Padre would pass through on his way back to the friary.

He walked past slowly, while everyone tried to kiss his hand or to place it on their heads in a gesture of blessing. And at the same time, there was an uninterrupted chorus, as he neared the door: “Padre Pio, pray for my son; he’s dying”; “Padre Pio, I’m losing my eyesight; pray for me”; “Padre Pio, I had an accident at work; pray that I may be able to go back”; “Padre Pio, my wife has a fever that the doctors do not understand; pray . . .”

“When he got to the door, Padre Pio turned around, gave a blessing with broad gestures, and went back to the friary. On one of my subsequent visits, while he was turning around to give the blessing, I heard something that must have come forth from him a number of times, because I have also read it in some of his biographies: “All have their cross; all ask that it be taken away. But if they knew how precious it is, they would be asking that it be given to them.”

His life was one of illness and pain, but he believed that in the suffering we can find the Divine.

It was never a given when one got into the long line, rock concert ticket wait times, to confess to Padre Pio that one would be absolved. Or even seen. In one instance, Pio told an assistant to dismiss a woman waiting in line. She was so immodestly dressed that her ankles were showing. Saint Pio’s gift of seeing the sins and the conscience of those confessing obligated him to reject the false confession and counsel the subject on how to properly discern their conscience.

I have often thought that, if we saw our souls, and our sins, as the Almighty does, which of us could withstand even a moment of that knowledge. For a time as recently as 1968, it was possible to receive a slight taste of that, as much as mercy would allow, from an Italian friar in the sticks of Italy. Imagine if, in order to receive communion, you had to submit to Padre Pio for confession and be absolved. Where could one go today to find such a gift?

Recommended reading for the comfortable Christian, and especially for the spiritually smug.

May the blessings of the Lord and Saint Pio be with you all this day. Have a happy Lord’s Day.

Bridge Night

This is nonfiction. Every word of this account is true. Quoted dialogue is from my best recollection. I recount this not because I think it will persuade Modernists or Rationalists of anything, at all, but because @westernchauvinist asked me to. And if in so doing, ten men revile me and one man is strengthened in their faith, then the ridicule of the ten is a cheap price for the benefit received by the one.

In college, I was a homeless Christian. I had gone to Sunday school as a child on those weekends when I was staying with grandparents but stopped after disgracing myself. The subject turned to double predestination, and even though I had never heard the doctrine before, I (disgracefully) dismissed it with a profanity. I was scandalized that any adult could hold to a creed that made a mockery of the events of Eden, the ministry of John the Baptist, the Pentecost of Acts, and a great deal more. It did not shake my faith in Jesus one iota, but it left me with a sharp suspicion of churches and in the judgment of my elders as elders. A distrust also nurtured by exposure to televangelism and the eschatology of fundraisers.

Fast forward ten years, and I found myself attending a Catholic university where I met a psychology professor who had been a student of the younger priest who conducted the famous 1949 St. Louis exorcism, the event that inspired William Peter Blatty to write his novel, The Exorcist. The unit we were studying was parapsychology, and he shared what the exorcist had to say of such things. Having prepared myself for all manner of conflict to that point, as befits a young man, I hied myself to the university library where I found only two artifacts in the card catalogs under demon- or exorcism. The first was a folio on Pope Leo XIII’s vision of the Lord and Satan making a wager, his long prayer for exorcism, and his Saint Michael prayer. The second was a seminar collation edited by the venerable confessional Lutheran Dr. John Warwick Montgomery. The exorcism prayer was long (many pages) and baffling, and I despaired immediately of ever memorizing it for use when I encountered a devil in some dark basement or alley. Sort of like trying to carry a missile silo around in your back pocket. So I moved quickly on to fifty or so other topics as one does in college, and forgot the whole matter.

It was maybe a year later when I hopped in a friend’s car to go to our regular Wednesday night bridge game. I noticed at one point that we were headed in the wrong direction, and he said our host was sick, but we were invited to a seance by another friend of his. He knew that I was interested in the spiritual, my projects at the time included testing Edgar Cayce’s claims against archeology. Cayce did not stand up very well. But I wasn’t at all interested, a night of watching bored adults trying to spook each other out was not my idea of a good time. But he was running late so I went along and read in the living room around the corner while they seanced away in the dining room. My heart rose as, after twenty frustrating minutes of futile summoning, they broached the topic of giving up for the night.

Then I was suddenly frozen in a very physical, primal terror as if I had just noticed a lion in the room. I am a big guy, not easily given to terror. A name came to mind, it just popped into my head.

Seconds afterward, the medium announced the presence of a spirit. He mentioned the same name. This was a new contact for him. I was baffled by the fear, but the sequence of extraordinary events convinced me that I was in the presence of an actual spirit. A hostile one. And I did what any scion of Heinlein and Niven and Anderson and Pournelle, et al., would do. I began thinking of experiments I might try, given this opportunity.

What does one do with a demon in the room, I wondered. I had no bells, no candles, and just a book of Retief stories. But I tried silently commanding that the demon be bound. The terror did not stop, but then I did hear the medium say, “He is in distress.”

I knew nothing, but I did believe that if I had just bound a demon in my own name, I had made an invisible, immensely powerful enemy for eternity. An enemy older and more potent than humanity. This led me down lines of calling on help, arriving fretfully at a classic yet simple deliverance prayer:

“In the name of Jesus Christ, begone,” I silently commanded.

The effect was instantaneous. The terror was gone instantly. I was drained but relaxed.

The medium announced that the spirit had left.

In the car, my friend asked, “What did you do?”

I had said nothing in the house, afterward. These people were strangers whose evening entertainment I had just spoiled. They might not take that well if they knew.

“Didn’t you feel that thing?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied, shrugging.

“Your friends should stop doing this. It isn’t safe,” I told him.

Two months later, he mentioned that his friends and the medium had been unable to summon any spirits since that night, despite several tries.

“God is good,” I told him.

Did I become a saint? Did I find my way to an orthodox church and live a life of virtue and obedience? Hardly. It was over three decades before I settled on a church. But that, as they say, is a matter for another day.

Links:
Pope Leo XIII’s Vision and the Saint Michael Prayer
The Exorcism Prayer of Pope Leo XIII (do not pray this, the wording assumes the one praying is a priest authorized by his bishop to conduct exorcisms, praying it without the requisite authority opens one to demonic retaliation)

God is very, very good. May His peace be with you always.

Happy Lord’s Day.

For the Wounded

Never been wounded? This post isn’t for you. Real people are invited to stay.

Today I recommend, for your comfort and enlightenment, a series of talks by Father Chad Ripperger, on healing spiritual and psychological wounds. Father Ripperger, the author of Dominion, is a scholar in the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Thomist, and a veteran exorcist for the Roman Catholic Church. A handy combination, he maintains, since he finds demons to be Thomistic in their thinking and, more importantly, in the laws that the Lord places them, and us, under.

Who was Saint Thomas Aquinas? He was a Dominican monk and theologian who lived from 1225 to 1274 and wrote the Summa Theologica (“Summary of Theology”), fusing Aristotle, scripture, and the early Christian Fathers. His work requires training to appreciate, the vocabulary is deceptively familiar to us, but with technical facets a modern student would never appreciate on their own. Fortunately, father is gifted in presenting Thomistic concepts to modern audiences.

We are under continual spiritual attack from our own institutions and culture. Right down to the universal dismissal of the spiritual, and for when that fails, the promotion of modern spiritualism. My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence. I credit them both with the death of any skepticism I might have had. (For more on the dark absurdities of modern spiritualism, I recommend starting with Robert H. Bennett’s book, Afraid.) In a world where so many dark forces are rubbing salt into so many wounds for the detriment of all (but themselves, or so they think), these talks can serve as an important curative.

Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power. Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore, take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day and to stand in all things perfect.
— Ephesians 6:10-13

Have a blessed Lord’s Day, and may His peace be with you.

The Lord’s Day: The Order of Battle

It is easy for intelligent and engaged citizens to have been caught up in the apparent spirit of the age. I even had an aged, beloved family member who, after a lifetime of dismissing any information coming from a politician, suddenly citing the Republican “Morning” Joe Scarborough (her phrasing, not mine) as a source of truth and wisdom. While he repeated the most ludicrous talking points. The only source of information worse than a politician is a retired politician who has sold his reputation for a media gig. In her defense, she was suffering a long illness and television was her only reliable distraction. A retired friend from church was in a similar state, but she even recognized she was torturing herself. She watched the media all day, becoming more and more anxious and angry as she did so. It is common knowledge that 9/11 served as a live experiment in captivating audiences through the manipulation of fear and anger, with CNN becoming a big winner in the never-let-them-go jackpot. I reminded her of that, and that corporate media, whether it’s the alphabet soup or the WallPoTimes, is the most unreliable news source because of the Narrative. In the Internet Age, it is easy to set up an RSS news reader to watch a couple of hundred sources of all types to proof stories. Be willing to check local news organs, preferably before corporate has time to reach down and sanitize, and the heavy hand of the narrative at the MSM level is as undeniable as it is twisted. But you guys know this. We’ve taken this trip together.

We are the target of a massive disinformation campaign. An overarching psyop. YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook are the idiot division, so clumsy and obvious in their Stalinist efforts that everyone knows they are lying clowns laying down sniper cover for the study stream of disinformation. They are conspiring now to murder infants now with the jab, despite their radical absence of risk from the disease. And, of course, there are the show trials. But this is not an outrage post, quite the opposite. While the Left burns down their cities, and people leave, and encourage massive looting, and stores leave, there are these pesky Americans. Visiting family, making a career amid the disruption, raising their children, being harassed by federal authorities for attending school board meetings (because that’s what Democrats do, but I digress, no outrage porn, no outrage porn). They are living their lives, working, attending church, volunteering at the food bank for the benefit those neighbors trampled by a heartless and corrupt Biden machine. They aren’t triggered. The grossly unnecessary psychological damage caused by federal malfeasance in the name of pandemic notwithstanding, and there is a lot of it and it is tragic, has not defeated the soul of the American people.

I was at breakfast after church the other week. It’s my routine, bacon and eggs to chase down the eucharist. The diner is very nice, serving a very diverse clientele. On mornings when I have not gotten to it beforehand, I quietly say my Auxilium Christianorum in the chatter and clatter of the morning while waiting for my order. Now, this is in an area where the biggest signal radio station is a people of color focused station that is the very negative image of Rush Limbaugh, both in content and presentation, hammering out their vision of an identity pathologically indigestible by the melting pot. They play public- service announcements pushing home schooling to assure children receive the full benefit of a proper Critical Theory education, advertise shows about the heroic adventures of Howard Zinn and Saul Alinsky. All day, all night. This place must be a hotbed of racial strife and resentment. Or so some would like it to be. And it is in the heart of this target of anger and division that, as I was finishing my eggs (easy over, using the toast to sop up the yolks) a family walks past my table and a girl, no more than seven, stops and turns to me, saying, “This is for you.”

She scurries to catch up with her family and is out the door, leaving me with the napkin below.

Yes, her family were people of color, and I, as a person of pallor, am worthy only of stoning according to the genocidal dictates of Critical Theorist accusers. Don’t take my word for it, just turn on your radio. But this young girl is inoculated from the hate-mongers by the blood of the Lamb. Lord bless her and the faithful that raise her, and the many like her. The darkness will not win in the end. It is a test of the faithful, the Church Militant. Remember to don your armor of God, my friends. And remember your prayers.

In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.
In him was life: and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness: and the darkness did not comprehend it.
— John 1:1-5

Happy Lord’s Day this third of July, may He bless you all. And to steal a friend and teacher’s tagline, may America bless God.

Yesterday Was the Feast of the Baptizer

John first penetrated my awareness in the gospels. He was an Elijah, a Jeremiah, an Isaiah, in an age when the prophets had been silent for 400 years, and in an age when, to my young mind, no other prophets were needed. The Son had come. The demon Baal and his profits were now truly and utterly and forever defeated and cast out. If the feet of the Son trods the mountaintops publishing peace, what is this mere prophet doing here? And the Son tells us, John is the greatest of all the prophets. Not that the Son isn’t a prophet and immeasurably greater than John, but the Son is something that is the epitomy of so many titles. Prophet, priest, rabbi, king, shepherd, son,…friend. He chides John to baptize Him despite the odd asymmetries of that moment, to fulfill all righteousness. I have read commentaries, but I am still convinced that the full and exact portent of those words will not be shown to me until the fulfillment of the promise of the resurrection of the body, when I ask Him to His face.

I had a younger brother. I was very young at the time, but am still gifted with the odd memory of mom presenting her swollenness so that I might feel my brother’s kicks. And he was, indeed, a kicker. Have no doubt. But he never kicked for me, and because this was such a special thing it saddened me. The sadness is what I remember most keenly, there was life here, a sibling I had never seen, but it was hiding from me. (No children, this was before all of that, there would not be a brother in the equation until he issued forth from our mother’s womb, dingus and all. We did not pry at the mysteries then as we do now.)

So when, in the King James, my still very young eyes came to Luke 1:41, “And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost” Babies kick for everyone else, I thought at the time. But this one kicked to tell everyone, even me, two millennia later, the good news.

When I learned what abortion was, I knew immediately that this was darkness. And I knew there was darkness in this life. There was darkness when the Devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness. (The Devil was always clueless, wicked, intelligent, dangerous, yes, but always clueless. Blind to the Beatific Vision.) There was darkness in His agony in the garden at Gethsemane, in His perfect knowledge of the horror that was imminently upon Him. There was darkness in the Sanhedrin, and in Pilate. “What is truth?” And there was darkness in the separate water fountains and bathrooms and hotels and clubs for those deemed inferior by their breeding, or by the melanin content of their skin. I had seen these things, and heard of them. A darkness where the humanity of my friend, Calvin, or of the man who taught me the story of Noah, the great and horrible Bill Cosby, did not somehow arise to that of others. My puny eight year old fist balled tight. If you are not of their tribe, you are not of mine.

And then, when I heard what abortion was, barely comprehending, I discovered a depth of darkness I had never imagined. Among the first explanations I heard was the one that, black mothers in economic distress needed to do this to make a life for themselves. So, if the other will share our water fountains and our bathrooms, we should lead them to kill their innocent babies by the millions so that we may be less so burdened? An act of cosmic retribution for the impudence to claim the personhood that they already knew in Christ? Reach cold instruments into their mother’s protecting wombs and slice them ruthlessly into marketable bits for the enrichment of Dr. Lamborghini and Dr. Porsche?

Thomas Jefferson’s trembling for his country on reflecting that God is just has long been my trembling, as well. But it got worse.

The next shoe to drop went even further. Parental consent, and even parental notification. Those august figures in Washington and the state capitals did not stop with letting their children and their grandchildren be butchered by Dr. Lamborghini and Dr. Porsche. That was not bad enough. Not dark enough. Not evil enough. No, they averted their eyes and abrogated all parental authority for all parents. Stalin and Hitler would have been proud.

And the Apostate Biden and the Apostate Pelosi claim, in the purest of blasphemies, that abortion is a sacrament, a fundamental Christian right. An exorcist that I know of relates the story of the demon that threatened his mother. He took this personally, and began thinking of tortures appropriate to a demon that would dare to threaten his beloved mother. And, perhaps checked by the darkness of his own thoughts in a moment of testing, he prayed to the Almighty that He might punish this demon in a way that was harsher than any punishment the demon had yet known. His prayer was answered, and seeing how it was answered the exorcist suddenly appreciated the capacity of the Infinite for wrath. I pray these smug, corrupt apostates repent. The alternative is too horrible for mere mortals to imagine.

John leapt in the womb. No blob of tissue, but a human being possessed of a soul and a body and a heartbeat. And deserving of our love and protection. My joy is reflected on the face of the justice who has waited an entire career to strike this blow against the demonic. May the Lord bless the five justices. I am not yet ready to ask for His mercy for the others.

Aprille with His Shoures Sote

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
Bifel that, in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come in-to that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde;
The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
And wel we weren esed atte beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon,
That I was of hir felawshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.
But natheles, whyl I have tyme and space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun,
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree;
And eek in what array that they were inne:
And at a knight than wol I first biginne.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

And so, out of April’s sweet (not sooty) showers comes the great unfinished cycle of Chaucer’s celebration of God and man as he finds them in an age of war and death and pestilence and piety both sincere and false. He was the son of the king’s bottler, or butler, which was to say vintner, and we find him in service as a page in a noble house as a youth and later a diplomat married to a prince’s sister-in-law and, of course, he was most famously to history a court poet. The Canterbury Tales loosely follows a plan adopted by the Florentine Boccaccio in the Decameron, a work of scorching humor where characters in the story share stories themselves, creating a cycle of stories. The Decameron is first released when Chaucer is about ten, and a revised edition when he is about 30. Chaucer appropriates the plan and uses it in part to repurpose and revise earlier works as modern writers sometimes do today, as with Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, and also to bring us new stories.

Chaucer’s original plan was to have each of the 30 pilgrims tell two stories on the way from London to Canterbury and two on the way back for 120 tales total. The current state of scholarship delivers us 24 tales plus an extensive prologue and some framing bits about the pilgrimage and the pilgrims.

Chaucer’s idiomatic range is extraordinary in these tales. “The Knight’s Tale” starts off the set, the knight in question with armor that is worn and tattered and a career that has seen, as Chaucer says, fifteen mortal battles. Chaucer, a veteran of the king’s campaigns, is giving us a portrait of a humble, worthy veteran rather than a gleaming exemplar. It is a tale of love and loss and suffering and loyalty and nobility. It will break hearts and serve as a “pious” expression of courtly love, which was being lambasted by the French poets of the day (you know of their predecessors, they gave us Lancelot, the French knight that beds Arthur’s wife, of all the gaul).

And then we are off to “the Miller’s Tale,” which is about the complications that arise when old men marry young women and when flatulence collides with flame. From the elevated to the ribald, Chaucer’s clear plan is to make the Tales a sort of map of the literary world as he has known it.

We will see pious clergy and impious, wise men and fools, and we will meet the one character that assured Chaucer’s reputation, both as a poet and an Englishman, for all time. The bawdy, lusty, gap toothed wife of Bath. She is a rule breaker and a force of nature. She reminds me of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1ff), whose many husbands Jesus told her about and who clearly did not align with the expectations of her age. Shakespeare had his Falstaff, Milton had his Lucifer, Chaucer has his Wife. Some feminists suggest that this was a woke Chaucer as he catalogs through her many of the misogynies of his age. I suspect that he has encountered such women and seen the storytelling possibilities, an element of which is injustices not usually articulated in court poetry. Her part may have grown as the character’s novelty and comic value showed itself through audience response. I wonder how the men and the women of court responded. (Remember, Chaucer was not bound to a printed text the way authors today are, he could and did change some of his works over time if the surviving manuscripts are any indication. Plays and such do the same today, fine-tuning scripts and performances in response to audience reaction.) Almost as if he anticipated our 21^st Century obsession with finding the author’s preferred or final version and conceived to frustrate scholars through all the ages. But probably not.

Chaucer is a court poet who, as he achieves eminence-gris, turns his pen to the humble people of the world. Raised among nobles but not noble, stature and pension offer him the chance to document the range of stories he has heard, but also the range of people he has met. It has been suggested that some of the financial squeeze we find in his last days arose from royal disfavor with this idiosyncratic turn to the examination of common people. Centered around a pilgrimage in honor of Saint Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who was assassinated by four of the king’s knights (see T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral for a dramatic treatment, or Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole in Becket). Subsequently his king, the formidable Henry II, was publicly flogged for the crime of his murder to settle the matter with the Church. Royals have long memories for such things. Is that a whiff of anti-royalist sedition from an aged court poet? Or perhaps it was a glint of Saxon egalitarianism that nettled the Norman royals. Maybe if he had written a cycle where an errant Norman knight put the horns on Charlemagne all would have been mended. Or not.

And so, sweet April showers brought us one of the most extraordinary and culturally influential works in history and its affection for humanity in all of its manifestations, sacred and profane, rich and poor, quick and dull, was subversive to the elitism of its age. It would come to influence Anglophone culture and values worldwide to this day.

This is dedicated to Sr. Dunn, Dr. Olmert, and Ms. Bjelland, who labored long and hard to embue me with some small bit of Chaucerian scholarship despite my notoriously thick skull, and, of course, to Geoffrey. I am sure he has long since completed the full cycle for the greatest court of all. If any of you angel types happen to be carrying a spare copy, I don’t suppose you could see your way to…

For a Flickering Moment

It was Sunday and He rode an unbroken colt in procession through the gates of Jerusalem, heir to the Davidic line and the doer of signs and wonders prophesied to mark the Anointed One, the Messiah, of the Lord who would free the children of Israel. Sweet hosannas were sung by the crowds and palm branches were gathered and waved in celebration as Jesus passed. In this brief moment it appeared that Heaven and Earth were reconciled and the enemies of Israel would be routed, heralding a golden age like none before it. David had also ridden a donkey, signifying to his people that he came to work, not on a horse that would signify a conqueror.

Of course, the optics were deceptive. I won’t share any spoilers, but that mundane golden age thing did not shape up to the expectations of Judah. For today, Jesus is the triumphant Messiah come to free His people and they celebrate. For a flickering moment.

Blessings to you all this beautiful Palm Sunday.

Jesus and the Adulteress

It is an essential story of Jesus’ ministry. From John 8:

“3Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst,
4they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act.
5“Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned.d But what do You say?”
6This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.
7So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”
8And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
10When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”
11She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
12Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
– NKJV

But that is not the quote of the day. There are always new translations that tug this way and that on points of doctrine or suggest novel insights into the most scrutinized texts in the history of the world. President Thomas Jefferson was famous in part for his groundbreaking, albeit private, edits of the Bible. Striking every passage witnessing to Jesus’ divinity, Jefferson reduced his own personal Jesus to a simple moralist. His mundane vision presaging a thousand sermons on the “Miracle of Sharing,” reducing the fish and loaves miracles to a mundane example of the power of sharing. Jefferson was privately a Deist while publicly posing as a worshipping Anglican. But he does not provide the quote of the day, either, just a useful example of the passion of sinful men to eviscerate the divine to claim absolute authority in their own right. Jefferson exercised vile authority over hundreds of slaves. And he shared this thought on the institution of slavery:

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

So pretending that the Lord, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, was a mundane moralist of no particular authority comforted him in a way that tickled his intellectual vanity while calming his anxiety that he might be held accountable for his many, many sins. While there was forgiveness in the mercy of the Lord, as he would have heard every Sunday from his paid seat at Bruton Parish Church while studying law under the Whig George Wythe in Williamsburg, Jefferson clung to his cult of self with the enthusiasm of a dyed in the wool Modernist and Rationalist.

If Jefferson found anxiety in the authority of the divine, imagine a man whose crimes dwarf Jefferson, a holder not of hundreds of slaves but millions. Xi has undertaken to reform the revealed word of the Lord, which he finds to be irredeemably flawed. Xi and the CCP are excitedly working to produce a new, improved scripture that better reflects their views. From them, a fragment leaked to the Union of Catholic Asian News, as related by Crisis Magazine, sheds new darkness on the story of Jesus and the adulteress, changing the ending as follows:

When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.”

Jesus then stones her to death.

Satan could not have put it more blasphemously himself. That is the quote of the day.

And having exposed you to such demonic tripe, I leave you with these words from Saint Paul as a consolation:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
-Galatians 1:6-9 (ESV)

Lord have mercy.

This post originally appeared on the Main Feed at Ricochet.