«The prideful rebellion of the devil always comes back to one point: The devil was not content with the nature God gave him, which was to be the greatest of all the angels, so he made some expression of desiring to be “like the most High.” According to Tradition, the archangel who cast the devil from Heaven is Michael, whose name is a question: “Who is like God?” It would seem that this humble retort was a rhetorical one, but angels don’t debate. Angelic knowledge is complete and intact, so the question came with an answer, and the answer is found in the first chapter of Genesis where God says, “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” So, when the devil says that he will be “like the most High,” Michael responds by asking “who is like God?” And in doing so, he is pointing at man. Two chapters later, the devil tempts Eve by suggesting that if she should eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she would then become “like gods” (like angels), even though she was already made in God’s likeness. Modern men seem to have forgotten that we possess the image and likeness of God and have instead adopted the strange notion that natures are malleable. In the ancient world, men believed that the elements were changeable, and attempted to transform lead into gold through alchemy. Today, men believe that one species of animal can become another species through mutations and genetic alterations. This evolutionary world-view has warped our sense of history and purpose, relegating man to nothing but a step in the chain from single-celled organism to what the heretic priest Teilhard de Chardin called “the Cosmic Christ.” And because modern man now views the origin of the cosmos as the accidental result of some universal and chaotic explosion, rather than the deliberate and orderly harmony of God’s, “Fiat lux,” the rational disorders of transgenderism, transhumanism, trans-racism, and even trans-speciesism are all the sterile fruit that we are left with.» (Michael Hichborn, of The Lepanto Institute, quoted from Your Catholic Week in Review)
«And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. » (Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day.)
While I was reading Michael Hichborn’s editorial I remembered Lincoln’s Proclamation, and a recent video by Michael Matt as well. Then I thought about Genesis 3:22-24
“Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’—therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.”
In the up and coming ‘global reset’ according to what is presented in Matt’s video, one of the objectives will be:
- To impede agriculture and animal husbandry to ‘benefit’ the environment’s return to its wild state.
- To severely limit natural births of human beings.
- To experiment with human populations’ DNA. “We will become better at manipulating our own genes, and Those of our children.” (Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, published by The Crown Publishing Group, 2018)
I think these actions 1, 2, and 3 are exact opposites of God’s intentions as described in Genesis
- The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
- God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’ (Genesis 1:28)
- To guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24)
The angel guarding the tree of life has a flaming sword. (Genesis 3:22-24) In the vision presented to the three seers of Fatima an angel with a flaming sword hits the world three times proclaiming a time of penance.
“I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'” Sr. Lucia Dos Santos, L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English; 28 June 2000, Special Insert.
If I am guessing right, DNA/RNA are a veritable “tree of life”! It is there that an important part of the physical consequences of original sin reside until God –who is sovereign over the sources of life– decides to remove it in the renovatio mundi which is God’s own “great reset”!
But the “Fiat lux” that was spoken in the beginning of Creation was echoed in another fiat. Our Lady, who is the Daughter of the Eternal Father, Mother of the Divine Son, and True Spouse of the Holy Spirit, issued her own fiat which brought the Light of the World into her very own womb. The light was in the beginning by fiat, and He is incarnate by fiat. There was no desire to change nature, but only to embrace what is. Tuesday is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. On March 25, 1858, Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous for the 16th time and revealed to her these words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” This is a curious phrase, considering the origin of man. A year and three days after Our Lady gave us these words, Charles Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell, assuring him that in his new book, “Origin of Species,” that he does not discuss the origin of man. However, it was this book that laid the foundation for the belief in the evolution of man from lower forms. The thing is, if Adam and Eve were an evolutionary outgrowth from lower forms, then they necessarily must have been formed in the wombs of lower species. In short, they, too, would have been immaculately conceived. And yet, Our Lady very clearly says, “I am THE Immaculate Conception.” She is the only one. And as She always does, She lights the way to the Light, the Truth, the Incarnate Word. (Michael Hichborn, of The Lepanto Institute, Your Catholic Week in Review.)
In my view, these presumptuous men intend to bypass the angelical guard and reach the tree of life. It seems obvious that there will be evil. My bet is that there will be angelical intervention. Something interests me about this interpretation: it may be a hidden sign of a fast approaching extraordinary divine action.
Sacred History can be seen as a prophetic model of the sequential structure of God’s plan of salvation. The more I study the work of the saints, the Fathers of the Church, and Holy Scripture, the more I am convinced that our Lord is a God of Parables. He reveals Himself and His purposes to those who humbly pray seeking to attain intimacy with the Divine Mind through contemplation, meditation, and study. To those believers God gradually opens the treasures of wisdom He has stored in Sacred History and Holy Scripture. The models hidden there repeat forming a pattern (please see Signs Everywhere.) Having in mind those principles, please consider the following passages of scripture.
Rebellion against Moses (the Lawgiver) takes place often during the 40 years in the wilderness. There were many instances of rebellion but we will focus on three.
- The apostasy of the golden calf (Exodus 32) when the Hebrews wondered why Moses was not coming back from the top of the mountain and decided to make themselves a new religion. The leaders obliged. Moses came back and he was not happy.
- Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Numbers 16) when a faction challenged the authority of Moses and wanted to be leaders themselves. The move did not end well.
- The temptation of the Moabites (Numbers 25) when the false prophet Balaam suggested to the king of Moab to tempt the Israelites with a big party, sex, etc. Good Pinchas (Phineas) ended the problem making a shishkebob with a couple of frisky partygoers.
Those rebellions have the following modern equivalents:
- The Great Modernist Apostasy
- The Modernist assault on the divine authority of the Church and the Pope that takes place after 1054 and then later after 1517.
- The Sexual Revolution
I am sure you will agree with me that the parallelisms are rather obvious. One of the last temptations was the one the Moabites tried. In fact, God’s people crossed the Jordan shortly after that under the leadership of Joshua. We write “Joshua” in English to distinguish him from Jesus. Both are Yeshua originally. There is a hidden sign. Israel crossed the Jordan following a man named Jesus, that is Joshua. Quite a hint from above.
The false prophet Balaam, who had suggested to honey-trap the men of Israel, took refuge in Jericho, a city that dominated the plains of Moab. He saw the circling of the walls of Jericho. According to Jewish tradition, Balaam died crushed by the falling walls. Raab (the repentant prostitute that have offered refuge to Joshua and Caleb, the Israelite spies) was miraculously preserved. I believe she represents the faithful Church of the last days while Balaam the false prophet represents the unfaithful. Balaam remains under the rubble to this day and Raab was blessed to join the Israelites and became the ancestor of King David and of the promised Messiah.
If Israel wandering in the desert is a model of the Church between Calvary and the End Times, these parallelisms may suggest that we are close to the “crossing of the Jordan” into a new world that we can hardly imagine. The renovatio mundi, the restoration of the world according to the will of God may be much closer than anyone can imagine. Those imagining a “new world order” are standing right in the path of God’s sovereign restoration of the world. By trying to get control of the Tree of Life, they are calling the flaming sword upon themselves.
Come, Lord Jesus!
Sometimes artists do double duty as prophets. Sergio Endrigo, a very respectable Italian jazzman, had to make a living singing popular songs because jazz did not sell enough to support a family. He was not a top of the line singer but he could survive in a country where almost everyone is a good singer. To distinguish himself he chose his songs carefully. He sang things that had a very unusual depth of meaning.
The following I heard in Buenos Aires, in the boreal summer of 1970. At the time, there were many Italians in BA. The many European wars had sent them our way. So, we were blessed with a live transmission of the Festivale della canzone italiana di San Remo, usually referred to as “San Remo”(or Sanremo) a little town in the Imperia region of Italy, a stone throw from Monaco. I sat in our small living room watching and hearing this very performance. I was an odd kid, I listened to the lyrics. I still do. At the time I read a fair lot of science fiction and I had just read Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Not a good book but it was influential in the same way Robert Silverberg’s Nightwings was going to be a few years later.
This piece by David Warren took me back to that time, to the exact feeling of horror I felt contemplating the idea of a world that was no longer ours, no longer human. This time it was not a feeling I could put away by closing a book or turning off the turntable. In the original song, the words of Sergio Endrigo created that strange world very well. Ne sono sicuro quelli di voi che capiscono l’italiano saranno d’accordo. Those of you who understand Italian will agree, I’m sure.
So here is the 13th song of the San Remo Festival of 1970 that surprised everyone. Notice the spontaneous applause at first refrain. By then we had been living for quite some time under the shadow of universal nuclear destruction.
And here is David Warren’s post of today that triggered the memories of that evening in Buenos Aires when I listened for the first time to that strange song being sung half a world away in the very region of the world where my ancestors once fled the horrors of war and famine to start anew in a distant continent.
https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2021/01/16/one-last-harrumph-for-trumpf/
. . . and the lyrics to the song with a (hasty) English translation.
L’arca di Noè (1970)
Un volo di gabbiani telecomandati / A flight of remote-controlled seagulls
E una spiaggia di conchiglie morte/ And a beach of dead shells
Nella notte una stella d’acciaio / A steel star in the night
Confonde il marinaio/ Confuses the sailor
Strisce bianche nel cielo azzurro/ White streaks in the blue sky
Per incantare e far sognare i bambini/ To enchant and make children dream
La luna è piena di bandiere senza vento / The moon is full of windless flags
Che fatica essere uomini / How hard it is to be human
(Refrain)
Partirà, la nave partirà / It will leave, the ship will leave
Dove arriverà, questo non si sa / Where it will arrive, we do not know
Sarà come l’Arca di Noè/ It will be like Noah’s Ark
Il cane, il gatto, io e te/ The dog, the cat, you and me
Un toro è disteso sulla sabbia / A bull is lying on the sand
E il suo cuore perde kerosene / And his heart is leaking kerosene
A ogni curva un cavallo di latta / At every turn a tin horse
Distrugge il cavaliere / Destroys the knight
Terra e mare, polvere bianca / Land and sea are both white dust
Una città si è perduta nel deserto / A city got lost in the desert
La casa è vuota, non aspetta più nessuno / The house is empty, it no longer expects anyone
Che fatica essere uomini / How hard it is to be human
Partirà, la nave partirà
Dove arriverà, questo non si sa
Sarà come l’Arca di Noè
Il cane, il gatto, io e te
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On Sun, Jan 17, 2021, at 11:49 AM, Anonymous wrote:
Wonderful poetry. I used to have extremely detailed and “realistic” dreams about the ends of civilization in nuclear war. I still remember some of them.
A neighbor handed me a well-worn paperback of a Canticle for Leibowitz when I was about 13. I read it urgently. Again, some of the images have stayed vividly in memory.
My college roommate’s father was in the Air Force. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was the end of a runway at the SAC airbase in Minot North Dakota. As he said at my house where he stopped for the night on his last flight to the four corners of the US in his Cessna 172 before he sold it and passed to God, “I was bombed up and ready! I had all green lights!” There was a mad and merry-sad twinkle in his eyes. He had survived a Japanese prison camp, air combat in Korea and Vietnam, and a nasty alcoholic wife. He understood there are worse things than death.
The devil wants to destroy all God’s work. Hollow it all out. Burn the husks. Who really would push the world to the brink of destruction for an empty political abstraction that was already a failure according to its promises but the evil one? He was a murderer and a liar from the first. He seeks to steal the sublime joys of truth and beauty and to replace it with guilt, regret, bitterness and hate. Misery loves company: the motto of the left.
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