Earlier today, I spoke of preparation for Lent. The Anchoress is giving us a head-start. It’s never too early to prepare, so give a listen to her experimental-podcast as she podcasts her way to Heaven.
Daily Archives: February 19, 2009
Tea Party
A response to Rick Santelli , it seems, is underway. The American Freedom network writes:
Most of you have already seen the wonderful,passionate speech by Rick Santelli among the traders in Chicago today. He decries the way the Obama policies for mortgage support reward the “water drinkers” instead of those who carry the water. It is one of the most truly inspired speeches I have ever seen or heard, and well worth viewing if you value capitalism. I love how Santelli dismisses the traders are “putty in his hands”, but are real Americans who want to enjoy the fruits of their hard work.
Party Hardy!
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I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore!
Thanks to the Anchoress! Read here.
Rick Santelli’s right-on diatribe should have Americans opening their windows and yelling:
“I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore!”
Rick Santelli:
“How about this, President – New Administration: Why don’t you put up a website to ask people to vote on the internet as a referendum to find out if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages, or would we would we at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people who might actually prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water rather than just drink the water.”
In response to cheers and applause, Santelli declares: “This is America! … President Obama are you listening?!”
Rick Santelli then adds: What we are doing in this country, right now, is making the Founding Fathers roll over in their graves.
Krauthammer’s Hammer
Excerpts from the pen and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer writting for the Washington Post with my emphasis:
“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.”
— President Obama, Feb. 4.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
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And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
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It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
St. Gertrude the Great – God’s Promise
You may find the language of St. Gertrude the Great difficult. The arcane style is cumbersome in these days of expediency. If I simplified it, you would lose the sense of the Saint, herself. Slogging your way through is well worth the effort to get to the treasure . God made promises to St. Gertrude the Great, recorded by the Saint, herself, contained in The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great. When you consider Who it is who condescends to make the promise, how likely is it that we in our day have outgrown the promise in favor of modernity?
Your liberality, O Lord, has bestowed on me this gift, more necessary than all – certifying to me that whoever, in their charity, will either pray for me – the vilest of God’s creatures – or perform any good works, either for the amendment of my life, or the forgiveness of the sins of my youth, or the correction of my iniquity and malice, shall receive this reward from thy abundant liberality – namely, that they shall not die until, by Your grace, their lives have been pleasing to You; and that You will dwell in their souls by a special friendship and intimacy………
You have added to all these favors, my kind God, by an abundant liberality – that if anyone, after my death, considering with how much familiarity You did communicate with my unworthiness while in this life, should recommend themselves humbly to my prayers, You would hear them as willingly as if they invoked the intercession of any other person, provided that they had the intention of repairing their faults and negligence, and that they humbly and devoutly thanked You for five special benefits which You granted me.
First. For the love by which You freely chose me from all eternity, and which I declare to be the greatest of all the benefits which You have bestowed on me: for as You were not ignorant of, or rather did foresee, the corrupt life which I should lead, the excess of my ingratitude, and how I should abuse Your gifts, so that I deserve to have been born a pagan, and not an enlightened human being – Your mercy, which infinitely exceeds our crimes, has chosen me, in preference to many other Christians, to bear the holy character of a religious.
Secondly. Because You have drawn me blessedly to You; and I acknowledged it to be an effect of the clemency and charity which is natural to You, Who have won, by the attractions of Your caresses, this rebellious and stubborn heart, which deserves to be loaded with fetters and chains; and it has seemed as if You hadst found in me the faithful companion of yYour love, and that Your greatest pleasure was to be united to me.
Thirdly. Because You have united me so intimately to You; and I declare, as I am bound, that I am indebted for this only to Your signal liberality, as if the number of the just was not great enough to receive the immense abundance of Your mercies, not that I had better dispositions than others, but, on the contrary, that Your charity might be the more signalized in me thereby.
Fourthly. That You have taken pleasure and delight in dwelling in my soul; and this, if I may so speak, proceeds from the ardor of Your love, which has deigned to testify, even by words, that it is the joy of Your all – powerful wisdom to stoop to one so dissimilar to You, and so utterly ungrateful.
Fifthly. That it has pleased You to accomplish Your work happily in me; and, it is a favor which I have hoped with humble confidence from the tenderness of Your most benign charity, and for which I adore You with gratitude, declaring, O sovereign, true, and only treasure of my soul, that I have in no way contributed to it by my merits, but that it is a true gift of Your liberality.
All these benefits coming from Your immense charity, and being so far above my nothingness, I am unable to give thanks for them worthily; but You has further assisted my misery, in exciting others, by the most condescending promises, to render thanksgivings to You, the merit of which may supply my deficiencies. For which may all creatures in Heaven, on earth and under the earth, glorify You and thank You continually!
What hope we have, when we consider the lengths to which our Lord goes, reaching through the centuries, to supply for our lack of merit.
Racing Ahead
Lent isn’t here yet, but our priest understands the need to prepare. He’s also an Eagle Scout, and a National Guardsman. Today was all about the little niches, the “altarcitos” (New Mexico, here) around us in our pagan society. Every aspect of it vies for our attention. Our society rejects the Cross: euthanasia, abortion, birth control; all part of rampant hedonism. Eternal youth, that’s the ticket! (Good luck with that one!)
There’s a scene in The Passion of Christ in which Jesus is rebuked for embracing His Cross. That is the reasonable attitude without Christ who reveals the Mystery. No one will escape the Cross. Many will waste the Cross in their lives. Without daily union with Christ, our crosses bring us down. There’s the rub. That’s the waste!
Preparing for Lent is preparing for the realities of Life. Eagle Scout-mentality is a plus: the epitome of “Be Prepared.” I’ll bet our priest has his hair shirt at the ready and I’m looking for mine.
Be Holy! 