In this episode “Phage” of Star Trek Voyager (Season 1, Episode 4), the lungs are involuntarily harvested from the character “Neelix” (the tiger-man). The difference from subjecting pre-born children to non-therapeutic–receiving no medical benefit–involuntary participation in a medical experiment, is that this character is tangible and identifiable, having been personalized, and able to be advocated for by those who love him. Whereas it is only God and His Church who love and advocate for the rights of pre-born human persons who have never been personalized by tangible identification by, in G.K. Chesterton’s memorable phrase, “the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about” (Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”).
Mary attended the wedding of a poor couple, accompanied by Jesus and His disciples. The couple did not expect so many guests at their wedding banquet. They ran out of wine, to their dismay and shame.
The servants of the wedding banquet knew to come to Mary. “They have run out of wine.” Mary took their problem to her Son, Jesus. “Woman, what is it to Me, to you? My hour is not yet come.”
Mary only said to the servants, “Do Whatever He Tells You.” Jesus changed the water into wine, the servants took the wine to the chief steward, who did not know what Jesus had done, he said to the Bridegroom, “Every man sets forth the good wine first, then when the guests have drunk well, he puts out the inferior wine, but you have saved the good wine until last!” This was Jesus’ first miracle, the beginning of His public ministry, at His mother’s prompting. And His disciples believed in Him.
After His mother told Him, “They have no wine.”
On the cross, Jesus gave His mother to His friend John.
And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. – Revelation 12:17
Click the ▶ Button to sing the prayer (key for Women), or play the song in a New Window ⧉
Click the ▶ Button to sing the prayer (key for Men), or play the song in a New Window ⧉
O Virgin, guest most gracious,
the couple’s last recourse,
unless thy help’s solicited,
they languish in remorse;
Thou bidst us do whatever He says,
His Word’s command Divine,
The type of His great gift of Self,
The water into wine.
God was so pleased with Enoch, that He took him bodily up to heaven. God took Elijah up to heaven in a fiery chariot. No one knows where Moses is buried, it is thought that he was taken up to heaven in his body. It is the firm tradition of the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic, from the earliest time of the Church, that Mary, whom Jesus loved more than anyone, did not presume to avoid death after her Son had suffered death, but when she fell asleep, it was fitting, along with Enoch, Elijah and Moses, that she should suffer no corruption, and that she was taken bodily up to heaven, where , in her body, physically united with her soul, she is now with Jesus, Who Himself had already ascended bodily to the right hand of God nevermore to suffer death, as His holy mother had never been subject to the devil’s domain of death, except by her choice to imitate her Divine Son’s death. And after the end of the world and the ending of all death, we will also be reunited with new bodies, in heaven or otherwise, after the first-fruits of salvation, Jesus and Mary. Mary now sits at the right hand of her Divine Son at the eternal Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
▶ Click the Button to sing the prayer, or play the song in a New Window ⧉
▶ Click the Button to sing the prayer, or play the song in a New Window ⧉
| Fr. Frederick W. Faber | Fr. Charles Raymond-Barker, S.J. |
|---|---|
| 1. Sing, sing, ye Angel Bands, All beautiful and bright; For higher still, and higher, Through fields of starry light, Mary, your Queen, ascends, Like the sweet moon at night. |
2. A fairer flower than she, On earth hath never been; And, save the Throne of God, Your heavens have never seen, A wonder half so bright, As your ascending Queen! |
| 3. O happy Angels! look, How beautiful she is! See! Jesus bears her up, Her hand is locked in His; O who can tell the height Of that fair Mother’s bliss? |
4. And shall I lose thee then, Lose my sweet right to thee? Ah! no—the Angel’s Queen, Man’s mother still will be, And thou, upon thy throne, Wilt keep thy love for me. |
| 5. On then, dear Pageant, on! Sweet music breathes around; And love like dew distills, On hearts in rapture bound; The Queen of heaven goes up, To be proclaimed and crowned! |
6. On—through the countless stars, Proceeds the bright array; And Love Divine comes forth, To light her on her way, Through the short gloom of night, Into celestial day. |
| 7. The Eternal Father calls, His daughter to be blessed; The Son His Maiden-Mother, Woos unto His Breast; The Holy Ghost His spouse, Beckons into her rest. |
8. Swifter and swifter grows, That marvelous flight of love, As though her heart were drawn, More vehemently above: While jubilant angels part, A pathway for the Dove! |
| 9. Hark! hark! through highest heaven, What sounds of mystic mirth! Mary by God proclaimed, Queen of Immaculate Birth, And diademed With stars, The lowliest of the earth! |
10. See! see! the Eternal Hands Put on her radiant crown, And the sweet Majesty, Of Mercy sitteth down, For ever and for ever, On her predestined throne! Amen. |
The Full Stations of the Cross
Click the ▶ Button to sing the prayer (key for Women), or play the song in a New Window ⧉
Click the ▶ Button to sing the prayer (key for Men), or play the song in a New Window ⧉
| Anonymous | The Sodalist’s Hymnal (1887) |
|---|---|
| 1. Thy life, O Lord, is ebbing fast, Thine eyes are growing dim at last; How near to death Thou art! I hear Thou heave one heavy sigh: It is the last, the loudest cry That broke Thy Sacred Heart, That broke Thy Sacred Heart. |
2. The scene, the dreadful scene is o’er– The wicked men can do no more, Thy head is on Thy breast; The thorns, the nails Thou dost not fear, The cruel scoff, the bitter jeer– Thy Heart is now at rest, Thy Heart is now at rest. |
| 3. Thy voice, that made the demons flee, That waked the dead and calmed the sea, Itself in death is hushed; But O, we have this comfort sweet, Our foes lie prostrate at Thy feet, The serpent’s head is crushed, The serpent’s head is crushed. |
4. Thy corpse is hanging on the tree, While mocking crowds in impious glee The murd’rous act applaud; But quiv’ring earth and darkened skies, The crumbling rocks, the dead that rise, Proclaim Thee to be God, Proclaim Thee to be God. |
| 5. Yes, Jesus, bruised and marked with blood, And fastened to the dripping wood, To me Thou art the same, As throned on Thabor’s shining mount, Or in the heav’ns, of bliss the Fount, In glory and in shame, In glory and in shame. |
6. O, may Thy last, Thy piercing cry, The Blood that pleaded loud on high, For me be not in vain! O, make me treat the world as dross, And glory only in the Cross, On which Thou wouldst be slain, On which Thou wouldst be slain! Amen. |
O Jesus, my Savior! I see You now dead on this cross. You speak no more; You breathe no more; because You have life no longer, having willed to lose it to give life to our souls. You have no longer any blood; for you have shed it all, by dint of torments, to wash away our sins. In one word, You have abandoned Yourself to death through Your love for us. He has loved us, and delivered Himself for us. – Ephesians 5:2. “Let us consider,” writes St. Francis de Sales, “this divine Savior stretched upon the cross, as upon His altar of honor, where He is dying of love for us; but a love more painful than that very death. Ah, why, then, do we not in spirit throw ourselves upon Him to die upon the cross with Him, Who has willed to die there for love of us? ‘I will hold Him’, we ought to say, ‘and will never let Him go. I will die with Him, and be burned up in the flames of His love. One and the same fire shall consume this divine Creator and His miserable creature. My Jesus is all mine, and I am all His. I will live and die upon his breast; neither death nor life shall ever separate him from me.'” – St. Alphonsus de Liguori, The Passion of Jesus Christ. 2. “The death of Jesus”.
… and for her mother.
Postcards of Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity
Click the ▶ Button to sing the carol (key for Women), or play the carol in a New Window ⧉
Click the ▶ Button to sing the carol (key for Men), or play the carol in a New Window ⧉
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
A Christmas Carol (1900)
A Christmas Carol (1900)
Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
Ach Gott vom Himmelreiche (1609)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood on Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
This would merely be a paranoid, conspiratorialist rave–except that the evidence is all in the notes. (This posting isn’t intended so much as an article, as a set of easily accessible notes for making arguments.)
You can sometimes learn more from your presumptive ‘opponents’ than from your alleged friends, who can actually be acting in Pecksniffian self-interest presenting a highly-filtered public persona, on the presumption that they know better than you what you need to know. Regardless of the functional debilities of extreme leftism, Noam Chomsky still aspires to the tenet of classical liberalism, that “I strongly uphold your right to your point of view, no matter how strongly I disagree with you”. It’s sometimes worth listening to what he has to say.
Noam Chomsky, citing Ralph Waldo Emerson on the elites’ rationale for agitating for universal, compulsory education: “The grounds on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education, is fear” … [that, in their words, he says] … “This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats”, meaning, “educate them the right way,” keep their perspectives and their understanding narrow and restricted, discourage free and independent thought, and frighten them into obedience –something that’s done over and over in the schools as well–we’ve all experienced it.”
.
WE breed water dogs not to bite game birds, we hood falcons to control them, when race horses run too fast we “handicap” them with lead weights, and when students are in danger of independent learning so that they threaten to evade being conditioned into mindless consumers and docile, unquestioning employees of giant corporations, we subject them to “schooling”.
College graduates today have been denied, by design, a basic liberal-arts education that was freely available to many 1-room schoolhouse, elementary students prior to the imposition of universal forced schooling in the period 1880-1920. It was a result of planned, deliberate deprecation of curricula and intense, adverse behavioral conditioning, which long preceded their high school graduation. A vast store of evidence for this assertion, unknown to the general public, is in freely available authors in a tradition of “studies of Deliberate Dumbing Down K-12”. (Author list at the end of the article.)
.
The issue of deliberate dumbing down (DDD), of unimaginably vast scope, centers on the confidential history, virtually never discussed openly in the press or taught in schools or colleges themselves, that contrasts the rigidly controlled, standard anti-intellectual conditioning children receive today in public schools, with the extreme opposite, self-directed, radical freedom which prevailed in America prior to the railroads (1840).
.
America from the Colonial/Revolutionary period, until the mid-19th century, was an outpost of personal independence, granted immunity by geographical isolation, from the restrictive model of Europe’s old-world, highly stratified class system. (America was at a colonial “margin” at some distance from the imperial center, England. The historical dissolution in the mother country of the ancient, manorial-feudal medieval society in which peasants had traditional rights to the land which their lord could not abrogate, had been disrupted centuries earlier in England than in America, with the enclosure of common lands for specialized sheep-grazing for the Italian wool trade by the lower gentry, socially rapacious behavior in common with the higher nobility, friends of Henry VIII, in the despoiling of Church lands built up over centuries of free labor accumulation under the evangelical counsel of Poverty. This pattern of dissolution only encroached on the colonial margin in America, centuries after it happened at the center, in England.) For instance, it was illegal in 19th century England to teach to lower class children, what John Taylor Gatto termed “the active literacies”, writing, public speaking and the cultivation of eloquence.
.
Concurrent with the liberal Protestant biblical studies (“Historical-Critical Method”) of Adolf von Harnack in the late 19th century which “proved” that biblical accounts of miracles were “fantasies”, agnostic or atheist northern German philosophers were instrumental in enlarging on the rationalist foundation of the French Enlightenment until the late 19th century rise of the Fabian Socialist Society (symbol: a wolf in sheep’s clothing) espoused by the high architects of compulsory, universal, dumbed-down schooling. In contrast with the 99% of humanity which has believed in some sort of God, “when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe nothing, they’ll believe anything”.
.
"There can’t be a God, nor any Heaven", (the outlook that "proves one is a 'scientist' "), therefore, let’s “create” heaven on earth, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”, (never to be resurrected into any eternal paradise), continually “improving” humanity, reinventing ourselves, on Darwin’s racist model of human “survival of the fittest”, leading to Hitler’s death factories and ultimately, today, to Bill Gates’ great purge of the “excess” of the majority of humanity.
.
A free people would never accept this. Therefore, starting in the mid-19th century, American children had to be wrested out of their family traditions and religions by secretly socialistic, anti-intellectual conditioning, subjecting them, in compulsory, universal, police-enforced, deliberately dumbed-down schooling, beyond the parents’ knowledge and understanding, to the endless drudgery of factory schooling, “at least keeping them off the streets and out of trouble”, precisely from the age when their brains should be furiously, delightfully absorbing everything about the wonderful, fascinating world.
Categories
Breaking the ‘Education’ Racket
February 19, 2021
This year, my daughter Jessica has been singing, from our home in New Hampshire, for a choir based in England—the Self-Isolation Choir—composed of singers from all over the world. They perform mostly individually, and then their performances are combined by the wizardry of modern technology for an impressive and beautiful result. A few days ago, we listened to their rendition of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, a little over two hours of sacred music, comparable in many ways to Handel’s earlier and much-beloved Messiah.
She sang her part from a cloth-cover edition of the work published by Oliver Ditson and Company in the middle of the 19th century; the book bears no specific date. As was common in those days, the inside covers and the nearby pages carry advertisements: in Ditson’s case, mostly for books of music, along with a goodly library of biographies and appreciations of the great composers. The music ranges from classical (Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart) to what the company bills as “gems” from this or that folk tradition; from symphonies to polkas to “Nellie Gray.”
The books are for beginners, serious students, and people advanced in skill; there are singing-books for grammar schools, high schools, and colleges; books for community singing clubs, for all-male choirs, for all-female choirs, and for mixed choirs; books for church organists with the great pipe instrument, and books for churches and for families that have the “melodeon” or reed organ instead.
Of course, in those days, there were no recordings, so the only way you ever heard Bach’s stupendous St. Matthew Passion was to be a singer or a player in a performance, or to be present when it was performed. The whole musical world depended upon innumerable people everywhere, from an opera house in Peoria to Covent Garden in London to the great halls of Vienna, who knew how to play and how to sing. Life, I might say, was more complicated in that time, inasmuch as you had to be skilled in a great many things just to get through the day, let alone to live a life graced with beauty and the good cheer of a human community.
And you did require others: there is no such thing as solo harmony.
But what does this have to do with freedom? A great deal, I think. I will choose one direction here out of many. Oliver Ditson, the head of the company, graduated from his grammar school in 1823, when he was 11 years old. He went straight to work in the Boston bookstore of Samuel Hale Parker. Colonel Parker was particularly interested in music; he was one of the founders of the Handel and Haydn Society—still very much alive—and he had introduced Americans to Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation. Young Oliver worked in that store through the rest of his boyhood and into young manhood. When a fire destroyed the store in 1834, Colonel Parker and 22-year-old Ditson regrouped and founded a new business: Parker and Ditson, selling music, and selling and mending musical instruments. Oliver Ditson went on to become one of the foremost publishers of music in America.
No one at that time, I suppose, thought it was odd that a mere boy would leave school, go to work, learn a great deal there about literature and the arts, and become, at so young an age, a fully fledged businessman. Again, I do not want to hear about our greater sophistication, requiring so many more years of youth spent within school walls. Consider what you had to know to carry on that business, apart from bookkeeping and the countless skills of a printer, especially a printer of music for which a single sheet for a hornpipe dance requires work of excruciating detail and precision, let alone more than 150 pages of four-part singing accompanied by three-part organ, such as the Elijah.
There is no way that you take two steps in that business if English is your only language. You must be conversant also with German, Italian, and French, at least. Ditson had a large lineup of sacred music for Catholic churches—Masses, requiems, motets; he must have been able to work a bit in Latin, too.
Nor was it only the languages. Ditson required expertise in a wide range of musical traditions, genres, and styles, as his advertisements show, and that included knowledge of musical instruments, what they were made of, how they were constructed, how you should tend them, and how to repair them. That in turn required knowledge of materials: different kinds of wood, metal alloys, catgut for strings, and so forth.
What made it possible for Oliver Ditson to be thus on his way at age 11, reading the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, much loved by the colonel and by Americans who could not wait to order them from him and read them, when our college students find David Copperfield a challenge, let alone the slightly antiquarian Scott of Old Mortality? Our schools have become institutions for protracted and perverted infancy, even imbecility; and that is part of my point, but only part. Why have they become so?
One of the reasons is that we are disturbed by the freedom that young Oliver enjoyed.
We do not consider it that way, of course; we drive cars, and he had to walk or go on horseback or ride in a carriage. We can buy a ticket to fly to any part of the world and be there within a day. But we have accepted a rather drab narrative for life, despite our attempts to trick it up with the rouge of licentiousness and other dreary and self-enslaving vices.
You go to school, which is mostly dull, and which wastes countless hours just riding the buses. If you are smart you go to college, which is, setting government aside, the most expensive and most egregious racket and swindle in the nation. When you graduate, you are very likely still to be ignorant of almost all the literature, art, and music of your own heritage; you probably are not good with numbers; you will have picked up a few evil and self-destructive habits; you will have plastered on your brain the sociological and political jargon of the day; and you will be over the gables in debt. But you will have the diploma, the ticket, and without that ticket, who is going to hire you?
This narrative is ready to be smashed. Some people say we should assist the poor by financing their college education. In our context, that is to reward the racketeers. How about this instead? Let us work to break the college-employment nexus. Get rid of compulsory schooling; for there is no such thing as compulsory education. Give employers again the permission to hire whomever they please, for whatever reasons they please; let them know that they need no longer turn to colleges as a mind-bogglingly wasteful credentialing service.
By coincidence, in the last several weeks I have come upon one person after another who did not graduate from high school, but who achieved remarkable things, and when they did so, no one thought they were prodigies, no one thought it was even unusual. Life is for everyone. Learning is for everyone. School is not. Colleges—such as they are now—certainly are not.
Categories
In Memoriam
Devonne Kathy DeFrantz Keevers, March 7, 1948–January 9, 2021
(Please leave your greetings in the comment form, below.)
Devonne was born in Stockton, eldest child of a school-teacher, James DeFrantz, born 1920, and a nursing educator, Roberta nee Dennis, born 1922. Devonne had two brothers, Dale (deceased) and Michael. She lived on Los Angeles Street in Stockton. Her dogs were Sisi, Jeanine, Bubbles and Ebony. As a child she and Dale rode on the back of their family pig.
Devonne had five children, Christopher (1969), Jonathan (1982), Heather (1983), Kimberly (1985), and Matthew (1987). 
Devonne’s grandchildren are Anthony Sr., Janessa, Hope, Rodrigo, Jacob, Otis and Philomena. Devonne’s great-grandchildren are Elizabeth, Alfons, Alicia, Victoria, and Anthony Jr.
Devonne received a Bachelor degree from CSUS. She studied bacteriology and cello. As a bacteriology student, she was able to solve problems the instructor couldn’t solve. Devonne could produce accurate answers to calculus problems off the top of her head without using calculus, and she was an ace at solving quick math problems. Once Devonne wrote a musicology paper for the department chair, which was at first rejected because it was too insightful and presumed to be plagiarism, until Devonne provided the instructor with the research notes and it was acknowledged that her work was far superior to the standard of undergraduates.
Shortly before her death, Devonne led the musical arrangement of the pre-Victorian poem “The Virgin” by William Wordsworth (1820), which is renowned for the line “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”; Devonne is credited as the arranger, having specified how the musical form would be adapted with more verses than are present in the original metrical index, the number of syllables of the original Old 124th hymn tune, and Devonne decided how the melody would be adapted, where certain rises and falls would occur; the song is at http://www.sing-prayer.org/anthems-of-the-immaculate-virgin-mary-star-of-the-sea#OurTaintedNaturesSolitaryBoast.
Devonne was a school teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sacramento, in the early 1990s. During Devonne’s first year as teacher, she had 6 ADHD students in a single second-grade class–it would be remarked that what Devonne didn’t know about ADHD wasn’t worth knowing. Mrs. Keevers produced the performance of a student play which she wrote. Devonne was a humble and resolute truth-teller, insisting on the basis of Catholic teaching that the responsibility for conveying “the facts of life” rests with the parents–and paying the price for her witness without complaint. To the end Devonne was a teacher, really sacrificing her life to help ensure her grandchildren got their education. Devonne was a true hero.
Devonne was President of a small, private non-profit charity, Showers on Wheels, which gave baby showers with car seats, blankets (thanks to project Linus), baby clothes and things, and diapers. Devonne gave parties to 275 Moms at Showers on Wheels baby showers from 2008 to 2015.
Devonne interviewed about Showers on Wheels by Bob Dunning on the Bishop’s Radio Hour on May 25, 2015
Devonne was married to William for 39 years.
“I don’t want to hear cute, I want to hear successful …”
They were married in the Catholic Church, at Sacred Heart Parish on J Street in Sacramento, on July 24, 1981.
Memorial Hymn, Hopes for Devonne’s Release From Purgatory and Entrance into the Beatific Vision
Click the Button to sing the prayer, or play the song in a New Window ⧉
| Right Reverend Msgr. H.T. Henry | Nicola A. Montani |
|---|---|
| 1. Unto her, for whom, this day; Juste judex ultionis (Just Judge of Retribution) We in love and pity pray; Donum fac remissionis. (Grant her the gift of release) (Refrain) |
Refrain: Pie Jesu Domine, Dona ei requiem. Pie Jesu Domine, Dona ei requiem. (Holy Lord Jesus Grant her rest.) |
| 2. When at Judgement she shall stand, Rex tremendae majestatis, (Immensely Majestic King) Grant her what Thy love hath planned, Qui salvandos salvas gratis. (Who freely saves the needy) (Refrain) |
3. She hath fought the gallant fight Inter oves locum praesta, (Provide her a place among Your lambs) Lead her on to Heaven’s light Statuens in parte dextra. (Send her to Your right hand.) (Refrain) |
Hymns for the Release From Purgatory of the Holy Souls
Devonne’s Ring – with five fruits of her body
To Get Her New, Best Dog.
Devonne says she loves you.
Devonne, “we saw a meteor shower last night. It was AWESOME! I saw two meteors! Ooh!”
| Devonne’s funeral will be held at | |
| St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, 65th and Fruitridge, Sacramento | |
| Tuesday | February 23, 2021 |
| 9:00 | Visitation |
| 10:00 | Mass |
| 11:00 | Burial |
Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us. — Ecclesiastes 1:10
A recent work of speculative fiction, reasonably predicts a voyage to our nearest star about a century hence. Upon arrival after years of travel, it is discovered that this latest voyage was preceded by 10,000s of years by travelers from earth from a now unknown civilization previously dominant across the earth, a scenario easily imaginable considering the great contrast between how little is known of the details, and yet the great extent of undeniably existing archeological ruins of the Indus Valley, Harappan civilization of Mohenjo-Daro, nearly as old as Sumeria. (In the story, the Alpha-Centauri, early voyagers’ elites worshiped a three-eyed snake-man god to which child sacrifices were made that would make those the the Canaanite god Moloch look like the work of rank amateurs.)
Given how we presently live on a hazardous technological edge while knowing so little about the lives even of our near ancestors 100 years ago–much less about what a normal way of life should aspire to look like–it’s worthwhile trying to get a view from far off afield, of the developments of civilization since the fall of the middle ages and the rise of the modern period. We could speculate on four distinct divisions of technological development:
- Agricultural Revolution – Starvation Policy
- Manufacturing Revolution – Keeping workers too poor to buy their own products
- Information Revolution – Flooding common people with low quality, disinformation, from the irrelevant to the factually inaccurate
- Un-named Revolution, possibly, Algorithmic Revolution – technology emulates human consciousness with the result of enslaving it.
Two characteristics of the Tower of Babel, are that 1) its fall greatly increased human confusion and 2) that fall was occasioned by humans trying to assert their own self-originated autonomy against the Providence of God.
The Agricultural Revolution is concerned with food. When satan tempted Jesus with the offer to turn stones into bread, Jesus cited the book of Deuteronomy, 8:3, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The people of Jesus’ day wanted to make Him a secular king, not only to expel the Romans, but to give them bread, after He multiplied the loaves and fishes. “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” John 6:26 But His offer of Himself as the bread that comes down from heaven, they didn’t want, instead they were scandalized, and many of His disciples no longer walked with Him.
The issue of world hunger is a political playing piece, a carom that is zoomed all around the playing board of the self-avowed masters of the universe. Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me.” Matthew 26:11. The issue of ending starvation, which was the main plot theme of the 1968 movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, revealed this continuing, strange anxiety about, not only feeding ourselves, but elaborate concern about the political economics of need while failing actually to feed the poor. Fifty years after the movie which influenced even the selection of Popes, no Pope himself has proposed to systematically eliminate world hunger, no American presidential ally of the Papacy has ever formulated a policy of using American military aircraft to food-bomb with excess American agricultural production, areas where deliberate starvation is used by local warlords as a political half-nelson against vulnerable populations.
Categories
The Three Kings
Click the ▶ Button to Hear the Song, or Play the Song in a New Window ⧉
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Sir John Stainer |
|---|---|
| 1) Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. |
2) The star was so beautiful, large and clear, That all the other stars of the sky Became a white mist in the atmosphere, And by this they knew that the coming was near Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy. |
| 3) Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, Three caskets of gold with golden keys; Their robes were of crimson silk with rows Of bells, pomegranates and furbelows, Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees. |
4) And so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of the night, over hill & dell, & sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at some wayside well. |
| 5) “Of the child that is born,” said Baltasar, “Good people, I pray you, tell us the news; For we in the East have seen his star, And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, To find and worship the King of the Jews.” |
6) And the people answered, “You ask in vain; We know of no King but Herod the Great!” They thought the Wise Men were men insane, As they spurred their horses across the plain, Like riders in haste, who cannot wait. |
| 7) And when they came to Jerusalem, Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them; And said, “Go down unto Bethlehem, And bring me tidings of this new king.” |
8) So they rode away; and the star stood still, The only one in the grey of morn; Yes, it stopped—it stood still of its own free will, Right over Bethlehem on the hill, The city of David, where Christ was born. |
| 9) And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard, Through the silent street, till their horses turned And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard; But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred, And only a light in the stable burned. |
10) And cradled there in the scented hay, In the air made sweet by the breath of kine, The little child in the manger lay, The child, that would be king one day Of a kingdom not human, but divine. |
| 11) His mother Mary of Nazareth Sat watching beside his place of rest, Watching the even flow of his breath, For the joy of life and the terror of death Were mingled together in her breast. |
12) They laid their offerings at his feet: The gold was their tribute to a King, The frankincense, with its odor sweet, Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, The myrrh for the body’s burying. |
| 13) And the mother wondered and bowed her head, And sat as still as a statue of stone, Her heart was troubled yet comforted, Remembering what the Angel had said Of an endless reign and of David’s throne. |
14) Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, With a clatter of hoofs in proud array; But they went not back to Herod the Great, For they knew his malice and feared his hate, And returned to their homes by another way. |
Short Literary Criticism (Click/Expand or Bypass)
Click ^ again to contract
THE WISE MEN
G.K. Chesterton
Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.
Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.
We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And serve the made gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.
The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.
Go humbly … it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.
The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.
The Child that was ere worlds begun
(… We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.
Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.
Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.