Misc.

The Buddhist monks who practiced Sokushinbutsu, mummifying their own bodies as they approached death, and by which means they brought on their death, being virtual suicide, provide a clear picture of the austere counterfeiting of the total extravagance and lavishness with which God preserves various saints incorrupt in death.

The same counterfeiting preservation of their own bodies is also a kind of picture of man's modern day obsession with austerity.

Simply put, I think people have a desire for ashes.

I think people have an unholy penchant for the austere, and I think our age is a perverse example of a weird, comfort-dualist rejection of God the Father's riches. We reject His eternal wealth in favour of austerity. I'm not talking about the stereotypical religious "repressed".

Picture a child refusing, out of his own strength, a gift from a parent. What a wretched child who thinks he'll come to terms with things on his own. How wretched the too adept child.

What an offense we are to God who are so confident in our strengths, and beside which the gifts, graces, mercies of God go unnoticed to us as though we were wealthy and were are our own wealth providers, who are so viciously proud under our social constructs that we've wretchedly adapted ourselves to, stretching ourselves in every capacity to be acclimated to the glamour and vanity of this world, and hardly giving one iota to conforming ourselves to God's will; so utterly poor underneath and so utterly weak in our strength that we refuse His most tender mercy.

Think about how God's mercy must come to us. If God is infinitely powerful, is eternally pure act, then don't you think the diffusion of His mercy would be in proportion to this; that it would be to us as something practically imperceptible?

We're like stone.

Behind every sin indulged is a tight grip, an unyielding "vice" grip of austerity by which the sinner will not let it go. And the adept are the most lost. People today love austerity. They're obsessed with it. They lap up bullcrap about "austerity" for the economy, as though it's going to do anything.

They come to a Mass of non-obligation in droves, because of the ashes, but other Masses of non-obligation, like various great feast days, aren't even thought about.

Easier to pound sand than to try the waves.

Easier to believe in Gaia (who commands unyielding austerity) than to believe in the Trinity.

Easier to be a Libertarian than to seek true freedom.

The sights around us tell us that people today love austerity and make it their daily bread.


*


Rats are more in the news concerning Alberta.

Uh oh. Isn't that like finding a bed bug in The Empress or something?

Er, uh, something like that.

Seriously though, rat extermination is serious and should be fully funded and kept up.

Ever hear of the plague?

I wish B.C. was rat-free. That would be a harder deal to keep up.


*


Went to Mass this morning at the mega parish. The parking lot was so full I had to park on the side of the road.

Came out after Mass and saw that someone had smacked the front fender of my car, leaving no note of contact, no nothing.

So there I was, driving home and thinking the kinds of thoughts that a person thinks to himself after confession and communion, like, "Yeah, it was probably someone from the parish", and such nice thoughts, and I get home, and there where I park my car are pieces of the plastic from under the wheel well.

"Oh! So it was smacked here, and I was just so asleep when I came out to the car that I didn't see it!" I said.


*


Terry at Abbey Roads:

"God is good.  The Holy Spirit always reminds us that our stability here on earth is in Christ and His Church."

I agree.


Fr. Angelo at Mary Victrix:

"As pope he is acting in the interests of preserving and promoting the ministry he has exercised so well."

I agree.


Christopher Ferrara at The Remnant:

"All of this, of course, is speculation."

Yep, you got that damn right.