A blessed and joyous Easter Octave to all our readers, and I hope everyone is enjoying this week of Sundays, indeed, week of Easter Sundays wherein, with Our Lady and the Apostles, we ‘rejoice with great joy’, for our Lord has risen indeed.
My apologies for being a bit remiss in posting, for – if I may be forgiven a personal request for your thoughts and prayers – I have been here at home watching vigil with my mother as she journeys soon towards eternity, having just been diagnosed with untreatable cancer. Fitting, one may take some comfort, in this week of Divine Mercy, following the path of Pope Saint John Paul II. As I sit and pray, ponder, write and read, beside and with her, my thoughts have been on life and death, and everything in-between.
The world continues on its own journey towards that future ‘apocalypse’, when the meaning of all things will be revealed, whose day and hour we know not, until the time is fulfilled. Easter teaches us that, whatever happens – whatever Passion we must endure – so long as we remain faithful to Christ and His truth, we will be offered eternal bliss with Him forever. Keep the commandments is all Christ first requires of the young man asking how he can gain heaven. Not a bad deal, when one ponders it.
Yet so many refuse, or at least seem to. We wonder at those who support the holocaust of untold millions of unborn children, even after the humanity of the embryo and foetus have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. All of a piece with the dogma of moral relativism, of which Carl Sundell writes. Father James Schall, S.J. – and may God rest his warrior soul – in one of his last essays, said that all those unborn, their lives cut short, still have an eternal destiny, a role to play in the history of salvation in the mystery of God’s providence. They too will ‘rise again’, for, as the good Jesuit reasons, quoting Saint Augustine, those who can be born, can also be re-born, and they too, with Job of old, will see the Lord in their resurrected flesh.
Consciences are being ‘woke’, as the saying goes, with the unexpected box-office success of the film Unplanned, on the conversion of Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood employee-turned-pro-life-zealot, and the deep, demonic rot within that Margret Sanger-eugenics-inspired abortion empire. There are as yet no plans for the film’s release in Canada – a conspiracy? – but you may sign this petition to ask for a showing, somewhere, somehow.
And the hypocrisy of the green-zealots continues, as Justin Trudeau, fresh from inflicting a ratcheting carbon tax on Canadians, spending Easter weekend – the most solemn time of year for a professed Catholic, ideally spent immersed in liturgy. Whatever one’s proclivities, Justin decided to spend some time surfing off Torino with his family in tow, all on private jet, belching more greenhouse gases than a whole slew of rural towns, chainsaws and pick-up trucks, across Canada. Meanwhile, gas and heating fuel for the ‘average’ Canadian are shooting through the roof. But is that not just the point? A punitive tax to make travel, and even heating ourselves, more costly, and hence more rare. A surfing trip to Tofino is a pipe-dream, pardon the pun, for the same middle-class, working-stiff Joe, paying for Trudeau’s trips. Even an economical cross-country visit to family and friends will soon be out of reach. And, like dear old Dad, Trudeau just grins for the photo op.
We should not begrudge the Trudeaus their vacation, even if the hypocrisy seems rather rank. Of course, the real evil – the culpability of which is known only to God – is his bizarre, cold, zealous, unremitting support for unchecked abortion, as well euthanasia – see the reposting of the letter from Jennifer Ackroyd, something that hits home to me as I watch the beauty of my own mother’s final days.
The Trudeaus, pere et fils, hold some large degree of responsibility for the murder of untold numbers of Canadians, for which they and their ‘Liberal’ and other political cronies will be vilified – their names struck from whatever secular or religious triptychs then in vogue – should our culture ever return to sanity. We may add to his malfeasance his zeal in permitting ever-more Canadians’ brains to be fried on marijuana, one might suppose to keep us all docile; ponder some of the effects of this supposedly ‘harmless’ drug recounted by Peter Hitchens. Now, he wants to make any criticism of a certain irrational, even barbaric, religion – witness Easter slaughter and beheadings – illegal. A lasting legacy, indeed, from our surfer-dude-in-chief. In some senses, we get the leaders we deserve, I suppose, and
Meanwhile, on the cultural front – to choose but one sign amongst many – the highest-grossing film of all time is yet another mind-numbing-superhero saga, with Avengers Part-whatever already approaching a billion dollars in profits in just a few days. Who is ever going to make real, dialogue-and-drama-driven films again, when these brain-dead box-office boondoggles hog all the cash? Then again, most of their money is made in China, in which deadened Communistic regime they are apparently so starved of entertainment, they will pay big bucks to sit through two and half hours of wooden dialogue, mumbled through by rubber-clad and zombie-esque actors, stumbling towards brobdingnagian paycheques that make the Hulk look like the Ant Man in full quantum mode.
Strive, dear reader, for a culture that will elevate us towards all that is true, good and beautiful. Whether spandex-superheroes are your thing or not as perhaps a harmless – dare I write mindless? – diversion, we should spend out time, our talents and what few dollars we have left, after Trudeua’s robbery, wisely, for we truly know neither the day nor the hour.
Dominus surrexit vere, alleluia!