VLX Interlude
A Lectio Divina on the Gospel found in the Christmas Midnight Mass
Why Did God Become Man? A Simple Explanation
Would the Eternal Word have become incarnate if Adam had never sinned? Some religious in the Middle-Ages answered in the negative to this. However, the Franciscans answered in the positive. The latter view would become known as the Absolute Primacy of Christ. I hold to this view, namely, that the Second Person of the Trinity would have indeed become Jesus Christ even if Adam and Eve had never sinned. However, even for those who hold to the Absolute Primacy of Christ (like the Franciscans and me) we clearly assert that the propitiation for our sins was a major reason for the Incarnation. Of course, the Incarnation is when God the Son became a zygote at the Annunciation and was later born a baby of Mary Immaculate at that first Christmas 2021 years ago. This blog post will look specifically at [...]
The Incarnation
“One will be sent in the flesh,” thundered the most beautiful Trinity to the angels and all the courts of heaven eons ago. In perfect harmony they rejoiced. But later they wondered if anyone but a lowly archangel like Raphael (still more glorious than a burning star) could dare condescend again to take flesh as Raphael did for Tobit. Their best guess for the new assignment was Gabriel. God said “Gabriel will go…but in spirit as preparation. One much higher than he will become flesh.” “But how?” the angels wondered, “A cherubim's eyes would melt the trees and mountains. No human warrior's body could even instantaneously hold the power of a seraphim. Who will go in the flesh?” And they intuited through each other like laser beams, seared and alit by the thought of leaving the splendor of heaven for [...]
Ancient Pagan Prophesies Describing the Savior of the World
Not only did the Hebrew Scriptures describe that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, but so did pagan oracles. Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes some of them: History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God – Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others, right down to the person who founded a new religion this very day. Each of them has a right to be heard and considered. But as a yardstick external to and outside of whatever is to be measured is needed, so there must be some permanent tests available to all men, all civilizations, and all ages, by which they can decide whether any one of these claimants, or all of them, are justified in their claims. These tests [...]
CPX 95: The Third Commandment
Catechism of Pope St. Pius X (CPX) p. 117-119 Q/A 1-11 *** Support my work here: https://padreperegrino.org/donate/ https://youtu.be/i4IrJe92N6A
TCE #36: All flesh shall see the salvation of God
If 6M Muslims a year convert to [mostly] non-Catholic Christianity, who is behind this? God or the devil? Listen to this "Theology and Current Events" (TCE) to get my best-guess. Yes, best-guess only here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicsTNZ5pYc&t=1s
VLX 95: Their Heart is Far From Me
Mt 15:1-9 *** -Support my work here: https://padreperegrino.org/donate/ -Mental prayer vs. Centering prayer: https://padreperegrino.org/2021/12/mentalprayer/ -True Obedience vs. False Obedience: https://padreperegrino.org/2021/08/obed/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtGBoN7yEbs
The Darkness Fears the Light
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.—Lk 2:1-2 Notice that Joseph and Mary had to go through a census or registration (ἀπογραφὴ or apographé in Greek in Lk 2:2 above) as Jews living under the foreign occupation of the Roman Empire. Herod, a half-Jew who was in cahoots with the Roman government that had invaded, presumably used this registration to track Jesus in his attempts to kill Him: Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.—Mt 2:16 [...]
Mental Prayer vs. Centering Prayer
A good friend recently asked me to explain the difference between traditional Catholic mental prayer (meditation on the life of Jesus that the Spanish mystics called oración mental) and New Age centering prayer (amorphous meditation promoted by pseudo-Eastern groups.) My online series on mental prayer called Video Lectio Divina tries to teach the former, but I have never tackled the difference in definitions. So what is the difference between mental prayer and centering prayer? A decent answer would be that that mental prayer looks outwards to God and centering prayer looks inward to self. This would be a decent answer. However, it's not a perfect answer because great mystics like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila say we actually do look inwards in mental prayer. Yes, you might be surprised that within the Catholic view of [...]
Planned Mass Psychosis
Here's two excellent resources I would like to share to prove that the totalitarian overreach (using the pretext of COVID-19) is actually a planned mass-psychosis. The first is surprisingly a podcast with Joe Rogan and Dr. Peter McCullough MD. The second is a list of medical and sociological facts compiled by Kit Knightly. 1. Joe Rogan and Dr. Peter McCullough MD, MPH (See above picture) were in a three hour podcast here on Spotify. This is so incredibly important that someone as mainstream as Joe Rogan (admittedly less and less mainstream every day) has given a forum to one of the strongest medical voices on the truth of COVID-19. Rogan (usually quite crude but well behaved in this podcast) has over 11M subscribers on YouTube, so this is going to reach a lot of people (even though this individual podcast [...]