Is this the first good news since 1962?

Pope Francis is to invite the world’s bishops to consecrate Russia (and Ukraine) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

If he withhold the waters, all things shall be dried up; and if he send them out, they shall overturn the earth.

And the letter was sent on the feast of Purim, which commemorates how the Queen saved her people from destruction.

 

What is going on?

I find these statistics very mysterious. Ignoring Bosnia which is a special case from which few inferences can be drawn, all 50%+ countries are non-Slav Eastern-Rite, all 25-50% countries are Slav Byzantine and all 25%- countries are Latin. What is the explanation? It can’t just be Vatican II because that doesn’t explain the inferior performance of the Slav Byzantines compared to the Non-Slav Easterners .

 

St Andrew and the Eschaton

This Sunday, in the old rite, part of our Lord’s discourse about the end times will be read or chanted. The first three gospels each tell us that after He had prophesied the destruction of the temple, His disciples came to Him to ask when all would be fulfilled. St Matthew and St Luke simply tell us that “the disciples” asked the questions; St Mark specifies that four disciples asked, namely Peter, James, John – and Andrew. This evangelist was recording the preaching of Peter in Rome, and doubtless St Peter had mentioned the names, so as not to lose the opportunity to honour his own brother, who had first brought him to Christ.

We are familiar with the idea that the first three of these disciples formed an inner ring within the twelve. They were chosen to be there when Jairus’s daughter was raised from the dead, at the Transfiguration and at the Agony. But this is the only occasion when St Andrew is joined to their company: to hear first of the fall of the temple, of the end of the rites of the Old Covenant and of the slaughter of the ancient people of God; and then of that which these things foreshadowed, the great persecution of the Church, the coming of the lawless one, the consummation of all things and the return of Christ in glory. Why was the apostle Andrew chosen to hear these things directly from the mouth of Christ?

Perhaps in part because he is the “first-called”, Πρωτόκλητος, and so had been following the Lord longer than anyone (along with the disciple who was with him when he was called); it was fitting therefore that he should hear of the rewards for those who persevere to the end. Perhaps also because he would become the patron saint of that nation which, more than any other, seems bound up with the Church’s fortunes as she makes her way toward those last days: Russia.

It is now almost a hundred years since Lenin entered holy Russia in his sealed train and since the Queen of Heaven told the three children that that nation would first spread its errors throughout the world and then be made the chosen instrument for their correction. And they have been spread, perhaps beyond the hopes of hell itself. But just as Christ’s words do not pass away, so nor do hers, through whom the Word was made flesh. St Andrew’s nation will be consecrated to her and become a fountain of grace for the last days, perhaps for resistance in that final persecution, or perhaps only when antichrist shall have been overthrown, and the Church enjoys, if this be the plan of heaven, a time of flourishing before the second coming, foreshadowed by the forty days her Spouse once spent on earth between Resurrection and Ascension.

It is not without reason that his feast everywhere is celebrated on the cusp of Advent, on the vigil of December’s kalends. As St John the Baptist from his place on earth prepared all men for the first coming of the Lord, so St Andrew from his place in heaven prepares all men for the second. Nor is his name devoid of mystery, for it means manliness, or courage. When those days come, upon whomsoever they may come, such as have not been known since the foundation of the world, we shall have need of Andrew then.

 

The Consecration of Russia

Some time ago I had the privilege of meeting Hugh Owen. His father was Sir David Owen, the Secretary-General of International Planned Parenthood; he himself is a deeply spiritual Catholic convert with a large family who spends his spare time explaining the doctrine of creation as taught by the Fathers of the Church and later witnesses to tradition.

In conversation he mentioned the consecration of Russia, which we both think has not yet been accomplished as it is meant to be. He remarked that too often this consecration is presented as a mere response to the evil of atheistic materialism that has spread from Russia throughout the world; as if it were, in effect, an exorcism of Russia. Thus explained, it is not surprising that it should meet with little enthusiasm from Russians themselves, as no one wants to have his country regarded in the world as a sheer source of evil.

But, he continued, ‘consecration’ implies some good quality in the thing consecrated; a fitness to be offered to heaven. This is true whether we think of the consecration of nazirites in the Old Testament, or of Christian families to the Sacred Heart or of devout souls to the immaculate Heart. Russia has been the source of immense evil; yet, he thought from his own observations, it is still in a sense Holy Russia; there is a sense of Christian realities present within it, lacking from the apostate nations of the West. Its schism is another’s sin more than its own. It is a fit instrument (he thought) to be used by God, once consecrated by the Pope of Rome, for the salvation of the nations.

 

 

 

 

Fr Kentenich in a Dachau bathroom

Fr Malak was taken  by a priest friend to meet a German priest whom he’d met. They went to the chapel first.

“Come on” whispered Fr Kentenich.

When we got to the porch, he said “Let’s go to the bathroom, it’s empty at this time of day – we won’t find a better place”.

We sit on chests standing next to the wall. The conversation unfolds. Fr Kentenich makes ever longer contributions, and they turn into a sort of lecture.

 

Hedging one’s bets

In the war, my father’s father and his brothers were in the Home Army (Polish “resistance”), their mother’s brother was a Soviet general in the “wojsko sanitarne” – the medical corps?, and it appears that some other kind of uncle, somewhere on their father’s side, won an Iron Cross as an officer (can’t find the list now to say what rank) in the Luftwaffe. We couldn’t lose. 

 

 

Foxy Presidential Bod Photos

Murder shmurder. The important thing is that Putin has been declared the sexiest head of state on holiday by the New York Daily News.

PHOTOS!!!!!

 

Russia gets a bit more scary every day…

Murder on the streets of London, territorial claims on the North Pole? Now its long range bombers and banning the BBC. I was sitting in a cafe in Warsaw on Wednesday when some fighter aircraft flew over (as part of the celebrations of the battle of the Vistula). ‘Perhaps Putin is invading’ someone joked. It doesn’t seem so funny now…