Last night, after Solemn High Mass of the Lord’s Supper, I stayed with Our Lord in the Garden while the altars were stripped by the clerics.  I then opted to stay with Our Lord during Tenebrae, whose place of repose was not, as in other years, in a full side chapel, but rather this year was a tiny “cupboard” chapel, an almost secret place behind great wooden doors that when shut look like the doors to a reliquary cabinet, but when opened – SURPRISE! – a tiny chapel. The third Psalm of the second night of Tenebrae is Psalm 26, which described the setting and situation perfectly in verses 4 and 5:

One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; * that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
That I may see the delight of the Lord, * and may visit His temple.
For He hath hidden me in His tabernacle; * in the day of evils, He hath protected me in the secret place of His tabernacle.

Hearing Tenebrae chanted just a few yards away in a great, dark, empty church was no problem at all – I was even outfitted very kindly with a lamp for my prie-dieu.  I’ve had some extremely memorable Holy Thursdays since entering the Church thirteen years ago, but this one, I am quite confident, will not be topped.  Keeping vigil with Our Lord in the Garden as the men chanted the Office of Tenebrae was… well.  Saturated.  The experience was… saturated.  I brought all of you with me, and at the second antiphon of the Third Nocturn leading into Psalm 87, I told Our Lord that all of us who love Him are here with Him.

Thou hast put away Mine acquaintance far from Me; * I am shut up, and cannot come forth.

One of the greatest mysteries of the Triune Godhead is the fact that God Almighty wants US to comfort HIM.  This is why attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at least once per week, on Sunday, is required (when physically possible), and Our Lord wants us present at Mass as often as possible – and this is why we go. How can this level of infinite condescension (in the positive sense) be possible?  There is only one answer: INFINITE LOVE. GOD IS HIMSELF INFINITE LOVE.

Let me quickly repeat the point I made on the last couple of Barnhardt podcasts, as the antiphon of Psalm 26 addresses it directly: This CoronaCold situation is NOT a chastisement positively willed and directly sent by God upon us.  This CANNOT be a chastisement from God in the sense that people are taking it, because it is based on lies and deceit, and God neither deceives nor can be deceived.

WE ARE DOING THIS TO OURSELVES.  God has given us up to our own lies.  He isn’t the author of the lies, He has merely given us up to ourselves.  Finally.  After the ratification of divorce, the ratification of self-sterilization making almost every conjugal act – even within valid marriages – mortally sinful, sodomy, the ascension of pornography as the number one pastime, after the Drag Queen story hours where men sexually molest tiny children to the cheers of their parents. After the legalization of infanticide and the cold, calculated, premeditated murder of billions of human beings, most of which with the mother as a direct and enthusiastic accomplice.  After the near-total apostasy of His Holy Church and the public construction of an Antichurch, headed by an Antipope, unchallenged and uncontested (almost).

This economic destruction, the pitting of every human being against every other human being as a “vector of disease” (and the mask-wearing nonsense is a huge weapon in this psychological terrorism and direct attack on fraternal charity, a satanic attempt to make misanthropy into a luciferian faux-virtue), this suppression of the public worship of God, is all 100% the freely-chosen and totally unnecessary work of MEN.  Look at the antiphon of Psalm 26: False witnesses are risen up against me, * and iniquity hath lied to itself.  Bill and Melinda Gates et al.  Fauci. Birx. Every government.  The media.  Antipope Bergoglio and the Antichurch that he heads. INIQUITY IS LYING TO ITSELF.

Men who end up in hell, end up damned by their own free choice, and completely unnecessarily. Christ’s death REDEEMED ALL MEN, but so very, very many die UNSAVED by their own choice after they fall for the LIES AND DECEITS OF SATAN, WHO IS THE FATHER OF LIES.  Redemption and Salvation are two very different things.  This situation is an uber-allegory of this truth. Damnation is freely chosen.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.
-John 8: 44

Christ before the High Priest.

False witnesses are risen up against me, * and iniquity hath lied to itself.

Christ Before the High Priest, Gerard van Honthorst, ARSH 1617