Noli Me Tangere, Lavinia Fontana, ARSH 1581

The beautiful painting above is of Mary Magdalene seeing Our Resurrected Lord in the garden close to the Empty Tomb and initially mistaking Him for the gardener.  In art Our Lord is commonly depicted in this specific scene as a gardener by his spiffy gardener’s hat – and only sometimes carrying a gardening implement, as in this image.  As a great fan, connoisseur and wearer of hats, I am always tickled to see Our Lord behatted.

But there is massive meaning in all of this, and it goes back to the Garden of Eden, and teaches us about the Eucharist, and specifically about the importance of worthy and unworthy reception of the Eucharist.  This is especially germane as one of the hallmarks of the Bergoglian antipapacy is the pogrom of sacrilegious desecration of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

Anyone who objects to the enthusiastic desecration of the Eucharist will, of course, be denounced as a “fundamentalist” or “rigid” or whatever is today’s entry in the Antipope Bergoglio book of insults.

Our Lord appeared as a Gardener to Mary Magdalene because He is, in fact, The Gardener of Eden (Genesis 2: 8-9) and would walk in The Garden (Genesis 3: 8).

Interestingly, we see from Genesis that it was His intention to commune with mankind AS FOOD from the very beginning, whether man fell to original sin or not.  The Tree of Life wasn’t a mere foreshadowing of the Eucharist, it was in fact a species of the Real Substantial Presence of God, in the form of food, to be eaten by man in order to give man eternal life.  Again, the Fruit of the Tree of Life was an actual species of the Real Presence, not a symbol.  So Christ was not only The Gardener of Eden, He Himself was also the “Crop”.

Now think about this – when Adam and Eve fell, what did God do? He drove them out and even sent an angel with a flaming, rotating sword to specifically physically block them so that they could not COMMIT THE SIN OF SACRILEGE OF EATING OF THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF LIFE, THAT IS THE PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE OF GOD HIMSELF, AND THUS MAKE THEIR SITUATION EVEN WORSE.  It wasn’t enough to merely tell them that they couldn’t eat of the Tree of Life (a species of the Real Presence) because Our Lord knew that satan would tempt them to eat it anyway, and they would, because they were now guilty of the sin of pride.

Our Lord drove Adam and Eve out of The Garden and posted an angelic sentry BECAUSE HE LOVED THEM. Our Loving God EXCOMMUNICATED Adam and Eve in order to protect them from themselves, knowing that they would do even further damage to themselves by eating of His Physical Substance unworthily.

Only after Our Lord had incarnated, and True God and True Man had suffered and died for the sins of the world, could mankind once again be able to eat of the Fruit of the Tree of Life.  The Cross is The Tree.  Jesus Christ hanging from it is The Fruit of The Tree of Life. The Eucharist is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, True Food and True Drink. Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection re-established The Garden of Eden, ended the protective banishment, and lifted the excommunication of mankind.

This is why Our Lord said to the Apostles in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday, “With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you…”

When God says, “I’ve REALLY been looking forward to this…”, something incomprehensibly good and profoundly important is about to happen.

And this is why, in these days, growing ever darker, that satan, through his infiltators in The Church – some of them consciously willing, some of them merely stupid, are pushing for what the serpent could NOT effect in The Garden: the sacrilegious desecration of the Fruit of the Tree of Life.

It is true.  There are no angels with flaming swords to prevent unrepentant sinners from receiving the Eucharist.  Would that there were.  I would be very happy if I were blocked from receiving the Eucharist by an angel, because then I would absolutely know that I was not in a state of grace, and could take steps to correct that in the confessional. It is always a nagging concern in the back of one’s mind every time one receives the Eucharist.  Or, at least it should be.

But, considering the steps that God took in The Garden of Eden, one should think very long and very hard about the gravity of unworthy reception, and of the truly satanic malignancy of this final push to get those in openly unrepentant mortal sin to desecrate the Eucharist, and for the priests, who have been the last line of defense, standing in place of the angel, instead to be the willing facilitators and encouragers of sacrilegious desecration of Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist.

And this is why Our Risen Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener, as we can tell by the spiffy hat.

I hope this helps.

Here is the first of Rembrandt’s two “Supper at Emmaus”.  I prefer the drama of this piece.  Note the disciple in the foreground shadow who has fallen out of his chair and is on his knees bowing to Our Lord, who has just revealed Himself in the Eucharist, and is about to disappear in His corporeal form.  The woman in the kitchen is going to walk out with a plate of something in a few seconds and say, “Where’d He go?” And the men are going to point at the Consecrated Host and say, “He’s RIGHT THERE!”

Every year during Holy Week, a theme usually pops out in my mind whilst attending the Sacred Mysteries. This year, the theme is Pontius Pilate, and judging by current events, specifically these insane “anti-semitism laws” that are cropping up, this essay might be a felony by next year, so I had better get it written up and publicly visible while I still can.

As we have discussed in this space before, historical context is EVERYTHING when considering Pontius Pilate vis-a-vis Our Lord’s Passion and death. I learned this historical context from Dr. Mazza several years ago, and it has been a massively informative and illuminating bit of information. Right now, there seems to be a big push by ethnic Jews (almost all of whom today are militant atheists) to deny all responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ, to the point of trying to criminalize the very mention of it. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that the whole, unvarnished truth about the matter is spread far and wide. While both the Jews and Pontius Pilate (as a governing proxy for the Roman Empire) were both guilty of deicide, as Holy Mother Church has always taught, the guilt of the Jews was far greater than that of Pilate. Not only SHOULD the Perfidious Jews have recognized the Messiah, some of them actually did recognize Him, and killed Him anyway, exactly, precisely as prophesied throughout the Old Testament and by Our Lord Himself during His earthly ministry.

The Office of Tenebrae is my favorite Liturgical event of the year, and the sixth reading of the second night of Tenebrae is St. Augustine’s treatise on the question. It couldn’t be any clearer. I post it in full here, again, because this is literally going to be declared illegal at the rate we’re going in Clown World:

Reading 6
They whetted their tongue like a sword. The Jews cannot say: We did not murder Christ, albeit they gave Him over to Pilate His judge, that they themselves might seem free of His death. For when Pilate said unto them, Take ye Him: and kill Him, they answered, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death. They could throw the blame of their sin upon a human judge: but did they deceive God, the Great Judge? In that which Pilate did, he was their accomplice, but in comparison with them, he had far the lesser sin. Pilate strove as far as he could, to deliver Him out of their hands; for the which reason also he scourged Him, and brought Him forth to them. He scourged not the Lord for cruelty’s sake, but in the hope that he might so slake their wild thirst for blood: that, perchance, even they might be touched with compassion, and cease to lust for His death, when they saw What He was after the flagellation. Even this effort he made! But when Pilate saw that he could not prevail, but that rather a tumult was made, ye know how that he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this Just Person. And yet he delivered Him to be crucified! But if he were guilty who did it against his will, were they innocent; who goaded him on to it? No. Pilate gave sentence against Him. and commanded Him to be crucified. But ye, O ye Jews, ye also are His murderers! Wherewith? With your tongue, whetted like a sword. And when? But when ye cried, Crucify Him! Crucify Him!

Let’s go back to Pontius Pilate’s court.  Pilate knows Our Lord is innocent and does NOT want to execute Him, but the Jews, led by the High Priest and the Sanhedrin have threatened Pilate – they have threatened his life, and almost no one today understands this. Pilate was terrified for his life and the life of his family and all of the men serving under him, which Mel Gibson alluded to in “The Passion of The Christ” in the scene between Pilate and his wife, Claudia, in which Pilate expresses the pressure he is under from Rome. But even Gibson’s treatment doesn’t fully explain how deep Pilate’s fear was.

Did you know that there was a man named Lucius Aelius Sejanus, who was the head of the Praetorian Guard, and was essentially the number 2 to Tiberius Caesar? When Tiberius withdrew to the Isle of Capri in ARSH 26 (some of you may have been to Capri as tourists, apparently it is very beautiful), Sejanus was left to essentially administer the entire Roman Empire.  Sejanus, not Tiberius Caesar, APPOINTED PONTIUS PILATE the governor of Judea.  So Pilate was Sejanus’ boy, not Tiberius’.  Sejanus was executed by Tiberius in AD 31 – note that date, folks – because pretty much everyone suspected Sejanus of plotting to take over.  SO, when the Perfidious Jews, led by the High Priest and Sanhedrin in Pilate’s Court yelled out to Pilate…

“If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar’s friend. For whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar.” — John 19: 12

…what they were doing was threatening Pilate’s life – they were threatening to have Pilate and his entire family and all of Pilate’s men “canceled” and “Arkancided” by denouncing him as not loyal to Tiberius, and rather loyal to the Sejanus faction.  “Not Caesar’s friend,” but rather “Sejanus’ friend.”  Which would have meant torture and execution for Pilate, and his family, and all of Pilate’s men.

Isn’t. That. Interesting.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, non?

And just so we’re clear, as we see in the Sixth Lesson of Tenebrae of Thursday night-Friday morning, St. Augustine says that Pilate, even under intense coercion of his own torture and death and that of his family is still guilty, but less so than the Jews. Yes, succumbing to coercion, even the most severe coercion, does not absolve guilt. WE MUST DO THE RIGHT, NO MATTER THE COST.

“By the very fact of doing what he did, Pilate became a sharer in their crime; but compared with them he was much less guilty.”

But Pilate was still guilty. Because “much less guilty” is still guilty. WE are called by Our Lord to “be perfect”, that is, to not succumb to coercion AT ALL. It’s not okay to fold in fear, find an easy way out, and wash your hands of the mess, being content with being merely “much less guilty.” Pontius Pilate is NOT a moral example to anyone. In fact, he is a dire warning against the temptation to succumbing to coercion.

And so we see the reason why the Jews in this context are referred to by Holy Mother Church as the PERFIDIOUS Jews: because if what they did to leverage Pilate isn’t the definition of perfidiousness, then I don’t know what is. Perfidy is TREACHERY. The Latin word perfidy means TREACHERY. And it is essential that the qualifier PERFIDIOUS be used, because there were righteous Jews, most prominently the two Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. The qualifier “perfidious” isn’t a sloppy ethnic smear, it’s an essential distinction. No human beings are “locked-in” to moral degeneracy and “born damned” because of their DNA. Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection REDEEMED ALL OF HUMANITY. The question of each individual’s possible SALVATION is a corollary to the antecedent fact of the REDEMPTION, ACCOMPLISHED AND IRREVERSIBLE. All people with the use of reason are free to choose. Just because a large percentage of a given race choose poorly, doesn’t mean that they weren’t – every single one of them – free to make that choice.

Like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pilate this year. Pious tradition holds that Pilate met his tragic end in the mountains of Central Italy. Having eventually returned to “Rome”, local tradition holds that Pilate committed suicide by drowning himself in a small, high mountain lake on the border between Umbria and the Marche region in Italy. The Lake exists to this day, and is called “The Lake of Pilate”. Not surprisingly, it was a hotspot for satanic rituals in the Middle Ages.

So the question for all of us, being that we are all sinners and falling short in our lives, are our sins like the sin of the Perfidious Jews, cold and calculated evil, or are our sins more like the sin of Pilate, the sin of allowing oneself to be coerced, willing to condemn an innocent man to death, in the case of Christ, TRUTH ITSELF, in order to save one’s own skin?

An extremely apt analogy of this today is the Perfidious sin of the BigPharma, government, corporate and media people who consciously executed the DeathJab crime against humanity – Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Albert Bourla, Stephane Bencel, every media talking head and corporate executive that relentlessly lied and coerced people into injecting themselves with a known poison with the aim of reducing the human population through excess death and sterilization. They certainly have “the greater sin”. But every doctor, nurse, pharmacist and business owner who fell for, or accepted a de facto bribe and participated, even while bleating, “But I have no chooooooice. I’m just following oooooorders…” still have committed horrific sin, and will, like Pontius Pilate, end up at the bottom of a lake if they don’t repent. The “washing my hands of this” pose, exactly as with Pilate, is a delusion.

And, of course, there is the analogy to the Bergoglian Antipapacy. There are the Perfidious bishops and Cardinals that have infiltrated the Church and executed the usurpation of the Petrine See, Jorge Mario Bergoglio being first among them, but there are also all of the other people who are going along with the Bergoglian Antipapacy, knowing full well that Holy Mother Church is under intense and relentless attack by an obvious, observable Antipope, but exactly like Pilate make a BIG SHOW of washing their hands of the matter, declaring, exactly like Pilate, that “there’s nothing we can doooooo… we can’t say anything…” because to do so would mean that “Caesar in Rome” would destroy them.

Our model in this analogy is St. John, who stayed with Our Lord and His mother, all the way to Calvary, and interestingly, died a natural death as a very old man – the only Apostle to NOT be martyred.

So which is it? Which do you choose? Which are you striving for? To merely be Pilate, guilty of “lesser sin” and deluding yourself into believing that you can wash your hands and disclaim any responsibility, saying, “See ye to it…”, and ending up at the bottom of the eternal lake, or are you going to strive to be stalwart, brave and faithful St. John, “the Disciple that Jesus loved”?

I hope this helps, and that one and all have a grace-filled Triduum and Easter.

It didn’t work with Pilate. It certainly won’t work for us.

A longtime reader emailed in asking that one and all be reminded of the events recorded in the twentieth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. If any of you readers out there are “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion” in the Novus Ordo, you really, really need to stop. Immediately.

As I have recounted on the Barnhardt Podcast, in my first year after being received into the Church (Novus Ordo), I did prison ministry at the Arapahoe County Jail. It was all laypeople. Not even the “permanent” deacons went. And, to my abject horror in retrospect, we were enjoined to perform “Catholic Communion Services” using a script authored by the not-very-conservative “conservative” Archbishop Charles Chaput, who it also turned out was rabidly anti-traditional liturgically. The “team leader” for the day would pass out, completely casually in the visitors locker room of the jail, The Blessed Sacrament to each team going to one of the six cellblocks. “How many do you want? Six? Okay. Here.” I think back on that and cringe. More than once I was handed a pyx filled with Hosts, which I then PUT IN MY POCKET and carried down to the cellblock. The only thing I can say in my own defense is that as I was walking down to the cellblock, I would “talk” to Our Lord, generally remarking to Him that He was the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, Infinite Love and Power Himself, and… He was in my pocket. At least I acknowledged Him, and the situation, which is more than could be said for most. But it was still so totally, horrifically wrong.

Since I could speak a little Spanish, I was almost always sent to the Spanish-speaking cellblock, and most of the men who came to the “Communion Service” were either maximum security or super-max, that is, wearing either orange or red jumpsuits. Was I ever scared? No way. I was safe as a kitten. I had 15 or more exceptionally capable bodyguards at all times. The men were mostly Mexican, with some Central Americans. And I learned two very important lessons about Eucharistic piety from those men. First, many of them did not receive Holy Communion. Why? Because they had, in their words, “two wives”. That is, they were divorced and civilly “re-married”, or divorced and shacking up with another woman. They KNEW this meant that they could not receive – but they still came. The other thing I learned from the Latino felons in the jail was pre-conciliar Eucharistic piety. When they walked into the room, and saw the pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament on the table, they would immediately fall to their knees and reverence Our Lord. They believed in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Far, far more than the upper-middle class American Novus Ordoists.

The Fruit of the First Sorrowful Mystery, Our Lord’s Agony in the Garden, is SORROW FOR SIN. Oftentimes poorly formed priests tell people that once they have confessed a sin, they should never think about it again. This is wrong. As one progresses and tries to advance in sanctity, one of the graces that follows is realizing not only what sins one has committed in the past, but realizing WHY those sins were sins, and just how awful they were. So, not only did I confess my participation in these “Catholic Communion Services” and the intrinsic sacrilege of them and of my physical handling of the Blessed Sacrament, but I also always mention these sins when I make a General Confession. Thank God! Thank God that now I not only know, but that the horror of it gets continually stronger. Let this process of realizing the kind and gravity of my sins never cease!

Which brings us to the whole question of physically touching the Blessed Sacrament. It is all in John 20. Our Resurrected Lord tells Mary Magdalene that SHE MAY NOT TOUCH HIM (verse 17), but just a few verses later specifically tells St. Thomas to stick his finger in Our Lord’s side (verse 27). What is the difference?

St. Thomas, having been present at The Last Supper which was not only about the institution of the Mass and the Eucharist, but also about the INSTITUTION OF THE PRIESTHOOD (“Do this in memory of Me” – only ordained PRIESTS can “do this”, that is, confect the Eucharist), was already an ordained priest. The Sacramentally Ordained may touch the Blessed Sacrament (Deacons, Priests, Bishops). Anyone else, male or female, may NOT. Period. In fact, the non-ordained may not even touch a vessel holding the Eucharist. Lay people may not TOUCH a ciborium, a chalice, a pyx, or a monstrance with bare hands, and preferably not at all. The pyx that I was given in ARSH 2007 when I began doing prison ministry, I later wrapped in a linen handkerchief and surrendered to a Traditional priest, because a vessel that held the Lord should not be sitting on a shelf in my house, and I should not even be touching it. Now, the only vessels that have contained The Eucharistic Lord in my house are ME and MY GUESTS.

It isn’t a question of contrition. The Penitent Magdalen was more contrite than any of us will probably ever be for our sins. St. Thomas was in a state of extreme and even obstinate doubt until the moment he physically touched Our Lord. It is a question of the supernatural reality of the priesthood, and of the supernatural reality of the consecration of the Eucharist within the Mass, and the Real, Physical, Substantial Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. 

Having unconsecrated hands touch the Blessed Sacrament is a direct attack upon the priesthood, and the Eucharist itself. It is a premeditated introduction of scandalous desacralization – the modern buzzword here is “DEMYTHOLOGIZATION“.

If you are NOT a Deacon, Priest or Bishop, STOP TOUCHING THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. Only receive Holy Communion from the hands of a Deacon, Priest or Bishop, and do so kneeling and on the tongue. Do not participate in the Freemasonic scandal of desacralization, the attack on the Priesthood, the Church and the Eucharist, which is what the whole “Extraordinary Monsters Ministers of Holy Communion” thing is. Believe me, you will be glad you did, and you will regret not having done so sooner.

Laypeople.

Ordained.

Today is Spy Wednesday, so called because this is the day in which Antipope Bergoglio’s homoerotic demoniacal patron, Judas Iscariot snuck off to the Sanhedrin to negotiate the price and seal the deal to betray Jesus Christ to be murdered.

Oftentimes in art, Judas Iscariot is depicted as ugly, almost to the point of physical deformity, with a super-heavy brow, beady eyes, etc. While one can certainly understand this iconographical approach, I think in these dark days it is more salutary for us to look upon Judas Iscariot as he almost certainly was – a perfectly normal-looking man.  Folks, evil people in this world don’t walk the streets drooling, with teeth filed to points.  It is generally difficult to pick out most evil people by sight.  The Victoria Nulands of the world are the exception, not the norm. In fact, as I think more and more people are waking up to the fact, evil oftentimes presents itself as completely pedestrian, and not uncommonly as attractive.

Consider the fact that at the Last Supper, the Apostles had no idea which one of them would betray Our Lord.  It isn’t as if Our Lord spoke of the betrayer, and everyone in the room turned and looked at Judas Iscariot.  In fact, St. John says in his Gospel that even when Judas got up to leave after Jesus said to him, “That which thou dost, do quickly,” most of the Apostles thought that Our Lord had sent Judas out to either buy supplies, or to do some work of charity.

I’d like to take it a step further and put forth the possibility that when all is revealed at the General Judgment and we are all able to see EVERYTHING, that it is possible that Judas Iscariot will have appeared to have been both pious and humanly attractive.  Further, I think that it is very possible that when we see all of Judas’ interactions with Our Lord, including private interactions, conversations, etc., over the course of Our Lord’s ministry and Judas’ time with Him as an Apostle, AND Judas’ interactions and relationship with the Blessed Mother (have you ever considered Judas with regards to Mary?) that it will become clear just exactly how deep and profound Judas’ betrayal was.  Because remember, Judas didn’t merely walk away.  Judas sold Our Lord TO BE MURDERED with full malice aforethought for today’s equivalent of approximately $500.

Why?  Two things.  First, as we see all around us today, Judas lusted after power.  Second, Judas was EMBARRASSED by Our Lord.  This all came to a head when Our Lord gave the Bread of Life discourse as recorded in John 6, explaining the Eucharist, and that He was about to institute the Eucharist whereby people would literally – not symbolically, not figuratively, but LITERALLY – eat Our Lord’s Body, Blood Soul and Divinity.  Judas lusted for earthly temporal power, and had all kinds of visions and plans for Jesus overthrowing the Roman occupation and that he, Judas would be made a prince of the land, with all the power that goes with it.  When Our Lord gave the Bread of Life discourse and all of the thousands of people got up and left, saying that Our Lord was insane and/or demonic, and Judas saw his planned power base and political ambitions going up in smoke, he was enraged.  He was further, and perhaps even more enraged because he was EMBARRASSED by the Eucharist, as so very, very many people – most especially clerics and prelates – are today.  I cover this in the essay, “THEY DON”T ACTUALLY BELIEVE ANY OF THAT BULL****.

So, still lusting after power, Judas decided that the thing to do was to get Jesus out of the way, which is to say dead, and then walk back and totally eliminate all of Jesus’ crazy-pants talk, especially the insane parts about the Eucharist, and then he, Judas, could “re-found” the movement and be its glorious leader.

By the way, is this ringing any bells?  Sounding familiar at all?

Let me help you – remember that Judas Iscariot was always going on about “the poor” because he kept the money box, and was a money-grubbing thief.

Antipope Bergoglio doesn’t even say Mass anymore. Is anyone here surprised? Why would an apostate sodomite Antipope continue to say Mass if he could get out of doing it?

And so, Judas decided that Jesus had to be eliminated. Filled with rage and spite from the embarrassment of the Eucharistic discourse, Judas went to the Sanhedrin and negotiated the price and terms.  Judas’ priority clearly was NOT getting rich off the Sanhedrin deal.  No, he was playing long ball.  He just wanted Jesus dead, and then the REAL MONEY would come flowing in.  So, Judas low-balled the offer – $500.  The Sanhedrin took the offer and the deal was sealed.

Which brings us to today.  Do you want to get an idea of how normal Judas looked, how benign, how pious, even?  Well, that’s easy.  Go look in the mirror.  Every time we sin, we are selling Jesus Christ unto death on the Cross, and selling Him cheap.  What is your price? What is my price?

Is it your salary?

Your pension?

Is it your estate?

Is it your planned future earnings as you slither up the ladder of “career advancement”?

Or is it even cheaper than that?  Is your price mere human respect and personal popularity?

Is your price hits on your website? Or likes on Facebook? How about clicks on your “Donate” button?

Is your price an orgasm, or several decades of orgasms?

Is your price as low as not having to actually get dressed and do anything?

As with Judas Iscariot, it is so very simple to undo our treasons against Christ – go to Him, confess and repent.  In fact, Judas did return the $500 to the Sanhedrin – that part was done.  How many people today refuse to do even that, or are choosing to believe the transparent lies from on high that their sins aren’t sins if they themselves “discern” that they aren’t, or worse yet, that God positively wills that they continue in their sins?

Judas knew and fully acknowledged that what he had done was wrong.  All Judas had to do from there was go to Our Lord and ask His forgiveness and mercy, and it would have come without hesitation.  All he had to do was get within shouting distance, which he could have.  Judas could have literally gone to Calvary and been absolved by Christ as He hung on the Cross.  The greatest sin ever committed, deicide, could have been wiped away, and Judas could have gone on to be a saint and the ultimate example of the penitent and forgiven sinner, the ultimate example of Christ’s mercy, far beyond Mary Magdalen.

But no.  Judas murdered himself, and thus freely, and completely unnecessarily chose hell.

We’ve all sold Our Lord, and for far less than Judas’ piddly $500.  We can all see ourselves in Judas.  Is it not time to take our “$500” and throw it back at the Sanhedrin, and then sprint to the foot of the Cross, confess to Him, and receive His Mercy?  If not now, when?

I hope this helps.

Christ, have mercy on us.

What does a person who has sold Christ cheap unto death on the Cross look like? Here’s an excellent example.

March 25th is the fixed date of the great Feast of the Annunciation… BUT since March 25th falls inside Holy Week this year, Holy Mother Church defers the Great Feast to the first day outside of Eastertide, which is Monday, April 8th this year. Why? Well, to be frank, so that we are not deprived of celebrating the literal pivot point of history: When Our Lady, in full freedom, said, “Yes” to God, and The Second Person of the Triune Godhead incarnated in her womb. A fascinating question in speculative theology is what God would have done had Our Lady not given her Fiat. This is NOT an heretical question. In fact, to argue that she HAD to say “yes”, and thus had no exercise of free will in the matter is the heresy. The fact that she was given the choice, and had the agency to choose, is the entire point. Her free choice to say “yes” undid the free choice of Eve to disobey God’s command. But BOTH women were free of Original Sin when presented with their respective choices. Eve was created from the side of Adam free from Original Sin, and yet fell. Our Lady was conceived without the stain of Original Sin by virtue of Our Lord’s Passion and death on the Cross reaching backwards through time to prevent her, and ONLY her after The Fall, to be conceived without the stain of Original Sin, but Our Lady was still FREE to choose. She was also, it must be remembered, FULL of Grace. Love MUST be free, by definition. Love and coercion cannot coexist. So, had Our Lady said “no”, would God have written off humanity and annihilated the world simply on the rationale that if the woman intended to be His highest created being refused to cooperate and thus the Trinity would end “the human project” and delight in the quintillions of angels, OR would He have found another way? This is a completely speculative question, the answer to which God only knows, and none of us need spend excessive amounts of time worrying about. All we need to know is that she said, “Fiat” and that as a result of her “Yes” we are redeemed by the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ and can be saved, and she is therefore the Co-redemptrix by her freely-chosen Fiat.

Even when this Annunciation-in-Holy-Week dynamic happens, the Christian world used to always hold March 25th as the first day of the New Year. My essay on this in the context of explaining the florid historical Latin acronym “ARSH” that I use on all of my dates is thus an annual tradition on March 25th, not a little bit because I still regularly get emails asking what ARSH stands for, even though there is a dedicated link to the essay in the Menu Bar, as well as the FAQs page. Also, because I have noticed over the years that the ARSH acronym absolutely drives malevolent actors completely, one might even say diabolically, crazy. As in full-blown spittle-flecked nutty. So, I watch and note VERY carefully who rages and throws fits about my use of ARSH, because only someone who is seriously morally deranged and a servant of evil could possibly be offended by the words, “In the Year of the Reparation of Human Salvation” in historical Latin acronym usage (see examples below). Only an enemy of Christ, witting or unwitting, could possibly have a problem, much less be driven to rage, by something so incomprehensibly beautiful as the Incarnation of The Lord, of which no human words could ever be sufficient in praise. If there were something more florid than ARSH, I would use it.

So, here is the essay, which is, according to some, rock-solid proof of my spectacular, deranged evil, even though we defer the celebration of the Feast until after Eastertide. You be the judge. And remember, the ARSH party this year is Monday, April 8th. –AB ’24

The abbreviated date prefix ARSH stands for:

Anno
Reparatae
Salutis
Humanae

This means, “in the Year of the Reparation of Human Salvation”.

There are several forms of this wonderfully and beautifully Christian prefix to dates.  The most common, which we are all familiar with, is “A.D.”, which of course stands for “Anno Domini”, which means, “the Year of The Lord”.  BUT, there are actually FIVE more forms which one sees in documents, books, plaques and inscriptions:

A.S. = Anno Salutae = “The Year of Salvation”

A.N.S. = Anno Nostrae Salutis = “The Year of Our Salvation”

A.S.H. = Anno Salutis Humanae = “The Year of Human Salvation”

A.R.S. = Anno Reparatae Salutis = “The Year of Salvation Accomplished/Reparated”

And finally, the most florid and most glorious:

A.R.S.H. = Anno Reparatae Salutis Humanae = “The Year of the Reparation of Human Salvation”

This “moment zero” from which all dates are counted is, of course, the Annunciation, when Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, became incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary at her words, “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum,” that is, “Be it done to me according to thy word.” This is why up until not too terribly long ago in Christendom, March 25, NOT January 1, marked the beginning of a new year, and was when the date rolled over.  Hence, March 24, ARSH 1514 was followed the next day by March 25, ARSH 1515.

This event is so massively incomprehensible in its infinite love for mankind that we bend the knee TWICE at Mass when it is mentioned:  the first instance is when the Creed is recited.  All should kneel at the words, “Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto ex María Vírgine: Et homo factus est,” that is in English, “And became incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary: and was made man.”

The second instance is at the Last Gospel, the first fourteen verses of St. John’s Gospel, which is recited at the end of almost every Mass, all genuflect at the words, “Et Verbum caro factum est,” which is, “And the Word was made flesh.”

And so, years and years ago, in fact, when I was sixteen years old and got my first checking account, I started always putting “A.D.” beside the date when I wrote checks, just as a little way of working a witness to the Incarnation into daily life.  Later, when I launched Barnhardt.biz, I asked my website developer to write into the code that all timestamps would include “A.D.”  THEN, over  a decade ago, after visiting Rome on pilgrimage, the abbreviation ARSH was suggested to me as the “ultimate” date prefix.  I was sold, because with me, it’s “go big or go home”.  And there are no words adequate to declare the awesome loving miracle of God incarnating as Man so that we might be saved.

I find it a strange compliment that 1958 sedevacantists and Trad Inc. partisans most especially, seem to think that the pinnacle and proof of my evil and stupidity is my little revival of the use of a beautiful Latin abbreviation for the pivot point of Salvation History when the Blessed Virgin Mary by her freely-chosen “Fiat” became the Mother of God and Co-redemptrix, by which all of mankind, including atheists, Communists, Jews and musloids, all measure time.

It’s… odd.

Here are some pics of ARSH used in various places:

An inscription from Naples, Italy.  Not ridiculous.

From a Hungarian text. Not ridiculous.

From a French text, in fact explaining Latin abbreviations. Not ridiculous.

(This “hits harder” with each passing year given current events. Pun enthusiastically intended. -AB ’24)

On Palm Sunday thirty-seven years ago, having been locked out of their church because they were a Traditional Latin Mass parish, the parishioners at St. Louis Port Marly gathered, Mass was celebrated outside in front of the church, and then to strains of “Christus Vincit” the men used a battering ram to bust through a wall and gain entrance to their church.

No one feared arrest. No one feared getting a ticket. No one feared sodomite apostates. They feared only God.

The sportiness begins at 24:00.

Un! Deux! Trois!!!

Be inspired.