Solemnity of the Most Precious Blood, Pentecost VI
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
This weekend we add a “well done!” to our welcome for the brave young adults who are gathering together here despite the inconveniences of traveling in a time of tyranny and revolution. We’re delighted to have you with us, and pray for the smooth success, both spiritual and social, of your days at St. Gertrude the Great.
How cheering was Independence Day, or rather Independence evening. Along with St. John’s Eve, the delightful picnic supper and socializing with no particular distancing or muzzles in place, it was encouraging, a true relief. I think our fellow Americans must have felt this same way, from the beauty and abundance of the fireworks, three or four at the same time, I could follow from the front room at the rectory.
The Good Lord contributed to the gorgeous night lights, and outdid all the rest. The Buck or Wort Moon (meaning medicinal plants they used to gather in the full moon) rose above the horizon, so large and bright, timed to coincide with the festive fireworks. What a relief it was to have something, some enjoyment, of “the good old days,” of just a few months ago, before they were seized and cancelled by pretext and lies. Nobody has so far cancelled the moon, though. So much for God’s view of “cancel culture.” May Our Lady, “beautiful as the moon,” come back to the country dedicated to her Immaculate Conception.
Today we honor the supremely antirevolutionary devotion of the Precious Blood, our purification, our protection and expiation, our all. This devotion also commemorates in its liturgical establishment a glorious counterrevolution, which should fill us with hope, even as the struggle intensifies for us this summer.
How much we must pray to Jesus, to be covered with His Precious Blood, its saving flood, cheered and encouraged. Let the red stripes on the American flag remind us that “by His stripes you were healed,” as we both offer and receive the Blood of the Man God, the Blood which redeemed us once, and saves us now. The feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel comes Thursday. She clothes her Brown Scapular children daily with “the dyed garments of the Precious Blood,” the prayer says. Wear your scapular, be under this double protection.
Fr. McKenna is back from his southernmost and northernmost missions, spanning our nation’s width, Texas and North Dakota, and will have interesting reports for us. One of the long-term and so faithful members of our border chapel, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in El Paso, Texas, was dying. Refused and refused and refused again permission to visit this dying man with the comforts of our religion, Father persevered until he got to yes, and to Dick Joy’s bedside. He had a holy death. Pray for his soul, and for our priests. Pray for holy perseverance.
Pete Gebel, one of our “originals” both in his early and persevering attendance and in his open and friendly personality, died Tuesday after a long, isolating and painful illness. We will miss you, Pete! But rest in peace, dear friend. Pete was everybody’s doctor, and always had a wise word of advice, generously offered.
Amid the losses, we were cheered by news that one of Victor Ritze’s sons got in to see his dad, “through the window,” instead of on the other side of it, as you see prisoners, talking through the phone. Vic was in a bad way after months of solitary confinement, but the visit did him much good. What a world!
Fr. Lehtoranta is enjoying a few days’ vacation, traveling around poor Minnesota, following Finnish traces, monuments and settlements. Many places were closed due to the Covid Hoax, but he had a good time, I think. Lake Superior is magnificent. We are grateful to Father for covering as well St. Hugh in Milwaukee with Sunday Mass and more during his “time off.”
The conflict intensifies. You will have to go out of your way to hear about it, but the resistance does as well. Already is it time for our peaceful, powerful prayer protest; the procession of the Holy Rosary tomorrow evening, as usual, in West Chester. Come. You have no idea how much good is done, temporal as well as spiritual, by these public prayers, as well as by your own personal and common sense protests.
God bless you, God bless our young adults, and God bless our sheriff Rick Jones. Thank God for leading us to Butler County.
–Bp. Dolan