Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle and Martyr

Today is the feast of St. Thomas, Apostle and Martyr. He is commonly referred to as "Doubting Thomas," from the account in John 20:24-29. The account John gives is marvelous, and invites plenty of reflection. Before the "reforms" of 1969, the Church encouraged Her Faithful to silently say what Thomas said when he realized he had touched the Word Made Flesh - "My Lord and my God!" - at the Major Elevations at Mass. This is a practice that has fallen to the wayside, and is worthy of revival in one's life.

However, it would be an injustice to focus on Thomas' doubt. (In our day and age, sadly, this is often the case.) After the Upper Room, St. Thomas went on to be an Apostle and Martyr in the truest sense of the words. Here is what Fr. Leonard Goffine (1649 - 1719) wrote about the Saint for December 21st:

Thomas, also called Didymus, or the twin, was a fisherman of Galilee. After having been received among the apostles he accompanied Jesus in all His journeys, and uniformly showed docility, zeal, and love towards Him, particularly on the occasion of His going to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead. For when the apostles were afraid to go thither, because the Jews desired to kill Jesus, Thomas, full of courage, said, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him" (John xi.16). His faith, indeed, wavered for a moment in regard to the resurrection of Christ; but no sooner had Christ satisfied him thereof by showing His wounds, than he cried out with firm faith, "My Lord and my God." St. Gregory thereupon says, "God overruled the doubting of Thomas to our good, since that very doubt has profited us more than the ready belief of the other disciples, inasmuch as thereby Christ was induced to give so much clearer proofs of His resurrection, in order to confirm us in the belief of it." Thomas showed the firmness of his faith by the innumerable labors which he undertook, and by the sufferings that he endured for Christ. He traversed the most extensive and remote countries, and preached Jesus to the Armenians, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and other barbarous and wicked nations, enduring in the course of his labors, with astonishing firmness, the greatest sufferings for the honor of God and the salvation of men. Finally he came to India, when, in the city of Calamina, or Meliapor, he underwent a glorious martyrdom, being pierced through with lances, by order of the idolatrous priests, as he was praying at the foot of the cross. So much did the apostle do to repair a single fault; but we, who every day commit so many - what do we do to repair them? 

The Feast of St. Thomas supersedes all but the Sundays in Advent.

Ora pro nobis, Sancte Thoma!

St. Raphael

Magnificat

Salve Regina

FUNERAL OF HER MAJESTY, QUEEN ELIZABETH II

 

BATTLE OF BRITAIN DAY ~ 82nd ANNIVERSARY

 

QUEEN ELIZABETH II: REQUIESCAT IN PACE

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II died today at Balmoral at the age of 96. May Our Lord Jesus Christ be merciful upon her soul. 

 

"Come on out, come on out, there's going to be a war". Reflections on the Anniversary of World War 2

This day, 83 years ago, the forces of Satan crossed the Polish border and unleashed on the world a torrent of bloodshed. In the early hours of that fateful day, Nazi aircraft began to bomb Warsaw leading to the eventual occupation of that nation with co-conspirator, Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks attacked Poland on the 17th, following the secret protocols in the vile Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. In fact, Nazis had even been training in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. The right and left hand of Satan met at the river San - the dividing line between the two totalitarian States. Eventually, due to far greater organization and international connections and assorted fellow travellers,  the communist empire would devour more than half of Europe and lead to its monstrous extension over the globe leading to such a death count, that even the fiendish Hitler would end up looking like a choir boy. 

 "Come on out, come on out, there's going to be  a war", were the words my mother recalled to me of her mother hurrying down to the ocean side as she played with my uncle at Southend on Sea. That fateful day was September 3rd, and Britain and France had just declared war on Germany. A few hundred miles away, in my father's country the forces of Satanic evil were busily at work, already bombing hospitals and murdering civilians. 

Stalin directing Hitler into a losing war 

The result for Poland was the virtual extermination of Poland's Jews - protected by King Kazimir the Great centuries earlier, when Jews were being hounded out of other European states. Nazi hatred for the Catholic Church too was on display with arrests and executions of priests. Mass was proscribed, with the sole Mass at the Wawel Cathedral under the eye of the Gestapo. It was in this environment that the great Archbishop Sapiecha would take on a seminarian named Karol Wojtyla. 

My father was a witness to Nazi brutality. Early during the war, he and my grandmother on a number of occasions would sneak food to the Jews of Przemysl and pass food through the wired off area where the Jews were kept, prior to deportation to the death camps. My father always remembered this, and he remembered to his horror seeing behind the wire a young teenage boy from his class in school. Eventually my father would be arrested in a "Lapanka" (or street catch) and sent to Germany for slave labour. He then ended up in Norway on an island doing tree cutting; transferred to a camp near the Swedish border, he and another teenager escaped up into the mountains and to freedom in Sweden. He always remembered seeing the German Army motorbikes travelling along the road far below looking for them. In fact, this escape was even more daring for two young men had tried it earlier and had been shot. From Stockholm he eventually he would end up in Scotland in the armed forces... from then, onto London where he met my very English mother (who left London and spent her war years in Llandudno, Wales) - and the rest is history. 

So, please pray for Poland that she may remain true to her ancient Faith.