Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day - a day set aside not so we can grill burgers and toss back beers while the kids swim in the pool, but for the solemn purpose of honoring our servicemen who died while defending America's citizens from enemies who have sought to drive freedom from our shores.

From the first person who perished on Lexington’s village green in 1775, up to the most recent fatality in the Middle East, the list of the fallen is long. Each person on that list made a sacrifice that was ultimate in its earthly finality. We should resolve to do everything in our power to defend America's founding principles against all foes - domestic in addition to foreign, orators in addition to terrorists - to ensure that those people did not die in vain.

To observe past Memorial Days, I have published a couple letters that were written by soldiers during wartime. Here they are again.

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This first one was from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, to his wife. He was killed in the Battle of First Bull Run one week after writing it:

July 14, 1861

Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And it is hard for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us.

I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me – perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly I would wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness.

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be near you, in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights…always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

Sullivan Ballou

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This next letter was written by Arnold Rahe, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, with instructions that it be delivered to his parents if he did not survive. He was killed in action shortly thereafter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Strange thing about this letter; if I am alive a month from now you will not receive it, for its coming to you will mean that after my twenty-sixth birthday God has decided I’ve been on earth long enough and He wants me to come up and take the examination for permanent service with Him. It’s hard to write a letter like this; there are a million and one things I want to say; there are so many I ought to say if this is the last letter I ever write to you. I’m telling you that I love you two so very much; not one better than the other but absolutely equally. Some things a man can never thank his parents enough for; they come to be taken for granted through the years; care when you are a child, and countless favors as he grows up. I am recalling now all your prayers, your watchfulness -- all the sacrifices that were made for me when sacrifice was a real thing and not just a word to be used in speeches.

For any and all grief I caused you in this 26 years, I’m most heartily sorry. I know that I can never make up for those little hurts and real wounds, but maybe if God permits me to be with Him above, I can help out there. It’s a funny thing about this mission, but I don’t think I’ll come back alive. Call it an Irishman’s hunch or a pre-sentiment or whatever you will. I believe it is Our Lord and His Blessed Mother giving me a tip to be prepared. In the event that I am killed you can have the consolation of knowing that it was in the “line of duty” to my country. I am saddened because I shall not be with you in your life’s later years, but until we meet I want you to know that I die as I tried to live, the way you taught me. Life has turned out different from the way we planned it, and at 26 I die with many things to live for, but the loss of the few remaining years unlived together is as nothing compared to the eternity to which we go.

As I prepare for this last mission, I am a bit homesick. I have been at other times when I thought of you, when I lost a friend, when I wondered when and how this war would end. But, the whole world is homesick! I have never written like this before, even though I have been through the “valley of the shadows” many times, but this night, Mother and Dad, you are so very close to me and I long so to talk to you. I think of you and of home. America has asked much of our generation, but I am glad to give her all I have because she has given me so much.

Goodnight, dear Mother and Dad. God love you.

Your loving son,

(Bud) Arnold Rahe

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God bless them all, and may they never be forgotten.

Marian Musings, Part X

While growing up, this grandson of a Baptist preacher never really had any gripes with the way Catholic and Orthodox Christians regard Mary.

Artwork of her is holy and points to God. And praying to her didn't strike me as bad, since it's not like those saying the prayers ever ask her to do God's job or go against his will.

Her being sinless didn't seem like a stretch, though admittedly, the thought of her remaining perpetually virgin did. But then again, perpetual virginity only seemed like a stretch, for how could the thought of such a singularly remarkable woman having lived in a remarkable way be out of the question?

If my younger self had to pick a specific thing that felt like it had a strong chance of being false, it would have been the title Queen of Heaven, because attaching a royal title to someone known for the very non-royal qualities of humility and servanthood just felt off.

Well, I started this series almost a year ago and have spent much of it encouraging "fellow Protestants" to set aside preconceived notions and look at Mary through the lenses of capital-C Catholicism and capital-O Orthodoxy - and not being a hypocrite where faith is concerned, I have walked that walk myself where this matter of queenship is concerned. 

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My main hang-up with referring to Mary as a queen sprang largely from my Western conception of what it means to be a queen. When those of us from the West and particularly the United States hear that word, we think of monarchy and all the pretentious and authoritarian baggage it entails. To us, a queen is usually a stern individual who rules from on high, not a helper who subjugates herself to the good of others.

The Bible, however, is neither modern nor Western. To properly understand it you must look at it from the non-modern, non-Western context that created it - or at least make an honest effort to look at it from that context - and once you do, things shift.

Its books were produced by ancient Hebrews, for whom the queen was not the king's wife but rather his mother. You see this reflected in the Davidic line - to which Jesus belonged - when you consider that in all four Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles, when new kings get coronated, their mothers are named while their wives go unmentioned.

Think also of the fact that when Bathsheba's husband David was king, she "bowed with her face to the ground and paid homage to the king" (1 Kings 1:31) yet when her son Solomon was king, it was he who "rose to meet her and bowed down to her" (1 Kings 2:19).

And don't downplay the significance of 1 Kings 2:19 going on to say that Bathesheba "sat on his right," for in biblical terns, to be situated to the right of a powerful person meant you too had a level of authority. This is why Jesus is repeatedly said to be "at the right hand" of the Father.

Scripture's original readers and hearers wouldn't need to be told that Bathsheba's motherhood is what made her queen because it went without saying. When they heard Jesus described in kingly ways - you know, King of Kings, King of the Jews, King of Israel - they likewise would have thought of his mother in queenly ways, especially in light of Revelation 12:1 depicting her with "a crown of twelve stars."

When you consider that Jesus described himself as a kind of king, what would have been strange is for early Christians to not think of Mary as a kind of queen.

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In light of the above, I feel like I could go ahead and end this post right now, but first I want to add that it wasn't helpful that the first time I heard the word "queen" associated with Mary, it came in the packaging of the phrase "Queen of Heaven." The concept is more properly called "Mary's queenship," and it certainly would have landed on my ears better if that was how I first heard it rendered.

Regardless, if I had applied more thought back whenever that was, I should have grasped that Heaven is a kind and serving realm and thus I should have concluded that being called its queen is not on par with being called monarchical and authoritarian. Unfortunately, my reactive brain did take it to mean monarchical and authoritarian, then erroneously assumed that calling someone a queen of Heaven, which is "higher" than Earth, implies that person is even more monarchical and authoritarian than a monarch on Earth.

When I type it out like that, the error of my gut reaction is clear. When I remember what Heaven actually is and take into account what queen meant to ancient Hebrews, there is no reason to recoil from the thought of Mary as queen. But my brain recoiled simply because of the preconceived notions I held as an American, and I'm convinced I am far from alone in that, and, getting back to where I want to go with this section: Queen of Heaven is just one of many phrases that are used to evoke Mary's queenship, and if I had heard any of the others first, I would have reacted differently.

Only one of the 22 chapter titles in this Fulton Sheen classic refers to Mary in queenly ways, and does so by calling her Queen of Mercy. That fits beautifully, and bears no contrast to those qualities of humility and servanthood I mentioned earlier. Queen of Mercy feels right even with modern Western/American pre-programming, does it not?

Mary is also called Queen of Martyrs, Queen of Peace, Queen of Christians, Queen of Saints, and Queen of Angels. When you recall again what queen meant in the culture whence Christ deliberately came to Earth through her, none of those appellations should seem off-putting to a person who believes in Christ's divinity.

I will close by quoting from the aforementioned chapter from Sheen's book: "There are many sheaves in the field that the priests and sisters and the faithful are unable to gather in. It is Mary's role to follow these reapers to gather the sinners in... It is easy for the brothers of Christ to call on the Father, but it is not easy for the strangers and the enemies. This role Mary plays. She is not only the Mother of those who are in the state of grace but also the Queen of those who are not."

On that note, as they say in France: Profitez de vos bénédictions.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship
    Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
    Part VIII: Our Lady of Guadalupe
    Part IX: On Good Friday

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at the grotto of Saint Leo Abbey in Florida.

Note #3: If you're interested in listening to a deeper dive into the topic of how "the queen was the mom," this eighteen-minute presentation by Brant Pitre does a great job delving into it.

Marian Musings, Part IX

Easter is the most significant event of the year for Christians, and, properly understood, it cannot be constrained to the day we set aside to recognize the fact that Jesus rose from the dead twenty centuries ago.

Holy Week stretches from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, aka Resurrection Day, and I think we can be guilty of disservice if we pull apart its components that flow from Maundy Thursday through Resurrection Day. After all, the Last Supper, Gethsemane, betrayal, trials, scourging, crucifixion, earthquake, afternoon darkness, burial, Black Saturday, and resurrection all together form a cohesive story, and whenever we separate one part of a story to view it in isolation, we run the risk of missing something important.

But having said that, sometimes it is good to consider a component's unique attributes. Take Claudia Procula, for example - she would be lost to time if we didn't occasionally pause during the Easter story and think of how odd it must have been for Pilate to receive her message, right?

With that in mind, here I am on Good Friday, hitting the publish button on some thoughts about what it must have been like for the mother of Jesus on that day her son got nailed to the cross not for his sins, of which there were none, but for ours, which are immeasurable.

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Although I prefer not to start by repeating something I've already touched on in this series, there are plenty of well-intentioned folks who might be thinking it's wrong to write about Christ's mother on the anniversary of his sacrifice. Therefore, I feel I must stress something I've always thought to be obvious: For Christians to recognize and honor Mary does not in any way subtract from their recognition and honor of Jesus.

If you have children, you certainly know that when your second child arrived and you started loving him or her, that did not subtract from the love you have for your firstborn. Why would this truth about love not also apply to honor?

It's a safe bet that the bond felt by a mother for her child is unlike anything a man can conceive of, and when it comes to Mary, like I observed back in Part II, "there is more going on here than 'just' motherhood." Though it's undeniable she was Jesus' mother and he was God in the flesh, many people from Protestant and non-denominational backgrounds get squirrely when they hear her described as "the mother of God." What they do not realize is that that title was coined specifically to defend his divinity against early heresies that opposed it.

Arianism - which rejected the gospel by identifying Jesus not as the Creator, but as a created being - was in fact such a threat that by the turn of the fourth century a sizable percentage of the world's clergy, many of whom were focused on political power, accepted it. Arianism's rise was the prime reason Christianity's first ecumenical council was held, and had a young African deacon named Athanasius not held his ground in front of the 300+ bishops who traveled to Nicaea for that council, Arianism likely would have prevailed.

Athanasius was not the first person to refer to Mary as the Theotokos (which technically translates into English as "God-bearer," giving rise to the more common rendering "mother of God") but in defending Christ's divinity at Nicaea, he invoked it so persuasively that its authenticity as sword and shield of the faith was irrefutable.

Its authenticity came into even sharper focus when another heresy called Nestorianism reared its head a century later. Claiming that Jesus' divinity and humanity were separable throughout the incarnation, an influential archbishop named Nestorius denied the hypostatic union of Jesus being at once both fully God and fully man. The theological problems spilling from that error are many, and one of the things it gave rise to was the contorted concept of Jesus being two different entities sharing one body, with Mary having borne only the one described as his "human nature."

Nestorius advanced the error by taking direct aim at the time-honored title Theotokos and delivering sermons in which he said it should be replaced by Christotokos. Defenders of Christian orthodoxy rebuffed him by asserting that mothers give birth to people, not "natures," thus affirming the hypostatic union's centrality and warning that its very concept would be undermined by dispensing with the title Theotokos.

If that sounds like a bunch of academic gobbledygook, remember: Things sounding like academic gobbledygook have a long history of subverting truth and giving rise to dangerous movements, and the ideas of Nestorius were deemed to be so serious that another ecumenical council - the third in Christian history, this time held in Ephesus - was convoked to settle the matter.

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Sorry if it feels like my inner historian hijacked a post that's supposed to be about Mary and Easter, but that inner historian finds it significant that all of Christianity accepted the Council of Ephesus' affirmation of Theotokos and condemnation of Nestorianism - just like all of Christianity had earlier accepted the Council of Nicaea's condemnation of Arianism. This all happened before any of the faith's churches stopped attending the councils or accepting their rulings.

What history shows to be novel and late-arriving is the minimizing of Mary, and like I outlined back in Part IV, exultation of her in the early centuries was not limited merely to the title Theotokos. 

Artistic depictions of Christ's mother did not suddenly become a thing in the Middle Ages, as there is at least one painting of her in the catacombs and it has long been thought that the world's first painting of her was done by Luke himself, in a style that would later become known as Hodegetria.

Through the ages, paintings of Jesus' corpse being brought down from the cross show Mary there, sometimes cradling the corpse in her arms; and though grief seems like the most logical place to start pondering what Good Friday was like for her, perhaps we should start somewhere else. Perhaps we should start with a quality she possessed in spades, but which almost always gets overlooked: courage.

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While intentionally looking through Pope John Paul II's book Crossing the Threshold of Hope a few weeks ago, I learned that he wrote the following on page 220: "'Be not afraid!' Christ said to the apostles and to the women after the Resurrection. According to the Gospels, these words were not addressed to Mary. Strong in her faith, she had no fear."

After seeing it spelled out like that, it was so obvious I felt like a dunce for making it halfway to 110 before noticing that not only is Mary loving, nurturing, and peaceful, but also preternaturally brave - so brave she belongs in front of Richard the Lionheart, Joan of Arc, and many others whom history remembers for that trait.

She was a teen, and probably closer to 12 than 20, when she was approached by Gabriel and told of the plan for her to become pregnant well before her wedding feast. Yet she agreed without hesitation and asked only one question.

She knew that her betrothed, being aware the child was not his, was likely to divorce her. She knew the stigma of her pregnancy in that circumstance would open her up to the possibility of death by stoning; and that even if stoning was not imposed, the stigma would still ruin her reputation and make it effectively impossible for her to marry. Yet she agreed without hesitation.

When Joseph was mandated to traverse some 70 miles of wild terrain for the Quirinian census, Mary went with him despite being nine months pregnant... then gave birth amongst livestock in what you and I would consider to be more cave than stable, without any doctor or midwife present to assist... and later, after the Magi departed, she and Joseph fled to Egypt - again traversing wildlands, this time by night with child in tow - to escape the slaughterers sent by Herod... and she did these things without hesitation.

She knew Jesus' public ministry was destined to bring her pain that would, according to Simeon, be akin to "a sword pierc(ing) through your own soul," yet she prodded him to start the ministry when she approached him about the wine at Cana, again acting without hesitation.

And come Good Friday, although it meant experiencing prolonged agony like nothing any human has ever faced, Mary accompanied her son from the avulsions of the flagrum to the asphyxiation of the cross, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on him during those tortures she knew she was powerless to prevent. This too she did without hesitation.

All of the above require a degree of courage no human can fathom, but to which every human should aspire.

And courage just so "happens" to be integral to another theological virtue we are called to exhibit: faith.

Coincidence? No.

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We are constantly told to step out in faith, or to look upon those who do as examples we should model.

But nobody would ever step out in faith if they weren't buoyed by courage, would they?

Whenever the phrase "step out" is brought to bear, we are obviously talking about a faith that requires all-caps, risk-taking trust, not some run of the mill faith with lower case trust. We are talking about the difference between having faith you'll make it safely through a vast forest when you enter through undergrowth at midnight without a flashlight, versus having faith you'll make it safely through when you enter on a well-marked trail at noon. 

Without courage being there to nourish it, the latter faith might persist when the chips are down, but it is certain to at least falter - and it runs a not-small chance of failing altogether.

As with the chicken and egg, so with courage and faith. We don't know which came first, but we know they are symbiotic and we know neither can attain its fullness without the other. So it stands to reason that Mary, history's ultimate human, possessed the fullness of both. She exhibited both virtues at every step of her progression through Scripture, each one feeding the other so that they crested in tandem.

This was always evident, but at no point was it so evident as it was on Good Friday, when she deliberately submitted her soul to anguish and, like Father John Waiss observed in his book Bible Mary, resolutely stood and fulfilled her son's command to watch and pray in the face of horror.

Mary's qualities are the ideal to which everyone should strive. Sorely mistaken are they who would say that meditating about her on Good Friday distracts us from the core of Christianity. To the contrary, it focuses us on that core by illuminating how to trust and revere her son.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship
    Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
    Part VIII: Our Lady of Guadalupe

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at the fourth Station of the Cross (Jesus Meets His Mother) in the meditation garden of St. Mary Catholic Church in Tampa, Florida.

"Presidents Day"

  

Don't get me wrong. I am just as happy as anyone else to have a day off work. And my love for this nation because of its founding principles is unsurpassed.

But I have always had a big problem with there being a national holiday called Presidents Day. I even published a piece about it seventeen years ago, in which I summed up my problem by saying that "carelessly lumping all presidents together for a generic third-Monday holiday...places the corrupt alongside the honorable, the cowardly alongside the brave, the inept alongside the able - and makes absolutely no distinction between them."

While that problem itself remains the same, its magnitude has grown exponentially worse due to: 1] the weirdly hagiographic way many partisans fawn over two of the three presidents we have since experienced, along with 2] the creepily puppeteered nature of the other president we've since experienced (obviously, Biden).

At this particular moment, the magnitude of the problem feels existential thanks to the seemingly infinite tentacles of the Epstein files. As we incrementally receive each drip and drab of evidence of evil within them, it becomes clearer and clearer that people with power and influence can never be trusted.

That should have already been obvious to people who share my conservative worldview, seeing as how that worldview is predicated on the belief that all humans are sinful by nature, that power inherently corrupts, and that humans with power must therefore be subject to checks and balances and treated without favor.

What has me particularly troubled is how many people who share that worldview - people who, I repeat, should know better - are turning out to be just as willfully blind as ideological liberals when it comes to overlooking sins committed by those on "our" side.

The evil we are seeing in the Epstein files - and make no mistake, it is evil - is bipartisan, both domestically and internationally. As a Republican, I understand the knee-jerk irritation over YouTube thumbnails about Epstein showing so many images of Donald Trump, despite the fact that what we've seen in the files supports his consistent claim to have severed ties with Epstein years ago. And as a defender of Western civilization, I understand the knee-jerk irritation over YouTube thumbnails about Epstein showing so many images of Benjamin Netanyahu without showing any of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.

But if anyone allows the jerking of his knees to guide the direction of his eyes, he inevitably won't see many of the things that are right there in front of him and need to be seen.

The latest doc dump in the Epstein files contains more than three million documents and I am not here to insult your intelligence by pretending to have seen them all. But from what I do know, they not only confirm what we already suspected in terms of child sex trafficking and upper crust bacchanalia, they also contain strong indications of orchestrated cannibalism.

Let that sink in.

Orchestrated. Cannibalism. Strong indications of.

Child. Sex Trafficking. Confirmed.

The stuff in the files causes claims that once would have been dismissed as crackpot paranoia to suddenly become credible. Politicians, celebrities, and tycoons from all over the world appear in the files. Though we cannot tell how much each of them knew or to what extent each was involved, they are all there.

You may be asking what this has to do with the third Monday of February being set aside as a U.S. holiday called Presidents Day? Well, if we date the beginning of the Epstein scandal only to the infamous "sweetheart deal" he received from the U.S. Department of Justice, the cold hard fact is that it stretches to six presidential terms and four presidents, two of whom are Democrats and two of whom are Republicans.

Sure, it's tempting for those of us who vote GOP to point out that a fifth president is both a Democrat and by far the most implicated POTUS in the documents... Admittedly, I just did point that out, which at face value makes the "score" three Democrats to two Republicans... But why should anyone care, when what really matters is that the fingerprints of both parties are on the files and, if we insist on focusing simply on presidents, no matter how tangentially tied they may be, we're now talking about every president who has occupied the Oval Office for the past thirty-three years.

When it comes to our current president, the problem is: 1] Trump made releasing the Epstein files a big part of his 2024 campaign, then backtracked after taking office; 2] Trump's attorney general claimed to have Epstein's "client list" on her desk ready to release, then didn't release it, then said there really wasn't a "list," then released but a piddling and oft-redacted fraction of the files, which we all know is "the list" for all intents and purposes; and 3] Trump's deputy attorney general claimed there was nothing in said files that could be used to bring charges against anybody, even though any sentient human with half a brain will immediately know that claim is utter bullshit as soon as he starts perusing said files.

Flip the table around. If this happened under a Democrat administration, we would be screaming for heads to roll and probably calling the POTUS unfit for office.

If we believe what we say we believe, we cannot give the current administration a pass simply because the man at its head received our vote 468 days ago.

We can be thankful for Trump green-lighting the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons facilities without accepting, as a "cost of doing business," his culpability in allowing pedophile slavers to slip away from justice.

If it's about principles and not persons, we have to stand up for the principle at hand regardless of the person who's in the Klieg lights. This goes for our political foes as well as our political allies, and it shouldn't be hard to do.

If we conservatives can't pull it off, it means we are susceptible to cults of personality and must stop pretending like that susceptibility is a purely left wing phenomenon.

And if we are susceptible to cults of personality, then we - this time meaning liberals, conservatives, centrists, and apoliticals alike - ought not have a holiday that indiscriminately celebrates heads of government.