Eleison Comments DCXCIII ( 24 OCTOBER 2020 )
"The family can live, today and tomorrow.
With God's help, there is a way."
Humanly speaking, the horizon is very dark around us; demonic forces are tearing the family apart because it is God's way of putting souls on the path to Heaven. For this reason, it is appropriate for readers of these "Comments" to summarize an email sent to their editor by a man living in the United States, father of a family of eight children. He is neither desperate nor afraid. He lives in the middle of the bush. Once a month he is able to attend traditional mass in a chapel near his home. His example shows that it is always possible to have reason to keep. Here is the gist of his email.
"We survive spiritually and sacramentally in our Resistance chapel with a monthly Mass. We will continue to need it as long as we need Mass and the sacraments. I don't think that this need (or the crisis in the Church) will end any time soon. The chapel is doing well, but at the last two Masses, attendance was lower. For various reasons, many traditional Catholics seem to be giving in to the panic caused by the media.
Our family is doing well, we have nothing to complain about. We are soon expecting our ninth child. We had another boy recently. Everyone notices how different he is from the girls. He explores everything, immerses himself in everything, is more interested in "things", machines, equipment, etc. than in people. Since we have several girls, we really notice the innate differences between boys and girls. All our children love music, because I teach them to love and feel it: melody, harmony, rhythm, and to taste the lyrics. We listen to folk music, mostly Irish, a variety of instrumental and classical music, and singing. On the other hand, any song that comes from a place of anguish, despair, depression, hatred, etc., is bad, ugly, and is to be rejected.
I work full time from my home office for a Catholic work that seems to grow more and more Catholic every year, unlike the FSSPX, which once had the complete truth, but year after year is losing it. If the work for which I work continues to be faithful to the Truth as it has been until now, it will one day have to become fully traditional or betray it by changing course. There is no other choice. I also work manually in our gardens that we have just enlarged, having learned, a few years ago, the gardening method of the "Garden of Eden". Our soil is pure clay and very poor, but with mulch, we can imitate God's nature, allowing the soil to be enriched from the decay of organic matter. Thanks to a recently discovered source of free wood chips, I have enough to make my own mulch. All my children are helping me use this new technique to treat our fruit trees and start making flower beds. We hope to be able to produce enough food here soon. At present we have two garden beds measuring up to 1,500 square feet (Circa 140 m²).
We are very concerned about the results of this year's elections. My feeling is that 2016 is going to be a breeze compared to 2020, when you think of all the COVID craziness, the nationwide riots because a black man overdosed on Fentanyl. Maybe the fight is just between the real bad guys (Deep State) on the one hand, and lesser bad guys, rivals on the other (Trump and his associates). Maybe Trump is simply less bad? Maybe he hasn't been involved in child sacrifice, child torture or other evil acts as others have? My hopes are limited. But I don't think Trump is on the side of the deep state. I will vote for him because of his unprecedented actions against abortion, and for freedom in general.
Financially, we are getting by, thanks to the many blessings from Heaven. But the greatest of these blessings is to have learned, still as a teenager, the evils of usury practiced by the banks. Without this knowledge of economics, I might be blameless and sinless, but still deeply in debt and misery. My wife too has always been sober, so we have always lived within our means, renouncing luxury and working hard, so that now we are reaping the benefits. Today we are completely free of debt, even with eight children and only one modest income. I point out to my children that it took years of frugal living and hard work to get there, but now it's done.
As for the local chapel, many souls come but, alas, do not return. However, some are now looking for a Tridentine Mass where they can continue to receive Holy Communion on their lips, even though our diocese forbids it: "Covid" obliges! So much for Tradition depending on the official Church! I often wonder why God allows so many setbacks to Tradition. Does He purify "the little remnant", seeking quality rather than quantity? We observe, among non-Catholics as well as in traditional Catholic families, that children do not "fully take their place" in the rising generation, even when the parents seem solid. The tides of the world are constantly passing over young people and wearing them down. Some are slightly weakened, others more severely, while others collapse completely. In truth, "if these days were not shortened, the chosen ones themselves could not be saved.
Topic: Eleison Comments #693: Wealthy Family (Read 792 times)