https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/headline-news-around-the-world/item/6328-homily-of-archbishop-carlo-maria-vigano-on-the-epiphany-of-our-lord-jesus-christ
Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ; omnes gentes servient ei. - Ps 71:11
Praised be Jesus Christ.
This solemn day is sanctified by three miracles: the adoration of the Magi, the changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana, and the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan. These miraculous signs show us the divinity of Our Lord and His universal Lordship over the cosmos, over nature and over us. It is no longer only the shepherds who are called by the Angels to recognize the Verbum caro factum, but it is the whole human race, it is all creation that the voice of God himself calls to adore Him, to listen to Him, to obey Him. A Lordship that some recognize with humble Faith and that others reject out of pride.
In the Martyrology on Christmas Eve, we heard sung the announcement of the Birth of the Savior secundum carnem, placed in history with a multiplicity of precise and detailed chronological references. The Toto orbe in pace composito that the cantor solemnly pronounces shortly before raising the tone of his voice to mark the historical reality of the salvific event of Christ’s Birth refers to the triple triumph of Augustus, author and peacemaker of the Roman Empire. A human and pagan triumph, certainly; but which was intended to prepare the eternal triumph of the Rex pacificus, the immortal Emperor, the unconquered Sun. For this reason, January 6, established as a civil holiday to celebrate the human glory of Rome, was chosen by the Church to celebrate the undying glory of Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.
In this age of apostasy, marked by wars and conflicts caused by rebellion against God, it is difficult to understand how the earthly authority of the Emperor could constitute in the plan of Providence the necessary prerequisite for the coming of the Lord. What seems to us more “normal” – so to speak – is the ferocious and ruthless response of Herod, who in his mad attempt to kill the Child King exterminated the children of Bethlehem whom we recalled a few days ago in the Liturgy. Life and death, peace and war, light and darkness, grace and damnation: we constantly have before our eyes the two great alternatives for ourselves, for our families, for civil society. And it is Christ who stands as a point of reference, as a stumbling block, asking us to make our moral choice, recognizing Him as our Life, our Peace, our Light, our everything. If not, that is, if we renounce this choice, if we wanted to declare ourselves neutral in the face of the battle fought by the angelic hosts against the infernal powers, we would still be making a choice on which our salvation and that of the whole world depends. We see it today: those who do not take the field under the banners of Christ inexorably end up being allies of His enemies, stand by watching as the innocents are killed by Herod, and before the manger refuse to adore the Lord, all in the name of a perverted concept of freedom and secularism in which the sovereign rights of God are denied or silenced.
And yet, precisely in contemplating the mysteries of this Most Holy Day, the Church shows us the need for the Epiphany, the manifestation of the divinity of Jesus Christ; a necessity for which Providence does not hesitate to move the stars, if a star can lead pagan scholars towards the light of Grace and conversion to the true God. In fact, the simple and faithful adoration of the shepherds, made up of a humble and poor interiority, was not enough: it recalls the act of faith of the individual, of each one of us, but remains incomplete for the fate of the world if it is not accompanied by the public and official adoration of those who hold authority on earth, since this authority is a reflection of the authority of God, the Supreme Legislator and Judge. As the Psalm prophesies: Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ; omnes gentes servient ei.
It is surprising, somehow, that it is wise men from the East who pay homage to the Child God, while the representatives of the imperial authority are absent, just as neither the king of Israel nor the High Priests appear; who also played a decisive role in trying and condemning the Lord to death. Present at the moment of death, but absent at the moment of life. Why do we not see the Roman Procurator, Herod, Annas and Caiaphas, the officials of the Sanhedrin and the scribes of the people around the manger, as we contemplate Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar kneeling before the Child intent on offering their gifts?
The answer is evident in all its simplicity. The shepherds adored Christ with the trusting abandonment of the simple, who has nothing to offer but himself and the poor things of daily life and his humble work. The Magi adored Christ thanks to His miraculous manifestation in the course of the stars, and their human wisdom, their ability to peer into the cosmos, led them to the timeless Sun, because they too, with humility, knew how to recognize the birth of God in the world. Both were illuminated by Grace, the former through the announcement of the Angel, the latter through the signs of heaven. Instead, Herod and the High Priests, who should have known very well the Messianic prophecies preserved by Israel, could neither see nor believe, because their first concern was power. On the one hand, the temporal power, exercised under the domination of pagan Rome and forgetting that the Jєωιѕн Sovereigns were vicars of the only King of Israel, the Lord God of hosts; on the other, spiritual power, exercised in what today we would call “self-referentiality,” that is, concerned to preserve itself and keep the people in ignorance. This is confirmed by the harsh rebukes and severe warnings of the prophets, by the mouth of which the Lord reminded His priests of their duties, while they were busy lengthening the prongs of the forks with which they held part of the sacrificial flesh for themselves, or while profiting from the trades of the money changers and merchants brought into the Temple. Deaf to Grace! Deaf is Herod, who should have seen in the little Jesus the ratifying of his own authority; deaf are the High Priests, who should have recognized in Him the promised Messiah, the Desired One of all peoples. Both, significantly, had preferred to submit to the invader, rather than bow to the One who holds in His hand the fate of the world and time. Non habemus regem nisi Cæsarem.
The present situation is not very different in this regard from that time. Even today the civil and ecclesiastical authorities refuse to worship Jesus Christ, or do so only in words plotting for His killing, for fear of losing their power. Even today we see the simple and the leaders of distant nations recognizing the Saviour, and conforming their private and public lives to Him, while world leaders prefer to gather in Davos for their globalist agenda, and the prelates of the Bergoglian sect think only of hiding their scandals, propagating synodality and encouraging the most unmentionable vices. Both support each other and recognize each other's legitimacy. Both see Jesus Christ as an uncomfortable obstacle to the pursuit of their plans for power and domination. Yet, as we sing in the hymn of the Epiphany, non eripit mortalia qui regna dat cœlestia. He who gives us heavenly kingdoms does not ravish earthly ones.
But if on the one hand the Magi, with their tribute of Faith, have been able to publicly adore the King of kings, having nothing to fear for their authority; on the other hand, the rulers who are rebellious and indocile to God, not recognizing the divine origin of the power they exercise, place themselves against His Lordship and also against their subjects, transforming wise and just government into an instrument of hateful tyranny. This is how the prophet Jeremiah expresses himself against them:
26For among my people there are wicked people who spy like lurking hunters, they set traps for men. 27Like a cage full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit; therefore, they become great and rich. 28They are fat and wicked, they go beyond the limits of evil; they do not defend justice, they do not care for the cause of the orphan, they do not do justice to the poor. 29Should I not punish these sins? Oracle of the Lord. Should I not take revenge on a people like this? 30Terrifying and horrible things take place in the land. 31The prophets foretell in the name of lies, and the priests rule at their behest; yet my people are pleased with this. What will you do when the end comes?
Listening to these words of Sacred Scripture, we wonder if they are not addressed to the powerful of this world, to the members of the globalist elite and to those who serve them out of cowardice, self-interest, and obsequious complicity. And to those who, established in authority in the Church to feed the flock entrusted to them by the Lord, abuse their power to govern at the nod of the prophets of the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr, who prophesy pandemics and emergencies of which they are ruthless architects.
What will you do when the end comes?, the Lord asks. Will you create new emergencies, new crises, new pandemics, new wars with which to keep the people subjugated? Will you continue to exterminate innocent children, to render fathers and mothers sterile, to defraud the worker of his reward, to corrupt the young, to kill the sick and the elderly because they are considered useless for your own vile interests? Will you barricade yourselves in your fortresses, hoping to escape God’s wrath and your just chastisement? What will you do, servants of the Great Reset, when your masters have to flee into their lairs and hide in the bowels of the earth? Do you think you can sell yourself to a new owner as you have done so far? Poor, miserable, deluded ones. The terrible day of the Lord will come for everyone, and also for you: first with the particular Judgment, and then with the universal Judgment. If earthly justice stands idly by and watches your crimes passively because it is subservient to you, Divine Justice will instead be inexorable and terrible, so that your public sins against the Majesty of God and against the man whom He created in His image and likeness, and whom He redeemed with His own Blood, do not go unpunished. And if our poor strength fails to overcome your cօռspιʀαcιҽs, know that each one of us, every faithful one of the Holy Church, every single good soul is praying, fasting, and doing penance, asking for the intervention of the Lord, the King of the Nations, whom you refuse to recognize, adore, and serve. What will you do when the end comes?
On this day of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the public manifestation of the divine kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the public tribute of the Magi to His universal and eternal Lordship, let us also renew our offering. It is a poor and miserable offering, because it comes from us who have nothing but what Providence has granted us. And yet it is a precious offering, if presented by Our Lady, Mary Most Holy, the Queen Mother who is our Advocate at the Throne of the Son. It is an infinite offering when it rises to the Majesty of the Father through the hands of the pure and holy Victim, the High Priest, the Eternal Pontiff who renews the Sacrifice of the Cross in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Let us place our penances at the foot of the altar, so that they may become the gold of kings; our prayers, that they may ascend to heaven like the incense that priests burn to God; and our fasts, so that the Holy Mass may convert them into the myrrh of sacrifice. And we ask the Child King to convert those who hold authority both in civil society and in the Church, who find themselves today having to choose whether to follow the star to Bethlehem to worship Him, or to ignore His Birth in order to avoid His will and wage war against Him.
And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria, Archbishop
January 6, 2023
Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Catholics should distance themselves from using language that is common to those who practice the craft.
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What does So Mote It Be mean?
May 20, 2022Reading Time: 9 minutes
So Mote It Be from the [color=var(--global-palette-highlight)]SHORT TALK BULLETIN (https://shorttalkbulletin.com/)[/url] for the Masons and Non-Masons who desire some knowledge. This is not a secret nor should it be. Way to many Brothers are using it incorrectly. Then there are those that have started the using it to claim they like a Facebook post or to look in the know. Hopefully this helps.[/i][/i][/font][/size][/color]
How familiar the phrase is. No Lodge is ever opened or closed, in due form, without using it. Yet how few know how old it is, much less what a deep meaning it has in it. Like so many old and lovely things, it is so near to us that we do not see it.
As far back as we can go in the annals of the Craft we find this old phrase. Its form betrays its age.
[color=var(--global-palette3)]So Mote It Be meaning
The word MOTE is an Anglo-Saxon word, derived from an anomalous verb, MOTAN. Chaucer uses the exact phrase in the same sense in which we use it, meaning “So May It Be.” It is found in the Regius Poem, the oldest docuмent of the Craft, just as we use it today.
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As everyone knows, it is the Masonic form of the ancient AMEN which echoes through the ages, gathering meaning and music as it goes until it is one of the richest and most haunting of words.
At first only a sign of assent, on the part either of an individual or of an assembly, to words of prayer or praise, it has become to stand as a sentinel at the gateway of silence.
When we have uttered all that we can utter, and our poor words seem like ripples on the bosom of the unspoken, somehow this familiar phrase gathers up all that is left – our dumb yearnings, our deepest longings – and bears them aloft to One who understands.
In some strange way it seems to speak for us into the very ear of God the things for which words were never made.
So, naturally, it has a place of honor among us. At the marriage Altar it speaks its blessing as young love walks toward the bliss or sorrow of hidden years.
It stands beside the cradle when we dedicate our little ones to the Holy life, mingling its benediction with our vows. At the grave side it utters its sad response to the shadowy AMEN which death pronounces over our friends.
When, in our turn, we see the end of the road, and would make a last will and testament, leaving our earnings and savings to those whom we love, the old legal phrase asks us to repeat after it: “In The Name Of God, AMEN.” And with us, as with Gerontius in his Dream, the last word we hear when the voices of earth grow faint and the silence of God covers us, is the old AMEN, So Mote It Be.
How impressively it echoes through the Book of Holy Law. We hear it in the Psalms, as chorus answers to chorus, where it is sometimes reduplicated for emphasis. In the talks of Jesus with his friends it has a striking use, hidden in the English version.
The oft-repeated phrase, “Verily, Verily I Say Unto You,” if rightly translated means, AMEN, AMEN, I say unto you.” Later, in the Epistles of Paul, the word AMEN becomes the name of Christ, who is the AMEN of God to the faith of man.
So, too, in the Lodge, at opening, at closing, and in the hour of initiation. No Mason ever enters upon any great or important undertaking without invoking the aid of Deity. And he ends his prayer with the old phrase, “So Mote It Be.” Which is another way of saying: “The Will Of God Be Done.” Or, whatever be the answer of God to his prayer: “So Be It – because it is wise and right.
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What, then, is the meaning of this old phrase, so interwoven with all our Masonic lore, simple, tender, haunting? It has two meanings for us everywhere, in the Church, or in the Lodge.
First, it is assent of man to the way and Will Of God; assent to His Commands; assent to His Providence, even when a tender, terrible stroke of death takes from us one much loved and leaves us forlorn.
Still, somehow, we must say:” So it is; so be it. He is a wise man, a brave man; who, baffled by the woes of life, when disaster follows fast and follows faster, can nevertheless accept his lot as a part of the Will of God and say, though it may almost choke him to say it:
“So Mote It Be.” It is not blind submission, nor dumb resignation, but a wise reconciliation to the Will of the Eternal.
The other meaning of the phrase is even more wonderful; it is the assent of God to the aspiration of man. Man can bear so much – anything, perhaps – if he feels that God knows, cares and feels for him and with him.
If God says Amen, So it is, to our faith and hope and love; it links our perplexed meanings, and helps us to see, however dimly, or in a glass darkly, that there is a wise and good purpose in life, despite its sorrow and suffering, and that we are not at the mercy of Fate or the whim of Chance.
Does God speak to man, confirming his faith and hope? If so, how? Indeed yes! God is not the great I Was, but the great I Am, and He is neither deaf nor dumb. In Him we live and move and have our being – He Speaks to us in nature, in the moral law, and in our own hearts, if we have ears to hear. But He speaks most clearly in the Book of Holy Law which lies open upon our Alter.
Nor is that all. Some of us hold that the Word Of God “Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us, Full Of Grace and Truth,” in a life the loveliest ever lived among men, showing us what life is, what it means, and to what fine issues it ascends when we do the Will of God on earth as it is done in Heaven, No one of us but grows wistful when he thinks of the life of Jesus, however far we fall below it.
Today men are asking the question: Does it do any good to pray? The man who actually prays does not ask such a question. As well ask if it does a bird any good to sing, or a flower to bloom? Prayer is natural and instinctive in man. We are made so. Man is made for prayer, as sparks ascending seek the sun. He would not need religious faith if the objects of it did not exist.
Are prayers ever answered? Yes, always, as Emerson taught us long ago. Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered – and that is as far as we need to go.
The deepest desire, the ruling motive of a man, is his actual prayer, and it shapes his life after its form and color. In this sense all prayer is answered, and that is why we ought to be careful what we pray for – because in the end we always get it.
What, then is the good of prayer? It makes us repose on the unknown with hope; it makes us ready for life. It is a recognition of laws and the thread of our conjunction with them.
It is not the purpose of prayer to beg or make God do what we want done. Its purpose is to bring us to do the Will of God, which is greater and wiser than our will. It is not to use God, but to be used by Him in the service of His plan.
Can man by prayer change the Will of God? No, and Yes. True prayer does not wish or seek to change the larger Will of God, which involves in its sweep and scope the duty and destiny of humanity.
But it can and does change the Will of God concerning us, because it changes our will and attitude towards Him, which is the vital thing in prayer for us.
For example, if a man living a wicked life, we know what the Will of God will be for him. All evil ways have been often tried, and we know what the end is, just as we know the answer to a problem in geometry.
But if a man who is living wickedly changes his way of living and his inner attitude, he changes the Will of God – if not His Will, at least His Intention. That is, he attains what even the Divine Will could not give him and do for him unless it had been effected by His Will and Prayer.
The place of Prayer in Masonry is not perfunctory. It is not a mere matter of form and rote. It is vital and profound. As a man enters the Lodge as an initiate, prayer is offered for him, to God, in whom he puts his trust.
Later, in a crisis of his initiation, he must pray for himself, orally or mentally as his heart may elect. It is not just a ceremony; it is basic in the faith and spirit of Masonry.
Still later, in a scene which no Mason ever forgets, when the shadow is darkest, and the most precious thing a Mason can desire or seek seems lost, in the perplexity and despair of the Lodge, a prayer is offered.
As recorded in our Monitors, it is a mosaic of Bible words, in which the grim facts of life and death are set forth in stark reality, and appeal is made to the pity and light of God.
It is truly a great prayer, to join in which is to place ourselves in the very hands of God, as all must do in the end, trust His Will and way, following where no path is into the soft and fascinating darkness which men call death.
And the response of the Lodge to that prayer, as to all others offered at its Altar, is the old, challenging phrase, “So Mote It Be!”
Brother, do not be ashamed to pray, as you are taught in the Lodge and the Church. It is a part of the sweetness and sanity of life, refreshing the soul and making clear the mind.
There is more wisdom in a whispered prayer than in all the libraries of the world. It is not our business to instruct God. He knows what things we have need for before we ask him. He does not need our prayer, but we do – if only to make us acquainted with the best Friend we have.
The greatest of all teachers of the soul left us a little liturgy called the Lord’s Prayer. He told us to use it each for himself, in the closet when the door is shut and the din and hum and litter of the world is outside. Try it Brother; it will sweeten life, make its load lighter, its joy brighter, and the way of duty plainer.
Two tiny prayers have floated down to us from ages agone, which are worth remembering; one by a great Saint, the other by two brothers.
“Grant Me, Lord, ardently to desire, wisely to study, rightly to understand and perfectly to fulfill that which pleaseth Thee.” And the second is after the manner: “May two brothers enjoy and serve Thee together, and so live today that we may be worthy to live tomorrow.”
“SO MOTE IT BE”
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