St. Michael the Archangel be Our Protector...

Today, September 29, is the Roman Catholic day to honor Saint Michael the Archangel. He is portrayed as a warrior saint slaying Lucifer shown in the form of a deadly dragon. Lucifer whose beauty was once so stunning that he challenged God, and was thus caste into Hell by Michael whose name is really a question he shouted across the heavens as he prepared to slay the dragon, "Who is like God?" . As Lucifer and his angels fell into their kingdom of fire they transformed from beauty to ugliness, thus beginning the strange bait of evil which often appears so beautiful but becomes so ugly. Defeated by God and His angels, Lucifer then set his target on God's wonderful creation, man.

With this as a background it is interesting to see the church on the coast of France (see picture) dedicated to Saint Michael who was proclaimed by the church as the protector of Europe. The 21st century finds Europe spiritually adrift after a brutal century of warfare. Its churches are empty. Some are turning into mosques. In Glasgow, Scotland there are now 33,000 Muslims. This week the Pope visited the Czech Republic the first atheist majority nation in Europe. The last century was a tough one for Europe: imperialism, fascism, Communism, materialism have taken their toll on its soul. Saint Michael the Archangel still stands on the coast of France, and the church, freed from its oppressors and pedophiles, begins the task of again converting Europe. We will not live to see the results, but I believe Michael will again prevail over evil.

Christ in Christmas

Well its the last days of summer and the bees are still visiting tired flowers. Nevertheless, today's mail produced another supply of Christmas cards from competing Catholic religious orders eager to beat the other for your money. Sometimes it seems the orders should just be done with it and just change their names to Sisters of Hallmark or Gibson Brothers of the Holy Post. What started as a unique oddity has mushroomed into a card industry: Christmas, Easter, birthday, death, and illness keep a steady flow of cards to our homes. Sometimes they include medals, rosaries, and holy cards. Some even send coins and postage to stir your conscious. Today's mail came from the Maryknoll Order, once the great American missionaries of China now reduced to a trickle of vocations after truly embracing a liberal approach to Catholicism. It contained the usual manger scene cards. The envelope said, "Keep Christ in Christmas". Surely a nifty reminder in the hustle and bustle of summer Cristmas season. How many shopping days to Christmas, Father ? Perhaps we can begin to keep Our Lord in Christmas by having His Church get out of the card business and stop competing with malls decorating for His birth in September in the hope to make the most bucks. Fathers, Sisters and Brothers consider remembering what Chaucer said in the Canterbury Tales, "If the gold rusts what will the iron do"?

Chesepeake Bay in Late Summer

...a morning I recently captured at the harbor of Saint Michael's Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.

Hibernation

Time for our brother bears to sleep for the winter. Is it necessary to say "Do Not Disturb"?

Moon at Dusk

I discovered the beauty and calm of the desert while in Arizona last year, and captured the early moon from the driveway of Frank Loyd Wright's home, Tailsman. Religions speak of spiritual encounters with God, angels, Satan and demons in the desert. The peaceful void, lack of distractions, and absence of man's presence there makes it possible to hear and perhaps even see the spiritual world about us which is so clouded by noise and visual pollutions of the mind. In the desert we discover ourselves.

Tolerance?

In the 15th century when the Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople they entered its most sacred church, the great Hagia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom, women were violated, men killed, holy objects looted, and the sacred altar desecrated as the conqueror stood on it and faced Mecca with a prayer of thanksgiving. Hagia Sophia was not just another church. It was the seat of the entire Orthodox church rivaling the Vatican in size, age and beauty. The Muslims covered its great mosaics with plaster, removed its cross, and declared it a mosque. Later, they made it a museum. Recently, it was announced that a church in Tarsus, Turkey, birthplace of Saint Paul, would no longer be recognized as a church and was now also a museum. People wishing to pray there were to make an application weeks in advance, secure tickets, and wait for final governmental approval. When Hitler was certain he would win World War II and all of Europe's Jews would be killed, he decided to build a museum dedicated to Judaism. Prior to that Stalin, after destroying 35,000 of Russia's 45,000 churches decided to make surviving buildings (not needed as warehouses or trash dumps) museums as well. Apparently, placing a faith considered an enemy of the state in a museum is an official government declaration that a people and their faith are dead.

Today, apologists for Islam and proponents of Turkish membership in the European Union speak often of the peaceful tolerance of Islam. I find such evidence rare. Islam in total power erases all it opposes one way or another. Western liberal atheists, unceasing in their attacks on Christianity and the state of Israel, would be wise to read history. Surely, after the Christian and Jewish believers are erased they would be next.

False Faith

The President and his political party continue to withdraw from the war on terror. Indeed, in the truest of Orwellian speak they say there is no war on terror, just fading military operations in Iraq and a "joint" military mission in Afghanistan. Searching CIA files, Democrats seem more obsessed with attacking the previous administration than with American security. As they continue to free prisoners from Guantanamo prison it might be wise to consider history. Britain declared "peace in our time" with Hitler as he continued to prepare for war and nearly defeated them a few years after their declaration of a false peace. The following revolutionaries were once imprisoned and later freed to wreck destruction: Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Castro. How would the world have been different had they never been freed. Again, America, ignore history at your peril, it is sure to repeat itself.