J L Waechter

[Brandon Gill @realBrandonGill]

90% of Americans agree that members of Congress should not be able to trade stocks.

90% of Americans also agree that you should have to show an ID to vote.

198 Democrats just voted against both.

[Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @DrDoyleSays]

Every feeling you have is valid, in that it makes sense & is connected to a very real experience or need-- and but also, feelings don't have to have the final say in your choices. It is not invalidating feelings to consider them a source of information-- but not the only source.

[Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle @DrDoyleSays]

Struggling w/ executive functioning-- getting started, making decisions, following through-- is an unrecognized "freeze" response for many survivors. And trauma responses are not choices.

I said, trauma responses are not choices.

Start w/ the smallest version of the task.

[CatholicVote @CatholicVote]

🚨 Bishop Barron says the rise of "democratic socialism" should be recognized for what it is: communism.

"Take them seriously; they mean what they say. And then I would say, especially to my co-religionists, to my fellow believers, it's time to speak up and to speak out."

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, when voices today praise tyrants like Mao Zedong, we must take them at their word. History teaches us a clear lesson: when God is taken out of the equation, basic human rights go out the window. It’s time for my fellow co-believers to speak up.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

The Uniparty: “We don’t have time to pass the SAVE America Act.”

Hardworking Americans: “You’ve got plenty of time; it’s *spine* that you seem to be lacking—not time.”

[Fr. Thomas Petri OP @PetriOP]

The challenges of the postconciliar era are not all about the rubrics and prayers of the Mass. One of the worst liturgical habits of the last several decades was making the Mass depend on the priest’s personality. Many priests were formed that way in seminary, with practicum classes emphasizing connection, active participation, and eye contact.

One priest is folksy, another comic, and yet another determined to be “relatable.” The faithful could go from one parish to another and encounter markedly different celebrations.

That harmed the Church, but it also harmed priests. Extroverted men who enjoyed this could easily harden into a signature style and identity within only a few years. Quiet and introverted men were made to feel that reverence and fidelity were not enough—that they also had to “work the room.”

The rite carries the priest and the people. Even the Novus Ordo can. The priest does not need to manufacture an experience for the faithful or perform a personality.

His task is simpler and greater: to celebrate what the Church has given him, and to let Christ remain at the center.

[Hughes de Payens 🇻🇦✝️📿 @hdpayens]

If you read Isaiah 22 before reading Matthew 16, the papacy stops looking like a medieval power grab and starts looking like a direct biblical appointment.

Christ did not invent a random metaphor when He told Peter, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."

He was quoting a specific, pre-existing political office from the Davidic Kingdom.

Isaiah 22:22 describes the master of the palace, the royal steward who held authority over the king's household: "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open."

The identical language. Keys. Opening and shutting. Binding and loosing.

But here is the critical detail most Protestant readings miss.

The royal steward was not a temporary gift to a single individual. It was an ongoing office within the Davidic kingdom. Isaiah 22 shows the steward Shebna being removed from office and replaced by Eliakim, who receives the same key of the house of David and the same administrative authority. The office outlasted any single occupant.

Christ, the eternal Davidic King, establishes His restored kingdom and appoints a steward to govern it. The early Church Fathers recognized this typological link, viewing the Petrine office as the continuation of this administrative authority over the household of God.

The papacy is not a fourth-century power grab. It is the restored Davidic court, established by the King Himself.

If Christ explicitly established a permanent office of visible headship for His Kingdom, why would that office cease after Peter's death?

[Thomas a Kempis @TomKempis]

Lord, left to ourselves we sink and perish, but visited by You we are lifted up and live. We are truly unstable, but You make us strong. We grow lukewarm, but You inflame us.

[Catholic Frequency @CatholicFQ]

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

― Fulton J. Sheen

[Memento Mori @TempusFugit4016]

"God loves us when He consoles us, but He loves us too when He sends us trials and leaves us in distress; He loves us when He gives us joy in abundance, as well as when He afflicts us with sorrow. His consolations are love; so too are His chastisements and trials. In all the circumstances of our life, even the saddest and most painful, we are always encompassed by His love. God's love can will nothing but good; even when He leads us by the harsh, rough road of suffering, He is infallibly willing our good. God 'makes us die and makes us live . . . He scourges us and He saves us' (1 Sm. ii. 6 – Tb. xiii. 2), always because of His love. Thus it is not rare that He strikes hardest those whom He loves most, for, as the Holy Spirit says, '. . . acceptable men [are tried] in the furnace of humiliation' (Sir. ii. 5). St. Teresa of Jesus says: This suffering 'is what the Father gave to Him whom He loved most of all [Jesus] . . . These, then, are His gifts in this world. He gives them in proportion to the love He bears us. He gives more to those He loves most and less to those He loves least. "

To believe in God's love, to believe in it strongly even when He strikes us in what we hold most dear: such is the program of the soul who wishes to entrust itself blindly to infinite love." - Fr. Gabriel

[Bishop @BishopJaxi]

When I was still a Protestant, Catholics told me they were praying prayers like this for me.

At the time, I did not really understand. I even found it strange.

Now that I am Catholic, I understand.

The prayer life of the Church has changed me deeply. It has taught me greater reverence for Christ, greater love for His Mother, and a more fervent desire to pray for the conversion and salvation of souls, including those who misunderstand and oppose the Catholic faith, as I once did.

O Merciful Jesus, my King and my God, I worship You.
O Blessed Mother, Mary Immaculate, I cherish you.
For those who offer you insult, I offer you praise.
For those who offer you mockery, I offer you honor.
For those who offer you disbelief, I offer you trust.
For those who offer you hatred, I offer you love.
For those who offer you curses, I offer you blessing.
For those who offer you ridicule, I offer you loving gazes.
For those who offer you blasphemy, I offer you adoration.
For those who offer you rebellion, I offer you obedience.
For those who offer you indifference, I offer you devotion.
For those who offer you obstinate pride, I offer you a contrite heart.
For those who offer you scorn, I offer you fidelity.

Soften the hearts of those who offend you, that they may come to know you and love you as you deserve.
Make my heart more fervent, so that I may pray without ceasing for the conversion and salvation of souls.
Amen.

[Raymond Arroyo @RaymondArroyo]

“ I think Pope Leo would be well advised to put Traditionis Custodes in the shredder and make the Latin Mass available more freely.” @GeraldMurray8 on a new PRAYERFUL POSSE in the wake of the SSPX excommunications. Subscribe, watch, and like the full episode here:
📺 https://t.co/olx8mEkwdn

🔈 https://t.co/Xm5BRoMm4a

[James Dueck🇻🇦 @JamesDueck]

Long ago, Western civilization was Catholic. The Reformation divided us. The modern world distracted & demoralized us. Our nations feel like they’re dying, because they are. Our only hope of saving Western civilization is to revive the Catholic Church. It’s time to come back.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

We’ve got less than a month to save America this year

By passing the SAVE America Act

An easy workweek isn’t worth losing the opportunity

Share if you agree

[Fr. Thomas Petri OP @PetriOP]

Some thoughts on this weekend’s Parable of the Sower.

The four soils aren’t four fixed classes of people—and we practicing Catholics shouldn’t assume that we’re automatically the good soil.

Consider:

• A soul can hear Scripture, listen to preaching, and read spiritual books, yet never allow the Word to sink deeply within.

• Religious enthusiasm can be sincere and still remain shallow.

• Concern for the Church, the country, or the culture can become thorns when anxiety crowds out Christ. Even concern about genuinely important things can become excessive and disordered.

• Every heart may contain all four kinds of soil.

• Hardened ground can be broken open. Stones can be removed. Thorns can be cut back.

• Good soil doesn’t produce the fruit by itself. The fruit comes from the seed—from what Christ has planted.

The parable begins not with our receptivity, but with the astonishing generosity of the Sower. Every kind of ground can be cultivated by Christ—even ground that presently seems barren.

And so the question isn’t simply, “Which soil am I?”

It’s: “Where has the Word taken root in me, and where do I still resist the work of the Sower?”

Christ is still sowing the seed.

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. 

He was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon.

Then, I revoked his legal status. @ICEgov has removed him from the U.S. and he will never endanger another American.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is the oldest surviving icon of Christ, the oldest painted portrait of the face of Jesus that has come down to us.

It was made around 1500 years ago, and if you cover one half of the face, then the other, you are looking at two different men...

It's called Christ Pantocrator, a Greek title meaning "Ruler of All," and it was painted in the sixth century, around the year 550, most likely in a workshop in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

It was almost certainly sent as an imperial gift to a remote new monastery being built in the Egyptian desert. It has hung there, in the Monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai, ever since.

For roughly 1,500 years, it has never left.

That it survived at all is remarkable. In the eighth and ninth centuries, the Byzantine Empire went through a violent period called Iconoclasm, in which religious images were condemned as idolatry and destroyed by the thousands. Almost every icon of this age in the empire was burned. But Saint Catherine's lay far out in the desert, beyond the reach of the emperors and their decrees, so this one was spared. It is one of the very few images of its kind on earth to come down to us intact.

But the truly haunting thing is the face. Look at it, and the two sides do not match. On the side where Christ holds the Gospel, his features are harder, sterner, the brow raised, the eye larger and more severe, the face of a judge who sees everything. On the side where he raises his hand in blessing, the expression softens, calm and merciful, the face of a savior. One half is divine authority. The other is human compassion.

Most scholars believe this was entirely deliberate. The icon was painted not long after the Church had formally defined that Christ was at once fully God and fully man, two natures joined in one person. And so the artist, it is thought, built that doctrine directly into the face, splitting it in two so that the same man could be, in a single gaze, both merciful and just, both human and divine...

I started my newsletter because our past is extraordinary, and fewer and fewer people are showing us how to truly see it. Every week I try to. If that is something you'd like to be part of, you can join through the link in my bio, and if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

Thanks for reading.

[Fr. Joseph Krupp @Joeinblack]

We don’t know when but one day, we will wake up to our last morning.
It is imperative that we remember this so that we do not go about the day enslaved to the random movements of our heart.
The devil will bait you. He wants you to react instead of respond, to chase the shiny things, and to save all of your passion for earthly things that will pass.
Not today. Today you rise anew, embracing the truth that you were not made for the petty or the transitory; You were made for heaven.
Pray for the grace to live this truth well.

#talkedtotheboss

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

The party that screams about “no kings” and “protecting democracy” just forced an elected candidate to drop out and will now have a few oligarchs from the party leadership hand pick a new candidate to represent the people.