It's New Year's Eve - How Will You Celebrate?

Lighting the first candle...

This morning's mass was the last one of the liturgical year. Tonight is "New Year's Eve - Catholic Time." The vigil mass marks the First Sunday of Advent. So how will you ring out the old liturgical year and celebrate the new?

First thing I'm doing is putting out my advent wreath officially. We'll bless the wreath and light the first candle casting light on a new year filled with anticipation and hope.

The Christopher's have a saying that it's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. Let us light the candle in hope and trust in God who loves us so much he sent His only begotten Son as a helpless infant.

Babies are so easy to love. They threaten no one. They invite us to smile and laugh and cuddle. All our senses respond to a newborn. We delight to see their innocent faces and smell the unmistakable scent of heaven. We touch their velvet skin and listen to their soft coos. Everything about newborn babies reminds us to "taste and see the goodness of the Lord."

We close out a year of darkness filled with an incredible litany of evil. The Wuhan virus may very well have been unleashed on the world with deliberation. Would it really surprise anyone to see the Chinese Communists, who have unmercifully murdered so many of their own people, send a deliberate scourge, a sort of chemical warfare, to the world? Was the coronavirus part of a deliberate plan to unseat a highly successful president and ensure election of a sympathetic party willing to sell America to the highest bidder?

The Democrats are a particular threat to Chinese immigrants like Helen Raleigh who wrote this for the Federalist on November 24th:

It is very clear that there’s less and less ideological difference between the totalitarian left in this country and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. When both groups were in the process of obtaining power, they shouted slogans of “democracy,” “equality,” “freedom,” and “tolerance.” Once they are in a position of power, however, they reveal their true colors.

Both have little tolerance for different ideas and people who hold them. Freedom to them means having a free hand to reprimand those with whom they disagree by whatever means necessary. Democracy to them means if they all agree to punish dissenters, the punishment is thus legitimate and justified. Whether in China or the United States, totalitarianism is always about power, the power to force people to think and behave a certain way, the power to brand those who disagree as enemies of the state and deprive them of their rights and property.

We have seen the totalitarian left implement draconian controls in the name of protecting health. They even have a document on the CDC website calling for what sounds ominously like concentration camps (Community Isolation Centers) which "may be implemented at any time, regardless of the level of community transmission, based on guidance from public health officials, and may be scaled up or down as needed." And who exactly will be making the decisions to "scale" these center "up or down as needed?" Governors like Cuomo and Whitmer with the help of their state health "Fauci" officials? Oh, but this will all be voluntary, you say? Perhaps...but the document includes a footnote linking to a WHO guideline for "involuntary quarantine:" 

Considerations regarding involuntary quarantine can be found here external icon: World Health Organization, Considerations for quarantine of individuals in the context of containment for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Interim Guidance, March 19, 2020

Prepare for the camps!

Another liberal activity reminiscent of Communists and Fascists is calling on people to rat out their neighbors. That's what Democrat Governor Kate Brown urged Oregonians to do. For what? Not selling drugs or keeping sex slaves chained in cages in the garage --- but for having too many guests (MORE THAN SIX!!!) for Thanksgiving dinner. Cuomo (New York), Newsom (California) and Hogan (Maryland) are a few of the tyrants with draconian regulations in place.

It sounds like a skit on Saturday Night Live, but is all too ridiculously real. (The cops would have had to bring a couple of paddy wagons to our house to load up 28 of us for arrest.)

Keep all this in mind as you light that first Advent candle tonight or tomorrow. God has not forgotten us, despite the darkness of the times. In fact, this Scripture passage was written for our moment:

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen." (Isaiah 9:2)

The shadow of death has passed over our world this year and many  crossed the finish line, some from the Wuhan virus, others  cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, strokes, starvation, and all the other illnesses that plague our world. Let us spend this Advent remembering them along with all our other intentions.

Despite the challenges of this past year, never lose sight of hope's light. Let us respond to that light by joining Our Lady's army. She is "dressed in battle array" to fight the demons. Under the standard of Christ with Mary's help (Never forget that she is our twelve star general), let us join the Advent legion of angels and saints and prepare to announce and bring to fruition the Kingdom of God. We reject the false Utopia of the secularists, but fly the standard of truth as we work to bring about the reign of Christ the King.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come!