International Public Notice: What Won't Do

 By Anna Von Reitz

The offer is not negotiable. 

The banks want to remove Federal Reserve Notes and Euros and other fiat currencies from circulation because these "notes" are evidence of crime.  

What has to happen instead, or in addition to, the removal of such fiat currencies, is for their already accumulated prepaid credits to be issued to the living people and the lawful governments and for the bookkeeping to finally be done. 

The Federal Reserve conveniently only kept track of their "notes" at the point of issuance, and this, together with the interest of this so-called National Debt, plus the printing and delivery costs, was the total negative accounting associated with this system. 

Now multiply each National Debt times 3000, and you will have a more reasonable approximation of the actual National Debt.  

Who owes this unimaginably large "National Debt" --?  The commercial corporations doing business as the UNITED STATES, INC., and the United States of /America, Inc., their franchises, and their Principals.  

No wonder they both sought bankruptcy protection-- under False Pretenses. 

The story is no different or better in Europe with the Euro.  

Same Schtick. 

All these corporations are insolvent and the Principals, who acted in Bad Faith, are responsible. The Successors to Contract are not released by the actual preferential creditors, the living people of each country impacted by this gargantuan fraud scheme. 

This doesn't begin to count the illegal confiscations of labor, land, and other capital assets that have been illegally seized upon by these same Players using various means -- aggravated identity theft, mortgages, property taxes, and "income taxes" -- a repugnant federal payroll kickback tax misapplied to millions of average Americans, and all used to reduce the victims to peonage and enslavement. 

Our States of the Union never ratified the so-called Sixteenth Amendment. Every penny collected from average Americans was a theft under threat.  Every IRS seizure imposed on average Americans was armed theft under color of law and conditions of deceit. 

Every mortgage paid off for the benefit of imaginary foreign debtors resulted in a non-disclosed lease purchase agreement that the victims never knew existed -- and were never told anything about.  The escrow they were owed, plus interest, was also a deep dark secret the banks never revealed -- and kept for themselves. 

And property taxes, quite above and beyond the fraudulent misadministration more than adequately described by the current United States Supreme Court case: 

https://youtu.be/exmUlevMhNQ?is=82mGvquDHuZ-nD24

--were also grossly misapplied to the American Public. We never owned any "property" or "real estate" -- but we did own and are owed our land, our soil, our houses, our businesses and everything else without recourse to any foreign titles or public trusts or administration by Esquires or Prefects or Magistrates of any stripe.  

It goes without saying that we were never obligated to pay any foreign taxes enforced under foreign laws. 

The Vermin responsible acted under color of law, in breach of trust, and millions of Americans obeyed what they thought of as their government -- paying foreign taxes they never owed in the first place.  

  

They also used unconscionable contracts to create foreign undisclosed citizenship obligations as a means to non-consensually subject Americans to foreign forms of law without their knowledge or consent. 

This debt has been established and liens have been established based on this observable and insurmountable debt arising from multiple sources based on fraud, deceit, armed force under color of law, counterfeiting, credit kiting, and other criminal enterprises.

This results in the corporations all being insolvent and subject to lawful conversion, that is, nationalization.  That is what I have taken to the Pope in his role as Roman Pontiff also, under Ecclesiastic and Roman Civil Law, both; remedy on behalf of the living people is owed and demanded.  

This has also been taken up with the United Nations Trustees and the U.S. Trustees and the appropriate courts. 

They have, whether in ignorance or with malice, defrauded the living people of an estimated sixty nation-states.  Proposing CBDCs and other nonsense won't do.  Simply removing the debt notes won't do. 

The people of this planet are owed copious amounts of prepaid credit, and as they have already paid out in goods and services, this is in the realm of lawful bilateral banks to distribute, not commercial banks that are by definition insolvent, and which have been criminally mis-administered. 

The easiest solution is to lawfully convert all the incorporated commercial banks and turn them over to their creditors -- the living people and lawful governments, who can convert them into lawful banks that are competent to issue both actual asset-backed money and prepaid credit disbursements.  

We know who we are.  We know what we are owed. We are here to collect. 

The bookkeeping has to be done and the accounts have to be balanced, which is the very least that any banking establishment owes to the actual public. 

An offer of a little dust off and a new crooked monopoly run by the same old bosses is not appropriate and is not accepted nor accommodated; it's time for the fraud begun during the reign of Queen Anne and promoted further during the reign of Queen Victoria, to end. 

This is not the Age of Empires and Corporate Feudalism; this is the Age of Aquarius and the Brotherhood of Man. All you have to do is look at the sky and tell the time. 

Do so, and you will see that the keyholes of Vatican City are no longer in alignment. 

Issued by: 

Anna Maria Riezinger - Fiduciary

The United States of America

In care of: Box 520994

Big Lake, Alaska 99652

August 10th 2026

------------------

See this article and over 5900 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.

How do we use your donations?  Find out here.

Granna Bytes: Quick Reply to Slanders

 By Anna Von Reitz

Hunter Toyofuku-Aki and Adriaan Fondse are just mercenaries like others who have come and gone, speaking one thing and doing another.  Boring. Predictable. 

Trying to substitute a licensed British Crown franchise commercial bank for a publicly chartered American International Trade Bank? 

That's a stretch even for Satan.  Like trying to substitute an armadillo for a llama.  

Passing off welfare entitlements whenever they feel like it, if they feel like it, instead of delivering the inheritance that is owed?

Offering loans when what is owed is prepaid credit? 

Accusing me of wrong-doing, when they are clearly the ones responsible for deceit, breach of trust, theft, misrepresentation and more? 

Quote me: "Whatever they are accusing the other person of, is what they are doing themselves." 

Hunter was given his Big Chance to break free and live the life he wanted, but transplanted or not, he didn't want it with all his heart. 

When the challenge came, he clung to his indoctrination and folded like a greeting card. 

Sorry to say it, because I always keep faith with what is highest and best in people, as long as they work with me and try. 

I slogged through my time in grade to get here and don't have a perfect record of absolute clarity and courage.  Nobody does. But in this horrific training ground, there is no second prize. 

Hunter was in line to have all his dreams come true, and gave it away with both hands; I can't imagine a worse position for a man to be in than to have to live every day facing that reality.  There is no punishment I could give him that would compare with that. 

So, justice is already served and I am on track, keeping straight on.

Left to myself, I really, truly don't spend more than a nano-second a day thinking about what they did.  They showed their truth and they are what they are, for everyone to see, defeated by their own words and actions --- without any malice from me. 

Adriaan Fondse has been running back and forth like a small dog for most of his life, trying to find a crack in the banking system where he could shoe-horn in and get a "big win" for him and his cronies -- personally.  Personal wealth.  Personal power.  His soul wants a rewrite of African history in which the Boers won, and still dominate the whole continent ---instead of the British, but as Colonialist powers just the same. 

Would you prefer raspberry feces a la mode, or chocolate? 

No, been there and done that with the American political system. Don't intend to extend that false paradigm to Africa, too. 

I understood that what Gaddafi was advocating for Africa -- a single gold-standard currency and a federation of nation-states -- was nothing more or less than what we had done ourselves two hundred years ago. 

And when "the U.S." and its European franchisees went in as mercenary forces and stole all the gold in the Libyan treasury without a word being said by anyone, I knew what to think, too. 

They have to get up earlier in the morning to keep my interest.  What news is it, when thugs act like thugs?  "World Martial Authority" --talk to my foot. 

They keep doing the same old things the same old way, monotonously, year after year, decade after decade.  They haven't leveled up since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.  

Now they are in a crossfire they can't answer.  Pinned down.  Wiped out.  Back tracking. Trying to figure out what hit them. They don't believe in God.... or Justice.... or Truth.... so they will look and wonder for a long time, nursing their arrogance and false pride, never admitting that they were just straight up dishonorable and wrong. 

Never realizing that when they attack me, they are attacking celestial powers, never humbling themselves, all their karma falling on them, all their Black Magic spells returning faster than thought. 

There's a reason I didn't blink. 

So just remember what your Granna is telling you. The hand of the true Lord is upon them. Watch them fall. 

The harder they struggle, the louder they speak, the more they try to control the narrative, the more evil they speak against me, the more money they pour into their efforts, the harder they go down. 

The same for the IRS, DOJ, and Daniel Applegate, the U.S. Trustees, and all the rest of the cast of characters. 

Their days of lying their way to success have come and gone. Their infantile game of pretending that they don't know who we are, and making up different names and personas for us, is down the drain and into the septic tank. 

Now comes the vengeance of the True Lord. I don't have to lift a finger or say a word. 

And that's why your Granna hasn't said much of anything about this, hasn't answered their accusations, hasn't responded to their slander. 

My arrow has already hit.  It flew straight to its mark, deep into the heart of the Beast---and the wound is mortal this time. 

The Beast may have resurrected itself -- what mystery is that, for a corporation?  

Just change its name or registration location, dance around a bit, name some new players as officers, and yes, it can come up "from the sea" again.  And again. And again. Indeed, it has done so. 

Wisdom waits for the Beast to fall dead at her feet; no need to sweat an outcome that is already ordained, foretold, written in the stars and come to Earth. The Beast may stagger and thrash.  It may roar.  But the outcome is already here. 

As you watch this happen in real time, remember that the Archer was an old woman, past seventy, from an obscure place, shy and motherly, and not seeking anything for herself beyond what is already hers. 

Granna

------------------

See this article and over 5900 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.

How do we use your donations?  Find out here. 

International Public Notice: What We Are Facing

 By Anna Von Reitz

For decades now, we have been raising the alarm -- not only about the condition of our own government and the usurpations of commercial interests against it, but the peculiar form of "war" that this usurpation has engendered. 

We have exposed the impersonation of living people as "persons" -- that is, corporation franchises, and the degradation this has unleashed along with predictable commercial predation.  

This entire circumstance has only worsened over time, until we have all suffered the "pandemic" and the pollution and manipulation of the biosphere to a point of cataclysm.  

Last year, 2025, a deep well drilling operation in Utah penetrated the edge of the Earth's inner thermal boundary, more than three miles deep.  

"Operation Forge" threatens to destabilize more than the world economy by rendering the use of oil as an energy source obsolete, but also risks destabilizing the internal high-pressure balance of the Earth's internal plasmasphere.  

The Usual Suspects are tampering with the basic structure of this planet with no idea of the consequences, all in a desperate search to find non-hydrocarbon energy sources they can control and sell. They are doing this even though we have known the way to develop abundant, safe, free energy from the Earth's magnetosphere for over two centuries.  

If they can't meter it, control access to it, and profit themselves from it, they have no interest in it other than to suppress competition.

This is the crippled, narrow, limited mindset we have to deal with, a mindset that sees everything in terms of money, control, and competition -- not ultimate gains for mankind, profit gains for individuals.

This, coupled with a false religion, is what is destroying this planet and condemning the people and the animals that live here. 

We are faced with not only evil in high places, but evil in the form of half-truths and omissions dogging our every step forward.  From Clerk Maxwell's incomplete electrical equations to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to the form of mathematics we use, we are being crippled and genocided by corporate greed. 

The additional irony is that these corporations have no natural right to exist and are in violation of the agreements that allow them to exist, without appropriate response from those tasked to discipline and liquidate them when they harm living people. 

Now we come to the False Religion -- and just like everything else that has been perverted, corrupted, and flipped upside down -- this is not what you expect, either.  Though we have been talking about and exposing this for years, this short video encapsulates the False Religion in a way that makes sense of it almost at a glance: 

https://youtu.be/srg80RDVQbA?is=S210WUFXFK9lbvNo

This briefly and completely explains the unholy marriage of Gnosticism with its life-hating memes and Hermeticism with its alchemical relativism -- and what we are left with is a clarion call to stop the brain rot.  

Life is a blessing and can be a far greater blessing if we put an end to our own self-pity and egotism.  

Gnosticism which claims "to remember where we came from and what we've been thrown into" needs to remember the reason this planet became a prison -- and strive to overcome that instead of trying to escape it through death. 

The Hermeticists need to wake up and realize that their alchemical traditions have been hijacked to serve the Gnostic Death Cult. 

Death is the same mistake we make when we refuse to make a hard decision and let whatever happens become the answer. 

All this artificial struggle between the Ego and the Universe is ridiculous: we are part of it, and it is part of us.    

Does a fenced-in pasture cease to be part of the landscape?  Do we, by virtue of inhabiting a body, become separate from the cosmos?   

If so, it's a separation that exists only in our own crippled and confused mind. 

Removing that barrier in our own minds is the practical necessity facing all of us.  And it is merely facing the truth.  

There is an ultimate right and an ultimate wrong. There is truth and there is falsehood.  There is eternal life and eternal doom. 

We can no longer afford to be confused by the dialectic embedded in this form of life.  The way that we experience things on this Earth is a state of abeyance, and we cannot delay judgment by failing to choose--- or by remaining ignorant, either.  

While you've been sleeping and listening to propaganda, while you stopped asking questions, the Trump Administration quietly stopped all support, all tax credits, and ended all government efforts to develop clean energy resources.  

They are betting the farm on Operation Forge, and the fight with Elon Musk is about the risks and lack of scientific knowledge surrounding this decision. 

To put it in another venue, the Reptilians are pushing plasma harvested from a dangerous non-conventional source that could blow this planet apart, and the Aquarians are outraged and pushing back with new free energy technologies.  

Both spell doom for the oil empires, and that conclusion is convulsing the entire planet --- why?  Because the oil barons and the banks supporting them have been in a hissy fit for the past thirty years screaming like debutantes on Prom Night who didn't get picked to lead the parade. 

The rest of us deserve to say a big, resounding, "So what?" 

We stopped using whale oil, too.  The loss of the oil economy is not the end of the world, and if everyone stays calm, it can turn out better than ever before for every living thing on this planet. 

Be aware that Musk leveraged everything, his empire, his wealth, and even his life, to secure this outcome.  Be aware that the fate of Earth (Terra) is tied to the fate of Mars (Gaia), if only because of the Martian refugees who fled here after their mindless lust for war resulted in the loss of the Martian atmosphere -- and resulted in that whole great planet becoming uninhabitable. 

We are being protected from a similar outcome; the Reptilians have still not learned their lessons, but we have. 

The Andromedans are stepping in to end the reckless threat to life presented by the British Crown. In the process, the Reptilians will be overthrown and cast out, root, stem, lizard, and leaf.  And the Saturnine Brotherhood will hit the bricks with them. 

This marks the end of centuries of economic and social oppression, intellectual stagnation, emotional crippling, and other evils of all kinds. 

Raise up your heads and sniff the wind and be glad. Rejoice! Let your gratitude swell upward in your soul. These words are hitting you at a deeper level than you expect, because you have been waiting to hear them, and hoping to hear them without hope.  

We are bringing forward the past and hitting a new timeline fast. Buckle up.  

Earth Angels -- your recalibration, for those who needed it, is ending in the next 72 hours. If you've been waiting for your mission assignment, it won't be long now. 

Throw a kiss to Elon Musk.  Billy Ocean: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going. 

Issued by: 

Anna Maria Riezinger - Fiduciary

The United States of America

In care of: Box 520994

Big Lake, Alaska 99652

August 9th 2026

------------------

See this article and over 5900 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.

How do we use your donations?  Find out here. 

Granna Bytes: The Life We Are Called to Live

 By Anna Von Reitz

Apparently, Jim's death last fall caused more people to become aware of the significant age difference between me and my husband, a matter of fifteen years.  I have been asked about this before and expressed my answers; but, I hardly expected to be called upon by other younger people who have fallen in love with older people for advice. 

I have a lot of somewhat emotional responses that flicker across a whole spectrum of experiences and connections. 

My Great-Grandfather was 26 years old and the quintessential eligible bachelor, when he fell in love with a 45 year-old widow, the  wife of a fallen military officer.  She had fallen on hard times after her husband's death and although she held her respected social position, she had few, if any prospects, in an era when favorable marriages often depended on dowries and social advantages. 

Certainly, at 45, she was well-past her "use by" date in terms of child-bearing and not even remotely in consideration to become the wife of a man so blessed with fortune, education, youth, and social position. 

He fell in love with her anyway, and unleashed a social firestorm of controversy and gossip that still echoes to this day.  Their story was brief, beautiful, and terrible.  She had been married for over twenty-five years to her first husband, but never had a child.  Upon being married to my Great-Grandfather, she became pregnant almost immediately, gave birth to a healthy son, and died in the effort.  

In a period of one year, everything was utterly changed.  The gossip hardly slowed down.  First, it was the scandal of him marrying an old woman beneath his social class.  Second, it was God's judgment against the both of them.  Their lives were reduced to an object lesson about failure to meet one's social obligations and the dangers of doing anything otherwise. 

The chief argument against their marriage was that she was too old and proven barren and could not give him children.  

That had been answered, with both triumph and tragedy.   

A little over five years later, he died, mainly of a broken heart, leaving his very young son in the guardianship of an elderly second cousin, who decided to move to America to escape the incessant gossip and social commentary that even impacted her own life.  

A couple generations removed, I was born out of that union of old and young, an especially devastating union, but as he wrote in his diary, "If I am fated to have but one love in life, I do not regret my choice."  

Real love may have regrets, but of a different kind.  Regrets of words we didn't speak and actions we didn't take.  Times when our courage fails. Times when social interference leads to betrayals. My Great-Grandfather had none of those regrets, whatever else life threw at him.  

At the time, the social reproaches faced by a man marrying an older woman were akin to, or even more profound, than those associated with interracial marriages in Europe. He could have chosen someone of a different color or a different faith and faced the same or lesser social backlash. 

On the other side of my family, my Grandmother was fifteen years younger than my Grandfather.  This was also difficult, though more socially acceptable at the time, owing to the loss of so many men in the American Civil War which erased much of a generation, and also the difficulties that a man faced in accumulating enough property and security to support a wife and family on the American Frontier.  

So, again, I am myself the product of love spanning generations. Perhaps that is why the idea of being separated from Jim because of a "substantial" difference in age held no meaning or force for me. Yes, it took more courage. Yes, it flew in the face of conventional thinking.  Yes, it came with knowing that in all likelihood, I would face his death before my own, and have to live through the misery of his passing --- and land precisely where I am, alone. 

Yes, all of that, and more. 

All the social questioning and suppositions.  All the glances, all the assumptions.  I sometimes played "the bit of fluff" or "arm candy" role just for parody, and then, let people get a glimpse of what actually underpinned the relationship.  

It would be just as bad for a young man in love with an older woman, or worse, because being assumed to be a gold-digger with less than honorable attachments is even harder for a man to put up with.  

Here's the thing -- "perfect love drives out all fear" 1 John 4:18; when it's true love, the sense of coming home and being where you are meant to be, goes along with a promise that whatever you have to endure, can be endured.  And so it is. 

The pain and the tragedy of age and the gradual separations that it causes, are offset by luminous growth of compassion and understanding, the great wealth of your older partner's life experience, the gentleness of their sympathy for you.  

When you marry someone older -- and I do mean, significantly older, a full decade or more -- you are marrying someone who has already had some rough edges knocked off, someone who has had time to level up and face life's realities. They automatically move to protect you from the worst of it, not out of any parental impulse, but as a partner engaged in a joint enterprise. 

Remember Clint Eastwood's character, Frank Horrigan, in the movie "In the Line of Fire", when he famously says, "I know things about pigeons...."  And he does know things about pigeons.  

It's because your older mate spent those intervening years living life, observing pigeons, and standing in the line of fire. 

To the young man who wrote to me and expressed being heartbroken and feeling caged because the only woman he ever loved was ten years older than him --- speak up.  Tell her.  Don't wait. Make the most of the time you can still have together. 

To the young women who know the truth, but hesitate, because his age and experience seems so intimidating -- I give the same advice. 

Love has its own wisdom and perfect love allows no cowardice. 

The age difference poses its challenges, socially and in practical ways, too -- but it yields its beauties and its benefits, its insights, and the richness of its experience. 

For those standing on that particular precipice of decision, I will also recall Joel 2:25: "I will return the years the locusts have eaten." 

This may shortly become literal, in the age of Med Bed technology and longevity science, but it is certainly experientially true right now, today.  

I have a memory of Jim, face flushed, gold hair jumbled, smile flashing.  We'd been out stomping around on cross-country skis on a winter afternoon.  He commented that I was "keeping him young" and it's true, I was, simply by being his companion. 

We both had to stop a moment and reflect. It's true, he would not have been inspired to strap on skis and go visit the Snowshoe Hares by himself. The magic of the afternoon with its blue shadows and white birches and golden sun slanting through the forest would have still been there, but he wouldn't have accessed it without me tugging on him like a terrier.  

God returned years of his life to him through me, and extended the reach and the depth of my experience of life through him.  How beautiful is that?  

Don't let prejudices and fears stand in your way.  We are called to live life without the burdens of those things.  To quote Bernard Baruch ---and Dr. Seuss: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." 

This is especially important when it comes to choosing a partner in life and getting it right at any age.  Always remember that there are just two people in a marriage relationship.  The rest of the world gets to sit on the sidelines.  

Granna

------------------

See this article and over 5900 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.

How do we use your donations?  Find out here. 

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine's The Church's Year At the Introit pray with the priest for brotherly love and for protection against our enemies within and without: INTROIT God in his holy place; God, who maketh men of one mind to dwell in a house: he shall give power and strength to his people. Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; and let them that hate him flee from before His face. (Ps. LXVII.) Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. COLLECT Almighty, everlasting God, who, in the abundance of Thy loving kindness, dost exceed both the merits and desires of Thy suppliants; pour down upon us Thy mercy, that thou mayest forgive those things of which our conscience is afraid, and grant us those things which our prayer ventures not to ask. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end, Amen. EPISTLE (i Cor. XV. 1-10.)Brethren, I make known unto you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand: by which also you are saved: if you hold fast after what manner I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen by Cephas, and after that by the eleven. Then was he seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God; but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me hath not been void. INSTRUCTION I. St. Paul warns the Corinthians against those who denied the Resurrection of Christ and exhorts them to persevere in the faith which they have received, and to live in accordance with the same. Learn from this to persevere firmly in the one, only saving Catholic faith, which is the same that Paul preached. II. In this epistle to the Corinthians St. Paul gives us a beautiful example of humility. Because of the sins he had committed before his conversion, he calls himself one born out of due time, the least of the apostles, and not worthy of being called an apostle, although he had labored much in the service of Christ. He ascribes it to God's grace that he was what he was. Thus speaks the truly humble man: he sees in himself nothing but weakness, sin, and evil, and therefore despises himself and is therefore willing to be despised by others. The good which he professes or practices, he ascribes to God, to whom he refers all the honor. Endeavor, too, O Christian soul, to attain such humility. You have far more reason to do so than had St. Paul, because of the sins which you have committed since your baptism, the graces which you have abused, and the inactive, useless life you have led. ASPIRATION Banish from me, O most loving Saviour, the spirit of pride, and grant me the necessary grace of humility. Let me realize that of myself I can do nothing, and that all my power to effect any good, comes from Thee alone who alone workest in us to will and to accomplish. GOSPEL (Mark vii. 3I-37.) At that time, Jesus going out of the coast of Tyre, came by Sidon to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coast of Decapolis. And they bring to him one deaf and dumb, and they besought him that he would lay his hand upon him. And taking him from the multitude apart, he put his fingers into his ears, and spitting, he touched his tongue: and looking up to heaven, he groaned, and said to him, Ephpheta, which is, Be thou opened: and immediately his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke right. And he charged them that they should tell no man; but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal did they publish it, and so much the more did they wonder, saying: He hath done all things well: he hath made both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. Whom may we understand by the deaf and dumb man? Those who desire neither to hear nor to speak of things concerning salvation. Why did Christ take the deaf and dumb man aside? To teach us that he who wishes to live piously and be comforted, must avoid the noisy world and dangerous society, and love solitude, for there God speaks to the heart. (Osee ii. i4.) Why did Christ forbid them to mention this miracle? That we might learn to fly from the praise of vain and fickle men. What do we learn from those who brought the deaf and dumb man to Jesus, and notwithstanding the prohibition, made known the miracle? That in want and sickness we should kindly assist our neighbor, and not neglect to announce and praise the works of God, for God works His miracles that His goodness and omnipotence may be known and honored. SUPPLICATION O Lord Jesus, who during Thy life on earth, didst cure the sick and the infirm, open my ears that they may listen to Thy will, and loosen my tongue that I may honor and announce Thy works. Take away from me, O most bountiful Jesus, the desire for human praise, that I may not be led to reveal my good works, and thus lose the reward of my Heavenly Father. (Matt. vi. I.) . ON RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES What are ceremonies? Religious ceremonies are certain forms and usages, prescribed for divine service, for the increase of devotion, and the edification of our fellow-men; they represent externally and visibly the interior feelings of man. Why do we make use of ceremonies in our service? That we may serve God not only inwardly with the soul, but outwardly with the body by external devotion; that we may keep our attention fixed, increase our devotion, and edify others; that by these external things we may be raised to the contemplation of divine, inward things. (Trid. .Sess. 22.) Are ceremonies founded on Scripture? They are; for besides those which Christ used, as related in this day's gospel, in regard to the deaf and dumb man, He has also made use of other and different ceremonies: as, when He blessed bread and fishes; (Matt. xv. 36.) when He spread clay upon the eyes of a blind man; (John ix. 6.) when He prayed on bended knees; (Luke xxii. q.i.) when He fell upon His face to pray; (Matt. xxvi, 39.) when He breathed upon His disciples, imparting to them the Holy Ghost; (John xx. 22.) and finally, when He blessed them with uplifted hands before ascending into heaven. (Luke xxiv. 30.) Likewise in the Old Law various ceremonies were prescribed for the Jews, of which indeed in the New Law the greater number have been abolished; others, however, have been retained, and new ones added. If, therefore, the enemies of the Church contend that ceremonies are superfluous, since Christ Himself reproached the Jews for their ceremonial observances, and said: God must be adored in spirit and in truth, we may, without mentioning that Christ Himself made use of certain ceremonies, answer, that He did not find fault with their use, but only with the intention of the Jews. They observed every ceremony most scrupulously, without at the same time entertaining pious sentiments in the heart, and whilst they dared not under any circumstances omit even the least ceremony, they scrupled not to oppress and defraud their neighbor. Therefore Christ says: God must be adored in spirit and in truth, that is, in the innermost heart, and not in external appearances only. -Do not, therefore, let the objections, nor the scoffs and sneers of the enemies of our Church confound you, but seek to know the spirit and meaning of each ceremony, and impress them on your heart, and then make use of them to inflame your piety, to glorify God, and to edify your neighbor. INSTRUCTION CONCERNING THE ABUSE OF THE TONGUE There is no member of the body more dangerous and pernicious than the tongue. The tongue, says the Apostle St. James, is indeed a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold how small a fire kindleth a great wood. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is placed among our members, which defileth the whole body, and inflameth the wheel of our nativity, being set on fire by hell. (James iii. 5. 6.) The tongue no man can tame: an unquiet evil, full of deadly poison. By it we bless God and the Father; and by it we curse men, who are made after the likeness of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. (ibid. iii. 8-10.) There is no country, no city, scarcely a house, in which evil tongues do not cause quarrel and strife, discord and enmity, jealousy and slander, seduction and debauchery. An impious tongue reviles God and His saints, corrupts the divine word, causes heresy and schism, makes one intemperate, unchaste, envious, and malevolent; in a word, it is according to the apostle a fire, a world of  iniquity. The tongue of the serpent seduced our first parents, and brought misery and death into the world. (Gen. iii.) The tongue of Judas betrayed Jesus. (Matt. xxvi. 49.) And what is the chief cause of war among princes, revolts among nations, if it is not the tongue of ambitious, restless men, who seek their fortune in war and revolution? How many, in fine, have plunged themselves into the greatest misery by means of their unguarded tongue? How can we secure ourselves against this dangerous, domestic enemy? Only by being slow to speak according to the advice of St. James, (i. 19.) to speak very few, sensible, and well-considered words. In this way we will not offend, but will become perfect. (James iii. 2.:) As this cannot happen without a special grace of God, we must according to the advice of St. Augustine beg divine assistance, in the following or similar words: ASPIRATION O Lord, set a watch before my mouth, and a door round about my lips, that I may not fall and my tongue destroy me. (Ps. cxl. 3.)