In America

By Anna Von Reitz

One of the fundamental misunderstandings I encounter (and by that I mean that I encounter this Coast to Coast and around the world) is the outrage people unleash on me and anyone else who happens to be standing nearby, when they first realize that they have been abused and defrauded by commercial governmental services corporations. 

What business or right does this....this....THING have....(and they insert their favorite pet irritation) to me? 

Well, it doesn't.  The good news is that they can only"presume" what your political status is, or depend on your Mother to make a mistake and misidentify you as a "US" citizen for them.   

She is, of course, assuming that they mean "State Citizen of The United States" but they are talking about the British Territorial or Municipal United States instead. In this way, via this semantic deceit based on similar names, assisted by a lot of trusting  gullibility, millions of Americans have been misidentified as foreigners in their own country. 

And treated as such, too.  

And this in turn means being in a foreign political status, subject to foreign law, and responsible for paying foreign taxes. 

Americans and people around the world are understandably upset when they realize: (1) the thing they thought was their government is just a commercial corporation in the business of providing governmental  services and (2) they have been the victims of unlawful conversion, pillaging, racketeering, asset stripping and other evils as a result. 

And they are right. These corporations don't have any right to do the things they are doing. 

But on the flip side, we are unwittingly letting them operate this way, and letting their Presumptions stand against us by (1) failing to declare our political status and record it and (2) failing to take responsibility to self-govern and operate our own government. 

Once we wake up and take charge of the situation we find that nobody and nothing is dictating our political status.  We have some greedy, power hungry corporations to deal with and rebuff, but the choice of how we live and what kind of political status we choose is up to us. 

We have to know the verbiage and the choices and choose the right political status for ourselves. And then we have the responsibility to rebuild and restore the actual government we are owed. 

Pope Francis recently shocked the world by claiming that we have an obligation to obey the United Nations.  This is because the United Nations is the new face of the Unum Sanctum Trust.  

The Pope's saying that this is so, doesn't make it so.  Where have we, individually or as a nation accepted any such obligation?  

We haven't.

He and his Municipal employees and dependents may have such an obligation to the UN, and may have accepted the UN as their

government, but any idea that the rest of us embrace this obligation is based on false premises -- especially when you consider that the UN Corp that would be acting as the worldwide governmental services provider (and taxing us all however it saw fit) was set up by Vichy French Nazi collaborators prior to the end of World War II and is tainted by hideous criminality.

The Pope has obviously not learned his lessons, but hopefully the rest of us have had enough and will not be obedient to such masters no matter what kind of "peace and love and world unity" top dressing they give it. 

In other words-- just as the British Crown and its corrupt American collaborators are trying to move their base of operations to China to avoid criminal prosecution here and in Europe, the Pope is trying to set up another storefront for the monstrous crime syndicate the Holy See has been running.  Instead of using the Roman Catholic Church as a front, they propose to use the United Nations organization instead.

"Here's to the new boss, same as the old boss...." only worse this time, because absolute power does corrupt absolutely. 

Instead of promoting consolidation of power into one already grotesquely criminal commercial corporation, the Pope and everyone else should be deploying empowerment back to each one of us and showing respect for our mutual divine origin. 

Everyone who wants the UN Corp in charge of as much as a dog kennel, raise your hands. 

Everyone who is sick and tired of letting criminal commercial corporations milk and bilk people and then skate away to cause trouble in new locations,  raise your hands. 

Everyone who is fed up with the Popes using good organizations as cover for hideous criminality, raise your hands. 

If I have one urgent message to deliver to the people of the world today, it would echo Nancy Reagan's famous and heartfelt  "Just say --no!" 

Say it and mean it and let it be heard. 

No, Pope Francis. You are not going to use the United Nations like you used the Roman Catholic Church as a storefront for criminals. 

No, British Crown.  The days when you and your buddies in the Dutch East India Company could just sail over the horizon, taking your shareholder's gold with you, are over. 

We know who the criminals among us are and we've had enough. 

Government of China, we stood behind you when you wanted the New York Fed to return the Chinese Nationalist gold left on deposit there. 

We did that because it was the right thing to do. Chinese gold belongs to China and the Chinese People. 

Now please have the wisdom, courtesy, dignity, courage, and decency to return the favor. Jail the known criminals and return our gold to us. 

Don't let these con artists use and abuse China as they have used and abused Europe and the United States--- because whatever sops they are offering now, and however good the deal seems, you will be cherishing a parasitic viper, and condemning yourselves and everyone else on the planet to yet another round of violence and criminality. 

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

See this article and over 2000 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the PayPal buttons on this website. 

How do we use your donations?  Find out here.

Diabolical Thinking

By Anna Von Reitz

Satan rules the world, they say.  The Bible makes it clear that at the time of Jesus, he was already ruling the world.   He doesn't rule the Earth--- just the world.  So what is the world?

The world is all the mental constructs and associated behavior that takes place. It's the things that don't actually exist, like corporations, foundations, trusts, cooperatives, LLC's, pension funds, fraternities, etc., which are just built of ideas and labels and names, agreements, and "business structures", patents and copyrights and trademarks, generally accepted accounting procedures, banking and securities laws, treaties, doctrines, dogmas, accords, conventions, conferences, and so on.

Now that you are squarely looking at it, does it disturb you to know that Satan's Kingdom is built of nothing but words and ideas?

And does this now explain the need to examine your thinking?

Thoughts are built of words.  Emotions are built of thoughts.  Emotions and thoughts together build actions.  Actions build the world.

But how can you build rightly, if any of the precursors are faulty? 

If you use the wrong words, or the words can be interpreted in various ways, your thoughts can go sideways. 

If your thoughts are not built on a solid understanding, your emotions have nothing to rely on and can easily be completely inappropriate.

And with wrong thinking (wrong assumptions) and wrong emotions resulting from wrong thinking, it is all but inevitable that you will take wrong actions, too.

We recently had an example of that in our own family.  My two daughters-in-law got into a horrible cat fight over a complete misunderstanding.  One said something and the other "took it wrong".  This happens all the time, and we all know that it happens, but once equilibrium is restored, we don't take time to examine this phenomenon. 

We don't care enough about how it happens, to examine it, so we never catch on to how this same process is utilized by Satan. 

The foundation of Satan's kingdom is diabolical thinking which is based on the equally diabolic misuse of words. 

Deceitful words and ideas are part of the rebellion against the True God, who is the personification and embodiment of Truth. 

In the beginning, was the Word....  and in the beginning, each word had a specific function and meaning, there was one language, and everyone knew precisely what every communication meant. 

But something happened in Babylon.... words began to take on a life of their own, the meanings of words began to change and shift, and the content of thoughts sparked by words also began to change and shift and become uncertain.  This, then, affected emotions and actions, too. 

More kinds of words were added to language and these "modifiers" --- adjectives and adverbs -- layered on more layers of possible, but increasingly uncertain meaning. 

What appears red to me, may appear green to you. 

What is "up" with relationship to me, may be "down" with relationship to you.

So the effort to make our language more precise and meaningful at the same time caused it to be more debate-able.  This is where lawyers have their stock and trade, sorting through the misunderstandings and deceits and double-entendres that lurk in business and social agreements of all kinds. 

When a bank advertises "home loans" are they offering to loan you money to build a home, or are they soliciting to borrow your home as an asset for their use? 

When you realize that the common mortgage process consists of: (1) you paying for the house; (2) conveying your own property into a trust; (3) giving the bank control of that trust; (4) which they then abuse for their own advantages.... it becomes clear that "home loans" doesn't mean what you were led to suppose. 

The phrase was used as a "term of art" --- it took on a special meaning, quite different than any common use, and nobody told you.  This is Satan's Kingdom at work.   You were misled to interpret "home loans" as an offer to loan you money for a home, when in fact, it is a solicitation for you to loan your home to the bank.  The exact opposite.

The same thing happened when a group of people calling themselves the United States [Territorial] Congress "forgot" to tell you that they were acting in a "Territorial Capacity" and changed the meaning of the word "person" to mean "corporation" without telling you. 

Double score!  Two deceits for the price of one! 

First, you were misled to think that they were operating as our State Delegates, and then, whenever they said "person" it suddenly meant "corporation".   

And again, the new meaning is exactly the opposite of the old meaning.

"Person" used to refer to you acting in your Lawful Capacity as a tradesmen or merchant or businessman of some kind, but this group of men suddenly upended that meaning of the word, and from then on, when they said "person" it meant "corporation". 

Thus, when you see the words "personal bank account" you naturally continue to think of it as your own private property, your bank account, but when these Masters of Deception say or write the same exact words, it translates as "corporate bank account". 

What corporation? 

Well, they provided for that, too, by stealing your identity and unlawfully converting your Trade Name (also known as a Given Name) into the name of a corporation franchise conveniently owned and operated by them.

We are seeing this in the whole debate about "global warming", too.  There's no scientific basis to think that carbon dioxide caused by human activity (or cow farts) is causing changes to the climate. 

This deceit, this wrong idea, has gained ground-- and now we have hysterical women standing on street corners shouting like Hellfire Preachers, telling innocent people that if they don't stop using fossil fuels "the Earth will die in eleven years!" 

This is like the hysteria caused by the publication of "The Population Bomb". This book claimed to "prove mathematically" that population growth would "kill" the world by the late 1980's if we didn't all reduce ourselves to eating dirt right now. 

The 1980's came and went and only the abject True Believers (who were not mathematicians or they wouldn't have bought this crappola in the first place) continue to buy the ugly fantasy of the "mathematically certain" destruction of the planet because we are having babies.

Neutering yourself for the cause proved less popular than boycotting oil products, thank the True God.

A more "sophisticated" man or woman (not a compliment) can easily see that: (1) both these hysteria responses were promoted by false information causing wrong ideas which caused wrong emotions and wrong actions; (2) this progression of errors is being used to promote political and economic agendas designed to control and tax people. 

Nothing more.  Satan's Kingdom at work.  Get the rubes to cling to their own chains.  Get them to believe a false narrative that lets us tax and regulate them more, with their own agreement and consent. 

This is what I call "diabolical thinking"---- and it is the actual means by which "Satan" ---or at least his Devotees--- use to lie their way to success. 

It's up to the rest of us to become such critical thinkers, such skeptics, and so true-hearted, that we are bullet-proof against this. 

Many people were startled by my statement exposing Barack Obama as a British Corporate Jock, not a Communist at all.  How could I deduce that?

It's simple.  These people always pretend to be their own target. 

This deflects attention away from what they are actually doing, causes others to have false assumptions about them and their motivations, allows them to blame their own bad behavior on their enemies, and, last, but not least, their agent gets to infiltrate the social group they are targeting.

So if Barack Obama pretends to be a pro-black, liberal, Communist, you can be sure that he is an elitist, racist, British Agent --- the exact opposite of what he pretends to be. 

This is how these people think and how they operate.  Black is white and white is black, the common man is an elitist, the progressive is a Luddite, a person is a corporation, and a "home loan" involves you loaning your home (and credit) to a bank for the bank's profit, entirely and wholly at your expense.

At every step, you are deliberately misled and your thinking, emotions, and actions are manipulated-- by deceitful use of words and phrases, by deliberately promoted false ideas and false assumptions, and then it is all kicked into action.  

It's like using electrical shocks on a mouse in a maze to "induce" the behavior you want from the mouse.

Want a war in Iraq?  Produce some false evidence, spread a bunch of lies using the lapdog media, promote wrong ideas and assumptions, get people all pumped up, and they will reliably take whatever wrong action you want them to take. 

In such a manipulated and manipulative environment, free thinking and logical deduction are even being discouraged in the scientific community. Facts and truth might interfere with self-interested commercial and political  agendas.

This is why you must examine not only your own logic circuits, but learn how these people use verbal deceit to promote wrong actions that benefit them.

The Pilgrim Fathers called attorneys "Masters of Deceit", because they make their livings alternately promoting and unraveling exactly these kinds of  deceits--- but it's not just attorneys steeped in this crappola.  Increasingly, the corporations posing as legitimate governments--- that got into their position by deceit, are using more deceit to stay in power.

This is why ex-CIA Chief Michael Hayden spoke so glowingly about "Post-Truth America".   He wasn't, as many people assumed, indicating any future event in which the actual Truth would be told to the American Populace.  He was talking about a world completely built on lies, ruled by exactly these kinds of deceits and manipulations.  He was gloating about it.  He thinks its a good thing, because it allows him and people like him, to rule over good people.

It allows him and those like him to murder, steal, corrupt, use and abuse good people, and they think we are too stupid to catch on, ever, because generations of Americans have trusted what they thought of as their government and never figured out that they have been the victims of a hostile corporate take-over, and all but overcome, by these banal deceits.

But, Satan lost the bet a long time ago.  His Kingdom is forfeit.  And we are here to collect.  Be of good cheer.  One candle lights a lot of darkness, and the Truth is a sword. 

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

See this article and over 2000 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the PayPal buttons on this website. 

How do we use your donations?  Find out here.

Constitutional Enforcement Seminar

From Anna Von Reitz

Here is the entire series of Study Articles in booklet form using a PDF file for the upcoming meeting in Austin Texas next weekend.

Once again this was done by Max Emmons Taylor Jr. as was the series For All Jural Assemblies.

Here is the link to this series.

http://annavonreitz.com/constitutionalenforcementseminar.pdf

Two Bad Choices, Followed by One Bad Choice, As Usual

By Anna Von Reitz

When you educate yourself about history of money in America you will hear about the "Continental Dollar" a script issued by the first fledgling government which suffered its demise through hyperinflation.  

What the textbooks never tell you is that the hyperinflation was caused by purposeful British counterfeiting.  

You will also never be told that we are suffering the effects of this same evil now, and for the same reason: British counterfeiting. 

Trillions of dollars-worth of hundred dollar bills were printed by the Obama Administration, which sent actual government printing presses, engraving plates, paper and ink, to places like Burma and China and Thailand and Kuwait so that our currency could be hyper-inflated and devalued. 

This was a supplement to "Quantitative Easing" which as Godfrey Bloom and I agree, is just another form of counterfeiting. 

So, once again, for those who are paying attention, it should be perfectly obvious that our enemy and the Enemy of all Mankind is the British Government responsible for this and for a great many other evils.  This same British Government that has been manipulating our government for many generations using means both fair and extremely foul, as in this case. 

Barack Obama was born in East Africa --- a British Territorial Citizen from the Get-Go, and no more a Communist than I am.  Following their usual modus operandi and pretending to be their enemies, they hope to blame him on the Communists and at the same time, infiltrate the Communist ranks.  Just like Hitler, he was an implant acting under the direction of the Lord Mayor of London and the Lords of the Admiralty.  His differences with the Queen were quite genuine, in that he was the Boy Toy of Westminster and the British Crown, which have sought to undermine and compromise her position for the sake of commercial interests all her life. 

And the form of "British Government" that Obama worked for --- and so far as I know, still works for, is a Bully Boy for the Pope.  The only religion these people believe in is the idol worship of Mammon. 

Let's be perfectly clear here --- I don't hate or dislike the British People.  Far from it.  Nor do I have anything against sincere Roman Catholics.  

It's the extremely evil corporate interests that have been using the Queen and the Church as storefronts for their operations that I object to.  

Just look at all the little graven images in your own pockets. These are the "products" they sell, regardless of whether they are called "Federal Reserve Notes" or "Dollars" or "Francs" or "British Pounds Sterling", and regardless also of whether or not these products are made of paper or gold or silver or plastic or anything else.  

They are just products --- like so many variations of little wooden Tiki-gods produced by Omar the Idol-maker. 

To compound the idiocy of mistaking the image for the fact, and ascribing any special "value" to any of these things at all, we trade these things back and forth, and bet on them, and hoard them and play all sorts of games with them. Via their manipulation some people live lives of total immoral sloth, others commit gross crimes for want of even a little supply of these little idols, some countries have far more than they can ever spend, and others have to beg. 

From the perspective of an Angel on Earth, this whole place has been turned into an insane asylum because of "money".  Horrible injustices have been spawned because of it.  Countries have been overrun for it.  Billions of people have died to get it or died for lack of it, and it's a mirage. 

There is no such thing as money as a "store of value".  There is no safety or reason to run helter-skelter trying to find shelter for a value that does not exist.  Imagine my consternation and grim amusement as I listen to men argue -- earnestly -- all day long, about the "strength" of gold, the "weakness of the dollar" and watch the ceaseless ebb and flow of the betting that goes on.  

It's all completely loony-tunes---objectively insane: an active defiance of logic and fact, and it is institutionalized all over the planet, locked down like a cement overcoat over (nearly) everybody's minds. 

How can such a thing be?  How can it endure?  

It's called "Operant Conditioning".   

The mouse drops a piece of litter into the cup and gets a piece of cheese.  The mouse drops a piece of litter into the cup and gets a piece of ham.  The mouse drops a piece of litter into the cup and gets a piece of bread.  As a result, the mouse associates the piece of litter with "value" because it translates into cheese and ham and bread.  

The banking system has done the same thing to delude and condition the responses of otherwise sane and sober men. 

The thing being used as money is the litter, the cash register or card reader is the cup, and whatever the "mouse" receives is the reward. And because it is rewarded each and every time, the mouse goes back for more. 

All that is simple enough and easy enough to see.  

But is that piece of "necessary" litter really worth anything?  No. 

Is it really necessary?  No. 

Is the nature, color, or material used to make the litter important? No, it's completely arbitrary. 

Because of this early Operant Conditioning and the fact that their parents have also been bamboozled, billions of people on this planet develop a Basic Logic Fault. It's like a feedback loop in a computer program. The logic process concerning money goes so far, stops, and returns to reset: blip-blurp, blip-blurp, forever and ever.  

Even otherwise well-educated and experienced people can't engage me in an intelligent conversation about this topic, because of their firm belief that money has value.  And my equally firm conviction that its nothing but a "traditional" and well-orchestrated con game.  

It's as if the whole human race is a family of pea-pickers set on automatic pilot: my great-grandfather was a pea-picker, and my grandfather was a pea-picker, and my father was a pea-picker, and I am a pea-picker, and my son is a pea-picker and my grandson is a pea-picker.... ad infinitum. 

And when it comes to money, they can't break their minds out of the seemingly inescapable destiny of being a pea-picker / money user, too.  

All over the world, people can't imagine a world without money.  They can't even entertain the thought of other forms of money, much less the all-important question of who or what should control your access to money, if you are going to use such a cock-a-doodle-loo system in the first place. 

So let's go over some important and relatively recent history and facts. 

Sovereign governments can't go bankrupt, but incorporated "governments" --- or to be exact, governmental services corporations, can.  

So these yahoos have been operating as "governmental services corporations", making false claims against the assets of the people and of the countries they are supposed to serve, obtaining credit based on this purloined collateral, charging whatever they want against credit owed to others, then going bankrupt, and leaving the victims (the presumed to be co-signers) holding the bag for them. 

The world's "governments" are involved in something that is very little more sophisticated than a credit card hacking scheme. And except for Iran and North Korea and some Pacific Island Kingdoms, they are all in on it.  

They all think they are so smart, that their actions are so secret, that nobody will figure out what they are doing, how they are doing it, why they are doing it, and ultimately, who is responsible for it.  

The generals and the bankers are responsible for it.  Both.  But when push comes to shove, you can bet that the bankers will get the bad end of that deal, now and forever, anon. 

It will surprise many people to learn that "bankruptcy" is a patented business model based on deliberate insurance fraud against the public, and that insurance is merely legalized gambling among commercial corporations. 

This is why you can't add your spouse to any insurance plan without a "marriage license" --- the license permits the legal presumption that the "marriage" is in fact a joint venture among commercial corporation franchises, and the parties to it --- interpreted as commercial corporations, not living people -- are by this pretense made "insurable".  

Also in this way, living people who are otherwise owed absolute indemnity, become subject to tax collection, tariff collection, and, in a divorce, subject to the distribution of their assets by their unseen "silent partner" in all this skullduggery, ---the same "governmental services corporation" that has secretively gained an "insurable interest" in your "marriage" and the "products thereof" ---- otherwise known as your children, via the issuance of a "marriage license".  This is also one of the primary scams they play to make you liable to debtor's prison and "impoundment".  

What does a bail bondsman really do?  He provides a "bailment"---- an insurance policy for the guilty "State of State", guaranteeing their insurable interest in YOU, with yet another insurance policy issued by another gambler. 

It's all stupid enough to provoke howls of laughter, but the damage all this sanctimonious crime causes is absolutely mind-boggling. 

Instead of people simply working together to take care of themselves as a group, they muddle along and let all these parasites and predators play havoc, and these "Service Organizations" and "Professional Associations" exponentially increase the actual cost of the services needed many, many times over.  

Now, you have the lay of the land and the stench of the stink, and it should not surprise you to find that what you think of as your money has no magical value. 

It's not special.  It's not mysterious.  It's a commodity like pork bellies.  If it is made of gold, it has the market value of that much gold.  If it is made of paper, it has whatever value people will pay for it, usually under the duress and coercion of legal tender laws. 

So, there are two established "schools" of money manipulation. 

There are the Gold Merchant Banks, who manipulated world "government" corporations to steal and hoard vast amounts of gold, so that they could force the use of fiat currencies, devalue them, drive up the price of gold, and then, cash in by controlling access to the gold supplies and forcing the great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of the people they stole all the gold from in the first place, to buy it all back at a ten thousand percent (or more) "value accrual" plus interest price.

Right.  

Theirs is a simple, brutal commodity rigging scheme. They hoped to evade attention and public understanding of what they were (and still are)  doing by staggering this scheme out over decades and boiling the frogs slowly, milking the value out of the fiat currency they forced upon us as they went. This is the "Hundred Year Plan" of the schemers who built the Federal Reserve. 

They were so entrenched and so successful, that J.D. Rockefeller and the  Vanderbilts and J.P. Morgan and the Mellons and other Party Hearties decided to start the International Monetary Fund -- a vast fiat and securities-based commercial credit fund and use other commodities besides gold, but including blood and labor--- as the basis of their lending.   They also schemed to control by interbank treaties and agreements the transfer of credits and debts between banks.   

Both of these groups collude with each other to bilk and milk the public.  They simply use different "instruments" to do it, which amounts to --- would you prefer to be dismembered using a knife or a saw?  

Joachim and Boaz, pillar and post--- again.  

For the past several years these groups have been paralyzing each other, one group blocking, one group unblocking, back and forth, as they jockey around trying to keep two steps in front of the bank and securities regulators who are finally waking up and "taking steps" ---- only because it has occurred to them that they, also, might otherwise lose their heads----   and ten steps ahead of the General Public, which will roast them alive like Jacques De Molay if average working people ever wake up and realize how badly they've been abused by the whole delusion of money.  

I have suggested to both groups, that for the good of the whole world, and their own health, they should come up with a solution.  This is what they've come up with: 

They will have a group of cronies in the Municipal US SENATE ram through a new digital currency based on nothing at all but digits and false claims; they, the same guilty bankers, will parcel out the digits to their cronies and use this so-called "money of account" which is created by entering digits onto a bank ledger --- to pay off the endlessly stupid government officials and labor unions.  

I burst out laughing.  I couldn't help it. 

They create this whole problem, they inculcate this whole bizarre system of idol worship, they kill billions of people over the course of three centuries, they build a whole civilization based on fraud and criminality, they truncate and maim countless lives --- and the best they can come up with as recompense, is a system that costs them nothing, which they control, and which they can use at will to abuse anyone on Earth. 

They propose to have this "Senate Action" carried through by December the 18th, so that they can celebrate their conquest of the entire planet on their pagan holiday, the Winter Solstice.  

I had to remind them that nothing the Municipal or Territorial Officers do has any validity at all with respect to us and our land and soil holdings and never has.  So they will in fact have nothing to peddle but a glorified credit card system and more hot air. 

To say that this solution is not a solution and not at all acceptable, would be a gross understatement.   The arrogance and affront involved is breath-taking. L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace, but audacity on the part of capitol level criminal felons who have been caught in the act is not audacity.  

My solution involves deprogramming the Operant Conditioning. Just plain removing it as if it never was, letting people see "money" for what it really is, and letting the bankers and their "products" go spin in the wind of the Abyss. 

So, between the two extremes, they better get serious about a real solution and they'd better not expose their cronies, including those in the  "US SENATE", the Knesset, and the Parliament. 

At the rate things are going, they will need every crony they've got. 

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

See this article and over 2000 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

To support this work look for the PayPal buttons on this website. 

How do we use your donations?  Find out here.

Constitutional Enforcement Pre-Study Materials - Part 8

By Anna Von Reitz

Here are all the links to the Austin meeting pre-study materials up through part 8.

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartone.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudyparttwo.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartthree.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartfour.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartfive.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartsix.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudypartseven.pdf

http://annavonreitz.com/prestudyparteight.pdf

Instruction on the Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine's
The Church's Year

The Introit of the Mass is a fervent prayer; which may be said in every necessity and adversity:

INTROIT Bow down thine ear, O Lord; to me, and hear me: save thy servant, O my God, that hopeth in thee: have mercy on me, O Lord, for I have cried to thee all the day. Give joy to the soul of thy servant: for to thee, O Lord, I have lifted up my soul. (Ps. IXXXV.) 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 Let Thy continued pity, O Lord, cleanse and defend Thy Church: and because without Thee it cannot abide in safety, govern it ever by Thy gift. 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 (Gal. V. 25, 26.; vi. I-Io.) Brethren, If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be made desirous of vain-glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren, and if a man be overtaken in any fault, you, who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ. For if any man think himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every one prove his own work, and so he shall have glory in himself only, and not in another. For every one shall bear his own burden. And let him that is instructed in the word, communicate to him that instructeth him, in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption: but he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. And in doing good, let us not fail: for in due time we shall reap, not failing. Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

EXPLANATION This epistle is taken, like that of the Sunday before last, from the epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, in which St. Paul shows them the insufficiency of the Jewish law, and that they can only be saved by a lively faith in Christ, but now he admonishes them to the performance of good works. You now live, he tells them, in the Spirit, that is, the Holy Ghost animates your heart by His grace, enlightens, confirms, and inflames you, admonishes and teaches you, impels your heart to do good; you must, therefore, also regulate your external conduct accordingly, and in particular devote yourself to the practice of humility and charity, as the foundations of a truly spiritual life. Humility must teach and move you to think little of yourself, to avoid vain glory, and not to confide in your own strength. But charity should impel you to be meek and compassionate to all, even sinners, to correct them charitably, and lead them back to the path of virtue; since he who is harsh to the erring, despises and treats them roughly, is often permitted by God to fall into the same, nay, even into greater sins.

Particularly you must show your charity one for another, that one bears the burdens of the other: that you bear the faults and imperfections of others just as patiently as you wish others to bear with your own imperfections; thus you will fulfill the law of Christ, which commands us to love our neighbor; you will prevent many sins which are occasioned by considering yourself perfect, raising yourself above others, criticizing their failings, and causing disturbance. True glory consists in knowing ourselves, our faults and evil inclinations, and in eradicating them. Be grateful to those who instruct you in the word of God, and give to them willingly of your earthly possessions. What you sow, you shall reap; if you only follow the dictates of the flesh, do not mortify yourself, do not correct your failings, and indulge your sinful appetites, you will one day reap death, destruction and damnation, whereas, on the contrary, if you follow the dictates of the Holy Ghost, you will reap of the Spirit of life.

Let us obey this doctrine, for it is of interest to us, and impress deeply on our heart that without mortification of body and soul we cannot be saved.

ASPIRATION. O. St. Paul! beg of God the grace for me, that I may always walk in humility, and the love of my neighbor, particularly in bearing with his imperfections and failings, and thus fulfill the law of Christ in this as in all things.

GOSPEL (Luke VII. 11-16.) At that time, Jesus went into a city called Naim: and there went with him his disciples, and a great multitude. And when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold a dead man was carried out, the only, son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a great, multitude of the city was with her. Whom when the Lord had seen, being moved with mercy towards her, said to her: Weep not. And he came near, and touched the bier. And they that carried it stood still. And he said: Young man, I say to thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up,. and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother. And there came a fear on them all; and they glorified God, saying: A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited his people.

Why did Christ show compassion to this widow?

To convince us that God takes sorrowful and destitute widows under His protection; and is to them a consoler and helper; and to teach us to do the same. Woe, therefore, to those who oppress them and cause them to weep. The tears and cries of widows will ascend to God, who will terribly punish the injuries inflicted upon them. (Exod xxii. 22. 23.)

Christ had still other reasons for compassion, for He saw in this deceased youth the death of sinners, and in the afflicted mother the pain which the Church experiences at the spiritual loss of so many of her children. Should this not also awaken our sympathy since it was the principal cause which moved our Saviour to compassion. If we are faithful children of our mother, the Church, it is impossible for us not to share her sorrow, and we would surely not be her children, if we could contemplate without sorrow the multitude who daily die the death of sin, and thus separated from the living body of Christ, hasten to eternal destruction. O let us with the Church unceasingly, ask Jesus, that He raise sinners from their spiritual death, enlighten those in error so that all recognize the truth, find, and walk the path which leads to life !

Why did Christ say to the widow: Weep not?

He wished to moderate her excessive sorrow, and to teach us that we should not mourn for the loss of our relatives, like the heathens who have no hope of resurrection to eternal life. (Thess. iv. I a.) Resignation to the will of God, with prayer and good works, will be of more use to the dead than many tears.

What else do we learn from this gospel?

That no one, however young and healthy, will escape death, wherefore we should always be prepared to die.

INSTRUCTION CONCERNING DEATH

If there were locked up in prison several hundred persons, on whom sentence of death had irrevocably been pronounced, yet who knew not the day or hour of their execution; if one after the other, and often he who least expected it, were taken out to be executed; would not each one's heart tremble, whenever the prison door opened? Now the irrevocable sentence of death is pronounced on us all; we are all locked up in our bodies, as in a prison; (Ps. cxiv. 8.) one after the other is called hence, yet we do not regard it. We live as though we could live forever; we think only of the body, but for the soul nothing is done, except that we load it with sins and vices.

Is this rational? The body will be food for worms, but the soul (without knowing when) will travel into the house of eternity, to which place she must bring treasures of good works, in order to live happy for ever. Who would, therefore, be so foolish as to care only for the body during life, and neglect the salvation of the soul?

O man, says St. Francis of Sales, (Phil. part. i. chap. 13.) represent to yourself in lively colors, that at your death the world will cease to exist with respect to you. In that last hour the pleasures, the vanities, the riches, the honors, the friendships, and all that was dear to you, will disappear before your eyes as so many shadows. O fool that I am, you will then say, for what trifles and fooleries have I lost all! On the contrary, piety, good works, penance, etc., will appear pleasant to you, and you will exclaim: O, why did I not travel on this blessed road? Then the sins which you now consider as mere trifles, will seem to you like mountains, and all that you thought you had accomplished as, great things, with regard to piety, will seem to you very little.

What terrible fear will then seize your soul, when she must travel alone into the bottomless abyss of eternity which, as St. Bernard says, devours all possible, imaginable ages, and of which St. Gregory says, that we can easier say what it is not than what it is. What terrors will befall her, when she must appear before the tribunal of that God whom she never really loved and honored in her life-time and before whom she must now give the strictest account, and hear an irrevocable and just sentence!

Should not these thoughts make an impression upon you? How can you escape this terrible future? By living now, as you would wish to have lived at the hour of death. Die daily with St. Paul by crucifying the flesh and its lusts and by voluntarily withdrawing your heart from the world, its pomps and vanities, before death will do this by violence.

RESOLUTION O world! because I cannot know the hour, in which I must leave you, I will not be attached to you. O you dear friends and relatives, you, too, I will in future love only with a holy inclination, directed to God, which will not cease with death, but remain forever. O Lord! help me, that I may die totally to myself and the world, and live only for Thee, and partake of eternal happiness.

INSTRUCTION ON THE CEREMONIES USED AT FUNERALSBehold, a dead man was carried out, the only son of his mother, and a great multitude of the city was with her. (Luke vii. 12.)

Of these people who accompanied the funeral of the youth, we should learn to pay the last honors to the dead, and follow their bodies to the grave. This is a meritorious work, one pleasing to God, if it be not performed from vanity and self-interest, but for love of God and the deceased, with the charitable intention of assisting him by prayers. Therefore those do very wrong, who from worldly motives either omit this good work entirely, or during the funeral procession indulge in idle talk and deny the deceased even a short prayer.

Why is a cross carried before the corpse?

By this is indicated that the deceased during life professed Christ, died believing in Him, and hoping for resurrection through Him.

Why are lighted candles carried before the bier?

To represent the desire of the Church that the deceased through the grace of God may be received into eternal light.This custom is very ancient; wax-candles and torches, together with prayer and great solemnity were made use of at the burial of St. Cyprian who was beheaded for Christ's sake, in the year 258 after Christ. (Ruinart.)

Why are the coffin and the grave sprinkled with holy water?

In order, as St. Thomas of Aquinas (Lib. iii. art. 21.) remarks, to implore God, on account of the prayers which the Church says when she blesses the water, that the souls of the faithful may be cleansed from all stains, and may receive consolation and refreshment in the tortures which they may still have to suffer.

Why are the body and the grave incensed?

By this the Church indicates that the deceased by his Christian vocation was a good odor of Christ, (ii Cor. ii. 14, 15.) and admonishes the faithful that their prayers should ascend like incense to heaven for the deceased.

Why are Psalms and other sacred canticles sung?

This is done to remind us of the teaching of St. Paul, (i Thess iv. 12.) not to be excessively sorrowful for the loss of the deceased, like the heathens who have no hope of eternal life. We also signify, thereby, that we congratulate the dead for the peace which they now enjoy. (Apoc. xiv. 13.) This custom, as St. Jerome shows, (Ep. 53.) is derived from the apostles, who interred St. Stephen, singing Psalms and hymns of praise.

Why are the bells rung?

To invite the faithful to the funeral and to pray for the dead who, during lifetime, was called very often by the same bells, prayed with and for us during religious worship, and who is not separated from us by death.

Why art the bodies of the faithful buried with the head towards the East, and those of the priests towards the West?

The faithful are buried towards the East, whence the sun rises, to indicate, that they are waiting for Christ who is called the Orient from on High, (Luke i. 78.) and whose voice they will hear at the end of the world, when He calls them to the resurrection; the priests towards the West, as a sign that on the day of judgment they will be placed opposite to the souls confided to them, to give an account of their charge and to bear judgment for or against them.

Why is a cross or monument erected over the grave?

To show that the deceased was a follower of Christ, the Crucified, to admonish the passers-by to pray for him, and to remind us of the solemn moment of death.

Why is the body laid in consecrated ground?

This is done through reverence for the bodies of the dead which are, by baptism, temples of the Holy Ghost; to show that, even in death, they still belong to the communion of that holy Church, in which they were embodied during life by baptism, and to which they clung in faith even until death; to inspire the surviving with a holy fear lest they profane graves.

Why is the solemn funeral service of the Church denied to heretics?

Because they would not belong to the Church during life, and despised the holy customs and prayers of the Church for the dead. How should the blessing and prayer of the Church be useful in death to one who despised them during life.

Why does not the Church permit criminals and suicides to be buried on consecrated ground?

In order to express her horror for the crimes perpetrated by them, and to deter the faithful from committing similar actions.