Smart Meters - be warned.

 On Tuesday 5th Sep 2023 the UK Parliament quietly approved a bill clearing the way towards forcing British citizens to have smart meters installed in their homes and for individual electrical appliances including; fridges, dishwashers, and washers to be fitted with smart functions (Source). The key to smart functionality is that these appliances can be operated externally “in response to load signals” which means that smart meters will soon allow for your energy to be rationed remotely or even cut off completely according to the Smart Tyranny coalition [Source]. 

Essential Upgrade

We are being put into a position where it will be hard to refuse as the state has plans to force non-compliant residences into having a smart meter installed or face a £15,000 fine. “The replacement of traditional gas and electricity meters with smart meters is an essential national infrastructure upgrade for Great Britain” we are told by the government which is promoting the use of a smart meter as a money-saving device. (source).

This may have enticed the 33 million homes and small businesses in Britain that already have smart and advanced meters installed, but individuals have felt pressured into having them due to relentless overzealous electricity providers who have been working to reach their companies’ “binding annual installation targets” to roll out smart and advanced meters since 2022.

Now their focus is on installing the smart meters in the remaining “non-smart” customers by the end of 2025, which can only mean they will now have to ramp up the pressure for us all to have them against our will.

They Do Not Deliver

Utility companies claim that smart meters deliver benefits to consumers — like access to more data, better services, and cost and energy savings through data analysis. And yet, reports from around the world repeatedly suggest that smart meters aren’t delivering on these promises, failing to make an impact on energy use.

One example, in the Netherlands, consumers are barely saving 1 percent on their energy bill — far under the projected amount.

Catastrophic Health Effects

Failing to deliver benefits is one thing — but smart meter radiation also comes with significant health and safety concerns. Smart meters are responsible for “catastrophic effects” on the health of individuals and animals, surely it is down to the individual to choose to take that risk just to save a few pounds?

Unsurprisingly, the government’s “Smart Meters guide for households” states that in fact there is “no evidence that the meters pose any risk to health” (source). We know there is.

They also claim that radio waves are likely to be “much lower than other everyday devices such as our mobile phones,” Again this is untrue.

Senior Nuclear Policy Lecturer at UCSC, Daniel Hirsch, is reported to have found that smart meters “can emit intense pulses of radiation more than 14,000 times EACH DAY.” has determined that wireless meters emit 100-150 times the radiation of a cell phone, thus, invalidating utility claims that the radiation is insignificant. (source)

That is just with the standard smart meters and reportedly they’re not as bad as smart meters in the narrowband mesh network. These new smart meters have to continuously emit EMF to keep up with the data transfer demands, according to the Sheild Your Body group.

This means we will be constantly exposed to EMF emissions, which can result in a range of health problems (source)

Of course, this is known to numerous health bodies, for example, according to the American Cancer Society “RF radiation is a possible carcinogen, and smart meters give off RF radiation, it is possible that smart meters could increase cancer risk.”

Even the World Health Organisation has declared that “Non-ionizing radiation of the kind emitted by smart meters is a class 2B carcinogen – the same category as DDT, based on cell phone brain tumor studies”

Also, an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience concluded that “EMF hypersensitivity can occur as a bona fide environmentally-inducible neurological syndrome.”

There is undoubtedly lots more, but importantly consumer experience has more than shown the dangers of having a smart meter installed, why are they being ignored?

The Task Force

On January 5, 2023, Arthur Firstenberg, from Cellular Phone Task Force wrote that five weeks previously, he had asked people to email the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) about their experiences with smart meters.

What he received in response he described as “heartbreaking testimonies” that poured in from around the world, which included stories about “catastrophic effects on the health and lives of adults, children, the elderly, pets, farm animals, birds, wild animals, insects, worms, plants, neighbors, workers and entire communities.”

Below are excerpts and summaries of some of the 271 testimonies that are posted on the public comments page of the PRC’s website.

The Smart Meter Testimonies

Jennifer Andree is a New Mexico resident who was severely injured by a smart meter “that has completely devastated my life.” She is a nurse and a veteran who knew nothing about smart meters until she was injured by one. This occurred on Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. “For three and one-half months,” she writes, she slept with her head approximately one foot away on the other side of a wall from an electrical panel containing two electric smart meters. “Anything that carries an electric current or emits any radiation” now causes her headaches, brain fog, and internal burning.

“I can no longer tolerate living in an urban environment,” she writes, “so I have moved to South Dakota, to a cleaner environment in the country. Because of the harms I was exposed to, I am separated from my family, which has contributed to my suffering… I have a nursing license, but can no longer work in my profession.”

Maryann McCabe writes from the UK: “From the time [the smart meter] was turned on, I could not walk around in my flat, I could not write an email, I could not think and I could not sleep. It was an absolute nightmare until it was switched off.”

Harriet Greene, formerly of New Mexico, writes: “I was able to opt out and keep my old meter. Everybody I talk to who was forced to accept smart meters has complained of numerous effects.”

Lauren Bond writes, “Smart meters were installed in my building, and the radiation they emit inside apartments creates for myself, a constant burning pain to my skin.”

Jeanne Thompson writes from California: “My mother died of a massive brain tumor caused by a row of six Smart Meters outside her condo, on the wall where the head of her bed was. We discovered this after she had already passed. You can imagine my shock and horror at that realization.”

Dr. Linda Thomas writes, “I have seen hideous debility in adults and children secondary to Smart Meters being installed in my area.” These include absence seizures in a 2-year-old boy and chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia in his mother.

Mario Desira writes from Malta: “Back in 2017 my electrical meter caught fire and nearly caused a house fire. Luckily I was at home and intervened before anything worse happened.”

Persephone Maywald writes from California that she was diagnosed with suspected Parkinson’s disease a few months after a smart meter was installed, and that she later had the meter replaced and within a few weeks all her symptoms disappeared.

Simone St. Clare writes from California that since a smart meter was installed, there have been almost no hummingbirds at her feeders and a decrease in caterpillars in her garden.

Deirdre Novella writes from New York that her hair started falling out within a few months of a smart meter being installed at her place of work, that she was diagnosed with leukemia, and that she developed a lifelong allergy to electricity.

Sheila Reavill, who works as an electromagnetic radiation specialist (“EMRS”) in Georgia, writes that after smart meters were installed, “the smart meter signature I logged [on her radio frequency meter] in my bedroom was at the precise times I wake up at night”; that her next door neighbor and her neighbor’s daughter wake at the exact same time she does every night; that her border collie began having skin problems and would wake up whimpering at the exact same time also; and that she and her dog both wake up at that same time with diarrhea.

Rebeca Randle writes from California that while she had a smart meter she could not sleep and there were no birds; and that when the smart meter was removed, the birds came back.

Robert Workman, an EMRS in Missouri, writes: “I have confirmed injuries from wireless radiation and the Smart meter seems to be the most damaging to me and my clients. Once the ITRON electronic meter is removed many of my clients have an immediate response to an improved health. This meter has been torture to myself and others in St Louis, it is my professional opinion this meter kills all biological life.”

Health practitioner Diane Peterson writes from California that “For the majority [of people], they suddenly developed symptoms and only later discovered that the symptoms began immediately after the smart meter was installed.”

Sema Kelly writes: “My friend’s neighbor had a smart meter put in. She didn’t know it had such dangers, but soon found out her chickens in the yard had huge tumors growing on their throats and body. The eggs they laid were odd shapes and colors, and the chickens appeared to be tired, which was not ever seen prior to the installments of the smart meters.”

Andre Fayolle writes that a smart meter gave his family headaches, caused the animals, birds and insects to disappear, and caused a fire that burned down his house.

Karen Crenshaw writes from California that she had no knowledge of the dangers of smart meters until an Itron smart meter was installed on her house, after which she awoke abruptly every hour during the night, had uncomfortable ear sensations, acquired high-pitched tinnitus, and felt pressure in her chest.

Annette Lillig writes from the UK: “Everyone I know who [has a smart meter] has been negatively affected by them.”

Beverly Jennings writes: “In Capitola, CA an entire bank of smart meters burst into flames and started a fire and burned down an apartment complex.”

Margaretha Tierney writes from Australia that she became sick two weeks after a smart meter was installed and was sick for five years until she had it moved off her house.

Sarah Wild writes that she had heart palpitations, headache, and panic until her smart meter was removed. She writes that her 80-year-old neighbor “went from being extremely lively, active, outward-going to hobbling around and forgetful within 6 months” of a smart meter being installed and died within 18 months.

Dino DeBenetti writes from Ontario, Canada that after a smart meter was installed, his wife’s health and behavior deteriorated, resulting in their divorce. He also writes that he has attempted to hatch fertile chicken eggs in an incubator in his house twice since the meter was installed, with over 20 fertile eggs each time, and not one egg hatched either time.

Karen Blomquist writes from California that when smart meters were installed on her home she incurred inner ear damage, sleeplessness, anxiety, non-stop heart palpitations, and migraines, and fled her home after two months to save her life. She also reports that her pets all got cancer and passed away.

Tina Cada writes from Florida that although she opted out of a smart meter on her own home, “[o]n the day they were getting installed [in her neighborhood], I walked outside and had no idea where I was. I had the worst kind of disorientation. This reaction was ongoing and lasted for the first few months.” She reports vertigo attacks that have continued, and constant dry mouth, that her teenage son has dry mouth, headaches and sleep disruptions, that her neighbor’s dog suddenly got cancer and died after the smart meters were installed, that her cat started acting differently, and that all the bats disappeared.

Laurie Grams writes from Texas that she lives in an apartment complex and so could not opt out, and has had sleep problems and agitation since smart meters were installed.

Jennifer Wood writes from West Virginia that “I have literally known thousands of people over the past nine years or so who became so ill when smart meters were installed in their homes that they had to move just as I did.”

Elizabeth Foley Walsh writes from North Carolina that she knew nothing about smart meters until after one was installed in her home and she began having severe headaches, dizziness, and temporal lobe seizures the following week. She writes that she thought she was dying until she went camping one week and the symptoms disappeared; that her next door neighbor’s headaches began the same time hers did; that an elderly neighbor across the street began falling repeatedly immediately after their headaches began; and that when she finally moved to a location without a smart meter she “was stunned at the change in my health.” She observed that “the frogs disappeared the very summer after the smart meter went in”—the hundreds of frogs that previously inhabited the creek behind their back yard—and that all the house sparrows and starlings disappeared, and that squirrels were “suddenly tame and suddenly laying down ‘resting’ a lot. They seem to be panting and they seem to be sick.” She writes that she has had to leave an 18-year career in developmental epidemiology.

Rainer Grobe writes that on the same day a smart water meter was installed, his wife developed heart arrhythmia, very high blood pressure, and fainted, and that they had to remove the meter themselves, with both legal and financial consequences.

Kent Casady writes from Germany that he and his wife purchased a house with a smart meter, and when they moved in there were no insects, bees, butterflies or birds, and “[t]he dirt in the yard was dead.” After they had the smart meter removed, they had “earthworms in the soil, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, spiders, and other creatures.”

Kimberly Webber, in Taos, New Mexico, writes that although they were able to opt out of a smart meter at their home, they were unable to opt-out at their place of business, and that “[w]e noticed agitation, irritability, depression, headaches, ear ringing and other symptoms from ourselves and our employees while in the work space.” They moved their business to a new location without a smart meter and “[a]ll of the symptoms have disappeared for us and our team.”

Ellen Habeck writes: “Until I researched the matter, I could not understand why I had such fragmented sleep, and would wake with severe tachycardia. I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. There was not sleep and no ability to function well in the morning after that.” Finally, “I looked and found the place I had moved to had a smart meter outside the bedroom wall.” She adds: “There is a neighbor who asked me why she thought she would feel unwell when working for hours in a particular room in her house. She also noted that any plants she put in that room died, where they had been thriving in other rooms. I looked and saw there was a smart meter directly on the other side of the wall of that room where she sat, and a neighbor’s smart meter pointing at fairly close proximity to that room.”

Arlene Griffin is a Santa Fe resident who briefly lived in southern California in 2019-2020. She writes: “I had no history of heart problems, but upon moving into a house in a development in San Diego County, I was jolted awake every night, feeling like what it would be like to be hit with defibrillator paddles. Once awake, my heart would alternate between pounding, racing, and skipping beats for the rest of the night, and I would shake for hours. I also developed eye issues—my eyes burned and were red and swollen. Each day I would feel better when I left our house, but each night the horrible symptoms would return. It was terrifying and exhausting… We hired an inspector who tested our house for RF/EMF radiation and found that the high readings were not coming from our property (we had an analog meter), but from our neighbor’s house. It so happened that her meter directly faced our bedrooms… Finally, in September 2020 I returned to New Mexico for good, and I have not had those heart symptoms here.”

Stephanie Dickerson writes from North Carolina that she is “currently suffering every single day and especially nights from the newly installed” smart meters in her neighborhood, and that “I have been forced from 3 previous home locations because of smartmeter installations… My heart rate has become dangerously high, my body temperature can not regulate, I experience constant vibrating in my torso and in my legs, my brain function has deteriorated and I can not sleep at all. This physical response to the newly installed smartmeters is life-threatening to me.”

Brenda Rogers writes from California that she “had to leave my home in a camper to find somewhere I could sleep” because of a smart meter, and that she had to abandon her home of 30 years.

Catherine Ralston lives in Taos. “A smart meter was put in at my address,” she writes. “I started having trouble sleeping at night. I started having headaches. I stopped waking up happy. My emotions were flatline. This happened quickly, over a couple of weeks. Someone told me about symptoms showing up in people after smart meters were installed where they live. I went looking for the smart meter. Then I moved my bed to a location in the building as far from the meter as I could put it, and slept with my head at the end of the bed furthest from the meter location. I slept through the night, and woke with no headache. I do not own the property and the owner won’t work with the electric company to give back the old meter. I feel blessed someone told me about the horrible impact the smart meters have on human health.”

Glenn Kikel moved to New Mexico from Colorado. He writes that when a smart meter was installed on their Colorado house, he developed tinnitus and his wife developed heart palpitations, and that both health problems ceased when the meter was moved.

Diane Craig writes that she “experienced severe tinnitus, tremors, short-term memory issues, and an area at the back of my neck at the base of my skull that was hot to my husband’s touch” in a 4-hour period after a smart meter was installed 10 feet beyond the head of her bed. They paid for opt-outs for both themselves and a neighbor in order to be well, she writes.

Alvita Armanavičienė, from Latvia, submitted this startling photograph of a bush standing just inches away from a smart meter:

Simone Bercu writes that she and her family left their homes in other states to come to New Mexico five years ago to escape smart meters. “The smart meters were devastating our small children and ourselves and the effects are still noticeable,” she writes.

Annie Mattingly, of Santa Fe, writes, “My daughter, living in another state, was away when a Smart Meter was installed on her house. Within days of her healthy arrival home, she became ill and now, several years later, she is still plagued with health issues and is only partially functional.”

M. L. writes from Pennsylvania: “When our meter started transmitting, I noticed two birds that had died within approximately 25 feet of it.”

Lukas Zillmer writes: “I have personal experience of bad sleep, waking up at night, waking up still tired from being exposed to the radiation by smart meters which made life almost unbearable.”

Simone Prince writes from British Columbia, Canada that her cat developed hyperthyroidism when a smart meter was installed on her townhouse, and that she herself changed from hypothyroidism to hyperthyroidism at the same time.

Arthur Firstenberg wrote: If you have stories to add and you have not yet sent them to the PRC, please email them to: New Mexico PRC <prc.records@prc.nm.gov>. Write “Case No. 22-00058-UT” in the Subject line. Be sure to also send a copy to me at Arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org. We need all the help we can get to preserve New Mexico as a refuge from smart meters, and as an example to the world. 

Arthur Firstenberg
President, New Mexicans for Utility Safety
President, Cellular Phone Task Force.

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We are one huge step closer to totalitarian control which is evidenced by the government’s new bill. Despite knowing what is good for us and what is extremely dangerous, our dictatorship of a puppet government is determined to take away our right to choose whether to risk our health by having a smart meter installed just to save a couple of quid.

Welcome to the New World Order, expect more of this authoritarian harmful control.

Saints Peter and Paul

                                     

                                       Saint Peter   (European School 18th c.)

The 29^th June is a special day when the Church celebrates the lives of two of the earliest and well known of the Christian Saints, Saints Peter and Paul.

St Peter was a fisherman by trade, plying his skills on the Sea of Galilee which  is in Israel bordering Syria, with his usual crew the brothers James and John. One morning whilst preparing to ‘shut shop’ after a particularly unproductive night during which they had caught no fish, they were spoken to by Jesus Christ, aged then about 30 years, who was unknown to them, but was watching from the shore.  Having complained that they had caught nothing all night, Peter was then told by Christ to cast his nets again. He was sceptical but reluctantly did as Christ suggested, and so many fish were caught in the nets that he had to call for help from other fisherman at the scene. This inexplicable event and incredibly large catch was recognised by Peter as the work of God, the first of many ‘miracles’ which he was to witness. Christ invited him to join Him as His disciple and become a ‘fisher of men’, which he did, as also did his colleagues James and John.  These three became the first of the twelve Apostles chosen by Christ, remaining with Him until he was crucified. During this time Peter was appointed by Christ as Head of His newly founded Church on Earth, the Catholic Church, which today numbers 1.378 billion baptized Catholics throughout the world.

 St Paul was born a Roman citizen, and as a young man with political ambition, became infamous for his ruthless single-minded persecution of Christians. This stopped after he was mysteriously struck from his horse while on the road to Damascus when he heard the voice of God Who asked him why he was persecuting Christians so cruelly. Recognising the error of his ways, Paul’s conversion to Christianity was immediate, and thereafter he spent the rest of his life preaching the reality of Christ’s resurrection from the dead and His teachings that men must follow to please God and attain eternal salvation.  St Paul’s life involved great physical and spiritual suffering, which he describes in his letter to the Corinthians, not out of any sense of vain-glory but for the enlightenment of the souls committed to his charge:-

“Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea.  In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren.  In labour and painfulness, in much watching, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness.” et al. (Ch.11  v. 24-27. St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.)

                                              Saint Paul Preaching in Athens   (Raphael)

 Both St Peter and St Paul suffered martyrdom for their faith, at the hands of both Jewish and Roman authorities who regarded Christianity as a threat to their position of power. Saint Peter was crucified and insisted that he be crucified upside-down as he was not worthy to imitate the death of his leader and master, Jesus Christ.  St Paul as a Roman citizen was protected from crucifixion, and although there is no recorded details of his death, he is  believed to have been decapitated by his captors, this being the customary manner of execution for men such as he.

In the Mass for the feast-day of St Peter and Paul, the Epistle relates the details of a particularly striking miracle involving St Peter:-

            ‘In those days, Herod the king stretched forth his hand to afflict some of the Church:  and he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword; and seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take up Peter also. Now it was in the days of the azymes: and when he had apprehended him, he cast him into prison, delivering him to four files of soldiers to be kept, intending after the Pasch to bring him forth to the people. Peter therefore was kept in prison; but prayer was made without ceasing by the Church unto God for him.  And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains; and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shined in the room; and he, striking Peter on the side, raised him up, saying: Arise quickly. And the chains fell off from his hands; and the angel said to him: Gird thyself and put on thy sandals. And he did so.  And he said to him:  Cast thy garment about thee and follow me.  And going out, he followed him: and he knew not that it was true which was done by the angel; but he thought he saw a vision.  And passing through the first and the second ward, they came to the iron gate that leadeth to the city, which of itself opened to them; and going out, they passed on through one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.  And Peter coming to himself, said: Now I know in very deed that the Lord hath sent His angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.’ (Acts of the Apostles Ch. 12 vs. 1-11)

These events occurred some 2000 years ago, yet the battle between good and evil continues unabated.

Today the world faces the frightening prospect of a take-over by a powerful group of pagan elitists, who have been planning over many decades to take control of the world. Currently they have infiltrated and are attempting to  control  the major governments  of the world, politically, economically, militarily, including  all matters relating to health, education, finance, and even ‘religion’. They aim for total and absolute power over all nations under ‘one-world government’. They preach the Malthusian policy of de-populating the Earth, planning to reduce the world’s population by billions.  They do not believe in God the Creator of the Universe, and they have adopted the role of  Lucifer at the time of Creation. Lucifer failed then as the elite will surely fail now,  but we need God’s help, for this is a spiritual battle. 

The world must return to God,  acknowledging His omnipotence and obeying His commandments.  Recognition of Jesus Christ, God the Son made Man, is necessary for our eternal salvation, for He suffered a cruel and unjust death for our sins, in order that we might be saved. God loves us and wants to help us, but we must go to Him.

“Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil.  For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore, take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect.”  (St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Ch.6 vs.11-13)

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us all.

'Life of Christ' by Fulton Sheen (Bp)

 

 

I am reading the book ‘Life of Christ’ by Bishop Fulton J Sheen, published in 1959, and find it spiritually informative and refreshing in this age of the diabolically inspired ‘Great Reset’ agenda. I hope that you too share my feelings.

                                   

                                                'The Early Life of Christ'

Bethlehem.

Caesar Augustus, the master book-keeper of the world, sat in his palace by the Tiber.  Before him was stretched a map labelled ‘Orbis Terrarum, Imperium Romanum’. He was about to issue an order for a census of the world; for all the nations of the civilised world were subject to Rome.  There was only one capital in this world: Rome; only one official language: Latin; only one ruler: Caesar. To every outpost, to every satrap and governor, the order went out:  every Roman subject must be enrolled in his own city. On the fringe of the Empire, in the little village of Nazareth, soldiers tacked up on walls the order for all the citizens to register in the towns of their family origins.

            Joseph, the builder, an obscure descendant of the great King David, was obliged by that very fact to register in Bethlehem, the city of David. In accordance with the edict, Mary and Joseph set out from the village of Nazareth for the village of Bethlehem, which lies about five miles on the other side of Jerusalem.  Five hundred years earlier the prophet Micheas had prophesied concerning that little village:

                                And thou, Bethlehem, of the land of Juda,

                              Art far from the least among the princes of Juda,

                        For out of thee will arise a leader who is to be

                              The shepherd of my people Israel.

                                                                                   Mathew 2:6

Joseph was full of expectancy as he entered the city of his family and was quite convinced that he would have no difficulty in finding lodgings for Mary, particularly on account of her condition.  Joseph went from house to house only to find each one crowded.  He searched in vain for a place where He, to Whom heaven and earth belonged, might be born.  Could it be that the Creator would not find a home in creation?  Up a steep hill Joseph climbed to a faint light which swung on a rope across a doorway.  This would be the village inn.  There, above all other places, he would surely find shelter. There was a room in the inn for the soldiers of Rome who had brutally subjugated the Jewish people;  there was room for the daughters of the rich merchants of the East; there was room for those clothed in soft garments, who lived in the houses of the king; in fact, there was room for anyone who had a coin to give the inn-keeper; but there was no room for Him who came to be the Inn of every homeless heart in the world.  When finally, the scrolls of history are completed down to the last words in time, the saddest line of all will be: ‘There was no room in the inn.’

            Out to the hillside to a stable cave, where shepherds sometimes drove their flocks in time of storm, Joseph and Mary went at last for shelter.  There, in a place of peace in the lonely abandonment of a cold windswept cave; there, under the floor of the world, He Who is born without a mother in heaven, is born without a father on earth.

            Of every other child that is born into the world, friends can say that he resembles his mother.  This was the first instance in time that anyone could say that the mother resembled the Child.  This is the beautiful paradox of the Child Who made His mother; the mother too, was only a child.  It was also the first time in the history of this world that anyone could ever think of heaven as being anywhere else than ‘somewhere up there’; when the Child was in her arms, Mary now looked down to Heaven.

            In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born.  He Who was later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was born among beasts. He Who would call Himself the ‘living Bread descended from Heaven’, was laid in a manger, literally – a place to eat.  Centuries before, the Jews had worshipped the golden calf, and the Greeks, the ass.  Men bowed down before them as before God.  The ox and the ass now were present to make their innocent reparation, bowing down before their God.

            There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful.  But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born - if He was to be born at all - in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for Him.  Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

            No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth, would one day have need of an ox and an ass to warm Him with their breath; that He Who, in the language of scripture, could stop the turning about of Arcturus, would have His birthplace dictated by an imperial census; that He Who clothed the fields with grass, would Himself be naked; that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle: that the feet which trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk; that the Eternal Word would be dumb; that omnipotence would be wrapped in swaddling clothes; that Salvation would lie in a manger; that the bird which built the nest would be hatched therein – no one would ever have suspected that God coming to this earth would ever be so helpless.  And that is precisely why so many miss Him.  Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

            The Son of God made man was invited to enter His own world through a back door. Exiled from the earth, He was born under the earth, in a sense, the first Cave Man in recorded history. There He shook the earth to its very foundations.  Because He was born in a cave, all who wish to see Him must stoop. To stoop is the mark of humility.  The proud refuse to stoop and, therefore, they miss Divinity. Those however, who bend their egos and enter, find that they are not in a cave at all, but in a new universe where sits a Babe on His mother’s lap, with the world poised on His fingers.

            The manger and the Cross now stand at the two extremities of the Saviour’s life!  He accepted the manger because there was no room in the Inn; He accepted the Cross because men said, ‘We will not have this man for our king.’ Disowned upon entering, rejected upon leaving.  He was laid in a stranger’s stable at the beginning, and a stranger’s grave at the end.  An ox and an ass surrounded His crib at Bethlehem; two thieves were to flank His Cross on Calvary.  He was wrapped in swaddling bands in His birthplace, He was again laid in swaddling clothes in His tomb – clothes symbolic of the limitations imposed on His Divinity when He took a human form.

            The shepherds watching their flocks nearby were told by the angels:

                        This is the sign by which you are to know Him;

                               You will find a child still in swaddling - clothes,

                        Lying in a manger.

                                                                                       Luke 2:12 

He was already bearing His Cross – the only cross a Babe could bear, a cross of poverty, exile, and limitation.  His sacrificial intent already shone forth in the message the Angels sang to the hills of Bethlehem:

                        This day, in the city of David,

                                    A Saviour has been born for you,

                        The Lord Christ himself.

                                                                                        Luke 2:11

Covetousness was already being challenged by His poverty, while pride was confronted with the humiliation of a stable.  The swathing of Divine power, which needs to accept no bounds, is often too great a tax upon minds which think only of power.  They cannot grasp the idea of Divine condescension, or of the ‘rich man becoming poor that through His poverty, we might be rich.’  Men shall have no greater sign of Divinity than the absence of power as they expect it – the spectacle of a Babe Who said He would come in the clouds of heaven, now being wrapped in the cloths of earth.

            He, Whom the angels call the ‘Son of the Highest’, descended into the red dust from which we were all born, to be one with weak, fallen man in all things, save sin.  And it is the swaddling-clothes which constitute His ‘sign’.  If He Who is Omnipotence had come with thunderbolts, there would have been no sign.  There is no sign unless something happens contrary to nature.  The brightness of the sun is no sign, but an eclipse is.  He said that on the last day, His coming would be heralded by ‘signs in the sun’, perhaps an extinction of light. At Bethlehem the Divine Son went into an eclipse, so that only the humble of spirit might recognise Him.

            Only two classes of people found the Babe: the shepherds and the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything.  He is never seen by the man of one book; never by the man who thinks he knows.  Not even God can tell the proud anything! Only the humble can find God!

            As Caryll Houselander put it, ‘Bethlehem is the inscape of Calvary, just as the snowflake is the inscape of the universe.’ This same idea was expressed by the poet who said that if he knew the flower in a crannied wall in all its details, he would know ‘what God and man is’. Scientists tell us that the atom comprehends within itself the mystery of the solar system.

            It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His life, and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was there from the beginning, and it cast its shadow backward to His birth. Ordinary mortals go from the known to the unknown submitting themselves to forces beyond their control; hence we can speak of their ‘tragedies’. But He went from the known to the known, from the reason for His coming, namely, to be ‘Jesus’ or ‘Saviour’, to the fulfilment of His coming, namely, the death on the Cross.  Hence, there was no tragedy in His life; for tragedy implies the unforeseeable, the uncontrollable, and the fatalistic.  Modern life is tragic when there is spiritual darkness and unredeemable guilt. But for the Christ Child there were no uncontrollable forces; no submission to fatalistic chains from which there could be no escape; but there was an ‘inscape’ – the microcosmic manger summarising, like an atom, the macrocosmic Cross on Golgotha.

            In His First Advent, He took the name of Jesus, or ‘Saviour’; it will only be in His Second Advent that He will take the name of ‘Judge’.  Jesus was not a name He had before He assumed a human nature; it properly refers to that which was united to His Divinity, not that which existed from all eternity.  Some say ‘Jesus taught’ as they would say ‘Plato taught’, never once thinking that His name means ‘Saviour from sin’.  Once He received this name, Calvary became completely a part of Him.  The Shadow of the Cross that fell on His cradle also covered His naming.  This was ‘His Father’s business’; everything else would be incidental to it.

                        (Ack. ‘The Life of Christ’ by Fulton Sheen. Published by Peter Davies London. 1959.)

'Mass for the People' by Caryll Houselander(1901-1954)

' Father O’Grady looked at his watch, the server was late. He checked a feeling of irritability and was shocked by the difficulty he felt in checking it. 

 Was sanctity within his reach after all, he asked; could his great hands lay hold of it, he who never knew the sweetness of this complete act of love; the unbroken prayer, the whole hour of meditation, the work accomplished, the sensible sweetness of the sacramental word spoken; even one hour out of the twenty-four, unbroken, for his personal delight! 

Could he who never knew that completeness in his soul, that inward closed circle of light, be a Saint? Could his day of fragments be a day in a Saint’s life?  

The answer came to him paralysing in its beauty; this broken life of his was the breaking of the bread, that in the broken bread, the whole Christ be given to his people. Soon, in a few minutes now, his people would be at the altar rails, opening their mouths like sparrows for their crumb of Life, and in their crumb of Life they would receive all Life, whole. 

 Father O’Grady paced up and down, rubbing his hands together to keep warm ---“Break me, dear Lord, but in the breaking of the Bread, be whole in Your Body upon earth!” 

 Lately, he had asked himself as he trudged home from the parish visits, what is the meaning of the lives of these unknown, insignificant people, who yet must somehow fulfil the strange prophecy, “And there are some of whom there is no memorial: who are perished as if they had never been born, and their children with them. But they were men of mercy, whose godly deeds had not failed.” 

 The priest was on the side of life, he had no other work, no other raison d’etre but to give life, and the life he gave could not be killed. He was not outside of the world’s love because he was a priest and alone, he was the heart of the world’s love, its core, because the Life of the World is born every day in his hands at Mass. 

He looked at his watch again. How late the boy was! He tried to say the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, to fill his mind with the words of the prayers to dismiss his distractions. But it was no use. This morning, distractions got the better of him, do what he would. 

 At last, a clatter outside proclaimed the arrival of the little server. How often Father O’Grady had tried to impress upon this boy that he represented all the Christians in the world before the Altar of God when he answered Mass, and how well the Christianity of the world should brush its hair and clean its shoes and wash its hands, to enter the Holy of Holies and offer the heart of mankind! Today he was even more dishevelled than usual, tousled, smeary, his bootlace undone, and it was apparent that the World had overslept and tumbled straight out of bed, and would today be even more than usually absent-minded and clumsy --- yet Father O’Grady looked at the urchin tenderly, all his irritability passed. After all the world is like that, late, distracted, grimy, but with a good if unstable will to serve; and might not this sudden new tenderness in the priest’s heart be a reflexion from aeons and aeons away, of the tenderness of the Eternal Father, waiting from eternity for the scruffy, sniffing, unconcentrated, often unwashed, imperfect, weak, and loving Christian world, to come to Him. 

 “Tie your shoelace,” he said, “and damp down your hair --- and here, flick your face with this wet towel, and hurry now, put on your cotta, and light the candles.” And the dishevelled Christian World, transformed, in a smooth white cotta, with a wet golden curl, and nothing of ‘the old man’ left but the huge boots jabbing out from his cassock, walked out with the expression of a Botticelli angel, to light the candles for Mass. 

 Even during the few steps that he walked from the sacristy to the sanctuary, the humiliation of being himself left Father O’Grady. The emptiness, the dryness of his soul, ceased to matter at all. He had only to give himself now, to give himself to the words and the movements of the Mass, to give his body, his hands, his tongue, to give his whole being, easily, unresistingly, to move through the groove trodden out for him, to move in it like water flowing in the deep groove in the rock, worn through the heart of the world by generations of the adoration of men. 

 At the entrance to the sanctuary, he turned to the congregation and said, “this Mass is offered for the people of the parish.” 

 There were only a few people present, the little server, a handful of old women, an Irish sailor, and a very old man. But since Christ was present in them, the whole Christian world was there, so all the people of the parish for whom Mass was offered were there. 

 The dockers already loading and unloading the big ships; the sailors who had just put out to sea, and the sailors ploughing their way home; the factory girls on their way to work, making the streets gay with their bright skimpy finery; the women scrubbing the steps with their arms up to their elbows in soapy water; the mothers washing-up the menfolk’s early breakfast before waking the children; the children sleeping the warm, woolly sleep of early morning; the marketers setting up their stalls; the flower women in their shawls and their gents’ straw boaters, carrying their great baskets of bronze and red and yellow flowers; the patients in the hospitals, newly washed and smoothed in cool white wards, the night nurses, pale and craving for strong tea and sleep; the day nurses pinning their starched caps, and wondering if it would be fried bread and bacon, or only fried bread for breakfast; the old folk in the workhouse, sitting quietly on their wooden benches; the prisoners in the gaol, looking up at the slit of silver sky, through the high, narrow windows of their cells: all were there, at the Mass that was being offered for them, the people of the parish. 

 Father O’Grady made the Sign of the Cross. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen,” and bowed down under the burden of the sins of the whole world. His own sins were a heavy enough load, and now he bowed under the weight of all sin. But when he straightened himself up from the Confiteor, the burden of the whole world’s sin, and his own with it, had fallen from his back, and his shoulders were strong. For it was Christ who rose and went up to the altar ---Christ who had seen evil, naked, face to face, Christ who had been brought down to the ground under the world’s sin, to sweat His blood into the dust, and Christ who has overcome the world. 

 The Mass moved forward with beautiful precision. “Kyrie Eleison.” “Christe Eleison.” Sharp, urgent little knocks at the door of Heaven. “Gloria in Excelsis Deo ……” The angel’s carillon swung into motion by the beating of a man’s heart, and onward, hurrying forward with the urgency of a lovers’ meeting. The bright, short prayers sparkling over the priest’s mind, bringing him swiftly to the Offertory.

 He lifted the un-consecrated Host, light as a petal on its thin golden paten, and with it lifted the simple bread of humanity, threshed and sifted by poverty and suffering. He offered the broken fragments of their love, made into one loaf. He lifted the wine and water mixed in the Chalice, and with it offered the blood and the tears of his people to God. And God accepted the offering, the fragments of love were gathered up into the wholeness of Love, and nothing was wasted. 

 The Mass moved swiftly, hurrying forward as if the longing of generations had set its urgent pace towards the climax. But now the pace grew slower, charged with so immense a momentum of Mystery that it could only move forward in larger, fuller, slower gestures. The wonder rising like the rising of the tide to the flood. And as the Miracle came closer and closer, time ceased to be at all. Simply, effortlessly, directly the Mass moved, not backward or forward in time, but into the eternal now of the Last Supper. Into the stillness of the Upper Room, where the voice of Christ fell upon the souls of His Apostles, like summer rain falling upon the sown earth.

 Slowly, exactly, Father O’Grady repeated the words of Consecration, his hands moved in Christ’s hands, his voice spoke in Christ’s voice, his words were Christ’s words, his heart beat in Christ’s heart:- “Who the day before He suffered, took bread in His holy and venerable hands, and lifting His eyes to Heaven towards Thee O God, His all-powerful Father, giving thanks to Thee, blessed and broke and gave to His disciples, saying TAKE AND EAT YE ALL OF THIS, FOR THIS IS MY BODY.”   Father O’Grady lifted up the consecrated Host in his short, chapped hands, the server rang a little bell, the sailor, the handful of very old women and the very old man bowed down whispering “My Lord and my God”, and the breath of their adoration was warm on their cold fingers. 

 

Father O’Grady was lifting up God. A cry arose from all over the world, “Come down from the Cross if you are the Son of God!” “Save yourself and us too if you are the Christ!” But Christ remained on the Cross. His fingers closed on the nails. He would not come down from the Cross. He would not dethrone the children, He would not discrown the poor, He would not scatter the fragments of the bread of love. He would not break faith with sinners or fail the failing. He would not forsake the young men coming up to die His death. 

 “Come down from the Cross! come down! come down! save yourself and us!” But Christ remained on the Cross. His fingers closed on the nails. The Crown of Thorns was in flower, the five ribs like the five fingers of the world’s pain gripped His heart, and His heart broke open and the river of the world’s life flowed out of it. A flood sweeping His heart and brain and flowing out into the tips of His fingers, swept through His Mystical Body. Through the eternal heart of Rome, through the lonely mind of her august Shepherd, out into the least and lowliest of men, and the last little infant howling at the touch of the waters of Baptism, the blood of the world’s life flowed into the fingertips stretched out on the Cross, measuring the reach and stretch and extremity and ultimate possibility of love. 

 “Come down from the Cross if you be the Son of God!” “Save yourself and us too if you are the Christ.” The world strained at the nails, wrenched and dragged, the Cross was shaken in the earth, bent like a tree in the storm, dragged earthward by the weight of man’s body, but it was rooted in rock, and the Cross was built to the shape of man, not man to the shape of the Cross. The world’s suffering was built and fitted to the size of each man, and the Cross stood. 

 “Come down, come down, come down!” But Christ would not come down from the Cross. The life of Riverside went on, the day’s work had begun, a ship was coming in from the sea, another putting out. An old man was dying, and a child was being born. The little server rang his silver bell. The people bowed down low. Time stopped. Father O’Grady was lifting up God in his large, chapped hands. Christ remained on the Cross. The blood and sweat and tears of the world were on His face. He smiled, the smile of infinite peace, the ineffable bliss of consummated love.' 

 Caryll Houselander (Ack. ‘Book of the Saviour’ an anthology, published Sheed & Ward, 1952.)

Happy memories of our garden last summer.

 

It is now March, the garden has been wind-swept and to all appearances barren for several months, but at last we can enjoy the golden and purple crocus peeping up above the lawn,  and the early daffodils rising to the challenge. Before either of these, we admired a lovely show of snowdrops scattered around the garden, increasing every year, and safe from the scavenging of hungry mice, who particularly enjoy crocus and tulip bulbs, much to my wife's understandable annoyance.

I apologise for neglecting my blog-site over the past three months, I just seem to have been caught up in other matters, on the internet in particular, which have taken up a great deal of my time.

I hope that you enjoy these few photographs of our garden last summer, I had saved them on my computer for posting on my blog, and here they are - a reminder of summer past and summers to come! They are nothing special, no rare or unique varieties of plants, but they reflect the beauty of flowers in the summer-time, just a tiny taste of the beauty of God's creation. 

 

 

 Nothing particularly exciting or special about these photographs, but I am reminded of the delight and satisfaction the flowers brought  to my wife, the planner and  main artisan in the garden, and to me, primarily responsible for keeping the grass under some sort of control! This winter seems to have been  interminably long, very windy, very cold, and very wet, with a few light falls of snow. Things were not helped  by innumerable power cuts, some lasting several hours, which do make life difficult. I suddenly remembered that I had these photographs stored on my computer, and looking at them cheered me up to such an extent, that I persuaded myself to post them on this blog and perhaps bring some pleasure to  others, who like me, may be suffering from  debilitating  'long winter syndrome' (LWS). The photos are quite ordinary, but the flowers are a promise of things to come!

There is no denying that the World is in a mess, primarily due to the abandonment of God's commandments by so many nations and so many people. Corruption in all walks of life, gross immorality and evil, brazenly and publicly promoted, confirm the supernatural and natural threat of the devil and his minions; together with the very real threat of the 'Great Reset' and the agenda for 'One World Government', which seeks the complete control of mankind and the negation of Almighty God and His laws.

The devil and his followers might win a battle but they will not win the war, of this we can be absolutely sure. This world  is God's creation, as is humanity created by God in His own image. Satan will be crushed, as he was by Christ in the desert, but  I believe that we must all play our part  and do  everything possible to sabotage this attempted evil  take-over of humanity by the globalist elites. Faith and courage, prayer and penance, are our main weapons, relying always on the omnipotence of God and His unending love for humanity, for whose salvation God the Son, Jesus Christ, became man and was crucified for our sins,  that we might have eternal life. 

Wishing you all fruitful and happy gardening!