Wars and Rumors of Wars, part five

And Jesus being come out of the temple, went away. And his disciples came to shew him the buildings of the temple. [2] And he answering, said to them: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed. [3] And when he was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: Tell us when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the consummation of the world? [4] And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you: [5] For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ: and they will seduce many.

[6] And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. [7] For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes in places: [8] Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. [9] Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake. [10] And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another.

[11] And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. [12] And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. [13] But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. [14] And this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come. [15] When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand.

[16] Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains: [17] And he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house: [18] And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat. [19] And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days. [20] But pray that your flight be not in the winter, or on the sabbath.

[21] For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. [22] And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened. [23] Then if any man shall say to you: Lo here is Christ, or there, do not believe him. [24] For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. [25] Behold I have told it to you, beforehand.

[26] If therefore they shall say to you: Behold he is in the desert, go ye not out: Behold he is in the closets, believe it not. [27] For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west: so shall the coming of the Son of man be. [28] Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together. [29] And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be moved: [30] And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. (Matthew 24: 1-30.)

President Donald John Trump’s extraordinary White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, February 28, 2025, demonstrated the latter’s abject refusal to recognize that the Russian Federation’s unjust invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022, the Feast of Saint Matthias, that has resulted in the deliberate targeting of civilian population centers by both combatants and the destruction of much of Ukraine’s infrastructure did not happen in a vacuum. While the actual invasion was unjust and was undertaken by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is as amoral of the globalist Zelensky himself, the invasion was preceded by eight years of Western interference in Ukraine, starting with the so-called Euromaidan Revolution that overthrew the corrupt but nevertheless duly elected pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych, was overthrown in a American-sponsored and engineered coup d’etat on February 22, 2014, fleeing to exile in Russia (see Did We Provoke Putin’s War in Ukraine?). While Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro was indeed a vacillating fool on matters of foreign policy, a man who was tongue-tied and paralyzed when it comes to dealing with even the hint of a suggestion that Mohammedanism is evil in se, no American president has ever had any business meddling the affairs of Ukraine. There have been too many American presidents who have made it a point to meddle in the affairs of other nations, engaging in exercises of social engineering that resulted in the persecution of foreign nationals and the needless deaths of untold numbers of Americans, who should never have been put in harm’s way in the first place.

Yanukovych, who had been Prime Minister of Ukraine from November 21, 2002, to December 31, 2004, had been elected to the presidency in 2004 before the Supreme Court of Ukraine invalidated his election on grounds of election fraud following days of protest that came to be known as the “Orange Revolution.” The man who was elected in the presidency in the court ordered rerun election, Viktor Yushchenko, proved himself to be corrupt in his own right and did not even qualify for the ballot to run for re-election in 2010, at which time Viktor Yanukovych was elected and actually got to serve as the president of Ukraine until his ouster four years later. In other words, politics in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was in existence, albeit with an ever-changing set of national boundaries from March 10, 1919, to December 25, 1991, are filled with intrigue, corruption, and scandal. Sort of sounds like the naturalist farce that takes place here in the United States of America, doesn’t it?

Indeed, as more than one secular commentator has noted, ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been decades in the making because of a truly bipartisan effort on the part of American presidential administrations to give Russia every reason to be suspicious of a pro-globalist and supposedly “pro-democracy” Ukraine. Ukrainian leaders helped to undermine a president, Donald John Trump, whose administration had actually provided them with military arms, something that the administration of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., refused to do despite their “pro-democracy” rhetoric, to cover up for Hunter Biden, thus weakening Ukraine militarily with Russia. As Trump himself has noted and as a majority of Americans agree, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president (see 62% of Voters Say Putin Wouldn’t have invade Ukraine if Trump Were President).

Writing immediately after the invasion in 2022, a secular commentator explained why Vladimir Putin took the risk without for one moment justifying his grotesque act of war:

Russian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?

Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.

While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.

That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining.

Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States.

In the last year there have been two attempted “pro-democracy” inter-elite coups in pro-Kremlin states on Russian borders: Belarus and Kazakhstan. Both of those so-called “color revolutions” failed, but Ukraine represents a much more pressing concern, especially given the country’s push for NATO membership, which Biden officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly encouraged last year with no intention or possibility of actually making it possible. Yet rather than compelling the United States to rethink the wisdom of planting the NATO flag on Russia’s border, Putin’s escalating rhetoric—and troop movements—only made the Biden team dig in deeper.

This is a game that Biden and key figures in his administration have been playing for a long time, beginning with the 2013-14 Obama administration-backed coup that toppled a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv. This was the so-called Maidan Revolution, a sequel of sorts to the George W. Bush-backed Orange Revolution of 2004-05. Much of that same Obama foreign policy team—Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and others—is now back in the White House and State Department working in senior posts for a president who personally ran Obama’s Ukraine policy.

What did all these figures have in mind for Ukraine? The White House and U.S. foreign policy experts from both parties are united in claiming that Ukraine is a U.S. ally, a democracy, and a beacon of freedom, which are no doubt fine words to hear when you have been left to fight Vladimir Putin on your own. But to understand what Ukraine truly is, we must start where all geopolitics begins: by looking at a map.

Ukraine is situated between two greater powers, Russia and the European Union. That makes Ukraine a buffer state. Geopolitical logic dictates that buffer states cultivate and maintain cordial relations with the greater powers that surround them, unless they want to be swallowed up by one of those powers. That’s because siding with one great power against another often leads to catastrophe. No less an authority than the prophet Isaiah tells us so. He warned the Jews not to side with the pharaoh—a broken reed, he called Egypt, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it—in the dynasty’s conflict with the Babylonians. Isaiah was right: The Jews bet wrong and were dragged off into exile.

Today Israel is no longer a buffer state; rather, it’s a regional power. But geography didn’t change, which means that Israel is still a tiny country surrounded by larger entities, like Turkey and Iran.

So how did the Jewish state transcend buffer-state status? Because it acquired what is reportedly a large nuclear arsenal with air, land, and sea delivery capabilities—the vaunted nuclear triad—which render it immune to an enemy’s first strike, and ensures, for the time being anyway, that Israel is no longer a stomping ground for empires. Conversely, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for U.S. security guarantees in the event its neighbors, Russia in particular, turned hostile.

What kind of strategy dictates that a state hand over its security vis-a-vis local actors to a country half the world away? No strategy at all. Ukraine was not able to transcend its natural geography as a buffer state—and worse, a buffer state that failed to take its own existence seriously, which meant that it would continue to make disastrously bad bets. In 2013, the European Union offered Kyiv a trade deal, which many misunderstood as a likely prelude to EU membership. Young Ukrainians very much want to join the EU, because they want access to Europe so they can flee Ukraine, which remains one of the poorest countries on the continent.

The trade deal was an ill-conceived EU project to take a shot at Putin with what seemed like little risk. The idea was to flood the Ukrainian market, and therefore also the Russian market, with European goods, which would have harmed the Russian economy—leading, the architects of this plan imagined, to popular discontent that would force Putin himself from office. Putin understandably saw this stratagem as a threat to his country’s stability and his personal safety, so he gave Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych an ultimatum: either reject the deal and accept Moscow’s $15 billion aid package in its place, or else suffer crippling economic measures.

When Yanukovych duly reneged on the EU deal, the Obama administration helped organize street demonstrations for what became history’s most tech-savvy and PR-driven regime change operation, marketed to the global public variously as Maidan, EuroMaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, etc. In February 2014, the protests forced Yanukovych into exile in Moscow. Consequently, Nuland and other Obama administration officials worked to assemble a new Ukrainian government friendly to the United States and therefore hostile to Russia.

In late February, the Russians responded to the American soft coup in Ukraine by invading Crimea and eventually annexing it and creating chaos in Eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration declined to arm the Ukrainian government. It was right to avoid conflict with Moscow, though by leaving Kyiv defenseless, it showed that the White House had never fully gamed out all the possible scenarios that might ensue from setting a client state on course for conflict with a great power. Instead, Obama and the Europeans highlighted their deadly miscalculation by imposing sanctions on Moscow for taking advantage of the conditions that Obama and the Europeans had created.

The White House seems to have taken a perverse pride in the death and destruction it helped incite in Eastern Europe. In April 2014, CIA Director John Brennan visited Kyiv, appearing to confirm the agency’s role in the coup. Shortly after came Vice President Biden, who took his own victory lap and counseled the Ukrainians to root out corruption. Naturally, a prominent Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, which was then under investigation for corruption, hired Biden’s son Hunter for protection.

By tying itself to an American administration that had shown itself to be reckless and dangerous, the Ukrainians made a geopolitical blunder that statesmen will study for years to come: A buffer state had staked its future on a distant power that had simply seen it as an instrument to annoy its powerful neighbor with no attachment to any larger strategic concept that it was willing to support. Russia then lopped off half of the Donbas region on its border and subjected Ukraine to a grinding, eight-year-long war, intended in large part to underline Russian capacity and Ukrainian and American impotence.

Ukraine then made a bad situation even worse. When the same people who had left them prey to Putin asked them to take sides in an American domestic political conflict, the Ukrainians enthusiastically signed on—instead of running hard in the opposite direction.

In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign came calling on Ukrainian officials and activists to lend some Slavic authenticity to its Russia collusion narrative targeting Donald Trump. Indeed, Russiagate’s central storyline was about Ukraine. Yes, Trump had supposedly been compromised by a sex tape filmed in Moscow, but Putin’s ostensible reason for helping Trump win the presidency was to get him to drop Ukraine-related sanctions. Here was another chance for Ukraine to stick it to Putin, and gain favor with what it imagined would be the winning party in the American election.

With the CIA’s Brennan and a host of senior FBI and DOJ officials pushing Russiagate into the press—and running an illegal espionage campaign against the Trump team—Ukrainian political figures gladly joined in. Key participants included Kyiv’s ambassador to Washington, who wrote a Trump-Russia piece for the U.S. press, and a member of the Ukrainian parliament who allegedly contributed to the dossier. The collusion narrative was also augmented by Ukrainian American operatives, like Alexandra Chalupa, who was tied into the Democratic Party’s NGO complex. The idea that this game might have consequences for Ukraine’s relations with its more powerful neighbor doesn’t seem to have entered the heads of either the feckless Ukrainians or the American political operatives who cynically used them.

Of course, Ukraine was hardly the only American client state to involve itself in domestic political gamesmanship. By appearing before the U.S. Congress to argue against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took sides with Republicans against a sitting American president—which seems like an even bigger potential faux pas.

The differences between the two situations are even more revealing, though. The Iran deal touched on a core Israeli national interest. As a U.S. ally, Israel was challenging the wisdom of handing nuclear weapons to its own (and America’s) leading regional competitor and rival. By contrast, Ukraine had no existential or geopolitical reason to participate in the anti-Trump operation, which allowed it at best to curry favor with one side of the D.C. establishment while angering what turned out to be the winning party. Russiagate was the kind of vanity project that a buffer state with a plunging GDP and an army equipped with 40-year-old ex-Soviet weapons in a notoriously risky area of the world can ill afford—especially one that lacked a nuclear arsenal.

And that was only the beginning. Just as Russiagate seemed to be coming to a close in July 2019, U.S. national security officials injected yet another Ukraine-related narrative into the public sphere to target the American president. This one appears to have been initiated by Ukrainian American White House official Alexander Vindman and his colleague Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst who had served as Vice President Biden’s point man on Ukraine during the Obama administration. When Vindman told Ciaramella about a phone call in which Trump had asked the Ukrainian president for information regarding allegations about the Biden family’s corrupt activities in Kyiv, they called on help from U.S. intelligence services, the State Department, the Pentagon, Democratic Party officials, and the press. Quick, scramble Team Ukraine—Trump is asking questions!

In order to cover up for what the Bidens and perhaps other senior Obama officials had done in Ukraine, a Democratic Congress impeached Trump for trying to figure out what American policymakers had been doing in Ukraine over the past decade. As for the Ukrainians, they again put themselves in the middle of it, when they should have stayed home.

The end result was that the Ukrainians had helped weaken an American president who, unlike Obama, gave them arms to defend themselves against the Russians. More seriously, they reinforced Putin’s view that, especially in partnership with the Democrats, Ukraine did not understand its true place in the world as a buffer state—and would continue to allow themselves to be used as an instrument by policymakers whose combination of narcissism and fecklessness made them particularly prone to dangerous miscalculations. The 2020 election victory of Joe Biden, a man whose family had been paid by the Ukrainians to protect them, can have done little to quiet Putin’s sense that Ukraine needed to be put in its place before it was used yet again as a weapon against him.

From the perspective of the U.S. national security establishment, Biden’s victory over Trump signaled that its actions in Ukraine would stay hidden. So long as the media continued to bark that the 45th president of the United States is Putin’s stooge, no one would be held accountable for anything. Except, as it turns out, D.C. political operatives aren’t the only people who can make history. Putin can, too. And the people of Ukraine will come out much the worse for both of their efforts. (Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble.)

Vladimir Putin cannot be indemnified for the deadly course of action that he has taken, but Ukrainian leaders deserve much blame for tying themselves as they did to the American intelligence and national security apparatus that put in place a man, Biden, who had been wrong about every national security matter in his entire fifty-year career in the government of the United States of America, and it was Biden’s weakness emboldened the Russians to invade Ukraine while billions of American dollars went accounted and probably into the hands of Ukrainian oligarchs:

The public humiliation of Zelensky was perhaps avoidable, but the net result was not. It was a necessary corrective to the mountain of lies on which U.S. aid to Ukraine has been predicated since Russia’s invasion. Biden early on promised to “give Ukraine what it needs to succeed on the battlefield … as long as it takes.” But what did “success on the battlefield” mean? When pressed, administration officials never wavered: the military objective was the complete liberation of Ukraine to its internationally recognized border. 

Americans have spent perhaps $300 billion chasing this objective, but it was never remotely plausible. A proper understanding of Russian interests in Ukraine should have led Western leaders to realize that Russia was willing to sacrifice many more people to achieve its minimum territorial aims than the U.S. or any blustering European government was willing to sacrifice to stop them. 

Moreover, as I pointed out in these pages weeks before the fighting started in 2022, Ukraine’s nationalists realized in the months after the Euromaidan revolution of 2014 that they faced a choice between territorial integrity and political independence. At every turn since then, they have chosen the latter. Hence, the West was pouring weapons into Ukraine to help it achieve an objective that had long since become a secondary to Kiev. 

Since 2014, the West had treated Russian grievances as mere propaganda, not to be taken seriously. Instead, western governments have been operating on a “domino theory” that never made any sense. Kiev, which understood full well Russia’s true motives, played along and even encouraged Western governments in their misappraisal — indeed is still doing so even now. This terrible mistake could yet be Ukraine’s undoing, for it was only a matter of time before the Americans demanded an accounting of how their own vital interests justified the extravagant costs of supporting Ukraine. 

Biden had written Ukraine a blank check. It was only a matter of time before it bounced. 

Why America Went to War

It’s hard to believe that anyone could take the aim of liberating the whole of Ukraine’s territory seriously. It would mean Russian capitulation on every major issue of the war. But outnumbered three-to-one, Ukraine by itself would never be able to compel a Russian surrender, no matter how many weapons it got from NATO. There was all along only one way to impose such a defeat on Russia, and that was for NATO to attack Russia directly. 

Of course, neither Biden nor any other NATO government had the slightest intention of attacking Russia in order to compel its surrender. Indeed, Biden only gave weapons to Ukraine subject to laughable constraints on their use inside Russia. The stated aim of U.S. aid was just “chest-thumping” as Vice President Vance put it — an extravagant farce. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, arms suppliers to an active conflict are considered de facto belligerents — that’s in the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual. We are arguably already at war with Russia, but most people don’t know it because Russia isn’t fighting back: The last thing Putin wants is war with NATO. Still, the sheer scale of NATO’s military assistance to Ukraine has been staggering — perhaps $400 billion all told. The U.S. alone has been spending almost as much per year on Ukraine as it was spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of the fighting. 

So if we are basically at war with Russia, but the stated military objective is a complete fabrication, what are we fighting for?  

Let’s peel back a few layers of the onion and think about the substance of the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Suppose the two countries had peacefully agreed to restore a pro-Russian government in Kiev shortly after 2014 or that Ukraine had peacefully agreed to sell Russia 20% of its territory. Would any vital U.S. interests have been adversely affected? 

There is no reason to think so. After Russia and Ukraine both declared independence from the Soviet Union, American presidents of both parties were perfectly happy to leave Ukraine under Russian domination. And as for what side of the border the disputed territories of Crimea and Donbas should be on, the U.S. never had a position on that either. It recognized the post-Soviet borders of Ukraine only because the Russians did. (That’s the famous Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which, incidentally, does not contain meaningful “security guarantees;” that’s another lie.) 

Simply put, the U.S. has virtually nothing at stake in the substance of the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The entirety of the U.S. position is that Ukraine’s borders should be respected because, for whatever reason, everyone agreed to respect them in 1991, in tumultuous circumstances that nobody even remembers. All that matters now, apparently, is that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim. 

To be sure, there is a vital U.S. interest in the principle that borders should not be changed by violent means. Failing to vindicate that principle could make a wide range of vital U.S. interests far more difficult to defend. Russia has engaged in a war of aggression and must be made to pay an onerous penalty. But to eliminate U.S. interests from the calculus — or, worse, to pretend that there are vital U.S. interests at stake when there aren’t, is to risk calamity for both Ukraine and the U.S.

Consider the Vietnam War. What were we doing there? The French had spent years fighting to protect their colonists living on plantations across Vietnam, with roots in the land and a wonderful culture of their own to defend. The U.S., on the other hand, was pursuing nothing but a gravely flawed application of containment strategy, based on John F. Kennedy’s silly promise to “pay any price” and “oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” As the French colonist Hubert de Marais tells Captain Willard in the director’s cut of “Apocalypse Now,” “You, American, you are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.” 

In the Oval Office spectacle, Zelensky repeated yet another lie we’ve often heard (apologies if you’re losing count), namely that if Putin is not defeated now he will come after NATO countries next. This contention, repeated on infinite loop by our intelligentsia, is laughably stupid. This is not 1938, and Ukraine is not Czechoslovakia. Appeasing Hitler at Munich was a death sentence for Europe, because it instantly transformed Nazi Germany’s position from defense to one of overwhelming offensive advantage. 

By contrast, advancing in Ukraine doesn’t help Russia threaten NATO in any way. The Kremlin knows that every inch of NATO territory is hopelessly beyond Russia’s reach. Again, if Putin thought he could risk war with NATO, he would have retaliated for NATO’s belligerence by now, but he hasn’t even tried to establish a credible deterrent. And Zelensky surely understands all of this but has pretended otherwise in order to trick NATO governments into treating Ukraine as a vital defensive bulwark. But it simply isn’t. 

A more interesting question is what message a wavering U.S. stance in Ukraine sends to China on Taiwan. That is another inapposite analogy. While the U.S. couldn’t care less what side of the border Crimea ends up on, it has an overwhelming interest in ensuring Taiwan’s political and economic independence from the Chinese Communist Party. Taiwan contains 80% of the world’s semiconductor industry, on which America’s economy vitally depends for everything from cars and airliners to computers and cellphones. The U.S. will resist Chinese domination of Taiwan regardless how peacefully the CCP goes about it. In other words, unlike in Ukraine, the U.S. has a vital interest in the substance of the dispute between Taiwan and China. 

Support for Ukraine has also been sold on the idea of a shining symbol of democracy fighting a cruel dictatorship. This, too, is a myth. Russia and Ukraine both declared independence from the Soviet Union at the same time; institutionally, they are virtually identical, and share similar institutional pathologies: corruption, human rights abuses, electoral irregularities, and weak rule of law. Indeed, while Russia holds regular elections, Ukraine’s duly elected government was deposed in 2014, with subsequent elections taking place only in non-rebel areas, and none at all since 2022. A large majority of Ukrainians — even in heavily Russian areas — wants to be free of Russia and join Europe. That’s a lovely aspiration, and we should support it, but it doesn’t make Ukraine a shining democracy. (How Biden's Ukraine Blank Check Bounced.)

Zelensky is blinded by his unjustified status as a “hero” among the globalists in Europe and forever wars anti-Trump zealots in the United States of America. Zelensky, though, is actually a coward as to takes a truly heroic man to recognize when the time has come to put personal and even national pride aside to stop more needless killing in a conflict with very origins, both remote and proximate, that are very complex.

Although neither President Donald John Trump nor Vice President James David Vance discussed the complex, centuries long and very intertwined history of Russia and Ukraine with the showboating Zelensky, who had been coached by United States Senator Christopher Murphy (D-Connecticut) to be defiant when he met with the president and not sign the minerals deal that he, Zelensky, had agreed to sign but, it would appear, only on the condition that he take his pound of flesh out of Trump before doing so, it is important for us to remember that, despite the undeniable reality that Ukraine is losing the war and that it cannot continue to sustain the losses it has been suffering, many Ukrainians are descendants of those who suffered mightily at the iron hands of Russians in the past century.

In addition to the starvation of ten million Ukrainian Catholics in the 1930s, which was an effort to decimate the Catholic population and to Russify the “Ukrainian Soviet Republic,” the Soviets forced a number of those arrested under their “denazification” program in countries behind the Iron Curtain to Donetsk to work as prisoners in such harsh conditions that many of them died. The Soviets moved in replacements from other regions of the Soviet Union.

Even disregarding this, however, the Soviets also starved the people of what is known as the Donbass region, which encompasses Donetsk, during the Holodomor in the 1930s, making Putin’s concern for what is happening them more an example of crocodile tears shed as a pretext for an unnecessary war:

Ukrainians living in the Donbas were further decimated by the state-sponsored 1932–33 Holodomor (meaning ‘to kill by starvation’) famine and the Russification policy of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Since most ethnic Ukrainians were rural peasant farmers, they bore the brunt of the famine, with the government confiscating their land and removing any means they had to feed themselves.

The term Holodomor emphasizes the famine’s man-made and intentional aspects of the atrocity, including rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement so that no one was allowed to leave the region to find sustenance elsewhere.

As part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine — the majority of whom by now were ethnic Ukrainians — died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe that was unprecedented in the history of the country.

Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.

Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished. Current scholarship estimates a range of 4 to 7 million victims, with more precise estimates ranging from 3.3 to 5 million.

According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the total demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, however, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.

Russification stepped up after depopulation from WWII

Donbas was greatly affected by the Second World War. War preparations resulted in an extension of the working day for factory laborers, while those who could not produce according to the new standards were arrested.

Adolf Hitler viewed the resources of the Donbas as critical to Operation Barbarossa, his plan for the invasion of Russia. The region accordingly suffered greatly under Nazi occupation during 1941 and 1942.

Thousands of industrial laborers were deported to Germany and forced to work in factories. In the Donetsk Oblast alone, 279,000 civilians were killed over the course of the occupation. In what is now now the Luhansk Oblast, 45,649 were killed. The 1943 Donbas strategic offensive by the Red Army resulted in the return of Donbas to Soviet control, but the famine and the war had taken an enormous toll, leaving the region both destroyed and once again depopulated.

It was during the subsequent period of reconstruction that the Donbass received its most recent wave of Russian citizens after masses of Russian workers descended on the area after the War.

By 1959, the number of ethnic Russians living there was 2.55 million; just 33 years prior, it had been just 639,000. The Russification of the area accelerated after the 1958–59 Soviet educational reforms, which led to the near elimination of all Ukrainian-language schooling in the Donbas.

According to the Soviet Census of 1989, 45% of the population of the region reported their ethnicity as Russian.

So it is no surprise that in the 1991 referendum on Ukrainian independence, 83.9% of voters in Donetsk and 83.6% in Luhansk supported independence from the Soviet Union. In October of 1991 a congress of southeastern deputies from all levels of government took place in Donetsk, where delegates demanded federalization.

Constant unrest after 2014

The region’s economy deteriorated severely in the ensuing years, however, and by 1993, industrial production had collapsed, with average wages falling by 80% since 1990. Donbas was then in total crisis, with many accusing the new central government in Kyiv of mismanagement and neglect.

Donbas’ invaluable coal miners went on strike in 1993, causing a conflict that was described by historian Lewis Siegelbaum as “a struggle between the Donbas region and the rest of the country.” One strike leader said that Donbas people had voted for independence because they wanted “power to be given to the localities, enterprises, cities”, not because they wanted heavily centralized power moved from “Moscow to Kyiv.”

This strike was followed by a 1994 consultative referendum on various constitutional questions in Donetsk and Luhansk, held concurrently with the first parliamentary elections in independent Ukraine.

These questions included whether Russian should be declared an official language of Ukraine, whether Russian should be the language of administration in Donetsk and Luhansk, whether Ukraine should federalism, and whether Ukraine should have closer ties with the Commonwealth of Independent States, the remnants of the Soviet Union.

Almost 90% of voters voted in favor of these propositions; however, none of them were adopted: Ukraine remained a unitary state, Ukrainian was retained as the sole official language, and the Donbas gained no autonomy.

In March of 2014, following the Euromaidan and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, large swaths of the Donbas experienced major unrest. This later grew into a war, with pro-Russian separatists affiliated with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” both of which are now recognized by Russia but not by any other member of the United Nations as legitimate.

Pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions took over government buildings in 2014, proclaiming the regions as independent “people’s republics” after Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Since 2014, more than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting in the Donbas region between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of backing the separatists both militarily and financially.

Amid the fighting, a Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board in a shocking event which catapulted the unrest onto the world stage once again. International investigators concluded the missile was supplied by Russia and fired from an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists; Russia has denied involvement in the shooting down of the airplane.

On Monday, Putin announced the independence of the regions after meeting with the Russian Security Council following a video appeal by the regions’ separatist leaders for the recognition of independence.

Each of the regions has its own self-proclaimed president, with Denis Pushilin elected in 2018 to lead the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, while Leonid Pasechnik is the leader of the Luhansk separatist region.

Russia’s recognition of the independence of the regions on Monday in effect ends the Minsk peace agreements, which were never fully implemented in any case. The agreements, which were signed in 2014 and 2015, had called for a large amount of autonomy for the two regions within Ukraine. (History of Donbas-Donetsk-Luhansk.)

The history of the disputed regions is very complex as the Russians had troops in the Donbas region even before the events of 2014 (A Woman Imprisoned for Years by Separatists in Eastern Ukraine Says No One Wants to Stay There) and neither the governmental officials of Ukraine nor of Russia have covered themselves in glory. The Russians have committed atrocities against Ukrainians in the Donbas region and the Ukrainians have sent drones to destroy residential apartment buildings in Russia.

Alas, Slavs tend to have long memories, and long memories without the forgiveness found in the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus are used by the adversary to lead people to hate those they blame for their problems and then to justify acts of violence against them. Here, good readers, we see once again what happens when men and their nations do not submit themselves to Christ the King and His true Church, a situation that has been exacerbated aplenty during this time of apostasy and betrayal and the absence of a true Pope to teach and guide men in the ways of true peace and everlasting salvation.

As well-intentioned as President Donald John Trump’s efforts to end the killing caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there can be no true and lasting peace within nations if the souls of men are in a state of perpetual warfare against the Most Holy Trinity by means of either Original Sin and/or Actual Sin. Peace is more than the absence of conflict.

The world must be punished because men continue to sin unrepentantly and because they believe that they can establish a “better” world and build “peace without Christ the King and His true Church and without a tender devotion to and firm reliance upon His Most Blessed Mother, especially through her Most Holy Rosary. This is true of the West, and it is true of Russia, which has not been converted back to Christianity as true Christianity is found only in the Catholic Church:

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

Those of you who have yet to accept the simple truth that the Catholic Church cannot make any compromises with error ought to reread the following sentence from the passage above as the conciliar “popes” have indeed made terms with error have polluted the integrity of the doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and all that Jorge Mario Bergoglio at this time to put these errors in easily understandable terms to as to tickle the itching ears of the multitudes:

It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

Yes, Pope Leo XIII was a very wise pope, and we love had not the voice of a true pope for nearly sixty-three and one-half years, which is why so many people are looking to “conservative” figures in the counterfeit church of conciliarism for leadership and guidance. The counterfeit church of conciliarism is no more the standard bearer of Christianity than is the Russian Orthodox Church.

As Pope Pius XI noted in Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:

20. Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

Yes, we must reform our own lives with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. In order to do this, of course, we love God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church with our whole mind, our whole soul, our whole body, our whole heart and our whole strength. We must love others for love of Him, Who wills the good of all men, which is the salvation of their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church.

Use the final three weeks of Lent to beg Our Lady for the peace of her Divine Son, a peace that can be had in the lives of us all if we pray, fast, go to Confession regularly (if possible in this time of a paucity of true priests), pray the Rosary with fervor, keep the promises of the Brown Scapular, protect ourselves with the Miraculous Medal and distribute blessed Green Scapulars to all those God’s Holy Providence places in our path during our journey in this passing, mortal vale of tears.

Do not fear what may happen because of current events. Just beg Our Lady to help you stay in a state of Sanctifying Grace as sin is not only more deadly the coronavirus, but also more dangerous and deadly than any world conflict.

Pray the Rosary daily.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicity

The real Feast of these two illustrious heroines of the Faith is tomorrow, which is the anniversary of their martyrdom and triumph; but the memory of the Angel of the Schools, St. Thomas of Aquin, shines so brightly on the seventh of March that it almost eclipses the two glorious stars of Africa. In consequence of this, the Holy See allows certain Churches to anticipate their Feast, and keep it today. We take advantage of this permission and at once offer to the Christian reader the glorious spectacle, of which Carthage was the scene, in the year 203. Nothing could give us a clearer idea of that spirit of the Gospel, according to which we are now studying to conform our whole life. Here are two women, two mothers; God asks great sacrifices from them: he asks them to give him their lives, nay more than their lives; and they obey with that simplicity and devotedness which made Abraham merit to be the Father of Believers.

Their two names, as St. Augustine observes, are a presage of what awaits them in heaven: a perpetual felicity. The example they set of Christian fortitude is, of itself, a victory, which secures to the true Faith a triumph in the land of Africa. St. Cyprian will soon follow them, with his bold and eloquent appeal to the African Christians, inspiring them to die for their Faith: but his words, grand as they are, are less touching than the few pages written by the hand of the brave Perpetua, who, though only twenty-two years of age, relates, with all the self-possession of an angel, the trials she had to go through for God; and when she had to hurry off to the amphitheater, she puts her pen into another’s hand, bidding him go on where she leaves off, and write the rest of the battle. As we read these charming pages, we seem to be in the company of the Martyrs; the power of divine grace, which could produce such heroism amidst a people demoralized by paganism, appears so great that even we grow courageous; and the very fact that the instruments employed by God for the destruction of the pagan world were frequently women, we cannot help saying with St. John Chrysostom: “I feel an indescribable pleasure in reading the Acts of the Martyrs; but when the Martyr is a woman, my enthusiasm is doubled. For the frailer the instrument, the greater is the grace, the brighter the trophy, the grander the victory; and this, not because of her weakness, but because the devil is conquered by her, by whom he once conquered us. He conquered by a woman, and now a woman conquers him. She was once his weapon, is now his destroyer, brave and invincible. That first one sinned and died; this one died that she might not sin. Eve was flushed by a lying promise, and broke the law of God; our heroine disdained to live, when her living was to depend on her breaking her faith to Him who was her dearest Lord. What excuse, after this, for men, if they be soft and cowards? Can they hope for pardon when women fought the holy battle with such brave and manly and generous hearts?” (Homil. de diversis novi Testamenti locis.)

The Lessons appointed to be read on the Feast of our two Saints, give us the principal incidents of their Martyrdom. The passage from the account written by Perpetua herself, which is quoted in these Lessons, will make some of our readers long to read the whole of what she has left us. They will find it in our first volume of the Acts of the Martyrs.

During the reign of the Emperor Severus, several Catechumens were apprehended at Carthage, in Africa. Among these were Revocatus and his fellow servant Felicitas, Saturninus and Secundulus, and Vivia Perpetua, a lady by birth and education, who was married to a man of wealth. Perpetua was about twenty-two years of age, and was suckling an infant. She has left us the following particulars of her martyrdom. “As soon as our persecutors had apprehended us, my father came to me, and, out of his great love for me, he tried to make me change my resolution. I said to him: ‘Father, I cannot consent to call myself other than what I am—a Christian.’ At these words he rushed at me, threatening to tear out my eyes. But he only struck me, and then he left me, when he found that the arguments suggested to him by the devil, were of no avail. A few days after this, we were baptized; and the Holy Ghost inspired me to look on this baptism as a preparation for bodily suffering. A few more days elapsed, and we were sent to prison. I was terrified, for I was not accustomed to such darkness. The report soon spread that we were to be brought to trial. My father left the city, for he was heartbroken, and he came to me, hoping to shake my purpose. These were his words to me: ‘My child, have pity on my old age. Have pity on thy father, if I deserve to be called Father. Think of thy brothers, think of thy mother, think of thy son, who cannot live when thou art gone. Give up this mad purpose, or thou wilt bring misery upon thy family.’ While saying this, which he did out of love for me, he threw himself at my feet, and wept bitterly, and said he besought this of me, not as his child, but as his lady. I was moved to tears to see my aged parent in this grief, for I knew that he was the only one of my family that would not rejoice at my being a martyr. I tried to console him, and said: ‘I will do whatsoever God shall ordain. Thou knowest that we belong to God, and not to ourselves.’ He then left me, and was very sad.

“On the following day, as we were taking our repast, they came upon us suddenly, and summoned us to trial. We reached the forum. We were made to mount a platform. My companions were questioned and they confessed the faith. My turn came next, and I immediately saw my father approaching towards me, holding my infant son. He drew me from the platform, and besought me, saying, ‘Have pity on thy babe!’ Hilarion, too, the governor, said to me, ‘Have pity on thy aged father, have pity on thy babe! Offer up sacrifice for the Emperors.’ I answered him: ‘I cannot; I am a Christian.’ Whereupon, he sentences all of us to be devoured by the wild beasts; and we, full of joy, return to our prison. But as I had hitherto always had my child with me in prison, and fed him at my breast, I immediately send word to my father, beseeching him to let him come to me. He refused; and from that moment, neither the babe asked me for the breast, nor did I suffer inconvenience; for God thus willed it.’ All this is taken from the written account left by the blessed Perpetua, and it brings us to the day before she was put to death. As regards Felicitas, she was in the eighth month of her pregnancy, when she was apprehended. The day of the public shows was near at hand, and the fear that her martyrdom would be deferred on account of her being with child, made her very sad. Her fellow-martyrs, too, felt much for her, for they could not bear the thought of seeing so worthy a companion disappointed in the hope, she had in common with themselves, of so soon reaching heaven. Uniting, therefore, in prayer, they with tears besought God in her behalf. It was the last day but two before the public shows. No sooner was their prayer ended, than Felicitas was seized with pain. One of the jailers, who overheard her moaning, cried out: ‘If this pain seem to thee so great, what wilt thou do when thou art being devoured by the wild beasts, which thou pretendest to heed not when thou wast told to offer sacrifice.’ She answered: ‘What I am suffering now, it is indeed I that suffer; but there, there will be another in me, who will suffer for me, because I shall be suffering for Him.’ She was delivered of a daughter, and one of our sisters adopted the infant as her own.

The day of their victory dawned. They left their prison for the amphitheater, cheerful, and with faces beaming with joy, as though they were going to heaven. They were excited, but it was from delight, not from fear. The last in the group was Perpetua. Her placid look, her noble gait, betrayed the Christian matron. She passed through the crowd and saw no one, for her beautiful eyes were fixed upon the ground. By her side was Felicitas, rejoicing that her safe delivery enabled her to encounter the wild beasts. The devil had prepared a savage cow for them. They were put into a net. Felicitas was brought forward the first. She was tossed into the air, and fell upon her back. Observing that one side of her dress was torn, she adjusted it, heedless of her pain, because thoughtful of her modesty. Having recovered from the fall, she put up her hair which was disheveled by the shock, for it was not seemly that a martyr should win her palm and have the appearance of one distracted by grief. This done, she stood up. Seeing Felicitas much bruised by her fall, she went to her, and giving her her hand, she raised her from the ground. Both were now ready for a fresh attack; but the people were moved to pity, and the martyrs were led to the gate of Sana-Vivaria. There Perpetua, like one that is roused from sleep, awoke from the deep ecstasy of her spirit. She looked around her, and said to the astonished multitude: “When will the cow attack us?” They told her that it had already attacked them. She could not believe it, until her wounds and torn dress reminded her of what had happened. Then beckoning her brother, and to a catechumen named Rusticus, she thus spoke to them: “Be staunch in the faith, and love one another, and be not shocked at our sufferings.”

God soon took Secundulus from this world, for he died while he was in the prison. Saturninus and Revocatus were exposed first to a leopard, and then to a bear. Saturus was exposed to a boar, and then to a bear, which would not come out of its den; thus was he twice left uninjured: but at the close of the games, he was thrown to a leopard, which bit him so severely, that he was all covered with blood, and as he was taken from the amphitheater, the people jeered at him for this second baptism, and said, “Saved, washed! Saved, washed!” He was then carried off, dying as he was, to the appointed place, there to be despatched by the sword, with the rest. But the people demanded that they should be led back to the middle of the amphitheater, that their eyes might feast on the sight, and watch the sword as it pierced them. The Martyrs hearing their request, cheerfully stood up, and marched to the place where the people would have them go; but first they embraced one another, that the sacrifice of their martyrdom might be consummated with the solemn kiss of peace. All of them, without so much as a movement of a moan, received the swordman’s blow, save only Saturus, who died from his previous wounds, and Perpetua, who was permitted to feel more than the rest. Her executioner was a novice in his work, and could not thrust his sword through her ribs; she slightly moaned, then took his right hand, and pointing his sword towards her throat, told him that that was the place to strike. Perhaps it was that such a woman could not be otherwise slain than by her own consent, for the unclean spirit feared her.

The Holy See has approved of the three following Hymns composed in honor of our two Martyrs. We unite them under one conclusion.

Hymn:

Let the Church, the Spouse of Christ, celebrate in holy praise, the two dauntless women; and sing, in joyous hymns, how the weaker sex had here two manly hearts.

Both were born in Africa’s sunny land; and now both shine throughout the whole world as the two glorious combatants, wearing bright laurels on their brows.

Perpetua is honored by her fellow-citizens as being of high birth, and had but recently contracted an honorable marriage. But there was an honor far higher, in her eyes, the love and service of Christ.

Felicitas, though she served an earthly master, was free in this, that she was a servant of the great King. Like Perpetua, she thirsts for battle; and like her, she culls a palm.

Perpetua was besieged by her father, who sought, by tears and threats, to make her deny her faith. She, on her side, was full of grief and pity at seeing him a victim of error. Her babe was taken from her; she kissed him and was content.

Felicitas begins her sufferings by those cruel pangs which Eve, our mother, brought upon the earth. Now, in childbirth, she suffers for herself, and she moans; but, in her martyrdom, she suffers for her God, and she rejoices.

The gate of heaven is thrown open to Perpetua, and she is permitted to look within. She there learns that a contest awaits her, but that, after the battle, God will grant her repose.

She sees a golden ladder reaching to the palace of heaven; but both its sides are armed with spikes, and at its foot lies an angry dragon, which devours them that fall.

Ascend, Perpetua! fear not the dragon. Trample on his head, and make it a steppingstone, whereby thou mayst quickly mount to the starry land above.

There shalt thou find a paradise of delights, where the loving shepherd caresses his sheep. “Thou art welcome here, my daughter!” Thus did he address the Martyr, and then gave her to eat of sweetest food.

In another vision, she thought she was hurried to the amphitheatre. There she was met by a man, whose face was swarth and terrible to look at. He brandished his sword. She encountered him, threw him on the ground, and trampled on his head. A cry was heard:

Thou hast conquered! Come, take the prize!

But at length came the glorious day of victory for the soldiers of Christ. On, Martyrs, to the field! Perpetua and Felicitas! the court of heaven is longing to receive you!

The wild beast rashes upon them, tossing, tearing, and wounding their tender limbs. See, Felicitas! thy sister’s hand emboldens thee to renew the fight.

God looks down from heaven on the two brave combatants, and calls them to the prize. Their blood streams from the wounds, and their spirits speed their way to the bosom of Christ.

The sword, the welcome sword, is thrust; the Martyrs die, all save Perpetua; bravely she takes the trembling lictor’s hand, and offering him her neck, tells him his surest aim is there.

Go, now, brave-hearted ones, to him who is your Spouse, and there eternally enjoy the bliss he has in store for you. He gave us you as models; oh, show your power, and help us your clients.

Eternal glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the co-equal Spirit! And let every choir in Christian lands sound forth its praise to the grace bestowed on Martyrs. Amen.

Perpetua! Felicitas! Oh! glorious and prophetic names, which come like two bright stars of March, pouring out upon us your rays of light and life! You are heard in the songs of the Angels; and we poor sinners, as we echo them on earth, are told to love and hope. You remind us of that brave woman who, as the Scripture says, kept up the battle begun by men: The valiant men ceased: who will follow them? A Mother in Israel. (Judges 5:7) Glory be to that Almighty power which loves to choose the weak things of the world that it may confound the strong! (1 Corinthians 1:27) Glory to the Church of Africa, the daughter of the Church of Rome; and glory to the Church of Carthage, which had not then heard the preaching of her Cyprian, and yet could produce two such noble hearts!

As to thee, Perpetua, thou art held in veneration by the whole Christian world. Thy name is mentioned by God’s Priests in the Holy Mass, and thus thy memory is associated with the Sacrifice of the Man-God, for love of whom thou didst lay down thy life. And those pages written by thine own hand, how they reveal to us the generous character of thy soul! how they comment those words of the Canticle: Love is strong as death! (Song of Solomon 8:6) It was thy love of God that made thee suffer and die and conquer. Even before the water of Baptism had touched thee, thou wast enrolled among the Martyrs. When the hard trial came of resisting a father, who wished thee to lay down the palm of martyrdom—how bravely didst thou not triumph over thy filial affection, in order to save that which is due to our Father who is in heaven! Nay, when the hardest test came—when the babe that fed at thy breast was taken from thee in thy prison—even then thy love was strong enough for the sacrifice, as was Abraham’s, when he had to immolate his Isaac.

Thy fellow-martyrs deserve our admiration; they are so grand in their courage; but thou, dear Saint, surpassest them all. Thy love makes thee more than brave in thy sufferings, it make thee forget them. “Where wast thou,” we would ask thee in the words of St. Augustine, “where wast thou, that thou didst not feel the goading of that furious beast, asking when it was to be, as thou it had not been? Where wast thou? What didst thou see, that made thee see not this? On what wast thou feasting, that made thee dead to sense? What was the love that absorbed, what was the sight that distracted, what was the chalice that inebriated thee? And yet the ties of flesh were still holding thee, the claims of death were still upon thee, the corruptible body was still weighing thee down!” (Sermon for the feast of SS. Perpetua and Felicitas) But our Lord had prepared thee for the final struggle, by asking sacrifice at thy hands. This made thy life wholly spiritual, and gave thy soul to dwell, by love, with Him, who had asked thee for all and received it; and thus living in union with Jesus, thy spirit was all but a stranger to the body it animated.

It was impatient to be wholly with its Sovereign Good. Thy eager hand directs the sword that is to set thee free; and as the executioner severs the last tie that hold thee, how voluntary was thy sacrifice, how hearty thy welcome of death! Truly, thou wast the Valiant, the Strong Woman, (Proverbs 31:10) that conqueredst the wicked serpent! Thy greatness of soul has merited for thee a high place among the heroines of our holy Faith, and for seventeen hundred years thou hast been honored by the enthusiastic devotion and love of the servants of God.

And thou, too, Felicitas! receive the homage of our veneration, for thou wast found worthy to be a fellow-martyr with Perpetua. Thou she was a rich matron of Carthage, and thou a servant, yet Baptism and Martyrdom made you companions and sisters. The Lady and the Slave embraced, for Martyrdom made you equal; and as the spectators saw you hand in hand together, they must have felt that there was a power in the Religion they persecuted, which would put an end to Slavery. The power and grace of Jesus triumphed in thee, as it did in Perpetua; and thus was fulfilled thy sublime answer to the pagan, who dared to jeer thee—that when the hour of trial came, it would not be thou that wouldst suffer, but Christ, who would suffer in thee. Heaven is now the reward of thy sacrifice; well didst thou merit it. And that babe, that was born in thy prison, what a happy child to have for its mother a Martyr in heaven! How wouldst thou not bless both it and the mother who adopted it! Oh! what fitness in such a soul as thine, for the Kingdom of God! (Luke 9:62) Not once looking back, but ever bravely speeding onwards to him that called thee. Thy felicity is perpetual in heaven; thy glory on earth shall never cease.

And now, dear Saints, Perpetua and Felicitas, intercede for us during this season of grace. Go, with your palms in your hands, to the throne of God, and beseech him to pour down his mercy upon us. It is true, the days of paganism are gone by; and there are no persecutors clamoring for our blood. You, and countless other Martyrs, have won victory for Faith; and that Faith is now ours; we are Christians. But there is a second paganism, which has taken deep root among us. It is the source of that corruption which now pervades every rank of society, and its own two sources are indifference, which chills the heart, and sensuality, which induces cowardice. Holy Martyrs! pray for us that we may profit by the example of your virtues, and that the thought of your heroic devotedness may urge us to be courageous in the sacrifices which God claims at our hands. Pray, too, for the Churches which are now being established on that very spot of Africa which was the scene of your glorious martyrdom; bless them, and obtain for them, by your powerful intercession, firmness of faith and purity of morals. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, March 6.)