Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part thirty-five

Do you what is going on with the American-Israeli war on Iran now?

Well, I sure don’t know.

Every day brings a new post or sets of remarks from President Donald John Trump that contradicts some other post or set of remarks he had made the day before or, in some cases, three or four hours before.

Although the specifics vary from moment to moment and from day to day, several things are clear:

First, none of the predicates of the Just War Theory were met before Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Eagle were launched on Saturday, February 28, 2026.

That is, there was no wound to justice or imminent threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to the national security of the United States of America. All the maniacal histrionics that Donald John Trump still continues to repeat in speeches and in his all capital letters and multiple exclamation points Truth Social posts about Iran being within weeks of obtaining a nuclear weapon continue nothing but the fantasies of his own desire to make people in that which is unreal. This is especially the case since Trump said eleven months ago that the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities had “completely obliterated”

Second, President Trump overrode the objections of Vice President James David Vance and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Daniel Caine, about the defining the objectives to be pursued, the time frame that would be needed to achieve those objects, and what outcome would constitute a victory. Vance has also questioned the accuracy of Pentagon reports concerning the depletion of American weaponry, especially missiles, during the war so far (see Vance Doubts Pentagon's Depiction of Iran War.

Third, despite President Trump’s denials to the contrary, the murderous Zionist named Benjamin Netanyahu did indeed convince Trump to undertake a full-scale military attack upon Iran. Netanyahu appealed to Trump’s unsurpassed vanity and narcissism (only “Trump could bring down” the Iranian regime, which is, of course, a collection of murderous Mohammedan thugs in their own wretched right) and that the Iranian people would rise up en masse against their oppressors in Teheran (I stick to the old spellings, thank you). Trump was assured that victory in Iran would be as quick as it had had been in Venezuela.

Fourth, the imposition of an American naval blockade of Iranian ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman, may be bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s economy to the point of collapse, but the blockade was undertaken on Low Sunday, April 12, 2026, after the first five weeks of military strikes failed to result in the collapse of the murderous Iranian regime and after the Islamabad, Pakistan, negotiations failed to produce a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Fifth, President Trump said originally that the war would be over in two to four weeks, but it is now nine weeks since the American-Israel joint military attacks began. Even though President Trump has written to Congress to say that the war was “suspended” on April 12, 2026, when the ceasefire began in an effort to avoid the sixty-day limit on a president’s ability to conduct military operations without Congressional approval imposed by the War Powers Act, no one who has an ounce of sanity believes that the “war” has ended, especially a naval blockade it itself an act of war.

Sixth, ignoring for a moment or two the fact that the Mohammedans are still executing their own innocent civilians even Benjamin Netanyahu helped to sell President Trump on the idea that the Iranians would rise up after much of the top-tier of Iran’s leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khameini, were killed by Israeli bombings on Saturday, February 28, 2026, the war has increased energy costs here in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world.

The Seething, Racialist Hatred of the Zionists for All Non-Jews, Including Christians

Trump keeps saying that the increased costs of gasoline are a “small price to pay” to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon. However, ordinary Americans are being forced to pay at the pump for a war they do not, by and large, support and was undertaken because Benjamin Netanyahu knew that he could play Trump like a fiddle and thus be used as a pawn in Netanyahu’s Greater Israel Project. The president does not have to “pay at the pump.” We have to do so, and those of who have very low incomes have to more and more for energy as the “price” for the Zionist marauders to continue their destruction of Gaza under cover of the world’s attention on the situation in Iran and to commence a destruction of southern Lebanon by using the same genocidal methods that has been using in Gaza since October 7, 2023:

An entire street is leveled. Houses and shops are flattened, including a popular cafe. This is what is left of the town of Bint Jbeil, just a couple of miles from the Israeli border, nearly two months after Israel relaunched its ground offensive in southern Lebanon.

The destruction of this town, a Hezbollah stronghold, is repeated again and again across southern Lebanon, a lush region of undulating vistas, where Israel has razed border villages as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for a larger occupation.

The approach, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said, was modeled on tactics the military used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods, buildings and streets to rubble.

After the war between Israel and Hezbollah reignited in early March, when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Iran, Israel established a several-mile-deep “buffer zone” that it says it will continue to occupy until the threat from Hezbollah is contained.

An analysis of satellite images, along with photos and videos shared online and verified by The New York Times, shows the scope of that campaign. Widespread demolitions have flattened expanses of at least two dozen towns and villages near the border, with damage to government offices as well as civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and mosques.

Villages are now blurred into ash, with the white of rubble marking town after town.

“I feel like I am going to break from anger and sadness,” said Nabil Sunbul, 67, who works in a bakery in the town of Bint Jbeil. He has now fled to Beirut with only a few belongings.

Satellite imagery shows that the area where Mr. Sunbul lives and works has been severely damaged, though it was unclear whether his home was completely destroyed.

Since the war began, Israeli strikes have killed more than 2,600 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, including journalists and medical workers, and destroyed infrastructure such as bridges and gas stations. More than a million people have been displaced. The fighting has continued despite a U.S.-mediated cease-fire, which has now been extended through mid-May.

The Israeli military says it is targeting infrastructure and positions belonging to Hezbollah. The Iran-backed group has launched hundreds of drones, rockets and anti-tank missiles at Israel and has killed at least 17 Israeli soldiers since early March, according to the Israeli military.

Legal experts and human rights activists say targeting civilian infrastructure or destroying it without a valid military justification constitutes a war crime. They also expressed concern over Israeli officials’ statements that they would model the destruction in southern Lebanon on Gaza, given the scale of devastation and loss of life in the strip.

“Deliberately and extensively destroying civilian objects or property, absent any military justification for wanton destruction, is a war crime,” said Ramzi Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Israeli military said its troops were operating “in accordance with international law,” and that its directives permit the demolition of structures used for Hezbollah’s military purposes or when deemed operationally necessary.

One video circulating on social media and verified by The Times showed an excavator destroying solar panels near the village of Debl in late April. The solar panels supplied the town with electricity and powered the water station, according to Lebanon’s state news agency.

The Israeli military said in a statement to The Times that such actions did not meet the standards it expected of its soldiers. “Following an inquiry into the incident, command measures were taken against the reserve soldiers involved,” the statement said, without elaborating on what those measures were.

Across southern Lebanon, many towns were already devastated during the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024. More than 10,000 structures, including homes, mosques and parks, were damaged or destroyed in at least 26 municipalities, according to Amnesty International.

The destruction now appears far more extensive, with fresh rubble visible in satellite imagery spanning wide swaths of terrain.

“Our home was the fruit of our lives’ work,” said Fatima Abdallah, 46, a mother of five from the town of Houla near the Israeli border, who is now staying in a tent inside a stadium in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Satellite images show her town was heavily hit, and her home, which she and her husband built two decades ago, appears to have been destroyed.

Videos show Israeli soldiers are using similar methods of destruction to what they employed in Gaza, including the use of controlled demolitions, in which soldiers enter the targeted structures to place explosives.

Soldiers then pull the trigger from a safe distance, said Barbara Marcolini, a visual investigator with Amnesty International who previously worked for The Times. The blasts send plumes of dust and debris skyward. As a result, entire streets are now moonscapes of white rubble and shattered concrete, with little left to mark where homes or businesses once stood.

Israel says its operations are aimed at dismantling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, which it says is embedded in civilian areas. Hezbollah has long denied placing military assets among civilians.

Other videos and photos, including photos taken from the Israeli side of the border, show demolitions being carried out by bulldozers and excavators in heavily damaged areas.

Experts say this mirrors what Israel did in Gaza, leaving vast areas uninhabitable and preventing those displaced from returning home.

“This is basically the same pattern that we documented back in Gaza, then in southern Lebanon. And now it’s southern Lebanon again,” Ms. Marcolini said. “It is a strategy that they have, and they have been doing this consistently throughout the region.”

There is damage across the south, but the most severe destruction in the south is concentrated in Shiite villages. Shiites, who are from the same sect as Hezbollah, form the majority of the population in southern Lebanon, though some towns in the no-go zone near the border are predominantly Christian or Druse. Israel has told some Christians and Druse they can stay if they expel Shiite Muslims from southern towns.

Satellite imagery shows a stark contrast between these areas. In images taken near the border in April, the majority-Shiite villages of Aita al Shaab and Hanine appear as expanses of gray rubble, while far less damage is visible in the nearby predominantly Christian village of Rmeish.

For the families who fled, there is no clear sense of when they will return. For now, they rely on messages and calls from displaced friends and neighbors, piecing together fragments of news about what remains of their homes and lives.

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Abdallah invoked a Lebanese phrase — “with stones, not with people” — to express that although their home had been reduced to rubble, her family members were at least unharmed. (How Israel Is Using the Same Tactics in Lebanon That It Did in Gaza.)

The devil inspires the Mohammedans in Hezbollah to attack northern Israeli cities and villages so that the equally possessed Zionists can use such terrorist attacks as the justification to impose their own “final solution” in southern Lebanon just as they continue to do in Gaza to root out and disarm their fellow experts in murder and mayhem in Hamas.

Never mind the fact the Israelis’ quenchless thirst for genocidal revenge that only inspires new generations of terrorists in the future who are as filled with hatred and revenge as are the Zionists themselves involves the destruction of civilian population centers and the forcible and most likely permanent displacement of innocent people from their homes.

No, even though the Iranian leadership thinks nothing of executing dissenters in their own country, the Israelis have thought nothing of killing over 75,000 innocent Palestinians in Gaza and close to 3,000 innocent Lebanese civilians, many of them Christians who had lived in their villages and cities for generations upon generations.

Benjamin Netanyahu took perfect advantage of the attacks upon Iran to do the Zionists have always done in Lebanon when given a chance to do so, namely, kill and displace innocent civilians so that Israeli troops can move in to occupy parts of a sovereign nation for their own expansionist purposes

A “truce” for the Israelis means that they can proceed to kill innocent human beings by claiming they live near Hamas or Hezbollah territories even though they have nothing do with either organization and, quite indeed, have been victimized by those terror groups whose leaders do not care for those they falsely claim to “represent” and “protect” while extorting money from the innocent civilians in the manner of the Chinese war lords and the Mafia in Sicily in other parts of Italy.

The Israelis have killed eight hundred twenty-eight civilian Palestinians in the past seven months since the “true” in Gaza took effect:

In the shattered neighbourhoods of Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, the roar of Israeli drones and the concussive thud of controlled demolitions are daily reminders that the war has never really ended.

Despite a “ceasefire” in place since October, families continue to pull bodies from the rubble. According to local medical sources, 828 Palestinians have been killed since the “truce” began. Now, families in Gaza are bracing for a renewed offensive as Israeli officials threaten to tear up the fragile agreement to force a surrender.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly cancelled a scheduled security cabinet meeting on Sunday, opting instead for smaller consultations. Simultaneously, the military has ramped up pressure to resume hostilities. A senior official in the Israeli military’s General Staff told Channel 15 that an additional round of fighting was “almost inevitable”, citing the refusal of Hamas to surrender its weapons and the alleged “failure” of the International Stabilization Force, a multinational body deployed under the recent truce framework to oversee security and manage the ceasefire’s implementation.

Israel’s Army Radio reported that on the ground, the military has steadily been enlarging the territory it controls in the besieged enclave. By gradually pushing the “ceasefire”-established “Yellow Line” westwards, Israeli forces have expanded their territorial control to 59 percent of the Strip, regularising their occupation through daily violations of the “ceasefire” and moving additional troops from the Lebanese front into Gaza and the occupied West Bank. (Israel threatens Gaza war resumption to force disarmament as ‘truce’ frays.)

The Israeli program of genocidal social engineering in Gaza has included the “vaporizing” of innocent civilians, including many hundreds of children, a program of “disappearing people” designed to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians once and for all:

Israel has continued its attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire announced on April 17 to halt more than six weeks of its war on Lebanon

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported on Saturday that at least 2,659 people have been killed and 8,183 wounded between March 2 and May 2 by Israeli forces.

n 23 April, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that "dozens of children go missing each week" in the Gaza Strip "against the backdrop of the postwar chaos" - a curious euphemism, no doubt, for the ongoing US-backed genocide in the Palestinian territory, which proceeds apace despite the ceasefire that was ostensibly implemented last year.

The article begins with four-year-old Mohammed Ghaban, who disappeared in early April in northern Gaza: "[H]e had been playing with his brother in front of his displaced family's tent. He went inside, asked for a hug, put on his sandals and went out." And then he was gone.

The author cites an estimate from the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared that 2,900 children "disappeared during the war", with 2,700 bodies thought to be trapped under the rubble and the remaining 200 simply missing.

Such statistics are in keeping with the modus operandi of the Israeli military, which, according to the official fatality count, has killed more than 72,500 Palestinians in Gaza since the launch of the genocide in 2023, with thousands more still missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned back in September that the true death toll might already have been more in the vicinity of 680,000.

Speaking of disappearances, an Al Jazeera Arabic investigation revealed in February that at least 2,842 Palestinians had "evaporated" in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war - a phenomenon Gaza's civil defence teams attribute to Israel's use of US-manufactured thermal and thermobaric weapons, which effectively "vaporise" human bodies.

The gruesome tally was quickly eclipsed by the deranged US-Israeli war on Iran and wider regional catastrophe, which has monopolised the news for the past two months. But the topic remains as sinisterly relevant as ever.

In remarks to Al Jazeera at the time, civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal outlined the process for determining the number of vaporised victims at homes targeted by Israeli strikes: "If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as 'evaporated' only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces - blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps."

Vaporised bodies

Upon publication of these macabre findings, the Israeli military got its panties into a genocidal bunch and issued a huffy communique to allegedly set the record straight.

Rejecting Al Jazeera's "false claim of the evaporation of Gazan bodies", the army insisted that it "uses only lawful munitions" and that it "strikes military targets and objectives in accordance with international law and takes all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian property to the extent possible."

It's not clear, of course, why a military that has been accused of potentially killing nearly 700,000 people - and that wipes out entire families and neighbourhoods without so much as batting an eye - took such particular offence at the whole "evaporation" matter.

Granted, disappearing bodies into thin air is a pretty good way of hiding the true extent of mass slaughter.

And while the vaporisation of Palestinian bodies may not fit the official legal definition of enforced disappearance, it is quite literally exactly that.

It's not clear, of course, why a military that has been accused of potentially killing nearly 700,000 people - and that wipes out entire families and neighbourhoods without so much as batting an eye - took such particular offence at the whole "evaporation" matter.

Granted, disappearing bodies into thin air is a pretty good way of hiding the true extent of mass slaughter.

And while the vaporisation of Palestinian bodies may not fit the official legal definition of enforced disappearance, it is quite literally exactly that.

According to the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "an enforced disappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law".

In light of Israel's explicit disappearing act in Gaza, however, a considerable expansion of that definition would seem to be in order.

And yet Israel is guilty of the traditional variety of enforced disappearance, as well. Last August, UN experts denounced reports that starving Palestinian civilians - including a child - were being forcibly disappeared from aid distribution sites run by the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Backed by Israel and the US, the foundation also specialised in massacring desperate folks who had gathered in search of food and other necessary items for survival.

Meanwhile, in both Gaza and the West Bank, Israel's enforced disappearances of medical personnel, journalists and all manner of other humans have flourished since the onset of the genocide - not that this hasn't always been par for the course.

Global pattern

For its part, the US has had a hand in enforced disappearances in a whole lot of places around the world, including by aiding and abetting bloodthirsty right-wing regimes throughout Latin America during the Cold War.

Tens of thousands were disappeared in Argentina, Guatemala and beyond as the US and its buddies nobly went about making the hemisphere safe for capitalism.

In Mexico, more than 130,000 persons have been disappeared, the vast majority of them following the launch in 2006 of the US-backed "war on drugs", which would be more aptly characterised as a war on the poor.

Israel's campaign of terror in Lebanon takes another psychopathic turn

But from Mexico to the Middle East, the number of disappeared hardly conveys the extent of victimisation. The families of the missing are victims, too, condemned as they are to indefinite psychological limbo in the absence of concrete information regarding the fate of their loved ones - without which it is impossible to commence the grieving process or obtain the emotional closure that is necessary to move on with one's life.

In the case of Israel's "evaporation" of Palestinians in Gaza, it's hard to say whether the knowledge that your loved one has been vaporised is concrete enough to enable eventual closure. After all, there's nothing very concrete about being forcibly vanished without a trace.

Indeed, Al Jazeera quotes Palestinian father Rafiq Badran on the almost inconceivable psychological torment that attends Israel's sinister new spin on the theme of enforced disappearance: "Four of my children just evaporated," Badran said, holding back tears. "I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?"

Now, with regional war raging as the arms industry rakes in big bucks, it has become even easier for global audiences to tune out the unique plight of the Palestinians - which means that the genocide is effectively being disappeared from the spotlight, as well.

In the end, of course, the Israeli goal is nothing less than to forcibly disappear the very idea of a Palestinian people. But unfortunately for Israel, its blood-drenched legacy will not be so easily concealed. (Israel is making Palestinians disappear in more ways than one.)

This is no Israeli “accident.”

This “vaporizing” of children is quite deliberate, and it comes directly from hell as it is carried out by those who false religion belongs, as the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, the well-regarded editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review from 1943 to 1963, noted in The Catholic Church and Salvation, “to the kingdom of satan.”

President Donald John Trump keeps posting messages that the Islamic Republic of Iran must pay for its “crimes against humanity” for the past forty-seven years.

However, crimes against God and men are commonplace right here in the United States of America, especially as the president refuses to enforce the Comstock Act that forbids the mailing of abortifacient pills and devices and has directed his Department of Justice to use Federal courts to block various states’ efforts to prohibit the human pesticide, the abortion pill, from being distributed by the United States Postal Service in their respective states. Over sixty million innocent children have been killed by surgical means alone in the United States of America since 1965, and each one of these killings is a crime against God and against all men.

Therefore, while admitting full well that the faithful Mohammedans within the Islamic Republic of Iran are moral monsters in their own diabolical manner as their souls are just as captive to the devil by means of Original Sin as are those of the Israelis, the leaders no country have matched the crimes of God and men than Israelis themselves.

Meanwhile, of course, the deliberate targeting by Israelis of Catholic churches and convents in Lebanon continues unabated and without a single word of rebuke by President Donald John Trump, whose administration continues to provide the Zionists with arms and the ammunition to kill the innocents in Gaza and Lebanon as well as the bulldozers that the Israelis use to clear the rubble of entire cities they have leveled with their relentless bombing.

Famously, an Israeli solider personally chopped down a life-sized Crucifix in a Maronite Rite Catholic village in Lebanon and took a sledgehammer to vent his demonic fury against his own very Divine Redeemer, Whom he has been taught to revile with a seething hatred throughout his military training:

An image showing an Israeli soldier using a jackhammer to smash a statue of Jesus on a cross in southern Lebanon went viral on social media on Sunday.

Israel has occupied several areas in southern Lebanon since launching its war on the country on March 2.  A ceasefire came into effect on Friday.

Members of the Christian community say the statue is in the village of Debel, a Maronite Christian town about six kilometres northwest of Ain Ebel and roughly five kilometres from the Israeli border community of Shtula.

The image sparked immediate outrage online, including among some former allies of US President Donald Trump.

Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted mockingly on X under the image: “'Our greatest ally' that takes billions of our tax dollars and weapons every year.”

Greene, once a Trump ally, has since turned on the US president over the Epstein files and his decision to follow Israel into a war on Iran, which she has condemned.

Similarly, Matt Gaetz, a former Republican congressman, described the image as “horrific”.

The backlash from figures within the MAGA movement is likely to further damage Israel’s image among one of its strongest support bases in the US - evangelical Christians.

Regional analyst Muhammad Shehada captioned the image “'Judeo-Christian values' in Israel”, referencing a phrase Israel often uses to bolster support in the West.

The municipality of Debel told AFP the statue is located in the village but could not confirm whether it had been damaged.

Under Israeli rule, Christians in Israel and the occupied West Bank have faced a growing wave of attacks, from daily harassment to the destruction of religious sites.

Clergy have reported being spat on and physically assaulted, while churches, cemeteries and other Christian symbols have been vandalised.

These attacks, often linked to ultra-Orthodox Jews, religious nationalists and settlers, have frequently gone unchecked, with Israeli police accused of failing to intervene.

Responding to the latest incident, an Israeli military spokesman did not deny the image’s authenticity, saying on X that "If this photo is indeed real and recent,” then it is not in line with the army’s “values”. (Israeli soldier filmed smashing Jesus statue in Lebanon.)

Denying that the attack upon the very One Who was made Incarnate by the power of God the Holy Ghost in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of Our Lady in the land they control, the Zionist leaders of Israel represented any kind of systematic hatred of Christians and Christianity, the soldiers who took part in the destruction of the Crucifix have been sentenced to thirty days of military detention, but one can be assured that they will be back to active duty thereafter:

Two Israeli soldiers have been pulled from combat duty and given 30-day jail sentences after one photographed the other swinging what appeared to be a sledgehammer at the head of a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.

Other troops who stood by but did nothing to intervene, the military said, have also been summoned and could face disciplinary action.

The military replaced the damaged statue with a gleaming new sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ and released a photo of it.

The extraordinarily swift administration of military justice by Israel was a tacit acknowledgment of the reputational damage the incident had done to the country, more than the seriousness of the crime. (Israeli Soldiers Sentenced to Jail for Damaging Jesus Statue in Lebanon.)

An Interjection:

The crime is quite serious in the eyes of the Most Blessed Trinity as it was a blasphemous and sacrilegious assault upon the very instrument upon which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour wrought our redemption in atonement for our sins. There are very things more serious than such attack.

Then again, one has to be able to view the world supernaturally through the eyes of the true Faith to understand this, and Zionists’ eyes are as blinded with hatred towards Christ the King as were the Biblical Jews when they, motivated in large measure by the effects of our own sins having transcended time, took delight in His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

The rest of the news story cited just above is very revealing but not in a way intended by its authors nor the Israeli leaders upon whose words they were reporting:

The incident occurred in Debl, a Christian village in Lebanon a few miles from the Israeli border. The village is in an area that the Israeli military seized as a buffer zone before a cease-fire with Hezbollah went into effect late last week.

The photograph surfaced online Sunday, sparking widespread outrage in Israel and beyond, and demands for harsh punishment of the soldiers.

Experts said the act of vandalism reflected both ignorance and a growing hostility to Christians among some Israeli Jews, who see Christianity as a form of idolatry or Christian proselytizing as a threat.

The incident also prompted immediate and profuse apologies from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its foreign minister, Gideon Saar.

In a statement Tuesday, Israel’s military expressed its “deep regret” and said that its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had condemned the incident as “a moral failure.”

The Israeli military purchased the new statue and had erected it by late Tuesday. What had been a fairly humble-looking object of worship now was a shiny rendering of Jesus in silver- and gold-toned metal on a reddish-brown cross, beneath the familiar abbreviation “I.N.R.I.” — Latin for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” (Israeli Soldiers Sentenced to Jail for Damaging Jesus Statue in Lebanon.)

Even though the statute donated by the Israelis was, as you will below, replaced by one the more closely resembled the crucifix destroyed by the Israeli soldiers, I have highlighted the last paragraph to emphasize the point that it was the Jews themselves who donated a crucifix statue with the letters  “I.N.R.I” to which the Pharisees had objected to Pontius Pilate on Good Friday as follows:

When therefore he delivered him to them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him forth.  17 And bearing his own cross, he went forth to that place which is called Calvary, but in Hebrew Golgotha.  18 Where they crucified him, and with him two others, one on each side, and Jesus in the midst.  19 And Pilate wrote a title also, and he put it upon the cross. And the writing was: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.  20 This title therefore many of the Jews did read: because the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.

21 Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate: Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am the King of the Jews.  22 Pilate answered: What I have written, I have written. (John 19: 16-22.)

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ used the pagan Pontius Pilate to write a title that bore witness to the truth even though Pilate himself was outwardly unconvinced.

Similarly, Our Lord used the murderous Zionists, who He knows despise Him and everything to do with Him despite their fake, phony, fraud claims of “toleration,” to erect a crucifix with the same I.N.R.I, that Pilate had written on Good Friday, thus calling to mind the words of Saint Paul’s Epistle to Colossians that was read at Holy Mass yesterday, Sunday, May 3, 2026, the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross and the Commemorations of the Fourth Sunday after Easter and of Saints Alexander, Juvenal, Theodulus, and Eventius:

Brothers: For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2: 5-11.)

Yes, even the souls in hell—and those on earth who are destined to spend all eternity there unless they convert to the true Faith before they die—must confess “that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” even if they have to be forced to do against the inclinations of their stony hearts and their iron wills!

Behold the power of our God.

Behold.

The marauding Zionists have also attacked, by “accident,” of course, other Catholic shrines, churches and convents:

A Catholic charity has condemned Israel after its forces destroyed a convent in southern Lebanon, in what it said is a deliberate attack on a place of worship.

The French organisation L'Oeuvre d'Orient said Israeli troops demolished a convent belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters, a Greek Catholic religious order, in the village of Yaroun.

“L'Oeuvre d'Orient strongly condemns this deliberate act of destruction against a place of worship, as well as the systematic demolition of homes in southern Lebanon aimed at preventing the return of civilian populations,” the group said in a statement on Friday.

The charity said the attack forms part of a wider pattern of attacks on Christian heritage, noting that “Christian sanctuaries were also destroyed during the war in 2024, such as the Melkite churches in the villages of Yaroun and Derdghaya, both classified as part of Lebanon's heritage”.

Images circulating in April showed an Israeli soldier using a jackhammer to desecrate a statue of Jesus on a cross in southern Lebanon, fuelling anger among Christian communities around the world.

Reports of violence against Christians have intensified across the region.

In occupied East Jerusalem, a nun was assaulted earlier this week near the Cenacle on Mount Zion. The 48-year-old researcher received medical treatment after sustaining facial injuries.

Restrictions have also extended to religious practices. Last month, Israeli police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and other clergy from holding Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before partially restoring access following international pressure.

A recent report by the Rossing Centre for Education and Dialogue documented a sharp rise in attacks on Christians, describing a “continued and expanding pattern of intimidation and aggression”.

It recorded 155 incidents in 2025, including 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 cases of harassment and 14 instances of vandalised signage. The report said the figures represent only the “tip of the iceberg”.

Israel’s military said following the latest attack on Saturday that its forces damaged a “religious building” in Yaroun during operations targeting what it described as infrastructure in the area.

Israel has continued its attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire announced on April 17 to halt more than six weeks of its war on Lebanon

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported on Saturday that at least 2,659 people have been killed and 8,183 wounded between March 2 and May 2 by Israeli forces. (Israel accused of destroying Christian convent in Lebanon in latest attack on Christians.)

Here is more information about the “accident” (the Zionists seem to have a lot of “accidents” when it comes to killing Christians, seizing their properties, bombing their churches, destroying statues and other holy images, etc.) involving the Catholic convent in Lebanon:

The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged it caused some damage to a Catholic convent in southern Lebanon while working to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, but denied it “demolished” the site with bulldozers.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, during operations in the border village of Yaroun, forces caused damage to a structure that “had no external signs indicating it was a religious building.”

“After identifying religious indicators in the complex, the forces acted to prevent further damage,” the military said, publishing photos showing the intact structure.

The IDF said Hezbollah had used the compound to launch rockets “multiple times” during the war, “which is why the forces operated there, with the aim of destroying the organization’s terror infrastructure.”

“The IDF takes care to destroy only terror infrastructure and has no intention of harming religious buildings,” the military added.

Gladys Sabbagh, the superior general of the Basilian Salvatorian Sisters, told the Associated Press that the convent was a small compound housing just two nuns, who left because of the war. It had previously included a school and a clinic.

A Catholic convent near the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun, May 2, 2026. (IDF)

The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged it caused some damage to a Catholic convent in southern Lebanon while working to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure, but denied it “demolished” the site with bulldozers.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, during operations in the border village of Yaroun, forces caused damage to a structure that “had no external signs indicating it was a religious building.”

“After identifying religious indicators in the complex, the forces acted to prevent further damage,” the military said, publishing photos showing the intact structure.

The IDF said Hezbollah had used the compound to launch rockets “multiple times” during the war, “which is why the forces operated there, with the aim of destroying the organization’s terror infrastructure.”

“The IDF takes care to destroy only terror infrastructure and has no intention of harming religious buildings,” the military added.

Gladys Sabbagh, the superior general of the Basilian Salvatorian Sisters, told the Associated Press that the convent was a small compound housing just two nuns, who left because of the war. It had previously included a school and a clinic.

A Catholic convent near the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun, May 2, 2026. (IDF)

Sabbagh said they “heard” the convent “was destroyed with bulldozers.”

In its own statement, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, “claims that a monastery in Yaroun in South Lebanon was ‘demolished’ are false. The site is intact and safe.”

The Catholic Church in Lebanon rejected claims that the compound was used for military purposes.

“We are against all practices against places of worship and churches. These are places to spread peace, love and education,” said Rev. Abdo Abou Kassm, director of the Catholic Center for Information. “These are not military bases.”

The incident came just two weeks after a soldier smashed a statue of Jesus in the village of Debel, drawing widespread international condemnation.

The soldier who smashed the statue, along with another soldier who photographed the act, was dismissed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military jail.

The crucifix was replaced by a new statue donated by soldiers of UNIFIL’s Italian contingent. The Israeli military also delivered a replacement statue following the incident, although it was smaller and styled differently from the original.

Lebanese media published photos showing that the statue donated by the UN peacekeepers more closely resembles the original statue.  

The statue delivered by the IDF was also seen in photos being carried by members of the community, apparently being moved elsewhere.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel on March 2, shortly after the beginning of the US-Israeli war with Iran. Israel responded with heavy airstrikes and by expanding its troops’ presence deeper into Lebanon.

The conflict entered a temporary ceasefire on April 17.

The ceasefire has now significantly eroded, though fighting remains at a lower level than before the truce was announced in mid-April, and the IDF has continued to limit the areas in which it carries out strikes. (IDF admits damaging Catholic convent in southern Lebanon, denies site demolished.)

As mentioned in the article cited just above, a French religious sister was brutally attacked by a zealous Talmudist, who displayed the sort of hatred for Our Lord and Catholicism that is taught in many Orthodox Jewish rabbinical schools throughout the United States of America, where is not uncommon for young Talmudists in Rockland County, New York, to spit in the direction of Catholic churches and/or to loudly shout curses in Hebrew as they pass by them:

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has decried an Israeli man’s attack on a religious sister in Jerusalem as “barbaric.”

“This is a repulsive and barbaric hate crime committed against a defenseless nun. It is the duty of the authorities to bring the perpetrator to justice and to ensure that clear and effective measures of deterrence are put in place so that such acts are neither tolerated nor repeated,”  Farid Jubran, Public and Governmental Affairs Advisor at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, told Crux Now.

A 36-year-old man was recently arrested by Israeli police after it was reported that a religious sister was attacked near King David’s tomb in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Newly released video footage shows a man pushing a Catholic religious sister to the ground, briefly walking away and then going back to kick her.

The head of a Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, has also reportedly condemned the attack and has called for an international response to stop the increasing hostilities against Christians in the Holy Land.

He said on Facebook that “the attack on a nun in the city of Jerusalem comes amid escalating violations against Christian institutions in the city,” according to Al Jazeera.

“This reflects increasing concerns about the future of the historic Christian presence in the Holy Land,” he added.

According to AP News, a police video shows the attacker was wearing tzitzit, a tasseled undergarment worn by some observant Jewish men, which is meant to serve as a reminder of God’s commandments.

The unprovoked attack was carried out by an Israeli colonizer, according to the al‑Baidar Human Rights Organization.

Last year in Jerusalem alone, 155 to 181 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism targeted at Christians were recorded, according to the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue and the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC). (Latin Patriarchate condemns 'barbaric hate crime' against Catholic nun in Jerusalem.)

So much for the Israelis’ self-serving claims about being “tolerant.”

For a refresher course on how hatred of Christianity is ingrained in the minds of the Israeli military and in Israeli culture-at-large, please see Attacking churches in Palestine: An Israeli policy since 1948 – Middle East Monitor and the following information that I believe is important to reprise given these recent Israeli attacks upon Christianity:

The Israeli targeting of Christian churches and institutions of mercy is no accident as contemporary Talmudists and Zionists have the same contempt for the Prince of Peace’s followers as the Biblical Jews had for Him when He walked amongst them and as they arranged for Him to be arrested, tried, condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns and Crucified:

The significance of Jewish teachings – known severally as the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Torah – may not be immediately obvious. Yet, on closer examination, this Jewish tradition of learning has exerted a powerful anti-Christian influence in our modern world. From wars through war crimes and the subversion of Christianity to support its horrendous crimes, the hatred of Christ and Christian values has combined with the liberal-global tradition to produce much of the hell on earth we inhabit today.

In recent days, a video from 2023 has resurfaced in which the president of the European Commission explains the idea of the Europe she leads: “Europe is the values of the Talmud,” she says, claiming the central text of Rabbinic Judaism records the “Jewish sense of personal responsibility, of justice—and of solidarity.”

Ursula von der Leyen spoke in 2022 at Ben Gurion University in Israel. What was she talking about – and why does it matter?

What is the Talmud?

The Talmud – meaning “study” or “learning” – is the written oral tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, second only in its significance to the Old Testament in Jewish “religious” teaching.

The Talmud began around the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and has been formalized into Jewish religious law—or halacha—“the laws of Jewish life” that “governs daily Jewish practice.”

Today, many in Israel, including in its government, call for this to be the law of the state of Israel. Yet its influence has shaped our world far beyond the undefined borders of the Zionist state.

Its teachings inform the political decision-making of Israeli, American, and now European leaders, legitimizing regime change wars abroad and sanctifying the persecution of Christians – such as the “ancient Jewish custom” of spitting on Catholic priests, Christians, and churches in the birthplace of Christianity.

So, what are the values of the Talmud, whose inspiration guides the “religious” and secular Zionists of today?

Sanctifying desecration

Von der Leyen accepted her honorary degree with praise for Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister of Israel. A religious Zionist assassinated him, and his life was threatened by current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who attacked Rabin’s car weeks before he was murdered.

Ben-Gvir is also the man who defended the routine spitting on Catholic monks and priests, committed by “religious” Jews.

As Haaretz reported in 2023, a “prominent Jewish settler” said, “It’s a good time to mention that spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom, and there’s even a special blessing in Jewish law that should be recited when you see a church.”

This custom comes from the Talmud. It was observed in Jerusalem in May 2023, where naive Evangelical Christian Zionists were spat upon by a mob led by the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King.

He said, “It is the duty of every Jew to save all Jews from descending into the Christian cult … we came here to protest in front of them.”

King led protesters in “chanting insults, spitting on participants and smashing windows at the center” which hosted a prayer meeting, as Haaretz recorded, while “hundreds of Christians attended the event, including Evangelical supporters of Israel.”

A question to Grok 3 on the phenomenon of Evangelical Christian Zionism, which many Christians consider to be heretical, returns the following:

Regarding the conversion of Jews to Christianity, beliefs vary among evangelical Christian Zionists. A significant subset, influenced by dispensationalism, holds that the return of Jews to Israel sets the stage for apocalyptic events, including a period of tribulation described in the Book of Revelation. Some interpret passages like Romans 11:25-26 (“a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved”) to mean that a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity will occur either before or during Christ’s return. In this view, the Second Coming involves Jesus reigning from Jerusalem, often after a battle at Armageddon, and many believe that Jews will recognize Jesus as the Messiah at that time.

However, not all Christian Zionists emphasize conversion as an immediate goal. Some, like Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, focus on supporting Israel out of a perceived biblical mandate without actively pushing for Jewish conversion, arguing that their support is a way to honor God’s covenant with Abraham’s descendants.

Bethlehem Palestinian Christian Pastor Munther Isaac charges that “the Christian Zionism movement weaponizes the Bible and says John Hagee and others are engaged in a political movement that leads to great suffering for the Palestinians.” In a YouTube interview, he responding to a question about what he would say to Hagee if he met him, he said that he

…would call Hagee to repent from his obsession with power, with a militant solution to everything, and his unwavering and uncritical support to an apartheid regime, for his constant dehumanization of Palestinians and for refusing to open his eyes to the suffering of Palestinians for 75 years. I would challenge him to rediscover the way of Jesus, the way of peace, the way of compassion. I don’t recognize the Gospel in many of these leaders, who openly have called for Israel, some of them, to turn Gaza into a parking lot. It is shocking to us how distant they are from the very same teachings of Jesus…That is why we talk about the weaponization of the Bible.

On October 4, 2023, “religious” Jews were filmed spitting on Christians in Jerusalem during a parade for the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

In February 2024, the Catholic abbot of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem was filmed being spat on and attacked by “religious” Jews, who cursed “f****ing Jesus” as they did so.

Abbot Schnabel said in an interview following the attack that he is “spat on practically daily.”

The author of this custom, known as “The Maharil,” is described as “the foremost Talmudist of his generation” by the Jewish Virtual Library.

Yet spitting on Christians is not the only anti-Christian message it teaches.

The cursing and damnation of Christ

Just as the “religious” Jews cursed “Yeshua” when spitting on the abbot, the Talmud refers to Christ as Yeshu.

Why does it do so?

The three consonants j s (shin) v, with which the name Jeshu was written, are here explained as being the first letters of the three words: /=jimmach, sh = sh’mo, v = v’zichro, i.e., may be blotted out his name and his memory.

The very name of Christ is expressed as a curse in the Talmud, as the Lutheran Bernhard Pick explained in his 1910 essay, “The Personality of Jesus in the Talmud.”

Pick examines the traditional Talmud, which he says has been censored “by the Jews themselves” to remove the most damning passages about the Lord. “In our days, such accusations against the Talmud were impossible because all these offensive passages have been removed … by the Jews themselves.”

This, he says, is “a fact only very often overlooked by controversialists. In the Jewish year 5391 (i.e., A.D. 1631) a Jewish synod held at Petrikau, in Poland, issued a circular letter to the effect that all such passages in the Talmud which refer to Jesus, etc., should be omitted in the future.”

In brief, the Talmud says Jesus Christ was a bastard, His mother a whore, and He was a sorcerer in league with the devil who died the deserving death of a common criminal.

Organizations such as Los Angeles-based “Jews for Judaism” say the passages cursing Christ are misinterpreted or point to omissions from texts, which Pick reminds us were removed by “the Jews themselves” to appease Christians.

It is to be remembered that the Talmud also says it is just for Jews to deceive non-Jews and that legal disputes should always be framed to exonerate Jews of wrongdoing.

A 2009 book documenting the mention of Our Lord, titled “Jesus in the Talmud,” states:

The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater.

They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus’ resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell – and that a similar fate awaits his followers.

What punishment does the Talmud say Christ received in hell?

He is in the “Tzoah Rotachat” for eternity – “boiling in excrement.”

The Zionist mindset

The Talmud directly inspires the Zionist mindset of the government of Israel. Its finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, says the “Greater Israel” project to expand Israel’s borders through war – with the direct assistance of the United States – is prophesied in religious texts.

“It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus,” he says.

Where is it written? The Greater Israel movement arose to claim Israel should retain all the territory it took in the 1967 Arab-Israel war – its goals in annexing the West Bank and Gaza promoted by Smotrich today.

In addition, it draws on interpretations of the Old Testament to say Israel has a right to annex parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. There are at least three versions of “Greater Israel” in the Bible, but Smotrich does not explain to which of these writings he refers.

Smotrich uses this heresy to justify his plan – currently underway – to violently annex the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and promote the extermination or expulsion of the entire population of Gaza.

The project of “Greater Israel” has been served by the “regime change” or “forever” wars urged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States Congress in 2002, and pursued on the Jewish traditional principle of “striking your enemy first” – the concept of “pre-emptive war.”

The “interpretations” of the Old Testament form the Midrash Raba, which, along with the Talmud, the Hebrew Old Testament, and the five books of Moses, comprise the traditions of Jewish teaching known as the Torah, but which by no means do all Jews interpret or accept in the same way, disregarding many of the worst, horrific Talmudic teachings.

The Midrash Raba has inspired the doctrine of pre-emptive war, pursued by Israel “since day one,” and injected into the national security strategy of the United States in 2002 – following the advice of Netanyahu.

A million historic Christians with their roots in the time of Christ have been killed as a result of this warmongering, inspired by the “religious” teachings which shape Israeli and U.S. policy.

How do these teachings justify these actions? The Talmud provides more insights.

“The best of Gentiles [non-jews] should all be killed”, it says in Soferim 15, “even if we are not in war.”

Further, the Talmud states, “God has permitted all the possessions of the Gentiles to the Jews” – meaning land and property of non-Jews can be seized under Halachic Law, which many in the Israeli government say should be the legal code of the state of Israel.

Netanyahu has made much use of the Hebrew name “Amalek” – a term meaning the enemies of Israel – who are, as former IDF Chief Yoav Gallant said of the Gazans, “human animals.”

The Talmud says that non-Jews are not human.

“Goyim [Gentiles] are considered beasts, and only Jews are human.” (Bava Metzia 114b). This explains how the state of Israel can justify its horrific crimes against the non-Jewish population, as well as those against the United States – such as in the USS Liberty attack or the theft of U.S. nuclear material and secrets. (The 'Judeo-Christian' lie is destroying the Christian West.)

The Talmudic and Zionist hatred for Christians is palpable, it is ongoing, and it is relentless. Yet is that so-called “Christian Zionists” give their full support to the murderous policies of the Zionist State of Israel because of their own heretical beliefs about Divine Revelation.

We are thus eyewitnesses during the Easter Season in 2026 to the sort of diabolically inspired hatred of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that the Biblical Jews exhibited towards Him as He, the Omnipotent God, displayed His humility and meekness before them, who so blinded by their hatred that they could see the fulfillment of their own Scriptures.

Once again, it is Our Lady’s own Fatima Peace Plan and the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart will lead men and their nations out of the abyss of the anti-Incarnational world of Modernity and of the Modernism of the conciliar sect that is so very aligned with the globalists who desire a One World Order to which the One World Ecumenical Church will be completely subservient.

We do our part to build up Pope Pius XI called “The Peace of Christ in the Kingship of Christ” by every Rosary we pray and, among so many other devotions to which we must remain faithful but also pray for an increase of the Gift of Fortitude in our souls and to be ready to suffer martyrdom for the honor and glory of God, to make reparation for ours, and to provide a salutary example to others.

The world suffers today for the sins of men who have forgotten and/or scoffed at the King of Kings Who suffered and died for us to reign with Him in the glory of the eternal kingdom, Heaven itself, and it is thus that we pray Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary to usher in the day when the Triumph of Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart will be manifest to all men everywhere as they exclaim una voce dicentes:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus, Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus, qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

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 Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Appendix A

On the Feast of Saint Monica

Today, Monday, May 4, 2026, is the Feast of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, who caused her such grief for twenty years by living a life of utter profligacy.

Unlike the likes of such heretics as Victor Manuel Fernandez or his fellow Argentine, the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Saint Monica did not reaffirm nor “accompany” her son as he did and said things that she knew had wounded Our Blessed Lord and Saviour once in time and wounded his own immortal soul that has been redeemed at such a high price, that of every single drop of the Divine Redeemer during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

Guided by the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, Holy Mother Church chose the account found in the Gospel according to Saint Luke of Our Lord’s raising the son of a woman in Naim from the dead:

At that time, Jesus went to a town called Naim; and His disciples and a large crowd went with Him. And as He drew near the gate of the town, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large gathering from the town was with her, and said to her, Do not weep. And He went up and touched the stretcher; and the bearers stood still. And He said, Young man, I say to you, arise. And he who was dead, sat up, and began to speak. And He gave him to his mother. But fear seized upon all, and they began to glorify God, saying, A great prophet has risen among us, and God has visited His people. (Luke 7:11-16.)

Truly did Our Lord raise Augustine of Hippo from the death of his soul in response to the endless prayers offered and tears shed by his saintly mother, Saint Monica, who was hailed as follows by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., in The Liturgical Year:

In the company of our Risen Lord there are two women, two mothers, of whom we have often had to speak during the last few weeks: they are Mary, mother of James the Less and Thaddeus, and Salome, mother of James the Greater and John the beloved disciple. They went, with Magdalene, to the Sepulcher, on the Resurrection morning; they carried spices to anoint the Body of Jesus; they were spoken to by Angels; and, as they returned to Jerusalem, our Lord appeared to them, greeted them, and allowed them to kiss his sacred feet. Since that Day, He has repaid their love by frequently appearing to them; and on the day of His Ascension from Mount Olivet, they will be there, together with our Blessed Lady and the Apostles, to receive His farewell blessing. Let us honour these faithful companions of Magdalene, these models of the love we should show to our Lord in His Resurrection; let us, also, venerate them as mothers who gave four Apostles to the Church.

But lo! on this fourth morning of beautiful May, there rises, near to Mary and Salome, another woman, another mother. She, too, is fervent in her love of Jesus. She, too, gives to holy Church a treasure: the child of her tears, a Doctor, a Bishop, and one of the grandest Saints of the New Law. This woman, this mother, is Monica, twice mother of Augustine. This master-piece of God's grace was produced on the desert soil of Africa. Her virtues would have been unknown till the day of Judgment, had not the pen of the great Bishop of Hippo, prompted by the holy affection of his filial heart, revealed to us the merits of this woman, whose life was humility and love, and who now, immortalized in men's esteem, is venerated as the model and patroness of Christian Mothers.

One of the great charms of the book of Confessions, is Augustine's fervent praise of Monica's virtues and devotedness. With what affectionate gratitude he speaks, throughout his whole history, of the untiring constancy of this mother, who, seeing the errors of her son, "wept over him more than other mothers weep over the dead body of their children! (Confessionum, liv. iii. cap. xi)" Our Lord, Who, from time to time, consoles, with a ray of hope, the souls He tries, had shown to Monica, in a vision, the future meeting of the son and mother; she had even heard a holy Bishop assuring her, that the child of so many tears could never be lost: still, the sad realities of the present weighed heavily on her heart; and both her maternal love and her Faith caused her to grieve over this son who kept away from her, yea, who kept away from her, because he was unfaithful to his God. The anguish of this devoted heart was an expiation, which would, at a future period, be applied to the guilty one; fervent and persevering prayer, joined with suffering, prepared Augustine's second birth; and, as he himself says, "she went through more when she gave me my spiritual, than when she gave me my corporal, birth (Ibid. lib. v. cap. ix)."

At last, after long years of anxiety, the mother found, at Milan, this son of hers, who had so cruelly deceived her, when he fled from her roof to go and risk his fortune in Rome. She found him still doubting the truth of the Christian Religion, but tired of the errors that had misled him. Augustine was not aware of it, but he had really made an advance towards the true Faith. "She found me," says he, "in extreme danger, for I despaired of ever finding the truth. But when I told her, that I was no longer a Manichean, and yet not a Catholic Christian, the announcement did not take her by surprise. She leaped for joy, at being made sure that one half of my misery was gone. As to the other, she wept over me, as dead, indeed, but to rise again; she turned to thee, O my God, and wept, and, in spirit, brought me, and laid the bier before Thee, that Thou mightest say to the widow's son: " Young man! I say to thee, arise! Then would he come to life again, and begin to speak, and Thou couldst give him back to his mother! * * * Seeing, then, that although I had not yet found the truth, I was delivered from error, she felt sure that Thou wouldst give the other half of the whole Thou hadst promised. She told me in a tone of gentlest calm, but with her heart full of hope, that she was confident, in Christ, that before leaving this world, she would see me a faithful Catholic (Confessionum, liv. vi. cap. i)."

At Milan, Monica formed acquaintance with the great Saint Ambrose, who was the instrument chosen by God for the conversion of her son. " She," says Augustine, "had a very great affection for Ambrose, "because of what he had done for my soul; and he equally loved her, because of her extraordinary piety, which led her to the performance of good works, and to fervent assiduity in frequenting the Church. Hence, when he saw me, he would frequently break out in her praise, and congratulate me on having such a mother (Ibid. liv vi. cap. ii)." The hour of grace came at last. The light of Faith dawned upon Augustine, and he began to think of enrolling himself a member of the Christian Church; but the pleasures of the world, in which he had so long indulged, held him back from receiving the holy sacrament of Baptism. Monica's prayers and tears won for him the grace to break this last tie. He yielded, and became a Christian.

But God would have this work of His divine mercy a perfect one. Augustine, once converted, was not satisfied with professing the true Faith; he aspired to the sublime virtue of continency. A soul, favored as his then was, could find no further pleasure in anything that this world could offer him. Monica, who was anxious to guard her son against the dangers of a relapse into sin, had been preparing an honorable marriage for him: but Augustine came to her, one day, accompanied by his friend Alypius, and told her that he was resolved to aim at what was most perfect.

Let us listen to the Saint's account of this interview with his mother; it was immediately after he had been admonished by the voice from heaven: "We (Augustine and Alypius,) go at once to my mother's house. We tell her what had taken place she is full of joy. We tell her all the particulars; she is overpowered with feelings of delight and exultation. She blessed thee, O my God, Who canst do beyond what we ask or understand. She saw that Thou hadst done more for me, than she had asked of thee, with her many piteous and tearful sighs. * * * Thou hadst changed her mourning into joy, even beyond her wishes, yea, into a joy far dearer and chaster than she could ever have had in seeing me a father of children (Confessionum, liv. viii. cap. xii)." A few days after this, and, in the Church of Milan, a sublime spectacle was witnessed by Angels and men: Ambrose baptizing Augustine in Monica's presence.

The saintly mother had fulfilled her mission: her son was regenerated to truth and virtue, and she had given to the Church the greatest of her Doctors. The evening of her long and tried life was approaching, and she was soon to find eternal rest in the God, for Whose love she had toiled and suffered so much. The son and mother were at Ostia, waiting for the vessel that was to take them back to Africa. "I and she were alone," says Augustine, "and were standing near a window of our lodging, which commanded a view of the garden. We were having a most charming conversation. Forgetting the past, and stretching forward to the things beyond, we were talking about the future life of the saints, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it ascended into man's heart. And whilst thus talking about it and longing for it, our hearts seemed to bound forward and reach it. We sighed, and left the first-fruits of our spirit there, and returned to the sound of our own voice. Then, my mother said to me: 'My son! as far as I am concerned, there is nothing now that can give me pleasure in this life. I know not what I can do, or why I should be here, now that I have nothing to hope for in this world. There was one thing, for which I desired to live somewhat longer, and it was to see thee a Catholic Christian before my death. My God has granted me this, and more; for I see that thou hast despised earthly pleasures and become his servant. What do I here (Confessionum, liv. ix. cap. x)?'"

She had not long to wait for the divine invitation. She breathed forth her pure soul a few days after this interview, leaving an indelible impression upon the heart of her son, to the Church a name most dear and honoured, and to Christian mothers a perfect example of the purest and holiest maternal affection. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Monica, May 4.)

Saint Augustine gave up his profligate ways and aspired to continency. The conciliar revolutionaries have mocked continency and have aspired to “accompany” those who seek to live in profligate ways.

The readings for Matins for the Feast of Saint Monica contain Saint Augustine’s own words in praise of his holy mother, Saint Monica, who suffered so much to win his conversion to the true Faith:

Monica was twice over the mother of St. Augustine, for, under God, he owed to her both earth and heaven. When her husband was very old she made him a friend of Jesus Christ, and after his death she lived a widow in all purity and constantly occupied in works of mercy. Her son Augustine had fallen into the heresy of the Manichaeans, and for his conversion she earnestly pleaded with God for years, with strong crying and tears. She followed Augustine to Milan, and tenderly and constantly besought him to confer with Ambrose the Bishop. This he consented to do, and at last, through the public sermons and private conversations of Ambrose, his eyes were opened to see the truth of the Catholic Religion, and he received baptism at the Bishop's hands, at the Passover of the year 387.

The mother and son set out to return to their home in Africa, but after they had reached Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, she was stricken down by a fever. One day as she lay sick, she came to herself after her mind had been long wandering, and said: "Where am I?” Then she saw who were standing by, and said "Let your mother lie here only, remember me at the altar of the Lord." On the ninth day this blessed lady surrendered her spirit to God. Her body was buried there at Ostia in the Church of St. Aurea, but, long after, in the papacy of Martin V, it was carried to Rome and honourably buried again in the Church of St. Augustine.

Augustine added these words after describing his mother's death: "We did not think that hers was a death which it was seemly to mark with repining, or tears, or lamentations, seeing that she died not sorrowfully, nor at all as touching her best and noblest part. This we knew, because we knew what her life had been, her faith unfeigned, her sure and certain hope. And then, nevertheless, I remembered again what thine handmaid was used to be, her walk with thee, how godly and holy it was, and with us so gentle and long-suffering and that it was all, gone away from me now. And I wept, over her and for her. And if any man will make it blame to me that I wept for a little while, when I saw lying dead before my eyes my mother, who had wept over me so many years, that she might see me live, I say, if any man will make it blame to me, I pray him not to sneer at me, but rather (if his charity be so great) himself to weep over my sins before thee, Who art a Father to all them to whom thy Christ is a Brother." (As found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Monica, May 4.)

Neither the conciliar revolutionaries nor Donald John Trump weep over their sins; they celebrate them in the name of “tolerance” and “compassion.”

We, though, must imitate Saint Augustine’s sorrow for our sins and beg Our Lady, the Mother of Sorrows, to help us understand their horror and to strive to cooperate more and more with the graces she sends to us to climb the ladder of personal sanctity, especially as we fly unto her maternal patronage through her Most Holy Rosary in this month, her month, the month of May, and every month we are privileged to live as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

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 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.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Appendix B

Father Francis X. Weninger, S. J., on Saint Monica

St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, the great teacher of sacred wisdom, was a native of Africa. She was doubly a mother to the Saint; for, she not only gave him earthly life, but also spiritual life, by regenerating him for Heaven. Her parents, who were Christians and in comfortable circumstances, brought her up in modesty and virtue. She was devoted to pious exercises from early childhood. Having heard from her mother how pleasing in the sight of God it is to overcome sleep at night, and spend the time in prayer, she forthwith began to rise during the night and pray. Nor was she less devoted to the poor. She often deprived herself of food in order to supply the wants of the indigent. She never evinced any pleasure in vainly adorning her person, but always attired herself according to her station in life. In all her words as well as actions, she endeavored to be decorous and retiring. When grown up, it was her desire to live in virginal purity, but was obedient to her parents who wished her to marry. As a wife her conduct was so exemplary that she might be held up as a model for all married people. Patricius, her husband, tormented his pious wife in a thousand different ways, as he was of a violent temper, immoral, and addicted to many vices. Monica always treated him with love and gentleness, never reproaching him for his vices. She never contradicted him when, giving way to passion, he burst out into manifold curses: but waited until his anger had passed away, and then represented his faults to him with Christian calmness. Praying to God unceasingly for his conversion, she gradually changed him so completely, that he at last led a very edifying life. The women who lived in her neighborhood, and who were acquainted with the passionate temper of Patricius, often wondered that he never struck or otherwise brutally treated her, as their husbands did to them. But Monica told them the reason of it, and taught them to be submissive to their husbands, to meet them with love and gentleness, and above all things, never to contradict them when they were angry, but to bear their faults in patience and silence. But just as anxious as Monica was to live in love and peace with her husband, so was she determined not to permit strife and contention among her household, still less other vices. She had three children, two sons and one daughter, and her greatest care was to give them a Christian education. Augustine, her first born, however, was not obedient, especially after the death of his father, but led a wild, licentious life, regarding neither the admonitions, supplications, nor menaces of his pious mother, until at last, he fell into the heresy of the Manichees.

Meanwhile Monica regulated her widowhood entirely after the precepts which St. Paul gives in his first Epistle to his disciple Timothy. She was liberal towards the poor, assisted daily at Holy Mass, listened eagerly to the word of God, spent no time in idle gossiping, or in walking about; but read devotional books, prayed and worked. She would hear nothing of worldly pleasures, and still less of fine garments or other vanities. She loved solitude and lived a retired and peaceful life, her only trouble being the vicious conduct of her son. Shedding many tears, she prayed almost day and night to God for his conversion, and requested others, both of the Clergy and the laity, to pray for the same object. As she one day asked a bishop for his prayers, he said to her: "Go in peace, a son for whom his mother sheds so many tears cannot perish." These words gave her some comfort, but she derived still more consolation from a vision in which God distinctly announced to her the conversion of her son.

In the meantime, Augustine was desirous to leave Carthage, where he had studied rhetoric, and go to Rome. Monica endeavored to prevent his going; but Augustine secretly departed while she was at church. Scarcely, however, had he arrived in Rome, when he became dangerously ill: and he ascribed it to his mother's prayers that he did not die in his sins and go to eternal destruction. As soon as Monica was informed where her son was, she determined to go to him so as to be able to watch over him. When she, after a most dangerous sea-voyage, arrived at Milan, she found him there, as he had been called from Rome to teach rhetoric. It was then that she perceived with joy that there was a change in him, through his conversations with St. Ambrose, who, at that period, was Bishop of Milan. Monica entreated the bishop not to relax in his interest for her son, until he should be entirely converted.

At length, God in his mercy complied with the holy widow's desire. Augustine renounced the Manichean heresy and was baptized in his 3Oth year by St. Ambrose. It may be said with truth that this conversion was the fruit of the prayers and tears of Saint Monica. The consolation that she received from her son's conversion, may be more easily imagined than described. Soon after this event, she determined to return with her son to Africa, but having reached Ostia, where they were obliged to wait for an opportunity to continue their voyage, a slight fever overtook her. At first it was not supposed dangerous, and Augustine himself relates how edifying a conversation he had held with his holy mother on the glories of heaven. She ended it with the following words: "My son, as far as I am concerned, I expect nothing further from this world. I had only one wish, which was to see you a Catholic before I died. God has granted me more than I asked; because I see that you not only serve Him, but that you despise all earthly happiness. What, therefore, remains for me to do upon earth?" Meanwhile, her malady increased so rapidly, that nine days later, St. Monica, who so long had sighed for heaven, gave her soul, adorned with so many virtues, into the hands of her Creator, in her fifty-sixth year. What she requested before her death of her two sons who were present, St. Augustine relates as follows: "Lay my body," said she: "where you like, and allow no thought of it to trouble you. Only one thing I request of you: remember me before the Altar of the Most High wherever you may be." St. Augustine describes also how they placed the body of his holy mother by her open grave, and there offered the sacrifice of our Redemption, the Holy Mass, for the dead before they interred her. A clear evidence that, at that remote period, they also believed in purgatory, and prayed for the dead as we Catholics still do in our days.

Practical Considerations

The life of St. Monica may serve as a lesson and example to every one. As a virgin, she was modest and retiring, was devoted to prayer, was kind to the poor, took no pleasure in luxuries or elegant garments, married not without the knowledge and consent of her parents but more in obedience to them than because it was her own wish. These are all points which deserve to be especially considered and imitated by all unmarried persons. As wife, she showed almost wonderful reserve and patience. She suffered the wrong done to her in silence, but endeavored to reform her husband by kind persuasions and prayers. She evinced, however, the greatest solicitude to give her children a Christian education. Married people may learn from this how they ought to conduct themselves, especially if one has to suffer from the other. As widow, she passed her time in the exercise of those works I have mentioned above. She loved solitude, fled even from lawful pleasures, and avoided the slightest shadow of vanity in her attire and behavior. Oh! that all widows would consider this example well, and conform their lives to it. For, to live, after the death of the husband, the same life of vanity and dissipation, to dress just as luxuriously and proudly, to find the same delight in the pleasures of the world and seek them as frequently as in the past, to be just as indolent in the exercise of charitable deeds, to spend even more time in gossiping than in prayers or in hearing the word of God, to lead a life regulated only by a love of comfort and sensuality, perhaps, even to seek greater dangers--is not living as a widow who earnestly desires to gain her eternal salvation. St. Paul says: "If any widow have children or grandchildren; let her learn first to govern her own house, and to make a return of duty to her parents: for this is acceptable before God. But she that is a widow indeed and desolate, let her trust in God, and continue in supplications and prayers night and day. For she that lives in pleasures is dead while she is living." (I. Timothy v.).

St. Monica had a vicious husband and a wicked son. She, however, converted both. But how and by what means? Not by strife and contention, not by abuse and injuries, not by swearing and cursing; but by patience, by tender exhortations, by constant prayers. Oh! that all women, all parents used such means when they have bad husbands or wicked children. These are not to be changed by curses and abuse. If a husband is angry, or intoxicated or otherwise unfit to listen to reason, the wife should be silent and yield, but await a suitable time to show him his faults and exhort him to better his conduct. Contradictions or curses only pour oil into the fire and increase the evil. As far as parents are concerned, they must know that they are never allowed to curse their children or to wish them evil, let the children be ever so godless and bad. The parents sin by cursing and often very heavily.

They cause many sins which their children, in the course of time commit by cursing in the same manner: for one sees every day that children learn cursing from their parents, and become themselves as accustomed to it as their parents are. And who is responsible to God for all the curses of the children but the parents, who have set them the example? I am aware of the many excuses which the parents give, and I will answer them at another time. Today, I say only this: To curse is never permitted. God forbids it. As often as parents curse their children, so often do they act in contradiction to the law of God: they sin and cause their children to sin. To curse is not a proper, neither is it an allowed means to educate children or make them better. St. Monica used quite different means and obtained what she desired. Where has there ever been a father or a mother who made a child pious by cursing? But even if it were possible to bring up a child well and make it pious by cursing, yet would it be sinful to do it with this intention. God has forbidden it: this must suffice. "Bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord," writes St. Paul. (Eph. vi.). The correction of the Lord does not permit cursing, but on the contrary prohibits it. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S. J., Feast of Saint Monica, May 4.)