Saint Michael Quotes

The battle against the devil, which is the principal task of Saint Michael the Archangel, is still being fought today, because the devil is still alive and active in the world.

But do I need to say anything?" Sophie asked. "Do I need to learn any words?" "Like what?" Saint-Germain said. "Well, when you lit up the Eiffel tower, you said something that sounded like eggness." "Ignis," the count said. "Latin for fire. No, you don't need to say anything." "Then why did you do it, then?" Sophie asked. Saint-Germain grinned. "I just thought it sounded cool.

The ultimate lesson is that science isn’t special – at least not anymore. Maybe back when Einstein talked to Niels Bohr, and there were only a few dozen important workers in every field. But there are now three million researchers in America. It’s no longer a calling, it’s a career. Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other. Its practitioners aren’t saints, they’re human beings, and they do what human beings do – lie, cheat, steal from one another, sue, hide data, fake data, overstate their own importance and denigrate opposing views unfairly. That’s human nature. It isn’t going to change

A friend asks if I know the difference between a saint and a martyr: A saint is someone who radiates goodness and bears no faults. A martyr is someone who lives with a saint.

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human angel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the coler of water.

I thought. I thought of the slow yellow autumn in the swamp and the high honey sun of spring and the eternal silence of the marshes, and the shivering light on them, and the whisper of the spartina and sweet grass in the wind and the little liquid splashes of who-knew-what secret creatures entering that strange old place of blood-warm half earth, half water. I thought of the song of all the birds that I knew, and the soft singsong of the coffee-skinned women who sold their coiled sweet-grass baskets in the market and on Meeting Street. I thought of the glittering sun on the morning harbor and the spicy, somehow oriental smells from the dark old shops, and the rioting flowers everywhere, heavy tropical and exotic. I thought of the clop of horses' feet on cobblestones and the soft, sulking, wallowing surf of Sullivan's Island in August, and the countless small vistas of grace and charm wherever the eye fell; a garden door, a peeling old wall, an entire symmetrical world caught in a windowpane. Charlestone simply could not manage to offend the eye. I thought of the candy colors of the old houses in the sunset, and the dark secret churchyards with their tumbled stones, and the puresweet bells of Saint Michael's in the Sunday morning stillness. I thought of my tottering piles of books in the study at Belleau and the nights before the fire when my father told me of stars and butterflies and voyages, and the silver music of mathematics. I thought of hot, milky sweet coffee in the mornings, and the old kitchen around me, and Aurelia's gold smile and quick hands and eyes rich with love for me.

Michael looked around the beautiful garden with its many colored flowers, fragrant lemon trees, the old statures of the gods dug from ancient ruins, other newer ones of holy saints, the rose-colored walls across the villa. It was a lovely setting for the examination of twelve murderous apostles.

In order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach. The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his struggle to transform into virtue the impudence, dishonor, unfaithfulness, and malice within him. One day Lucifer will be the most glorious archangel standing next to God; not Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael—but Lucifer, after he has finally transubstantiated his terrible darkness into light.

Saracen The Knight: There will be a cost. Saint-Germain: Anything. I will pay anything to get my wife back. Saracen: Even your immortality? Saint-Germain: Even that. What's the point in living forever, when it is not with the woman I love?

God, you made me. You love me. What would you have me do? Where would you have me go? Who would you have me serve? Show me how I can be your eyes of compassion, your heart of love, and your hands reaching out to this world. Amen.

JESUS MAY CALL YOU TO CHANGE CAREERS AND BECOME A MISSIONARY . . . BUT IN THE MEANTIME YOU ANSWER HIS CALL BY DILIGENTLY DOING WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO.

Do what you enjoy doing, do what you’re good at doing, and do what the world needs doing.

There were only two sorts of women so perfervid in their devotions: madwomen and saints, nor were the two species entirely distinct.

I’m doing the best I can. Getting old, that’s what it is. I’ll be fifty-three at the feast of Saint Michael. I’m no longer as strong as you are, young sirs,’ said the ferryman.

The distinctive conditions that generated Western excellence are set to continue deteriorating so long as selection does not favor heroes, geniuses, and saints, but rather “Last Men” whose quest for personal happiness likely cannot sustain a civilization in the long run.

The small group hugged one another quickly. Although nothing was said, they knew this could be the last time they ever saw one another again. Saint-Germain kissed Joan before they parted. “I love you,” he said softly. She nodded, slate-grey eyes shimmering behind tears. “When all this is over, I suggest we go on a second honeymoon,” he said. “I’d like that.” Joan smiled. “Hawaii is always nice at this time of year. And you do know I love it there.” Saint-Germain shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere that has a volcano.” “I love you,” she whispered, and turned away before they could see each other cry.

Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, 1504-06 It’s hard to talk about what you believe while you are believing it. Fervor reduces thought to shorthand and all we get is an icon. Give a man a weapon and you have a warrior. Put him on a horse and you have a hero. The weapon is a tool. The horse is a metaphor. Raphael painted this twice—white horse facing east against the greens, white horse facing west against the yellows. The maiden flees or prays, depending. A basic dragon, the kind you’d expect from the Renaissance. Evidence of evil but not proof. There’s a companion piece as well: Saint Michael. Paint angels, it’s easier: you don’t need the horse. Michael stands on Satan’s throat, vanquishing, while everything brown burns red. All these things happened. Allegedly. When you paint an evil thing, do you invoke it or take away its power? This has nothing to do with faith but is still a good question. Raphael was trying to say something about spirituality. This could be the definition of painting. The best part of spirituality is reverence. There are other parts. Some people like to hear the sound of their own voice. If you don’t believe in the world it would be stupid to paint it. If you don’t believe in God, who are you talking to?

His memory is perfectly clear and serves no good, no purpose at all. He has seen things before (the fly in the bottle, the indeterminate will). Santa Muerte, Saint Death, we pray to you to swallow our breath.

Go down a few steps and take your positions,” Prometheus instructed. “Let no one onto the roof. Will and Palamedes, you take the north side. Saint-Germain, can you take the west? Joan, the east is yours. I’ll guard the south.” “How come you get the dangerous side?” Saint-Germain asked. The big Elder smiled. “They’re all dangerous sides.

Starting with religion, as the British historian Hugh Thomas noted in his monumental study The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870, “There is no record in the seventeenth century of any preacher who, in any sermon, whether in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, or in a Presbyterian meeting house in Liverpool, condemned the trade in black slaves.

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised that I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human engel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the coler of water.

CNN will not be showing up at a church that is simply trusting God to do extraordinary things through his ordinary means of grace delivered by ordinary servants. But God will. Week after week. These means of grace and the ordinary fellowship of the saints that nurtures and guides us throughout our life may seem frail, but they are jars that carry a rich treasure: Christ with all of his saving benefits.

Ordinarily Michael would have also thrown himself directly back to work, but for the first time in a very long time, Michael stood there for a full five minutes before beginning his next job, just watching Pete start on his next project. Humans have always been fascinated by mirrors, after all. Michael had never seen from the outside how it looked to work constantly to avoid feeling, and he could not look away.

Do you want to know how God looks upon this world? Do you want to know how He feels about different kinds of people? Then look at the sun. Does the sun shine more brightly on a saint than on anyone else? Is the air more available to the saint? Does the rain fall on one neighbor’s trees more than another’s?

Academics concede that the Bible’s text is full of “pious fraud.” They admit that there are two gods spoken of in the opening books, and that as time went by the two (Elohim and Jehovah) were fused into one, henceforth referred to as “Lord God.” They concede the errors, fictions, skewed facts and accounts of characters who never existed. They admit the plagiarism, and that the Four Gospels were not written by the so-called “Saints” after whom they are named.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other. Its practitioners aren’t saints, they’re human beings, and they do what human beings do—lie, cheat, steal from one another, sue, hide data, fake data, overstate their own importance, and denigrate opposing views unfairly. That’s human nature. It isn’t going to change.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.20

Saint Michael the archangel, Defend us in battle, Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, And do Thou, oh prince of the heavenly host, By the divine power of God, Cast into Hell Satan and all evil spirits Who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Men do not die on mornings like this: whatever happens then happens in their name, like the lives of obscure saints, who exist only in folk memory.

And then he repeated, very slowly and very seriously, " Please ... draw me a sheep..." In the face of an overpowering mystery , you don't dare disobey.

A flourishing human life is the best advertisement for the gospel, and the gospel in turn empowers us to become better people.

Historian D. Michael Quinn refers to the Saints’ bald-faced dissembling as “theocratic ethics.” The Mormons called it “Lying for the Lord.”*

If you did not sin, God would destroy you and replace you by another people who would commit sins, ask for God’s forgiveness and He would forgive them.[25] THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

People say that God cries when He looks at this earth. The saint sees that God goes into ecstasy when He looks upon this earth, under all conditions, and at all times.

In this day and age, it is hard for a saint to trust the cucumber.

Why do you want to do this?" he asked curiously. "Why is this woman so important to you?" Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. "Have you ever loved anyone?" he asked. "Yes," Tamnuz said cautiously, "I had a consort once, Inanna..." "But did you love her? Truly love her?" The Green Man remained silent. "Did she mean more to you than life itself?" Saint-Germain persisted. "They do not love that do not show their love," Shakespeare murmured very softly. The French immortal stepped closer to the Elder. "I love my Jeanne," he said simply. "I must go to her." "Even though it will cost you everything?" Tamnuz persisted, as if the idea was incomprehensible. "Yes. Without Joan, everything I have is worthless." "Even your immortality?" "Especially my immortality." Gone were the banter and the jokes. This was a Saint-Germain whom neither Shakespeare nor Palamedes had ever seen before. "I love her," he said,

you know who’s really insane? But also awesome? Joan of Arc. The Maid of Orléans. She had visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, all instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from British rule during the Hundred Years’ War. She heard voices and actually led an army in the siege of Orléans. People were so willing to accept religious miracles that they let a teenager lead a political movement because she was divinely inspired. She was a radiant vision of power and defiance. And so of course they burned her.

We must love God more than the world, yet if we truly love God, we will also love the world, on his behalf. God matters more than the world, but because he loves it, the world now matters.

Although it is a bit of a caricature, I think that there is some truth in the generalizations I’m about to make. The tendency in Roman Catholic theology is to view the kingdom of Christ as a cosmic ladder or tower, leading from the lowest strata to the hierarchy led by the pope. Anabaptists have tended to see the kingdom more as a monastery, a community of true saints called out of the world and a worldly church. Lutheran and Reformed churches tend sometimes to see the kingdom as a school, while evangelicals (at least in the United States) lean more toward seeing it as a market.

He was everywhere. He’d become everything I thought of when the urges arrived. How long would it be before I could no longer accept the visualization and had to possess the real Father Saint James?

The only consolation we have is that few of those will have active weapons either," Prometheus told them. Palamedes looked over at Scathach. "When you say 'few...,'" she began. "Some will be armed," Prometheus clarified. "Incoming!" Saint-Germain yelled. "Two of them have launched missiles." "Sit down and strap yourselves in," Prometheus commanded. The group scrambled to get into the seats behind him, and he added, "We're too slow to outrun them, and the smaller ones are infinitely more maneuverable." "Is there good news?" Scathach demanded. "I am the finest flier in Danu Talis," The Elder said. Scathach smiled. "If anyone else said that I would think they were boasting. But not you,Uncle." Prometheus glanced quickly at the Warrior. "How many times do I have to tell you-I'm not your uncle." "Not yet,anyway," she muttered under her breath. "Everyone strapped in?" Prometheus asked. Without waiting for an answer, he brought the triangular vimana straight up into the air, then flipped it back, so that the ground was directly overhead and the sky below them, before he leveled it off and the earth and sky resumed their normal positions. "I'm going to throw up," Scatty muttered.

The left-liberalism that considers itself the true faith (but which eschews the name it appropriated and ruined and now calls itself progressivisn) ... is an ideology of self-styled saints, a philosophy of determined perversity. Its animating impulse is to marginalize itself and then enjoy its own company. And to make itself as unattractive to as many people as possible: If it were a person, it would pierce its tongue.

Astrid looked at Lana, now leaning against the window, and Diana, lost in thought, and reminded herself that at times she had hated Diana. She had told Sam to kill her if necessary. And she had disliked Lana as a short-tempered bitch who sometimes abused her privileges. She let her mind move beyond these two. Orc, who had been the first to kill in the FAYZ, the first murderer. A vicious drunk. But someone who had died a hero. Mary. Mother Mary. A saint who had died trying to murder the children she cared for. Quinn, who had been a faithless worm at the start and had been a pillar at the end. Albert. She still didn’t know quite what to think of Albert, but it was undeniable that far fewer would have walked out of the FAYZ without Albert. If her own feelings were this conflicted, was it any wonder the rest of the world didn’t know what to do with the Perdido survivors?

Around 400 A.D., Saint Augustine, a prominent Roman bishop, described a pastor's job: Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved.

I can remember Grandma telling stories about little nest makers leaving wards in the wid. The details would shift and change as she got older, but it always involved Saint Vinson's crystal spider and a wandering soul haunted by nightmares.

I can remember Grandma telling stories about little nest makers leaving wards in the wild. The details would shift and change as she got older, but it always involved Saint Vinson's crystal spider and a wandering soul haunted by nightmares.

We learn what it means to be human from Scripture’s opening act of creation and what it means to be Christian from its closing act of redemption. If redemption restores creation, then the point of being a Christian is to restore our humanity.

Christ has no body now but yours No hands, no feet on earth but yours Yours are the eyes through which he looks Compassion on this world Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes.

Well, when you lit up the Eiffel Tower, you said something that sounded like eggness.” “Ignis,” the count said. “Latin for fire. No, you don’t need to say anything.” “Why did you do it, then?” Saint-Germain grinned. “I just thought it sounded cool.

I hope that I state your case fairly: One of my great fears is misrepresenting you, even to myself, now that you are not here to set me right. The truth is that you did not believe in idealism. All love was suspect; even a saint's was just differed self-interest. And it was impossible to argue without sounding either sentimental or naive. Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary. And you studied early to disguise your childhood pain. But it is not universal.

In my country, politics is tragic, and all our great politicians have been tragic figures, either saints or demons. You, clearly, are one of the saints. But no one expects real change, because the nation reflects the human condition, original sin, call it what you like. There will always be a chingón and a chingada, and the only question is which men fall into which group. In your country, on the other hand, you believe that change is possible, and so your politics is comic. All your politicians are therefore clowns.

sweetness on the tongue and a promise of scent on the night air. It was sensual in the best meaning of that word, saturating every sense at once, so that the flesh was known, finally, as a thing of such goodness that man blessed his Creator from morning to night for having made him. Here in this medieval town where once an extraordinary little fellow had burst forth with songs to God, as a passionate lover speaks to his bride, here the restoration of man to his own true home was no longer the dream of saints. It was the wedding feast. It was a word made flesh.

In the summer of 1897, members of the party of the Italian mountaineer Abruzzi, fresh from their conquest of Mount Saint Elias, inflamed barflies and telegraph operators in the town of Yakutat with a tale of having seen, from the slopes of the second-highest Alaskan peak, a city in the sky.

Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive; built of hopes and dreams and visions, rock of faith and vault of grace; here the love of Christ shall end divisions: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.7

Jesus is with you even when you don’t feel His presence. He is never so close to you as He is during your spiritual battles. He is always there, close to you, encouraging you to fight your battle courageously. He is there to ward off the enemy’s blows so that you may not be hurt.” – St. Pio of Pietrelchina, August 15, 1914

In „The Secret of Secrets“, al-Jilani refers to the Hadith Qudsi, where God speaks through His Messenger, peace be upon him: „Man is My secret and I am his secret. The inner knowledge of the spiritual essence (ilm al-batin) is a secret of My secrets. Only I put this into the heart of My good servant, and none may know his state other than Me.“ (p. 192)

On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his little house, No. 19 Königstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg. Martha must have concluded that she was very much behind, for the dinner had only just been put into the oven. “Well, now,” said I to myself, “if that most impatient of men is hungry, what a disturbance he will make!” “Mr. Liedenbrock so soon!” cried poor Martha in great alarm, half opening the dining room door. “Yes, Martha; but very likely the dinner is not even half-cooked, for it is not two yet. Saint Michael’s clock has only just struck half-past one.” “Then why has the master come home so soon?” “Perhaps he will tell us that himself.

No," Natan said. "That would be altruistic. There is no such thing, not even for Mother Teresa." He jabbed his finer at her again, careful to keep it from touching her. "A feeling of goodness, scoring bonus with God, whatever the reason, even the saintly get something for the sacrifice, and you are no saint. You are not doing this out of goodness. You have a motive and it's not noble.

When you think about it, it's all well and good living a life so clean, it would even put a saint to shame, but sure god knows you might as well live it up, enjoy your few cigarettes, your few drinks, your desserts, or whatever your vice may be. Death doesn't discriminate or favour those who live healthy lives. It will take anyone, anytime, so you might as well go with a smile on your face.

The Bard’s bright blue eyes twinkled. “Well, then it ends well.” The Saracen Knight blinked in surprise. “Which part of what I’ve just described suggests a good ending? There is death and destruction in our immediate future.” “But we are all together. And if we die — you or I, Scathach, Joan or Saint-Germain — then we will not die alone. We will die in the company of our friends, our family.

My appetite for Father Saint James was stronger than before we’d fucked. Hearing my name come out of his mouth when he came was better than I could have imagined. It was so arousing and I came harder than ever, placing me in unfamiliar territory. I’ve never craved seconds before, I didn’t even know what they were like. I was always done after the first bang—pun intended. But with my priest, I couldn’t wait to do it all over again.

In Fez Yasmin had another dream. „I saw myself in a shower. Water poured over me, washing and purifying me and I was told ‚All your sins have been washed away by that water. You‘ve been cleansed. Your sins have been washed away and you‘re blessed.‘ „I feel that Allah has been knocking on my door for some time now, perhaps all my life. ‚But you just haven‘t recognized Me‘, He says, ‚You haven‘t recognized Me. You keep waiting but I have been there all along.‘“ (p.195)

Marian consecration basically means giving Mary our full permission (or as such permission as we can) to complete her motherly task in us, which is to form us into other Christs. Thus, by consecrating ourselves to Mary, each of us is saying to her: Mary, I want to be a saint. I know that you also want me to be a saint and that it's your God-given mission to form me into one. So, Mary, at this moment, on this day, I freely choose to give you my full permission to do your work in me, with your Spouse, the Holy Spirit.

Tyson emails back: “I’m going to tell you the same thing that I told Henry Louis Gates” (Gates had asked Tyson to appear on his show Finding Your Roots): My philosophy of root-finding may be unorthodox. I just don’t care. And that’s not a passive, but active absence of caring. In the tree of life, any two people in the world share a common ancestor—depending only on how far back you look. So the line we draw to establish family and heritage is entirely arbitrary. When I wonder what I am capable of achieving, I don’t look to family lineage, I look to all human beings. That’s the genetic relationship that matters to me. The genius of Isaac Newton, the courage of Gandhi and MLK, the bravery of Joan of Arc, the athletic feats of Michael Jordan, the oratorical skills of Sir Winston Churchill, the compassion of Mother Teresa. I look to the entire human race for inspiration for what I can be—because I am human. Couldn’t care less if I were a descendant of kings or paupers, saints or sinners, the valorous or cowardly. My life is what I make of it.

the vows before the Superior elected. Shortly before nine o’clock he went to see Father Ignatius to say goodbye. He found him out of bed and just finished dressing. Ignatius put his arm round the younger man’s shoulders and limped with him to the door. “Rodriguez left a quarter of an hour ago”, he said. It was a very beautiful morning. “Who is going to do all those letters now?” Francis blurted out. Ignatius smiled—without answering. And suddenly Francis knew that he would never see this man again, this incredible man whom he loved more than he had loved anybody else on earth; he knew that there was between them a very special love, beyond all the ties with the other companions, born of the air and soil and blood of their country, born out of the very hardships of the battle Ignatius had waged to win him over during all those long years in Paris. And he knew that the gateway to heaven could look like a man and be a man, a small, frail, bald man, who was for Christ on earth what Saint Michael was for God in heaven. “Go”, said Ignatius. “Go and set all afire.

In particular, anyone who appears to be good is most likely a hypocrite. The genuinely good, a rare breed, never appear so. ‘Whenever in the course of my life I have come across, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they have generally had the cheerful, practical, brusque and unemotioned air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, no fear of hurting it, the impassive, unsympathetic, sublime face of true goodness.

You know what, Sam? We created the council to take pressure off of you. Because you were falling apart.” Sam just stared at her. Not quite believing she’d said it. And Astrid seemed shocked herself. Shocked at the venom behind her own words. “I didn’t mean…,” she started lamely, but then couldn’t find her way to explaining just what it was she didn’t mean. Sam shook his head. “You know, even now, as long as we’ve been together it still surprises me that you can be so ruthless.” “Ruthless? Me?” “You will use anyone to get what you want. Say anything to get your way. Why was I ever even in charge?” He stabbed an accusing finger at her. “Because of you! Because you manipulated me into it. Why? So I would protect you and Little Pete. That’s all you cared about.” “That’s a lie!” she said hotly. “You know it’s the truth. And now you don’t have to bother manipulating me, you can just give me orders. Embarrass me. Undercut me. But as soon as some problem hits, guess what? It’ll be, oh, please, Sam, save us.” “Anything I do, I do for everyone’s good,” Astrid said. “Yeah, so you’re not just a genius now, you’re a saint.

Maybe it's only a fool who will perilously journey out to what might not be there. And maybe it's only a fool who will ask about supertasks, about infinity. But if you want to solve problems, you don't just solve the ones that are there, you find more and make more and go after the impossible ones; fostering a love and obsession with problems is how you solve problems. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wasn't a mathematician, but his advice fits nicely here. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. And as always, thanks for watching.

Michael saw Northampton Castle being built by Normans and their labourers, while being pulled down in accordance with the will of Charles the Second fifteen hundred years thereafter. A few centuries of grass and ruins coexisted with the bubbling growth and fluctuations of the railway station. 1920s porters, speeded up into a silent comedy, pushed luggage-laden trolleys through a Saxon hunting party. Women in ridiculously tiny skirts superimposed themselves unwittingly on Roundhead puritans, briefly becoming composites with fishnet tights and pikestaffs. Horses’ heads grew from the roofs of cars and all the while the castle was constructed and demolished, rising, falling, rising, falling, like a great grey lung of history that breathed crusades, saints, revolutions and electric trains.

Here is a man who by all conventions should have been a denizen of the lower depths of society: ignored, illiterate, disfigured, limping, penniless, blind and deaf. Almost anyone in his place would be bitter, miserable and without hope. Yet here is a man whose constant invocation, dedication to service and association with living saints transformed him into an inestimable gift, a man of knowledge, wisdom, certainty, kindness, lightness of heart and peace. He is, for me, the personification of the words of Shaykh Moulay Al-'Arabi Ad-Darqawi: "Certainly all things are hidden in their opposites – gain in loss and gift in refusal, honor in humiliation, wealth in poverty, strength in weakness, abundance in restriction, rising up in falling down, life in death, victory in defeat, power in powerlessness …

When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house.

In tone, the administration said that the NSS was all about championing America, but I wondered what America that was: the national/nativist state defined by blood, soil, and shared history? Or America the creedal nation, the Madisonian embodiment of Enlightenment ideals? I suspected that it was the former, since the champion, Donald Trump, had already alleged that American elections were “rigged,” three million people had voted illegally (all against him), the seat of government was a “swamp,” the free press was the “enemy of the people,” crime was at record rates, and the American judicial system was a “joke.” In all that, he sounded a lot like an Internet troll on a botnet controlled from Saint Petersburg. Or like Vladimir Putin. Whom he never could quite admit had worked to get him elected. But Putin had. And then some.

I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufis? I didin't know how to measure it. Whether the malangs were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.

The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?

Why else would they come out here?” This statement was not as dour as it sounded; Beatriz was not the only one in Bicho Raro who could be strictly pragmatic. Pete gestured to the land around them. “Because it’s pretty.” The desert preened and Michael regarded Pete anew. One compliments a man when one compliments his chosen home, and Michael felt nearly as good as the desert about Pete’s words. Kindly, he said, “You better get into some dry clothes now.” Straightening up, Pete finger-combed his rain-flat hair into its usual style. “Soon. Got to pick some beetles first. See you later, sir!” He left Michael standing there by the side of the barn, sheering off hard left to avoid a shadow he thought might be Beatriz, and then threw himself back into beetle picking. Ordinarily, Michael would have also thrown himself directly back into work, but for the first time in a very long time, Michael stood there for a full five minutes before beginning his next job, just watching Pete start on his next project. Humans have always been fascinated by mirrors, after all. Michael had never seen from the outside how it looked to work constantly to avoid feeling, and he could not look away.

TRUMP EVENTUALLY REALIZED THAT he needed executives with a strong background in running casinos. He scouted the competition and picked Stephen Hyde, a devout Mormon with a large family. The Church of Latter-day Saints opposed gambling, but the casino industry employed many Mormons in key positions, in part because executives believed the faithful wouldn’t be tempted to bet. Hyde was soft-spoken, unflappable, and widely considered one of the nation’s savviest gaming executives, having most recently worked for Trump’s competitor Steve Wynn. Trump, who once wrote, “I can be a screamer,” would occasionally humiliate Hyde by cursing him out in front of other executives. Yet Trump recognized Hyde’s capabilities and entrusted him with a business potentially worth billions of dollars. Hyde was, Trump wrote, “a very sharp guy and highly competitive, but most of all, he had a sense of how to manage to the bottom line.” Trump throughout his career would rely on small circles of advisers, and Hyde became one of Trump’s most trusted associates at the time. That meant some other senior executives felt shut out, unable to convey their concerns to Trump without going through the tight inner circle. Hyde was at the top of that chain of command. Hyde

The historian Michael Walzer has argued that modern revolution was a task for the kind of ascetic, single-minded, self-denying personality that Calvinism sought to inculcate, and certainly some of the successful revolutionaries of the West would seem to fill the bill. As we have seen, the English revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist himself, railed perpetually against the festive inclinations of his troops. The Jacobin leader Robespierre despised disorderly gatherings, including “any group in which there is a tumult”—a hard thing to avoid during the French Revolution, one might think.73 His fellow revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just described the ideal “revolutionary man” in terms that would have been acceptable to any Puritan: “inflexible, but sensible; he is frugal; he is simple … honorable, he is sober, but not mawkish.”74 Lenin inveighed against “slovenliness … carelessness, untidiness, unpunctuality” as well as “dissoluteness in sexual life,”75 seeing himself as a “manager” and “controller” as well as a leader.76 For men like Robespierre and Lenin, the central revolutionary rite was the meeting—experienced in a sitting position, requiring no form of participation other than an occasional speech, and conducted according to strict rules of procedure. Dancing, singing, trances—these could only be distractions from the weighty business at hand.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offering superb insight into solitude, both its horror and its beauty, include The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with further understanding of how solitude affects people include Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Cain, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offering astute ideas about aloneness are Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, The Life of Saint Anthony by Saint Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), the verse of William Wordsworth, and the poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from the C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an invaluable resource—I spent weeks immersed in the site, though I did not qualify to become a member of the hermit-only chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fascinated by the stories of Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fascinating account.

By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with the holy and elect of God, may he be damn'd. We excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from the thresholds of the holy church of God Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over with Dathan and Abiram, and with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we desire none of thy ways. And as fire is quenched with water, so let the light of him be put out for evermore, unless it shall repent him' and make satisfaction. Amen. May the Father who created man, curse him. May the Son who suffered for us curse him. May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him. May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him. May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him. May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him. [Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,---but nothing to this.---For my own part I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.] May St. John the Pre-cursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ's apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him. May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honor of Christ have despised the things of the world, damn him May all the saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of God, damn him May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him. May he be damn'd wherever he be---whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church. May he be cursed in living, in dying. May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting! May he be cursed in all the faculties of his body! May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly! May he be cursed in the hair of his head! May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex, in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers! May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach! May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin, in his thighs, in his genitals, and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails! May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! May there be no soundness in him! May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty and may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him, unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness!

As a token bit of mysticism, the mason had fixed an Eye of God way up on the steeple, above the clock - an oval shape carved into a block of stone that I'd noticed on the old country churches Farther dragged us round at weekends. Yet at Saint Jude's, it seemed more like a sharp-eyed overseer of the factory floor, looking out for the workshy and the seditious.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a famous aviator of the early 20th century, who once said: He who would travel happily must travel light.

[W]henever the masses were let into the Church, the spiritual giants, the saints, fled to the desert.

We must bring an end to this before we are all torn to—’ ‘No one will touch de Stannell and me,’ averred Bon confidently. ‘We are members of the Guild of Saints, which is loved for its charity.’ ‘Not since you have taken the food from the mouths of widows and beggars,’ said Bartholomew warningly. ‘Which is why you killed Knyt, of course – a man who was beginning to baulk at the amount of money Winwick wanted. And you tried to kill Michael with poisoned cakes, while you succeeded in dispatching Hemmysby with a gift – no doubt sent after he overheard you making plans to burgle Michaelhouse.’ Bon’s milky eyes narrowed. ‘I killed Hemmysby for humiliating me at the

They provided education for the poor, and love and medical care for those who would otherwise be abandoned, often giving them a sense of dignity and true acceptance in their last days.   In

Does God exist? This question has plagued mankind from the beginning of recorded history. Even the saintly Mother Teresa admitted in her last years that, many times in her life, she did not know the answer to this question. Yet we live as if God does exist and as if there will be a Judgment Day when we will be judged for our good and bad deeds. But what is good and what is bad? That has become increasingly confusing in this age of relativity. There seem to be no mores that are considered universal. Can that be so? Look at the Ten Commandments. Read all of them. “Thou shall not kill.” What does that mean? Aren’t we told to kill in war? Well, if you read the original Hebrew, the word is “murder.” The commandment is “Thou shall not murder.” It does not say, “Thou shall not kill.” They are two completely different things. It takes some knowledge of the history of both the Hebrew language and of the prophets themselves to properly interpret not only the Ten Commandments but mankind’s guidebook for life on this earth, the Bible.

The Bishop rightly understood that the Church's doctrines were inviolable. They were not something to be tampered with by each new generation. Rather, the duty of every generation was to preserve the faith just as it had been received. Jesus Christ had entrusted the Gospel to His disciples. Their calling was to preserve and pass it on to other faithful men who also would do likewise. The truths of the Church could be defined and expounded upon, but not changed.

Athanasius' flight into exile had not simply been one of reaction. He had carefully thought out the proper response to persecution. He wrote: "To all men generally, even to us, this law is given, to flee when persecuted, and to hide when sought after, and not rashly tempt the Lord . . . but that men should be ready, that, when the time comes, or when they are taken, they may contend for the truth even unto death. This rule the blessed martyrs observed in their several persecutions. When persecuted they fled, while concealing themselves they showed fortitude, and when discovered they summitted to martyrdom.

For a time, the enemy is masked and appears to the world as light, though he is darkness. When he reveals himself, his malice will be unleashed as never before. Take heart, beloveds, that great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel, our Savior Jesus. Like the prophets before you, like the apostles and saints, you will have fear, yet you will overcome this fear by his presence, by the power of the Blood of the Lamb. When you see the things that are about to happen, do not let yourself fall into despair. Look up! Look up, for your redemption is near at hand.

It may well be that the difference between murderers and saints is that murderers think the evil of the world is outside of themselves, while saints think the evil of the world is inside of themselves.

I should acquire humility by humiliating myself, considering myself a sinner and the least of all. When I see a defect in other persons, I should think of their good qualities and that those defects may be permitted by God to humiliate the person who has them, and in exchange may be interiorly very pleasing to God, while I have worse and still more defects than she has. I should see the little I’m worth in the sight of God and serve everyone as though I were a slave, since that is what I am through sin.

Whoever follows Him "will have the light of life.

They live in unbridled pleasure; they offend Him, without thinking that each year they are closer to death.

Finally, what the history of this period proves is that, during a time of general apostacy, Christians who remain faithful to their traditional faith may have to worship outside the official churches, the churches of priests in communion with their lawfully appointed diocesan bishop, in order not to compromise that traditional Faith; and that such Christians may have to look for truly Catholic teaching, leadership, and inspiration not to their diocesan bishop, not to the bishops of their country as a body, not to the bishops of the world, not even to the Roman Pontiff, but to one heroic confessor when the other bishops and the Roman Pontiff might have repudiated or even excommunicated. And how would they recognize that this solitary confessor was right and the Roman Pontiff and body of the episcopate (not teaching infallibly) were wrong? The answer is that they would recognize in the teaching of the confessor what the faithful of the fourth century recognized in the teaching of Athanasius: the one true Faith into which they had been baptized, in which they had been catechized, and which their Confirmation gave them the obligation of upholding. In no sense whatsoever can such fidelity to tradition be compared to the Protestant practice of private judgment. The fourth century Catholic traditionalists upheld Athanasius in his defense of the Faith that had been handed down, the Protestant uses his private judgment to justify a breach with the traditional Faith.

The outward signs of his priestly vocation were abandoned in a wooden footlocker. Like a casket. He shed his blood-stained prayer stole, his clerical collar, and a photo of his investiture as a priest that was folded down the middle – as if the crease itself depicted his divided nature. Good man. Bad man. Sinner. Saint. Christian. Buddhist.

For instance, since state buyers of meat paid attention to quantity rather than quality, collective farmers maximized profits by producing fatter animals. Consumers might not care to eat fatty meat but that was their problem. Only a foolish or saintly farmer would work harder to produce better quality meat for the privilege of getting paid less. As in all countries, bureaucracy tended to become a self-feeding animal. Administrative personnel increased at a faster rate than productive workers. In some enterprises, administrative personnel made up half the full number of workers. A factory with 11,000 production workers might have an administrative staff of 5,000, a considerable burden on productivity.

Explain it to me.” “You want to be a saint, Billy. But you want to be a saint on your own terms. You want glorious victories with your sword; most of all, you want victories over your personal weaknesses and faults.

The greeting "Merry Christmas!" must have originated in that period of English history when England really was merry. Christmas itself meant to the English Catholic of that happy era the Mass of Christ, as Michaelmas meant the Mass of the glorious Saint Michael, and Candlemas meant the Mass of that day when the candles were blessed and lighted on English altars and in English homes. English men and women in those Catholic days would have been horrified at the thought of wishing a Merry Christmas to anyone who wasn't on his way either to or from the lovely Mass which is the Eucharistic rebirth of the Savior among His beloved. To the believing world of that day Christmas was a time when with fullest reason any Christian man or woman could be deeply merry.

The pursuit of happiness was at the center of the medieval worldview. They understood (as every Christian does) that we cannot be happy without God—that God is our happiness. “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in thee,” as Saint Augustine said. There’s no better word for the condition of modern man: restless. He is oppressed by his own false freedom, tortured by his inflamed appetites, and humiliated by his own ignorance. The things that might make him truly happy—gratitude and simplicity, peace and quiet—are kept forever out of his reach.