St Stephen's Day Quotes

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.

It all happened," Lipton summed up, "because Shifty saw a tree almost a mile away that hadn't been there the day before.

Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.

I’M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRY Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans. I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians. Then everything changed. Partly because of its proximity to the United States and a shared heritage, Canadians also aspired to what was commonly referred to as the American dream. I fall neatly into that category. For as long as I can remember I wanted a better life, but because I was born with a cardboard spoon in my mouth, and wasn’t a member of the golden gene club, I knew I would have to make it the old fashioned way: work hard and save. After university graduation I spent the first half of my career working for the two largest oil companies in the world: Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The second half was spent with one of the smallest oil companies in the world: my own. Then I sold my company and retired into obscurity. In my case obscurity was spending summers in our cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, and winters in our home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. My wife, Ann, and I, (and our three sons when they can find the time), have been enjoying that “obscurity” for a long time. During that long time we have been fortunate to meet and befriend a large number of Americans, many from Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” One was a military policeman in Tokyo in 1945. After a very successful business carer in the U.S. he’s retired and living the dream. Another American friend, also a member of the “Greatest Generation”, survived The Battle of the Bulge and lived to drink Hitler’s booze at Berchtesgaden in 1945. He too is happily retired and living the dream. Both of these individuals got to where they are by working hard, saving, and living within their means. Both also remember when their Federal Government did the same thing. One of my younger American friends recently sent me a You Tube video, featuring an impassioned speech by Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida. In the speech, Rubio blasts the spending habits of his Federal Government and deeply laments his country’s future. He is outraged that the U.S. Government spends three hundred billion dollars, each and every month. He is even more outraged that one hundred and twenty billion of that three hundred billion dollars is borrowed. In other words, Rubio states that for every dollar the U.S. Government spends, forty cents is borrowed. I don’t blame him for being upset. If I had run my business using that arithmetic, I would be in the soup kitchens. If individual American families had applied that arithmetic to their finances, none of them would be in a position to pay a thin dime of taxes.

At the hangars, each jumpmaster was given two packs of papers, containing an order of the day from Eisenhower and a message from Colonel Sink, to pass around to the men. “Tonight is the night of nights,” said Sink’s. “May God be with

(In Austria after VE Day) Sergeant Mercier...dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs. Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, "Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him?" "Take him out and shoot him," Speirs replied, not looking up. "Sir," Mercier called out, "sir, please, sir, it's me, Sergeant Mercier." "Mercier, get out of that silly uniform," Speirs ordered.

In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’ “ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.’ 

Clive Barker, Stephen King, Angela Carter, and Anne Rice. King's Cujo, the story of a rabid St. Bernard that traps a mother and her dying son in a car, and Rice's Interview with the Vampire, the wildly popular tale of a modern-day Dracula, epitomize the genre.

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’ “ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.

There is not a day that has passed since that I do not thank Adolf Hitler for allowing me to be associated with the most talented and inspiring group of men that I have ever known.” Every member of Easy interviewed by this author for this book said something similar.

Before lying down, Winters later wrote in his diary, “I did not forget to get on my knees and thank God for helping me to live through this day and ask for his help on D plus one.” And he made a promise to himself: if he lived through the war, he was going to find an isolated farm somewhere and spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet.

St. Chrysostom, suffering under the Empress Eudoxia, tells his friend Cyriacus how he armed himself beforehand...."I thought, will she banish me? 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Take away my goods? 'Naked came I into the world, and naked must I return.' Will she stone me? I remembered Stephen. Behead me? John Baptist came into my mind," etc. Thus it should be with every one that intends to live and die comfortably: they must, as we say, lay up something for a rainy day; they must stock themselves with graces, store up promises, and furnish themselves with experiences of God's lovingkindness to others and themselves too, that so, when the evil day comes, they may have much good coming thereby.

The Atonist nobility knew it was impossible to organize and control a worldwide empire from Britain. The British Isles were geographically too far West for effective management. In order to be closer to the “markets,” the Atonist corporate executives coveted Rome. Additionally, by way of their armed Templar branch and incessant murderous “Crusades,” they succeeded making inroads further east. Their double-headed eagle of control reigned over Eastern and Western hemispheres. The seats of Druidic learning once existed in the majority of lands, and so the Atonist or Christian system spread out in similar fashion. Its agents were sent from Britain and Rome to many a region and for many a dark purpose. To this very day, the nobility of Europe and the east are controlled from London and Rome. Nothing has changed when it comes to the dominion of Aton. As Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe have proven, the Culdean monks, of whom we write, had been hired for generations as tutors to elite families throughout Europe. In their book The Knights Templar Revealed, the authors highlight the role played by Culdean adepts tutoring the super-wealthy and influential Catholic dynasties of Burgundy, Champagne and Lorraine, France. Research into the Templars and their affiliated “Salt Line” dynasties reveals that the seven great Crusades were not instigated and participated in for the reasons mentioned in most official history books. As we show here, the Templars were the military wing of British and European Atonists. It was their job to conquer lands, slaughter rivals and rebuild the so-called “Temple of Solomon” or, more correctly, Akhenaton’s New World Order. After its creation, the story of Jesus was transplanted from Britain, where it was invented, to Galilee and Judea. This was done so Christianity would not appear to be conspicuously Druidic in complexion. To conceive Christianity in Britain was one thing; to birth it there was another. The Atonists knew their warped religion was based on ancient Amenism and Druidism. They knew their Jesus, Iesus or Yeshua, was based on Druidic Iesa or Iusa, and that a good many educated people throughout the world knew it also. Their difficulty concerned how to come up with a believable king of light sufficiently appealing to the world’s many pagan nations. Their employees, such as St. Paul (Josephus Piso), were allowed to plunder the archive of the pagans. They were instructed to draw from the canon of stellar gnosis and ancient solar theologies of Egypt, Chaldea and Ireland. The archetypal elements would, like ingredients, simply be tossed about and rearranged and, most importantly, the territory of the new godman would be resituated to suit the meta plan.

They were returning to Mourmelon, but not to the barracks. This time they were billeted in large green twelve-man wall tents, about a mile outside what Webster called “the pathetically shabby garrison village of Mourmelon, abused by soldiers since Caesar’s day, consisting of six bars, two whorehouses, and a small Red Cross club.” In Webster’s scathing judgment, “Mourmelon was worse than Fayetteville, North Carolina.

[Currahee was more a hill than a mountain, but it rose 1,000 feet above the parade ground and dominated the landscape.] A few minutes later, someone blew a whistle. We fell in, were ordered to change to boots and athletic trunks, did so, fell in again—and then ran most of the three miles to the top and back down again.” They lost some men that first day. Within a week, they were running—or at least double-timing—all the way up and back.

No, no. You shall make no such confession, Stephen. I am sure that if he is still alive now, if Father Joseph rejoices, he is also full of terror. He is a man, Stephen, just as you are. Listen, he told me some years ago that he reads St. John’s account of Gethsemane every day. It reminds him that our Lord himself desired not to suffer, not even for his Father’s will. Never deny your own humanity, lest you deny the same humanity of our Lord.” He saw that Stephen struggled with this admonition. “Hold your fear close to your heart, even cherish it, for that is where you share our Savior’s Cross — not in his divinity, but in his humanity, in his Gethsemane.” He was relieved to learn that the young man was no zealot, that he had the good sense to be frightened — it would make him cautious.

According to Luke, far from denouncing the cult, like Stephen, they worshipped together every day in the temple.22 Indeed, the revered Pharisee Gamaliel, whose views were more liberal than Paul’s, is said to have advised the Sanhedrin to leave the Jesus movement alone: If it was of human origin, it would break up of its own accord like other recent protest groups.23 But for Paul, the Hellenistic followers of Jesus were insulting everything he believed to be most sacred, and he greatly feared that their devotion to a man executed so recently by the Roman authorities would put the entire community at risk. Paul himself had never had any dealings with Jesus before his death, but he would have been horrified to learn that Jesus had desecrated the temple and argued that some of God’s laws were more important than others. For a Pharisee with extreme views, like Paul, a Jew who did not observe every single one of the commandments was endangering the Jewish people, since God could punish such infidelity as severely as he had punished the ancient Israelites in the time of Moses. But above all, Paul was scandalized by the outrageous idea of a crucified Messiah.24 How could a convicted criminal possibly restore the dignity and liberty of Israel? This was an utter travesty, a scandalon or “stumbling block.” The Torah was adamant that such a man was hopelessly polluted: “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a gibbet, his body must not remain on the tree overnight; you must bury him the same day, for the one who has been hanged is accursed of God, and you must not defile the land that Yahweh your God has given you.”25 True, his followers insisted that Jesus had been buried on the day of his death, but Paul was well aware that most Roman soldiers had little respect for Jewish sensibilities and might well have left Jesus’s body hanging on his cross to be consumed by birds of prey. Even though this was no fault of his own, such a man was an abomination and had defiled the Land of Israel.26 To imagine that these desecrated remains had been raised to the right hand of God was abhorrent, unthinkable, and blasphemous. It impugned the honor of God and his people and would delay the longed-for coming of the Messiah, so it was, Paul believed, his duty to eradicate this sect.

Across the South China Sea in Hong Kong it was anything but a perfect day. After a seventeen-day siege the British surrendered to the Japanese. Hours earlier Japanese troops had entered the city and celebrated Christmas in their own special way – by torturing and massacring sixty wounded patients and doctors in St Stephen’s College Hospital.

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

Four days into the St. Louis’s voyage, the British government published the McDonald White Paper on Palestine. The document, named after Colonial Secretary Malcolm McDonald, limited Jewish immigration in Palestine to a total of seventy-five thousand over a five-year period, with the number of Jews in the country not to exceed one-third of the total population. In repudiating the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the White Paper limited immigration to the one place seemingly most logical. “This White Paper,” Rabbi Stephen Wise would later write, “issued shortly before Hitler was to begin his mass annihilation of European Jewry, was in effect a death sentence for scores of hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have found life and safety in Palestine rather than death in Maideneck [sic] and Auschwitz.

I felt I was New Age before it became hip (and now passé), and disliked the name given to this 'recent' wave of spiritual interest in the 1980s because the word 'new' was in it: this word automatically implies that the phase will soon pass into something either “established” or stale, or will be chronicled as an ephemeral fad or phase to be found on some old bookshelf one day. Again, passé. For instance, the New Thought movement faded with the smoke of the Great War, the war to end all wars – which later was reclassified as WWI. Indeed, just a few years into the new 21st century, New Age was becoming old. Smooth jazz seemed to replace the name in music, and holistic and integral were the latest catch words describing the eclectic philosophy of the past decades. Astrologers were laughing: they knew the planetary alignments that predicted this network of integrated thought; it was the same inspiration behind the world wide web. Uranus (technological innovations, groups) and Neptune (images, imagination) reunited in the mid 1990s in the practical sign of Capricorn; we all became more connected with the next jump in electronics, technology and vision, right on cue. The world wide wave (www) was here. That wave came in, peaked in the 1990s, everyone was refreshed and expanded (some got drenched), and the promoters were now looking for new packaging. By the end of the 1990s, the Dot.com bubble burst. It was time for the next phase.

story of Private Stephen Kelly of Co. E, 91st Pennsylvania. He joined that unit in August 1861, and was mustered out three years later in Philadelphia. Several years after the war Kelly had occasion to visit the battlefield park and was surprised to find his own grave, (#A-88) nicely defined in the Pennsylvania section of the National Cemetery. It is there today, but Kelly was not in it. He took the whole matter in stride and in good humor, and was once heard to say: “[E]ach Decoration Day I go up there and strew some flowers on the tomb of the man who is substituting for me.

Gordon wrote to Mayor Ritsema: “On September 17, 1944 I participated in the large airborne operation which was conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company E, 506th PIR, I landed near the small town of Son. The following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven. While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties. That is war talk for bleeding. We occupied various defense positions for over two months. Like animals, we lived in holes, barns, and as best we could. The weather was cold and wet. In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the ground we had fought so hard to capture. “The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that of the German occupiers of your city. How soon we forget. History has proven more than once that Holland could again be conquered if your neighbor, the Germans, are having a dull weekend and the golf links are crowded. “Please don’t allow your country to be swallowed up by Liechtenstein or the Vatican as I don’t plan to return. As of now, you are on your own.

When the Bishop Projectius brought the relics of St. Stephen to the town called Aquae Tibiltinae, the people came in great crowds to honour them. Amongst there was a blind woman, who entreated the people to lead her to the bishop who had the HOLY RELICS. They did so, and the bishop gave her some flowers which he had in his hand. She took them, and put them to her eyes, and immediately her sight was restored, so that she passed speedily on before all the others, no longer requiring to be guided." In Augustine's day, the formal "worship" of the relics was not yet established; but the martyrs to whom they were supposed to have belonged where already invoked with prayers and supplications, and that with the high approval of the Bishop of Hippo, as the following story will abundantly show: Here, in Hippo, says he, there was a poor and holy old man, by name Florentius, who obtained a living by tailoring. This man once lost his coat, and not being able to purchase another to replace it, he came to the shrine of the Twenty Martyrs, in this city, and prayed aloud to them, beseeching that they would enable him to get another garment. A crowd of silly boys who overheard him, followed him at his departure, scoffing at him, and asking him whether he had begged fifty pence from the martyrs to buy a coat. The poor man went silently on towards home, and as he passed near the sea, he saw a large fish which had been cast up on the sand, and was still panting. The other persons who were present allowed him to take up this fish, which he brought to one Catosus, a cook, and a good Christian, who bought it from him for three hundred pence. With this he meant to purchase wool, which his wife might spin, and make into a garment for him. When the cook cut up the fish, he found within its belly a ring of gold, which his conscience persuaded him to give to the poor man from whom he brought the fish. He did so, saying, at the same time, "Behold how the Twenty Martyrs have clothed you!" Thus did the great Augustine inculcate the worship of dead men, and the honouring of their wonder-working relics. The "silly children" who "scoffed" at the tailor's prayer seem to have had more sense than either the "holy old tailor" or the bishop. Now, if men professing Christianity were thus, in the fifth century, paving the way for the worship of all manner of rags and rotten bones;

This is not a conventional “how-to” book. It contains no exercises, and it has few formulas saying “first do this, then do that.” This is intentional. As we’ll see later, eros doesn’t like to be told what to do. If you set a goal, your sexual mind will be happy to reject it. It’s kind of childish and brilliant that way. You also won’t find much about sexual biology or neurochemistry on these pages. Sex books these days tend to be full of advice for “boosting your dopamine”—or your oxytocin, or some other such nonsense. In all my 30 years as a sex therapist, I’ve yet to see a dopamine molecule walk into my office. We’ll stick with things you can see and feel yourself, without needing a laboratory. I’ll also spare you the body diagrams. You already know what a penis and vagina look like, right? And we won’t discuss how many neurons are concentrated in your clitoris. It’s an impressive number, but who really cares? There are a few great sex books already out there, and I’ll point them out to you as we go along. But reading most of the others is like gnawing on dry bones. As my friend and colleague Paul Joannides, the author of Guide to Getting it On (one of the aforementioned great ones), has accurately noted, “the trouble with most books on sex is they don’t get anyone hard or wet.” This book is not intended to get you hard or wet. But it’s meant not to get in your way either. The chapters are short, so you can read them even if you get a little distracted. Hey, I hope you get a little distracted. There are no lists to memorize, and there won’t be a test afterwards. We’re dealing with a part of the human mind that hasn’t gone to school yet, and never will. Any questions? OK, let’s get started . . . Adapted from LOVE WORTH MAKING by Stephen Snyder, M.D. Copyright © 2018 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

On the evening of 7 December (1917), the first British troops saw Jerusalem. A heavy fog hung over the city; rain darkened the hills. The next morning, Governor Izzat Bey smashed his telegraph instruments with a hammer, handed over his writ of surrender to the mayor, "borrowed" a carriage with two horses from the American Colony which he swore to return, and galloped away toward Jericho. All night thousands of Ottoman troops trudged through the city and out of history. At 3 a.m. on the 9th, German forces withdrew from the city on what Count Ballobar called "a day of astounding beauty." The last Turk left St. Stephen's Gate at 7 a.m. By coincidence, it was the first day of Jewish Hanukkah, the festival of lights that celebrated the Maccabean liberation of Jerusalem. Looters raided the shops on Jaffa Road. At 8:45 a.m., British soldiers approached the Zion Gate.