“In the child Jesus, The defenselessness of God is apparent. He comes without weapons, because he does not want to conquer us from outside but desires to win and transform us from within. If anything can conquer man’s vainglory, his violence, his greed, it is the vulnerability of the child. God assumed this vulnerability in order to conquer us and lead us to Himself.”
Then-Cardinal Ratzinger, as quoted in a collection of essays on religious artwork (which name escapes me)
I ask in hindsight, how did we expect Him to come among us? He desires to capture our hearts and for us to fall in love with Him. When my first child was born, I called my sister to share the joyous news. Her words still sit with me very deeply. “Did you ever imagine you could be so in love with someone so instantly?” The truth is that it took even me by surprise. But God, in His wonderful Providence, created us to love the little child immediately and to love that child with a ferocity that would cause a man to lay down his life for that baby without question. This is why He came among us as a Babe in the manger, defenseless. He already loves us. He wants us to share in that love and to be in love with Him.
Take in the wonder of this most holy night when God appeared among man, guarded by humble shepherds and lauded by His holy angels. In the piercing cold in Bethlehem, He Who Is showed us His tiny, precious face. Yes, that face would one day be marred by our sins. But I’m this moment, be in love.
Merry Christmas to all!
Incarnate Word, Son of God and Son of Mary, have mercy on us poor sinners who kneel before Thy crib!
We are now on the cusp of the Vigil of Christmas. We have made it, ready or not, through the four weeks of Advent – waiting, praying, watching for Our Lord’s coming.
In the morning, my teenage son and I will wake up early and do a few very important things. First, we will go to Mass. If you are reading this, please pay heed to these words. Although the daily Mass is not obligatory for anyone, I cannot imagine why anyone – let alone any man with a wife and children – wouldn’t move heaven and earth to avail himself of this greatest treasure. Remember, He came among us as a Babe specifically to die for us as a Man, to ransom us from our sins. Every day He gives us to come to His altar, His Calvary, to worship Him.
We’ll probably go for a little breakfast. Have to nourish ourselves for the day ahead.
Then we will head to the cemetery to visit the grave of a man we never knew.
After I moved here I discovered the story of a police officer who died in the line of duty. He was ambushed and murdered by the notorious gang, the Texas Seven, on Christmas Eve. He had been eating dinner at an Olive Garden with his young son when he responded to the radio call of a robbery in progress. He was nearby. He said goodbye to his boy and headed to his demise. My boy and I have taken to visiting his grave on Christmas Eve, his anniversary, laying down some flowers, and offering prayers for his soul. It reminds us both of the fragility of life which reminds us of something I find myself saying to him (and anyone else who will listen): Stay confessed!
A family gathering with my wife’s mother’s side of the family and then…
Midnight Mass. At midnight!
There’s still plenty to do before then. Presently, my daughter and I are watching yet another Hallmark Christmas movie. It’s become our thing. Again I say, if you give me two hours of gratuitous beauty shots of a farmhouse in Connecticut covered in snow, I’ll watch.
And just this minute, as I was writing these lines, trying to come up with something eloquent at this late hour, after a day of errands, a bit of fasting, and a healthy amount of prayer, just trying to unwind amid the relative peace of these final hours of Advent; I got some wonderful news.
A new baby just arrived! My nephew – he of whom I sometimes write – he and his wife just welcomed their second child (both boys) at a few minutes to midnight on the East Coast. Apparently, God thinks the world should go on for now. God bless the young boy and his family.
Over the past few years, as I have become more entrenched in the Traditional Latin Mass, I have made the suggestion on more than one occasion to not a few friends and family members that they also “give it a go”, as the Brits say.
“Come with me to Latin Mass,” I have offered. “Come and see what I have found!” It is truly a beautiful thing to discover one’s heritage. Realizing that this heritage was stripped from you unceremoniously by malicious actors, well that’s just another sad dimension in the very sad recent history of the Church. But the least I can do, I figure, is to encourage others to do what I have been given the grace to do – that is, to discover anew the ancient treasure of my Rite.
You see, I am a ROMAN Catholic. My father was a Roman Catholic and his father before him. My father’s mother, on the other hand, was an Anglican who converted to marry my grandfather. To her credit, when my grandfather’s drinking became too problematic to deal with effectively, and she (my grandmother) civilly divorced my grandfather; both of them continued to live (though apart) as though they were man and wife. That was in the early 1940’s. My dad was seven years-old and these things simply were not done. To her further credit, my grandmother embraced the Catholic faith. She sent my dad to a Benedictine prep school in New Jersey where he learned not only to love the faith but to sacrifice everything for his family and to do so chiefly through the daily attendance at the Holy Sacrifice. He married at the age of 21, fathered sixteen children, and gave to me, his youngest son, the gift of that devotion to daily Mass. This wouldn’t be possibly had it not been for the faith of Florence Nightingale Millican. I’m laying it on the line, folks. That was her actual name. Please pray for the repose of her soul.
So she is just one of many people to thank for the safety I now enjoy in the traditions of the Church – my Church, the ROMAN Church.
St. Lawrence Catholic Chapel (FSSP), Harrisburg, PA
There are others. It’s Christmas time so I will name them. An old friend from college named Michael Hichborn has been putting out videos and articles for years. He sure helped (though I don’t know if he knows it). I’d read his posts on Facebook back in the day and, curiosity being what it is, I would search the internet for what he was talking about. Another voice in the wilderness was Taylor Marshall. In the summer of 2018 I was working as a courier, taking long drives from Dallas to Lubbock or Houston or Memphis. Someone turned me on to his content and I’d listen to his videos while I drove. I have to say that he has the capacity to be a great teacher, something I respect because I am also a teacher. Though I do not always agree with some of the more click-batey titles of his content, I appreciate what he does and I thank him here for helping me to see the Truth. Then there is my nephew. He’s also my godson. Around the same time I was discovering tradition, he was about a half-step ahead of me owing to his wife. We’d talk with each other on the phone and the conversations couldn’t help but lead me to where I am. Thank God for him! I know it should be the other way around – the godfather coaching the godson, but he has more than lived up to his end of the spiritual bargain. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law, too, played a tremendous role in my life. Knowing people who truly lived the Catholic faith the way I knew I wanted to live it, who went to daily Mass, this was a huge help.
So when I invite others I am sometimes shocked at the standard reply I get. It always seems to be the same thing. Granted, there are the handful who say, “Sure! I’ll check it out!” and actually mean it. But the majority of the time I hear this. “Yeah… Sorry. Latin Mass just isn’t my thing.”
To these people I want to say the following: If you are Roman Catholic – as in, not Byzantine of any stripe – then Latin Mass absolutely IS your thing. It is the Mass of your fathers and grandmothers. It is the tradition of your faith. It IS your heritage. Latin Mass is what the saints heard every day. When Benedict XVI (still reigning by the way) introduced the language of “ordinary form” and “extraordinary form” in 2007, I think I know what he was attempting to do. But I also think he got the terms reversed. The default (ordinary form) ought to be the one that was in use going back to at least the 6th century and likely well before that.
I recently had a debate of sorts with another nephew who is getting married in the next year. He asked if Novus Ordo was valid. I said what I’ve said many times before. I believe it’s valid but horrible. It is not edifying. It is not beautiful. It is certainly not ancient nor is it traditional. And that is why I believe Our Lord is none too thrilled to be called down on the altar table. But to that same nephew I asked the following question: “Why don’t you come to my parish and check out the TLM? Again the response, “It’s just not my thing.” Look, dude, if you were having this conversation with me sixty years ago, that statement would sound ten times more retarded than it does in this moment; and believe me, it sounds pretty gay.
So, to all my trad friends, I issue this challenge. In the coming year of grace, try to get at least five people to come to a TLM with you. Pray for me and I will pray for you. Pray for our priests. They are high value targets to Satan and they need our support. Pray for the friend or sibling or parent or child who is on the fence and says “it’s not my thing” like this is an option between pleated and flat-front pants. We’re talking about the eternal Sacrifice here. It IS that important.
It is your thing and it is my thing. But more than that, it is Christ’s thing. We owe it to Him to make this happen.
Readers of this page know that I am a regular reader of the Barnhardt blog (and especially the Barnhardt Podcast) run by the unconquerable Ann Barnhardt.
I just wanted to take a moment tonight to thank Miss B. for her years of dedicated truth-telling – particularly in the realm of “Vitamin I”.
Thanks to her advice, I have not had so much as a sniffle lo these two past years. I have followed the protocol. I have kept myself safe and my family too. In fact, I’ve been able to dispense as needed to anyone who asked and kept them safe as well.
If you know, you know. If you don’t, check out her “I” page here.
I just finished watching another silly Hallmark movie with my teenage daughter. This is a very peaceful time of year in our house. We’ve put away the schoolbooks for a while. The house is, mercifully, clean and also festive. Not to worry, my trad friends… We have not decorated the main tree yet. In fact, I’m inclined not to even put the main tree up until Christmas Eve; but the family in the parish who sells the trees needed to deliver them early this week. And so a seven foot Frazier fir stands proudly and patiently, guzzling up water every day, in the corner awaiting the lights and ornaments. I really love this time of year.
But amidst the burgeoning joy there is a twinge of sadness in my heart tonight for I am thinking of three people in particular who are not here this year. What’s funny is that I am not sad that they are not here. I pray for them and entrust their souls to God. But death has a finality to it that reminds this sinner that there isn’t much we can do about reversing the situation. And I am not even truly sad, simply a wee bit haunted at their memory and how very much it is tied to Christmas.
First up is the most recent departed. One year ago, while sitting in my pew during the offertory at Holy Mass, my phone began buzzing. As I silenced it, I noticed it was one of my sisters. She and I speak every morning. I figured that she had forgotten the time difference, turned my phone over, and went back to my missal. A moment later, she called again. This time I began to think it must be important. When two additional sisters called within the next minute, I knew someone had died. The thing is, I thought it was my mom. I made the decision, as I believe my dad would have done, to turn the phone completely off and continue with the Mass. As I said earlier, a person will not be “more dead” if I wait to hear the news. I offered the rest of my Mass and Communion for the soul of the departed, still thinking it must have been Mom. I was alone. There were maybe ten other people in the church including the priest and server. It was a crisp but sunny late December morning. In fact, I believe it was the hour of the solstice. The sunlight was pouring through the Crucifixion window to my right side.
Sacred Heart of Jesus statue, St. Anthony of Padua Chapel (SSPX), Salisbury, NC
I left the church and turned my phone back on to discover that Mom still walked among us. Instead, it was one of my brothers who was dead. And what bizarre circumstances, too… He had died six weeks earlier in a boarding house in Scranton, PA, succumbing to decades of alcohol and drug abuse. He died, in all likelihood, alone, unconfessed, and scared. It just so happens that one of my sisters had heard the news from someone who had finally found her number and with just days to spare before the order to cremate his remains was to be issued. I loved my brother, despite all his many flaws. He was at times a thief, a man who fathered and then abandoned three children, and had a tendency toward violence. Hence, he did not live with any of the rest of us for many years. In his right and proper mind, however, he was the most charitable of souls. He truly would give you the shirt off of his back if you needed it. He was smart as a whip, charming, and more talented in the ways of artistry than many I’ve met.
We flew East to give him a proper Catholic funeral and buried him in the family plot. I then found a priest through Fr. Z.’s site – a priest, it turns out – in Denmark, who offered 30 Gregorian Masses (TLM’s) for my brother. I continue to pray and fast for him and I invite you to do the same when you think of it.
Stay confessed. You know not the day nor the hour.
Her One and Only Christmas
The other two people will forever be tied to Christmas for me, though neither died at this time of year.
In March of 2008, as my wife and I eagerly awaited the birth of our first child, my sister (the one with whom I speak every day on the phone) was eagerly awaiting the birth of her fifth child. One morning in early March, she and her husband welcomed their fifth baby girl into the world. In the OR for the C-section were the doctors (high risk specialists), nurses, and our parish pastor. The baby was taken from the womb and immediately baptized. I hear that the surgeon cried. She was not dead but she was not long for this world. They gave her odds of about five hours. She showed them all wrong and hung on for five days.
The baby had been diagnosed in-utero with anencephaly, a fatal birth defect wherein the brain and/or skull do not completely form or close over. In her case, it appeared it was the latter as she had a pretty fully formed brain. Unfortunately, covering the back of her head where bone and skin should have been was a thin membrane. The issue is that in this condition, infection will likely set in quickly. They say she was in all probability blind, deaf, and likely had a host of other “problems”.
To me, however, she was the most perfect little girl I’d ever encountered. Her parents named her Bernadette after an old man in our parish (Bernie) who had been a pro-life warrior until the day he died. Into his 80’s he stood outside the abortuaries praying his rosary, even getting arrested for exercising his freedom of speech. Bernadette, I came to discover, also means warrior.
She never made a noise that I remember and she didn’t really open her eyes.
With a large and loving family such as ours, you can imagine that she was never alone for one second of her short life in this vale of tears. We all took turns staying by her crib in the NICU overnight so my sister and brother-in-law could get some rest one floor up. On the second night there had been a scare and we all came to the hospital thinking it was her time. When we realized she had some fight in her, another brother-in-law and I decided we’d take the night watch. We sat down on opposite sides of her crib. We would put our hands through the long sterile plastic sleeves to touch her face and hands so she knew we were there. But then sometime around 4AM exhaustion began to overtake us both.
My brother-in-law was a broadway actor with the finest voice I will ever hear. He had lead the choir at church for years. He was a good man and always tried to lift the spirits of everyone around him. It was no surprise, then, when he came back into the NICU with two cups of coffee and said, “Carols.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked. He replied, “it’s how we’re going to stay awake. We’re going to sing Christmas carols. Besides,” he added, “Every child deserves at least one Christmas.”
And for the next two hours we went through every Christmas carol in the book. At one point I believe I was making them up as I went along, slap happy from the lack of sleep. Little girl gripped my finger tightly as we sang. As the sun rose, we were relieved by another sister but I will never forget those two bourse singing with Dan and Bernadette about the Babe in the manger and the nails and spears that would pierce Him through as the cross was born for me and for you.
Two years ago, Dan was called to his own judgment. It was sad. It did not need to happen. Hospitals are terrible places that often spread more disease than they cure. He left behind my sister, three grown children, and thousands who loved him and will always be haunted by that rich baritone voice.
I like to imagine as he went before the throne of the cross that Our Lord, Who gave him the suffering he bore at the end, might have been holding Bernadette’s hand and telling him, “She tells me you comforted her in My name.” And more suffering there likely was because God is merciful and just; but that kind of charity covers a multitude of sins. Our Lord promised us that much and His word is true because He is Truth.
“Whoever welcomes a little child in my name receives Me; and not only Me but the One Who sent Me.”
Mk. 9:36
Just please don’t ask any questions when you see me bury my head at midnight Mass as the choir sings O Little Town of Bethlehem…
“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n! : So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heav’n. / No ear May hear His coming but in this world of sin / Where meek souls will receive Him still the dear Christ enters in.
“Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child / Where misery cries out to thee, Son of the Mother mild. / Where Charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door / the dark night breaks, the glory breaks and Christmas comes once more!
Folks, I got off all that social media nonsense a while ago. Sorry but I'm not on Twitbook, Facepalm, YouHu, WingWang or any of the others. Maybe an event will happen to make me change my mind like Peter and Paul coming down with flaming swords and commanding it be so. Until then, read the blog and if you feel a comment is in order or you feel like sharing a tip or suggestion for a topic, email me at harvey@harveymillican.com.
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 