On Making Money

I have no problem with people making money. It is necessary in the fallen world we live in. I make money myself. I get a small disability stipend for being crazy which I mostly give away to my family (because father takes care of me and deserves it and because I love my brother). But some people are good at it and make a lot of money. But as a reason to exist it is lacking to me. I have no desire for money or the things that money can buy, after the meeting of basic necessities. Perhaps it is because I do not watch television. Sometimes I buy books; I do like some of my prayer books. But what else is there to money? What is the point of luxury after necessity is met? Saint Benny had his office and his Imitation of Christ and a rosary around his neck and one in his hands. Even he did not have nothing. He carried around those two books in a bag and read from them often. He begged for coins and for bread and if he had a crust and needed more to share he would multiply the bread like Christ did the loaves on the mountainside and share it with his beggar friends on the streets and in the Colosseum of Rome. I have a little more. I have a book case with books I sometimes read. But they are more for show than for reading. I do not need them. The only books I regularly read are my Way of the Cross and my Little Office, and I also have my little Holy Hour booklet, but I would like to also keep a picture of Gemma like a soldier carries a picture of his young wife and looks at it and dreams of being with her while in the trenches. I could shed those and have nothing. I could be like a desert Father and spend my life meditating on a short prayer or a single line from scripture. I could say over and over again "Oh Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine heart" and after thirty years I could tell my friends that I was only beginning to understand the meaning of those words. I am a little person. I love people and things and my family and women and God and I love even the cruel hard world. And I love you if you are reading this. Yes, you. I love you. There are abortions and there are sparrows. Blood and tears and Our Lady of Guadalupe. There is a heaven and there is a hell. This I know. There is a God and a devil. Some worship God and some worship the devil. I think a lot of people are wretched and a lot of people are not honest. I don't want to make a lot of money. I would be happy if I were a slave whose master gave him a place to sleep and food and daily tasks and other slaves to talk to. I would be happy as long as the master did not abuse me and there was a little Church I could go to to pray.

People go to Communion. We are to believe that the Blessed Host is Our Lord Jesus Himself, come down from heaven, dying on the Cross for us and He is to be our food. If one is well disposed it will raise one up to the highest heaven and if one is ill disposed one will be hurled into the deepest pits of hell. There is nothing more perilous than appearing before the altar rail to receive Holy Communion. It truly is as it was in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the professor had to guess which chalice was the true Holy Grail and drink from it, and to choose wisely will lead to life and to choose poorly will lead to death. I go to Communion at our little mission in the upper room. So do many of us. I go to confession once a month and I receive Communion every Sunday. I am not afraid because I do not feel guilty. I feel as if I were a friend of Jesus. I try to visit him every day. It is special when he is in the monstrance, but more often he is still there only inside the Tabernacle. I like to sit close to him and look into his heart. I can only see bread, as only once did I see the Light of the World, but I know that he is looking back at me and sees deep into my soul. I do not doubt these things. It is my reality and it has been for eleven years.

I like to pray the Holy Hour every Thursday evening. It makes the day a special day. I read the little meditations and pray and think and look at the pictures of Gemma, for in her face I see the Christ Crucified as she bore His wounds in her flesh. It has become a favorite prayer of mine. I look forward to reading the parts that move me most and I hope to have it memorized some day so I can go back to it over and over in my mind during the week. If I had a friend and I wanted to convert her I would take her into my room and pray the Hour with her if she was interested. Gather around the Christ in Gethsemane and tell Him that you love Him.

I do not have a wide audience with my blog. I only have a few readers, I am not sure how many, but I seem to have a reader from Portugal. Blessings to you, my Portuguese friend. I have a wider audience when I make posts on the niche Catholic forums I like to post on. But here this is a place of my own where I can leave a record of my own thoughts. A record of my thoughts. I am only a fool. Do I seem pious? Or do I come across as a fraud? I think I am always talking about the same things. I have been thinking of God and the angels lately and have been speaking of the same things over and over again. Yet there are those who are always speaking of Nietzsche.

His blood! His blood! What profit in His blood? I don't know? Nobody in my life takes me seriously anyway except for my friends from Church. Julian takes me seriously. My good friend who I will visit tomorrow. He prays for us and since he is blind all he can do is pray. And listen to the television. We will pray together the Chaplet of St. Michael as we always do. And I will bring him some food. A salami sandwich. And angry Tom takes me seriously. He asked me if I wanted to become a religious brother, but I do not think anywhere I wanted to go would take me, being too old and infirm and crazy. As a young man he went to the seminary but he said at the time it had become too liberal and he left. He wanted to become a priest but instead he became a social worker. He did help people in his life. More than I have done.

I want to be like a little child and love God as a little boy loves his father. Only more. Everything good He has given to me. Life. My life is charmed. Envy not for envy is the source of unhappiness.

I used to roll cigarettes. I rolled them better than anyone else in the world. It probably took five years off of my life. That was ages ago. I remember I used to get enough tobacco and papers for fifty cigarettes for four dollars. I would smoke them constantly. My brand was Drum. It was the thing I did. But then I gave it up. A few years after my conversion, and after I had given up cigarettes, I met a traditional Catholic at Mass (of the tweed suit variety) who rolled his own cigarettes. Unlike me, he put little filters into his cigarettes as he rolled them. I guess he was worried about his health. He was travelling and I only saw him twice, but he talked to me after Mass at the coffee shop. One Sunday he told me that the night before he was at a party and he challenged a protestant to a fist fight because he blasphemed Our Lady. I thought of asking him what he was doing at a party with such people but I held my lip. He seemed like a good chap, but the kind of person who would be good at making money. I wish him the best even though I can not remember his name.

Sunday is something to look forward to now. The whole day. Now we have music at Church. More people are coming to the Cenacle now. Church is at five. So I go in early and try to visit one or two of the Churches in Manhattan before. And after we have coffee and food. I am liberal with money on Sundays. I have a happy life. I am so happy. Not all the time when I am busy doing things, but in the quiet of the night and in the silence I am a very happy person.

I don't want to be an important person or be famous or be a great artist. I do not want to abuse women. I do not resent people with money or men who have beautiful women. I do not regret becoming crazy and losing my chance at a normal life. I am happy for my father and my mother and my family for my brother. I am happy for my friends and for our priests and for Church. I am happy for God and for the angels and the saints. I am happy for my Gemma and that I can look at my pictures of her and read about her and pray to her. Thinking about her makes me so very happy. You do not know. I am happy for so many things. Even if the world is full of ugliness and sin and pain. I often forget all the pain I was in when I was being tormented by the devils, but I knew what it was like to suffer. And now I have a life of peace and joy. I am grateful for being tormented by the devils for all that time because it makes me grateful for the peace I have now.