Fasting Again

 I have gained a lot of weight since this covid nonsense started. I have been eating more, and also drinking beer. So I decided to stop and lose weight again. Actually the weight gain really began when I got out of the hospital almost two years ago, but it got worse since covid. I ate more, and stopped going out for my two daily walks during the winter.

So now I started going on my two daily walks again. And starting yesterday I am fasting. It will be slow going, as I do not have the will built up yet. The immediate goal is to eat two meals a day, not counting tea. A half of a tuna melt, or alternatively two pieces of toast with butter and jam, at noon time. And a normal dinner, whatever I make for my family at night. I am not going to eat a separate meal of rice and lentils as I did the last time I fasted. But that is for now, I may switch as time goes on. On Sundays I will not fast, and sometimes I will allow myself to take some beer. But still eat less than I normally would.

On day one I did well. I had my two meals and took a little extra food in between meals as I got hungry. But even though I had a little extra, it was a little enough amount of food that if I continued to eat that way I would lose weight. Today, day two, I also took a little extra food. But a little less than yesterday. And I will be having a light dinner. In time, I will get less hungry and be able to eat less food. Who knows, in time I may have the will to eat only one meal, at night, and not have my half a tuna melt in the morning. But I will not do this quickly, as recently I bought a lot of cans of tuna from the internet so I have at least a month's worth to eat before it is gone. Perhaps the goal will be to reduce the amount of food until I am ready to eat only one meal when I run out of cans of tuna. So it is going well so far. I hope the will to fast does not go away. I was able to sustain it for half a year the first time, hopefully the same will happen again.

And I started taking my two daily walks. Yesterday I saw a falcon soaring and an oriole sitting high up in a tree and singing. I love seeing uncommon birds. The common birds in my neighborhood are mourning doves which are my favorite birds, sparrows, pigeons, starlings, mockingbirds, and robins. Sometimes I see gold finches, cardinals, blue jays, and woodpeckers. There are also the hawks who often rest atop the steeple of the Church a block and a half away from our house. And of course there are the grackles who live in South Richmond Hill on the way to St. Benny's. But I have stopped walking to St. Benny's for Benediction since covid so I haven't seen them recently. I should find out if they have Benediction again over there so I could go on Thursdays as I used to go. And of course there are the songbirds who live in the bird store on Atlantic Avenue which I go past on my walks. There are other birds whose names do not come to my mind but they are not as common as those I named.

I have been bringing my best friend Julian food on Fridays. I bring him tuna salad sandwiches with celery and cucumbers and lettuce with no cheese. He wants a specific type of bread from Trader Joe's called Ezekiel Bread. I bought it once for him. But we do not eat it so it will go bad every week if I continue to buy it for him. Perhaps I will just give him the whole loaf when I bring the sandwiches to him on Fridays. I would get him the bread every week, but I can not always get a ride to Trader Joe's and it is a long walk or 5.50 for the bus fare. Julian is a charity case. I am always buying him things and he doesn't pay me back very much. For every ten dollars I spend on him he gives me one dollar back. But I don't mind. I have nothing to spend my money on anyway. I guess I could give more money to Church.

And I have started taking my cold showers again. It does strengthen the will so it goes well with fasting. And I have decided to say more prayers. Be sure to pray the whole Little Office every day except for Sunday and the Office of the Dead at night before I go to bed. And the Rosary which I always pray. Sunday is a Holiday. I go into the city for Church and after Mass we talk foe a while with my friends. There is a new man at Church named Raymond. He introduced himself to me last week, though I had seen him before. He started coming regularly a little earlier in the year. Perhaps next week we will invite him to the Donut Pub after Mass so we can talk about religion. CUP. I was thinking about these things at Church this week and during the Canon I started praying "help me to be more of a monk". So I am eating less and praying more, and having my recreation of my walks. 

I have a problem of talking to myself. Sometimes when I talk to myself I say bad things without really thinking about what I am saying until after it is said. I used to confess this until the priest told me that if it was not intentional it probably was not a sin. I do say bad things. Maybe it is the wickedness spilling over the brim of my wicked heart. But sometimes I say good things as well, does that mean my heart is good? Am I a good tree or a wicked one. Do I bear fruit? 

The Fly

 

Today is Friday. I go to Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction at the local Church. In case Jesus is still there, I go to honor Him. At three I pray the stations in front of the monstrance and then I pray the Rosary. Fifteen decades. There is the fly. The devil comes to bother me for a few moments, buzzing around my ears. I finish praying and go home. At six thirty I go for Benediction. I pray and think and meditate and pray. The fly returns. The devil buzzes around me ears. To and fro, here and there. Just before the ceremony begins, the fly lands on my right hand. I feel him. I do not move. Then the fly goes away, the devil buzzes around my ears. I look at Jesus, if Jesus is still really there. I think He is. Julian does not. Julian once told me that his mother used to go to Benediction and one time she told him that when she looked at the monstrance she did not see the face of Jesus, but instead she saw the face of the devil. I think Jesus is there. But if he is not the devil can not harm me. I am not afraid of the devil. Sometimes I fear God's justice. That I have sinned so much that I cannot be forgiven. But usually I am fine. I pray to Jesus and to Mary and to Gemma.

Being visited by flies as I pray in the Church is a recurring theme. It is never a fly. It is the devil. The Lord of the Flies. He wants to distract me or to make me afraid.

It is something I have been doing since I got out of the hospital. I do not like the Novus Ordo. But I think it is valid. So Jesus is really there. So if I go before Jesus in the tabernacle it is good. And I keep Him company. In the Novus Ordo there are not that many who have the true faith and love Jesus. So I will love Him. But I do not want to go the the Novus Ordo Mass because I think it is bad. So I walk the line. Cross myself as I pass the Church, and genuflect before the tabernacle.

My uncle George is a Russian Orthodox. But he belongs to a strict Church. He is not in Communion with most of the other Churches in Orthodoxy. We went to his granddaughter's baptism at a monastery and he spoke about how he sung at the ceremonies but did not go to Communion because he was not in Communion with the monastery where his granddaughter was baptized. And he thought the schism was getting out of hand and it would be better if all the sects would be in Communion with each other. But not under Rome. It seems all the Orthodox share a distrust of the Pope and Rome.

My uncle's mother just died. She was orthodox. EENS. So she is in hell most likely. I heard on one of the forums that the Orthodox do not have their own version of EENS, so they hold that those outside of orthodoxy might be saved. But they are territorial and prone to schism. Charles Coulombe says that In the West we will accept any amount of heresy but no schism, but in the East they will accept any amount of schism but no heresy. And both halves of what should be the one united Church are meant to be corrective of each other's tendencies. Mithrandylan once said on one of the forums that he used to watch all of Charles Coulombe's lectures with Professor Biersach and he watched hours and hours and he thought they were enlightening, but later on after he became a more knowledgeable Catholic, that he couldn't think of a single important thing he learned from those lectures.

It is the devil. The fly. I do really believe in the devil. I do not want to be a witch but I believe they are real. I do not know what powers witches have, but I think their powers are increased greatly now that there are so few good Christians and so many abortions. As man abandons God, God abandons the people to the witches and the vampires. I do wonder if the end of the world is near. I think it is. But Tom says that the Garabandal warning will come first. But Joey Lomangino died blind. And then the Consecration of Russia and then the period of peace and only then the end of the world. I am not so hopeful. I fear the end is nigh. And the antichrist is here and the mark of the beast is the vaccine or something related to it. I told Tom that I would give him twenty dollars if the Warning happened while we were still alive and together in this valley of tears. The warning. What would you do if you could see the state of your soul as it was before the judgement seat of Jesus Christ? Would you go to confession? Or would you hate God even more. I fear many will hate God even more.

So I am home and tomorrow we are going to the orthodox funeral to pay our respects. In this world of pain. I saw a fly and he landed on my right hand in Church as I was looking at Jesus.

Brown Scapular Sighting

I went to the bank to deposit money in my mother's bank account. As I opened the door to go in a brown skinned man walked by and his shirt was not buttoned all the way up and I saw that he was wearing a white Rosary around his neck and a Brown Scapular. I Thought that was neat.

On my first walk this morning on the avenue I walked by a gray stray cat. The cat was just sitting there and she let me walk up to her. She was occupied eating grass. I did not know cat's ate grass.

Looking out the window a starling flew from inside our house (they have a nest there, below the gutter) to the electric wire that runs to the pole in the back. The starling pooed out white poop which fell to the ground, and then another bird flew up and started wrestling with the starling. I could not tell what kind of bird this was, I thought maybe a mourning dove. The two birds fell down out of sight and I did not see them again.

Father Pfeiffer is a Bishop now. In Kentucky. If you know who he is. He was just consecrated by a Thuc line Bishop named Webster. I went to his Masses four times. Twice under the SSPX and twice after he left. Now he is in Kentucky as the leader of what many regard as a cult. I believe he is a dogmatic geocenrist, but he opposes the flat earth movement.

As of now, Saturday evening, the moon is almost full. Father drove us to Bay Shore. While parked, I was waiting in the car when I saw a gaggle of crows. They cried out, two fought with each other. On telephone wires and old buildings. Birds of ill omens. Heart Shaped Box.

Simeon

"Listen to me. It is in silence that I speak to souls. Those who flee silence will never hear my voice. Encourage silence and practice it yourself with a renewed dedication, for it is in silence that the Holy Spirit descends, and it is in silence that He works in souls, bringing them to holiness of life, and to the perfection that I desire for each one."

So I finished reading my book, In Sinu Jesu. It was a nice read. I will read it again. It was not the best book I have ever read. The main point of the book was that Jesus likes it when we go to pray before the Blessed Sacrament and that if more people do so with love, the Church will grow strong again. I wish there were more to it, a journal of around 260 pages, but it was comforting to read.

In these times of peace and of calamity I am feeling well for myself. Because of my family I have peace. Without them I would be sad. But none of them listen to me. I am the only believer (well my mother believes a somewhat but not as crazily as I do). Often I think to myself that I am alone. I am the only person I know who wants to love God, and everyone else in my life is a devil worshiper. And I am probably a devil worshiper myself, but am fooling myself. I don't know. But nobody listens to me.

I do not understand why the Novus Ordo exists. I wish it would be wiped off the face of the earth. It is like drinking poison that does not taste good. I consider it valid. But not in a good way. Valid as if a priest walked in to a bakery and pronounced the words of consecration over the bread there and then walked home. Some may say it must be good because it comes from the Church. I don't know. Perhaps Julian is right and it is just bread, or even the body of the devil.

"It's good to be inspired by the saints and by others. Sometimes it's good to imitate some of their actions or devotions. But you are not them, you are you. You are called to be holy in a way no one else is, even if certain things are similar."

This is a quote from a Catholic twitter personality. It reminds me of Saint Simeon Stylites who lived as a hermit atop a pillar and was later copied by other hermits. Imagine walking from one city to the next and seeing three Catholic hermits living on top of pillars, spending their lives in prayer and loving God until they were struck by lightning.

So am I fooling myself? Am I a fool. I want to be good. Am I beyond redemption? Is it too late? I know I have done bad. But am I beyond salvation? Am I alive? Or am I dead, being a corpse who only thinks he is alive, but is being animated by necromancy beyond all hope of redemption? Am I a zombie. I don't know. Cry? When crazy I remember I thought I was a vampire and that my parents had turned me into a vampire. Imagine thinking that while being schizo. I have crazy fits sometimes.

I was disappointed today (Saturday). I went to the local Church for Eucharistic Adoration, but it was not to be. Instead they had the vigil Novus Ordo, which I do not like. I must call the office to see when they have EA and benediction now which I love. I would be happy if I had a traditional Mass, daily, with benediction every night. But I am happy enough.

Today is Sunday (I started writing this yesterday) Went to the indult with mom. A high Mass. I saw some people I knew but did not speak to them today. Mom lit a lot of candles. I hope our SSPX Mass comes back soon in our little rented room.

I decided to stop praying the Rosary in Latin, and go on praying it in English. It seems more humble that way. I should be littler.

Just because I love her, this is my favorite Holy Card. Last year I printed out ten of them and gave them to friends from Church and my brother.

Thirty-Sixth Rose

In 1578 a woman in Anvers had given herself to the devil and had signed the contract with her own blood. Shortly afterwards she was stricken with sincere remorse and had an intense desire to make amends for this terrible deed. So she sought out a kind and wise confessor who advised her to go to Father Henry, one of the Fathers of the Dominican Friary, who was Director of the Rosary Confraternity in that town, to ask him to enroll her in it and hear her confession.

Accordingly she went to ask for him but met, not Father Henry, but the devil disguised as a Dominican Father. The latter scolded her pitilessly and said that she could never hope to receive Almighty God's grace again as long as she lived, and that there was absolutely no way in which she could regain possession of her contract. This grieved her greatly but she did not quite lose hope of God's mercy and sought out Father Henry once more, only to find the devil a second time, and to meet with a second rebuff. She came back for the third time and then at last, by Divine Providence, she found Father Henry in person--the priest whom she had been looking for--and he treated her with very great kindness, urging her to throw herself upon the mercy of Almighty God and to make a good confession. He then received her into the Confraternity and told her to say the Rosary frequently.

One day while Father Henry was saying Mass for her Our Lady forced the devil to give her back the contract which she had signed. In this way she was delivered from the devil by the authority of Mary and by her devotion to the Most Holy Rosary.

Three Rosaries

I bought three rosaries online today. The last time I purchased a rosary online, it was a beautiful blue rosary with a relic from Gemma's coffin in it. It is the rosary that will be wrapped around my hands as I lay in my coffin stone cold dead. I wonder who will go to my wake and funeral. I only have Church friends. I lost my secular friends after I went crazy and I don't think Mellonie wants to talk to me anymore, but some of the people from Church will come and pray for me. And my parents and my brother and my cousins. But today I bought three everyday rosaries. They are all wooden with cords and no links, as I have found these to be the best ones for me. I can pray with them without links to break. The cord is stronger than the chain. If a rosary has five hundred links, only one of them has to break for the rosary to become worthless, and in my experience, one of them always breaks. When my first rosary broke I saw it as a sign of my own reprobation as the breaking of a rosary must certainly be a sign of damnation. But no, they always break. They are meant to be pretty, but since nobody ever actually prays the rosary, they make them weak so they break if regularly used. I am sure there are quality chain rosaries that do not break, but I have never owned one. My favorite was very expensive and made of green malachite stones and real silver links and it fell to pieces, both the stones and the links. And every other chain rosary I bought since has also fallen to pieces. So now I like the wooden beads on cords. This is the website I like to buy them from. I wish more people would buy from them, so if you want a rosary, order it from them. They have the kind I like and I am grateful to them because once I bought a rosary from them, prayed with it, and pulled it a bit, and the string broke on the first day I used it. So I complained and they sent me a new one right away at no cost and it has lasted for years, so ever since they were so nice to me I like to talk them up and recommend their website.

I wonder if we will be watching the Super Bowl this year. Mass is at 5, so it will end at 6. And the game starts around 6:30, usually. I know our priest is a football fan and his team is the Chiefs and they are playing, so we may all go out as a group to a pub or something to watch the game. There is nothing more worldly than the Super Bowl and the inner Jansenist in me suggests boycotting it on principle. I remember I watched the Katy Perry halftime show a few years ago and it was a mockery of the Whore of Babylon from the Book of the Apocalypse. So I have no desire to take part in the satanism or blasphemy on public display. But I have nothing against having two pints and eating some wings and the football itself is merely stupid and not sinful. The gladiators are not killing each other, and there are no Christians being eaten by tigers or anything. Though some suggested boycotting the game over some advertisements promoting sodomy, for what it's worth. And the pro-lifers complained that the network turned down a pro-life advertisement. Still, I would not want to give an anti-christ television network a couple of million dollars for an ad even if the ad itself did promote a good cause.

So I am more excited for the rosaries than about the big game. I still have a weakness for baseball. I like when the Yankees win. I want them to win the world series. Last year I watched a few games. I will probably watch a few this year. But it is still stupid and a weakness of mine. An imperfection perhaps, and not a sin.

I want to live in my little room and be peaceful and pray and hope as I have been. I have been good since I got out of the hospital. It has been six months. I am at peace, even in my infirmities. More hope, and no despair. Nobody bothers me, and I don't feel lonely even though I know I am pretty much alone. I am happy more than any other emotion. I live in my little room and look at pictures. I go to Church to say my prayers. I pray for people in my life who I love, and people from my past who I used to love and still have a fondness for. Lately there is one person who I am thinking of and praying for all the time. I have thought about praying the Office of the Dead for her and did tonight, even though she is still alive. I wonder if my prayers make a difference? Even if God does not exist, the meditation and disciplining of the mind and the will makes me happy and gives me peace, even if there is no power of divinity in it. And of course I think there is great power in it. In prayer, if even not in my own prayer because I am feeble and a sinful man like Saul.

I imagine Cora's prayers are powerful. She is living with the relatives of a friend who are members of some sort of cult in another state and is praying for them, unable to make it to a Church, or at least a Church she is willing to go to. She is more pious than me, as I am willing to step foot in a Novus Ordo Church to pray. She prays more than anyone I know and I think she is very holy if anyone I know is holy. Angry Tom thinks she is crazy. She is a seventy eight year old Filipino woman, forty years older than I am, but when I used to see her at Church I sometimes thought about how beautiful she was for an older woman and how if she was forty years younger she would be the kind of woman I would like to marry (if I were not broken). And then there is Karen. She is feebleminded like I am, and is an old maid. I bet her prayers are powerful. She told me she prays for three and a half hours every day. She likes the Pieta Prayer Book. And she comes to Mass. She is like Cora in her sensibilities and she gets visits from Jesus and Mary and they tell her what to do and what Churches to go to. She has not told me of any prophecies. She told me about how one time one of her friends tried to get her to marry the devil as a young woman but she refused and another girl she knew accepted and wedded the devil and now she is rich and living with a multimillionaire husband not caring for a thing but trying not to think about eternity. And Julian's prayers must be powerful. He is all alone in the nursing home with no friends and nobody to take him to Church. Our good priest visits him to hear his confessions and bring him Holy Communion every once in a while and they argue about salvation. In my mind whatever your position on EENS is I can't imagine a lot of people are going to heaven these days. I wonder about the Christians in Africa. They are dirt poor, but they have families and they seem to believe and they fight with Muslims and are more conservative than Americans and Europeans. There liturgy is strange and Africanized but I hope a lot of them have the faith and are good people. So Julian in his nursing home alone, with nurses who are not kind to him, praying for all of us, blind, with bad kidneys, unable to walk much. He is a victim for sure and it is always nice to talk to him. I am looking forward to March because he says he will be leaving the nursing home in March and moving in with his sisters, six blocks from my house. So we can be friends. I can bring him to the diner and we can eat together, perhaps once a week. And perhaps once in a while I can get my Father to drive us to our Mission in the City for Mass. He will not go to the local Churches where I go for Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction because he does not believe the Novus Ordo has true Sacraments so to him it would be idolatry, so he only goes to the Latin Mass (and not all Latin Masses) and the Eastern Rite Divine Liturgy. I think Jesus is there and that God would not abandon 99.9 percent of the world's Catholics to idolatry, even if the Novus Ordo is a deficient Mass, but he is more pious than me and is even a sedevacantist if you know what that means. So I do not tell him about how I like to go to Novus Ordo Church to look at Jesus because that would lead to an argument. I can tell angry Tom that, but not Julian or Cora or Karen, because I like to keep the peace, and I don't think their differing opinions would lead them to have less hope for salvation.

So I am happy to wait on my three rosaries. They should come next week and I will have them blessed by Father after Mass next Sunday. I am thinking of buying a fourth rosary, this one a fifteen decade one, also with wooden beads and a cord. It is more expensive though. I have no use for a twenty decade one because I do not pray the Luminous Mysteries (because I am a traditional Catholic and we do not like new prayers for the most part, though I have thought about learning how to say them and also learning how to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet, as an act of charity. I doubt, even if I do not think they are as good as the real rosary, that it would be a sin to pray those prayers, even if they are weaker).

Yesterday there were so many grackles. I noticed there were two kinds of grackles. One with brown breasts and one who were all black. The black ones are bigger. There were like fifty of them in front of a house near St. Benny's flying to and fro, cackling. Often I do wonder if animals really are a sign. The black birds represent the state of the souls of the people who live near by, like the squirrels. If people were holy all the squirrels would be white and all the pigeons would be as ivory doves. I looked at the grackles for five minutes or so. Some were eating. Really, they were just hanging out, talking to each other. Like people do outside of their apartments when you walk by and smell marijuana smoke. I wonder if animals get bored. I never get bored anymore. I waste time on the computer, but when I have quiet and silence it does not bother me. My thoughts are straight and I always have a prayer in my mind or on my lips. For some reason I never get tired of the same prayer, at least for the last six months. In the hospital in my despair in limbo I prayed Ave Maris Stella. Now in my freedom I pray a simpler prayer in English, "O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine heart." I say it over and over. Sometimes in front of Jesus I look at him, and I did this today at Eucharistic Adoration and repeat it over and over, hundreds of times. Or in front of the tabernacle. Today I held my rosary beads and counted them out, in my mind, not vocally. Over and over. They say the Orthodox do that with the Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me a sinner". But you can do that with any prayer. A monk might retreat on to his mountain with a few lines of a psalm and contemplate them for seventy years and still not fully understand it. I will walk around the mountain a thousand times. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear because the Lord is with me. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. But my mind is by no means free of trouble. Sometimes I have bad thoughts but when I do usually I speak them out loud, they do not remain in my mind, and sometimes I say bad things. But usually I have peace. And when I go to confession I confess that sometimes I say bad things to myself but I do not remember how often or what exactly I said. It is my most common sin, but Father P. told me to not worry because it probably was not a sin because it was like a tic of the mind with no intent in the will.

I just thought about the mayor of Kew Gardens, Aaron, and how I told him that when he died I would go to his grave in the Maple Grove Cemetery and put a toasted bialy with butter and a cup of coffee on his headstone. I wonder if he is still alive. It has been twelve years and he was an old man back then. He must be dead by now, no? I have not seen him like some of the old reprobates from my last job when I am around Kew Gardens to go shopping, or to the bank, or to the post office with my mother. Poor old Aaron and Stanley. Yes, they must be dead by now. So much time has passed. Perhaps I should pray for them?

There is one thing lately that I am grateful for. I am grateful that I am a happy crazy and not an angry crazy or a depressed crazy. If one has to break, I broke in a better way. I am not suicidal, and I do not suffer. Now. If things get bad I may go there in the future and when I was newly broken, I was in a bad place, but I survived. But now, I am glad to be happy broken.