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.

Father R.

Today we had Father R. as our priest. He used to be our pastor seven or eight years ago and we hadn't seen him since. He remembered me and knew my name. He said my name without asking. I told him I had seen the picture of him saying Mass on top of the cliff at the grand canyon. He gave a sermon on which he talked about EENS and salvation. He spoke of how God gives graces to all men so they have a chance to be saved (whenever this is spoken of I think of all the unbaptized babies). And he spoke about how if a man tries to be good but does not know about Jesus, Our Lord will enlighten him and send a missionary or an angel or an internal inspiration so that he can learn about Jesus and receive the faith and join the Church. This is different from what another priest talked about a few weeks ago where he denied the need to have the faith and join the Church. So Father R. believes the faith is necessary while the other priest expressed the modern view that "being nice" is enough.

He spoke about how it was years since he had last been here and how there were few of us who he recognized and I told him how some people died. The skinny old lady? D.? Yes she died. And M.? Yes, I know she died. She was very generous. But a friend who I was hoping to see was not there. I was sad. I had hoped to see him because he told me he would be at Church one Sunday in January and this was the last and he was not there. I could have spoken to him.

After Church for coffee there were four of us. We spoke for a little while. I expressed the thought that I would probably never marry and was offered encouragement. T. is the same age as me and also single and he was speaking about his troubles with women. He says he attracts the wrong kinds of women. And he also expresses disinterest in Church girls. They are stuck up or something. I don't know as I have never tried to date a Church girl. I just ignorantly hope that they are angels and that they are better than me. I am afraid of even speaking with them honestly. Less people come now that Mass is at 5 and not 2:30. But at night I get to go early and see Vespers as well as Mass and visit a few Churches. So you win and lose.

I just wanted to remember Father R. was here and he said he should be back some time in the next few months when Father S. is away. At Mass today I was praying for someone's conversion, and for me and my family. I was talking to God about them.

I read most of the life of Antony today. I will finish it tomorrow. When he speaks about faith he tells the Greek philosophers that faith comes directly from God and does not come from arguments. So that for a man with faith arguments are useless and even bad. For a man to have faith, he just knows interiorly. Faith comes from hearing, but it does not come from proofs. So his faith is different from the faith of the philosophers. I trust the faith of Antony.

Looking forward to the doctor and therapy tomorrow.

Fasting Again

I am fasting again. So far it is going well. I will be fasting until Easter. The plan is to eat one meal a day at night, usually rice and lentils with an egg except for Friday and Sunday. Preferably no meat, but some dairy. I have been at it for a week and five days and I have lost five pounds. In my experience I should lose two pounds a week until I stop. The last time I did this I got so skinny everyone told me I was too skinny, so now I plan on not going too far. I was a glutton since I got free last time so now I want to tighten my belt. I have no wife to please. It is for myself and I guess for God. To have a strong will and not be a glutton. Eating is not ugly like sex, but too much is too much. I think that any eating above and beyond the level of sustenance and hospitality must be a form of gluttony, however mild. When people are starving in Africa so they say, how dare you feast on fried fish and chips or mutton. I bought another bag of lentils today.

I have been drinking coffee. More than I should because I am not eating. The plan is to cut it down to just a little. And I have been drinking diet soda which I also want to cut down if not eliminate. I will be having beer on Fat Tuesday but otherwise I will not be drinking any wine or beer. My father got a bottle of rum from work and I am the only drinker in the house, but that is too much. I will not be mixing rum with my diet sodas while I am fasting.

So far I have been having a little bit of food outside of my one meal. Today I had a small piece of cake, and on other days I have had some bread. But the hunger pains are going away. For some reason the more I eat, the more hungry I get. And now less than two weeks into fasting the hunger has gone away. The demons of my belly must be afraid of me or something.

The demons of the belly. The devils haven't bothered me much lately except that soon after I got out of the hospital I had strange temptations for a while which I discovered were from the devils and they have left me since they were discovered. The devils work in funny ways. Demons of alcohol are strong, but they do not last very long for me. Demons of tobacco were stronger but they only lasted for a week or so. Demons of sexuality are the strongest and they fought really really hard against me. But now I only face common demons of food and drink and normal living. My fasting is to fight these common demons. I still have the demons of coffee and diet soda. I plan on getting rid of the diet soda demons. And the coffee demons need to be put in their place. But can one conquer the demons completely and live a life of no sensuality at all when none of one's actions are influenced by the demons. They say that when people willingly sin the demons do not bother them but when one tries to stop sinning then the demons come out in force and fight really really hard to maintain control.

I am a common person who is feeble-minded. But I want to be good. I have been so bad. But now I want to be good. I do not want to be a plaything of the demons any longer. Their favorite corn-cob pipe.

I sometimes have desires to take up smoking again. My preference would be out of a corn-cob pipe because as a youth when I was a new smoker it gave me more pleasure than smoking in any other way. I would take the smoke into my mouth taste it with my tongue like good whiskey, and then blow it out of my mouth. My mouth would absorb the smoke and the nicotine and it would make me feel very very happy. It was a happy drug. Other methods of tobacco usage were addictive but they did not give me the same pleasure. So if I took up the vice again it would be in that way. But if I ever did that my parents would get angry and it would be introducing the old demons into my life, the tobacco demons. I used to roll really good cigarettes. After the corn-cob pipe, I preferred hand-rolled cigarettes without filters, that I would roll and smoke like candy. I may get lung cancer even after quitting. And if I bought a pack it would be Kamel Reds or some other variety of Camels. Cohiba cigarettes were better but I only smoked them once because at the time I smoked they were illegal in America. But that is another form of gluttony. It must be a vice.

So pray for me that I kick the demons of diet soda and coffee to the dust and live demon free. I am doing well for a schizophrenic out of the hospital. There is no demon fire in me like there once was so long ago. I have peace even though my life is meaningless in the eyes of the world and I am alone without a wife. Girls are so very beautiful to me even though I am no longer as much of a slave to the demons of lust as I used to be. There are some saints who never looked at a woman's face in their entire lives, even their mother's for the sake of modesty. I am not like that. I look at women's faces and adore their beauty. There are paintings of beautiful women in Churches. Are they not meant to be looked at?

For what it's worth I have been writing about demons. Fasting to fight them. I wish I were pure of heart.

Hopeless

On the idea that some people are already damned, but still go on living. They are waiting for death with nothing ahead of them but waiting for eternal hell. Are there some people who have pushed God too far and are already damned but are still yet living? Something I think about. What if I am among them. What exactly is the unforgivable sin that Jesus talks about? Have I committed this sin? It is not quiet clear. Is saying something unkind about the third person of the Blessed Trinity an unforgivable offense? Looking back on my life, have I done that? I cannot remember. Perhaps once when I was drunk or on drugs? But others say that this blasphemy that is unforgivable is merely final impenitence and that there is no sin that can not be forgiven if one is penitent. But then there is that dreaded sermon of the Cure of Ars where he says that some sinners have pushed God too far and even if they come back to God they are forsaken by Him and God does not listen to their cries. He gives Voltaire as an example. He called for a priest and even went to confession and as he was dying the last few hours of his life were spent begging God for forgiveness, but St John Vianney tells us that his sorrow was in vain. He had pushed God too far and was damned. Could I be among those so doomed? Are my prayers and piety in vain?

I think sometimes on that matter when I interact with other people. I know one man who does not have hope and lives in despair and I wonder if he is right to do so and if I am only fooling myself with hope which will only lead to greater disappointment. It does not hurt as it makes me happy, but what if it were more fitting to hate God for forsaking me?

Has God forsaken you? I am a happy person lately. But I am also so very alone. Julian is alone. My best friend. He is in a home and can not see. But I am alone. I am older now and I have no wife and no means to support one and I have no friends so I get lonely. When I was younger I knew what it was like to be with a woman and it is normal to be married. But I have to face the fact that I am alone, will remain alone, and then I will die and nobody will go to my funeral. Maybe I could meet some crazy girl on disability and we could get married and live together. I know that will never happen. But if you know anyone you think would be good for me let me know. But I did know a couple like that so if it could happen like that maybe it could happen for me. No, I am alone. I am happy. My life is not difficult now. And on Monday I get to go to therapy to talk. Loneliness. Go to Church, therapy. I do not slave away, but my mind does not work. Life is good for me now because I have my family. I love my family, except that they watch television. I hate television.

Be good and be happy. It was nice going to Church today. Like every Thursday there were the grackles. Cackling. It is almost time for my holy hour, my favorite prayer. In peace until then.

Betrothal

I witnessed something new today, something I did not know about. A young man and woman, both of whom sing in the mixed choir that we have had often for the past few months, and neither of whose names I remember, are going to get married. And after Mass today they were betrothed. The priest went through a little ceremony and blessed them. Nothing was announced about this beforehand, though the priest did announce the Blessed Sacrament would be on the altar after Mass because he was making a sick call, it just happened after Mass. The man, the woman, the Lovely Helena and her sister Olivia had little cards with the prayers on them and Father blessed them.

A betrothal is a promise to get married, more solemn than an engagement. I do not know what the consequences of breaking the betrothal are, perhaps it is considered a sin without grave reason, while a normal engagement can be broken off with less reason.

The beautiful Cecilia is so very beautiful. I am afraid of her. Today she was wearing a dark red velvet dress, feminine and modest enough, but gorgeous. It is hard not looking at her. She has chestnut brown hair which she wears down long and curled at the ends. After Mass today I was distracted and wanted to just look at her beauty. I did not, I only glanced at her a few times. Father made a sick call so the Blessed Sacrament was on the altar for a while after Mass, a long while, as we all kneeled, I sat, and prayed.

When Mass is over and they blow out the candles, the beautiful Cecilia helps take down the altar and put the things away and when she does I admit I like to wait and look at her moving from side to side as she does not notice me. Angry Tom once saw me looking at the beautiful Cecilia as she was walking away and he asked me why I don't go after her. I once told him that I was afraid if her and he asked why and I said because she was so very beautiful.

We have a new refugee coming to Mass. A pious older black woman who held a crucifix with a St. Benedict Medal on it and prayed throughout Mass. I said hello to her. She comes from Our Lady of La Salette. She had the article I read from the Queens Chronicle and after reading it she no longer wants to go there because of the scandal. I would expect more people to come as we are in the same city, and as far as theology is concerned we are the closest to them in the area. But so far she is the only one. I went there once for Ash Wednesday. I just hope what supposedly happened there is not common.

But the beautiful Cecilia is so very beautiful. I wonder what kind of person she is. If she is pious and chaste and not a hypocrite she would be so very beautiful as to be extraordinary. What is she doing here with us grievous sinners in the city of Sodom? She should be in the country married with children far away from the flood of sins that surrounds us here. But if I was not broken and had a decent job and I was young I would want to marry Cecilia, but I would be afraid to ever talk to her as I am now. I would think that she was too good for me, even if I were young and not mentally crippled, But now I can see her at Mass gracefully gliding back and forth or sitting or kneeling quietly. I do not even know the color of her eyes. I have seen them for a moment at a time, but I have never stared into them out of fear, so I forget the color. Were they olive green or brown or grey? They were not blue. Beauty and youth. I hope they are green like my own eyes are green.

I am liking my new routine of going in to the city early to pray on Sunday. Mass now is not until 5 PM. I saw most of vespers at Holy Innocents and then I went to Our Saviour and then to the upper room for Mass. I said all my prayers. I even got to be blessed at benediction. It was an ideal day and I hope to make it the model of every Sunday. Some may think it bad to go to other Churches that are not traditional, but I think it is fine now because I think they are valid and Jesus is really there. I do not go to the Novus Ordo for Mass, but I can look at Jesus and say prayers there without affirming the goodness of the Novus Ordo. Even angry Tom goes there and he is a sedevacantist, so it should be fine for me as well. I am content.

Even though I try to be chaste and not a pervert, I can not get over my love for women. The attraction is still there even though I am older. I admire beauty even though I do not want to sin over it anymore.