#//were literally around during the days before the original sin of the soul society and all the soul king shit happened

[doomxdriven]

Bansui working toward his ultimate goal of helping everyone achieve "Ascension" a.k.a turning every living being into some kind of Hollow-Hybrid thinking that its going to solve literally all of the World(s) problems when in reality he's being subtly manipulated toward that goal by the primordial Hollow that fused with him ages ago-- manipulated toward what? Nothing Good™ I will say that much.

[pamphletstoinspire]

September 15 - Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows.   Ora pro nobis.

Stabat mater dolorosa iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat filius.

(At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last.) Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306)

We pray today to Our Blessed Mother, that through our joining with her sorrows, we may find the joy of eternal salvation with Jesus Christ, Our Lord. We look to Mary as a model of forbearance and endurance, obedience and meekness, love, patience, and joyful suffering.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS Fr. Francis Cuthbert Doyle, 1896

I. One of the Wise Man's most pathetic exhortations is, that a son should never forget the travailing and the sorrows of his mother. In order, therefore, that we may bear in mind the bitter anguish which lacerated our Lady's heart, we must reflect today upon that scene of woe in which her seven-fold sorrow culminated, in which the waters rose up around her, and closed over her head in a sea of anguish, such as never before flooded the heart of mortal man.

Jesus hung on the Cross, the outcast of His nation–a mark at which the vile rabble, and their still viler leaders, hurled their bitter taunts, and aimed their clumsy scorn. A galling wreath of thorns circled His head; His eyes were filled with blood; His hands and feet nailed tightly down to the cruel wood. The wickedness of a sinful world pressed heavily upon Him, and its ponderous weight well-nigh crushed Him Who upholds the universe. During His death agony, men scoffed and jeered at Him, taunting Him with impotence, and blaspheming Him most vilely; and all the while there stood by that death-bed of shame, Mary His Mother! He was Her Child; her blood flowed in His veins; her heart beat in unison with His. Those sacred features, now so sadly bruised and disfigured, were the exact counterpart of her own. That head, now crowned with thorns, had often nestled in her bosom. That tongue which now and then spoke through the darkness, had been taught by her to lisp its first accents. Between Him and her there had passed all that interchange of fond affection and tender love which takes place between a mother and the child of her bosom. Add to this the intense love with which she loved Him as her God, and we may truly say, there never could be love between mortal man and God greater than the love which existed between Jesus and Mary.

If, then, the natural effect of love is union, and if the greater the love the closer the union, we may form some idea of the agony which the sufferings of Jesus caused her heart. The thorns which made His temples throb with acute pain were as a circle of fire upon her brow. The nails which pierced His hands and feet fastened her also to His Cross. The foul language, the revilings, the scoffings, the blasphemies uttered against Him, were as a hail of fire upon her heart. Verily she was filled with His reproaches, and the revilings of them that reproached Him fell upon her. To what shall we compare her, or to what shall we liken the sorrow of this Virgin daughter of Sion? It is great as the sea. Who shall heal it? ‘O! all you that pass by the way, attend and see if there be sorrow like unto her sorrow.'

II. As we look at that ocean of sorrow, the bitter waters of which inundate her soul, we are forced to acknowledge that human words are but faint and inadequate symbols by which to indicate its depth and its breadth. Yet, though we may not be able to do this, we may at least turn our eyes with compassionate tenderness upon her, as she stands beneath the Cross, to see how she bears herself under its crushing weight, that so we also may learn how to suffer.

There are some to whom misfortune deals a blow so terrific that they are stunned and dazed by it. The insensibility which its violence produces, shields them from feeling the poignancy of the pain. It was not so with Mary. Though the magnitude of her grief surpassed all other human sorrows, yet she did not allow it so to master her as to make her swoon away, and thus be unable to feel the keenness of the sword which wounded and tortured her. Her grief, being calm and self-possessed, was on that very account all the more terrible, all the more bitter, because her mind fully adverted to all the circumstances which aggravated and brought it home more closely to her heart. Not one circumstance of those three cruel hours, during which the Saviour of the world slowly died before her eyes upon His Cross of shame, escaped her notice. Her chalice was indeed a deep and bitter one, but she drained it to the very dregs. She stood beneath that Cross!

Yet she was neither hard nor insensible. She sighed and wept, and would not be comforted; but her grief did not overwhelm her. Strong men had fled away from that spectacle. Some had turned away their eyes, that they might not witness the terrible anguish which that mutilated Victim endured. But Mary stood by Him to the end, and her tearful eyes looked up into His pallid face as it sank in death upon His breast.

O broken-hearted Mother! by the grief which then wrung thy maternal heart, by the fidelity which made thee stand by the Cross of Jesus, and bravely associate thyself with Him in His hour of ignominy and of pain, pray for us to God, that our hearts may be torn with true contrition for our sins. Mayest thou stand by us in the last hour of our life, and give us courage to pass through the portals of death to the feet of Our Judge.

III. From the sorrows of the most holy Mother of God, learn that all sorrow is the effect of sin. The first tears that ever dropped from the eyes of man were wrung from him by the bitter loss which he sustained on account of sin; and every tear that has since fallen, and gone to swell the tide of human woe, has had its origin in sin. Mary had never been guilty of sin. But sin seized upon and murdered her only Child; and therefore sin made her weep, we might almost say, tears of blood, upon the place dyed with the blood which she had given to Jesus Christ.

Look back at your life, and call to mind the numberless times in which you have sinned against your Lord. Each of these sins had its share in causing Mary's bitter tears. They helped to strike down that thorny wreath upon the brow of Jesus; to wield the cruel scourge; to dig through the delicate hands and feet; to murder Him upon the Cross. They gave nerve to the executioner's arm, and malice to the hypocritical Scribe, and words of scorn to the rabble that screamed and yelled around the Cross.

When, therefore, you contemplate the sorrows of our dearest Mother, fall upon your knees before her, look up into the face of your Saviour, smite your breast, ask pardon for having been the cause of His and of her sufferings; and promise that by resisting evil for the future, and by living a holy life, you will endeavour to blot out the evil of the past. If the merciful but just hand of God should chastise you for your sins by sending you sorrow to wring your heart with anguish, and to draw bitter tears from your eyes–Oh! lift up those eyes to the Cross on which Jesus hangs, beneath which Mary stands, and learn patiently to bear the trial. Weep with her over the work which your hands have done. Those tears are a sweet balsam to the wounds of Jesus; they are a consolation to the heart of His Mother; they are a health-giving fountain which will wash away the filth of sin, ‘and heal the stroke of its wound.' 

The Seven Dolours

Different sorrows of Mary have been honored in the Church’s history, but since the 14th century these seven have commonly been regarded as the seven dolours (sorrows) of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

The prophecy of Simeon The flight into Egypt The loss of the child Jesus for three days Meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary The crucifixion and death of Jesus Jesus being taken down from the cross Jesus being laid in the tomb. Manual of Devotions Translated by Fr. Ambrose St. John , 1861

Devotion to the Sorrows of our Blessed Lady dates from Calvary. The Apostolic Church clung round her whom Jesus had given to be its Mother, and ever remembered that it was amid the pains, the Blood, and the agonies of the Passion, that it had become the child of Mary–literally “the child of her Sorrows.” The chief characteristic, then, of the Church's first love to our Lady was a deep, tender, loving, and child-like devotion to her Sorrows, and the Apostolic age bequeathed this exquisite feeling to succeeding times. But it was reserved for the thirteenth century, in many respects the grandest period in the history of religion, to develop this intuitive aflection, by giving it, as it were, a form, and uniting those most attached to this devotion in a confraternity, strongly recommended by the Church, and richly endowed with indulgences, and other favours by the Supreme Pontiffs.

It was in the year 1234. that seven holy men of Florence, retiring from that city into the cloister founded a religious Order, under the name of the Servites, or Servants of Mary, whose especial object was to honour the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin; nor was it long before Heaven miraculously proved that our Blessed Lord, the Man of Sorrows, was well pleased with this afifectionate devotion to her who had the most nearly and bitterly shared in His Passion.

This tender sympathy, and the consequent graces richly bestowed by Jesus and Mary, were however not to be confined to the cloister. A lay affiliation of the Servites of Mary was soon established; the habit, or scapular of our Lady of Sorrows, enriched with numerous indulgences, was eagerly sought after by thousands of all ranks. The Crown or Rosary of the “Sorrows” began to emulate the Dominican Rosary; in short, the Confraternity of the “Sorrows,” like the great Society of Mount Carmel, spread through Christendom, was in like manner encouraged by holy Popes, and in like manner drew down the favours of God, and the blessings of Mary, on untold thousands of rich and poor.

The great object of this Society is to nourish a loving sympathy with our Blessed Mother in her sufferings, and with her, and through her, to unite ourselves with Jesus bleeding and dying for us.

Those who wish to practise this devotion may be divided into two classes:

1st–Those who wear the black Scapular and receive her Crown or Rosary, and join from time to time in the Offices and devotions of her Sorrows.

2nd–Those who, in addition to the above, become enrolled members of the confraternity, with a good intention of regularly observing its rules.

It is with sincere pleasure, and heartfelt gratitude, that we have seen this beautiful devotion established in this country. It has lately been regularly organized as a canonical Confraternity at St. Patrick's, Soho, London, where the first Feast of the Seven Sorrows has been solemnly kept. Of this we are certain, that in proportion as we, the Servants of Mary, compassionate her sufferings and meditate on her great Sorrows, while thus our love for her grows daily “more and more,” so also will our love for Jesus crucified still more continually increase. Private devotions will multiply, public Offices will be more regularly and more devoutly attended, and, as we confidently believe, Mary will show us a grateful love, and, with her own most marvellous blessing, will bless those who, by compassionating her Sorrows, show themselves the most truly to be her children, and give the sweetest consolation to her afilicted heart. 

[confrontingbabble-on]

“These twelve dubious concepts promote conflict, cruelty, suffering and death rather than love and peace.

1. Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. Calvinists talk about “God’s elect,” believing that they themselves are the special few who were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).

Religious sects are inherently tribal and divisive because they compete by making mutually exclusive truth claims and by promising blessings or afterlife rewards that no competing sect can offer. “Gang symbols” like special haircuts, attire, hand signals and jargon differentiate insiders from outsiders and subtly (or not so subtly) convey to both that insiders are inherently superior.

2. Heretics – Heretics, kafir, or infidels (to use the medieval Catholic term) are not just outsiders, they are morally suspect and often seen as less than fully human. In the Torah, slaves taken from among outsiders don’t merit the same protections as Hebrew slaves. Those who don’t believe in a god are corrupt, doers of abominable deeds. “There is none [among them] who does good,” says the Psalmist. Islam teaches the concept of “dhimmitude” and provides special rules for the subjugation of religious minorities, with monotheists getting better treatment than polytheists. Christianity blurs together the concepts of unbeliever and evildoer. Ultimately, heretics are a threat that needs to be neutralized by conversion, conquest, isolation, domination, or—in worst cases—mass murder.

3. Holy War – If war can be holy, anything goes. The medieval Roman Catholic Church conducted a twenty year campaign of extermination against heretical Cathar Christians in the south of France, promising their land and possessions to real Christians who signed on as crusaders. Sunni and Shia Muslims have slaughtered each other for centuries. The Hebrew scriptures recount battle after battle in which their war God, Yahweh, helps them to not only defeat but also exterminate the shepherding cultures that occupy their “Promised Land.” As in later holy wars, like the modern rise of ISIS, divine sanction let them kill the elderly and children, burn orchards, and take virgin females as sexual slaves—all while retaining a sense of moral superiority.

4. Blasphemy – Blasphemy is the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. By definition, criticism of these ideas is an outrage, and it is precisely this emotion–outrage–that the crime of blasphemy evokes in believers. The Bible prescribes death for blasphemers; the Quran does not, but death-to-blasphemers became part of Shariah during medieval times.The idea that blasphemy must be prevented or avenged has caused millions of murders over the centuries and countless other horrors. As I write, blogger Raif Badawi awaits round after round of flogging in Saudi Arabia—1000 lashes in batches of 50—while his wife and children plead from Canada for the international community to do something.

5. Glorified suffering – Picture secret societies of monks flogging their own backs. The image that comes to mind is probably from Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, but the idea isn’t one he made up. A core premise of Christianity is that righteous torture—if it’s just intense and prolonged enough–can somehow fix the damage done by evil, sinful behavior. Millions of crucifixes litter the world as testaments to this belief. Shia Muslims beat themselves with lashes and chains during Aashura, a form of sanctified suffering called Matam that commemorates the death of the martyr Hussein. Self-denial in the form of asceticism and fasting is a part of both Eastern and Western religions, not only because deprivation induces altered states but also because people believe suffering somehow brings us closer to divinity.

Our ancestors lived in a world in which pain came unbidden, and people had very little power to control it. An aspirin or heating pad would have been a miracle to the writers of the Bible, Quran, or Gita. Faced with uncontrollable suffering, the best advice religion could offer was to lean in or make meaning of it. The problem, of course is that glorifying suffering—turning it into a spiritual good—has made people more willing to inflict it on not only themselves and their enemies but also those who are helpless, including the ill or dying (as in the case of Mother Teresa and the American Bishops) and children (as in the child beating Patriarchy movement).

6. Genital mutilation – Primitive people have used scarification and other body modifications to define tribal membership for as long as history records. But genital mutilation allowed our ancestors several additional perks—if you want to call them that. In Judaism, infant circumcision serves as a sign of tribal membership, but circumcision also serves to test the commitment of adult converts. In one Bible story, a chieftain agrees to convert and submit his clan to the procedure as a show of commitment to a peace treaty. (While the men lie incapacitated, the whole town is then slain by the Israelites.)

In Islam, painful male circumcision serves as a rite of passage into manhood, initiation into a powerful club. By contrast, in some Muslim cultures cutting away or burning the female clitoris and labia ritually establishes the submission of women by reducing sexual arousal and agency. An estimated 2 million girls annually are subjected to the procedure, with consequences including hemorrhage, infection, painful urination and death.

7. Blood sacrifice – In the list of religion’s worst ideas, this is the only one that appears to be in its final stages. Only some Hindus (during the Festival of Gadhimai) and some Muslims (during Eid al Adha, Feast of the Sacrifice) continue to ritually slaughter sacrificial animals on a mass scale. Hindu scriptures including the Gita and Puranas forbid ritual killing, and most Hindus now eschew the practice based on the principle of ahimsa, but it persists as a residual of folk religion.

When our ancient ancestors slit the throats on humans and animals or cut out their hearts or sent the smoke of sacrifices heavenward, many believed that they were literally feeding supernatural beings. In time, in most religions, the rationale changed—the gods didn’t need feeding so much as they needed signs of devotion and penance. The residual child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (yes it is there) typically has this function. Christianity’s persistent focus on blood atonement—the notion of Jesus as the be-all-end-all lamb without blemish, the final “propitiation” for human sin—is hopefully the last iteration of humanity’s long fascination with blood sacrifice.

8. Hell – Whether we are talking about Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, an afterlife filled with demons, monsters, and eternal torture was the worst suffering that Iron Age minds could conceive and medieval minds could elaborate. Invented, perhaps, as a means to satisfy the human desire for justice, the concept of Hell quickly devolved into a tool for coercing behavior and belief.

Most Buddhists see hell as a metaphor, a journey into the evil inside the self, but the descriptions of torturing monsters and levels of hell can be quite explicit. Likewise, many Muslims and Christians hasten to assure that it is a real place, full of fire and the anguish of non-believers. Some Christians have gone so far as to insist that the screams of the damned can be heard from the center of the Earth or that observing their anguish from afar will be one of the pleasures of paradise.

9. Karma – Like hell, the concept of karma offers a selfish incentive for good behavior—it’ll come back at you later—but it has enormous costs. Chief among these is a tremendous weight of cultural passivity in the face of harm and suffering. Secondarily, the idea of karma can sanctify the broad human practice of blaming the victim. If what goes around comes around, then the disabled child or cancer patient or untouchable poor (or the hungry rabbit or mangy dog) must have done something in this or a previous life to bring their position on themselves.

10. Eternal Life – To our weary and unwashed ancestors, the idea of gem encrusted walls, streets of gold, the fountain of youth, or an eternity of angelic chorus (or sex with virgins) may have seemed like sheer bliss. But it doesn’t take much analysis to realize how quickly eternal paradise would become hellish—an endless repetition of never changing groundhog days (because how could they change if they were perfect).

The real reason that the notion of eternal life is such a bad invention, though, is the degree to which it diminishes and degrades existence on this earthly plane. With eyes lifted heavenward, we can’t see the intricate beauty beneath our feet. Devout believers put their spiritual energy into preparing for a world to come rather than cherishing and stewarding the one wild and precious world we have been given.

11. Male Ownership of Female Fertility – The notion of women as brood mares or children as assets likely didn’t originate with religion, but the idea that women were created for this purpose, that if a woman should die of childbearing “she was made to do it,” most certainly did. Traditional religions variously assert that men have a god-ordained right to give women in marriage, take them in war, exclude them from heaven, and kill them if the origins of their offspring can’t be assured. Hence Catholicism’s maniacal obsession with the virginity of Mary and female martyrs. Hence Islam’s maniacal obsession with covering the female body. Hence Evangelical promise rings, and gender segregated sidewalks in Jerusalem and orthodox Jewish women wearing wigs over shaved heads in New York.

As we approach the limits of our planetary life support system and stare dystopia in the face, defining women as breeders and children as assets becomes even more costly. We now know that resource scarcity is a conflict trigger and that demand for water and arable land is growing even as both resources decline. And yet, a pope who claims to care about the desperate poor lectures them against contraception while Muslim leaders ban vasectomies in a drive to outbreed their enemies.

12. Bibliolatry (aka Book Worship) – Preliterate people handed down their best guesses about gods and goodness by way of oral tradition, and they made objects of stone and wood, idols, to channel their devotion. Their notions of what was good and what was Real and how to live in moral community with each other were free to evolve as culture and technology changed. But the advent of the written word changed that. As our Iron Age ancestors recorded and compiled their ideas into sacred texts, these texts allowed their understanding of gods and goodness to become static. The sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam forbid idol worship, but over time the texts themselves became idols, and many modern believers practice—essentially—book worship, also known as bibliolatry.

“Because the faith of Islam is perfect, it does not allow for any innovations to the religion,” says one young Muslim explaining his faith online. His statement betrays a naïve lack of information about the origins and evolution of his own dogmas. But more broadly, it sums up the challenge all religions face moving forward. Imagine if a physicist said, “Because our understanding of physics is perfect, it does not allow for any innovations to the field.” Adherents who think their faith is perfect, are not just naïve or ill informed. They are developmentally arrested, and in the case of the world’s major religions, they are anchored to the Iron Age, a time of violence, slavery, desperation and early death.

Ironically, the mindset that our sacred texts are perfect betrays the very quest that drove our ancestors to write those texts. Each of the men who wrote part of the Bible, Quran, or Gita took his received tradition, revised it, and offered his own best articulation of what is good and real. We can honor the quest of our spiritual ancestors, or we can honor their answers, but we cannot do both.

Religious apologists often try to deny, minimize, or explain away the sins of scripture and the evils of religious history. “It wasn’t really slavery.” “That’s just the Old Testament.” “He didn’t mean it that way.” “You have to understand how bad their enemies were.” “Those people who did harm in the name of God weren’t real [Christians/Jews/Muslims].” Such platitudes may offer comfort, but denying problems doesn’t solve them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Change comes with introspection and insight, a willingness to acknowledge our faults and flaws while still embracing our strengths and potential for growth. In a world that is teeming with humanity, armed with pipe bombs and machine guns and nuclear weapons and drones, we don’t need defenders of religion’s status quo—we need real reformation, as radical as that of the 16th Century and much, much broader. It is only by acknowledging religion’s worst ideas that we have any hope of embracing the best.”

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.

https://valerietarico.com/2015/01/20/religions-dirty-dozen-12-really-bad-religious-ideas-that-have-made-the-world-worse/

[thelastpilot]

Unwritten Lyrics- Chapter 1

To get back into writing and to fulfill my long held desire to write a dedicated Adrien/Nino fic, i present the first installment of this Teacher AU. ^u^ Adrien is a first year Literature teacher at Lycée Molière, a ‘school city’ in Paris containing students from the ages of 11-19. Just two doors down from his new office is the Music Room, where songs often wander out into the open hall.

The air was pleasant and crowded with noise as Adrien quickly hurried up the Metro steps out into the open street. He took a moment to absorb his surroundings, aware of the shoulders brushing past him as he committed the cardinal sin of dawdling at the top of a subway entrance. It was only a seconds’ hesitation, the tall reaching buildings keeping sunlight to themselves for a while more this early in the morning and leaving the cobbled sidewalks and morning commuters to fend for themselves in dim casted shadow. He was spurned to move again by a particularly nasty glance when he looked back down, and with a quick shift in the grip on his suitcase he was off down the street, hurried by his nervousness as well as his excitement.

It was the first of September in Paris, most people aware of the change in atmosphere for the native citizens. For visitors it was all the same, maybe only those with children even bothering to notice that the school year was eager to restart, even if it’s students were not. It was safely Saturday, and while come Monday the sidewalk would be flooded early morning with youth funneled into the waiting stone brick building at the end of the road, for now it only welcomed staff.

Adrien shifted his sweaty palm again, tugging at his light sweater and taking a breath.

He had studied a long time, done what was asked and he had a certain level of confidence in himself. It’s just that teenaged kids were a rough place to start… of course he couldn’t turn it down though, god no. Lycée Molière was an incredible place to begin teaching. The student base was small, the kids had a reputation for being by and large well behaved, and the staff was small and attentive. There were perhaps 150 teachers in the school with 1,400 students this year.

It’s just… teenagers were monsters sometimes.

Adrien shook his head, sighing deeply and reprimanding himself as he effortlessly walked shoulder to shoulder with the sidewalk traffic, aware of the school’s face on the far end waiting stoically for him.

He hadn’t even started, deciding who the kids were or ought to be was unfair. Plus, he had been a teenager at some point not even remotely all that long ago, and he had never given his teachers a hard time. He had witnessed some foul behavior sure, but mostly the kids were either kind, or disinterested.

Mm… yeah that about summed it up. Kids either cared or they didn’t, and depending on the class and the teacher, a lot of the kids didn’t.

He was stepping into a weird place, an insanely unique and relatively unfair opportunity. A teaching position in a school like this was ridiculous, and had predictably only had an opening because of a literal death. The last literature teacher for his grade range had dropped dead about a month ago, the poor guy. He was old enough to have possibly seen the original written languages be formed though, so…

Happens.

Some people just didn’t retire, even if the school begged them to and offered incentives so high it outweighed their prospective retirement. People just get comfortable, and die in their desk chairs.

Which he sincerely hoped had been replaced… he had literally died in it while visiting his office during the break. Just sat down and died.

There had been a scramble to interview replacements, and when the first miracle of even getting the interview being freshly out of his student teaching had passed he was sure that was the end of it, but apparently he had made an impression.

The hiring board was entirely women, and even though the reality of it was really unprofessional it was possible they had remembered him and his charming smile over some of the other applicants with many, many, too many years of experience. Maybe they were just hedging their bets and wanted to get someone a little less likely to die, or maybe they just wanted to train him themselves. Or possibly a few of the younger women had made an unprofessional decision. No matter how though, he had gotten a sort of short notice position.

New teachers usually have a solid hiring period starting at the tail end of the previous school year, so a month of clearance to plan curriculum was… crap. They assured him that they would allow him to use Mr. Idwitch’s (bless his soul) already established plan that had been uh… found with him at his desk, but from Adrien’s perspective it was…

Entirely unusable.

He made a half-hearted attempt to suppress his dread as he cleared the last of the street, vaguely looking for traffic before jogging across the road towards the looming, stone-brick building. It was an elegant building, the double wooden doors shielding a school soon to be filled with hundreds and hundreds of disinterested teenagers.

Of course they would be though, he thought to himself as he headed for the doors. With a teaching plan like Idwitch’s he was sure half of the kids wanted to smash their brains out against the desks, hell he wanted to. Just month to month of dull, dry readings and formulaic predictable analysis and stale old classics and on and on and on till they all died in their desk chairs.

He couldn’t use that, how could he possibly expect even himself to give a damn if there wasn’t any of the elements that made him love what he did, or what he was trying to start doing, at any rate. Where was the engagement? Where were the works that pulled you in and stimulated the readers into asking their own questions, not just the ones that were written down already?

Alright maybe expecting his first year of teaching to be Dead Poet’s Society was a little ambitious, but he had to hold on to something. His trepidation was letting his eagerness slip between his fingers, caught up in the shaking tremble of a first year teacher.

His fingertips connected with the wood of the main door, having overreached the handle in his distraction and leaving him blinking somewhat stunned at the too close entrance, only now really aware that he had arrived.

That shiver of dread slipped through him again, but he shook his head, clenching his reaching hand briefly into a fist before gripping the handle.

Don’t decide what the world is before you meet it, he reminded himself, even in his rattled state leaning on an old favorite of his.

He had been working for this for years… and he finally had the opportunity.

Don’t decide what it is without giving it the chance to show you.

He sighed, letting his hand linger on the handle, wondering what he looked like waiting at the grand, tall doors. Probably like one of the students, surely, intimidated by the soon to start school year and loitering outside. But he wasn’t a student, not anymore.

He was a teacher. And while he might not have the experience of his predecessor he did have his enthusiasm, his plans, and a little bit of humor.

Hopefully, this would be enough.

 He pulled on the handle, straightening his stance as the door opened enough to let him slip inside.

The entrance was not entirely unfamiliar, he had been here twice before for his interviews and had thought the hall intimidating then but it had since lost of a little of its edge. His footsteps echoed on the carefully clean but weathered tile floors, having born students across it since 1888.

The building had been small once, teaching only girls for a long while into its career before opening its doors to everyone. Buildings were added and classrooms extended, until the school was a frame of buildings around a large, open courtyard. He could see parts of it through the glass panes set in the doors ahead of him, wings of offices and stairs ushering towards classrooms on either side with scatterings of glass cases and self-important awards hung on the walls. It was old and elegant, as were many things in Paris, with repairs and additions made to compliment the changing times. The courtyard, despite time, remained largely the same. Dirt paths and garden fences, stone fountains and secluded benches, overlooked by hallways laced with creeping ivy attempting to obscure the doors of the classes that resided behind them. Overall it was stone and tile and brick and ivy, woven together and hammered down with a hundred student’s steps until it became a school, waiting anciently and patiently for its newest, unprepared instructor.

Adrien nodded to himself, a small smile forming as he looked around him for the first time knowing that it was his school. He had been a visitor before, but now he could expect to be here every day, doing his best to get at least one kid to learn something.

It was admittedly still a little unsettling though, being so empty. Schools had a way of feeling out of place when not filled with students, as if being crowded and humming were a condition of its existence and without it it’s reality could be called into question.

Adrien shut the door behind him, grinning at the way the click and boom of the door echoed and ran through the hallways. His following chuckle also ran away from him, and he cast his gaze about with a little of his trepidation returning.

He had a pretty solid guess about where his office was, his home base for the school year since the nature of his class meant he would be moving from place to place a lot. However, he did not have the key and he was going to have to track down the principal or about anyone at least a little more important than him to get one. Staff were afforded these two extra days to get things in order, and in his case, cram like hell to try and have a unit planned. He wanted to be tucked away in a dead man’s office so he could get to work and maybe make it feel a little like his own before Monday, but that still left him in the awkward period of standing alone in the entry way trying to remember where the offices were.

Adrien held his briefcase in front of him a little nervously, walking forward to peer down the hallways stretching in either direction. They both looked formal and old and held a dozen doors, but to his left he sighed in relief to see a small, simple sign dictating “Main Office”.

He followed them dutifully, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling new students probably had at being lost and out of place. It didn’t feel all that unlike his first day in public school, pacing around with his school bag trying to look like he knew where the health office was. Now it was inherently the same, he just had a lot more student debt and a few degrees to indicate that he still didn’t know where the health office was, but at least he knew a little about classroom management.

He paused in front of the labeled main office, recognizing it now from where he had been asked to wait during his interview. He smoothed his sweater and paused to fix his hair, then stepped inside with a prepared, warm smile for the aging secretary behind the desk.

It was a quick and uninteresting series of “Oh welcome Mr. Agreste!” and “Oh yes your key it’s right here I should- yes, yes there it is,” and all things like that, peppered with smiles and friendly chit chat. As it went on he got a little more comfortable, grinning easily as he discussed his hopes for his courses this year. He felt like a teacher, which was good. He could actually pretend a little like he had a handle on the whole thing, as the kind woman found him all the keys he’d need for this or that and another thing as well, and a crumpled map because the “floors are a labyrinth some days, especially once the kids come!”

The whole exchange only took a few minutes and quite abruptly he was back out in the hallway, pinning his briefcase to his side with an elbow and smoothing out the map of the grounds as he walked slowly in what was probably the wrong direction.

Adrien looked periodically between his paper and his surroundings, frowning at the dark wood stairs as he approached them and wondering if they might mislead him. After conferring with his guide however he gave them the benefit of the doubt, wandering up to the second floor and into the first of the ivy sheltered hallways.

He stopped at the door leading outside, standing in the open doorway and taking a moment to appreciate it. He couldn’t help but laugh, his eagerness again shoving his fears to the wayside and demanding it be heeded.

The sun had arrived, finally clearing the buildings that kept it from touching the ground to at least pour through the ivy. The warm morning light was cut to pieces by the wide, illuminated leaves and the thin railing fence, shining through the arches of stone brick that the ivy clung to and draped over. It scattered over the warm colored tile, simply marked classrooms and offices breaking up the spaces all the way down, paired with a soft, and distant tune.

Adrien turned his head as he finally strode forward, checking to make sure the last part hadn’t been imagined. There was a pause but after a moment he heard it again, sounding out and falling quiet. Like an instrument being tuned.

Adrien hummed, looking down at his map as he walked leisurely down the hall. The presence of an instrument, a violin it sounded like, was confusing but not entirely unreasonable. It was a school campus; it was entirely likely that-

Ah. Yes, a music room, that would explain it.

Adrien tapped the marking on his map, residing a small distance away from the room circled in red pen which indicated his office. On paper it was only slightly larger than a standard classroom, tucked not far from his comparatively measly office. As he continued to walk the sound grew louder as he drew closer, and he hummed again, brow furrowing.

Violins weren’t usually the sort of thing you’d find in a campus music room. Usually it was flutes and metronomes, maybe a handful of other small instruments and keyboards, not something practiced like a string instrument. Possibly the elective courses for the older students could have something a little more complex but still, the hand that played it now was clearly experienced, readying the instrument for some number it was meant to perform to the nearly vacant, sun filled hallway.

The teacher then, obviously. No students would be here for another two days, only a handful of staff were probably present, preparing their classrooms and plans.

The sound of scales climbing and restarting was as loud as it was bound to be, Adrien glancing to the side to see a single, unassuming door, left ajar.  It was smooth dark wood set in the brick, a slate gray plaque positioned beside it and reading only ‘13B Music Room’. He slowed as he passed it, but couldn’t see far inside the mostly dim interior.

Adrien took a handful of slow steps past it, thumbnail digging into the soft leather of his briefcase’s handle. Should he introduce himself? Or…?

Adrien paused fully, looking towards the door as the scales gave way to an ambling, formless tune, and he thought maybe not. He’d be interrupting, and besides they were practically neighbors for the times he was in his office, he would surely meet everyone in this row at some point or another. He continued, eyes trained on the doors now as he passed them, until he traveled the short distance to the end of the line, the corner room.

You’d think being on the end would allow for more room, but it was incredibly cramped. The door just before his was also an office, just as slim and bland and formal. He came to a stop in front of the very last door in the hall, and frowned a little at the plaque.

‘15B Office Quarters, Professor Clinton Idwitch Ph. D.’

Adrien paused, allowing a long look partially out of respect but also out of nervousness. With his free hand he idly fished for the brass key, glancing down only to sort between the three he had been given, then once found he held it before him, looking at the room number pressed into the metal.

15B. So this was him…

Adrien took a deep breath before just getting it over with, reaching out and unlocking the door, swinging it open to find a small, but not unbearably tiny office.

He sighed in relief to find it barren, kind of prepared for pictures of an old, old man and his family sat on top of a cluttered cough drop ridden desk. Instead the walls were pockmarked with holes from nails and thumbtacks, but otherwise bare. The desk had a small stack of papers and a desktop, a few sticky notes left on the monitor with Wi-Fi log ins and his personal passwords to download his class roster and things which was great to see. From the plaque he had assumed that the school had just been completely unprepared for him, but at the very least he wasn’t sitting in a dead man’s memories.

He stepped inside with a grin, closing the door behind him and setting his briefcase down on the desk. He shot the chair a hesitant look, but found it somewhat new looking so he decided it was probably alright. And even if it wasn’t he really didn’t want to know, because just knowing that the old codger had been found face down literally at this desk was…

He shook off a shiver of disgust, closing his eyes and getting acclimated to the small space.

It was bare, and likely haunted, but it was his. He’d be constantly moving between classrooms, so this was his only space to make his own. It was overwhelming, and the workload bearing down on him with so little time left stress clawing at his back but he refused to be bested.

Sure he had two days left to cement enough of a teaching plan to set up the first few weeks and he hadn’t had a chance to look over the textbook in more than a fleeting moment. And fine, he was incredibly new with no allies and was likely to get as lost going to the bathroom as he had as a child, but that wasn’t cause for panic. It was an opportunity to overcome, even if it meant many stressful nights…

Adrien wondered, briefly, what kind of fate Mr. Idwitch succumbed to at this very desk. He was young still, only 24, but he wondered if he might wile away in here until he died, out of sight under a mountain of coursework.

Dramatic maybe, but a teacher’s first year is an unrelenting learning curve of mistakes and questions. He was trying to keep his head up as best he was capable but…

Adrien’s head was bowed, staring sightlessly down at his latched briefcase when through the hall and through his door, came a sound.

It was the sort of pitch intent on interrupting, distant and muffled but violin had a way of being heard without all together being piercing. It strode down to him and rapped it’s knuckles on the door, asking for his attention.

Adrien turned as the song started, the lingering end of his failing mood sourly wondering if this was going to be a regular problem with the music room so close by, but quickly his criticism fell away.

Its tuning completed and practice scales proved unnecessary, a full piece began to play. It was peaceful and undemanding, the single instrument starting to swell and sing as if it were unaware there was no one to accompany it. It was audible but not loud through his closed door, and after a moment he reached out without standing and opened his door, letting it fall ajar.

His hand lingered, outstretched as the full tone reached him. Almost as if the melody knew it was being listened to the pace suddenly increased, and the slow elegant tune hit a turning point the moment his gaze fell back on the sun drenched ivy outside his door. The notes picked up and ran, jumping over themselves and sprinting feverously through the hallway, unrestrained and seemingly unlimited. The style was completely different, needlessly fast and complex like it had abruptly become bored with itself. The carefully beautiful music did away with pretense and set off on its own course.

“Well now you’re just showing off,” Adrien said aloud, retracting his hand but leaving the door open as he kept his focus outside. As the violin jittered and became more like a fiddle he laughed to himself, distantly surprised at himself for the humor.

He was deflecting, ignoring his stress in favor of appreciating the song, he knew that. But you grabbed for driftwood too when you were drowning, even if what you really needed was land.

‘Cut yourself a little slack,’ he thought to himself, swiveling his chair to face the open door. The violin ran and played, the backdrop to his internal placating. ‘You’ve done what you can, and you’ll do a little more. Maybe it won’t be the best, but at the very least it’s something, right?’

Hm…

Adrien sat in his chair, facing the hallway and continued to listen to the song that, for a moment, offered him a little distraction. He had work to do, he should be getting started, but all the same… this was nice too. Who knows maybe he would accomplish more if he relaxed a little bit.

He didn’t move, letting the moment be as it was as the music changed style and mood once again. It changed shape like it was alive and opinionated, losing interest in itself and switching again. It led him to wonder how long the violinist might keep it up before realizing they just might not like playing the violin, if they were so unsatisfied. The thought of it stopping, however, was disappointing to him.

Even if the musician found fault with it he thought it was incredible, clearly the player had a variety of talent if they could alter their style completely at the drop of a hat. It was company without questions to ask. It was a way of not feeling so… on his own, without having to flash a perfect smile and pretend like he knew how to be a teacher.

Maybe he was overthinking it, or maybe he was just grateful for something to fill his bland, featureless space. Still though, as the music slowed and found a peaceful tempo again amidst the wide leaves of the ivy and the stone brick arches, he had stability. A moment to recapture his determination that was so eager to flee from him.

He rooted it to the spot, leaving the door open but turning back to his desk with a little more strength, his anxious doubts quieted beneath a quirky, woven tune.

The distraction had come at just the right time to keep him from being overly dramatic. Thinking back to the image of withering away at his desk actually made him chuckle, though it had only been a few minutes since it was first formed. He was panicking and being stupid, it just took a little clarity to see that sometimes.

Panic be damned, he decided. Doing nothing would only make it worse, if he wanted to get a grip he needed to have something to lean on, and a few weeks’ worth of lesson plans was a good place to start. Then research and planning, and reading and learning. He had to get acclimated, pick up his copy of the book, he needed to check with department lead to see how early exam data needed to be collected and- so on, and so on.

Just a little bit of strength, just a stretch of land to stand on. Nothing big or life changing, just something to stop you on the way down long enough for you to get your feet back underneath you. Or maybe it wasn’t even that, so quick as it had been, but something to snap him out of it.

‘Stop being stupid,’ the warping violin might warn. ‘Just get to work.’

“Just get to work…” he muttered to himself, nodding his head and warming up his desktop to get started, pulling papers from his briefcase and casting about for a pen.

“Just get started, and see where it goes.”

[tricksheart]

AKIRA’S CHILDHOOD / PRE-GAME EVENTS Parts 1 / ???

Born to parents Katsuya Suou and Maya Amano in the year of 2000, month February, day 26th. Due to circumstances surrounding his birth, as he should had not existed because of the events of Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, his ability as a TRICKSTER cause time to flow backwards and changed many reality events leading up towards his initial birth. Battles and chance encounters between his parents and their persona teammates / adventures were now taken place in the year 1999 instead of early 2000, actually lining up with the original reality that proceeded the Batsu one. Essentially, due to his birth, everything was now as it should had been. As in, if the evil being Nyarlathotep didn’t destroy the universe the first time around. Even some of his parent’s friends could remember their bonds and relationships, resulting some of them living together. One big one was his uncle Tatsuya moving in with his ( Tatsuya’s ) long time lover and friend, Jun Kurosu. They couldn’t get officially married but still wished to be together forever. Everyone considered / still considers Jun to be family and treats them like so.

But not everything is perfect. His parents can’t be in the same vicinity for more than three days at most on a good day. As punishment for his parents actually having Akira and ruining some of the consequences of the remembering curse, the evil being Nyarlathotep manages to still make his mother Maya die if she spends time with her husband Katsuya for more than the allowed numbers of days. It’s a brutal and bloody death and doesn’t allow any warning time. By that moment, it’s game over. The only clues are pains and shortness of breath located in the chest area. It’s where his mother had gotten stabbed in Persona 2 Innocent Sin and triggered the grand cross effect, killing everything in the world in one fell swoop. The warning signs started to manifest on day one. 

So in an effort for a temporary solution, his parents were still married but lived separately from each other. The reasons behind these events were kept from Akira ever since the day that he was born. He never once understood why his parents were living in two different places. All that he knew was that they shared custody rights over him. Akira usually lived with his father on the weekends and weekdays with his mother in her apartment complex. Wanting to be a normal family unit and not quite understanding the consequences that would happen if his parents did decide to live in the same household, he kept pestering both sides. But no one would listen to the pleas of a small child and instead he kept getting passed around week after week, month after month, years after years. Eventually in his last year in grade school, he stopped questioning it all together and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth mentioning anymore because no one cared. No one stood up and asked the real questions, the truth lost in a fog. There was no justice to be found and his father, who he had previously admired and saw as a hero, was a complete and utter hypocrite.

At that time, Akira started causing trouble in his hometown. Minor things like graffiti art on walls, getting into small fights, pranking everyone and anyone he had met, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and being rude and vulgar. In his mind, he was just a pain in the ass that was causing his parents to still be married. Clearly, it was him that was the problem and would solve itself if he disappeared or acted up so they would abandon him and go along with their own lives. Even thinks it would had been better if he wasn’t born into the world. So Akira was going to raise hell because that was what he was only good for, his purpose in life at a crossroads and unclear. A reverse fool if you will. Just getting by and not really living life to it’s full potential. Just a punk and a damn brat. A trash of society. 

It’s one of the reasons why he stood up to Shido back in March of 2016 because his life didn’t mean shit to him or anyone else. He had nothing to lose or so Akira had thought. Actually being arrested and pinned with a crime that he didn’t commit shattered his reality and place in life. His hell raising rebellion spirit that all he had left suddenly got taken away from him as well. Everything in that moment flashed before his eyes quite literally and figuratively. All he was trying to do was stop a drunk man hitting on a scared woman crying out for help. It was the right thing to do at the time right? Even a punk like him should had at least done something, anything. It’s something that had pissed him off and he acted on his impulses to be someone that mattered for once in his life. However, every good deed doesn’t go unpunished. His actions had life alternating consequences.

Not to mention that is was his own father that had booked and processed him in jail during that fateful night. To think that his own father would actually uphold a frail law rather than listen to the innocent pleas of his very own flesh and blood sent a chill through Akira’s veins and a betrayal so deep inside of his heart and soul. Growing up he saw his father as his hero. The one who risked his life everyday keeping all citizens safe and taught Akira how to cook & bake. To not fold to the injustice around them and to do the right thing even if you’re the only one who believes its right. Not some cheap Sentai Rangers on TV who were so superficial and fed corporate forced values onto it’s audiences. Now realizing that his father was a complete and utter sham broke Akira’s trust in him.

And the final nail to the coffin was that both of his parents agreed to the court’s ruling and passed him off to a complete stranger in the huge city of Tokyo. He should had been careful what he wished for since this would definitely get him out of his parents hair for being a ‘pain in the ass’ but why did it feel so suddenly empty and cold? That they could just pay some random person money for their trouble and send him off to who knows where? Maybe deep down they didn’t really want him to be born or part of their life. He knows that type of thinking isn’t right but when they ship him to Tokyo with a crude moving box and nothing else, he can’t help but have that thought in his mind. Maybe everything was a mistake and his fault?? Self doubt and withdrawing into himself begins as he starts the new school year filled with uncertainty, fear of the unknown and his heart & soul shackled in the isolation room in the heart of Mementos. A wanted dangerous sinful criminal due for rehabilitation through the guillotine. 

Not much later finds out that he’s been a pawn in a rigged game from the start of his trip to Tokyo and used to prove a point to the masses of humanity. Also, the stranger known as Sojiro Sakura had said, the past truly follow you wherever you go. He just didn’t think he had to fight the crawling chaos’s, who had cursed Akira’s own family, own father ( as a persona ) in order to destroy a false reality. Ironic that everything came in a full circle even if he himself had no clue about the events surrounding his own birth. Fate has a funny way of making everything a fucking comedy and a tragedy at the same time. Maybe that’s why he’s always laughed mockingly and replied all the time, ‘Now that’s comedy!”.

[renewingthemind]

True Christianity

The scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus' day lived very holy lives. They lived up to a rigorous standard of outward behaviors, but it was just religion. They dressed a certain way. They blew trumpets before them when they gave away their alms. They prayed on the street corner where everyone could see them. They did all of these rituals, but they didn't know the Lord. Jesus called them hypocrites and white washed tombs that looked good from the outside but were full of dead men's bones (Matthew 23:27). Obviously, not every person who acknowledges that God is real has a relationship with Him.

Scripture makes this clear in the book of James, which says, "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble" (James 2:19).

That is one of the most sarcastic statements in the entire Bible. It says you believe that there's one God, good job, but you haven't done anything that the devil hasn't done. Satan believes in God, yet we know he isn't in right standing with Him. Satan isn't saved; he's going to spend eternity in the lake of fire that was prepared for him and his angels where they will be tormented day and night forever (Matthew 25:41 and Revelation 20:10).The devil believes in God, but his entire life and everything he does is in rebellion against God. So, just believing God exists doesn't put you in right standing.

To be in right relationship with God you have to yield to Him. You have to submit yourself to Him in order to receive relationship.

One night, a religious leader named Nicodemus went to see Jesus to ask Him some questions about the things He was teaching. Nicodemus didn't want to speak with Jesus openly during the day because of the criticism he would suffer, but his heart was sincere enough that he sought Jesus out at night. He was in conflict because he saw the anointing of God in the miracles Jesus was doing, but Jesus himself was contrary to everything that the religious system of his day was educating people to believe. After Nicodemus questioned Jesus, He replied, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3:3

This is an amazing statement, and Nicodemus was overwhelmed. He asked Jesus, "How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" (John 3:4). Nicodemus was thinking about a physical birth, but Jesus went on to say, Verify, verify, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. John 3:5

Some debate the meaning of being "born of water,"but I believe it is simply a reference to natural birth. A woman about to give birth is said to have her "water break," meaning that the amniotic fluid that surrounds a baby in the womb has dispersed in preparation for childbirth. This scripture is saying that unless you have a natural birth—when you were born in water—and then the second birth when you are born of the Spirit of God, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The second birth is what we call being "born again." So, just as surely as people have to be born physically to exist in this world, you have to be born again of the Spirit to enter into the kingdom of God. In fact, some Bible translations actually render this verse "born from above" or "born of God."

When God created Adam, He made his body and then He breathed into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The same Hebrew word that is translated "breath" is the word that was used for "spirit" all the way through the Old Testament. In other words, when God breathed into man, He literally put His Spirit into him. I'm sure that if we could have looked at Adam's physical body before God blew the breath of life into him, it would have looked just like our physical body looks. But there was no life in it until God put His Spirit in him.

Your spirit is the life-giving part of you. The New Testament confirms this fact when it says that it is the spirit that gives life to the body (James 2:26). Most of society is missing out on what life is all about because they are focused on the wrong thing. They give all of their attention to the body by indulging and attempting to satisfy every appetite and emotion that comes along. The body is not the most important part of life. The spirit is the real, life- giving part of a person—that's the reason someone can have all of the money, fame, and possessions imaginable and still be miserable. It's why people tarn to drugs and other addictions. They are trying to find life and happiness in the flesh, not realizing that what they are seeking only comes through the spirit.

When man was created, his spirit was alive because it was born of God, but the spirit of man died when he sinned. The Lord told Adam that in the day he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die (Genesis 2:17). Yet Adam and Eve lived for hundreds of years after they ate of the tree, so it wasn't physical death God was talking about. They died spiritually when they sinned, not physically.

The word "death" has come to mean a variety of things to different people. Some people interpret death to mean that you cease to exist, but in reality you never cease to exist. Although the physical body dies and ultimately decays, our spirit and our soul go on to exist eternally somewhere - for those who have been born again, we will be with the Lord. We also have a promise that God will one day resurrect our bodies, and our bodies will be reunited with our spirit and our soul (1 Corinthians 15). The natural mind thinks of death as the end, but the Bible teaches that there is no end.

Scripturally, death means separation. When Adam sinned, he died spiritually. His spirit didn't cease to exist, but it was separated from God. He no longer had the life of God inside of him. Originally, humans were created to be God dependent (Jeremiah 10:23). We were in union with Him. Sin, however, caused a separation, and the spirit that was within us died. After sin entered the world, we were abandoned to our own wisdom. The very nature of man became dominated and controlled by the devil. It became lustful, selfish, and full of hatred and misery. The sin nature present in man means that hurt, pain, and negative influences don't originate from an outside source; they come from the inside.

After Adam and Eve sinned, they began to produce children and they passed on their sin nature to every person who has ever been born of the flesh —which excludes Jesus. Since Jesus was born of a virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14 and Luke 1:26-38), He is excluded from this sin nature. He didn't get His life through man. He received a physical body through a woman, but His life came directly from God. So, with the exception of Jesus, every person who has ever been born on this earth has been born into sin with a nature that is separated from God and corrupted. This explains why Jesus said you must be "born again," because the spirit of every person who has not accepted Jesus as their Lord is still dead.

Man's separation from God isn't about individual actions, or sins; your actions of sin are a result of your sin nature. You don't have to teach a child to do evil; he or she will do it naturally. The sins we commit don't give us a sin nature. It's the other way around: the sin nature we were born with makes us sin. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Romans 5:12

True Christianity is not behavioral modification. It isn't merely learning to control your actions. It isn't possible to behave perfectly, and God doesn't grade on a curve, so you can't just live better than somebody else and earn salvation. You either have to be perfect, or you have to trust a Savior who was perfect for you. There is no other option. Even if you could behave perfectly from this moment on, it wouldn't change the fact that you sinned in the past. Most people think that God has a scale on which He will weigh their good actions against their bad actions, and if the good actions outweigh the bad, then they'll be accepted. That isn't what Scripture teaches. Salvation is not the result of doing the right things or living a good life.

The Bible says that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). God isn't asking us to meet some minimum standard of holiness. He created man to be perfect, and all of us have sinned and fallen short of that standard. Jesus is the perfect representation of the perfect standard of God, and none of us meets that standard. The payment for the sin we've committed is death. Somebody has to pay, and you can't pay for your own sins, so God sent us a Savior.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

This is where true Christianity and religious Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, diverge. The majority of religions teach that there is a supreme being who created all things, and he is an angry god. To appease this angry god and overcome his wrath at you for your sins, you must promise to behave rightly and deny yourself. In a sense, these religions put the burden of salvation on your back; it's all up to you whether or not you can live holy enough to earn salvation.

Every other major religion, and even a large portion of what is called Christianity, is preaching that you have to earn relationship with God by being good. I'm making a distinction here because not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a true Christian. True Christianity teaches that we could never pay the debt we owe for sin, so God himself became a man and paid the debt for us.

Jesus Christ was God in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16), and He lived a sinless life (1 Peter 2:21-22). He earned relationship with God through His own goodness. Although Jesus had done no wrong, He was killed on the cross and suffered for our sins. He took our punishment. He sacrificed himself for us. God's anger against sin fell upon Jesus, and He forever satisfied the wrath of God against the sin of the human race. Jesus has paid for all sin for all time, and because of that, you and I can have eternal life. Not by being good, not by earning it ourselves, but by receiving the salvation paid for by Jesus. Scripture says, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Jesus has already paid for your sins. The extent of your sin or how good you've been are not the issue. There is only one sin that separates you from God, and that is failing to believe in Jesus (John 16:9).

Salvation comes down to one thing: will you accept what Jesus has done for you?

False Christianity and false religions teach that you have to try to maintain your own goodness and somehow earn relationship with God, but it can't be done. Imagine the time when you will stand before God. If He asks, "Why should I accept you into heaven instead of banishing you to an eternity in hell," what are you going to say? I was a good person? I wore a saffron robe? I went to church and paid my tithes? I read the Bible and tried to be as holy as I could? Any of those answers will cause you to be rejected and sent to hell. The only correct answer is, "I put my faith in Jesus." You might have lived a good life, but without Jesus you can't be saved. And who wants to be the best sinner that ever went to hell?

If you try to stand before God in your own goodness, you are going to come up short. All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The only thing that will make you worthy to enter heaven is that Jesus paid for your sins, and you have claimed Him to be your Lord and Savior. You have to put your faith in the goodness of God through Jesus. Everyone who trusts in Jesus will be made in right standing with God. Anyone attempting to trust in their own goodness will never be able to live up to God's standard of perfection. The only way to have relationship with God is to have it through faith in Jesus.

Relationship with God is something you receive; it isn't something you earn. When you accept Jesus, you get changed on the inside—you are born again from above. Now, true Christianity does preach that you should live a good life, but a good life isn't the root of your relationship with God—it's the fruit of relationship with Him. You start living holy as a result of having a relationship with God, not as a means of obtaining it. Those are subtle distinctions, but the difference is profound, and it is what divides true Christianity from every other religion in this world.

Salvation and eternal life are all about Jesus. Some people try to say that Jesus was a great example of love, but that He is only one way to God. Jesus isn't a way; He is the only way to the Father. The Bible says, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

Jesus said of himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). Jesus proclaimed that He was absolutely the only way, so either He is who He claimed to be, or He was a deceiver and a charlatan. There are no other options. You can't merely look at Jesus as a good man. Either He is God, or He was a liar.

My testimony, and the testimony of countless others, is that Jesus is Lord. He is exactly who He said He was: the Son of God. The miracles He performed, the prophecies He fulfilled, and the testimony of God the Father all prove that Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is real, and He is alive. He changed my life, and He can change yours. You can know Jesus as your personal Savior and be born again today.

The Word says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9). Notice that it has to be more than an internal decision. Jesus said that whoever confesses Him before men, He will confess before the Father. But whoever denies Him before men, He will deny before the Father (Matthew 10:32-33). Receiving salvation has to be real enough that you live it and share it with other people.

Choosing to receive Jesus as your Savior and be born again from above is the most important decision you will ever make. Everything that is seen in this world is going to pass away, but those who know Jesus as Lord will never die (John 11:25-26). If you have come to realize what true salvation is and you're ready to receive it, then say this prayer out loud and you will be born again. It's that simple.

Father, I'm sorry for my sins. I believe Jesus died to forgive my sin, and I receive that forgiveness. Jesus, I make You my Lord. I believe that You are alive and that You now live in me. I am saved. I am forgiven. Thank You, Jesus!

If you said that prayer and believed it in your heart, then you are born again! You might look the same on the outside, but you are a whole new person. Your spirit is now alive with the life of God. You have been set free from the powers of darkness, and delivered into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

Being born again is about more than just getting into heaven when you die. Jesus died to give you eternal life, and eternal life is relationship with God —relationship that begins the moment you are born again (John 17:3). Now that you are born again, it is essential that you learn your new identity in Christ so that you can walk in victory and fulfill the plans God has for your life. God desires to pour out His blessings upon you, but you have to know how to cooperate with Him to receive all that He has for you. So, don't stop here; there is a lot more to learn. In the meantime, go tell someone about the decision you have made.

Andrew Wommack (from “Sharper than a Two-Edged Sword”)

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10 Broadway Inspired Cocktails (Toast The Tonys)

Theatrical Tipples

Over the years there have been scores and scores, musical and otherwise, of cocktails named after Broadway plays and performers as well as Broadway themed drinks in general. Here's an alphabetically ordered list of some of those curtain-raisers popular enough to have garnered a standing ovation with their own signature sip.

Many of these date back to the late 1800s, well before the Tony Awards were founded in 1947, when nicknamed The Great White Way as one of first streets to be fully illuminated by electric light and all the marquee signs advertising what was NOW SHOWING at each theater. However, that doesn't mean they weren't critically acclaimed. Along with having their name in bright lights on Broadway, they were the toast of the town, literally!

Drink-wise, some of these recipes are classics and others have become obscure, possibly needing a revival. Do you have a favorite from way back when or do you favor something that's more now than then?

A-List Of Drinks Named After Broadway Plays, Performers and Producers

Adonis

The Adonis cocktail made with dry sherry, sweet vermouth and orange bitters was named after the Greek God featured in this self-titled burlesque style musical which opened in September 1884 starring Henry Dixey. Adonis was the first show on Broadway with more than 500 performances.

The Affinity

Although there was a Broadway play called The Affinity in 1910, it was still known as Les Hannetons in 1907 when the New York Sun announced, "there's another new cocktail on Broadway... the Affinity." The original Affinity cocktail mixed with Scotch whisky, Italian vermouth, powdered sugar and orange bitters was probably named after the song in the Broadway musical The Soul Kiss whose production cast included many who went on later to produce and write the script and music in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Call Me Madam

The indirect relationship here may qualify as Off-Broadway, but there is a connection. The Black Russian cocktail was created in 1949 in honor of the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta, who was known as the "hostess with the mostess" and was supposedly the inspiration for the lead character Sally Adams in Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam played by Ethel Merman in 1950.

Chorus Girls' Milk

Back in the day, the Champagne cocktail was also known as Chorus Girls' Milk.

Fedora

The Fedora cocktail is made with bourbon whiskey, rum, brandy, curacao and sugar garnished with a slice of lemon. It was named after and first published in the same year as the Broadway play Fedora (1882), turned into a hat (1887), turned into an opera (1898), turned into a movie (1916), etc.

A Kentucky Colonel

Its possible, even probable, that the Kentucky Colonel cocktail, which combines the obvious bourbon whiskey with the not so obvious Benedictine herbal liqueur and dates back to at least 1913, could be named after the 1889 novel, turned into an 1892 Broadway play, turned into a 1920 movie. However, signature drinks are usually deemed namesakes closer to their grand opening on stage so that leaves a little room for doubt.

Rob Roy

The Rob Roy cocktail is a Scotch Manhattan with an affinity to the namesake above that's made with blended Scotch whisky, sweet vermouth and aromatic bitters. A bartender at the Waldorf Astoria hotel is credited with this recipe's creation in honor of the 1894 opening of the theatrical musical Rob Roy. Technically, an operetta, which is a light opera with acting versus a musical play with singing and dancing, this drink can be included on this list of Broadway inspired drinks along with being classified as an opera themed cocktail too.

Up In Mabel's Room

Crosby Gaige, a noted Broadway director / producer and president of the New York Wine & Food Society, included the Up In Mabel's Room drink in his 1941 bartending book called Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies Companion. This blend of rye whiskey, grapefruit juice and honey syrup is the namesake nip of the 1919 Broadway play / 1926 black & white silent comedy film / 1944 Academy Award nominated color movie that centers around Mabel's return of inscription incriminating lingerie gifted to her during a former romantic affair meant to remain secret.

Yankee Prince

The Yankee Prince cocktail gives its regards to the 1908 Broadway play where a yankee doodle comes to London town and wins over the love of his life by being more noble than nobility. This drink commemorates the musical comedy by garnishing the recipe with a shot of humor. Its crowning achievement is the hazelnut which tops off the dry gin, orange liqueur and OJ as an edible coronet.

Zaza

Naughty, naughty. Yet somehow, not naughty enough. The Zaza cocktail made with dry gin, Dubonnet and aromatic bitters memorializes the immoral behavior of a prostitute turned music hall performer who carries on an illicit affair with a married man in this late nineteenth century play. However, American audiences were bitter that their version had been censored from the more sinful French original and lusted for more.

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Week 7 —> Human Rights and Torture:  We care more whether the chicken we eat is free range than how people are treated in the penal system

The American Prison System is failing to fulfill its purpose. As our institutions of criminal justice have grown, a reactive approach to their evolution has frequently created more problems than it has solved. Data indicates that the United States has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world; not only does the US have the most inmates in prison but we also incarcerate more people per 100,000 citizens than any other nation. The US Prison rate is almost four times larger than that of the worlds average incarceration rate. If the United States prison rate is compared to that of other democratic nations reasonably equal in progress, then we incarcerate almost eight times the number of people as those nations. This shows that our incarceration rate is more on par with less developed nations. The original goals of incarceration in America were to protect the peace, rehabilitate offenders through religion, and operate better than the system in England. Until the mid 18th century and the idea of the “rights of man” began to appear and a campaign toward abolishing torture and lessening punishment was underway, most punishments were extremely brutal and they were held in public, as elaborate and shocking affairs of entertainment, designed to act as a deterrent to those who watched. Punishment consisted of arbitrary trails, torture and brutality. Unfortunately the reality of the American system has failed to live up to its initial aspirations.

The four primary categories of punishment theory are retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, or incapacitation.

Retribution: The retributive theory of punishment, also known as “just desserts,” is a punishment proportionate in severity to the crime that stems from a place of vengeance, not concerned with how criminal sanctions affect future crime. If severe punishment deters other potential criminals from committing a crime that is just an added bonus, not the goal.  Retribution is about serving justice, not controlling crime. “Just desserts,” is often argued to be unjust because it is difficult to create fair punishment scales based on human judgment and then also factor in mitigating aspects when determining a sentencing. The retributive theory focuses solely on the offender; it does not take into account prevention, protection, or reform.

The deterrence theory of punishment is based off the belief that people choose to obey or violate the law after calculating the gain and cost of their actions.]The goal is that by making punishments more severe it will prevent other people from committing the same crime. Thomas Hobbes was a proponent of deterrence because when the social contract fails, Hobbes argues that the punishment for crime must be greater than the benefit that comes from committing the crime. “Deterrence is the reason individuals are punished for violating the social contract, and it serves to maintain the agreement between the state and the people in the form of a workable social contract.” Retribution is getting even with the felon while deterrence is doing something to the felon so as to deter him and other would-be felons from doing the same wrong doing.

Incapacitation theory is similar to the deterrence theory of punishment. The incapacitation theory of punishment advocates that offenders should be prevented from committing further crimes by their removal from society. Incapacitation theory literally means to stop offenders from offending again. Capital punishment is the most severe form of incapacitation. According to the incapacitation theory, capital punishment is justified because once an offender is dead it is assured that they will never harm again. The primary method of incapacitation is imprisonment. According to this theory, punishment is not concerned with the nature of the offender or with the nature of the offense, as is the case with retribution. Rather, punishment is justified by the potential risks individuals are believed to pose to society in the future.

The theory of rehabilitation is concerned with the nature of the offender, and rehabilitation programs are meant to reform criminals and help them to lead a crime free life. The rehabilitative idea originated from church organizations that desired to “save souls,” rather then just lock people away. Originally the basis of rehabilitation was the offender’s spiritual welfare. Many criminals suffer from mental and physical illness, drug addiction, and economic failures; the theory of rehabilitating treats all of these problems as circumstantial, attributing responsibility to both person and circumstance. Therefore, by seeking to aid the offender in overcoming personal and circumstantial setbacks, rehabilitation claims to productively reenter offenders into society.

Of the four different goals of punishment theory, rehabilitation is the most concerned with the future wellbeing of the offender. Supporters of rehabilitation argue that crime is determined by circumstance: economics, brain chemistry, companions, family life, ect. Unfortunately the rehabilitation theory of punishment is not very popular, critiques of rehabilitation are that it is immoral because it denies the offenders responsibility for their actions by crediting their behavior to outside forces. Another critique is that it is impractical, most problematic is the cost of rehabilitation; it costs much more to help someone become a better person than it does to lock them in a cell all day. Also there is no clear treatment for criminal behavior that has been proved, for many criminals it is believed that there is no rehabilitative treatment that would be effective and that judging a criminal and deciding what treatment is right is extremely arbitrary.

We need rehabilitation in our penal system. Criminals leave the US penal system with all odds against a successful return to society; about 2 in 3 criminals are rearrested within three years. This is creating an endless cycle of crime and punishment and hurt with innocent children born into the cycle. The rehabilitative theory would choose to help these people prepare for society instead of setting them up for failure. Instead of exacting revenge against criminals, making their punishment a lesson, or locking people away and throwing away the key, thereby making their lives worse and continuing the cycle, rehabilitation tries to help them. Rehabilitative punishment is customized to the offender rather than to the crime.

Crime and punishment in the colonial era of America looked very different from it does now: there was social control through small towns, churches, and social rules in the community. The original settlers of America wanted their system of punishment to look differently than the system of punishment in England. Communities relied on very informal methods rather than on formal criminal justice rules. Small communities had sheriffs, constables, judges, courts, jails, and gallows but they played a small role in keeping order in the communities. Those who strayed from the social norms were more likely to be judged by their peers and their church than by law enforcement. Deterrence was a popular form of punishment in these early societies, most likely because of the Christian influence. The church supported public punishments because it symbolized an atonement or penitence for their sins. Common punishments included being sentenced to an hour in the stocks, to be publicly flogged, or even publicly hanged. These punishments were public occurrences with the goal of creating community norms and show the consequences of wrongdoing. The church was the main form of social control and many of the churches laws were also the laws of the community.

In the 1800s, America was rapidly growing and diversifying rapidly, therefore a more formal justice system was required. The American Revolution between 1765 and 1783 had a major impact on the way in which America’s criminal justice system developed. There a quickly increasing population and a need for change from British punishment laws. The 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments put laws into place that protected the people from unreasonable searches and seizures, self-incrimination, cruel and unusual punishments, and gave the rights to due process and a speedy public trial.

The creation of jails became necessary, and the opening of The Walnut Street Jail by Pennsylvania Quakers in 1790 marked the end of the colonial era of crime and punishment, and the birth of the modern criminal justice system. William Penn was a leader of the Quakers and he was very influential in the development of the system of crime and punishment in America. The Quakers believe that all people have an inner light that tells them right from wrong so they had the radical idea to help criminals find this inner light.

With the help of Ben Franklin, the Quakers of Pennsylvania created a revolutionary prison called the Eastern State Penitentiary. Notice that the name Penitentiary contains the route word penitence. The Quakers believed strongly in their model for rehabilitation and that the criminals, exposed, in silence, to thoughts of their behavior and the horribleness of their crimes, would become genuinely penitent. Before the Eastern State Penitentiary, most eighteenth century prisons were simply large holding pens. Large groups of men, women, and children were thrown together to suffer abuse form guards and their fellow inmates. The Penitentiary opened in 1829 and was one of the most expensive structures in America at the time. The architecture of the penitentiary was built strategically to allow constant surveillance of inmates while they had complete isolation in order to allow the criminals time to reflect and build skills they could use upon release. During the following century many prisons were built around the world modeled after Eastern State Penitentiary’s plan. Unfortunately due to overcrowding and under funding the Quaker theory was never fully tested, the solitary confinement tactics were abandoned and the Penitentiary shut down in 1913 due to unruly conditions. Today the effectiveness of isolation has been debated and even considered cruel and unusual, many prisoners held in Eastern State Penitentiary became insane or committed suicide due to the unbearably isolationism. Although their intentions were good, the Quaker plan of isolation and penance's eventually determined to be harmful for human beings.

In 80 years America had changed a lot, the country went from small communities of mostly white Englishmen to a mix of many different nationalities. To maintain order in the new urban society America created a new law enforcement tool resembling the modern police force. The 19th-century was a time for testing the rehabilitation theory and it moved away from the theory of deterrence. Punishments were done in private, removed from society. Incarceration became the most used punishment for felons. Between 1820 and 1900 America created a complex system of punishment: prisons, reform schools, parole, separate institutions for women and juveniles, and industry inside the prison. Also during this time incarceration accelerated at an increasing rate. The national incarceration rate rose from 29.1 to 115.2 per 100,000 between 1850 and 1880.

It is the mission of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons to protect society by confining offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.

Justice is not blind. Today our criminal justice system is not color blind, efficient, safe or humane. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States currently holds 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Corporations exploit the work of inmates to make a profit, with little to no concern for the inmate. In fact, inmates make less than many people in third world countries for their labor. Conditions in which these prisoners live are neither humane nor safe. Today’s culture in America jokes about prison rape frequently because it is so widespread. Everyone knows actions such as these are happening but it is not adequately addressed. The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a study in 2007 saying that 5 percent of inmates had reported being sexually victimized within the last 12 months, and these are only the cases that are being reported. The national prison population was 1,570,861 in 2007 so according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in one year alone more than 70,000 prisoners were sexually abused.

Not only is our current penal system unsafe, it is also color blind and inefficient. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black males are incarcerated at a rate of "more than 6.5 times that of white males and 2.5 that of Hispanic males.” "Black females are incarcerated at approximately three times the rate of white females and twice that of Hispanic females.” These statistics show clear issues of continuing racism in our justice system.

The most important thing prison’s claim to do is to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens. However, with the current state of affairs, this rehabilitation is not something the prison system seems to be offering. A mark of the success of prisons would be fewer offenders inside of prisons and fewer of these people reoffending. Until the 1970s there were many issues with the prison system but the basis for the policies was rehabilitation, which helped more people in the system than we do today. In 1970 there were 150 people in prison per 100,000. After the changes in policy, this number grew substantially, to 753 people in prison per 100,000 in 2008.  Not only are prisons growing but the recidivism rates are also extremely high. One study done by the National Institute of Justice in 1994 reported that Among nearly 300,000 prisoners released, 68 percent were re-arrested within three years. These numbers prove that our penal system is not fulfilling it purpose.

Prisons have become places where we allow humans to be degraded, abused, and humiliated. Prisons have been allowed to become primitive societies of barbaric violence contained by force and threat. Prisons are places where we feel quite justified in allowing people to suffer in fear of a culture of retribution and abuse. We feel it is somehow justice or a well-deserved punishment, but it is not just. It is important to establish meaningful consequences, separate criminals from free society in a way that protects the welfare and well being of others, and emphasizes our social expectation for those of free will to make moral choices. It is important that all people are given chances at redemption, the men and women who suffer in the penal system are not different than us, we want to believe they are somehow fundamentally separate and that separateness allows us to feel better about their treatment.  Lynn Hunt writes about the development of the notion of human rights and she explains that a change occurred during the mid 18th century when Enlightenment writers, philosophers, and legal reformers began to question torture and cruel punishment. Lynn Hunt, writes that, “The ground of all authority was shifting from a transcendental religious framework to an inner human one, but this shift could only make sense to people if it was experienced in a personal, even intimate fashion (Bone of their Bone, pg 83).” Two aspects really sparked this radical change: new found concern and privateness for the human body as well as empathy for humanity. Around this time people begin to be “self-contained,”  meaning they kept their bodily fluids to themselves, this amoung other things like new changes is music, theatre, painting, and writing allowed more people be autonomous, self-possessed and to feel empathy for others; barriers were broken down. It is important to continue to break down those barriers, today the US penal system is failing and we will need to find new sensitivity and empathy for our fellow human.

Most people who are sent to prison will one day be released and therefore we must do the best we can to prepare them for this time. There are undoubtedly those who should spend the remainder of their living days separated from free society because they are dangerous, unrepentant, and even pathologically committed to wrongdoing. But together with those who would very readily kill again are people who were convicted of crimes that were largely economic, not violent, that were truly acts of poor judgment and not fundamental immorality. We must create places where those who are serving time will be held humanely, with dignity and maybe the opportunity to examine their lives and their relationship to spirit. I am not saying prison should be fun or comfortable or easy or enjoyable. But I do believe it should be safe, that it should challenge people to change, provide expressions of humanity and at least the possibility of redemption. What would a prison look like if it was a place that was committed to spiritual growth, committed to reform and rehabilitation, committed to building trust and empathy and purpose and genuine respect for others?

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OUR LADY OF SORROWS September 15

Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Ora pro nobis.

Stabat mater dolorosa iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat filius.

(At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last.) Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306)

We pray today to Our Blessed Mother, that through our joining with her sorrows, we may find the joy of eternal salvation with Jesus Christ, Our Lord. We look to Mary as a model of forbearance and endurance, obedience and meekness, love, patience, and joyful suffering.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS Fr. Francis Cuthbert Doyle, 1896

I. One of the Wise Man's most pathetic exhortations is, that a son should never forget the travailing and the sorrows of his mother. In order, therefore, that we may bear in mind the bitter anguish which lacerated our Lady's heart, we must reflect today upon that scene of woe in which her seven-fold sorrow culminated, in which the waters rose up around her, and closed over her head in a sea of anguish, such as never before flooded the heart of mortal man.

Jesus hung on the Cross, the outcast of His nation–a mark at which the vile rabble, and their still viler leaders, hurled their bitter taunts, and aimed their clumsy scorn. A galling wreath of thorns circled His head; His eyes were filled with blood; His hands and feet nailed tightly down to the cruel wood. The wickedness of a sinful world pressed heavily upon Him, and its ponderous weight well-nigh crushed Him Who upholds the universe. During His death agony, men scoffed and jeered at Him, taunting Him with impotence, and blaspheming Him most vilely; and all the while there stood by that death-bed of shame, Mary His Mother! He was Her Child; her blood flowed in His veins; her heart beat in unison with His. Those sacred features, now so sadly bruised and disfigured, were the exact counterpart of her own. That head, now crowned with thorns, had often nestled in her bosom. That tongue which now and then spoke through the darkness, had been taught by her to lisp its first accents. Between Him and her there had passed all that interchange of fond affection and tender love which takes place between a mother and the child of her bosom. Add to this the intense love with which she loved Him as her God, and we may truly say, there never could be love between mortal man and God greater than the love which existed between Jesus and Mary.

If, then, the natural effect of love is union, and if the greater the love the closer the union, we may form some idea of the agony which the sufferings of Jesus caused her heart. The thorns which made His temples throb with acute pain were as a circle of fire upon her brow. The nails which pierced His hands and feet fastened her also to His Cross. The foul language, the revilings, the scoffings, the blasphemies uttered against Him, were as a hail of fire upon her heart. Verily she was filled with His reproaches, and the revilings of them that reproached Him fell upon her. To what shall we compare her, or to what shall we liken the sorrow of this Virgin daughter of Sion? It is great as the sea. Who shall heal it? ‘O! all you that pass by the way, attend and see if there be sorrow like unto her sorrow.'

II. As we look at that ocean of sorrow, the bitter waters of which inundate her soul, we are forced to acknowledge that human words are but faint and inadequate symbols by which to indicate its depth and its breadth. Yet, though we may not be able to do this, we may at least turn our eyes with compassionate tenderness upon her, as she stands beneath the Cross, to see how she bears herself under its crushing weight, that so we also may learn how to suffer.

There are some to whom misfortune deals a blow so terrific that they are stunned and dazed by it. The insensibility which its violence produces, shields them from feeling the poignancy of the pain. It was not so with Mary. Though the magnitude of her grief surpassed all other human sorrows, yet she did not allow it so to master her as to make her swoon away, and thus be unable to feel the keenness of the sword which wounded and tortured her. Her grief, being calm and self-possessed, was on that very account all the more terrible, all the more bitter, because her mind fully adverted to all the circumstances which aggravated and brought it home more closely to her heart. Not one circumstance of those three cruel hours, during which the Saviour of the world slowly died before her eyes upon His Cross of shame, escaped her notice. Her chalice was indeed a deep and bitter one, but she drained it to the very dregs. She stood beneath that Cross!

Yet she was neither hard nor insensible. She sighed and wept, and would not be comforted; but her grief did not overwhelm her. Strong men had fled away from that spectacle. Some had turned away their eyes, that they might not witness the terrible anguish which that mutilated Victim endured. But Mary stood by Him to the end, and her tearful eyes looked up into His pallid face as it sank in death upon His breast.

O broken-hearted Mother! by the grief which then wrung thy maternal heart, by the fidelity which made thee stand by the Cross of Jesus, and bravely associate thyself with Him in His hour of ignominy and of pain, pray for us to God, that our hearts may be torn with true contrition for our sins. Mayest thou stand by us in the last hour of our life, and give us courage to pass through the portals of death to the feet of Our Judge.

III. From the sorrows of the most holy Mother of God, learn that all sorrow is the effect of sin. The first tears that ever dropped from the eyes of man were wrung from him by the bitter loss which he sustained on account of sin; and every tear that has since fallen, and gone to swell the tide of human woe, has had its origin in sin. Mary had never been guilty of sin. But sin seized upon and murdered her only Child; and therefore sin made her weep, we might almost say, tears of blood, upon the place dyed with the blood which she had given to Jesus Christ.

Look back at your life, and call to mind the numberless times in which you have sinned against your Lord. Each of these sins had its share in causing Mary's bitter tears. They helped to strike down that thorny wreath upon the brow of Jesus; to wield the cruel scourge; to dig through the delicate hands and feet; to murder Him upon the Cross. They gave nerve to the executioner's arm, and malice to the hypocritical Scribe, and words of scorn to the rabble that screamed and yelled around the Cross.

When, therefore, you contemplate the sorrows of our dearest Mother, fall upon your knees before her, look up into the face of your Saviour, smite your breast, ask pardon for having been the cause of His and of her sufferings; and promise that by resisting evil for the future, and by living a holy life, you will endeavour to blot out the evil of the past. If the merciful but just hand of God should chastise you for your sins by sending you sorrow to wring your heart with anguish, and to draw bitter tears from your eyes–Oh! lift up those eyes to the Cross on which Jesus hangs, beneath which Mary stands, and learn patiently to bear the trial. Weep with her over the work which your hands have done. Those tears are a sweet balsam to the wounds of Jesus; they are a consolation to the heart of His Mother; they are a health-giving fountain which will wash away the filth of sin, ‘and heal the stroke of its wound.'

The Seven Dolours

Different sorrows of Mary have been honored in the Church’s history, but since the 14th century these seven have commonly been regarded as the seven dolours (sorrows) of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

1. The prophecy of Simeon 2. The flight into Egypt 3. The loss of the child Jesus for three days 4. Meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary 5. The crucifixion and death of Jesus 6. Jesus being taken down from the cross 7. Jesus being laid in the tomb.

Manual of Devotions Translated by Fr. Ambrose St. John , 1861

Devotion to the Sorrows of our Blessed Lady dates from Calvary. The Apostolic Church clung round her whom Jesus had given to be its Mother, and ever remembered that it was amid the pains, the Blood, and the agonies of the Passion, that it had become the child of Mary–literally “the child of her Sorrows.” The chief characteristic, then, of the Church's first love to our Lady was a deep, tender, loving, and child-like devotion to her Sorrows, and the Apostolic age bequeathed this exquisite feeling to succeeding times. But it was reserved for the thirteenth century, in many respects the grandest period in the history of religion, to develop this intuitive aflection, by giving it, as it were, a form, and uniting those most attached to this devotion in a confraternity, strongly recommended by the Church, and richly endowed with indulgences, and other favours by the Supreme Pontiffs.

It was in the year 1234. that seven holy men of Florence, retiring from that city into the cloister founded a religious Order, under the name of the Servites, or Servants of Mary, whose especial object was to honour the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin; nor was it long before Heaven miraculously proved that our Blessed Lord, the Man of Sorrows, was well pleased with this afifectionate devotion to her who had the most nearly and bitterly shared in His Passion.

This tender sympathy, and the consequent graces richly bestowed by Jesus and Mary, were however not to be confined to the cloister. A lay affiliation of the Servites of Mary was soon established; the habit, or scapular of our Lady of Sorrows, enriched with numerous indulgences, was eagerly sought after by thousands of all ranks. The Crown or Rosary of the “Sorrows” began to emulate the Dominican Rosary; in short, the Confraternity of the “Sorrows,” like the great Society of Mount Carmel, spread through Christendom, was in like manner encouraged by holy Popes, and in like manner drew down the favours of God, and the blessings of Mary, on untold thousands of rich and poor.

The great object of this Society is to nourish a loving sympathy with our Blessed Mother in her sufferings, and with her, and through her, to unite ourselves with Jesus bleeding and dying for us.

Those who wish to practise this devotion may be divided into two classes:

1st–Those who wear the black Scapular and receive her Crown or Rosary, and join from time to time in the Offices and devotions of her Sorrows.

2nd–Those who, in addition to the above, become enrolled members of the confraternity, with a good intention of regularly observing its rules.

It is with sincere pleasure, and heartfelt gratitude, that we have seen this beautiful devotion established in this country. It has lately been regularly organized as a canonical Confraternity at St. Patrick's, Soho, London, where the first Feast of the Seven Sorrows has been solemnly kept. Of this we are certain, that in proportion as we, the Servants of Mary, compassionate her sufferings and meditate on her great Sorrows, while thus our love for her grows daily “more and more,” so also will our love for Jesus crucified still more continually increase. Private devotions will multiply, public Offices will be more regularly and more devoutly attended, and, as we confidently believe, Mary will show us a grateful love, and, with her own most marvellous blessing, will bless those who, by compassionating her Sorrows, show themselves the most truly to be her children, and give the sweetest consolation to her afilicted heart.

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/