32 As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). 34 There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37 Above his head they placed the written charge against him: this is jesus, the king of the jews.
38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 44 In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[a] lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[b]
47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”
50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[c] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
55 Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. 56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph,[d] and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
It’s all over except for the democrat and MSM dementia in overdrive, of course…
Nothing has changed since November 9, 2016, if you woke up that morning & voted for Trump you are optimistic about the future. If you didn’t vote your hair is still on fire & you’ve never meaningfully tried to understand why people voted for him (hint was NEVER about him)
Let’s be clear, as the false narrative appears to be growing extra warts. The Mueller conclusion is that he and his mega platoon of Clinton butt-buddies ‘could not find enough to exonerate Pres. Trump of collusion with Russia and obstruction’. That was NOT his/their job. They were not, nor is our legal/judicial system in this country, tasked to find a person ‘not-guilty’ or even ‘innocent’. It is to prove his/her guilt. And so, when you hear the democrats and their MSM chiming “Mueller didn’t exonerate Trump!” do not buy into that bullshit. They are operating on this premise that we unwashed Americans are too damn stupid to know this simple fact that our nation was built on for well-over two centuries.
And if he found conclusive evidence Trump had obstructed justice, he would have said that. He didn’t. Schiff is spouting nonsense. https://t.co/gQqwSgMG5U
In this sense: At its heart, the Trump-Russia probe was about one question: Did the Trump campaign conspire, coordinate, or collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election? Mueller has concluded that did not happen.
Everything else in the Trump-Russia affair flowed from that one question. Paul Manafort’s shady finances would not have come under investigation were it not for that question. Carter Page would not have been wiretapped were it not for that question. Michael Flynn would not have been interviewed by the FBI were it not for that question. Zillions of hours on cable TV would not have been expended on Trump-Russia were it not for that question. And in the largest sense, there would have been no Mueller investigation were it not for that question.
And now Mueller has determined there was no collusion. Not that there was no criminal collusion. Or no prove-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt collusion. Just no collusion…
That is definitive. It is not kinda, sorta. It is definitive. As far as Mueller’s conclusions are concerned — and remember, he was long considered the gold standard of Trump investigations — there was no collusion.
The Mueller report is divided into two volumes. Volume I covers the collusion question. Volume II considers whether the president obstructed the investigation. But of course there would have been no obstruction investigation had there not been the collusion allegation to begin with. There would be no Volume II if there were no Volume I.
The report covers a lot of ground. Everyone knew, or should have known, that it would include details that Trump’s detractors could use against him and details the president’s supporters could cite in his defense. And it does. Certainly some House Democrats hope to use it as a road map to impeachment, and many, many Democrats hope to use it as a road map to defeating Trump in 2020…
It’s as I said yesterday… There is a reason Mueller enlisted a full team of Clinton operatives. He knew there was no collusion, perhaps actually being privy to the crafting of the hoax and informed he just had to go through the motions of an investigation in order to craft something fake tofu-meaty to throw to the democrats in Congress, especially after taking leadership of the House after the mid-term elections, so that they could spin and spin an impeachment move ahead of the 2020 election. And he has.
The longer the Democrats obsess over the Mueller report and the possibility of obstruction, the bigger hole they dig for themselves.
The reason is simple. The average American — what Groucho Marx used to call the Barber in Peru (Indiana) — not the army of Beltway lawyers, will scratch his/her head about why someone should be charged with obstructing justice for a crime he did not commit and did not even occur (i. e. collusion with Russia).
Yes, they understand there are legal niceties, but the bottom line remains. And those same middle American “Peruvians” realize — how could they not — that Donald Trump was under unprecedented assault from the media and Democrats from well before he first sat down behind the desk in the Oval Office. They further are completely familiar with Trump’s personality, his thin skin, his outspokenness, and are able to see him as a man responding emotionally — sometimes to his own detriment — to those almost entirely unjustified accusations. Most people will sympathize or at minimum be able to understand this as a defensible human reaction rather than obstruction of justice in a legal sense.
This is why House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and his cohorts are acting essentially as unpaid press agents for the president by keeping the Russia probe front and center and consequently paying less attention to issues that actually affect people’s lives.
Even worse, by continuing their Trump/Russia obsession Democrats will only be calling more attention to the forthcoming Inspector General’s report on the genesis of the investigation that is almost certain to point fingers in directions that will make them and their media friends uncomfortable. The potential for destroyed reputations at the least and incarcerations at the most is significant. Firings have already taken place…
Democrats have been living in a fantasy world since the clock struck midnight after November 8, 2016. Rather than accept reality and the results of historic victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election, Democrats have clutched to conspiracy theories.
The first fantasy was that the 2016 election was tainted by “fake news.” When that backfired, because after all it was the mainstream media that had to apologize for its biased coverage of the race, the narrative had to change. Democrats then settled on another conspiracy theory, hand woven by the Clinton campaign and deeply entrenched within the Obama administration Justice Department that was led by collusion truthers…
Democrats have been living in a fantasy world where words can lose all meaning. They declared the Obama administration was “not spying” on the Trump campaign when it sent covert informants to probe aides, tapped phones, and issued a secret warrant for surveillance. Perhaps Democrats have a different experience in the use of words. The reality is that spying did occur, and the investigators need to be investigated.
Before this president was even sworn in, Democrats sought to undermine him with their wild conspiratorial notions, aided by media outlets all too happy to spread false stories, promote fiction, and publish unverifiable materials. The Russia conspiracy saw many faces. First, it was “collusion.” When there was no evidence, the narrative changed to “obstruction.” Never mind that it was within the full authority of the president to fire James Comey, a man highly criticized by both parties for his improper actions as FBI director, including inserting himself in campaign politics.
It was not just the 2016 election results Democrats refuse to accept. They undermined the results of no collusion found by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. They undermined the results of no collusion, of the House Intelligence Committee investigation. They undermined the results of the inspector general investigation of finding misconduct by top ranking FBI officials who vowed to stop Trump from becoming president.
Why would they stop? Democrats are now undermining the results of the special counsel investigation and the findings of no collusion in the report by Robert Mueller, who they once elevated to sainthood. The conspiracy wheels will keep turning and the smears will keep coming because it is all Democrats have left to push in their narrative. They cannot win on the issues, they cannot win on the record of accomplishments under this president, and they cannot win on the economy that continues to sizzle…
For approximately 3 million people, nothing in the Mueller report could exonerate President Trump of “Russian collusion,” obstruction of justice, and various other high crimes and misdemeanors of which they are certain he is guilty. For those 3 million people (a number reflecting the combined average weekday primetime audience of CNN and MSNBC) Trump’s guilt is an indisputable fact, his presidency an ongoing crime against humanity, his 2016 election a fraud. In a nation of 325 million people, of course, 3 million is less than a single percentage point. However, that hard-core audience of obsessive Trump-haters includes every Democrat in Washington and the vast majority of our nation’s journalists, university faculty, and other such members of the intelligentsia. Therefore, their deranged idée fixehas enormous influence, calling into existence a sort of anti-Trump industry that manufactures a constant output of rage-inducing propaganda. The CNN/MSNBC bubble is the cable-TV equivalent of a cult compound, where dissent from their political religion is forbidden. For the past two years, the fanatics have been told every night by Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, et al. that the final destruction of Trump was at hand — “the walls are closing in!” — and the left-wing faithful awaited their deliverance from the evil man in the White House.
“Orange Man Bad” — that’s a shorthand label for the anti-Trump mentality, coined by an anonymous contributor on a Reddit forum in 2017, mocking the robotic mindlessness of the president’s enemies. No fact that might contradict their Trump-hating beliefs has any validity to them, because Orange Man Bad. By obverse principle, anything done to harm Trump or his supporters, including libel and violent assault, is considered legitimate, because Orange Man Bad. Living inside a media-generated echo chamber where everyone shares their simplistic worldview, the Trump-haters tune in nightly to their MSNBC/CNN religious revival and are catechized, so to speak, with the latest reiteration of the Orange Man Bad gospel.
What else can explain what happened Thursday, after Mueller finally delivered his 448-page “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The delivery of the special counsel’s report was preceded by a press conference at which Attorney General William Barr summarized the result of the investigation. Barr “made clear that, after two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and endless media speculation, the ‘Russian collusion’ story was, as some of us had noted all along, a story about nothing,” as Professor Glenn Reynolds observed. “No member of Trump’s campaign — and in fact, no American anywhere — colluded with the Russians to influence the campaign.” Contrary to what MSNBC and CNN viewers had been told night after night for month after month, Trump is not a Kremlin stooge and yet: “Orange Man Bad!” …
Chatting with a journalist about how disappointed I am in the hoaxster media's 'AKSHUALLY our debunked Russia narrative wasn't fake news" response to Mueller report, and he's mocking me for expecting literally anything better from them at this late date. Fair.
I know it's devastating that the narrative nearly everyone in the media pushed relentlessly — that Trump was a foreign agent — was completely debunked by their Lord and Saviour Robert Mueller…. HOWEVER, this shared talking point by Russia hoaxsters is downright pathological. https://t.co/mUM94duatw
This is just sad, pitiful, and pathetic. The fact remains, for over 2yrs the MSM "journalists" proved themselves to be little more than spider-eating Renfields to their blood-sucking democrats and Hillary Clinton masters, and have buried the MSM's credibility for all eternity. https://t.co/6xtxAIzmx1
Out of the entire report, this is what the Washington Post decides to go with as important. Read a couple sentences down to discover WHY he thought it was the end of his presidency – because everyone told him it would drag on for years and inhibit his ability to get things done. https://t.co/lIOEqnYG8W
Good thing nobody in the media ever took the position that the President was an asset of Russia and a traitor in order to justify a massive 2 year investigation that was based on an entirely false premise that the media created in the first place https://t.co/Re2OEIbK6b
2 yrs, a team of 19 Clinton supporters/donors, millions of our tax dollars and we finally busted and convicted the MSM for the manipulating, destructive, untrustworthy, colluding, biased liars we all knew they were. Congrats.
This is just embarrassing. It’s literally Elle Woods’ excuse for why her client couldn’t have committed murder in “Legally Blonde.” https://t.co/S4w4HITqby
CLASSIC moment from yesterday that nails the two year-long MSM false narrative campaign to the stinking rotting shit-house wall that is the American MSM…
Journalism in 2019:
Reporter: "Why did you acknowledge that this situation was unprecedented?"
One inherent message of the first volume of the Mueller report is clear: It is time for the professional media to assume responsibility for its role in inflaming the public with a scandal that wasn’t proven, by endlessly quoting intelligence and partisan political sources whose claims went far beyond the evidence it slithered upon.
Case closed. Russiagate was no Watergate.
The second volume of the Mueller report — dealing with 10 separate actions by Trump that could be construed as obstruction of justice — is less decisive.
It is clear from the report that an impetuous president with a famously quick temper pondered aloud about firing people such as Mueller, suggested that witnesses stick to their stories and sought leniency for some of his entangled aides. Senior advisers took extreme actions to ensure the president didn’t act on those impulses…
But, as Volume 1 of the Mueller report made clear, Trump committed no crime that he was trying to cover up…
But one lesson from this debacle, which Americans might find applicable to both the courts of law and public opinion, is worth grasping: A guilty man’s conduct to get rid of prosecutors, to impact witnesses or to impugn an investigation looks a lot more like obstruction than an innocent man’s similar actions during an effort to defend himself from bogus allegations.
In the absence of provable charges, the presumption of innocence still reigns supreme.
But this hoax has shown there are forces within our Republic, public and political/government, that have become extremely double-standard in who is and is not accountable to the law and to the American people. There really are two systems of justice right now in this nation, and Justice is no longer blind. That, comrades, is a deadly abomination.
But the remaining poltergeist in the room … and this is exactly why the MSM and the democrats are quadrupling down in the wake of the Mueller report putting an end to Trump and company “collusion” with Russia … is the blinding evidence of others in the prior administration, the government intel agencies under his control at that time, and the Hillary Clinton/DNC machine out to steal the 2016 election…
3) I hope POTUS, his family and staff realize how close POTUS came to an obstruction charge. Laws are made to restrain presidents, even genuinely frustrated presidents who are accused of things they didn’t do. President’s can’t instruct their staffs to lie. Ethics matter.
And no to obstruction, as levelheaded Constitutional lawyers are explaining, Mueller looks to have kicked that half of his report (Mark Levin calling it “Volume 2” that basically can get tossed in the dumpster fire) to Congress to define in better terms— for future reference.
Mark Levin: Volume 2 of the Mueller report is a 200-page op-ed that should never have been written https://t.co/OUAjNHtU6a
Jump to "where the Mueller team lists its 'prosecution and declination' decisions . . . try not to picture Mueller 'pit bull' prosecutor Andrew Weissmann collapsed under mountains of federal statutes after his two-year hunt to find one that applied." https://t.co/CNyqrPxFL8
Don’t forget, Barack Obama spied on people during his eight years in office and controlling federal resources at-hand. At least two or more in the media, the AP, FOX’s James Rosen and his parents, and CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson. Manipulating FISA with expensive faked documents created by foreign operatives, especially with the long experienced help of the Clinton machine, was basically child’s play for Obama. Not only should this secret court system now be seriously reviewed and scrutinized but those judges who were exposed to this must be interviewed and questioned by AG Barr and anyone else investigating the roots of this choking weed on our Republic and democracy. Those involved in this blasphemy must be held accountable and penalized, or we have learned nothing about just how damaged we have become. We cannot heal until the cancer has been cut out…
…@realDonaldTrump and his admin stood to expose alleged longstanding criminal wrongdoing within intel agencies. Not just what happened in 2015-2016. Some officials were/are desperately fighting for their lives/freedom. #GovtSpyingOnJournalists etc. #WoodsProceduresViolations
— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) April 19, 2019
Here's the funny little thing about collusion. It's not against the law. Conspiracy is against the law, but means an "organized attempt to break the law." If collusion is not illegal, you quite literally cannot have a "conspiracy to commit collusion."
Now then, what Hillary Clinton and the DNC, AND the Obama administration did was “conspiracy” that involved “collusion” on several levels. And there is irrefutable proof of that shit to be sure. It is what AG Barr is going to investigate.
Takes a sane person about 5 minutes of talking to Carter Page to realize the theory that he was a Russian asset is completely deranged
Similarly, the claim that FBI suddenly got spun up because of what Papadopoulos said in a bar is laughable
NYT's piece on Steele dossier says investigators are increasingly considering whether it was product of Russian disinformation. We addressed that a few weeks back too: https://t.co/3hqmlIb6bopic.twitter.com/qKjRxFHG2y
"So that's the bottom line. After nearly two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, hundreds of warrants and witness interviews, the special counsel confirmed — the Trump campaign nor any other Americans colluded," with the Russians.
What I am hearing from liberals/left and the MSM after Barr’s statement and the release of the redacted Mueller report is suspicious in and of itself. It sounds like more ‘collusion’ between those two parties that have pushed this bullshit for over two years based on lies, false premises and false narratives. You see, after over two years, millions of taxpayer dollars, and 19 democrat/Clinton donors/supporters “investigating” with Robert Mueller, what I am hearing noted from his report sure sounds like even more set-up of Pres. Trump for more dirty politics from the democrats and their butt-buddy MSM, especially in the lead-up to the 2020 election cycle. Mueller’s ho-humming and shrugging it off to the democrats in Congress who are chomping at the dick to impeach Trump, is that Hillary Clinton and the democrats sure got what we paid for from Mueller and his army of disgruntled Hillary voters … a “hanging chad”…
.@NicolleDWallace: "We know it wasn't a criminal conspiracy with the Russians, but then what was it? Because Robert Mueller spent 22 months looking at it, and if there was nothing, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have taken 22 months to say nothing." pic.twitter.com/UfP9CzDuhN
Remember the names of the people and media outlets who willfully perpetrated the Russia hoax. This is deeply sad to watch. But they don't have it in themselves to admit their massive failings. https://t.co/0guw3wG3ra
I keep hearing how Nadler and the dems are going to drag Mueller (and Barr) in for questioning. Every republican on that panel had better ask Mueller why he loaded his deck with all these democrats and Clinton pals, and not one conservative/republican. Not one.
All this shitting just to continue burying Hillary’s dirty dealing wrongdoing with the help of the Obama administration…
If you’re really interested in what obstruction of justice looks like then check out Hillary’s team deleting those thousands of emails and electronically wiping their servers clean.
You can have as many people testify as you want but it won’t change the outcome. The question that should be asked is on what basis was the FISA warrant issued and who knew about it. The American people deserve to know the truth since they paid for this investigation. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/46ilBKS8Ij
"This president and his team has been completely compliant and what is the net result?
"The net result is some $35,000,000 and 22 months later we know what we already knew, which is that this president won that election fairly and squarely" ~Kellyanne Conway #MuellerReport#MAGA
OKAY, I WROTE THIS FOR USA TODAY right after the Barr press conference, but they don’t want to run it because it doesn’t incorporate the Mueller Report. Since I don’t have time to read and digest the report this afternoon (I’m teaching two 2-hour classes back to back), I’m just posting it here. Enjoy!
_____
BILL BARR: ADULT IN THE ROOM
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Bill Barr’s press conference regarding the Mueller Report release was notable for both style and substance.
On style, he reminded us that in an age of shrieking media hysteria and out-of-control twitter-pols, there is still a place for stolid, stodgy, rule-following bureaucrats. Standing at the lectern with his lieutenants behind him, he calmly and carefully explained what was in the report, what had been redacted and why, and what the applicable laws and rules were. He didn’t play to the media, or to the social media. In tone and manner he was, well, boring.
It was refreshing.
On substance, he made clear that, after two years of investigation, thousands of subpoenas, and endless media speculation, the “Russian collusion” story was, as some of us had noted all along, a story about nothing. No member of Trump’s campaign — and in fact, no American anywhere — colluded with the Russians to influence the campaign.
In Barr’s words: “As the Special Counsel’s report makes clear, the Russian government sought to interfere in our election. But thanks to the Special Counsel’s thorough investigation, we now know that the Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of President Trump or the Trump campaign – or the knowing assistance of any other Americans for that matter. That is something that all Americans can and should be grateful to have confirmed. “
Nor do fallback claims of “obstruction” hold water: “In assessing the President’s actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context. President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as President, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the President’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion. And as the Special Counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation. Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.”
Barr also noted that the White House did not ask for any redactions in the report, and President Trump chose not to exert Executive Privilege, even though, in Barr’s words, “he would have been well within his rights to do so.” What redactions were made in the report were made by the Department of Justice attorneys and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff, and were designed to protect ongoing investigations and prosecutions, and some national security matters.
So no collusion, and no obstruction, and no serious grounds for complaining about the redactions. No doubt some politicians, eager to keep their base heated up, will try to pretend otherwise, and some cable news channels and media outlets, desperate for viewers and clicks, will go along.
But normal people should be pleased and relieved that there was no collusion, even as they should be angry that a huge chunk of our political class seriously maintained that the President of the United States was a Russian puppet. That claim, based more on a desire to undo the 2016 election than on any actual evidence, was a poisonous corruption of our political discourse, and those involved should be — but won’t be — ashamed.
“Yet Mueller wrote that if Trump had proven that he clearly was innocent, then Mueller would have declared him such.
The burden lies on Trump? And at the “clear and convincing evidence” standard of evidence?
The “clear” standard is a high standard of evidence, a midpoint (or so) between the civil courts’ preponderance of the evidence standard and the criminal courts’ requirement of the state to prove every element of its case (including intent) beyond a reasonable doubt.
And this burden, we’re now told, did not lie with the state but with with the accused.
It’s not just that Trump must prove his innocence by the lesser preponderance-of-the-evidence standard — he must prove his innocence by the clear evidence standard.
That’s one step shy of saying that Trump must prove his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Why stop at the “clear and convincing” level? Why not shoot the moon, Andrew Weissman?
And because Trump did not meet this made-up standard of providing the prosecutor “clear” evidence of his innocence, Mueller hits him with a “talking indictment” and smears him.”
As a Catholic school student it never dawned on me the idea of Jesus’s Last Supper with His Apostles (the men who were basically the first priests of Christianity and the church) was His final meal before His execution. It only struck me as such later in adulthood. For example, Robert Walsh has written…
The last meal is usually a tradition, not a rule. No law automatically entitles prisoners to anything other than standard prison meals so it’s a privilege, not a right. It’s also far more significant than being merely a kind gesture. It’s an important part of the execution ritual and has been for centuries. Barring last-minute legal action a prisoner’s last meal is usually their last chance to control anything that happens in their final hours. Modern executions are usually conducted according to strict timetables and rigid rules with minimal deviation there from. In the US, a prisoner might wait over twenty years between sentencing and execution so their last freedom of choice can be very important to them.
Execution is a grim ritual. The last meal is a part of that ritual and a ritual in itself. In medieval Europe it had religious significance dating back to when religion played a far greater role in daily life than it does today. A mental image of Christ’s Last Supper is often referenced as a parallel to a modern-day convict choosing their final menu. It also symbolizes a prisoner making peace with their executioners, breaking bread with them in the same way that Christ invited Judas Iscariot to the Last Supper. In modern-day Louisiana, a strongly-religious Southern state, Warden Burl Cain routinely invites condemned prisoners to eat their last meal with him and invited guests, offering the condemned Christian fellowship. Cain still supervises the execution, but he extends the invitation regardless. Naturally, the inmate isn’t obliged to accept.
Religion aside, superstition once played its part. In medieval Europe many believed that well-fed prisoners could be executed without fear of their returning as ghosts. The quality of the final meal was also believed to influence the likelihood of their doing so. If the food and drink were of the best quality it was believed that prisoners would be less likely to haunt their executioners. If the meals were poor, many believed prisoners would return as malevolent spirits bent on tormenting those involved in their deaths.
It really makes sense, the analogies between The Last Supper and the last meal before execution.
Not only was Jesus preparing for His own death that would throw open the doors, that had been slammed shut, so that all the departed souls, past-present-future, could finally lift from their imprisonment here and seek final judgement and the promised Paradise at His Father’s table, but making peace with those who prepared the meal … and even those sharing the meal with Him around the table … who would abandon Him in His time left in this world.
However, that last paragraph regarding superstition, I will note in every movie depiction I have seen over the years of The Last Supper I have never seen Jesus partaking of the “bread and wine” that He deemed His “body and blood” that He served to His Apostles. And so, Jesus did return with The Holy Spirit. However, not to haunt but to prove to those who loved and believed in Him as teacher and savior that His Father could do all things, and this hard and taxing life was just a stepping stone to eternity’s intersection of judgement worthiness of our life here.
The dining table of Christ’s last meal with His Apostles was the very first altar with a simple meal of bread and wine which are the Almighty’s gifts to mankind of grain and fruit that He would puzzle His followers, then and now, with the mystery of converting into His body and blood. In a previous gathering in an earlier time in Jesus’s adult life He had actually shared another of God’s gifts, that of fermentation. Fermentation is a long process. However, at the famed wedding Jesus not only made a quick fermentation to provide the wedding party and guests with wine but did so without the fruit of grapes by miraculously transforming water into wine. These were not skillful parlor tricks by some ancient sorcerer. No, these were real science manipulations of matter of God’s creation that only someone with the hand of God could accomplish. And He did, over and over again throughout His life as a man. To lift people out of their illnesses and handicapping maladies by physically erasing said ailments.
This Last Supper ritual is a key element in the Catholic and Orthodox mass, of which the priests do partake of the body and blood of Christ before serving everyone around the altar and in the gathering. For me this signifies the priest is a mere mortal like the rest of us, and not so much the embodiment of Christ. No, the priest is what the Apostles were being groomed to do in Jesus’s name. We all come to God’s table equally, as mortals and as sinners.
Even as a child my faith has never been a blind faith to the letter of the Catholic doctrine. What I do have is have a deeply seeded faith in something far-far greater than myself … far-far greater than the known and unknown reaches of this both heavenly and diabolically created beautifully inhumane universe and all that is in it, and on the other side of it. That we will never, as humanity, reach these ends of creation to fully witness it is in and of itself by Almighty design. We are to remain in a mortal state of awe and wonder, and yes, curiosity … just as we are at times with our faith in God. As an amateur scientist and a faithful mind and soul going through life I find my mind gets entangled and flustered just as much thinking in a secular and a faithful state over trying to imagine both the ends of the universe and in what God’s eternal paradise could offer my human-based senses. While we might be able to fulfill our senses with the answers to the universe, we are told our senses will not follow us into Paradise, simply because our eternal soul will not need them. This is something we humans, even in a state of faith, cannot even begin to fathom. As I said, nor are we meant to.
As humans we can trace our addictions and gluttony to trying to fill an emptiness within. What Jesus Christ was showing and saying to His Apostles at the Passover Last Supper with His beloved fellow travelers was…
… 26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 27And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. 29But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
Confirming what I had said about all those movies about Jesus, and not seeing Him partake of the bread and wine at supper. He knew He was a condemned man but was not eating His final meal before His execution.
When they all had finished we know what followed was Jesus and the Apostles moving their fellowship to the garden of Gethsemane for prayer. We know that in these waning moments of His own humanity Jesus presented His human weakness to His Father, asking Him to remove this cup from me. Jesus showed the epitome of mortality in a moment of fear and dread for what He had known His entire life was coming. But not just the torture, pain and suffering His Father had instore for the next twenty-four or more hours ahead, but for the abject abandonment He was about to experience by His very own brothers that had pledged to never leave Him. He knew He was also carrying the weight of their betrayal, failed humanity and regrets. How crushing all this was, Jesus now feeling every bit a mortal man than the Son of God. It wasn’t until the temptation from the Devil approached Him while in deep prayer and conflict with His fear that He found the strength in the truth to go on.
He met His destined fate with an empty human stomach and a soul filled with faith in His purpose to free us of our sin.
Denver-area public schools will be closed Wednesday as authorities search for 18-year-old Sol Pais, who they say made threats, is armed, and obsessed with the deadly 1999 Columbine High School shooting. https://t.co/6Wmr4Ivs1O
Billions of people around the world are waiting to celebrate an empty tomb on Sunday and the American press is geared up to celebrate a redacted report. On the upside, that'll mean less "Jesus wasn't really real and Christians weren't really persecuted by the Romans" pieces.
You won’t be too surprised when there will be those who deem these two thugs “heroes”. ..
Why not show these despicable men’s faces Hill? Democrats are so full of hatred & bitterness. MAGA hat doesn’t represent hate, it only brings out the hate in people on the left. MAGA people of all races are united in love for America pic.twitter.com/s0CaM0Jwm9
AP: 20 Years Later: Columbine survivors face new pain sending kids to school … Schools still are not taking this seriously and/or the right way. Targeting the ‘guns’ and setting up “Gun Free Zones” have not worked. Look into the horrific failures that led to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida.
Hey, those damn book collections by ‘white’ writers are cluttering libraries, or something. Entire first paragraph tells me the writer has issues, not the least of which is a possible/probable inability to think their way out of a paper bag … based on said bag’s color, of course. That said, this is at the top of my list of most hateful racist things I’ve read to date…
Ms Leung airs her distaste for “white men ideas” – as if they had been uniform across continents and throughout history – while reminiscing about attending a “white AF conference” two years earlier. I was unsure what the “AF” might refer to and searched for some literary or scholarly explanation. It then occurred to me that a “white AF conference” is, to borrow the woke vernacular, a white as fuck conference. Which is how not-at-all-racist academic librarians convey their thoughts, apparently.
If you look at any United States library’s collection, especially those in higher education institutions, most of the collections (books, journals, archival papers, other media, etc.) are written by white dudes writing about white ideas, white things, or ideas, people, and things they stole from POC and then claimed as white property… When most of our collections filled with this so-called “knowledge,” it continues to validate only white voices and perspectives and erases the voices of people of colour.
At which point, things get a little breathless and intermittently grammatical. However, readers may wish to ponder how synthesising insights from around the world, and from cultures long gone, and preserving those insights, in libraries, is somehow a bad thing. Readers may also wish to ponder the implications of a librarian and self-styled educator, schooled at the University of Washington and Barnard College, New York, and who is offended, something close to enraged, by the existence of “white ideas” and the “so-called ‘knowledge'” of “white dudes.”
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” – Author of the novel “Fahrenheit 451”, Ray Bradbury (HT – Instapundit)
Yeah, I knew this sort of anti-Christian/-Catholic secular-push BS was coming. I kind of thought crap writers would give a day or 2 for the ashes to cool before the smug attacks & 'WOKE' suggestions against an authentic rebuild as its intended purpose, a Catholic cathedral.
How should the Notre Dame be rebuilt? @ejdickson argues: “Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European France — but a reflection of the France of today…” pic.twitter.com/ebccUiAW65
It had better be a competition among construction engineers, carpenters, and glassworkers, because it doesn't need a fucking architecthttps://t.co/QB30REaQy0
AoSHQ: "… a map of the church's vandalized in France last year. It is breathtaking." But the MSM doesn't want that even mentioned, or something. Full story @ AoSHQ: https://t.co/DElMaOg0Bdpic.twitter.com/jRTqsvfgan
And in the U.S. a lot of churches have been desecrated, vandalized or burned. Follow Ali’s thread to see how you can help…
2. I am donating $1,000 to help these historical churches rebuild.
Who will join me at any level?
Sometimes the best way to fundraise is share what you're giving (no matter how small or large). It generates the energy needed to encourage others. https://t.co/dAp9sWGkjb
Paul Kengor: France’s Failure … As deep and rich as France’s history is, so is their weakness and failures over the centuries, which continues to this day…
In the end, the EU compromised on a gutless statement grudgingly conceding the continent’s “cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance.” It was a nod to God that George Weigel described as “so bland as to be meaningless.”
But, in an important way, it was not meaningless. It was sadly symbolic. Again, Belloc: “the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith.” Well, the state of the faith in much of Europe is in flames.
That brings us back to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Anno Domini 2019, the day after Palm Sunday. We do not yet know what caused this tragic episode, nor whether the authorities and responders could have done a better job preventing the sickening level of destruction. Nonetheless, this seems, at the least, an undeniable symbol of France’s failure to protect its Christian heritage.
The Easter season is about hope, about a Redeemer who rises again. If there’s a particular hope for Europe this Holy Week, it’s that the Cathedral of Notre Dame will be resurrected. And yet, given the state of modern France, it’s hard to be hopeful about what will replace it.
We can’t go wrong placing our faith in the inspiration of that cathedral, but we will always find disappointment in the secular authorities who seek to replace it. The former stood strong for over 800 years; the latter will fail us again and again.
This may be the right occasion to post the earliest known photograph of Notre Dame from 1838. Photography was barely invented pic.twitter.com/kyoj3x4uV3
It is heartbreaking, but not soul-breaking. In Her flames Notre Dame, our Mother, has brought us great meaning to the Holy Week preceding Christ’s suffering, death and His promised rising on Easter Sunday…
Anyone with even a grammar school inkling of the scope of real history weighing on those millenniums old beams and panels whose forest of trees were but tiny tender saplings pushing away the soil as they grew from the fertile ground when Jesus Christ walked the Earth knows the scope and depth of history that cathedral witnessed. Dark and Enlightened ages. The Renaissance of mankind’s intellect and creativity, art, literature and thought. Man’s inhumanity to man through oppression, imprisonment, inquisition, and crime. Wars. Plagues. Epidemics. Famines. Revolutions. Beheadings. Burning at the stake. Horror. Promise. Rebirth. “Gay Parie”. Economic highs and lows. Nearly nine centuries of countless generations passing-by or stepping inside to kneel and pray, or gaze with wide eyes the vast beauty of something man took nearly two hundred years to build around our faith in our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
Yesterday, as Notre Dame was consumed by the flames large groups of people gathered nearby to pray and sing. They knew She was dying, but also knew She would be reborn someday. They would remember Her with devotion and love, hold onto their faith, and welcome Her when She will be reborn.
My thirteen-year-old Grandson Mickey has a love and awe-filled deep sense of architecture and the history behind the buildings throughout the world. When I spoke with him on the phone last night he was in a bit of shock over the loss of Notre Dame. He went into his memory banks of knowledge on the structure, rattling off bits of trivia, and exuding hope in the fact the two massive bell towers were still standing and any of the cathedral’s rock, metal and glass materials in the ashes could be reused in reconstruction in order to cling to the ancestral roots of Notre Dame. I told him that She will not have the same feel as her former now lost self, but that when finished and ready to accept the faithful and the curious admirers in the future She will remind them that we must be strong in this life, in this world. Look how long She did.
She will not be the same Notre Dame when She is rebuilt. As we saw for the long and tumultuous decade or more of planning the rebuild after our Twin Towers were destroyed, we are in the dark ages of tearing down our history — especially that of Christianity and the “patriarchy” and Western civilization — bickering and inane irrelevant inclusion of secular divisive identity politics that want their beams and symbols welded into the building/rebuild of any historic structure. My first thought late yesterday was the lengths to which France, Paris in particular, has acquiesced to these groups, who are in celebration of Notre Dame’s burning. I do not doubt for a minute there will be those inside, and outside, Paris that will demand a new Notre Dame represent all religions, not just Christianity/Catholicism. How dare a Catholic Cathedral only represent Christianity. They will demand their identity symbols and safe corners of whatever the structure will be, as was done with the One World Trade Center Freedom Tower and its surrounding grounds in New York City. Recall that some people in NYC even dared suggest an Islamic Mosque be allowed to be built at Ground Zero. I warn, you, in the weeks and months ahead you will hear such insanity in Paris. Wait for it, as those who have brought us this era of darkness and babel insist on burning Notre Dame’s foundation.
Notre Dame invokes a long journey through history and Her part in it, She now will build a new history with hopes that mankind will have much better, faithful, kind and loving chapters to write. And hopefully a renewal of the Christian faith.
Notre Dame lives in us all. It is romance, danger, and transcendence. It is there as a backdrop for many of the movies, of the plays, of the novels we’ve loved. I can still access the corner of my brain where Quasimodo is laboring up the bell tower steps. It stands tall in the background of Les Miserables, of The Tale of Two Cities, of Le Crime de Sylvester Bonnard –- the first book I read in French.
That takes me back to my high school days and my eccentric, Francophile French teacher whose main curriculum was showing us 3-D color slides of Paris. She’d make us turn in our seats so that we were oriented in the proper direction as we gazed at the shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Bastille, and of course and most often Notre Dame. It sits there as the literal crossroads of France. All distances are measured from a ground-zero plaque on the pavement in front of the cathedral. That place is literally the center of all that is French.
It stands as a monument to Christianity and its foundational role in the stabilization of medieval Europe. It embodies reverence for tradition, for art, for innovation, for beauty, for holiness. It houses nine bells in its almost-twin towers and the lightning rod on the spire -– now totally destroyed –- held relics from St. Denis and St. Genevieve –- Paris’ patron saints. I don’t even believe in patron saints, let alone relics, but I mourn the loss of those tiny bits history.
History — time — is a most frustrating dimension. We retain so little of the past, even though we have this sensation that it’s important, foundational. We have history books, but they tell us little about the daily lives of those who have gone before, of the millions of souls who have knelt in prayer on Notre Dame’s stone floor. The computer age makes it possible for us to fanatically keep records, but those are more numerical than personal and contain little of what moves us, what worries us, or what brings us joy. One can, however, stand in the midst of such a cathedral, gaze up at its gothic-arch roof and its story-telling stained-glass windows and know that such a building does address those issues. It is three-dimensional time travel, and this fire has just closed that portal…
In the aftermath of the sack of Rome by Alaric and his Goths, St. Jerome wrote:
The world sinks into ruin: yes! But shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes; and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceilings also and the capitals of our pillars; yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the persons of His poor.
[…]
The French are duly mourning the loss. A sour Jerome would doubtless say that they might do better to mourn their sins. But there is a strange connection between dry eyes, all these years, and the tears now.
A family not warmed by love might mourn all the more the loss of a place, because without the house, the half-home, they have so little else. A people who have forgotten or forsaken Christ might mourn all the more the loss of the cathedral, because they have in his place only the great Nothing of our world, a Nothing of creature comforts, easy sex, shallow entertainment, and the restlessness of acedia.
I mourn the empty cathedral.
We have been evacuating cathedrals for a long time now. Burning them, too, and a lot of other things. We have been burning libraries, as Ray Bradbury tried to teach us. We burn them by our scorn for quiet, and for the good rich books of our heritage. We have been burning churches. Philip Larkin, atheist with a guilty conscience about it, could call a church a serious place on serious ground. Our intelligentsia are not nearly so honest or generous. They like to play with matches.
We have been burning schools. The schola is a place of leisure, of education for man when he is free; we have turned them into dens of politics, engines of human manufacture, sinks of dullness. We have been burning universities. Millennia of human wisdom? To the torch.
And Notre-Dame de Paris burns.
People are saying that we cannot build such a thing now. That is true. We lack the artisans. We do not have the techne: we likely could not fashion a single many-colored jewel in the 16-rayed north window, with the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child in the center of all. We cannot make the glass. We cannot mix the colors. We would have to guess and do our best.
But we would not build it now. It is not just that our hands lack the skill. Our hearts do not beat warmly enough, and our minds do not see. Think of that Mother and Child. What did it mean? The whole of creation and the life of man revolve, like the spokes of a wheel, about the submission of a woman to the will of God, and the humility of Christ, who emptied himself, and came to dwell among us in human form, not as an Alaric or Augustus, but as a servant, obedient unto death.
What have we built? What do we love?
If you were waiting for a sign concerning the scope and seriousness of what must be rebuilt in our age, and what will happen if not, this is it.
There is no way to replace what Paris, what France, what Christendom, and indeed what humanity, has lost today. It is irreplaceable. For example, we literally cannot recreate the windows, which date from the time of Dante. We do not know how to do it. As a friend said to me, “You can rebuild the World Trade Center. You cannot rebuild Notre Dame de Paris.” …
What we lost today is one of the great embodiments of Western civilization. It is impossible to overstate what this means. It will take some time to absorb. Notre Dame de Paris is at the heart of France’s identity. All distances in France are measured from kilometre zéro, in front of the cathedral. Though most (but not all!) of the French have turned away from their baptism, Notre Dame is the symbolic heart of the nation. And now, it’s gone, though firefighters may have saved its bones. It took 200 years to build, and now it was made a holocaust in one terrible afternoon.
Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization.
It happens whenever we fail to live out our baptism, and fail to baptize our children. It happens by omission, by indifference, and it happens by commission, from spite. It happens in classrooms, in newsrooms, in shopping malls, in poisoned seminaries and defiled sacristies, and everywhere the truths that Notre Dame de Paris embodied are ridiculed, flayed, and destroyed in the hearts and minds of modern men. The fire that destroyed Paris’s iconic cathedral made manifest what we in the West have been doing to ourselves for over 200 years.
This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don’t change course now…
The flames of Notre Dame de Paris are a call to repentance and conversion. As the monks of Norcia have been doing since their church met catastrophe, so let us all do as we mourn the loss of one of Christendom’s greatest cathedrals. There can be no greater tribute to what this holy and revered temple meant to its builders and to all those faithful who worshiped beneath its vaults all these centuries than to turn, in sackcloth and ashes, back to God, and to raise again the vaults of His sanctuaries in our hearts and families and communities — while there is still time.
For you in the West who are not religious, I hope you will reflect on what this cathedral meant in artistic, architectural, and cultural terms, and that you will think hard about what we are losing as we collectively repudiate our patrimony.
If you were waiting for a sign of the times, this is it…
I took this photo as we were leaving #NotreDame about an hour before it caught on fire. I almost went up to the dad and asked if he wanted it. Now I wish I had. Twitter if you have any magic, help him find this 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/pEu33ubqCK
Pictures posted on social media showed enormous plumes of smoke billowing into the city’s skyline as firefighters rushed to the historic site.
According to French newspaper Le Monde, the fire broke out in the attic of the historic monument before spreading to engulf a large section of the roof.
A spokesperson for the cathedral said the blaze was first reported at 5.50pm (GMT) and the building was evacuated soon after.
Officials in Paris said the fire could be linked to renovation works being carried out at the cathedral.
The cathedral is one the finest example of French Gothic architecture in Europe, and one of the most visited buildings in the world.
Notre Dame – which means ‘Our Lady’ – was build in 1160 and completed by 1260, and has been modified on a number of occasions throughout the century.
It is the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Paris, and is visited by some 12million people every year.
I weep for the beauty that is being consumed by the flames, but the flowers of the field and the mercies of the Lord are new every morning. Too long we have relied on a beautiful past while building a soulless, ugly future. #NotreDame
#NotreDame: 'The roof has entirely collapsed, there are flames coming out the back of the cathedral as if it was a torch'@charli, Journalist at France 24, at the scene of the fire. pic.twitter.com/2B0IrMiDcL
While the cause of this horrific all consuming fire is leaning toward a construction issue, there is this bit of information the MSM doesn’t want even mentioned right now…
“In 2018, the Ministry of the Interior recorded 541 anti-Semitic acts, 100 anti-Muslim acts, and 1063 anti-Christian acts.” https://t.co/fYHMFIoeH6
A man in France called into Shep Smith’s afternoon show on FNC to talk about this fire and began mentioning the roughly three dozen churches that have either been burned or desecrated/damaged this year alone. To which Shep quickly cut him off and scolded him that basically “we’re not going there with this. We’re not speculating about this…”
Moments later Shep Smith was joining the TV talking mouths in equating this fire to “our 9/11”.
Stop! Just stop!
I realize and feel the immense impact of historical and cultural loss for Paris and Europe in general. She made it through two World Wars and eight centuries. But her burning in no way can be compared to our buildings that were directly attacked and collapsed after their inferno, killing over 3000 people. If you insist we cannot discuss the nefarious loss of churches in France because you defy comparing this cathedral to terrorist/arsonist activity, then do not then proceed to compare this loss with our 9/11.
French analyst Philippe Karsenty: “Even the Nazis didn’t dare to destroy Notre Dame, and for the past year we have had churches desecrated each and every week across France”
For those of you who share my faith this is more than a symbolic building there are relics in there, deeply meaningful relics, including the crown of thorns and relic of the true cross https://t.co/jRAPgfPRfI
Only THREE days ago in France one of three women involved in a foiled plot in 2016 to blow up a car packed with gas canisters near the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Reports of most churches tolling their bells for Our Lady Notre Dame. So very heartbreaking. What an incalculable loss.
"Good news: all the works of art were saved. The treasure of the Cathedral is intact, the Crown of thorns, the Holy sacraments. #NOTRE_DAME" https://t.co/X0FSl7eHO7
