May 30, 2008, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Monthly Bulletin Fraternal Association of Prayer and Sacrifice

Fasting protects children, it keeps the young man sober, it makes the old man venerable; indeed, gray hair is more venerable when decorated with fasting. It is the most harmonious order for women, reins for those who are in their prime, a guardian of marriage, nourishment for virginity.

Now fasting certainly privately brings forth these advantages in every dwelling place where it is cultivated. But publicly, how does it govern our life?

Forthwith, it disposes the whole city and the whole populace towards tranquility, it puts shouting to sleep, it eliminates fighting, it imposes silence upon neighbors.

The presence of which teacher checks the noise of children so suddenly, as fasting, where present, restrains the tumult of a city? Which reveler goes forth in fasting? What impure band is obliged by fasting? Boisterous laughing, the cat-calls of prostitutes, impure dancing: they leave the city, fleeing from fasting as from some austere judge of acts.

Because if everyone would take fasting to counsel in their affairs, clearly nothing would stand in the way of there being a great peace in the entire circle of lands, neither for certain peoples raising up against others, nor for armies to shake each others’ hands.

Neither arms would be hammered out, if fasting thrived, nor would civil courts be built, and neither would anyone dwell in prison.

In summary, neither would deserts have brigands, nor would cities have slanderers, nor the sea pirates.

(St. Basil, Homily n. 2 [About Fasting], in Enchiridion Asceticum: Loci Ss. Patrum et scriptorum ecclesiasticorum ad ascesim spectantes, ed. De Journel and Dutilluel, Herder, Fribourg, 1936, n. 255, p. 140-141, tr. from Joshua from the Lat. & Gk.)
 

The Trumpet Sounds

            Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a day very disposed for fasting, in union with that Heart, hypostatically united with the Eternal Word, who loved us to the point of death and torment,

Today is also the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests. This day should be taken very to heart by those member of the Trumpets of Jericho Association. Claudio Cardinal Hummes prepared a beautiful letter for today. Indeed, the reform of the Church will start not with “action,” but with “contemplation,” especially prayer and fasting.

            Finally, thank you for your patience! The last e-letter was in January. But the translations from the ancient texts of the saints are rather daunting for the time they take. With or without a newsletter, let us continue to blow trumpets around Jericho, and the Trinity will bring forth His triumph in His time and in His way. “We are useless servants…”

    - Joshua

2 Kings 23:4

          Then the king [Josiah] commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.
          [Note from Joshua: I propose this passage for the hope it brings; and has Pope Benedict not asked all of us to hope, teaching us how, in his last encyclical? Even when Israel had abandoned God and turned away from the way of Yahweh, the days of the reform, beyond all hope, returned as as sunrise scatters the dark.]

• One holy hour each week before the Blessed Sacrament
• Fast on Fridays
• Rosary (five decades) once a week