The Ten Commandments are negative, but their fruits are positive.  Take the one against adultery.  By following this negative command, I stay on a positive plane with my children, and all the positive notes with my wife who bore them for me, and contributed positively to their raising.  What’s more, she still cooks me dinner!

I am now eighty-seven, and what young thing, except ones with no morals, would even look at me!  There’d be a great loss, the result of breaking that commandment for a moment of joy.  And I’m looking not for a moment, but an eternity of joy.

Sure, I’ve met women who raise promises of temporary pleasure in my mind.  But if I can meet them in eternity, that’s all to the better; I’ll have saved their souls and mine to boot!

No good comes of nothingness, and Karl Marx’s writings, through their atheism, the denial of humankind’s age-long search, amount to nothingness.  Russia’s Communism was in power for seventy years, a long time for nothingness.  Our present President’s willingness to oblige the CCP reflects his own uncertainty about the existence of God (Faux Catholicism).

How long does the CCP have, before it, too, goes the way of the Soviets?  I would wager about the same time that the Soviets had.  We are in an age of instant communication, of populism, of good intentions, and the CCP is dealing with Hong Kong, that burning torch of Judaeo-Christian values, with rough persecution.  It will not pay off.

True, China does not have the country-wide Christian base that Russia had, and it has a compromised media.  I withhold my judgment.  The media is not all-powerful, and we have to wait and see.  May the Holy Spirit inspire some influential Chinese.

I am grateful to the master of my fate that my life has been relatively free from fear.  I was seldom bullied (my height exceeded that of my peers most of my life) and those who bullied me feared physical or social repercussions.  But that is a gift, not a reason to brag.

But now in old age it is closer than before.  Why?  We should not attempt something in life that can bring defeat—it is not wise.  I still wince from one such attempt, but can rest in the knowledge that the maker of all, of the universe and my environment, saw my true, deep motive.

This peace in old age is the partial motive for leading a good life.  The full motive is that of a promised eternal life.  If life has been good, why not jump at the chance to continue forever.  And who would disprove it?

Ask me to write a prayer?  Armand, my WWII friend, asked me to write one for his friend suffering from a stroke—something he could do when the limitations of the stroke seemed too oppressive.  What better occupation for a writer?  Here’s what I came up with for his friend, Benedict:

To the Holy Spirit

Dear St. Benedict, leader of men, speak for me to the Holy Spirit, that changer of minds, that He may enlighten me as to how I am to take this affliction of a stroke.  For He sends us only what is good for our eternal salvation, and I am not sure as to how I am best to take this.  Without excluding a cure, I rest in confidence in your intercession with the Giver of Light.  Amen.

It is often not the affliction that is unbearable, but how we are to endure it.  The Holy Spirit, known to Christians since the post-Resurrection days, is the one who inspires knowledge and sagacity.  Pray to Him often.

Gremlins

During World War II, there were a thousand things that could go wrong on the assembly line for making war goods; the assembly workers had a name for these devils who accomplished these flaws==gremlins.  I had plenty of devils to contend with, but I worked (prayed) so hard to get my brother into heaven, and I think I finally succeeded.

He died alone in a Covid 19 room, but he was good at doing things alone.  He got little help from us on his way to his Ph.D., but he did it, with two Masters’ degrees to boot.  The gremlins were coaxing him at his bedside.  “You’ve got your firearm collection at home; don’t put up with this coronavirus,” they coaxed.  He remained adamant.

This time I did help.  A rosary a day, and he went peacefully.  Some saint said it succinctly: For the greater glory of God. He helps to the end.