Isaiah 2: 1-5
The Future House of God

1  The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2  Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it.
3  Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4  He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
5  O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the LORD.

Psalm 122
The Joy of Going to the House of the Lord

1  I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.”
2 Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
3 Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together,
4 Where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to the Testimony of Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 For thrones are set there for judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls, prosperity within your palaces.”
8 For the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, “Peace be within you.”
9 Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek your good.

Romans 13:11-14
Put on Christ

11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk decently, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Matthew 24:36-44
No One Knows the Day or Hour

36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,
39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.
41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.
42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

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I had been looking for, and have now found, an online homily that complements each of the Advent lectionaries. This homily is prepared by Reverend Monsignor Russell G. Terra, Pastor Emeritus of Saint Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Redding, CA.
http://www.stjosephredding.org/parish-homilies.html

1st Sunday of Advent
“The Realm of the Spiritual”
December 1, 2019

Is 2:1-5
Rom 13:1-14
Mt 24:37-44

My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord –

Last week I spoke about the sad fact that most of the younger generation do not have the same values that the generations before them had. What I did not mention is how rapidly this godlessness is increasing today.

The latest research reveals that Christians have declined from 77% of Americans to 65% in just the last 10 years! The non-religious affiliated, the “Nones” as they are called, have increased from 16% to 26% within the same time frame! However, what is most significant is that this represents 40% of all Americans under the age of 40!

This is truly alarming! Moreover, if the trend continues, Christian believers will become a minority – and we will, likely, be persecuted for certain values we hold that are non-negotiable!

At the root of the problem for many is a rejection of all things that cannot be physically or materially quantified – including anything that is not scientifically provable. However, this completely eliminates the spiritual. It eliminates what can be called a “5th Dimension”, which is the spiritual realm in which God works and interacts with us. What the non-affiliated risk is the Christian heritage that has sustained our country for almost 250 years – and the Salvation History that is found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

What is absolutely essential for complete human spiritual development is openness to the Bible and to the spiritual realm which can transform our lives in preparation for the vision of God.

Today’s reading from Isaiah was written before the fall of Jerusalem, 700 years or so before the time of Jesus. The Chosen People no longer led God-centered lives – and their leadership had become corrupt. Catastrophe was coming – but God wished to give hope to the faithful few. So, Isaiah spoke of a future Kingdom of God in symbolic words.

The mountain of the Lord is the realm wherein God dwells. Everyone is invited, and countless will come to this realm. Our vocation is to know God’s ways and to walk God’s
paths. Then we will achieve what is really important. Moreover, there will be the absence of conflict and war – and, instead, eternal peace! However, to get there, we must walk in the light of God’s revelation and grace!

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul insists upon the urgency with which we must be prepared and ready for God’s final call to His kingdom. We are to wake up to what is happening around us! We need to recognize our complacency and our failure to see and do what really must be changed in our hearts and lives. Our ultimate reckoning is closer than we think because with each day’s passing, our life here becomes one day less.

Perhaps, many of us have already repented and dealt with our darkest sins and crimes – But what about the subtle things – like our attitude, our behavior toward others, our tone of voice, our failure to communicate, our neglect of those we love, and our addictions that are not drugs, alcohol, or sex – like social media itself?

Once again, we are urged to put on the armor of God’s light and grace – to be able to stand against all darkness satan espouses – satan, who also works in the 5th dimension!

Finally, Jesus teaches us in St. Matthew’s Gospel that his coming for us will be without much or any warning at all. This might be at our own death – or at his universal final coming at the end of the world. Jesus will come, besides business as usual for Wall Street, our jobs, our politics, our recreation, our family life, and our usual daily activity. But come he will – and take us, he will!

Brothers and Sisters, those who truly believe and recognize the realm of the spiritual, know that God makes overtures toward us at every moment. God comes again and again in special ways throughout our lives. One of these is His annual coming at Christmas with the birth of His Son in human form.

So, let us prepare for this wonderful gift and for all that God continues to give to us!

Amen.

December 1, 2019                                    Msgr. Russell G. Terra

Ever had a recipe that didn’t quite turn out like you planned? Hehe, I have.

Recipe Failures are a favorite topic in our house.

As a young broker, I learned to cook out of necessity. Couldn’t afford swanky dinners on my credit card for clients. Besides, our parents’ generation invited people home for dinner….. kind of thought that’s the way it was supposed to be. My clients were mostly men, owners of companies, at least a generation older than me. With a “couple” invitation to dinner, kind wives took pity on me, and taught me a great deal. I was a willing student, and although unplanned, the “come to my house for dinner” bonding time often cemented my relationship with the wives.

There were so many mistakes in the beginning years.

Like the time I bought the most beautiful beef fillets I could afford, had them specially cut by the butcher, but I didn’t know how to grill….. had a penthouse but no grill. I put them in the oven at 350 degrees, and thought they would be “done” in 11 minutes….. just like Dad did when I was a kid. That one was a beauty.

Or the time I bought specialty steaks from a high priced Miami Steakhouse and took them to a Manhattan client as my “guest” contribution for the weekend. The steaks were like rubber…. sold me a crappy lot. We ended up eating potatoes for dinner.

Or the time I decided to make croissants from scratch. Did you know there are 162 layers of butter in a croissant? Bakeries have a machine, called a laminator, to process the dough. It looked so easy to do by hand on a Saturday morning cooking show….. took me all day long. I’ll never make croissants again.

How about the Rum Cake I made to take to a boyfriend’s family for Christmas? It was on the cover of Southern Living Annual Cookbook. The recipe required 12 eggs and an entire afternoon. No one ate a single slice. It even smelled bad.

Or the time I was over zealous to create a spectacular dessert for Christmas Eve dinner, as opposed to a normal dessert, cuz I was trying to impress my boss. I started a complicated pumpkin cheesecake at 8:00pm the night before. Finally got it into the oven at 1:00am, should have been finished at 2:00am…… but then the instructions told me to leave it in the oven, temp off, for another 2 hours, and “don’t open the oven”. I waited and waited, eventually setting an alarm for 4:00am. Yet, because I was up all night with dessert, I nodded off during dinner…. great impression, eh?

There were a few monumental errors. My step-mother was an incredible cook. As a teenager, we watched PBS on Saturday morning. Dad was a frustrated Bob Vila. Often, my step-mother would copy something from one of the cooking shows for dinner. I watched her do it for years, so how hard could it be? Thus, when I was newly married, I was watching one of the cooking shows and thought I could make bagels at home. Why not? Well, first of all they were ugly – the color of oyster white paint. Beyond that, they were hard… all the way through. In fact, they were so hard, we decided to feed them to the birds….. and the birds ignored them. The dough was so heavy the birds couldn’t carry off the scraps… little wings fluttering so fast…. nothing. The guys teased me for weeks, “We don’t need a fence to keep the deer out, we’ll just use Miss Daughn’s Bagels…. better than chain link.” Yeah, that bad.

Or the time I was convinced to create a more “natural” home and start making my own bread. Oh yes, I was determined. I bought books on the subject. Over a $100 of specialty flour and new pans…… and the bread rose to the thickness of cardboard and I ended up with a bread boat.

New husband suggested I call his mother for advice. I scoured the kitchen sparkling clean and begrudgingly called her. Everything was prepared for her ‘lesson’ as if she was a visiting surgeon. She didn’t measure anything. Stuck her elbow under a hot water tap to check temperature. She put a little sugar in the yeast to feed it and so it would foam. “What do you mean, FOAM?”, I said. “Oh dear”, she replied with the contempt dripping from her fangs, “You have to let the yeast foam, otherwise the bread won’t rise.”

Wut?

How come my recipes didn’t tell me about the “FOAM THING”? She was in my kitchen less than 15 minutes, said she would be back “after lunch, it will be done rising”. The sun was shining through the glass door as she waved goodbye, and the sun bathed her like a “bread goddess”. I sat and stared at the bowl for over an hour, flabbergasted. So many things I did not know.

The Diet Light Cookbook was funny….. looking back. I was a pretty good cook by that point, but thought we should start eating healthier. Over a couple of weeks, I made many dishes, all from the cookbook….. everything tasted the same. I came home late, almost dust, and husband was burning sticks in the backyard. He told me to grab a glass of wine and come join him. As I approached, I realized he was ripping pages from the cookbook and burning them. I protested a little, “We could both lose 10lbs and you should drop blood pressure.” He took a long swig of his beer and said, “I’d rather die happy”.

There was no bigger failure than the “Great Potato Soup Escapade”. Hours and hours of effort, over 20lbs of potatoes, but it turned to starch. My husband dumped it out back, behind our old chicken coop. The following spring, it was still there. He had to bury it. Nothing grew there for years.

In summary, to our friends and family, please excuse us while we try to be creative this Christmas. If our project turns out looking like the magazine photo, terrific. If it doesn’t, that’s okay.

The point of the failure becomes – don’t ever stop trying.

Take a chance, try some new skill or ethnic food.

Even the failures become a terrific story.

If worse comes to worse, we can always eat Chinese Christmas Turkey.

And all was right with the world………

Welcome! Come on in, the doors are open.

Come on up and find a comfy spot:

This Sanctuary Q Tree Saturday Open Thread is VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).

‘Sanctuary’ is not a bad word.

Like so many things, the Left has sullied it by using it as a cover to bring in and shelter people who are breaking our laws. 

I say, let’s take it back! Our country should be a Sanctuary for us…not for people who aren’t even supposed to be here.

Free Speech is practiced here at the Q Tree. But please keep it civil.
Discussion of Q is not only allowed but encouraged. Imagine that! We can talk about Q here and not get banned.

Please also consider the Important Guidelines, outlined here. Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.

With the Storm upon us…please remember to Pray for our President.

Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights.
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.

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For your listening enjoyment, I offer this composition by Berend Salverda, titled ‘Line In The Sand’:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGNUE8o0f_4&w=640&h=360]

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Visual descriptions for our dear Zoe, and for anyone else who may find them helpful:

Header Image: Is a gigantic Tree, sitting on a hill in the middle of a group of buildings and homes. The Tree reaches up into the sky, it’s branches forming an enormous canopy. Underneath the canopy, there is a bright glow shining up from within the Tree. The canopy of the tree stretches out over all the structures below.
Second Image: Is a rounded doorway at the top of a stone stairway, built into the base of an enormous Tree. The doors are glass and there is a bright glow coming from beyond the doors. There are plants, vines and vegetation on either side of the stone steps.
Third Image: Is an open room with comfy-looking futons, a fluffy throw rug and large throw pillows on a gleaming wooden floor. There are glowing lanterns positioned around on the floor.
Fourth Image: Is President Trump walking outdoors, with two secret service agents behind him. He is holding up his left arm out to his side, giving a wave with his hand.

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The eyes have it.