#I am so so happy to be free from my breasts fr

[sydsliftingface]

Hey guys! Top surgery is really hard! I find a lot of people sort of skip over how difficult major surgery is to go through because of course it’s worth it but !!!!!! Please!!!!!!! If this is a process you are considering going through PLEASE do all of your prep and research and be very prepared to go through an ordeal fr. This is no joke.

[theitgirlnetwork]

Better

Ch. 14: Happy Birthday Charlotte Pt. 1

Lip's Supportive Husband Outfit

Charlotte's Bday Fit

Hm...wonder what this is...

Note: Hiii, as I said I didn't take as long as last time; next post should be this week because this is a two-parter. For that same reason she's a lil short. I am so thankful for all of the love, interaction and the warm welcome back. I am very grateful and I appreciate you all so much. I hope you enjoy this chapter of watching our babies work their way back, celebrate a big day, and grow as a couple. A big change is coming. Also there's sexual content in this one so feel free to skip that portion and ask me any questions about what nonsexual information happened during it for clarification. This symbol: * indicates the beginning and end of that section. Thank you so much again, and feel free to interact, I love hearing thoughts from you guys! (Constructively, pls I'm sensitive lol) :)

Warnings: Explicit Content (MDNI FR I'm not playing), sexual content, strong language, anxiety

“So what’re you gonna say?” 

Lip shrugs lightly as his blue eyes follow his thumb’s travels along Charlotte’s neck, lips parting with wonder as he drinks in the glow on her skin from the morning light seeping in, big brown eyes offering him warmth and adoration that he can’t get from anywhere else. “That I uh…won’t actually knock his head off.”

Charlotte purses her lips in thought, resting her hand over his, leaning into him. “Okay, that’s good-”

“As long as he stays the fuck away from my wife.” he finishes, reaching under the blankets and dragging her leg over his body. “That’s you by the way.”

“Is it?” she hums, climbing over him fully before nudging his nose with her own. “We sure?” 

“Yeah,” he sighs against her lips before finally closing the space between them. “‘M pretty fuckin’ sure.” 

“Good.” 

The last few days have been rough. Threats of breaking up left some lingering weariness and anger between the couple. Lip was apologetic but still prideful, Charlotte was forgiving but still withholding. They were nursing wounds together. And it’s working. Their joint solution was simple. They need to be together. Everything else was secondary. Whatever they needed to do to make this work, it’s exactly what they’re going to do. So stay in the room together, deal with family later. They’d basically ghosted her parents. Call out of work for a couple days. Focus on being Phillip and Charlotte. Together. 

Lip was tiptoeing. Scared to bring anything up that could dismantle what they were managing to rebuild. But her dad’s words, lingering thoughts of sickness plague him as he holds her in his arms at night. Suddenly, every shiver, every sniffle, every groan as she rolls over in the middle of night makes his heart fall to his ass. But he can’t rock the boat. Not yet. He just needs to…work for it. Get to a point where she trusts him enough to tell him. He can wait. 

Charlotte gasps into the air as Lip rolls her underneath him, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the column of her neck. Her fingers dig into his golden curls, her legs closing around his waist as she pushes up to be pressed against him. “Phillip, you’re gonna be late-”

“‘M’not, don’t worry about it.”

*

The woman whimpers as large hands slip down her hips, fingers hooking into her underwear, yelping a little when she’s yanked upward roughly so the fabric can be tugged down her legs. “It’s…already 8:10…it’s-”

“Hey,” Lip calls sternly, one hand going back to her face, grabbing her jaw tightly enough to force her eyes to his, the other continuing its journey between her legs. “You want me to make you feel good, Bunny?”

“Y-yes-”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Phillip, I want you to make me feel good.”

“Know you do,” he hums, patronizingly pushing his thumb into the dimple on her cheek. “So lay back, and let me.” Lip finishes with a searing kiss on her lips before dragging his way down her body, pushing one hand underneath her shirt, massaging her breast as he uses his shoulders to nudge her legs completely apart. 

As Charlotte feels his mouth against her she panics, the cry she lets out is muffled by her hand flailing out, grabbing a pillow and putting it over her face. 

Lip licks a solid strip up her slit before pressing several kisses against her clit, slowing when his ears aren’t picking up the cries he lives for, confused considering he could feel her legs shaking by his head. His eyes trail up to find Charlotte smothering herself in effort to stifle her sounds and he’s immediately annoyed, hand coming down to slap her thigh. “Hey. Uh uh, fix that.”

A whine fills the air and he chuckles as he feels the soft pillow come down on his head before falling to the floor. “Don’t wanna be loud-”

“You know better.” he laughs, tugging her further down the bed and bringing her closer to his mouth, moaning himself at her sweet taste. 

Charlotte’s fingers flex as she grips at nothing, whimpering as he doubles his administrations, the pressure building even more now that piercing blue eyes are trained on her. “Fu-fuckin’ help me.” 

Lip’s eyes roll before he reaches up, grabbing her wrist and guiding her hands down to his hair, encouraging her to tug at it and groaning against her when she does. “Taste so fuckin’ good. Fuckin’ perfect. You’re just fuckin’ perfect aren’t you?”

“Oh, fuck, Phillip-” 

“Watch your mouth.” he grunts, slapping her thigh again. “You’re perfect. Say it, baby.”

“M’not perfect. I love you-”

“S’not what I told you to say-” he growls, pulling away and fixing her with a warning look, lips and chin glistening. Charlotte huffs, tugging his hair again, moaning louder as her toes flex.

“‘M’gonna cum, I want you to fuck me-”

“Say you’re perfect and I will.” Lip pulls away from her fully, untwining her fingers from his hair and watching her grow more frustrated, reaching for him to no avail. He climbs over her then, hovering over her as he runs his thumb over her bottom lip, guiding her mouth open, dipping his finger in before gathering some spit into his mouth and spitting it into hers, groaning when she swallows it obediently. “Charlotte.”

“I’m perfect. I love you. Please fuck me.”

Lip settles then, leaning his weight down onto her, groaning as he pushes into her, letting his head fall next to hers, pressing his mouth close to her ear. “You’re perfect, baby. My fuckin’...I fuckin’ live for you. I love you…happy birthday.”

The couple sets a steady rhythm then, one that they’ve grown used to over their time together but something about this time was different. The touches felt more desperate and needy. They both noticed it, but didn’t want to break the bubble they created by addressing it. But they could tell. Charlotte wraps her arms around him that much tighter, hand cupping the back of his head, legs locked around his waist in a vice, she arches to make sure she’s pressed against him as much as their movements will allow. 

Lip is the same, one arm around her waist to hold her close, switching between being in her ear, groaning every bit of filth, every promise, every praise he can think of, and resting his forehead against hers, demanding she look at him, maintaining eye contact to remind himself its her. She’s here, and he’s with her again.

“I…I’m…Phillip-” 

“Go ahead, baby. Cum for me, Bunny. Cum on my dick, baby.”

Charlotte bites down on his shoulder as she cums, curling into him and crying out. Lip moans as she contracts around him, keeping his thrusts steady until he feels two wet drops on his skin. He nudges her back onto the pillows to look at her face, slowing to a stop when he finds her with large, watery eyes. “I’m…I love you, Bubba.”

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

That’s all he can think. That’s all he feels. For multiple reasons. The first is the embarrassing fact that he somehow got impossibly harder from the knowledge that the woman underneath him just came around him, crying from how much she loves him. The second the humiliating fact that he was blinking back the moisture from his own eyes because even though he’s never been the religious type, he’s finding himself thanking whoever is running shit upstairs for making sure 20 years ago today, Victor and Cynthia Fisher fucked and made this fucking angel for him. And the third being the realization that Ian was right. He didn’t doubt him, but  with everything that happened, it was clear. He’ll never be in love with anyone else. If he doesn’t keep Charlotte, he’ll never have another chance. She’s it. 

He’s shaken from his thoughts with a soft hand on his cheek. “I’m okay, baby. Keep going. I’m okay.”

Lip nods absently, brows softened, jaw clenched as he tries to keep the flood of emotions in. Resting his forehead against hers as he thrusts into her deeply, moaning softly. 

“C’mon, Phillip, I love you, I want you to feel good too. I want you to cum too.” Charlotte whispers, running her fingers through his hair, tightening her legs around him, rolling up to meet him. “I want you to cum in me…I want you to give me your baby.”

That’s…a new development.

And fuck everything else Lip was embarrassed to admit to himself before. 

Nothing can top how absolutely ashamed he is at how hard he came to that statement. 

Who the fuck is he?

*

“‘Okay, bye, baby.” Lip pats Charlotte’s ass as he kisses her before slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Uh, be ready when I get home, alright? Happy birthday, princess.”

“‘Kay.” Charlotte chirps, bouncing on the balls of her feet, offering him a bright smile as he heads out. The wooden door slides shut and immediately she’s screaming, running over to the couch and tossing herself onto it. “I want to have your baby?! What the fuck? Charlotte you’re so fuckin’ stupid!” she whines. 

In her anxiety induced wailing, she doesn’t hear V and Fiona coming in the back door, cases of beer and boxed wine tucked under their arms. The two older women exchange concerned looks before slowly approaching the thrashing girl. “It’s like this every other day, hey! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I ruined my life!” Charlotte screams, kicking one of the pillows off of the couch. 

“Okay…” Fiona sighs, grabbing a beer for herself and V, passing it over Charlotte’s head. “Scoot. What happened?”

Charlotte looks up at Fiona and then over to V and shakes her head. “Can’t tell you. You’ll…like…throw up or something and she’s gonna hit me.”

“I’m not gonna throw up and I doubt V will hit you-”

“Might.” the older cousin shrugs, lifting her little cousin’s legs and plopping them onto her lap as she sits on the couch. Fiona fixes her with wide eyes and V huffs. “I won’t hit you. Probably.”

Charlotte narrows her eyes skeptically, but sits up nonetheless. It’s not like she would be any less embarrassed telling anyone else. “Well, this morning, Phillip and I were…uh…”

“Fucking?”

“Oh, god.” Fiona flinches, shaking her head in disgust. 

“It’s my birthday!”

“Oh yuck-”

“So what?” V asks, pushing the girl’s hair out of her face. “Was it bad?”

“No.” Charlotte murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself, pouting a little. “It was…good. But, I got caught up in the moment and…said something.”

“Something? If you were screwing, I’m pretty sure my brother would like whatever you said as long as it wasn’t another man’s name. And even then he might tolerate it.” 

“Is that what you did?” V says around her beer bottle, taking a swig. “Call him some guys name? Daddy? Bitch? Slu-”

“I told him I wanted him to give me his baby.” Charlotte blurts, dropping her face to her knees in embarrassment. 

Both older women immediately panic, Fiona tossing question after question at Charlotte. All of which were some variation of ‘are you pregnant’ and ‘are you using protection’. V takes the initiative of shooting off of the couch and flinging open the door to Charlotte and Lips’ room, yanking open the doors until she finds Charlotte’s birth control pills and starts counting, sighing in relief when she sees the girl is on track.  “I’m not actually trying to get pregnant, I…just said it, it was a spur of the moment type of thing, it just slipped out!”

“Girl, it better be.” V breathes heavily. “You just turned 20 today, you still don’t eat the crust on sandwiches, do not get pregnant, understand?”

“I understand.” 

“Good.” V sighs, running a hand over her face and watching Fiona flop back against the couch. “Now that that’s over…let’s go to breakfast for your birthday.”

“Fuckin’ shit.” 

Lip’s pissed. Like more than usual. He huffs to himself as he flicks his half smoked cigarette to the ground, stomping it out. Part of being with Charlotte meant trying to quit smoking, so he was trying to work on it. Apparently, part of being with her also meant being a dad?

He hadn’t even thought of that. Like…in theory, he fuckin’ loved the idea. He married her because he loves her and he wanted them to be a family. That included his siblings. They were kind’ve his kids and by association, hers. Does it make him happy to watch her play with Debbie? Help Carl with his homework? Bounce Liam on her hip? Abso-fuckin-lutely, she’s fuckin’ precious, he loves that shit. 

Would it be fuckin’ sexy to see her have physical evidence that she belonged to him? Watching her waddle around with his kid, carrying something that;s exactly half him half her? Hot as hell. 

But right now? They’re fuckin’ barely not absolutely broke right now. He’s been saving up for somethin’ big. A baby would throw all of that off. And he’s going to beg to keep his job. How can they raise a kid in these conditions? He’s still fuckin’ raising Frank and Monica’s. She hasn’t even told him about her having health conditions. Would that affect her getting pregnant? Would it affect a potential baby? He hopes she can wait. She has to. She will, right? Fuck.

He also is literally haunted by the last time he’d thought he was a dad. That was…fucking cruel to be honest. And Charlotte is definitely no Karen, but Lip doesn’t know if he’s ready for that. She’ll…she’ll wait. She loves him. She’ll wait.

The man straightens, pushing open the doors to the large office building, nodding to the security guard before getting in the elevator, taking it to his floor. Gritting his teeth he prepares to see that fuckin’ prick again. Eric, the punk bitch who’s been sniffin’ behind Charlotte since he saw her picture. Peppy ass daddy’s boy who signs his paychecks. Jesus, he needed to get these thoughts out of his system before he reached his office.

Fuckin’ bitch. Pussy. 

Lip sighs, shaking out his shoulders as he rounds the corner to Eric’s office. Alright, I’m done.

Limp dick, pussy chasin’, no life motherfucker. 

Now. Now, I’m done.

Lip’s jaw muscle jumps as he pushes Eric’s office door open, trying to make this as quick and painless as he can for himself. “Hey man, I…uh, know things were tense the other night, but uh, I’m…not really gonna knock your head off.” He goes to turn out of the room and can’t help himself, peeking his head back in, addressing the desk chair facing away from him, “Unless you keep trying to hit on my wife. Back off. Uh, okay, gonna go back to work-”

“Mr. Gallagher.” a voice calls to him before he can leave the room. It’s deep, and sounds like it came from an older man. Lip stops in his tracks, brows furrowing as he re enters the room.

“Uh…yeah?”

The man turns in his chair, dramatically in a way that has Lip fighting not to roll his eyes and reveals himself to in fact be a sharply dressed, gray haired version of Eric.

“Eric Preston-Scottlyn. So you’re the intern who threatened my son?” the older man asks, pushing out of the seat and leaning against Eric’s desk, nodding toward another chair for Lip to take a seat. The blond quietly moves to the chair, staring up at the older man cautiously. 

“Yeah. That was me.”

“I see.” the older man reaches back into the desk, grabbing a cigar and looking at Lip expectantly. 

“Oh, fuck, sure.” Lip digs in his pocket, pulling out his lighter and offering it to the man. “Look, I uh, need this job. I just got married and I’ve got like, a hundred siblings I take care of. That shit with Eric was…it won’t happen again.”

“So long as my son doesn’t speak to your wife again.” the older man chuckles, blowing his smoke carelessly, ignoring Lip’s light cough. “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem for Junior. Considering I’m promoting him.”

Lip swallows back his scoff as he rolls his tongue in his cheek. Nodding, he bites his tongue. Of course the spoiled little rich boy is getting promoted for the work Lip has been doing for him. “Fuckin’ good for Eric.”

“You’re happy for him?” the man asks in disbelief.

“Indifferent.”

The older man chuckles, blowing out more smoke. “Makes sense. You must be proud of where your work has gotten him.” he leans back, putting out the cigar in the ashtray and crossing his legs as he faces Lip again. Lip’s eyes widen slightly as he schools the rest of his expression, “Mr. Gallagher, I am not an idiot. I know my son’s capabilities. And I’ve noticed they miraculously increased the moment you were hired. My son needs to actually learn how to do something now, develop at least a few skills he can do without someone bolstering him. So he’ll need to learn under my close supervision.”

“Fuckin’ bullshit.” Lip blurts.

“Excuse me?”

Lip tries not to say it, he does, but his impulse control has always been some shit. “It’s fuckin’ bullshit, that Eric doesn’t know how to do shit and you fuckin’ know that I’ve been doing his goddamn work and he’s the one getting fuckin’ promoted-”

“So are you.”

Fuckin’- “What?”

Mr. Scottlyn claps his hands together. “You’re right. I know you’ve been doing his work. You’re capable, Mr. Gallagher. You’re quick and intelligent. Dedicated. So, I’m giving you Eric’s position, if you want it. Which I assume you do, considering your…socioeconomic position.”

Fuck you. But he’s right. This is amazing. “Okay…okay, cool. I’m-thanks.”

“You’re quite welcome. I have big expectations for you, Mr. Gallagher. You remind me of me when I was your age. Minus the obvious anger issues and baggage.”

“Uh…thanks again?”

“You’ll start tomorrow. Bright and early.” the older man grabs his cellphone off of his desk and pulls his suit jacket on. “Don’t embarrass me, Gallagher.”

And with that he leaves Lip alone…in his new office. Holy shit. Did something good just fuckin’ happen? He gets to keep his job…fuck that, he got promoted.

This new information makes a dangerous image flash into Lip’s mind, and he quickly shakes it away. 

Huh. Today is full of new things.

Lip rolls his eyes as he jogs his way up the walkway of his house, seeing Frank approaching out of the corner of his eye. “Get the fuck away from me, Frank.” 

“Is that any way to greet your father? We used to be so close, you and I, what has poisoned you, the fruit of my womb, against me?” his dad slurs, stumbling behind his eldest son, eyeing the bag in his hand.

“Fuckin’ christ.” Lip hisses, pushing the door open and trying to slam it behind him, only for Frank to slither his way in. “Don’t have time for your shit today.”

“I get it, I get it. You are a man now, you have responsibilities. Helping lead the house. Going to work. Making love to that delicious-”

“I’m serious, Frank, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.” 

“Why are we killin’ Frank?” Ian asks as he makes his way into the room, taking a swig of a soda before flopping onto the couch. “Wifey’s across the street waitin’ on you. Don’t forget, tomorrow she’s with me.”

Frank’s brows furrow as he looks between his two sons. “No, I was pretty sure you were the gay one. Or is that Carl…?”

“Fuck off, Frank.”

“No respect.” 

Lip tugs his work shirt off and starts shuffling through the pile of laundry Fiona had done to find something to change into. “I want her home in one piece, Ian, I’m fuckin’ serious. No drugs. Three drinks total. And no lettin’ Mickey pimp her out for free shit.”

“Okay, okay. Being married’s made you so fuckin’ serious.”

Lip just points his finger at his brother again before pulling on the shirt and sweater Charlotte had snuck and bought him for Christmas and pulling on a pair of jeans. The front door swings open and the sweet smell that follows his wife everywhere fills the room, so Lip immediately kicks the bag to the side behind the couch before taking in how she looks. “Baby, fuckin’ gorgeous. C’mere.”

Charlotte beams, her dress flouncing around her legs as she bounces her way into Lip’s open arms, meeting him in a deep kiss, humming when he pats her ass. “You look pretty too~” she sings.

“Ah, I know.” he scoffs, jokingly pushing her face from his as she squeezes his cheek. “Havin’ a good birthday? Yeah? Where the fuck is your jacket?”

“Don’t need one.” 

“Fuck, you don’t,” he frowns, snatching his jacket from the pile of laundry and pushing her arms through the sleeves.

“Excuse me, kiddo, I know you’re a little distracted what with your wife’s womanly wiles, a struggle to which I deeply relate-”

“Frank-”

“Ew.” Charlotte mumbles, pulling her jacket tighter over herself.

“However, you all asked me to warn you next time CPS would be stopping by and I might have been indisposed recently because a brief stint because of a possession case, however, while I have been released, I believe there will be a surprise…visit…inspection for the welfare of the children, soon. And your welcome for warning you.”

Charlotte immediately whips her head to look at Lip, eyes wide with concern, she clutches the sleeves of his jacket. “Don’t worry, Bubba, we’ll fix it. I can start cleaning and you and Ian can start fixing stuff around the house, we’ll dip into some of the money and get extra groceries, and get the kids ready when they get home. I can text Fiona-”

“But…it’s your birthday.”

He doesn’t know if his heart swells or cracks when his wife shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, we have to take care of your family.” 

You’re going to have to choose. I chose Cynthia. You can still choose your family.

Victor’s words flood Lip’s head as his eyes flick between Charlotte, the bag of stuff he got for her birthday on the floor and the mess of a house he and his siblings inhabit. He loves her so much. He wishes he wasn’t about to make her spend her 20th birthday preparing for a Child Protective Services visit. He wishes this wasn’t about to be her norm. He’s never not chosen them.

But Ian makes the choice for him.

“Nah, we got it.” the redhead shrugs, finishing the soda and pulling out his phone. “You guys go ahead, you can help later if there’s anything left for you to do. I’m gonna let everyone else know about Frank’s fuck up, and we’ll get this shit together. It’s not like they’re gonna come today. Wouldn’t be very random, then.”

Lip opens and closes his mouth, preparing to…thank him? Argue? He doesn’t know. But Ian doesn’t give him time. He picks up Lip’s bag and shoves it into his hands and starts pushing the couple toward the door. 

Charlotte watches her husband out of the corner of her eye the entire bus ride. She was anxious to say the least. There are millions of thoughts flying around in her head, and she doesn’t know what to do with them. From her sex induced plea for a baby, to Lip’s meeting with his boss or his siblings possibly getting taken by CPS…again, she was a nervous wreck. And…also it's her birthday. And she keeps forgetting.

Breakfast with Fiona and V was great and she loved it. But she’d spent it in her head, wallowing about her slip of the tongue. After, she had something to look forward to, spending time with Lip when he got off work, he’d apparently planned a surprise for her. He wanted to be in charge of everything, down to her outfit. Last night he stood in front of her wardrobe looking clueless, grumbling to himself as he demanded that she stay in bed and ‘not look’ while he picks, finally settling on a dress that he’d given to V to tell her to wear later. But then she could only focus on how devastated he would be if he did lose his job. Or the hit his self-esteem would take if he had to beg Eric.

She hadn’t even realized how well he could read her face.

“Stop.” he says softly, smoothing his thumb over the line forming between her furrowed brows. “Stressin’ that pretty little head out. We’ll handle it.”

“Tell me somethin’ good.” 

Lip nods, pushing her hair away from her neck, placing a kiss there before murmuring against her ear. “You look really beautiful, birthday girl.”

“Thank you. Somethin’ else?”

“Love you.” he says, placing another kiss before looking up to watch the stop they’re on.

“Love you more.” she hums.

“Bullshit.” he scoffs. “C’mon, this one’s us.” Lip helps her up, guiding her to walk in front of him, absently tugging her dress down over her ass a little to counter it riding up as she walks. The blond walks with his wife, their fingers intertwined, her spare hand busy picking at itself, her fingernails poking at her skin incessantly, nervously. As they walk down the block, Lip grows more frustrated, noticing that she’s so distracted she’s not even noticing where they are. “Okay. Stop. Let’s talk.”

Charlotte lets him pull her to a stop, standing before him. “Okay, lets.”

“What’s the problem?” 

“I’m worried about your siblings.” she whines.

Lip runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath. “CPS comes like 3 times a year, we deal with it. They take ‘em or they don’t. They do? We go to court, get them back, a week, tops. They don’t, we move on until next time.”

“That’s awful.” 

“The system sucks, princess, ‘m’glad you know nothin’ about it. But we know how to do this. It’ll be okay. And it's easier now that Ian and I are grown too. It’s gonna be okay.” Lip eyes her, bringing one hand to his lips and kissing it before prompting her to continue. “Next.”

“You’re job?”

“Was gonna save this for not your birthday, because it’s supposed to be about you, but I don’t want you to pick all of the skin off your fingers so…” he tugs her forward, digging his hand into the pocket of his jacket she’s wearing, producing a badge. “New badge.”

Charlotte squints at the title printed on the badge and her eyes widen. “Project manager? You got promoted?” A wide smile makes its way onto Charlotte’s face, and Lip matches it with his own smirk, gladly accepting the onslaught of kisses he receives all over his face as she squeals. “I’m so happy for you, bubba!” 

“Thank you, bunny.” he smiles, kissing her lips twice before setting her back onto her own feet. “Last thing?”

Charlotte immediately looks away from him, rocking nervously on her heels. “I…this morning…I-”

“Words, baby.”

“I…said something, we’ve never really talked about before.” Lip’s eyes widen in acknowledgement and suddenly the words are falling out of her mouth like vomit. “I didn’t mean it! Not…ugh, I mean not now. I love you and it felt good, and I got caught up in the moment. I didn’t mean to scare you, or rush you and I know we’re not even…we don’t even have the space for that. It’s not…not time, but I just said that and I meant it but I didn’t mean it.” 

She’s never wanted to punch him more than when he snickers.

“What? What? Phillip!”

Lip wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her to him. “Stop whinin’. It fuckin’ scared me shitless, okay? But,” he tugs her back again when she squirms against him, making an embarrassed groan. “I think about it too. Love you too. It felt good, hearin’ you say that. Obviously. So, now we know we both like that shit. Hell, for me it's probably genetic. And y’know, eventually, we’ll get there. Could be sooner. Could be later. Nothin’ to freak out about.” he nudges her chin with his knuckle. “‘Kay?”

“Kay.” 

“Good.” he sighs. “All done?” she nods, and he nods with her looking around. “Fuckin’ awesome, can we celebrate your birthday now?”

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah? Good, look around, baby, where are we?”

Charlotte looks at their surroundings for the first time since getting off of the bus, eyes widening as she views the pretty townhouses, uniform and lined up. Just behind them is the neighborhood that Lip had taken her to see the lights all of that time ago. “These townhouses are so cute.” she chirps, whipping her head around. 

Lip slips behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning his head on her shoulder. “Show me which one’s your favorite.” 

The woman’s big brown eyes slip over to a sage green townhouse, it nearly looks exactly like the shade she’d always wanted. The one she’d told Lip she’d want her house to be like two months ago…and the paint looked pretty fresh. “That one.” she breathes.

“Yeah? Should we go eat inside? Or we could check out the backyard.” he hums against her cheek. Charlotte slips her hand up into his hair, still staring at the house.

“I dunno. What if the people who live here come home early…I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

Lip shrugs, digging in the bag and producing something from it to dangle in front of Charlotte’s face.

“I spoke to the husband and he was fuckin’ cool with it, even said he thinks we should christen the place. But I guess I should ask the wife too.” 

Silver keys come into the focus of Charlotte’s vision and she uses Lip’s solid chest to support her weight.

 “Well, Bunny? What do you say?”

[dirtyalpha-rat]

RAT (THEY/THEM)

25 years old, Capricorn, neurodivergent

Verse and switch in theory.. stone top in practice. Preference for doming— rediscovering my sub side!

Most of the posts I reblog, I’m day dreaming of being the dom &/or top. If that’s not the case, it’s normally marked 𓆏

Loving Mate and owner to my very bratty dog ( @omegapuppyslxt ) and proud protector of my obedient little bunny!

Non-binary, trans masc, Butch. Mostly t4t, poly, Violently pansexual.

DNI: MINORS! And no rape threats.

Please for the love of gods be LGBTQIA. If you’re not that’s cool but I am queer and this blog is about queer sex. I post about all genders, so feel free to come vibe.

Mutuals, Followers, and blog visitors are always welcome to stop by asks and say Hi! Looking to make kink friends, happy to flirt. Not looking for new partners, or serious play.

DM’s open for mutuals and approved asks only! Mutuals.. come get a lil kiss!

more info under the cut for the curious.

You may call me…

Rat, Sol, Sir, Alpha or Mutt if you’re looking for some trouble.

Open to others, just please refrain from using terms that lay claim (mine, my, etc.)

Terms I enjoy being described with: Cock, hole, (t)dick, cunt, chest. Strap!

Terms I’m not comfortable being described with: Tits, breast (we love that chest dysphoria!)

Things I adore…

(incomplete always expanding)

- Impact play (hitting, spanking, punching, slapping)

- Biting, marking, bruising, hickies!!

- Primal play, Chase, rough housing

- pet play!

- Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, knotting

- Roleplay (knight, goddess, cowboy, horror older then time, etc. I hold multitudes)

- complete power exchange, devotion, 24/7 dynamics

- Leather

- Humiliation, Degration, Praise, Embarrassment

- Bondage, rope work

- Corruption, soft somo, soft cnc, Intox (weed)

- Punishment, Rules, Chasity

- Care, pleasure, and leaving a scene feeling good

- And much more

Common headspaces

Sir (He/They)

Strict. Hard on rules, ready to train. Will devour you. Has already thought about how. Happy to get my leather gloves out to hit you, and even happier to have you clipped to my carabiner. Don’t forget to clean my boots down there, while you’re at it.

Alpha (They/Them)

Primal, Alpha/Beta/Omega-verse, smells like rain, woodsmoke, deep vanilla, and weed (probably). Soft dom. I am currently nesting with my Omega, Kander.

Knight (They/He)

A bounce between devoted, selfless knight who lives to protect their prince no matter the cost, and knight who will happily help a royal to mind their manners. I devote my love, and my life to my prince. I am loyal not to the crown, but to him. Always him.

Sol (They/Them)

Soft dom, or service top. Not mutually exclusive. Lay on my chest and let me pet your hair. Let me press against you, let me feel every inch of you. Realize you are safe in hands that know and love you, and that if you ask nicely enough you’ll get exactly what you want. You can bully me, perhaps put up a fight— maybe I’ll fold or maybe I’ll remind you why you love being mine.

I’m a writer, and I love role play so there’s probably about 5000 others. Inquire for more if you’re interested!

Boundaries 

- No DDLG/Age play, No scat, No hard cnc or rape fantasies in my asks and dm’s. We all have lines and we all have trauma. It’s fine for you, it is not welcome here.

- I will block ageless blogs. I’m being so fr ya’ll keep poking and I’m not playing!

- I love to be violent! Please do not be violent with me out of nowhere (get my consent first.)

- Do not force feminize me! I present masculine in my daily life and I’m still figuring out my relationship with my femininity. Don’t complicate it.

- MAPS, Pedos, terfs, antisemitics, actual real life fr misogynists, racists, minors, DNI!

If you made it this far I applaud you. Send me an ask and I will reward your thoroughness!

[mint-moon25]

Revelation 2:23 Then I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am the One who searches minds and hearts, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

ILLEGAL - PROSTITUTE - AGE 45 - HISPANIC

PRUNE - BAG - INTERRUPTED - MY - CALL

WITH - FIFTH THIRD BANK - SHE IMMITATED

MY - WORDS - TOLD - ME - 'I - WILL - KICK

YOUR - ASS' - HISPANIC - MALE - CALLED

THE - POLICE - INSIDE - THE - LIBRARY - A

BLK - FEMALE - POLICE'

WENT - 2 - RESTROOM - PRUNE - BAG - YES

SAGGING - BREASTS - PANTS - HAIR - TIGHT

ABOVE - THE - UGLY - FACE - SHORTER YES

PERMED - HAIR - FOUND - HER - SHE - SAID

WASN'T - TALKING - 2 - ANYONE

MINDING - HER - BUSINESS

POLICE - FEMALE - TOLD - ME - CAN - I - YES

RECORD - HER - I - SAID - 'YES' - 2 - RECORD

THAT - PERSON - GOT - AMAZON - PRIME BLK

$23.95 - LOOKS - GOOD - 64 GB

THIS - UNITED STATES - WHY - CHICAGO SNOW

ILLINOIS - HAS - A - JENNIFER HUDSON STORY

HER - SISTER's - ESTRANGED - HUSBAND - YES

SHOT - 2 - DEATH - THEIR - MOTHER

OCTOBER - AND TOOK THEIR - AGE 7 - MALE

NEPHEW - B 4 - HALLOWEEN - WAS - FOUND

SHOT - MULTIPLE - TIMES - IN - A - VEHICLE

ALL - ARE - GUINEA - PIGS - IN - AMERICA

50 STATES - ALL - ARE - LIARS

PRESIDENT - JOE BIDEN - IS A - LIAR ALSO

ALL - NOT - GUILTY - ALL - ARE - GUILTY

'A - WITNESS - 2 - MY - LIFETIME'

'LIFE - LIBERTY - RIGHT - 2 - ACT - AS THEY

PLEASE - LIBERTY - 2 - BLUDGEON - 2 YES

SHOOT - 2 - DEATH - HER - MOM - NEPHEW

HE - SAID - 'YOU'RE - NOT - ENJOYING - THIS

HALLOWEEN' - AGE 7 - SAID - 'MAKE - HIM'

BATTERY - AND - HE - SHOT - HIM - MANY

TIMES - BOY - SAID - 'REAL - SCARED' - AND

SHOT - HIM - MORE - JESUS - IS - LORD

AMERICANS - ARE - THEY - ARE - CAUSE OF

DEATH - OF - THEIR - HOUSEHOLDS - THEIR

FAMILIES - THEIR - LOVED - ONES

'NOTHING - LASTS - FOREVER'

DEAR - KOREAN - GIRLS - OF - SEOUL,

FOREIGNERS - HERE - 2 - GIVE - KIDNEY

BLADDER - $9,000 - EACH - CANIBALS 2

RUN - OVER - IN - COMA - THE - HEART 2

AT - $35,000 - AN - AMERICAN - IS - YES

THEY - BIND - THEMSELVES - SO - THEY

CAN'T - REALLY - DECIDE - WHAT - 2 DO

'LIFE - LIBERTY - AND - PURSUIT - OF

HAPPINESS'

DOMESTIC - TRANQUILITY - 'RIGHT - TO

KEEP - AND - BEAR - ARMS - 2 - SECURE

THAT - OUR - STATE - REMAINS - FREE

FR - CRIMINALS - AND - INVASION - THE

RIGHT - 2 - KEEP - AND - USE - ARMS AS

PEOPLE - WHY - BLACKS - WERE - NOT

CALLED - PEOPLE - 2 - CONFUSE - THEIR

MINDS - 2 - BREAK - THEIR - SPIRITS - AS

WE - INVADE - 2 - OVERTHROW - MANY

GOVERNMENTS

01) USA

02) KOREA

03) PHILIPPINES

REMOVING - LIBERTY - RIGHT - 2 - ACT

AS - THEY - PLEASE - AS - CRIMINALS

SHE - SHOWED - HER - TONGUE - WHEN

SHE - CAME - NEAR - ME - EXPRESS 4

COMPUTERS - 30 MIN

SHE's A LESBIAN - SHE - LIKES ASIANS

WITH - NO - BREASTS - LIKE - ALL -THE

WAY - WITH - A - MALE - BUT - VAGINAL

AREA - THEY'RE - BONES - DETERIORATING

THEY'RE - ITCHY - IN - THE - VAGINAL AREA

GOD - SAID - 'TOUCH - NOT - HIS - ANNOINTED

AND - DO - HIS - SERVANT - HIS - CHILD - ALSO

NO - HARM' - SHE - WANTED - 2 - SUCK - MY

MOUTH - LIVE - IN - THE - MAIN - LIBRARY THEN

TOUCH - MY - BREASTS - LIVE - THEN - BOX AND

BEAT - AND - KICK - AND - BLUDGEON - HISPANIC

BLOODLINES - OF - EATERS - OF - DOGS AND CATS

WORMS - FROGS - THEY - EAT - LOTS - OF POSSOM

HISPANIC - EATS - DOGS - FROM - THE - SHELTERS

THEY - ARE - WHAT - THEY - EAT

'I'M - JUST - A - WITNESS - 2 - MY - LIFETIME'

FLORIDA

CONCEALED - CARRY - THEY - CHANGED - 2 - AGE 21

AND - OLDER - EVIL - LEADERS

KNIVES - SEMI-AUTOMATIC - REVOLVERS

LOTS - OF - KNIVES - TOSS - A - BURGER

TOSS - YOUR - KNIFE - AND - MAGNET - 2 - GET

BACK - TOSS - KNIVES - AGAIN - AND - MAGNET

JESUS - IS -LORD

SABER - SWORDS - SMALL - CARVED - IS - THE

BEST - SWORD - ON - EARTH - FAST

BOOMERANGS - OF - CARVED - SLICERS - AS IT

COMES - BACK - 2 - YOU

HISPANIC - LESBIAN - NEEDS - KNIVES

2 - SLICE - HER

STAND - YOUR - GROUND - AND - WITH - DEADLY

FORCE - TOSS - THAT - KNIFE - THEN - MAGNET

WITH - WRISTS - GET - BACK - KNIFE - TOSS AND

TOSS - THOSE - KNIVES - AND - GET - BACK WITH

MAGNET - KOREAN - GIRLS

WORLD WAR 3

STAND - YOUR - GROUND - BETTER - IN - NORTH

CAROLINA - BLUERIDGE - MOUNTAINS

VANDERBILT - CASTLE

CASTLE - DOCTRINE - DEFEND - YOUR - CASTLES

TOSS - YOUR - KNIVES - GET - WITH - MAGNET AS

WE - WILL - PRACTICE - THIS - FOREVER

JESUS - IS - LORD

KOREA - KR - WON

[skycollides]

Missed You

Billy Russo x Reader

Authors note: I apologize in advance for grammar or spelling mistakes

English isn’t my native language.

Let me know if you want to be tagged.

Requests are open. Feel free to send them in.

Warning: smut, fluffy end

Words: 2.045

It is Friday night and you’re waiting for your boyfriend Billy to come home. You hadn’t been able to spend some proper time with each other since you were both busy with work lately. He promised you to come home earlier today. You’re currently in the bathroom checking your makeup one last time when you hear Billy call out for you.

’’Y/N you home??’’ you hear his voice.

’’Yes’’ you reply and leave the bathroom only wearing your newest lingerie and one of his shirts.

’’There’s my girl’’ he says and licking his lips walking towards you.

’’Hey my love’’ you say before he grabs your jaw with his left hand bringing your lips to his.You wrap your arms around his waist brining his body closer to yours.

’’I missed you’’ he says after you pull away to get some air.

’’I missed you too Billy. ’’ you smile and start kissing his neck.

’’I love you Y/n so much.’’ you pull away to look in his eyes and all you see is love and adoration. 

’’I love you too babe.’’ 

’’You look so good in my clothes - better than I do to be honest. Have I ever told you that before?’’ he says and watches you with hungry eyes while licking his lips. 

’’You look so incredibly sexy baby. God what are you doing to me’’ he says and you notice the growing bulge in his pants. He picks you up and you wrap your legs around his waist pressing your lips onto his. He carries you to your shared bedroom and towards the bed. Billy lays you down. You sit up and open his belt while he is undressing his upper body.

’’Looks like someone missed me Mr.  Russo.’’ you say smiling while stroking his dick through the material. Billy lets out a low moan. 

’’You have no fucking idea Y/N. I have been missing you like crazy.’’

You slowly take of his boxers finally freeing his throbbing dick. You can’t help but smile at the sight in front of you. He looks down at you and you smirk at him before you give all your attention to his erection. You give his tip a soft kisses.

’’Don’t be such a tease babygirl.’’ he says and his hands find their way automatically to your head grabbing your hair pulling them together into a ponytail. You look up to him one last time admiring his handsome face before before you slip his tip in between your lips before taking him deeper into your mouth. He lets out a low moan and you feel him shift under your touch. Your lips work their way up and down his shaft. He started to thrust forward meeting your face each time. You become more eager wanting to have all of him inside your mouth. You grab his thighs before taking him in all the way all. He lets out a loud moan. His big cock causes you to gag but you shrug it off and keep going finally hearing what you were longing for the entire time.

’’God baby. You are amazing. You take me so well babygirl. You’re so good to me. Fuck please don’t stop.’’ You feel his hard length twitch in your mouth and pull him out. You lick your lips and he wipes your mouth with his hand.You move back to the middle of the bed waiting for your man to join you. Shortly after that Billy is hovering over you. He smashes his lips onto yours slipping his tongue into your mouth. You feel one of his hand sliding down your upper body in between your legs stroking your clothed pussy gently. You moan into his mouth. He releases your lips before speaking up.

’’You’re already so wet for me - so ready to take me and I haven’t even touched you yet. Who made you this wet baby? Who?’’

’’You did Billy Russo. Only you can no one else.’’ you say looking into his eyes.

’’That’s right baby I did. You’re mine!’’ he says with his husky voice. You love when he gets this possessive. 

’’Hips up’’ he says before you do as you’re told and he frees your now dripping wet pussy. He throws your thong away while you get a rid of your bra. You lay down again and his hand goes straight to your throbbing heat. He lets his thumb glide over your clit before sliding 2 fingers inside of you. 

’’Fuck Billy - Faster please’’ you beg him and he fulfills your wish. Your moans get louder each time he thrusts into you. ’’I-I’m gonna cum please don’t stop’’ 

’’Cum for me baby girl. Show me the good girl you are and cum all over my fingers’’

Hearing those words leave his mouth is enough for you. Your walls clench around his fingers and you scream out his name.

’’God there is nothing more beautiful than seeing you cum undone Y/n’’ he says and pulls his fingers out of your pussy before sticking them into his mouth needing to test you. 

’’You taste so sweet baby I swear this is my favorite flavor.’’ 

He spreads your legs with his hand before kneeling down in-between of them. 

’’You ready for me Y/n?’’ he asks and you nod not trusting your voice right now.

He takes his cock in his hand stroking it before sliding the tip between your lips moving up and down.

’’I need you Billy please!’’ you beg. With one thrust his cock is buried inside you all the way. The both of you can’t help but moan out each others names after finally becoming one again. He starts trusting slow at first to make sure his girl is comfortable. Billy leans down and kisses you passionately sliding his tongue in your mouth. You grab his head pulling him closer. One he releases your lips you look at him and ask ’’Let me be on top of you?’’

He stops in his tracks pulling away from you. You can’t help but whine after he pulled himself out of you. He lays down and you swing your leg over his waist sitting on top of him. He strokes your thighs as you get in position and lower yourself on his length. You bring your hands down to his chest for support before you start moving. You quicken your pace needing to hear Billys moans.

’’God you take me so well baby. You feel so damn good around me. This is my pussy. This is where my cock belongs right Y/n?’’

’’Yes it’s your pussy yours alone Mr. Russo.’’ 

’’That’s right!’’

He sits up moving his lips to your right nipple sucking and nibbling on it while his other hand gabs your ass supporting your movement. Once he releases your right nipple he repeats his action showing your other breast the same love.

’’Fuck Billy you feel so good. I can’t believe I had to miss out on this cock for 2 weeks.’’

He lets go of your breast and says ’’Neither can I. Never again. I try to be home earlier. I don’t wanna go without you more than I have to’’.

After that he flips the both of you over so he’s on top of you again.

He quickens his pace and you can’t help but let out a scream every time he hits your spot. 

’’Tell me what you want Y/n. Huh? What do you need my love?’’  he asks with an unsteady voice.

’’Go faster - harder please I beg you’’ he grins and does as he’s told and you can’t help but scratch his back needing to hold onto him while he is pounding into you hard.

’’Fuck babe I’m gonna cum’’

’’Cum for me baby girl’’ he orders and you follow his order. Tears are forming in your eyes because of this unbelievable pleasure. You scream out his name never wanting this moment to end. He keeps pounding into you and you feel his cock starting to twitch.

’’Please cum inside of me. Fill me up Billy. I beg you.’’ with that being said he can’t hold back and empties himself inside of you covering your walls with his cum . He thrusts a few more times and kisses you before laying down on top of you trying not squash you under his weight. You wrap your arms around your man stoking his back while the both of you are trying to catch your breaths.

’’Shit this was amazing you were amazing. I love you Y/n’’

’’I agree babe. I love you too Billy so much.’’ you answer him. Once Billy breathing is back to normal he is trying to remove himself from you but you won have it. You wrap your legs around him stoping him in his movement. He gives you a questioning look.

’’I’m not ready to let go of you yet. I need to feel you inside of me just a little bit longer.’’ you say and he nods understanding. He flips you over so you’re on top of him and he wraps his arms around you giving you a kiss on the head.

You caress his chest while his fingers are moving up and down your back. The both of you are laying there enjoying the silence simply being happy to be in each others embrace again.

’’I’m off the pill Billy.’’ you say and look up to him.

’’I know and it’s okay.’’ he says and smiles.

’’So you knew and you still decided against the condom?’’ you say with wide eyes. You’re surprised since the two of you never talked about children before.

’’Yes. I love you Y/n. I love you so much it scares me sometimes. I never felt anything like this in my life before. You’re my endgame Y/n. I will make you Mrs. Russo one day I swear. Back to the whole condom thing. I wouldn’t mind having a little you or me running around. Whatever happens - happens. You end up pregnant I’ll be happy. If not that’s okay too. We have our whole life in font of us.’’

Saying you’re shocked is an understatement. When you met Billy 3 years ago you got to know him and learned about his way with woman. So him telling you about his feelings and that he wants to be with you - to be in a serious relationship with you came as a surprise. 

’’Babe I don’t know what to say.’’ you say trying to find the right words.

’’Forest I said something’’ he says shoving you off him trying to get off the bed but before he can you pull him back.

’’Stay Billy. Listen I want this too do you hear me. I want you William Russo , all of you. You can’t get a rid of me’’ you laugh.

’’I’m just surprised because we never talked about kids or marriage. When I met you you had a different women every time we met. I never saw you as a guy who would settle down. Now we’ve been together for 2 years. I’m happy Billy I really am. You make me happy. By the way Y/n Russo has a nice ring don’t you think?’’ you say.

’’Yes you’re right. I was quite the ladies man. Frank always takes about quality over quantity so when I really got to know you better I finally understood what he was talking about. I changed my ways for you , for us - for our future. I can’t imagine being with anyone else but you.’’ he says and you have to yawn.

’’Tired babygirl?’’

’’Yes you wore me out babe.’’ you say and lift the covers hoping he will get under with you.

’’Take a nap with me Billy?’’ you ask him sweetly and he lays down with you.

’’Only if I can have you again after we wake up’’ he smirks

’’As if I would deny it to you.’’ you say and cuddle into his chest. He kisses your head and wraps his arms around you and closes his eyes.

’’Night Y/n. I love you.’’

’’Nighty B. I love you too.’’ you say before drifting off to the dreamland.

[romancatholicreflections]

14th April >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 22:14-23:56 for Palm Sunday, Cycle C: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’.

Palm Sunday, Cycle C

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 22:14-23:56

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke

Key: N. Narrator. ✠ Jesus. O. Other single speaker. C. Crowd, or more than one speaker.

N. When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them,

✠ I have longed to eat this passover with you before I suffer; because, I tell you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

N. Then, taking a cup, he gave thanks and said,

✠ Take this and share it among you, because from now on, I tell you, I shall not drink wine until the kingdom of God comes.

N. Then he took some bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying,

✠ This is my body which will be given for you; do this as a memorial of me.

N. He did the same with the cup after supper, and said,

✠ This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you.

And yet, here with me on the table is the hand of the man who betrays me. The Son of Man does indeed go to his fate even as it has been decreed, but alas for that man by whom he is betrayed!

N. And they began to ask one another which of them it could be who was to do this thing.

A dispute arose also between them about which should be reckoned the greatest, but he said to them,

✠ Among pagans it is the kings who lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are given the title Benefactor. This must not happen with you. No; the greatest among you must behave as if he were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves. For who is the greater: the one at table or the one who serves? The one at table, surely? Yet here am I among you as one who serves!

You are the men who have stood by me faithfully in my trials; and now I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father conferred one on me: you will eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.

Simon, Simon! Satan, you must know, has got his wish to sift you all like wheat; but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and once you have recovered, you in your turn must strengthen your brothers.

N. He answered,

O. Lord, I would be ready to go to prison with you, and to death.

N. Jesus replied,

✠ I tell you, Peter, by the time the cock crows today you will have denied three times that you know me.

N. He said to them,

✠ When I sent you out without purse or haversack or sandals, were you short of anything?

N. They answered,

C. No.

N. He said to them,

✠ But now if you have a purse, take it; if you have a haversack, do the same; if you have no sword, sell your cloak and buy one, because I tell you these words of scripture have to be fulfilled in me: He let himself be taken for a criminal. Yes, what scripture says about me is even now reaching its fulfilment.

N. They said,

C. Lord, there are two swords here now.

N. He said to them,

✠ That is enough!

N. He then left to make his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, with the disciples following. When they reached the place he said to them,

✠ Pray not to be put to the test.

N. Then he withdrew from them, about a stone’s throw away, and knelt down and prayed, saying,

✠ Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.

N. Then an angel appeared to him, coming from heaven to give him strength. In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.

When he rose from prayer he went to the disciples and found them sleeping for sheer grief. He said to them,

✠ Why are you asleep? Get up and pray not to be put to the test.

N. He was still speaking when a number of men appeared, and at the head of them the man called Judas, one of the Twelve, who went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said,

✠ Judas, are you betraying the son of Man with a kiss?

N. His followers, seeing what was happening, said,

C. Lord, shall we use our swords?

N. And one of them struck out at the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. But at this Jesus spoke:

✠ Leave off! That will do!

N. And touching the man’s ear he healed him.

Then Jesus spoke to the chief priests and captains of the Temple guard and elders who had come for him. He said,

✠ Am I a brigand, that you had to set out with swords and clubs? When I was among you in the Temple day after day you never moved to lay hands on me. But this is your hour; this is the reign of darkness.

N. They seized him then and led him away, and they took him to the high priest’s house. Peter followed at a distance. They had lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and Peter sat down among them, and as he was sitting there by the blaze a servant-girl saw him, peered at him, and said,

O. This person was with him too.

N. But he denied it.

O. Woman, I do not know him.

N. Shortly afterwards someone else saw him and said,

O. You are another of them.

N. But Peter replied,

O. I am not, my friend.

N. About an hour later another man insisted, saying,

O. This fellow was certainly with him. Why, he is a Galilean.

N. Peter said,

O. My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.

N. At that instant, while he was still speaking, the cock crew, and the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered what the Lord had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will have disowned me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Meanwhile the men who guarded Jesus were mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and questioned him, saying,

C. Play the prophet. Who hit you then?

N. And they continued heaping insults on him.

When day broke there was a meeting of the elders of the people, attended by the chief priests and scribes. He was brought before their council, and they said to him,

C. If you are the Christ, tell us.

N. He replied,

✠ If I tell you, you will not believe me, and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Power of God.

N. Then they all said,

C. So you are the Son of God then?

N. He answered:

✠ It is you who say I am.

N. They said,

C. What need of witnesses have we now? We have heard it for ourselves from his own lips.

N. The whole assembly then rose, and they brought him before Pilate.

They began their accusation by saying,

C. We found this man inciting our people to revolt, opposing payment of the tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king.

N. Pilate put to him this question:

O. Are you the king of the Jews?

N. He replied,

✠ It is you who say it.

N. Pilate then said to the chief priests and the crowd,

O. I find no case against this man.

N. But they persisted,

C. He is inflaming the people with his teaching all over Judaea; it has come all the way from Galilee, where he started, down to here.

N. When Pilate heard this, he asked if the man were a Galilean; and finding that he came under Herod’s jurisdiction he passed him over to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

Herod was delighted to see Jesus; he had heard about him and had been wanting for a long time to set eyes on him; moreover, he was hoping to see some miracle worked by him. So he questioned him at some length; but without getting any reply. Meanwhile the chief priests and the scribes were there, violently pressing their accusations. Then Herod, together with his guards, treated him with contempt and made fun of him; he put a rich cloak on him and sent him back to Pilate. And though Herod and Pilate had been enemies before, they were reconciled that same day.

Pilate then summoned the chief priests and the leading men and the people. He said,

O. You brought this man before me as a political agitator. Now I have gone into the matter myself in your presence and found no case against the man in respect of all the charges you bring against him. Nor has Herod either, since he has sent him back to us. As you can see, the man has done nothing that deserves death, So I shall have him flogged and then let him go.

N. But as one man they howled,

C. Away with him! Give us Barabbas!

N. (This man had been thrown into prison for causing a riot in the city and for murder.)

Pilate was anxious to set Jesus free and addressed them again, but they shouted back,

C. Crucify him! Crucify him!

N. And for the third time he spoke to them,

O. Why? What harm has this man done? I have found no case against him that deserves death, so I shall have him punished and then let him go.

N. But they kept on shouting at the top of their voices, demanding that he should be crucified. And their shouts were growing louder.

Pilate then gave his verdict: their demand was to be granted. He released the man they asked for, who had been imprisoned for rioting and murder, and handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they pleased.

As they were leading him away they seized on a man, Simon from Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him shoulder the cross and carry it behind Jesus. Large numbers of people followed him, and of women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said,

✠ Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For the days will surely come when people will say, ‘Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne, the breasts that have never suckled!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’; to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if men use the green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?

N. Now with him they were also leading out two other criminals to be executed.

When they reached the place called The Skull, they crucified him there and the two criminals also, one on the right, the other on the left. Jesus said,

✠ Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.

N. Then they cast lots to share out his clothing.

The people stayed there watching him. As for the leaders, they jeered at him, saying,

C. He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.

N. The soldiers mocked him too, and when they approached to offer vinegar they said,

C. If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

N. Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals hanging there abused him, saying,

O. Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well.

N. But the other spoke up and rebuked him:

O. Have you no fear of God at all? You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

N. He replied,

✠ Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise.

N. It was now about the sixth hour and, with the sun eclipsed, a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. The veil of the Temple was torn right down the middle; and when Jesus had cried out in a loud voice, he said,

✠ Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

N. With these words he breathed his last.

All kneel and pause a moment

When the centurion saw what had taken place, he gave praise to God and said,

O. This was a great and good man.

N. And when all the people who had gathered for the spectacle saw what had happened, they went home beating their breasts.

All his friends stood at a distance; so also did the women who had accompanied him from Galilee, and they saw all this happen.

Then a member of the council arrived, an upright and virtuous man named Joseph. He had not consented to what the others had planned and carried out. He came from Arimathaea, a Jewish town, and he lived in the hope of seeing the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He then took it down, wrapped it in a shroud and put him in a tomb which was hewn in stone in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day and the sabbath was imminent.

Meanwhile the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus were following behind. They took note of the tomb and of the position of the body.

Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. And on the sabbath day they rested, as the Law required.

Gospel (USA)

Luke 22:14—23:56

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table with the apostles. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for, I tell you, I shall not eat it again until there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; for I tell you that from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.

“And yet behold, the hand of the one who is to betray me is with me on the table; for the Son of Man indeed goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.” And they began to debate among themselves who among them would do such a deed.

Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest. He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those in authority over them are addressed as ‘Benefactors’; but among you it shall not be so. Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant. For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves. It is you who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

“Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” He said to him, “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you.” But he replied, “I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.”

He said to them, “When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything?” “No, nothing,” they replied. He said to them, “But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, He was counted among the wicked; and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment.” Then they said, “Lord, look, there are two swords here.” But he replied, “It is enough!”

Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, “Pray that you may not undergo the test.” After withdrawing about a stone’s throw from them and kneeling, he prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him. He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples, he found them sleeping from grief. He said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test.”

While he was still speaking, a crowd approached and in front was one of the Twelve, a man named Judas. He went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, “Lord, shall we strike with a sword?” And one of them struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said in reply, “Stop, no more of this!” Then he touched the servant’s ear and healed him. And Jesus said to the chief priests and temple guards and elders who had come for him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? Day after day I was with you in the temple area, and you did not seize me; but this is your hour, the time for the power of darkness.”

After arresting him they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest; Peter was following at a distance. They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter sat down with them. When a maid saw him seated in the light, she looked intently at him and said, “This man too was with him.” But he denied it saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” A short while later someone else saw him and said, “You too are one of them”; but Peter answered, “My friend, I am not.” About an hour later, still another insisted, “Assuredly, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.” Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” He went out and began to weep bitterly. The men who held Jesus in custody were ridiculing and beating him. They blindfolded him and questioned him, saying, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” And they reviled him in saying many other things against him.

When day came the council of elders of the people met, both chief priests and scribes, and they brought him before their Sanhedrin. They said, “If you are the Christ, tell us,” but he replied to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I question, you will not respond. But from this time on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?” He replied to them, “You say that I am.” Then they said, “What further need have we for testimony? We have heard it from his own mouth.”

Then the whole assembly of them arose and brought him before Pilate. They brought charges against him, saying, “We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Christ, a king.” Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He said to him in reply, “You say so.” Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds, “I find this man not guilty.” But they were adamant and said, “He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to here.”

On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean; and upon learning that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time. Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at length, but he gave him no answer. The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, stood by accusing him harshly. Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him, and after clothing him in resplendent garb, he sent him back to Pilate. Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly. Pilate then summoned the chief priests, the rulers, and the people and said to them, “You brought this man to me and accused him of inciting the people to revolt. I have conducted my investigation in your presence and have not found this man guilty of the charges you have brought against him, nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us. So no capital crime has been committed by him. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him.”

But all together they shouted out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.” —Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city and for murder.— Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus, but they continued their shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate addressed them a third time, “What evil has this man done? I found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him.” With loud shouts, however, they persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed. The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted. So he released the man who had been imprisoned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.

As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus. A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’ At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?” Now two others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They divided his garments by casting lots. The people stood by and watched; the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.” Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine they called out, “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Above him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”; and when he had said this he breathed his last.

Here all kneel and pause for a short time.

The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, “This man was innocent beyond doubt.” When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts; but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.

Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph, who, though he was a member of the council, had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. After he had taken the body down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb in which no one had yet been buried. It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin. The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind, and when they had seen the tomb and the way in which his body was laid in it, they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.

Reflections (5)

(i) Palm Sunday

We have just been listening to Luke’s account of Jesus’ final journey. Like any human being, Jesus recoiled at the prospect of crucifixion. It is only Luke who tells us that on the Mount of Olives, while praying intensely, his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. Jesus did not choose to be crucified. He choose to be faithful even if that meant being crucified. He choose to be faithful to God’s love for all of humanity. Although we have just heard a very tragic story, we consider it good news, gospel, because it is a story that proclaims the triumph of a truly life giving love. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion and death, Jesus refers to himself as the ‘green wood’. The cross, which was an instrument of torture, came to be venerated as the tree of life, because it is the place where love triumphed over hatred and life over death.

Calvary was a very dark place, an expression of human brutality at its worst. Yet, in the light of the resurrection of Jesus, the early church came to recognize that what happened on Calvary was more than just a monument to human brutality. There was already a light shining in that darkness, the light of God’s unconditional love for all humanity, including those who crucified Jesus. The church came to see that God was present in that place which seemed to proclaim the absence of God, God’s abandonment of Jesus and of humanity. There was a recognition ever after that God could be present in a loving way in the darkest of human situations. When faced with the cross, we can either renounce our faith in God, or open our hearts to God present in our suffering, loving us with a love we will never fully comprehend in this life. Just as God was present to Jesus and to all of humanity on Calvary, God is present in every experience of the cross, suffering with those who suffer, loving them into a new and fuller life.

The story we have just heard reveals both the worst and the best of the human spirit. The worst of the human spirit, the brutality of the absolute power of the Roman Empire, is there for all to see. Yet, as is often the way, the worst instincts of some drew forth the best instincts of others. It is above all Jesus who reveals the best of the human spirit in this hour. He dies as he lived, standing in loving solidarity with sinners, praying for those responsible for his death, promising paradise to a condemned criminal who turned to him for support. Those best instincts of human nature in the story we have heard can inspire us. We all struggle to forgive those who have hurt or damaged us, but, like Jesus, we may find it in us to pray for them, asking God to forgive them. We can all be a Joseph of Arimathea to others, working to take the wounded body of Christ, our suffering sisters and brothers, off their crosses. In the story of Jesus’ passion and death, we not only hear the good news of the Lord’s tremendous love for us, but we also hear the call to become that good news for others.

And/Or

(ii) Palm Sunday

Some of us may have accompanied loved ones on their last journey, as they passed from this life to the next. The stages of the final journey of a loved one can remain etched in our memories. Their journey was, in a sense, our journey. We travelled it with them. Very often, it is only some time after the death of our loved that the true significance of that final journey becomes clear to us. We come to see it in a new light; we come to understand what was going on in a way that was not possible at the time.

The final journey of Jesus was etched in the memory of his disciples. They too came to understand the full significance of that final journey only afterwards, in the light of Easter and with the coming of the Spirit. What they initially regarded as a great tragedy came to be seen as good news. A story of brokenness and failure came to be recognized as a story full of promise and hope. That is how we read and listen to Luke’s story of Jesus’ last journey this Palm Sunday. We hear this story, not as a depressing word, but as a word that nourishes us and strengthens our faith and hope.

Luke emphasizes that Jesus died as he lived. He lived prayerfully and he died prayerfully, praying to God that Simon’s faith would not fail, praying for forgiveness for his executioners, praying that his Father’s will would be done in his life and, with his final breath, praying himself into the welcoming hands of his Father. Jesus lived compassionately and he died compassionately, healing the wounded ear of one of his enemies, granting Peter a look of acceptance at the very moment that Peter denied him, promising Paradise to the condemned man who turned to him in his hour of need. The experience of his passion and death did not change Jesus. He remained in death all he was in life, a person in prayerful communion with God and in compassionate communion with all men and women, including those who rejected him and failed him.

The Jesus who lived and died is also the Jesus who is risen. As risen Lord, he remains in prayerful communion with God, interceding for us, and he remains in compassionate communion with ourselves. He joins us on our own life’s journey, as he joined the two sorrowful disciples on the road to Emmaus. As the Lord journeys with us, he pours out his Spirit into our hearts, so that we can journey in the same prayerful and compassionate way that he journeyed. His Spirit enables us to be prayerful and compassionate people as he was, in good times and in bad, when the path of life is easy and effortless and when it is painful and difficult. The portrait of Jesus that Luke gives us in his passion story is also intended as our portrait. We are being invited to identify with Jesus, to follow him, to become, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the person he was and is.

As we listen to Luke’s passion story we might find it easier to identify with the other characters in the story. We might recognize something of ourselves in the disciples who, at the last Supper, argued as to which of them was the greatest, in the followers of Jesus who, at the moment of his arrest, resorted to physical force when a different response was called for, in Peter who lacked the courage of his convictions under pressure. We might even recognize something of ourselves in Judas who turned a sign of affection into a signal of betrayal. I suspect many of us could also recognize something of ourselves in those who responded well, in Simon who helped to carry Jesus’ burden, in the good thief who confessed his sin and turned to Jesus in trusting prayer, in the centurion who saw more deeply than any other Roman, in Joseph of Arimathea who did not go along with his peers in the Jewish council but stood apart. Wherever we locate ourselves in the story, the prayerful and compassionate Saviour opens his arms to receive us. That is why this story is good news for us all.

And/Or

(iii) Palm Sunday

We have just heard the story of the last hours of Jesus as Nazareth as told for us by St. Luke. It is this story that we will be reflecting upon in the coming week. The passion narrative is a preview of the whole of this week, the only week in the church’s year that is called Holy Week. The story we have just heard is in one sense a tragic story, the story of the cruel execution of an innocent man. Luke’s telling of the story goes out of its way to declare the innocence of Jesus. Pilate declares Jesus innocent no less than three times, ‘I have found no case against him’. One of those crucified with Jesus declares, ‘This man has done nothing wrong’. The centurion, seeing how Jesus died, proclaims, ‘This was a great and good man’. Jesus dies as the innocent victim of a grave injustice. Therein lies the tragedy of the story we have just heard.

There have been many innocent victims of grave injustices since then, even close to home and in recent times. There may have been times in our own lives when we felt that we were unjustly treated. Such experiences can leave us feeling angry and our anger can turn to bitterness and resentment. The unfair and unjust treatment that we believed we received leaves us diminished. One of the extraordinary features of the story we have just heard is that the injustice done to its main character, to Jesus, did not diminish him in that sense. He retained his goodness, his love for others right to the end, even as the unjust forces were doing their worst to him. It is Luke who again brings out this dimension of the story more than the other evangelists. Luke portrays Jesus as healing the ear of those who came to arrest him, turning to look compassionately at Peter at the moment Peter denied him for the third time, praying aloud to God for forgiveness for those who were executing him, and in his last communication with a fellow human being, promising paradise to one of the criminals who were being crucified with him. Here was the triumph in the midst of the tragedy, the triumph of goodness over evil, of love and mercy over sin and injustice. This triumph would become visible to all when God raised his Son from the dead on the third day.

Luke’s story of the last journey of Jesus reminds us that our greatest triumph lies in how we respond to others, regardless of how they have treated us. We sometimes have little control over how others treat us or regard us. We have some control over how we respond to others. If we respond in the way Jesus did, then we share in his triumph. When we retain our goodness, our integrity, in the midst of forces that threaten to diminish it, then the Lord’s triumph, the triumph of this Holy Week, takes flesh in our lives. The story of Jesus becomes our story. That is the call this Holy Week makes on us.

And/Or

(iv) Palm Sunday

We have just heard the story of the last hours of Jesus as Nazareth as told for us by St. Luke. It is this story that we will be reflecting upon in the coming week, the only week in the church’s year that is called Holy Week. The story we have just heard is in one sense a tragic story, the story of the cruel execution of an innocent man. Luke’s telling of the story goes out of its way to declare the innocence of Jesus. Pilate declares Jesus innocent no less than three times, ‘I have found no case against him’. One of those crucified with Jesus declares, ‘This man has done nothing wrong’. The centurion, seeing how Jesus died, proclaims, ‘This was a great and good man’. Jesus dies as the innocent victim of a grave injustice. Therein lies the tragedy of the story we have just heard.

There have been many innocent victims of grave injustices since then. There may have been times in our own lives when we felt that we were unjustly treated. Such experiences can leave us feeling angry and resentful. One of the extraordinary features of the story we have just heard is that the injustice done to Jesus did not fundamentally change him. He retained his goodness, his love for others, right to the end. He remained the person he had been all his life, even as he unjustly endured so much hostility and hatred. Luke portrays Jesus as healing the ear of one of those who came to arrest him, turning to look compassionately at Peter at the moment Peter denied him for the third time, praying aloud asking God to forgive those who were executing him, and in the final words he spoke to another human being, promising paradise to one of the criminals crucified alongsie him. Here was the triumph in the midst of the tragedy, the triumph of goodness over evil, of love and mercy over sin and injustice. I am reminded of Saint Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Rome. ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’.

Luke’s story of the last journey of Jesus reminds us that our greatest triumph lies in how we relate to others, regardless of how they relate to us. We sometimes have little control over how others treat us or regard us. We have some control over how we respond to the way others relate to us. If, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we respond in the way Jesus did, then we share in his triumph. When we retain our goodness, our integrity, in the face of forces that threaten to diminish us and violate our dignity, then the Lord’s triumph, the triumph of this Holy Week, takes flesh in our own lives. The story of Jesus becomes our story, and the love of God which Jesus revealed most fully in the hour of his passion and death is revealed in our lives.

And/Or

(v) Palm Sunday

According to Luke’s version of the passion and death of Jesus which we have just heard, three groups mocked Jesus as he hung from the cross. Each group called on him to save himself. The leaders jeered at him saying, ‘He saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One’. The soldiers mocked him, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself’. One of the criminals hurled abuse at him, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well’. They all wanted Jesus to come down from the cross. Otherwise, he could not be taken seriously as the Christ of God, the king of the Jews.

The notion of a crucified king, a crucified Christ or Messiah, was a scandal. As Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’. If the notion of a crucified Messiah was a scandal and foolishness, a crucified God would have been even more scandalous. Yet, we believe that Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, not only when he was preaching and performing miracles in Galilee but when he was hanging powerlessly and silently on the cross. We believe that Jesus was God in human form from the first moment of his earthly life to the last. When we look upon the cross we are looking at a crucified God. Here is a God who is not removed from human suffering but who, in Jesus, enters fully and deeply into our suffering, not just our physical suffering, but our emotional, mental and spiritual suffering. Jesus suffered in all those ways on the cross; God suffered in all those ways on Calvary. We believe in a God who is with us in our darkest moments. We believe in a God who suffers with us whenever we suffer, which is the true meaning of compassion. Whenever we find ourselves undergoing our own Golgotha, our own Calvary, we can be certain that God is with us, that the Lord is with us, as one who knows that experience from within, and, so, can be our strength in weakness. When Saint Paul was experiencing his own Golgotha in a Roman prison he wrote to the church in Philippi, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’. We can all make those words of Paul our own.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or frmartinhogan@gmail.com

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14th April >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 22:14-23:56 for Palm Sunday, Cycle C: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’.

Palm Sunday, Cycle C

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 22:14-23:56

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke

Key: N. Narrator. ✠ Jesus. O. Other single speaker. C. Crowd, or more than one speaker.

N. When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them,

✠ I have longed to eat this passover with you before I suffer; because, I tell you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

N. Then, taking a cup, he gave thanks and said,

✠ Take this and share it among you, because from now on, I tell you, I shall not drink wine until the kingdom of God comes.

N. Then he took some bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying,

✠ This is my body which will be given for you; do this as a memorial of me.

N. He did the same with the cup after supper, and said,

✠ This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you.

And yet, here with me on the table is the hand of the man who betrays me. The Son of Man does indeed go to his fate even as it has been decreed, but alas for that man by whom he is betrayed!

N. And they began to ask one another which of them it could be who was to do this thing.

A dispute arose also between them about which should be reckoned the greatest, but he said to them,

✠ Among pagans it is the kings who lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are given the title Benefactor. This must not happen with you. No; the greatest among you must behave as if he were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves. For who is the greater: the one at table or the one who serves? The one at table, surely? Yet here am I among you as one who serves!

You are the men who have stood by me faithfully in my trials; and now I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father conferred one on me: you will eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.

Simon, Simon! Satan, you must know, has got his wish to sift you all like wheat; but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and once you have recovered, you in your turn must strengthen your brothers.

N. He answered,

O. Lord, I would be ready to go to prison with you, and to death.

N. Jesus replied,

✠ I tell you, Peter, by the time the cock crows today you will have denied three times that you know me.

N. He said to them,

✠ When I sent you out without purse or haversack or sandals, were you short of anything?

N. They answered,

C. No.

N. He said to them,

✠ But now if you have a purse, take it; if you have a haversack, do the same; if you have no sword, sell your cloak and buy one, because I tell you these words of scripture have to be fulfilled in me: He let himself be taken for a criminal. Yes, what scripture says about me is even now reaching its fulfilment.

N. They said,

C. Lord, there are two swords here now.

N. He said to them,

✠ That is enough!

N. He then left to make his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, with the disciples following. When they reached the place he said to them,

✠ Pray not to be put to the test.

N. Then he withdrew from them, about a stone’s throw away, and knelt down and prayed, saying,

✠ Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.

N. Then an angel appeared to him, coming from heaven to give him strength. In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.

When he rose from prayer he went to the disciples and found them sleeping for sheer grief. He said to them,

✠ Why are you asleep? Get up and pray not to be put to the test.

N. He was still speaking when a number of men appeared, and at the head of them the man called Judas, one of the Twelve, who went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said,

✠ Judas, are you betraying the son of Man with a kiss?

N. His followers, seeing what was happening, said,

C. Lord, shall we use our swords?

N. And one of them struck out at the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. But at this Jesus spoke:

✠ Leave off! That will do!

N. And touching the man’s ear he healed him.

Then Jesus spoke to the chief priests and captains of the Temple guard and elders who had come for him. He said,

✠ Am I a brigand, that you had to set out with swords and clubs? When I was among you in the Temple day after day you never moved to lay hands on me. But this is your hour; this is the reign of darkness.

N. They seized him then and led him away, and they took him to the high priest’s house. Peter followed at a distance. They had lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and Peter sat down among them, and as he was sitting there by the blaze a servant-girl saw him, peered at him, and said,

O. This person was with him too.

N. But he denied it.

O. Woman, I do not know him.

N. Shortly afterwards someone else saw him and said,

O. You are another of them.

N. But Peter replied,

O. I am not, my friend.

N. About an hour later another man insisted, saying,

O. This fellow was certainly with him. Why, he is a Galilean.

N. Peter said,

O. My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.

N. At that instant, while he was still speaking, the cock crew, and the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered what the Lord had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will have disowned me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Meanwhile the men who guarded Jesus were mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and questioned him, saying,

C. Play the prophet. Who hit you then?

N. And they continued heaping insults on him.

When day broke there was a meeting of the elders of the people, attended by the chief priests and scribes. He was brought before their council, and they said to him,

C. If you are the Christ, tell us.

N. He replied,

✠ If I tell you, you will not believe me, and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Power of God.

N. Then they all said,

C. So you are the Son of God then?

N. He answered:

✠ It is you who say I am.

N. They said,

C. What need of witnesses have we now? We have heard it for ourselves from his own lips.

N. The whole assembly then rose, and they brought him before Pilate.

They began their accusation by saying,

C. We found this man inciting our people to revolt, opposing payment of the tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king.

N. Pilate put to him this question:

O. Are you the king of the Jews?

N. He replied,

✠ It is you who say it.

N. Pilate then said to the chief priests and the crowd,

O. I find no case against this man.

N. But they persisted,

C. He is inflaming the people with his teaching all over Judaea; it has come all the way from Galilee, where he started, down to here.

N. When Pilate heard this, he asked if the man were a Galilean; and finding that he came under Herod’s jurisdiction he passed him over to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

Herod was delighted to see Jesus; he had heard about him and had been wanting for a long time to set eyes on him; moreover, he was hoping to see some miracle worked by him. So he questioned him at some length; but without getting any reply. Meanwhile the chief priests and the scribes were there, violently pressing their accusations. Then Herod, together with his guards, treated him with contempt and made fun of him; he put a rich cloak on him and sent him back to Pilate. And though Herod and Pilate had been enemies before, they were reconciled that same day.

Pilate then summoned the chief priests and the leading men and the people. He said,

O. You brought this man before me as a political agitator. Now I have gone into the matter myself in your presence and found no case against the man in respect of all the charges you bring against him. Nor has Herod either, since he has sent him back to us. As you can see, the man has done nothing that deserves death, So I shall have him flogged and then let him go.

N. But as one man they howled,

C. Away with him! Give us Barabbas!

N. (This man had been thrown into prison for causing a riot in the city and for murder.)

Pilate was anxious to set Jesus free and addressed them again, but they shouted back,

C. Crucify him! Crucify him!

N. And for the third time he spoke to them,

O. Why? What harm has this man done? I have found no case against him that deserves death, so I shall have him punished and then let him go.

N. But they kept on shouting at the top of their voices, demanding that he should be crucified. And their shouts were growing louder.

Pilate then gave his verdict: their demand was to be granted. He released the man they asked for, who had been imprisoned for rioting and murder, and handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they pleased.

As they were leading him away they seized on a man, Simon from Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him shoulder the cross and carry it behind Jesus. Large numbers of people followed him, and of women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said,

✠ Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For the days will surely come when people will say, ‘Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne, the breasts that have never suckled!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’; to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if men use the green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?

N. Now with him they were also leading out two other criminals to be executed.

When they reached the place called The Skull, they crucified him there and the two criminals also, one on the right, the other on the left. Jesus said,

✠ Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.

N. Then they cast lots to share out his clothing.

The people stayed there watching him. As for the leaders, they jeered at him, saying,

C. He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.

N. The soldiers mocked him too, and when they approached to offer vinegar they said,

C. If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

N. Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals hanging there abused him, saying,

O. Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well.

N. But the other spoke up and rebuked him:

O. Have you no fear of God at all? You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

N. He replied,

✠ Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise.

N. It was now about the sixth hour and, with the sun eclipsed, a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. The veil of the Temple was torn right down the middle; and when Jesus had cried out in a loud voice, he said,

✠ Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

N. With these words he breathed his last.

All kneel and pause a moment

When the centurion saw what had taken place, he gave praise to God and said,

O. This was a great and good man.

N. And when all the people who had gathered for the spectacle saw what had happened, they went home beating their breasts.

All his friends stood at a distance; so also did the women who had accompanied him from Galilee, and they saw all this happen.

Then a member of the council arrived, an upright and virtuous man named Joseph. He had not consented to what the others had planned and carried out. He came from Arimathaea, a Jewish town, and he lived in the hope of seeing the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He then took it down, wrapped it in a shroud and put him in a tomb which was hewn in stone in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day and the sabbath was imminent.

Meanwhile the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus were following behind. They took note of the tomb and of the position of the body.

Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. And on the sabbath day they rested, as the Law required.

Gospel (USA)

Luke 22:14—23:56

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table with the apostles. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for, I tell you, I shall not eat it again until there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; for I tell you that from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.

“And yet behold, the hand of the one who is to betray me is with me on the table; for the Son of Man indeed goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.” And they began to debate among themselves who among them would do such a deed.

Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest. He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them and those in authority over them are addressed as ‘Benefactors’; but among you it shall not be so. Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant. For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves. It is you who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

“Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” He said to him, “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you.” But he replied, “I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.”

He said to them, “When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything?” “No, nothing,” they replied. He said to them, “But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, He was counted among the wicked; and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment.” Then they said, “Lord, look, there are two swords here.” But he replied, “It is enough!”

Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he arrived at the place he said to them, “Pray that you may not undergo the test.” After withdrawing about a stone’s throw from them and kneeling, he prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him. He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples, he found them sleeping from grief. He said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test.”

While he was still speaking, a crowd approached and in front was one of the Twelve, a man named Judas. He went up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, “Lord, shall we strike with a sword?” And one of them struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said in reply, “Stop, no more of this!” Then he touched the servant’s ear and healed him. And Jesus said to the chief priests and temple guards and elders who had come for him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? Day after day I was with you in the temple area, and you did not seize me; but this is your hour, the time for the power of darkness.”

After arresting him they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest; Peter was following at a distance. They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter sat down with them. When a maid saw him seated in the light, she looked intently at him and said, “This man too was with him.” But he denied it saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” A short while later someone else saw him and said, “You too are one of them”; but Peter answered, “My friend, I am not.” About an hour later, still another insisted, “Assuredly, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.” Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” He went out and began to weep bitterly. The men who held Jesus in custody were ridiculing and beating him. They blindfolded him and questioned him, saying, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” And they reviled him in saying many other things against him.

When day came the council of elders of the people met, both chief priests and scribes, and they brought him before their Sanhedrin. They said, “If you are the Christ, tell us,” but he replied to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I question, you will not respond. But from this time on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?” He replied to them, “You say that I am.” Then they said, “What further need have we for testimony? We have heard it from his own mouth.”

Then the whole assembly of them arose and brought him before Pilate. They brought charges against him, saying, “We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Christ, a king.” Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He said to him in reply, “You say so.” Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds, “I find this man not guilty.” But they were adamant and said, “He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to here.”

On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean; and upon learning that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time. Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at length, but he gave him no answer. The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, stood by accusing him harshly. Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him, and after clothing him in resplendent garb, he sent him back to Pilate. Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly. Pilate then summoned the chief priests, the rulers, and the people and said to them, “You brought this man to me and accused him of inciting the people to revolt. I have conducted my investigation in your presence and have not found this man guilty of the charges you have brought against him, nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us. So no capital crime has been committed by him. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him.”

But all together they shouted out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.” —Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city and for murder.— Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus, but they continued their shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate addressed them a third time, “What evil has this man done? I found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him.” With loud shouts, however, they persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed. The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted. So he released the man who had been imprisoned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.

As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus. A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’ At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?” Now two others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They divided his garments by casting lots. The people stood by and watched; the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.” Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine they called out, “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Above him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”; and when he had said this he breathed his last.

Here all kneel and pause for a short time.

The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, “This man was innocent beyond doubt.” When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts; but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.

Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph, who, though he was a member of the council, had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. After he had taken the body down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb in which no one had yet been buried. It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin. The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind, and when they had seen the tomb and the way in which his body was laid in it, they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.

Reflections (5)

(i)  Palm Sunday

We have just been listening to Luke’s account of Jesus’ final journey. Like any human being, Jesus recoiled at the prospect of crucifixion. It is only Luke who tells us that on the Mount of Olives, while praying intensely, his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. Jesus did not choose to be crucified. He choose to be faithful even if that meant being crucified. He choose to be faithful to God’s love for all of humanity. Although we have just heard a very tragic story, we consider it good news, gospel, because it is a story that proclaims the triumph of a truly life giving love. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion and death, Jesus refers to himself as the ‘green wood’. The cross, which was an instrument of torture, came to be venerated as the tree of life, because it is the place where love triumphed over hatred and life over death.

Calvary was a very dark place, an expression of human brutality at its worst. Yet, in the light of the resurrection of Jesus, the early church came to recognize that what happened on Calvary was more than just a monument to human brutality. There was already a light shining in that darkness, the light of God’s unconditional love for all humanity, including those who crucified Jesus. The church came to see that God was present in that place which seemed to proclaim the absence of God, God’s abandonment of Jesus and of humanity. There was a recognition ever after that God could be present in a loving way in the darkest of human situations. When faced with the cross, we can either renounce our faith in God, or open our hearts to God present in our suffering, loving us with a love we will never fully comprehend in this life. Just as God was present to Jesus and to all of humanity on Calvary, God is present in every experience of the cross, suffering with those who suffer, loving them into a new and fuller life.

The story we have just heard reveals both the worst and the best of the human spirit. The worst of the human spirit, the brutality of the absolute power of the Roman Empire, is there for all to see. Yet, as is often the way, the worst instincts of some drew forth the best instincts of others. It is above all Jesus who reveals the best of the human spirit in this hour. He dies as he lived, standing in loving solidarity with sinners, praying for those responsible for his death, promising paradise to a condemned criminal who turned to him for support. Those best instincts of human nature in the story we have heard can inspire us. We all struggle to forgive those who have hurt or damaged us, but, like Jesus, we may find it in us to pray for them, asking God to forgive them. We can all be a Joseph of Arimathea to others, working to take the wounded body of Christ, our suffering sisters and brothers, off their crosses. In the story of Jesus’ passion and death, we not only hear the good news of the Lord’s tremendous love for us, but we also hear the call to become that good news for others.

And/Or

(ii) Palm Sunday

Some of us may have accompanied loved ones on their last journey, as they passed from this life to the next. The stages of the final journey of a loved one can remain etched in our memories. Their journey was, in a sense, our journey. We travelled it with them. Very often, it is only some time after the death of our loved that the true significance of that final journey becomes clear to us. We come to see it in a new light; we come to understand what was going on in a way that was not possible at the time.

The final journey of Jesus was etched in the memory of his disciples. They too came to understand the full significance of that final journey only afterwards, in the light of Easter and with the coming of the Spirit. What they initially regarded as a great tragedy came to be seen as good news. A story of brokenness and failure came to be recognized as a story full of promise and hope. That is how we read and listen to Luke’s story of Jesus’ last journey this Palm Sunday. We hear this story, not as a depressing word, but as a word that nourishes us and strengthens our faith and hope.

Luke emphasizes that Jesus died as he lived. He lived prayerfully and he died prayerfully, praying to God that Simon’s faith would not fail, praying for forgiveness for his executioners, praying that his Father’s will would be done in his life and, with his final breath, praying himself into the welcoming hands of his Father. Jesus lived compassionately and he died compassionately, healing the wounded ear of one of his enemies, granting Peter a look of acceptance at the very moment that Peter denied him, promising Paradise to the condemned man who turned to him in his hour of need. The experience of his passion and death did not change Jesus. He remained in death all he was in life, a person in prayerful communion with God and in compassionate communion with all men and women, including those who rejected him and failed him.

The Jesus who lived and died is also the Jesus who is risen. As risen Lord, he remains in prayerful communion with God, interceding for us, and he remains in compassionate communion with ourselves. He joins us on our own life’s journey, as he joined the two sorrowful disciples on the road to Emmaus. As the Lord journeys with us, he pours out his Spirit into our hearts, so that we can journey in the same prayerful and compassionate way that he journeyed. His Spirit enables us to be prayerful and compassionate people as he was, in good times and in bad, when the path of life is easy and effortless and when it is painful and difficult. The portrait of Jesus that Luke gives us in his passion story is also intended as our portrait. We are being invited to identify with Jesus, to follow him, to become, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the person he was and is.

As we listen to Luke’s passion story we might find it easier to identify with the other characters in the story. We might recognize something of ourselves in the disciples who, at the last Supper, argued as to which of them was the greatest, in the followers of Jesus who, at the moment of his arrest, resorted to physical force when a different response was called for, in Peter who lacked the courage of his convictions under pressure. We might even recognize something of ourselves in Judas who turned a sign of affection into a signal of betrayal. I suspect many of us could also recognize something of ourselves in those who responded well, in Simon who helped to carry Jesus’ burden, in the good thief who confessed his sin and turned to Jesus in trusting prayer, in the centurion who saw more deeply than any other Roman, in Joseph of Arimathea who did not go along with his peers in the Jewish council but stood apart. Wherever we locate ourselves in the story, the prayerful and compassionate Saviour opens his arms to receive us. That is why this story is good news for us all.

And/Or

(iii) Palm Sunday

We have just heard the story of the last hours of Jesus as Nazareth as told for us by St. Luke. It is this story that we will be reflecting upon in the coming week. The passion narrative is a preview of the whole of this week, the only week in the church’s year that is called Holy Week. The story we have just heard is in one sense a tragic story, the story of the cruel execution of an innocent man. Luke’s telling of the story goes out of its way to declare the innocence of Jesus. Pilate declares Jesus innocent no less than three times, ‘I have found no case against him’. One of those crucified with Jesus declares, ‘This man has done nothing wrong’. The centurion, seeing how Jesus died, proclaims, ‘This was a great and good man’. Jesus dies as the innocent victim of a grave injustice. Therein lies the tragedy of the story we have just heard.

There have been many innocent victims of grave injustices since then, even close to home and in recent times. There may have been times in our own lives when we felt that we were unjustly treated. Such experiences can leave us feeling angry and our anger can turn to bitterness and resentment. The unfair and unjust treatment that we believed we received leaves us diminished. One of the extraordinary features of the story we have just heard is that the injustice done to its main character, to Jesus, did not diminish him in that sense. He retained his goodness, his love for others right to the end, even as the unjust forces were doing their worst to him. It is Luke who again brings out this dimension of the story more than the other evangelists. Luke portrays Jesus as healing the ear of those who came to arrest him, turning to look compassionately at Peter at the moment Peter denied him for the third time, praying aloud to God for forgiveness for those who were executing him, and in his last communication with a fellow human being, promising paradise to one of the criminals who were being crucified with him. Here was the triumph in the midst of the tragedy, the triumph of goodness over evil, of love and mercy over sin and injustice. This triumph would become visible to all when God raised his Son from the dead on the third day.

Luke’s story of the last journey of Jesus reminds us that our greatest triumph lies in how we respond to others, regardless of how they have treated us. We sometimes have little control over how others treat us or regard us. We have some control over how we respond to others. If we respond in the way Jesus did, then we share in his triumph. When we retain our goodness, our integrity, in the midst of forces that threaten to diminish it, then the Lord’s triumph, the triumph of this Holy Week, takes flesh in our lives. The story of Jesus becomes our story. That is the call this Holy Week makes on us.

And/Or

(iv) Palm Sunday

We have just heard the story of the last hours of Jesus as Nazareth as told for us by St. Luke. It is this story that we will be reflecting upon in the coming week, the only week in the church’s year that is called Holy Week. The story we have just heard is in one sense a tragic story, the story of the cruel execution of an innocent man. Luke’s telling of the story goes out of its way to declare the innocence of Jesus. Pilate declares Jesus innocent no less than three times, ‘I have found no case against him’. One of those crucified with Jesus declares, ‘This man has done nothing wrong’. The centurion, seeing how Jesus died, proclaims, ‘This was a great and good man’. Jesus dies as the innocent victim of a grave injustice. Therein lies the tragedy of the story we have just heard.

There have been many innocent victims of grave injustices since then. There may have been times in our own lives when we felt that we were unjustly treated. Such experiences can leave us feeling angry and resentful. One of the extraordinary features of the story we have just heard is that the injustice done to Jesus did not fundamentally change him. He retained his goodness, his love for others, right to the end. He remained the person he had been all his life, even as he unjustly endured so much hostility and hatred. Luke portrays Jesus as healing the ear of one of those who came to arrest him, turning to look compassionately at Peter at the moment Peter denied him for the third time, praying aloud asking God to forgive those who were executing him, and in the final words he spoke to another human being, promising paradise to one of the criminals crucified alongsie him. Here was the triumph in the midst of the tragedy, the triumph of goodness over evil, of love and mercy over sin and injustice. I am reminded of Saint Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Rome. ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’.

Luke’s story of the last journey of Jesus reminds us that our greatest triumph lies in how we relate to others, regardless of how they relate to us. We sometimes have little control over how others treat us or regard us. We have some control over how we respond to the way others relate to us. If, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we respond in the way Jesus did, then we share in his triumph. When we retain our goodness, our integrity, in the face of forces that threaten to diminish us and violate our dignity, then the Lord’s triumph, the triumph of this Holy Week, takes flesh in our own lives. The story of Jesus becomes our story, and the love of God which Jesus revealed most fully in the hour of his passion and death is revealed in our lives.

And/Or

(v) Palm Sunday

According to Luke’s version of the passion and death of Jesus which we have just heard, three groups mocked Jesus as he hung from the cross. Each group called on him to save himself. The leaders jeered at him saying, ‘He saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One’. The soldiers mocked him, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself’. One of the criminals hurled abuse at him, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well’. They all wanted Jesus to come down from the cross. Otherwise, he could not be taken seriously as the Christ of God, the king of the Jews.

The notion of a crucified king, a crucified Christ or Messiah, was a scandal. As Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’. If the notion of a crucified Messiah was a scandal and foolishness, a crucified God would have been even more scandalous. Yet, we believe that Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, not only when he was preaching and performing miracles in Galilee but when he was hanging powerlessly and silently on the cross. We believe that Jesus was God in human form from the first moment of his earthly life to the last. When we look upon the cross we are looking at a crucified God. Here is a God who is not removed from human suffering but who, in Jesus, enters fully and deeply into our suffering, not just our physical suffering, but our emotional, mental and spiritual suffering. Jesus suffered in all those ways on the cross; God suffered in all those ways on Calvary. We believe in a God who is with us in our darkest moments. We believe in a God who suffers with us whenever we suffer, which is the true meaning of compassion. Whenever we find ourselves undergoing our own Golgotha, our own Calvary, we can be certain that God is with us, that the Lord is with us, as one who knows that experience from within, and, so, can be our strength in weakness. When Saint Paul was experiencing his own Golgotha in a Roman prison he wrote to the church in Philippi, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’. We can all make those words of Paul our own.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[kellyyisstrange-blog]

Warped Tour/Roadie For A Day Blog: July 13, 2018

Okay, wow! I have A LOT to talk about today. This blog might be all over the place because I am terrible at this, but I really want to share my experience with everyone! 

So, Doll Skin. If you haven’t heard of them before, let me educate! Doll Skin is a punk/rock band from Phoenix, AZ. In my opinion, they are beyond wonderful and extremely underrated and I try to bring their music to everyone’s attention as much as I possibly can. The members are as follows:

Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar: Sydney Dolezal | Lead Guitar: Alex Snowden | Bass: Nicole Rich | Drums/Vocals: Meghan Herring

Doll Skin played at Warped Tour 2017 and are currently playing at Warped Tour 2018 on the Owly stage! SO. A few months ago, I had learned about this contest sponsored by an organization called “Girls Behind the Rock Scene.” Basically, this organization helps bring more females into the music industry and showing women what it’s like in the backstage/roadie scenes of band life. I support this 100% because well, being a female myself, I love getting any opportunity that comes my way in a “male-dominated” world. Women are truly making breakthroughs all over the world and I could not be more proud to be a woman in this day and age. Well GBTRS partnered with Doll Skin for Warped Tour 2018 to have a contest, where for each tour date, someone would be selected to shadow/be their roadie for that day. I really wanted to apply, so I did, but at first I had no confidence that I was going to win. I was blessed with that email saying I was going to be Doll Skin’s roadie in Camden, NJ’s Warped Tour show. I had no idea how to prepare or even if I needed to prepare. So I just read up a little bit on what roadies do and took it from there!

Showtime!

So, I rode to Warped with my best friend, Kait. Unfortunately, my car decided to give me problems just 2 days prior. My luck in a nutshell. So, I arrived and had to meet with the girls’ tour manager, Nicole (since there are 2 Nicole’s, one being the manager and one being the bass player of the band I’m going to do this: when I’m talking about the tour manager, I’m going to say ‘Nicole (TM)’ and when I’m talking about the bass player I’m going to say ‘Nicole (DS)’.) So, I met up with Nicole (TM) and she was the absolute sweetest. She did everything in her power to make sure I could soak in as much information as possible, while also staying properly hydrated and having a fun time. It was very hot out that day. She probably gave me a total of 6-7 water cans throughout the day. 

Anyway, Doll Skin was scheduled to perform at 4:30, therefore they did not really need me until 3:45. But, Nicole (TM) asked me if I wanted to go with her and Meghan to see Don Broco at 11:30 (I believe) and I said sure! They took me SIDE STAGE and I was completely blown away. I have never seen any bands side stage before so this was an amazing new thing for me. I was trying to keep my cool because so many band members were just walking right past me. I got to give Meghan her gift, which was a red treble clef necklace and she loved it! She wore it during their set! So, after seeing Don Broco, I was taken to the band’s merch tent and I met Cameron. He was giving me pointers about how to sell merchandise to fans and he is just a natural! He convinced so many people who have not heard of the band to go check them out. He had stickers with the band’s name, set time and stage and handed them out to everyone. My favorite thing about sitting at the tent was when people would come up to us and say, “Doll Skin? I’ve never heard of them” and Cameron would say, “Oh but they are only the BEST band on Warped Tour this year!” with SUCH confidence and I could tell it made everyone interested in learning about them. Though, one lady approached us and asked if they were the “Powerpuff Girl band” which made me laugh because the girls told me they get that all the time. 

After that, I was pretty much free to watch some bands and do whatever I wanted until 3:45. The first thing I did was look for the Christina Grimmie Foundation tent. Since Christina was tragically murdered at her concert in June of 2016, her family decided to start a foundation in her honor and any donations are shared to families/victims of gun violence as well as breast cancer. Christina is one of my idols, and I’m friends with her brother Marcus who was running the tent, so I visited them and hung out for a while. Mark gave me a bracelet and we were laughing and joking around. It’s good to see him happy again. 

I decided to walk around for a while, just to check out all the tents and see what was going on when all of a sudden I notice a sign that said, “Simple Plan free signing 1:00″ It was 12:00 and I IMMEDIATELY went in line!! Simple Plan has been a favorite of mine since I was about 13 years old. I was able to get a selfie with them and my inner child was screaming for joy! Finally, after walking backstage and just looking at all these bands walking past me, I actually MET one! They were signing right next to the stage where Tonight Alive were performing, which made me happy because I really wanted to see them. So yes, another dream of meeting Simple Plan has finally come true! Then I went with Kait to see We The Kings and we got MURDERED in the pit pretty much! Haha, they said they were filming us for a video and around 8-10 fans all decided to crowd surf all at once and they were all coming towards us and we pretty much got squashed. One girl almost fell head first into the concrete! Thank goodness we saved her! Seriously! Be safe when trying to crowd surf people! (Ok, ‘safe’ and ‘crowd surfing’ do not go together, I know. But still, be careful!) 

After their set was done, I was escorted by Nicole (TM) to see Simple Plan side stage!!!! I repeat: SIMPLE PLAN...SIDE STAGE!!! It was an amazing experience. The crowd was fantastic and honestly, seeing everything from the opposite side, meaning from the stage as opposed to the crowd, was life changing for me. It really inspired me to maybe get myself onto a stage performing in front of crazy awesome fans one day! But oh my, were the fans crazy for Simple Plan! The band had huge water guns and were giving water to the fans and they were so loud and active and amazing! I got to see what really happens behind the scenes during a show. It is A LOT of hard work, guys! These shows don’t just have a magic button that you press to make it all happen. These crew members bust their asses for every single show and I don’t think we give them nearly enough credit! So shoutout to all of you wonderful crew members working Warped or working at all for any band! Keep it up!

NOW. It is 3:45 and I’m at Doll Skin’s tent backstage helping them prepare for their set! Now I just want to start this part off by saying that all of the members of this band are the nicest human beings I have ever met! So, I see Alex first, and she gave me a hug and was saying that their photographer, who is also named Kelly and also who I met earlier in the day, kept talking about me and how they were all so excited to finally meet me. I gave Alex her gifts, which were a Harley Quinn plush and Avenged Sevenfold All Excess DVD. Her jaw dropped and she gently put them down and gave me the biggest hug in the world, thanking me and saying I’m such a sweetheart for the gifts and that she is going to be watching that dvd for the rest of the tour and I just thought it was so cool that she loved them so much! Sydney shows up next and I hugged her and gave her the Doll Skin Photo Book I made and HER jaw dropped! She’s going, “Guys did you see this?!” and everyone is saying how awesome it was. I included a letter for them in the book which Sydney promised me they would read together. Nicole (DS) shows up next and it was so funny because Alex goes, “Woah! ...Omg from far away she looked naked!” And I started laughing. So I give Nicole (DS) her gifts, which were a pink wrist pouch, a MCR bracelet with Helena lyrics on it, and a bear keychain that was pink. She put the bracelet and keychain on instantly and thanked me and gave me a hug. I went to take a photo with Alex and Nicole (DS) and Nicole says, “OH WOW I DO LOOK NAKED! ...Oh well” Haha. Amazing. There was even a point when Kait asked me if I could bring her a water and Sydney ended up walking over to the gate and talking to her for a bit! Sydney is so amazing! I told her how much Kait loves her and she immediately wanted to meet her and they took goofy selfies together. It was amazing. Doll Skin really does love and care about their fans!

Their set was starting in a few minutes and basically what I learned was that the girls are pretty much their own roadies. We just helped them bring Meghan’s drums up to the stage and the girls took care of everything else. They are very independent and want to have control over how they set up their stage and I respect the hell out of that! We also put water on the stage for them in case they needed it. So, the set begins and I’m side stage of course. It’s like they have this internal switch, from normal people to ROCKSTARS and they definitely just flipped the switch to star! WOW! As soon as I heard Alex’s guitar and Sydney’s “WHAT’S UP, WARPED TOUR?!” I had so many emotions running through my head. These girls, these normal, average everyday but yet so amazing girls, are also in a band playing at Warped Tour. So, I have been wanting to get involved with music for the longest time. Whether it be doing photography for a band, being a roadie, a tour manager, or actually in the band myself, I’ve always wanted to be involved somehow. BUT, my little to no self-esteem, no confidence and anxiety have always been holding me back. But watching them perform like that just inspired me in so many ways. I don’t think I have ever actually felt THAT inspired before. They kicked ass and had a blast! I found myself in tears a few times during their set. I was so overjoyed! Here I am, just a random girl from Jersey, at the final Warped Tour show in Camden, working for Doll Skin and seeing all of these amazing bands up close and experiencing backstage life. It’s incredible!

Doll Skin’s Set List: Family of Strangers, Daughter, Shut Up (You Miss Me), Lets Be Honest, Uninvited, Persephone and Puncha Nazi. (They also said they were going to play Africa by Toto, then proceeded to play the first 10 seconds, stop and say, ‘That’s all we’ve learned!’ which was hilarious! I could tell they were having fun up there!)

When Puncha Nazi started, Nicole (TM) and I ran off stage to get their cases opened and everything ready to be put away and back on to the tour bus. They ended with Sydney grabbing the large Doll Skin flag and saying, “If you guys wanna hang out with us at our merch tent follow me!” And she took the fans, while Alex, Max, Nicole (both), Meghan and I were putting all of the guitars, bass guitars and drums back on to the truck. I can’t imagine doing that on a daily basis, but I would love to! It is A LOT more work than everyone makes it out to be, but it felt so rewarding to hear all of the ‘thank you’ comments from the entire band and we were just cracking jokes while putting things away. We had to be quick too and according to Nicole (DS) I was very quick and very helpful! It was adorable because there was one thing that was WAY too heavy for Meghan to put onto the truck so I did it for her. Nicole (DS) gave me her water and her chips which was great because I was starving. 

Ok, so on to the meet and greet and dinner. I waited until the girls were done meeting everyone. They were having so much fun meeting their fans! Then Kait and I hung with them a bit and took some more photos together. Then, I went to catering with Nicole (TM) and Meghan. WOW! I was literally surrounded by the majority of the bands! The singers from Mayday Parade and We The Kings walked past me a few times and I was thinking to myself, “Keep calm! You cannot fangirl in front of them! Stay cool!” It was very difficult. But overall the food was great and I was able to chill and eat dinner with the band again. Then Cameron and Sydney came with me to see 3OH!3 side stage. Again, amazing! I cannot put into words what an amazing day it was. After that, I talked to Sydney for a bit at the RV, she gave me a written set list, I thanked her, she thanked me, I saw Motionless in White with Kait and then we went home. 

So, I knew this was going to be a long post but DAMN! Haha, I HAD to share my experience! It was definitely, seemingly like a once in a lifetime opportunity and I just feel so blessed to have learned SO much in just one day about tour life backstage! This definitely inspired me to work harder with my music and hopefully I’ll be performing one day too! HUGE thank you to Doll Skin, Nicole, Cameron, Simple Plan, everyone I encountered at this show! I could not have asked for a better Warped Tour experience and I hope to see Doll Skin again very soon! Thank you to GBTRS for even putting this contest together. Women can do anything!!! Always remember that! 

And with that, LATER EVERYONE! :D 

-KellyKatt 

[pamphletstoinspire]

Padre Pio and Guardian Angels

It is the conviction of the Church that every human being is assigned an angel of God to be his guardian, an angel who has as his task to "lead (us) to the place that (God) has prepared," heaven. Not everyone listens attentively to their Guardian Angel, however, as he seeks to enlighten them through the voice of conscience to avoid sin, or gives them good inspirations to the love and service of God and neighbor. Certainly Padre Pio was one who did, from the earliest years of life, so that God granted him the vision not only of his own Guardian Angel but those of others. Many times it was through the Guardian Angel of a person that their need was brought to Padre Pio's attention, who then prayed for that person.

One might ask, why would the angel bring the need to Padre Pio, rather than directly to God? First, people often sent their angel to Padre Pio to ask for prayer. The angels, for their part, like true friends were happy to perform this little service for their protégés, especially the ones who habitually listened to their guidance. Since the angel can do nothing contrary to the will of God, God Himself must have desired it, as well. As with the other forms of intercession and mediation acknowledged by the Church, God has ordained that the true magnificence of His own glory be shown through His working through creatures (angelic and human). As Saint Paul noted, God chooses the weak to show up the strong (I Cor. 1: 27).

Padre Pio was especially careful for the well-being, spiritual and material, of those whom he had accepted as his spiritual son or daughter. He would look after them from a distance, with the help of their guardian angel. In the book Send Me Your Guardian Angel by Fr. Alessio Parente, OFM Cap., Padre Pio's relationship with the angels is related in the stories contained in the book. Fr. Alessio had the privilege of taking care of Padre Pio in the later years of his life.

Besides having the privilege of having his Guardian Angel visibly beside him all of his life, Padre Pio played with him when he was a child. The Guardian Angel would even sing for him when he was sad. Padre Pio said about his Guardian Angel: "Little companion of my infancy, Angiolino, Angioletto, my secretary, inseparable companion, celestial person, celestial messenger, brother, friend who prevents danger, one of the family, and also translates for me the letters in other languages. I send him to console people who are suffering. This angel prevents them from stumbling, he never leaves us alone for an instant from the cradle to the grave, or, even when we are sinning. It will be a great joy when at the moment of death, we will be able to see our Guardian Angel."

Once a person was accepted as Padre Pio's spiritual child, he would never abandon them, no matter what danger they were in. Even if he did not visit them personally, they would receive his help through his Guardian Angel.

A story related in Fr. Alessio's book concerns one of Padre Pio's spiritual children. Cecil Humphrey-Smith, a well known gentleman from England, while in Italy, during the time Padre Pio was alive, had a car crash and was very seriously injured. A friend of his, seeing Cecil in such a bad condition, went to the Post office and sent a telegram to Padre Pio requesting his prayers for his injured friend Cecil. When he presented the telegram at the desk, the man gave him back a telegram from Padre Pio assuring his prayers for Cecil Humphrey-Smith's recovery.

It was some months before Cecil was in good enough shape to travel again, but immediately after he had recovered, he went to San Giovanni Rotondo. On this occasion, both Cecil and his friend met Padre Pio and they thanked him for his prayers. At the same time, they were curious as to how he came to know about the accident and how a telegram had arrived in such a short space of time. In response to their questions, Padre Pio, in his humoristic way said: "Do you think the Angels go as slowly as the planes?" God had given Padre Pio the light to see his spiritual child in danger of death and, as usual, Padre Pio sent his Guardian Angel to assure Cecil of his prayers and protection.

On several occasions Padre Pio expounded further on the role of the angel in his ministry, and in our lives, in this case to his spiritual daughter Raffaelina Cerase. In Padre Pio's Letters, volume II. No. 30, he states: "You tell me in the midst of the sufferings that oppress you, how often you turn to me in your thoughts and call upon me. Well, your good Guardian Angel sometimes transmits these necessities of yours and then I, in my unworthiness, always do my duty with Jesus, recommending you to his fatherly goodness."

In his Letters, volume II, no. 41, Padre Pio says: "Offer to the glory of His Divine Majesty the rest you are about to take, (she was struck down with cancer of the breast at this time), and never forget the Guardian Angel who is always with you, never leaving you for whatever wrong you might do. Oh, the ineffable goodness of this our good Guardian Angel! How many times, alas!, I have made him cry for not having wanted to comply with his wishes, which were also God's. May this our most faithful friend free us from further disloyalty."

Once Fr. Alessio approached Padre Pio to ask a question. Padre Pio responded: "Boy, leave me alone, don't you see that I am busy?" Later Padre Pio apologized and explained: "Didn't you see all those Angels who were with me? They are the Guardian Angels of my spiritual children, who brought me their messages. I had to give them answers to refer."

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Stockings Quotes

Official Website: Stockings Quotes

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• 3 years ago I was stocking shelves at Target, living on Ramen noodles, and crashing at Billy’s house. Now I’m on tour – Benji Madden • A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.] – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking. – Karl Kraus • A night-cap deck’d his brows instead of bay,- A cap by night, a stocking all the day. – Oliver Goldsmith • A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie’s knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the “disgrace of the young.” She would not miss this place. – Libba Bray • A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer. – Mitch Hedberg • A woman’s education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stocking, never go out without a hat. – Coco Chanel • All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. – Maya Angelou • And there I was with the stars hanging above my house like live wiresand the night sky the color of stockings. I stuck out my tongue to taste the skybut could not taste. I inhaled deeplybut could not smell. I used to look to the sky for comfortand now there was nothing, not even a seam, and I looked down and saw that it did not even reach the ground. And my only company was the satellites counting their sleep and the Sorrowful Mother swinging her empty dipper in the darkness, the Sorrowful Mother picking her way through the stars over my roof. And I knew I was nowhere and if I ever took my hands from my ears I would fall. – Matthew Rohrer • Aside from a couple of signature flourishes, there’s nothing to mark Paycheck as the product of acclaimed action director John Woo. In fact, there’s little about this movie that makes it worth anyone’s time and money. With a script that waffles between being hilariously absurd and insultingly stupid, and action scenes that won’t cause anyone’s pulse to skip a beat, Paycheck is less appealing than a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking. – James Berardinelli

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Stocking', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_stocking').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_stocking img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Before the first World War women were arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, for using profanity, for appearing on beaches without stockings, for driving automobiles without a man beside them, for wearing outlandish attire for example, shorts – Geoffrey Perret • Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Christmas holidays are a heavy, heavy time. We make light of them with our red and green and our stockings and candy canes, but people think heavy thoughts over the holidays because that’s when you’re thinking about family. Are we close? Or are we not as close as other people? – Augusten Burroughs • Christmas is a stocking stuffed with sugary goodness. – Mo Rocca • Christmas it too large to be tucked away in the toe of a child’s stocking. – Gerald Stanley Lee • Donald Trump is a big Christmas gift wrapped under the tree for Hillary Clinton. She desperately hopes she runs against Donald Trump. I, however, am the lump of coal in Mrs. Clinton’s stocking, and she desperately hopes she does not run against me. – Carly Fiorina • Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n’y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.] – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Examining love is like examining a stocking: if you hold it up to the light and stretch it to search for snags, any snags there are may well run and ruin the stocking. In fact, if I may fashion Coudert’s law from Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy, it is this: Love is not only changed by observation; it is changed for the worse. – Jo Coudert • Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. “Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.- Betty Smith • From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned. – Cormac McCarthy • From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son’s incarceration as ‘a short break before college?’ A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off? Santa.That’s right. A man. – Rachel Held Evans • Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings. – Anna Godbersen • Good night.’ Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn’t possibly withstand any more. – Anna Godbersen • He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He had never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He’d committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never before felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed. – Loretta Chase • He put a ring in the toe of a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we opened our stockings and it was there at the bottom of the toe. Then he got down on his knees and he was shaking. – Kyra Sedgwick • I couldn’t wait until I grew up. I used to look at my mom’s stockings and put them on with her high heels and mess with my hair. – Florence Griffith Joyner • I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo! – Charles Dickens • I keep my campaign promises, but I never promised to wear stockings. – Ella T. Grasso • I liked getting up at 4 in the morning, driving on the freeway, and going in and stocking shelves and laughing with the stock clerks. – Michelle Pfeiffer • I love intimate details like lingerie, something like a gorgeous silk stocking or exquisite slipper. – Austin Scarlett • I loved Christmas. We had a really great time. But there wasn’t – it was all – you had to be happy with, you know, an orange and a couple of walnuts, you know, in your stocking. – Nick Lowe • I must admit to a personal lack of sympathy with women who have themselves photographed in black stockings, garter belts and boots, with bare breasts, bananas, and coy, come-hither glances…. A woman using her own face and body has a right to do what she will with them, but it is a subtle abyss that separates men’s use of women for sexual titillation from women’s use of women to expose that insult. – Lucy R. Lippard • I recently went mad and spent 1,000 in one afternoon on bras and knickers. I love classy, lacy stuff that makes you feel dead sexy knowing you’ve got it on. I’ve never worn stockings and suspenders, though. But I could imagine they’d make you feel really sexy worn under something formal. I think I’ll save that experience and wear them under my wedding dress. – Jennifer Ellison • I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what’s wrong – a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don’t even realize what you look like, how far you’ve deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else. – Jodi Picoult • I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat. – Ginger Rogers • I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive. – Joni Mitchell • I’d like a stocking made for a giant, And a meeting house full of toys, Then I’d go out in a happy hunt For the poor little girls and boys; Up the street and down the street, And across and over the town, I’d search and find them everyone, Before the sun went down. – Eugene Field • If you’ve seen Mary Poppins and The Grinch, come to the Booth Theater and let me shove a little coal down your stocking. – Nathan Lane • Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production – only to produce a race of bed-wetters! – Barbara Ehrenreich • In a cool medium, the audience is an active constituent of the viewing or listening experience. A girl wearing open-mesh silk stockings or glasses is inherently cool and sensual because the eye acts as a surrogate hand in filling in the low-definition image thus engendered. Which is why boys make passes at girls who wear glasses. – Marshall McLuhan • In my personal view, a failure to discover unimagined objects and answer unasked questions, once HST functions properly, would indicate a lack of imagination in stocking the Universe on the part of the Deity. – John N. Bahcall • In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, Heaven knows, anything goes. The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today. – Cole Porter • In the seventh grade, I was about to leave wearing a jumper, when my mom said she could see my panty line. So I just wore stockings. That day I broke my ankle, and the EMS cut my tights off. I got a full cast with no stockings on and no panties. – Gabourey Sidibe • In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune’s Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire. – Anita Shreve • Is it to be imagined … that women were made for no other purpose than to fabricate sweetmeats and gingerbread, construct shirts, darn stockings, and become mothers of possible presidents? Assuredly not. Should the women of America ever discover what their power might be, and compare it with what it is, much improvement might be hoped for. – Frances Trollope • it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that’s in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking. – P. G. Wodehouse • It is a myth that art has to be sold. It is not like stocking a grocery store where people fill a pushcart. Art is a product that has no apparent need. The salesperson builds the need in the mind of the buyer. – Jack White • It’s possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don’t appreciate how tough your elders had it. It’s true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle. – Gail Collins • It’s pretty awesome. Mattel does such a great job with detail… I’m way better looking than Ken. Barbie’s been hitting on my action figure the whole time. She actually asked the stocking people if she could hang next to me, but they said no – because it’s PG. – The Miz • I’ve been stocking my nuts away like a squirrel for 15 years. I don’t have kids, I don’t have a wife. I own my own house. I don’t owe anybody for it so I put my nuts away. I really made a commitment to myself to just do what I like to do and want to do, and not to do anything. I’m not even going to give six weeks away for money anymore, you know? – John Corbett • Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are two stockings made of one piece of cloth. – Martin Luther • Knitting is formed by a series of loops pulled through loops to the end of time or to ‘desired length’. By picking up loops and working in the opposite direction you are really picking up the concavities between the loops, and it is sheer unexpected witchcraft that stocking stitch and garter stitch will permit such an anomaly. Be grateful for this and don’t expect anymore. – Elizabeth Zimmermann • Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh • Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you. – Janet Fitch • My mom always puts a grapefruit in my stocking. I like grapefruit, but why put it in a stocking like it’s a gift? It’s almost as bad as coal. – Skylar Grey • My sister-in-law found a real surprise in her stockings – my brother. – Milton Berle • Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet–nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather. – William Shakespeare • New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size. – Billie Holiday • No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas. – Al Smith • OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR? – Terry Pratchett • Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. – Jonathan Swift • Once I spent a whole day there, a blade of grass in each hand to anchor me to the warm earth. I watched the sun rise, pass over my head and set. Ladybirds mated on my knuckle; a shrew nibbled a hole in my stocking while I tried not to laugh. Such a day was worth any punishment. – Emma Donoghue • Once upon a time there were three little foxes Who didn’t wear stockings, and they didn’t wear sockses, But they all had handkerchiefs to blow their noses, And they kept their handkerchiefs in cardboard boxes. – A. A. Milne • One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up. – Llewellyn Rockwell • One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. – William Crawford Williamson • Only one party sticks out in my mind as a kid. It was the best party ever. I was 5 years old, and my mom dressed me up in a church dress and stockings to go to the party and park. – Rihanna • Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty. – Romola Garai • Pick a better verb. Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an A-bomb. – Janet Fitch • Say heat. Say wet between my legs. Say legs. Seriously, I want you to. Stockings. Whisper it. The word is meant to be whispered. – Don DeLillo • Six feet three in her stocking feet, LWren Scott was every inch a great lady. – Hamish Bowles • Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child’s shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings…. Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette’s clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing. – Victor Hugo • So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets — dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion. – Janet Frame • Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. – Jonathan Safran Foer • That’s not a run in your stocking, it’s a hand on your leg. – Frank O’Hara • The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stocking for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort. – Joseph A. Schumpeter • The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses. . . . It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.- Joseph A. Schumpeter • The crux of the matter, is that people don’t understand the true nature of money. It is meant to circulate, not be wrapped up in a stocking – Guglielmo Marconi • The hottest thing in the world is to wear pants with stockings. – Diana Vreeland • The means by which I preserve my own health are, temperance, early rising, and spunging the body every morning with cold water, a practice I have pursued for thirty years ; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital, in the severest winter nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold. – Astley Cooper • The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready; an’ when he outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. – George Eliot • The Monte Carlo casino refused to admit me until I was properly dressed so I went and found my stockings, and then came back and lost my shirt. – Dorothy Parker • The sciences are found, like Hercules’s oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. – Jonathan Swift • The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. – Clement Clarke Moore • Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party. I understand that. But that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News, and turned into a stocking horse for the right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on the country for a long time. – Al Gore • There’s something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times – one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of. – Julie Burchill • They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copies; books that are collectible will continue to be collected; people with lots of bookshelves will keep stocking them; and anyone who likes to make notes in books will keep buying books with margins to fill. – Susan Orlean • This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea–if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance. – Bill Mollison • We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other. – Thomas B. Macaulay • What do you want?” Sophronia was moved to exasperation. “Me? Stockings and breeches to come back in fashion. I do miss seeing a man’s calves. – Gail Carriger • What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? – Gilbert Sorrentino • When in company with literary women, make no allusions to ‘learned ladies,’ or ‘blue stockings,’ or express surprise that they should have any knowledge of housewifery, or needle-work, or dress; or that they are able to talk on ‘common things.’ It is rude and foolish and shows that you really know nothing about them, either as a class or as individuals. – Eliza Leslie • When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • When you’re young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it’s already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. – Haruki Murakami • Whether I’m a Super Bowl Champion or a regular guy stocking groceries at the Hy-Vee, sharing my faith and glorifying Jesus is the central focus of my time on this earth. – Kurt Warner • Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • With toilet books, people don’t review them that much. They don’t really pay much attention to them. It’s just like, “Oh, okay. I’ll put this in your stocking.” – Drew Magary • Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. – Charlotte Bronte • Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings? – Jane Austen • Your stockings prove your virtues. Be certain they are clean and free of tears. – Emilie Autumn [clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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[equitiesstocks]

Stockings Quotes

Official Website: Stockings Quotes

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• 3 years ago I was stocking shelves at Target, living on Ramen noodles, and crashing at Billy’s house. Now I’m on tour – Benji Madden • A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one. Fr., Une femme bel-esprit est le fleau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, et tout le monde.] – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • A healthy man is content with a woman. An erotic man is content with a stocking to get to a woman. A sick man is content with thestocking. – Karl Kraus • A night-cap deck’d his brows instead of bay,- A cap by night, a stocking all the day. – Oliver Goldsmith • A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie’s knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the “disgrace of the young.” She would not miss this place. – Libba Bray • A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer. – Mitch Hedberg • A woman’s education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stocking, never go out without a hat. – Coco Chanel • All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. – Maya Angelou • And there I was with the stars hanging above my house like live wiresand the night sky the color of stockings. I stuck out my tongue to taste the skybut could not taste. I inhaled deeplybut could not smell. I used to look to the sky for comfortand now there was nothing, not even a seam, and I looked down and saw that it did not even reach the ground. And my only company was the satellites counting their sleep and the Sorrowful Mother swinging her empty dipper in the darkness, the Sorrowful Mother picking her way through the stars over my roof. And I knew I was nowhere and if I ever took my hands from my ears I would fall. – Matthew Rohrer • Aside from a couple of signature flourishes, there’s nothing to mark Paycheck as the product of acclaimed action director John Woo. In fact, there’s little about this movie that makes it worth anyone’s time and money. With a script that waffles between being hilariously absurd and insultingly stupid, and action scenes that won’t cause anyone’s pulse to skip a beat, Paycheck is less appealing than a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking. – James Berardinelli

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Stocking', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_stocking').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_stocking img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Before the first World War women were arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, for using profanity, for appearing on beaches without stockings, for driving automobiles without a man beside them, for wearing outlandish attire for example, shorts – Geoffrey Perret • Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Christmas holidays are a heavy, heavy time. We make light of them with our red and green and our stockings and candy canes, but people think heavy thoughts over the holidays because that’s when you’re thinking about family. Are we close? Or are we not as close as other people? – Augusten Burroughs • Christmas is a stocking stuffed with sugary goodness. – Mo Rocca • Christmas it too large to be tucked away in the toe of a child’s stocking. – Gerald Stanley Lee • Donald Trump is a big Christmas gift wrapped under the tree for Hillary Clinton. She desperately hopes she runs against Donald Trump. I, however, am the lump of coal in Mrs. Clinton’s stocking, and she desperately hopes she does not run against me. – Carly Fiorina • Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n’y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.] – Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Examining love is like examining a stocking: if you hold it up to the light and stretch it to search for snags, any snags there are may well run and ruin the stocking. In fact, if I may fashion Coudert’s law from Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy, it is this: Love is not only changed by observation; it is changed for the worse. – Jo Coudert • Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. “Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.- Betty Smith • From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned. – Cormac McCarthy • From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son’s incarceration as ‘a short break before college?’ A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off? Santa.That’s right. A man. – Rachel Held Evans • Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings. – Anna Godbersen • Good night.’ Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn’t possibly withstand any more. – Anna Godbersen • He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He had never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He’d committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never before felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed. – Loretta Chase • He put a ring in the toe of a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we opened our stockings and it was there at the bottom of the toe. Then he got down on his knees and he was shaking. – Kyra Sedgwick • I couldn’t wait until I grew up. I used to look at my mom’s stockings and put them on with her high heels and mess with my hair. – Florence Griffith Joyner • I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo! – Charles Dickens • I keep my campaign promises, but I never promised to wear stockings. – Ella T. Grasso • I liked getting up at 4 in the morning, driving on the freeway, and going in and stocking shelves and laughing with the stock clerks. – Michelle Pfeiffer • I love intimate details like lingerie, something like a gorgeous silk stocking or exquisite slipper. – Austin Scarlett • I loved Christmas. We had a really great time. But there wasn’t – it was all – you had to be happy with, you know, an orange and a couple of walnuts, you know, in your stocking. – Nick Lowe • I must admit to a personal lack of sympathy with women who have themselves photographed in black stockings, garter belts and boots, with bare breasts, bananas, and coy, come-hither glances…. A woman using her own face and body has a right to do what she will with them, but it is a subtle abyss that separates men’s use of women for sexual titillation from women’s use of women to expose that insult. – Lucy R. Lippard • I recently went mad and spent 1,000 in one afternoon on bras and knickers. I love classy, lacy stuff that makes you feel dead sexy knowing you’ve got it on. I’ve never worn stockings and suspenders, though. But I could imagine they’d make you feel really sexy worn under something formal. I think I’ll save that experience and wear them under my wedding dress. – Jennifer Ellison • I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what’s wrong – a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don’t even realize what you look like, how far you’ve deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else. – Jodi Picoult • I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat. – Ginger Rogers • I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive. – Joni Mitchell • I’d like a stocking made for a giant, And a meeting house full of toys, Then I’d go out in a happy hunt For the poor little girls and boys; Up the street and down the street, And across and over the town, I’d search and find them everyone, Before the sun went down. – Eugene Field • If you’ve seen Mary Poppins and The Grinch, come to the Booth Theater and let me shove a little coal down your stocking. – Nathan Lane • Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production – only to produce a race of bed-wetters! – Barbara Ehrenreich • In a cool medium, the audience is an active constituent of the viewing or listening experience. A girl wearing open-mesh silk stockings or glasses is inherently cool and sensual because the eye acts as a surrogate hand in filling in the low-definition image thus engendered. Which is why boys make passes at girls who wear glasses. – Marshall McLuhan • In my personal view, a failure to discover unimagined objects and answer unasked questions, once HST functions properly, would indicate a lack of imagination in stocking the Universe on the part of the Deity. – John N. Bahcall • In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, Heaven knows, anything goes. The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today. – Cole Porter • In the seventh grade, I was about to leave wearing a jumper, when my mom said she could see my panty line. So I just wore stockings. That day I broke my ankle, and the EMS cut my tights off. I got a full cast with no stockings on and no panties. – Gabourey Sidibe • In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune’s Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire. – Anita Shreve • Is it to be imagined … that women were made for no other purpose than to fabricate sweetmeats and gingerbread, construct shirts, darn stockings, and become mothers of possible presidents? Assuredly not. Should the women of America ever discover what their power might be, and compare it with what it is, much improvement might be hoped for. – Frances Trollope • it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that’s in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking. – P. G. Wodehouse • It is a myth that art has to be sold. It is not like stocking a grocery store where people fill a pushcart. Art is a product that has no apparent need. The salesperson builds the need in the mind of the buyer. – Jack White • It’s possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don’t appreciate how tough your elders had it. It’s true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle. – Gail Collins • It’s pretty awesome. Mattel does such a great job with detail… I’m way better looking than Ken. Barbie’s been hitting on my action figure the whole time. She actually asked the stocking people if she could hang next to me, but they said no – because it’s PG. – The Miz • I’ve been stocking my nuts away like a squirrel for 15 years. I don’t have kids, I don’t have a wife. I own my own house. I don’t owe anybody for it so I put my nuts away. I really made a commitment to myself to just do what I like to do and want to do, and not to do anything. I’m not even going to give six weeks away for money anymore, you know? – John Corbett • Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are two stockings made of one piece of cloth. – Martin Luther • Knitting is formed by a series of loops pulled through loops to the end of time or to ‘desired length’. By picking up loops and working in the opposite direction you are really picking up the concavities between the loops, and it is sheer unexpected witchcraft that stocking stitch and garter stitch will permit such an anomaly. Be grateful for this and don’t expect anymore. – Elizabeth Zimmermann • Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh • Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you. – Janet Fitch • My mom always puts a grapefruit in my stocking. I like grapefruit, but why put it in a stocking like it’s a gift? It’s almost as bad as coal. – Skylar Grey • My sister-in-law found a real surprise in her stockings – my brother. – Milton Berle • Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet–nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather. – William Shakespeare • New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size. – Billie Holiday • No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas. – Al Smith • OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR? – Terry Pratchett • Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. – Jonathan Swift • Once I spent a whole day there, a blade of grass in each hand to anchor me to the warm earth. I watched the sun rise, pass over my head and set. Ladybirds mated on my knuckle; a shrew nibbled a hole in my stocking while I tried not to laugh. Such a day was worth any punishment. – Emma Donoghue • Once upon a time there were three little foxes Who didn’t wear stockings, and they didn’t wear sockses, But they all had handkerchiefs to blow their noses, And they kept their handkerchiefs in cardboard boxes. – A. A. Milne • One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up. – Llewellyn Rockwell • One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. – William Crawford Williamson • Only one party sticks out in my mind as a kid. It was the best party ever. I was 5 years old, and my mom dressed me up in a church dress and stockings to go to the party and park. – Rihanna • Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty. – Romola Garai • Pick a better verb. Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an A-bomb. – Janet Fitch • Say heat. Say wet between my legs. Say legs. Seriously, I want you to. Stockings. Whisper it. The word is meant to be whispered. – Don DeLillo • Six feet three in her stocking feet, LWren Scott was every inch a great lady. – Hamish Bowles • Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child’s shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings…. Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette’s clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing. – Victor Hugo • So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets — dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion. – Janet Frame • Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. – Jonathan Safran Foer • That’s not a run in your stocking, it’s a hand on your leg. – Frank O’Hara • The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stocking for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort. – Joseph A. Schumpeter • The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses. . . . It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.- Joseph A. Schumpeter • The crux of the matter, is that people don’t understand the true nature of money. It is meant to circulate, not be wrapped up in a stocking – Guglielmo Marconi • The hottest thing in the world is to wear pants with stockings. – Diana Vreeland • The means by which I preserve my own health are, temperance, early rising, and spunging the body every morning with cold water, a practice I have pursued for thirty years ; and though I go from this heated theatre into the squares of the Hospital, in the severest winter nights, with merely silk stockings on my legs, yet I scarcely ever have a cold. – Astley Cooper • The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready; an’ when he outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. – George Eliot • The Monte Carlo casino refused to admit me until I was properly dressed so I went and found my stockings, and then came back and lost my shirt. – Dorothy Parker • The sciences are found, like Hercules’s oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. – Jonathan Swift • The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. – Clement Clarke Moore • Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party. I understand that. But that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News, and turned into a stocking horse for the right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on the country for a long time. – Al Gore • There’s something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times – one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of. – Julie Burchill • They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copies; books that are collectible will continue to be collected; people with lots of bookshelves will keep stocking them; and anyone who likes to make notes in books will keep buying books with margins to fill. – Susan Orlean • This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea–if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance. – Bill Mollison • We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other. – Thomas B. Macaulay • What do you want?” Sophronia was moved to exasperation. “Me? Stockings and breeches to come back in fashion. I do miss seeing a man’s calves. – Gail Carriger • What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? – Gilbert Sorrentino • When in company with literary women, make no allusions to ‘learned ladies,’ or ‘blue stockings,’ or express surprise that they should have any knowledge of housewifery, or needle-work, or dress; or that they are able to talk on ‘common things.’ It is rude and foolish and shows that you really know nothing about them, either as a class or as individuals. – Eliza Leslie • When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • When you’re young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it’s already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. – Haruki Murakami • Whether I’m a Super Bowl Champion or a regular guy stocking groceries at the Hy-Vee, sharing my faith and glorifying Jesus is the central focus of my time on this earth. – Kurt Warner • Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? – Gilbert K. Chesterton • With toilet books, people don’t review them that much. They don’t really pay much attention to them. It’s just like, “Oh, okay. I’ll put this in your stocking.” – Drew Magary • Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. – Charlotte Bronte • Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings? – Jane Austen • Your stockings prove your virtues. Be certain they are clean and free of tears. – Emilie Autumn [clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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[mebwalker]

Dorimène, Le Mariage forcé (théâtre.documentation)

Le Mariage forcé

Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée  (The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island), Versailles

Molière’s contribution

a comédie-ballet

Molière and Lully’s Le Mariage forcé (The Forced Marriage), is a farce and a comédie-ballet, in prose. It was first performed on 29 January 1664 in the Queen Mother’s apartments, at the Louvre. On 15 February 1664, it was performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where it proved less popular. It closed after 12 performances. It was performed again on 12 May 1664 during festivities known as Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island. Louis XIV wanted to show Versailles at an early date. He had hired architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André le Nôtre, and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun. These gentlemen had built Nicolas Fouquet‘s castle at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide and Tartuffe also premièred during Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, on 8 May 1664. In its original form, The Forced Marriage was a three-act comédie-ballet, by Molière and Lully It did not use figures from a mythology in which it differed from earlier comédies-ballets. At Versailles, King Louis XIV and other aristocrats performed in the comedy. In 1664, Louis was very much in love with Louise de La Vallière who lived at Versailles, in the small castle used as a hunting-lodge by the very private Louis XIII.

Molière transformed Le Mariage forcé into a one-act play in 1668, which is Le Mariage forcé as we know it. However, it was reborn as a comédie-ballet in 1672. Lully having broken with Molière, the music was composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

In his Preface to the Forced Marriage, Henri van Laun provides information concerning the posterity of the play. Sganarelle is Sir Toby Doubtful in Love’s Contrivance, a play by Mrs. Carroll, born Susanna Centlivre (c. 1667–1670 – 1 December 1723).

Panurge by Albrecht Dürer (BnF)

Origins

other

Gallic

Rabelais

pedants & philosophy: Aristotle and Pyrrho (doubt)

Although Molière drew some of his material from Spanish author Lope de Vega’s Intermède du sacristain [sacristan] Soguizo, and Giordano Bruno’s[1] Candelaio, or The Candle Bearer, entitled Boniface et le Pédant in French, Le Mariage forcé belongs mainly to a French tradition.

The Forced Marriage is rooted primarily in Rabelais‘ Gargantua and Pantagruel, the Third of Five Books [EBook #1200]. Molière’s Sganarelle reminds us of Panurge, as featured in Chapter Three of the Third Book (of Five) of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

 How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or no. 

Affinities between Molière and Rabelais leap off the page, and so does Pantagruel’s advice to Panurge. Pantagruel urges Panurge not to marry, which is Géronimo’s initial response, until he learns that Sganarelle has obtained permission to marry Dorimène from Alcantor, her father. In the Third Book, Panurge has decided to marry, but revisits his decision. In Rabelais’ Third Book, Panurge also seeks the advice of Trouillogan, the model for Molière’s Marphurius, a Pyrrhonian philosopher, and a pedant. He prefigures The Learned Ladies, or Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius. The mouton de Panurge is featured in the fourth of five books constituting Pantagruel and Gargantua. A mouton de Panurge, “describes an individual that will blindly follow others regardless of the consequences.” (See Panurge, Wiki2.org.) We cannot exclude Sganarelle.

Molière’s Mariage Forcé also has affinities with Guez de Balzac’s Socrate chrétien. Théophile de Viau’s Fragments d’une histoire comique, Dorimond’s L’École des cocus (the School for Cuckolds), and Charles Sorel’s Polyandre (see polyandry, Wiki2.org). These are 17th-century French authors.[2]

      Gravure Lalauze (théâtre.documention)

Le Mariage forcé (théâtre.documentation)

    Gravure Edmond Hédouin

Moreau le Jeune

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

SGANARELLE. (Molière) GÉRONIMO. ALCANTOR, father to Dorimène. ALCIDAS, brother to Dorimène. LYCASTE, in love with Dorimène. PANCRACE, an Aristotelian Philosopher. MARPHURIUS, a Pyrrhonian Philosopher. DORIMÈNE, a young coquette betrothed to Sganarelle. Two GIPSIES. The Scene is in a Public Place.

The Plot

Dorimène surprises us

la race des Sganarelles

Scene One of Le Mariage Forcé, Sganarelle, Molière’s mask, wants to know from his friend Géronimo whether he should marry. Sganarelle has already sought and obtained from Dorimène’s father, Alcantor, permission to marry Dorimène. Alcantor has agreed. In his mind, the mind of a pater familias, le Seigneur Sganarelle, a well-to-do 53-year-old gentleman, is a perfect match for his daughter.

However, Dorimène surprises us. One would expect her to oppose her tyrannical father, but she differs from other ingénues, forced to marry or be thrown in a convent. Young Dorimène is une mondaine who thinks a marriage to Sganarelle will allow her to escape her father. When she and Sganarelle meet in Scene II, she makes it clear that she wishes to be free. In fact, as we will see later, she has a lover, Lycaste, who cannot understand why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures Lycaste. Sganarelle is an older gentleman who has no more than six months “in his belly.” She wants to be a widow, the privileged women of 17th-century France. Widows were free to marry whom they pleased, or not to marry. Le Misanthrope‘s Célimène is a widow.

Yet, although arrangements are being made for Dorimène to marry Sganarelle that very day, Sganarelle would like to discuss marriage with his friend Géronimo, which should have happened earlier. When Géronimo learns that the bride-to-be is the lovely Dorimène and that she is not opposing Alcantor, her father, Géronimo has little left to do than exclaim:

Mariez-vous promptement; je ne dis plus rien. Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene I, p. 9) [Make haste and get married.] Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene Four, p. 227)

The most amusing lines of Scene One are Sganarelle’s:

Outre la joie que j’aurai de posséder une belle femme, qui me fera mille caresses; qui me dorlotera, et me viendra frotter, lorsque je serai las; outre cette joie, dis-je, je considère, qu’en demeurant comme je suis, je laisse périr dans le monde la race [3] des Sganarelles; et qu’en me mariant, je pourrai me voir revivre en d’autres moi-mêmes… [4] Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene I, p. 8) [Besides the pleasures I shall have in possessing a wife to fondle me when I am tired; besides this pleasure, I consider that, by remaining as I am, I suffer the race of the Sganarelles to become extinct ; whilst, by marrying, I may see myself reproduced, and shall have the joy of seeing children sprung from me… Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Two, p.  226)

Marriage and Marriage

Matters change. Sganarelle believed he would own Dorimène:

Hé bien, ma belle, c’est maintenant que nous allons être heureux l’un et l’autre. Vous ne serez plus en droit de me rien refuser; … Sganarelle à Dorimène (Scène II, pp. 9-10) [Well, my dear, both of us are going to be happy now. You will no longer have a right to refuse me anything; and I can do with you just as I please, without any one being shocked. You will be mine from head to foot, and I shall be master of everything, of your little sparkling eyes, your little roguish nose, your tempting lips, your lovely ears, your pretty little chin, your little round breasts, your … ] Sganarelle to Dorimène (Scene Four, pp. 227-228)

Dorimène, however, wants to escape her father’s tyranny and would not accept to marry a tyrannical Sganarelle’s. Two contrary discourses are juxtaposed. The second all be erases the first.  Sganarelle realizes that he has made a mistake.

Tout à fait aise, je vous jure: car enfin la sévérité de mon père m’a tenue jusques ici dans une sujétion la plus fâcheuse du monde. Il y a je ne sais combien que j’enrage du peu de liberté, qu’il me donne; et j’ai cent fois souhaité qu’il me mariât, pour sortir promptement de la contrainte, où j’étais avec lui, et me voir en état de faire ce que je voudrai. Dorimène à Sganarelle (Scene II, p. 10) [Immensely glad, I assure you. For, indeed, my father’s severity has kept me hitherto in the most grievous subjection. I have been raging, I do not know how long, at the scanty liberty he allows me ; I have wished a hundred times that he would get me a husband, so that I might quickly escape from the durance in which I have been kept by him, and be able to do as I pleased. Dorimène to Sganarelle (Scene Four, pp. 228-229)

The Dream

In Scene Three (FR), Géronimo returns. He has found a jeweler who has a beautiful diamond for sale. Sganarelle is no longer so eager to marry. He would like to confide that he has had a dream:

Avant que de passer plus avant, je voudrais bien agiter à fond cette matière; et que l’on m’expliquât un songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, et qui vient tout à l’heure de me revenir dans l’esprit. Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene III, p. 11) [Before going farther I wish to sift this matter to the bottom, and to have interpreted to me a dream which I had last night, and which just recurred to me.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Five, p. 229)

Dreams are mentioned in Rabelais.

Trouillogan by Gustave Doré (BnF)

Pancrace and Marphurius (Trouillogan)

Parbleu, de la langue que j’ai dans la bouche; je crois que je n’irai pas emprunter celle de mon voisin. Sganarelle à Pancrace (Scene IV, p. 15) [Zounds! The tongue I have in my mouth.] Sganarelle to Pancrace (Scene Six, p. 232)

So, as of “Zounds,” matters truly deteriorate. Sganarelle leaves. (I am not discussing the quotations in Latin.)

Sganarelle then visits another neighbour, a Pyrrhonian skeptic. This character reflects Sganarelle’s uncertainty and adds to his distress. Doubt has entered Sganarelle’s mind. correct Sganarelle. “[I]t seems to me,” (il me semble que) says Sganarelle, but “me” expresses uncertainty. “Nous devons douter de tout” (we must doubt everything), says Marphurius. Sganarelle is so frustrated that he ends up hitting Marphurius with a stick. Marphurius is defenceless. Sganarelle turns himself into a skeptic, mocking Marphurius:

Corrigez, s’il vous plaît, cette manière de parler. Il faut douter de toutes choses; et vous ne devez pas dire que je vous ai battu; mais qu’il vous semble que je vous ai battu. Sganarelle à Marphurius (Scène V, p. 22) [Pray, correct this manner of speaking. We are to doubt everything; and you ought not to say that I have beaten you, but that it seems I have beaten you.] Sganarelle to Marphurius (Scene Ten, p. 238)

Marphurius is Rabelais’ Trouillogan. He doubts everything (Chapter 3.XXXV)

 How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.

Le Mariage Forcé was a comédie-ballet, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Unlike other comédies-ballets, Le Mariage forcé did not use characters inhabiting mythologies. In Scene Twelve, Sganarelle asks three Égyptiennes (Gypsies) whether he will be cuckolded.

Cuckoldry and Widowhood

In Scene Twelve, Lycaste, who loves Dorimène, wonders why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures him. Not only will she be free, but she expects Sganarelle to die within a few months. She looks forward to widowhood. In 17th-century France, widowhood freed women who have married against their will.

Je vous le garantis défunt dans le temps que je dis; et je n’aurai pas longuement à demander pour moi au Ciel, l’heureux état de veuve. Dorimène à Lycaste (Scene XII, p. 25) [I guarantee that he is dead in the time I say. I shall not long have to pray Heaven for the happy state of widowhood.] Dorimène to Lycaste (Scene Twelve, p. 240)

Sganarelle has heard everything. Lycaste gets away as does Dom Juan. Dom Juan invites his father to sit down and Lycaste’s politeness leaves Sganarelle speechless. It is formulaic.

Agréez, Monsieur, que je vous félicite de votre mariage, et vous présente en même temps mes très humbles services. Je vous assure que vous épousez là une très honnête personne. Lycaste à Sganarelle (Scene VII, p. 25) [Allow me, sir, to congratulate you on your marriage, and at the same time to offer you my most humble services. Let me tell you that the lady, whom you are marrying, possesses great merits…] Lycaste to Sganarelle (Scene Twelve, p. 240)

Lycaste then goes away, having silenced Sganarelle.

A Forced Marriage

The remaining scenes feature Dorimène’s family. Alcantor will not allow Sganarelle to roll back his promise to marry Dorimène.

Seigneur Alcantor, j’ai demandé votre fille en mariage, il est vrai; et vous me l’avez accordée: mais je me trouve un peu avancé en âge pour elle; et je considère que je ne suis point du tout son fait. Sganarelle à Alcantor (Scene VIII, p. 27) [Mr. Alcantor, it is true I asked your daughter in marriage, and you granted my request; but I find that I am rather old ; I think that I am by no means a proper match for her.] Sganarelle to Alcantor (Scene Fourteen, p. 241) Vous vous êtes engagé avec moi, pour épouser ma fille; et tout est préparé pour cela. Mais puisque vous voulez retirer votre parole, je vais voir ce qu’il y a à faire; et vous aurez bientôt de mes nouvelles. Alcantor à Sganarelle (Scene VIII, p. 28) [You gave me your word that you would marry my daughter, and everything is prepared for the wedding; but since you wish to withdraw, I shall go and see what can be done in the matter; you shall hear from me presently.] Alcantor to Sganarelle (Scene Fourteen, p. 242)

During Scene IX, Sganarelle refuses to fight Alcidas, Dorimène’s brother, who has brought swords. In the end, Sganarelle is compelled to marry.

Hé bien! j’épouserai, j’épouserai… Sganarelle à Alcidas  (Scene IX, p. 30) Well then, I will marry, I will marry! Sganarelle to Alcidas (Scene Fourteen, p. 244)

      Sganarelle (www.cosmovisions.coms.com)

Sganarelle (Wikipedia)

Conclusion

The Forced Marriage turns matters upside down. We are therefore reminded of Mikhail Bakhtin Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque. We are also reminded of the comic playwrights. However, we are not dealing with Rabelais’ giants, except metaphorically.

Sganarelle makes wedding arrangements before seeking advice from Géronimo, or taking matters into consideration.

An older gentleman is forced to marry.

Dorimène is pleased to marry a senex iratus. She will be a widow.

Sganarelle is a cocu (cuckolded) before he marries.

Our philosophers have long left reality. Molière has created Les Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius.

However, floating just below the surface of this play is the farcical trompeur trompé, the deceiver deceived. How can Lycaste ever trust Dorimène? The extremely polite manner he uses to greet Sganarelle could be read as a criticism of Dorimène’s ploy. It is “affected.” As for Dorimène, she is her own senex iratus and will not change. Besides, destiny rules. She should be prepared to love the husband she has married and to give birth to a petit Sganarelle.

The play also features pedants. Pancrace’s pursuit of a correct term, forme or figure, for the shape of hats is trivial. As for Marphurius, he is Rabelais Trouillogan (See Chapter 3, XXXVI) in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200])

I am leaving behind the comédie-ballet, as written and composed in 1664. This post is already too long. But it is interesting to know that at Versailles, the King and aristocrats played roles in the comédie-ballet.

Sources and Resources

Le Mariage forcé is a toutmolière.net publication

Le Mariage forcé, Notice, toutmolière.net

The Forced Marriage is an Internet Archive publication

Pantagruel and his son Gargantua is Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200]

Trouillogan is featured in Chapter 3, XXXVI in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200]

Molière21

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (1965)

____________________

[1] Giordano Bruno was tortured and burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Among other notions, Bruno perceived the plurality of worlds, as would French philosophe Fontenelle, a century later. [2] Maurice Rat, ed., Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris: Gallimard, collection La Pléiade, 1956), pp. 878-884. [3] In the French language race means race, breed, and, occasionally, line. [4] Cf. Rabelais.

Love to everyone 💕 I apologize for spending a rather long time writing this post.

Baroque Music – Bourrée du Mariage Forcé (Jean-Baptiste Lully)

Bibliothèque nationale de France

© Micheline Walker 5 July 2019 WordPress

Molière’s “Forced Marriage,” “Le Mariage forcé” Le Mariage forcé Les Plaisirs de l'Île enchantée  (The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island),

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

10th October >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 11:27-28 for Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Happier those who hear the word of God and keep it’.

Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 11:27-28

'Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!'

As Jesus was speaking, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!’ But he replied, ‘Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it!’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 11:27-28

Blessed is the womb that carried you. Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.

While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

Reflections (6)

(i) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Paul says something very striking in today’s first reading. He declares that baptism into Christ has collapsed some of the distinctions that were so evident in the ancient world, the distinction between Jew and pagan, between slave and free, and between male and female. He declares that through baptism, we are all one in Christ Jesus. Regardless of our state in live, in virtue of our baptism and our faith, we are all equally sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters of Christ and of one another in Christ. What Paul writes would have been revolutionary in its time, and it remains a powerful reminder of our fundamental equality and unity in Christ today. We find something similar at play in today’s gospel reading. A woman in the crowd singles out Jesus’ mother for praise, pronouncing a beatitude upon her, ‘Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked?’ The woman, who was probably a mother herself, considered Jesus’ mother to be uniquely blessed because of the unique son that she bore. Of course, she was right in a sense. Mary is uniquely blessed; we honour her in a way we don’t honour any other woman. Yet, in his reply to the woman in the crowd, Jesus moves the focus away from his mother to all his disciples, to all of us here today, ‘Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it’. Jesus gives us there the essence of what it is to be a disciple, hearing the word of God as Jesus proclaims it, and keeping that word in our lives. If we do that, Jesus declares, we will be as blessed as the physical mother of Jesus, whoever we are, whatever our distinctive nature, our background or our social status. Mary, of course, was not only the physical mother of Jesus. She was also the ideal disciple, who heard the word of God, surrendered to it, and lived it to the full. We can all be like Mary in that regard, and, in so far as we are, Jesus declares that we will be as blessed as she is.

And/Or

(ii) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

This morning’s gospel reading is probably one of the shortest in the Lectionary. It is just two verses long. It is a little exchange between Jesus and a nameless woman that is to be found only in the gospel of Luke. Women feature prominently in Luke’s gospel. A woman was so taken by what Jesus was saying that she spontaneously uttered a beatitude, directed at Jesus’ mother. One woman declared another woman blessed because she was the mother of Jesus, this very special human being. Jesus undoubtedly had the highest possible regard for his mother. Yet, he deflects the woman’s beatitude onto a much wider group, ‘Still happier/more blessed those who hear the word of God and keep it’. Of course, Jesus’ mother was a prominent member of that much wider group. She, more than anyone else, heard the word of God and kept it. Jesus is saying that if his mother is blessed, it is not so much because she is his mother but because she gave herself over to the hearing and doing of God’s word, ‘Let it be to be according to your word’. Jesus is also saying that if we give ourselves over to the hearing and doing of God’s word, we will be just as blessed as she is.

 And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading, a woman in the crowd praises Jesus indirectly by pronouncing a beatitude on his mother. In reply Jesus pronounces his own beatitude which focuses not on himself or on his mother but on all who hear God’s word and keep it. That short gospel reading is from Luke’s gospel, and in Luke’s gospel the mother of Jesus is very much portrayed as someone who hears the word of God and keeps it. In that context, Jesus is saying in response to the woman’s beatitude that his mother is blessed not so much for the Son that she bore but because she hears the word of God and keeps it. Indeed, it was because Mary heard God’s word, addressed to her by the angel Gabriel, and then surrendered to that word, that she became the mother of Jesus. Her listening and keeping of God’s word, expressed in her response to Gabriel, ‘Let it be to me according to your word’, is what Jesus draws attention to, because everything else, including her physical motherhood of Jesus, is based on that, and comes from it. We are all invited to look to Mary as the one who can show us what it means to hear God’s word and keep it. Yes, she is the physical mother of Jesus, but she is also the model disciple of Jesus, and it is above all from her that we can all learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. In so far as we hear the word of God and keep it as Mary did, we will give birth to Jesus in our own lives. Mary’s Son will live in and through us.

 And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

This must be one of the shortest gospels in the Lectionary. Jesus and a woman from the crowd exchange beatitudes. The woman declares blessed the mother of Jesus, the womb that bore him and the breasts he sucked. Jesus, in reply, declares more blessed those who hear the word of God and keep it. Jesus’ mother is of course included among those who hear the word of God and keep it. Indeed, Luke’s gospel, from whom this short gospel reading is taken, portrays Mary as the one supremely heard the word of God and kept it. Towards the beginning of Luke’s gospel she declares to the angel Gabriel, ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be to be according to your word’, with ‘your word’ referring not just to the word of Gabriel but to the word of God which Gabriel proclaims. Mary’s whole life was according to God’s word. She pondered that word and it shaped her life. Luke tells us that when the shepherds made known to Mary what had been told to them about Mary’s child, she treasured all their words and pondered them in her heart. While Jesus’ beatitude embraces Mary in a special way, it has the potential to include us all. We are all called like Mary to live our lives according to God’s word, to treasure that word and ponder it in our hearts, so that it shapes our lives. In his letter to the members of the church in Colossae, Paul exhorts them ‘let the word of Christ dwell in your richly’. We are called to be people of the word, people whose lives proclaim God’s word, as did the life of Mary.

 And/Or

(v) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In the prayer of Mary in Luke’s gospel which we call the Magnificat Mary announced that all generations would call her blessed. In this morning’s gospel we hear of one woman who declares Mary blessed, announcing to Jesus, ‘Blessed the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!’ This is one of several beatitudes in the gospels and one of only two directed at Mary in particular. Jesus responds to the woman’s beatitude with his own beatitude, one which embraces his mother, but a much wider group as well, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it’. Mary is the great example of someone who heard the word of God and kept it. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, at the hour of the annunciation, Mary surrendered herself to the word of Gabriel, the word of God, ‘Let it be with me according to your word’. At the time of the visitation, Elizabeth pronounced her own beatitude over Mary that reflected Mary’s response to God’s word, ‘Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’. Elisabeth declared Mary blessed not primarily because she is the physical mother of Jesus, but because of her faith, because she responded to God’s word and lived by that word, kept that word, allowed that word to shape her life. Like Mary, we are all called to hear the word of God as proclaimed by Jesus and then to keep that word, to live by it. Insofar as we allow our lives to be shaped by God’s word, we too will be declared blessed by Jesus, as Mary was.

 And/Or

(vi) Saturday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s very short gospel reading, two women feature. A nameless woman in the crowd pronounces a beatitude over another woman, Mary, the mother of Jesus, ‘Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts that you sucked!’ The woman is so impressed by Jesus that she declares his mother blessed. We honour Mary for the same reason. We venerate her as the mother of Jesus, the Son of God, the one through whom God visited his people and all humankind in a unique way. Jesus replies to this woman’s beatitude with a beatitude of his own, ‘Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it’. In this gospel of Luke, Mary is portrayed as the one who truly heard the word of God and kept it. She surrendered to God’s word proclaimed to her by the angel Gabriel, ‘Let it be with me according to your word’. She allowed herself to be shaped by God’s word spoken by Gabriel, not just in a physical sense, but in the sense of her whole life being shaped by God’s word, God’s will. Jesus’ response to the woman’s beatitude could be understood as saying, ‘Yes, my mother is blessed, but she is blessed primarily because she heard the word of God and kept it’. None of us can be embraced by the woman’s beatitude, because Jesus had only one physical mother. However, we can all be embraced by Jesus’ beatitude, because, like Mary, we can all hear the word of God and keep it. When in the prayer, the ‘Hail Mary’, we ask Mary to pray for us sinners now, we are asking her to help us to open our hearts and our lives to the creative power of God’s word, just as generously as she did. In Luke’s gospel, the seed that fell on good soil is described as ‘the one who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance’. This corresponds exactly to Luke’s portrait of Mary in his gospel. It is a portrait we are all called to grow into.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[mebwalker]

Dorimène, Le Mariage forcé

Le Mariage forcé

Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée  (The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island), Versailles

Molière’s contribution

a comédie-ballet

Molière and Lully’s Le Mariage forcé (The Forced Marriage), is a farce and a comédie-ballet, in prose. It was first performed on 29 January 1664 in the Queen Mother’s apartments, at the Louvre. On 15 February 1664, it was performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where it proved less popular. It closed after 12 performances. It was performed again on 12 May 1664 during festivities known as Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island. Louis XIV wanted to show Versailles at an early date. He had hired architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André le Nôtre, and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun. These gentlemen had built Nicolas Fouquet‘s castle at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide (8 May) and Tartuffe (8 May) also premièred during Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée.

In its original form, The Forced Marriage was a three-act comédie-ballet, by Molière and Lully It did not use figures from a mythology in which it differed from earlier comédies-ballets. At Versailles, King Louis XIV and other aristocrats performed in the comedy. In 1664, Louis was very much in love with Louise de la Vallière who lived at Versailles, in the small castle used as a hunting-lodge by the very private Louis XIII.

Molière transformed Le Mariage forcé into a one-act play in 1668, which is Le Mariage forcé as we know it. However, it was reborn as a comédie-ballet in 1672. Lully having broken with Molière, the music was composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

In his Preface to the Forced Marriage, Henri van Laun provides information concerning the posterity of the play. Sganarelle is Sir Toby Doubtful in Love’s Contrivance‘s, a play by Mrs Carroll, born Susanna Centlivre (c. 1667–1670 – 1 December 1723).

Panurge by Albrecht Durer (BnF)

Origins

foreign

Gallic

Rabelais

pedants & philosophy: Aristotle and Pyrrho (doubt)

Although Molière drew some of his material from Spanish author Lope de Vega’s Intermède du sacristain [sacristan] Soguizo, and Giordano Bruno’s[1] Candelaio, or The Candle Bearer, entitled Boniface et le Pédant in French, Le Mariage forcé belongs mainly to a French tradition.

The Forced Marriage is rooted primarily in Rabelais‘ Gargantua and Pantagruel, the Third of Five Books [EBook #1200]. Molière’s Sganarelle recalls Panurge, as featured in Chapter Three of the Third Book (of Five).

 How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or no. 

Affinities between Molière and Rabelais leap off the title and so does the advice Pantagruel provides to Panurge. Pantagruel urges Panurge not to marry, which is Géronimo’s initial response, until he learns that Sganarelle has obtained permission to marry Dorimène from Alcantor, her father. In the Third Book, Panurge has decided to marry, but revisits his decision. In Rabelais’ Third Book, Panurge also seeks the advice of Trouillogan, the model for Molière’s Marphurius, a Pyrrhonian philosopher, and a pedant. He prefigures The Learned Ladies, or Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius. The mouton de Panurge is featured in the fourth of five books constituting Pantagruel and Gargantua. A mouton de Panurge, “describes an individual that will blindly follow others regardless of the consequences.” (See Panurge, Wiki2.org.)

Molière’s Mariage Forcé also has affinities with Guez de Balzac’s Socrate chrétien. Théophile de Viau’s Fragments d’une histoire comique, Dorimond’s L’École des cocus (the School for Cuckolds) and Charles Sorel’s Polyandre (see polyandry, Wiki2.org). These are 17th-century French authors.[2]

Gravure Lalauze

Le Mariage forcé

Gravure Edmond Hédouin

Moreau le Jeune

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

SGANARELLE. (Molière) GÉRONIMO. ALCANTOR, father to Dorimène. ALCIDAS, brother to Dorimène. LYCASTE, in love with Dorimène. PANCRACE, an Aristotelian Philosopher. MARPHURIUS, a Pyrrhonian Philosopher. DORIMÈNE, a young coquette betrothed to Sganarelle. Two GIPSIES. The Scene is in a Public Place.

The Plot

In Scene One of Le Mariage Forcé, Sganarelle, Molière’s mask, wants to know from his friend Géronimo whether he should marry. Sganarelle has already sought and obtained from Dorimène’s father, Alcantor, permission to marry Dorimène. Alcantor has agreed. In his mind, the mind of a pater familias, le Seigneur Sganarelle, a well-to-do 53-year-old gentleman, is a perfect match for his daughter.

However, Dorimène surprises us. One would expect her to oppose her tyrannical father, but she differs from other ingénues, forced to marry or be thrown in a convent. Young Dorimène is une mondaine who thinks a marriage to Sganarelle will allow her to escape her father. When she and Sganarelle meet in Scene II, she makes it clear that she wishes to be free. In fact, she has a lover, Lycaste, who cannot understand why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures Lycaste. Sganarelle is an older gentleman who has no more than six months “in his belly.” She wants to be a widow, the privileged women of 17th-century France. Widows were free to marry whom they please, or not to marry. Le Misanthrope‘s Célimène is a widow.

Yet, although arrangements are being made for Dorimène to marry Sganarelle that very day, Sganarelle would like to discuss marriage with his friend Géronimo. When Géronimo learns that the bride-to-be is the lovely Dorimène and that she is not opposing Alcantor, her father, Géronimo has little left to say than exclaim:

Mariez-vous promptement; je ne dis plus rien. Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene I, p. 9) [Make haste and get married.] Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene Four, p. 227)

The most amusing lines of Scene One are Sganarelle’s:

Outre la joie que j’aurai de posséder une belle femme, qui me fera mille caresses; qui me dorlotera, et me viendra frotter, lorsque je serai las; outre cette joie, dis-je, je considère, qu’en demeurant comme je suis, je laisse périr dans le monde la race [3] des Sganarelles; et qu’en me mariant, je pourrai me voir revivre en d’autres moi-mêmes… [4] Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene I, p. 8) [I consider that, by remaining as I am, I suffer the race of the Sganarelles to become extinct ; whilst, by marrying, I may see myself reproduced, and shall have the joy of seeing children sprung from me[.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Two, p.  226)

Marriage and Marriage

Matters change. Sganarelle believes he will own Dorimène:

Hé bien, ma belle, c’est maintenant que nous allons être heureux l’un et l’autre. Vous ne serez plus en droit de me rien refuser; … Sganarelle à Dorimène (Scène II, pp. 9-10) [Well, my dear, both of us are going to be happy now. You will no longer have a right to refuse me anything; and I can do with you just as I please, without any one being shocked. You will be mine from head to foot, and I shall be master of everything, of your little sparkling eyes, your little roguish nose, your tempting lips, your lovely ears, your pretty little chin, your little round breasts, your … ] Sganarelle to Dorimène (Scene Four, pp. 227-228)

Dorimène, however, wants to escape her father’s tyranny and would not accept to marry a tyrannical Sganarelle’s.

Tout à fait aise, je vous jure: car enfin la sévérité de mon père m’a tenue jusques ici dans une sujétion la plus fâcheuse du monde. Il y a je ne sais combien que j’enrage du peu de liberté, qu’il me donne; et j’ai cent fois souhaité qu’il me mariât, pour sortir promptement de la contrainte, où j’étais avec lui, et me voir en état de faire ce que je voudrai. Dorimène à Sganarelle (Scene II, p. 10) [Immensely glad, I assure you. For, indeed, my father’s severity has kept me hitherto in the most grievous subjection. I have been raging, I do not know how long, at the scanty liberty he allows me ; I have wished a hundred times that he would get me a husband, so that I might quickly escape from the durance in which I have been kept by him, and be able to do as I pleased. Dorimène to Sganarelle (Scene Four, pp. 228-229)

The two are in a collision course. Sganarelle realizes that he has made a mistake.

The Dream

In Scene Three (FR), Géronimo returns. He has found a jeweller who has a beautiful diamond for sale. Sganarelle is no longer so eager to marry. He would like to confide that he has had a dream:

Avant que de passer plus avant, je voudrais bien agiter à fond cette matière; et que l’on m’expliquât un songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, et qui vient tout à l’heure de me revenir dans l’esprit. Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene III, p. 11) [Before going farther I wish to sift this matter to the bottom, and to have interpreted to me a dream which I had last night, and which just recurred to me.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Five, p. 229)

Dreams are borrowed from Rabelais.

Trouillogan by Gustave Doré (BnF)

Pancrace and Marphurius (Trouillogan)

Géronimo is too busy to discuss dreams. He tells Sganarelle to speak with his neighbours: Pancrace, an Aristotelian philosopher, and Marphurius, a Pyrrhonean philosopher. Sganarelle now fears cuckolding. but Pancrace can’t help because he is preoccupied. He wonders whether one should use the word “form” or “figure” concerning the shape of a hat. Sganarelle pressures Pancrace a little, who then asks which tongue, langue, Sganarelle wishes to use. It is, of course the tongue in his mouth:

Parbleu, de la langue que j’ai dans la bouche; je crois que je n’irai pas emprunter celle de mon voisin. Sganarelle à Pancrace (Scene IV, p. 15) [Zounds! The tongue I have in my mouth.] Sganarelle to Pancrace (Scene Six, p. 232)

So, as of “Zounds,” matters truly deteriorate. Sganarelle leaves. (I am not discussing the quotations in Latin.)

Sganarelle then visits another neighbour, a Pyrrhonian skeptic. This character reflects Sganarelle uncertainty and adds to his distress. Doubt has entered Sganarelle’s mind. He correct Sganarelle. “[I]t seems to me,” (il me semble que) says Sganarelle, but “me” expresses uncertainty. “Nous devons douter de tout” (we must doubt everything), says Marphurius. Sganarelle is so frustrated that he ends up hitting Marphurius with a stick. Marphurius is defenceless. Sganarelle turns himself into a skectic, mocking Marphurius:

Corrigez, s’il vous plaît, cette manière de parler. Il faut douter de toutes choses; et vous ne devez pas dire que je vous ai battu; mais qu’il vous semble que je vous ai battu. Sganarelle à Marphurius (Scène V, p. 22) [Pray, correct this manner of speaking. We are to doubt everything; and you ought not to say that I have beaten you, but that it seems I have beaten you.] Sganarelle to Marphurius (Scene Ten, p. 238)

Marphurius is Rabelais’ Trouillogan. (See Chapter 3.XXXV)

“ How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.”

Le Mariage Forcé was a comédie-ballet, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Unlike other comédies-ballets, Le Mariage forcé did not use characters inhabiting mythologies. In Scene Twelve, Sganarelle asks three Égyptiennes (Gypsies) whether he will be cuckolded.

Cuckoldry and Widowhood

In Scene Twelve, Lycaste, who loves Dorimène, wonders why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures him. Not only will she be free, but she expects Sganarelle to die within a few months. She looks forward to widowhood. In 17th-century France, widowhood freed women who had married women who have married against their will.

Je vous le garantis défunt dans le temps que je dis; et je n’aurai pas longuement à demander pour moi au Ciel, l’heureux état de veuve. Dorimène à Lycaste (Scene XII, p. 25) [I guarantee that he is dead in the time I say. I shall not long have to pray Heaven for the happy state of widowhood.] Dorimène to Lycaste (Scene Twelve, p. 240)

Sganarelle has heard everything. Lycaste gets away as Dom Juan. Dom Juan invites his father to sit down and Lycaste’s politeness leaves Sganarelle speechless.

Agréez, Monsieur, que je vous félicite de votre mariage, et vous présente en même temps mes très humbles services. Je vous assure que vous épousez là une très honnête personne. Lycaste à Sganarelle (Scene VII, p. 25) [Allow me, sir, to congratulate you on your marriage, and at the same time to offer you my most humble services. Let me tell you that the lady, whom you are marrying, possesses great merits…] Lycaste to Sganarelle (Scene Twelve, p. 240)

Lycaste then goes away, having silenced Sganarelle.

A Forced Marriage

The remaining scenes feature Dorimène’s family. Alcantor will not allow Sganarelle to roll back his promise to marry Dorimène.

Seigneur Alcantor, j’ai demandé votre fille en mariage, il est vrai; et vous me l’avez accordée: mais je me trouve un peu avancé en âge pour elle; et je considère que je ne suis point du tout son fait. Sganarelle à Alcantor (Scene VIII, p. 27) [Mr. Alcantor, it is true I asked your daughter in marriage, and you granted my request; but I find that I am rather old ; I think that I am by no means a proper match for her.] Sganarelle to Alcantor (Scene Fourteen, p. 241) Vous vous êtes engagé avec moi, pour épouser ma fille; et tout est préparé pour cela. Mais puisque vous voulez retirer votre parole, je vais voir ce qu’il y a à faire; et vous aurez bientôt de mes nouvelles. Alcantor à Sganarelle (Scene VIII, p. 28) [You gave me your word that you would marry my daughter, and everything is prepared for the wedding; but since you wish to withdraw, I shall go and see what can be done in the matter; you shall hear from me presently.] Alcantor to Sganarelle (Scene XIV, p. 242)

During Scene IX, Sganarelle refuses to fight. Alcidas, Dorimène’s brother, has brought swords. In the end, Sganarelle is compelled to marry.

Hé bien! j’épouserai, j’épouserai… Sganarelle à Alcidas  (Scene IX, p. 30) Well then, I will marry, I will marry! Sganarelle to Alcidas (Scene XIV, p. 244)

  Sganarelle (www.cosmovisions.coms.com)

Sganarelle (Wikipedia)

Conclusion

The Forced Marriage turns matters upside down. We are therefore reminded of Mikhail Bakhtin Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque. We are also reminded of the comic playwrights. However, we are not dealing with giants.

Sganarelle makes wedding arrangements before seeking advice from Géronimo, or taking matters into consideration.

An older gentleman is forced to marry.

Dorimène is pleased to marry a senex iratus. She will be a widow.

Sganarelle is a cocu (cuckolded) before he marries.

Our philosophers have long left reality. Molière has created Les Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius.

However, floating just below the surface of this play is the farcical trompeur trompé, the deceiver deceived. How can Lycaste ever trust Dorimène? The extremely polite manner he uses to greet Sganarelle could be read as a criticism of Dorimène’s ploy. It is “affected.” As for Dorimène, she is her own senex iratus.

The play also features pedants. Pancrace’s pursuit of a correct term, forme or figure for the shape of hats is trivial. As for Marphurius he is Rabelais Trouillogan (See Chapter 3, XXXVI) in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200]

I am leaving behind the comédie-ballet, as written and composed in 1664. This post is already too long. But it is interesting to know that at Versailles, the King and aristocrats played roles in the comédie-ballet.

Sources and Resources

Le Mariage forcé is a toutmolière.net publication

Le Mariage forcé, Notice, toutmolière.net

The Forced Marriage is an Internet Archive publication

Pantagruel and his son Gargantua is Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200]

Trouillogan is featured in Chapter 3, XXXVI in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200]

Molière21

Mikhail Bakhtin

____________________

[1] Giorgano Bruno was tortured and burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Among other notions, Bruno perceived the plurality of worlds, as would French philosophe Fontenelle, a century later. [2] Maurice Rat, ed., Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris: Gallimard, collection La Pléiade, 1956), pp. 878-884. [3] In the French language race means race, breed, and, occasionally, line. [4] Cf. Rabelais.

Love to everyone 💕 I apologize for spending a rather long time writing this post.

Baroque Music – Bourrée du Mariage Forcé (Jean-Baptiste Lully)

© Micheline Walker 5 July 2019 WordPress

Molière’s “Forced Marriage,” “Le Mariage forcé” Le Mariage forcé Les Plaisirs de l'Île enchantée  (The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island),

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

7th Nov >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflection on Luke 14:15-24 for Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time ‘All alike started to make excuses'.

Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 14:15-24

One of those gathered round the table said to Jesus, ‘Happy the man who will be at the feast in the kingdom of God!’ But he said to him, ‘There was a man who gave a great banquet, and he invited a large number of people. When the time for the banquet came, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come along: everything is ready now.” But all alike started to make excuses. The first said, “I have bought a piece of land and must go and see it. Please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out. Please accept my apologies.” Yet another said, “I have just got married and so am unable to come.”

   ‘The servant returned and reported this to his master. Then the householder, in a rage, said to his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” “Sir” said the servant “your orders have been carried out and there is still room.” Then the master said to his servant, “Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full; because, I tell you, not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet.”’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 14:15-24

Go out quickly into highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled.

One of those at table with Jesus said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

Reflections (4)

(i) Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

Not all of the beatitudes in the gospels are spoken by Jesus. Today’s gospel reading opens with a beatitude spoken by one of Jesus’ fellow guests at a banquet to which Jesus had been invited, ‘Happy the one who will be at the feast in the kingdom of God!’ Perhaps he imagined that the meal at which he was present, hosted by a leading Pharisee, with other Pharisees present, was a kind of foretaste of the banquet of eternal life. The parable Jesus spoke in response to this guest’s beatitude suggests otherwise. It is a story about a man who gave a great banquet at which those expected to be there to turn up. Instead the banquet was filled with people who would never have been invited to the kind of banquet at which Jesus was a guest – the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, and those who were to be found by the open roads and hedgerows. Jesus was portraying a banquet that was very far removed from the one to which he had been invited. It is as if Jesus was saying to the guest who pronounced the beatitude, ‘Don’t think that this rather exclusive banquet is in anyway like the banquet in the kingdom of God’. There is nothing selective about God’s guest list. However, the parable warns than we can exclude ourselves from God’s banquet by allowing ourselves to become overly absorbed by the attachments of this life. God wants a full and varied table. There can be no doubting God’s desire. It is our desire to be at God’s table that is the only issue. We are to seek the Lord with something of that earnestness with which the Lord seeks us, or in that striking image in today’s responsorial psalm, with the same earnestness as a child seeks its mother. ‘A weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul’.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

The parable envisages a situation where people had already accepted an invitation to a feast and said they were coming. Then the second invitation went out just as the meal was ready, and it was at that point that they started to make excuses. Having initially said ‘yes’, they said ‘no’ at very short notice. Having said ‘yes’ to the invitation, they failed to follow through on it. Therein lies the challenge for all of us – to follow through on the ‘yes’ we make to the Lord’s call, to live out that ‘yes’ in the day to day affairs of our lives. The parable suggests that the Lord is determined that his feast would be a crowded affair. When the people originally invited said ‘no’, others were invited. There were to be no empty seats at table. The Lord’s determination cannot be questioned. He wants as many as possible to come to the banquet of life. What is at issue is our determination to respond. We might pray this morning that our response to the Lord’s invitation would be as persistent as his invitation, that our determination to be in communion with him would match his determination to be in communion with him.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

The householder in today’s gospel reading is a very determined host. He was determined to have people to dinner. The people that he originally invited and who had accepted his invitation changed their minds at short notice, just as the meal was ready. The host was disappointed and, indeed, angry. However, rather than give up on the idea of having a great crowd to a banquet, he sent out his servant to gather in the most unlikely of guests in that culture, the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, and complete strangers from the highways and byways. Come hell or high water, this householder was going to have a house full of guests. His desire to have people at his table was much stronger than the desire of some people not to be there. The householder’s tenacity speaks of God’s determination to gather as many people as possible into the banquet of eternal life. God remains a willing host even when he comes up against unwilling guests. Saint Paul expresses that conviction very succinctly, ‘where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more’. There is great consolation in that. Yet, even though God’s grace, God’s gracious initiative towards us, is powerful and enduring, it does require our openness, our willingness, our responsiveness, if God’s desire for our lives is to come to pass.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

In the gospels, especially in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is very often found at table. In this morning’s gospel reading he is guest at a meal hosted by a leading Pharisee at which other Pharisees and experts in the Jewish law were present. One of the guests utters a beatitude, ‘Happy the one who will be at the table in the kingdom of God’. In reply Jesus speaks a parable. Whereas the beatitude refers to a great feast in the future, Jesus’ parable is about a feast to which invitations have already gone out in the present. Jesus focuses people’s attention from the future to the present. The invitations have already gone out. What is to be our response in the present? In the parable, people who had initially said ‘yes’ to the invitation turn it down just as the meal was ready to be served, ‘Come along, everything is ready now’. They all get distracted by various worldly attachments, which are all good in themselves but are not the primary good. As a result of their refusal, a surprising invitation goes out to the kinds of people who would never get invited to anything. They have no strong attachments and are delighted to respond. The parable is a reminder to us to be attentive to the Lord’s invitation in the present moment and not to allow the good things of this world to so absorb us that we are no longer free to respond to his invitation as it comes to us in the here and now of our daily lives.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

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