A Happy and Blessed Easter to you all!

Well, it has been a long time since I have put fingers to keyboard to blog and the Easter Octave seems like a better time than any other to resurrect the defence of the Catholic Church from Her foes on this website. Since it has been so long, this post will probably be unfocused and rambling, but since it has been so long, I know not quite what to say.

Eastertide weeding and planting in the 
war memorial garden

About a year ago, I took on full-time employment as a gardener at the Council, albeit as agency staff, and it has taken about a year for my body to adjust, even marginally, to 6:15am starts, at times very physical labour and on my return from work, domestic and other duties I am required to perform on top of my gardening job. For the time being, my life is very much about 'doing' but I don't mind too much. It keeps me engaged body and soul.

The gardening job affords ample time for prayer, unlike office jobs that require a lot of mental concentration. This is a great blessing. There are breaks when I tweet and there is a lot of time when gardening to pray, when mowing and weeding, though ear defenders aid prayer when mowing. Gardening allows you to 'zone out' like no other job on Earth. I haven't yet found a way to pray the Rosary well while doing it since it requires no distraction even to count the beads in your head mentally.

When I updated this blog more often, and had more time, I was much more of a 'free spirit', so to speak, but I would like to update this blog when and as I have the time as well as the energy.

As I now mow and strim various lawns and banks of housing estates, as our team does from March onwards, I often think about what I could write about. As I trundle along with my John Deer KS2 lawnmower, I often think: 'Am I wasting my life and the writing gifts God has given me for His glory?' But then we cannot simply do always as we would have wished.

I do enjoy the gardening, it pays the bills and it is a long, long time since I thought I would be able to make a 'job' of writing and indeed I do appreciate my gardening work. I am very fond of my gardening colleagues and I love the simplicity and natural happiness of gardening. I love the looking back at the housing estate lawn once overgrown and now tidy, that final sweep of the mower over that final tuft of grass, the weeding of a walled garden, once overgrown with weeds, but now well kept and ordered, the planting of bulbs, the occasional planting of a bedding area. To be quite honest, I even like littering the parks and changing the bins. If we didn't do it, it would look terrible!

So what to say of Holy Mother Church? Ah, Lord! What can be said which has not been said? What can anyone add to that which has been commented on various sites?! Not much! We know we are headlong into the great crisis from which it appears there is no escape, but we know You will rescue Your Bride! Even in the darkness of the night, we glimpse the power even now of Your Resurrection!

Over Lent, I endeavoured to pray most fervently for Benedict XVI and when news of his eloquent intervention in the abuse crisis came I felt a real answer to prayer. The Lord has heard my entreaty and that of a multitude of others! It is a wonderful thing to be able to hear that voice again, of a Shepherd dedicated to the Truth. Who knows how much time he has left in this vale of tears to offer his positively magisterial assessment of the crisis of faith corrupting the Church from within? O please, God, give him many years to offer his wisdom to Holy Mother Church in Her time of trial, apostasy and temptation!

Easter is such a wonderful time of grace, basking in the light of Christ's victory over Satan, Hell, sin and death. I hope you are all having a blessed Octave and enjoying the Feasts that Holy Mother Church lavishes us with in this time of unbridled jubilation in the Lord.

Christ is Risen! Let us rise with Him! Do not weep over the crimes and the indifference of so many Cardinals and Bishops who should realise the gravity of the hour in which the Church now finds Herself, since so many are blinded to the Truth of Jesus Christ and doubt His words. Why look for Jesus among those who have rejected Him in the Hierarchy? He is not there. Why look for the living One, among the dead!?

Those Princes of the Church who are truly alive in Christ have already made themselves known over the last six years. Continue to pray for them and that more will wake from their slumber and proclaim Christ whose Resurrection fills the Earth with the power of divine love and Salvation.

Pray for the persecuted Church steeped in the blood of many martyrs who surely now bear the palm of eternal triumph, pray for the conversion of the infidels, for all the enemies of God and true religion, for Shepherds who long to lead souls to Christ, for Benedict XVI, who must still be surrounded by ravenous wolves, and pray for a holy and angelic Pope to lead Holy Church out of sorrow, division and distress, into certainty, clarity and the peace, tranquility and just order of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Allelulia, alleluia, allelulia! Away with sin and sorrow. Christ has conquered sin and death and the true King's enemies, one by one, will fall before Him. Let the hearts of the just stand firm, O just God, for all who abandon You shall perish! Whatever earthly gains they may merit by their apostasy shall be nothing compared to the eternal joy they shall have forsaken in the Kingdom where You reign as Risen King forever and ever! Amen!