Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Smoke in This Life and Not the Next

Wednesday, May 6
Virtue Under the Knife: Structure & Truth

Tonight’s Pairing

Cigar: Freud’s Cigar — dark Austrian‑style Maduro; dense, bitter earth; a harsh, honest draw that exposes every weakness in the structure
Drink: Old Forester 1920 — high‑proof discipline, oak and heat, the burn that clarifies a man’s interior architecture
Reason: tonight is about the collapse of compensations—psychological, muscular, spiritual—and the fire that reveals what a man really built

The Reflection

A Roman soldier’s leg was built for truth:
glute, hamstring, adductor—
a load‑bearing tripod that could march twenty miles in armor.
No illusions.
No compensations.
Just structure proven under weight.

Modern men reverse the ratio:
quads for show, weak adductors, collapsing gait,
and a psyche trained to avoid interior load.

Freud named the evasions—

repression, projection, rationalization—
but denied the cure.
He mapped the labyrinth of self‑deception
without admitting the fire that eventually burns it clean.

His cigar makes the point:
dense smoke, harsh draw,
the taste of a mind circling its own defenses.

St. Lidwina saw what happens
when those defenses finally collapse.
The cincture tears.
The soul stands before divine light with no illusions left—
no psychological smoke,
no muscular compensations,
no interior escape routes.

Purgatory is not punishment—
it is the forced march of a soul
that refused to train for holiness.

The Freud‑style Maduro fits the moment:
bitter, dense, unadorned—
the smoke of a man who can no longer hide from himself.

The 1920 matches it:
heat without chaos,
fire without rage,
the stern burn that exposes the weak joints of the will.

The legionary teaches the law:

build the structure now
or God will rebuild it later.

Purgatory Note

The souls she saw were not crushed by one furnace
but by many small ones,
because their faults were scattered across the whole field of life.
Their purification was relentless, not violent—
the slow correction of men
who lived on compensations instead of discipline.

Better to take the harsh smoke now.
Better to taste the high‑proof fire now.
Better to build the structure now—
and not the next.

MAY 6 Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Sigmond Freud Born 1856-First Wednesday

1 Samuel, Chapter 20, Verse 21

I will then send my attendant to recover the arrows. If in fact I say to him, ‘Look, the arrow is this side of you; pick it up,’ come, for you are safe. As the LORD lives, there will be nothing to FEAR.

"The sages characterized the relationship between Jonathan and David in the following Mishnah: “Whenever love depends on some selfish end, when the end passes away, the love passes away; but if it does not depend on some selfish end, it will never pass away. Which love depended on a selfish end? This was the love of Amnon and Tamar. And which did not depend on a selfish end? This was the love of David and Jonathan.

(Avot 5:15)" Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran (Spain, North Africa 14th-15th century) delineated the significance of this mishnah: “Anyone who establishes a friendship for access to power, money, or sexual relations; when these ends are not attainable, the friendship ceases…love that is not dependent on selfish ends is true love of the other person since there is no intended end.” (Magen Avot – abridged and adapted translation)[1]

Sigmond Freud[2]

Sigmund Freud’s most influential teaching is his sexual reductionism. As an atheist, Freud reduces God to a dream of man. As a materialist, he reduces man to his body, the human body to animal desire, desire to sexual desire and sexual desire to genital sex. All are oversimplifications.

The modern attack on marriage and the family, for which Freud set the stage, has done more damage than any war or political revolution. For where else do we all learn the most important lesson in life — unselfish love — except in stable families who preach it by practicing it?

Copilot’s Take

Five Chiefs, Five Pillars, and Confronting Evil

The ancient world named five corrupting powers that opposed God’s order: Baal, Asherah, Molech, Mammon, and Belial. These were not merely idols but patterns of distortion—each one a chief strategy for breaking covenant, destroying communion, and reducing the human person. The Catechism teaches that evil always begins with a lie about God and a lie about man (CCC 397), and these five chiefs represent those lies in their purest form. Against this backdrop, the covenant between David and Jonathan stands as the counter‑vision: love that is not dependent on advantage, appetite, or fear. Jonathan’s signal—“the arrow is this side of you; come, for you are safe”—reveals a love that evil cannot imitate because evil always seeks leverage, not communion.

The modern world has its own five chiefs, not carved in stone but written in books: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud. Peter Kreeft calls them the Five Pillars of Unbelief, and each one mirrors an ancient distortion. Descartes echoes Baal, replacing God with the self and making the mind the new idol. Kant echoes Belial, dissolving moral law into personal autonomy.

Hegel echoes Mammon, reducing permanence to historical drift and treating truth as a product of process. Marx echoes Molech, sacrificing the family and the innocent to ideology. Freud echoes Asherah, collapsing love into appetite and the soul into sexual instinct. These thinkers are not demons, but their ideas function like the enemy’s board of directors—five human embodiments of five ancient lies.

Freud is the most corrosive because he strikes at the deepest level: the meaning of love itself. The Catechism teaches that man is created for communion and self‑gift (CCC 1877–1879), but Freud denies the very possibility of unselfish love by reducing all affection to libido. He sexualizes childhood, pathologizes guilt, and redefines the family as repression. In doing so, he becomes the modern face of Asherah, the chief of sexual corruption. His influence fuels the modern attack on marriage and the family—an attack more destructive than any war because it destroys the one place where human beings learn covenant, sacrifice, and ordered desire. When love is reduced to appetite, fidelity becomes repression, and children become psychological battlegrounds.

The Catechism teaches that evil is confronted first by truth, then by conversion, then by ordered love (CCC 1428, 1803–1809). To confront the Five Chiefs and their modern heirs, we must restore what each one removed. Against Baal/Descartes, we affirm objective truth. Against Belial/Kant, objective moral law. Against Mammon/Hegel, the permanence of human nature. Against Molech/Marx, the spiritual dignity of the person and the sanctity of the family. Against Asherah/Freud, the reality of the soul and the possibility of unselfish love. Evil is confronted not by theatrics but by clarity: naming the lie, refusing reduction, and living the covenantal love that Freud said could not exist.

The world says love is appetite; Scripture says love is fidelity. The world says desire defines you; the Church says God does. The world says nothing is sacred; Jonathan says, “Come, for you are safe.” In the end, the Five Chiefs and the Five Pillars collapse under the same truth: the human person is not an idol, not an instinct, not a machine, not a class unit, not a historical accident. He is the image of God. And the moment he remembers that the enemy’s entire strategy begins to break.

Woke Culture and Freud — The Final Reduction

Much of what is now called woke culture is downstream from Freud’s reduction of the human person to desire.

When identity is defined by impulse, when the inner self is treated as unquestionable truth, and when the body becomes raw material for self‑expression, Freud’s shadow is unmistakable. The Catechism teaches that truth is objective and the body is a gift, not a canvas for self‑invention (CCC 364), but Freud’s legacy encourages the opposite: the belief that feelings create reality, that boundaries are repression, and that the family is a social construct rather than a school of love. This is why woke culture treats disagreement as harm and affirmation as salvation — it inherits Freud’s assumption that the self is fragile, unstable, and defined by desire. To confront this, the Church returns to the same truth that protected David and Jonathan: identity is received, not constructed; love is covenant, not appetite; and the human person is more than his impulses. Where Freud dissolves the soul into instinct, the Gospel restores the soul to its dignity.

If woke culture dissolve’s identity into self‑invention and treats the body as a negotiable project, then St. Joseph stands as its direct contradiction. He receives his mission rather than crafting it, protects rather than performs, obeys rather than self‑expresses. His silence has more authority than the age’s noise. His purity has more strength than the age’s fragility. This is why the First Wednesday devotion matters now: the culture has lost the father, so God reveals the one man who never lost himself.

First Wednesday[3]

Our Heavenly Father desires all three hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph to be honored. And so along with devotion to Jesus on First Fridays, and to Mary on First Saturdays, Our Father longs for us to add devotion to St. Joseph on each First Wednesday of the month.

"The Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have been chosen by the Most Holy Trinity to bring peace to the world." It is at God's request that "special love and honor be given to them" to help us "imitate" their love and their lives, as well as "offer reparation" for the sins committed against them and their love.

The St. Joseph First Wednesday devotion is:

1. Pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary - remembering St. Joseph's love, his life, his role and his sufferings

2. Receive Holy Communion - in union with the love St. Joseph had for Jesus the first time and each time he held him - his son, his God and Savior - in his arms.

In the approved apparitions of Our Lady of America, St. Joseph revealed:

· "I am the protector of the Church and the home, as I was the protector of Christ and his Mother while I lived upon earth. Jesus and Mary desire that my pure heart, so long hidden and unknown, be now honored in a special way.

· Let my children honor my most pure heart in a special manner on the First Wednesday of the month by reciting the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary in memory of my life with Jesus and Mary and the love I bore them, the sorrow I suffered with them.

· Let them receive Holy Communion in union with the love with which I received the Savior for the first time and each time I held Him in my arms.

· Those who honor me in this way will be consoled by my presence at their death, and I myself will conduct them safely into the presence of Jesus and Mary."

Joseph and the Defeat of the Five Chiefs

St. Joseph shows us how to defeat the Five Chiefs because his life restores everything they destroyed. Against Baal/Descartes, Joseph lives objective truth—he obeys the word of God without self‑invention. Against Belial/Kant, he embodies objective moral law—his righteousness is not autonomous but received. Against Mammon/Hegel, he guards the permanence of human nature—a father, a husband, a worker, not a construct. Against Molech/Marx, he protects the spiritual dignity of the person and the sanctity of the family—the Child and the Mother entrusted to him. Against Asherah/Freud, he reveals the reality of the soul and the possibility of unselfish love—purity without repression, authority without domination. Joseph defeats the Chiefs not by argument but by ordered love: truth received, conversion lived, and fidelity carried to the end.

Bible in a year Day 305 The Defender

As we hear the re-telling of the story of Judas Maccabbeus and his brothers fighting for the honor of the Lord's Temple in 2 Maccabees, Fr. Mike points out how this version gives us an insight into their recognition of God's presence, mercy, and justice in their circumstances. We learn that no matter what we are going through, we can trust that God is our great defender who is present and active in all circumstances of our lives.

Today's readings are 2 Maccabees 8, Wisdom 5-6, and Proverbs 24:30-34.

THIS WE BELIEVE

PRAYERS AND TEACHINGS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Prayer to Patron Saint

Great Saint N., who at my baptism was chosen as my guardian and under whose patronage I became an adopted child of God and solemnly renounced Satan, his works and allurements, assist me by your powerful intercession in the fulfillment of these sacred promises. Amen

Around the Corner Try 4-Ingredient Kielbasa and Sauerkraut Skillet

· Spirit Hour: Flaming Boilermaker in honor of St. John at the Latin Gate.

· Bucket List trip: Kyivan Caves Monastery

· Hindenburg Disaster 1937

· National Pet Month

· Red Cross Month

Today is Orson Welles' birthday.

May 6th (1915)

In honor of him we will be also watching

CITIZEN KANE (1941)

5 Life Lessons from the Film ‘Citizen Kane’[4]

· Seek Challenges… Not Comfort

“If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” — Charles Foster Kane

As a young boy, Charles Kane is sent away by his parents in rural Colorado to live under the guardianship of an austere banker. After a valuable gold mine was discovered on the Kane family property, his mother wanted him to be raised in a manner befitting his future inheritance. Later in life, Kane saw this wealth as a curse, shielding him from the adversity that could have forged him into a “great man.”

· Set Goals… Then Work to Achieve Them

“There's only one person who's going to decide what I'm going to do and that's me.” - Charles Foster Kane

Kane resolved as a young adult to direct his energy towards making a positive impact on his country. He grew a floundering city newspaper into a national media empire, and ran for Governor of New York on a progressive and anti-corruption platform.

· On Friendship: Quality Beats Quantity

“I know too many people. I guess we’re both lonely.” — Charles Foster Kane

Although he was always surrounded by people, Kane kept most of his acquaintances at arm’s length. Demanding loyalty from his friends and colleagues, but offering little in return. As a consequence, he often felt lonely and isolated.

· Principles Are More Valuable Than Possessions

When Kane took the helm of that first newspaper, he promised (via a front page cover story), to operate the periodical according to the principles of truth and honesty. As his empire expanded however, he chose to compromise these principles in service of his ambition.

Kane attempted to fill the resulting void in his life by collecting art and curios from around the world. In the end, he died alone in his cavernous mansion, surrounded by his collection destined for an auction house or incinerator.

Scene from end of Citizen Kane

· We Are All Tapestries of Diversity

“Mr Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle… a missing piece.”

— Jerry Thompson

Citizen Kane becomes a cautionary tale precisely because it shows what a man becomes when he follows the Five Chiefs instead of the Father. Kane lives Baal/Descartes by treating truth as something he can manufacture. He lives Belial/Kant by making his own will the only law. He lives Mammon/Hegel by imagining identity can be built from power and acquisition. He lives Molech/Marx by sacrificing relationships—especially the family he never learned to form—on the altar of ambition. And he lives Asherah/Freud by reducing love to need and desire to self‑expression. Kane is brilliant, restless, and self‑invented, yet hollow. His “Rosebud” is the missing formation he never received. This is why Joseph stands at the center of today’s lesson: he is the man who defeats the Chiefs by living the ordered love Kane never learned to obey.

Daily Devotions

· Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them in fasting: Today's Fast: Increase in Christian Feminism

· Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus

· Offering to the sacred heart of Jesus

· Make reparations to the Holy Face

· Drops of Christ’s Blood

· Universal Man Plan

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan

[2] https://catholiceducation.org/en/culture/5-the-pillars-of-unbelief-sigmund-freud.html

[3]https://enteringintothemystery.blogspot.com/2018/12/dont-forget-first-wednesday-devotion-to.html

[4] https://citizenupgrade.com/posts/lifelessonscitizenkane/

THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER (1949)

Charles Laughton • Franchot Tone • Burgess Meredith

A Parisian manhunt filmed in rare Ansco Color, where Inspector Maigret stalks a brilliant, taunting killer through cafés, alleys, and finally the iron lattice of the Eiffel Tower itself. A procedural wrapped in psychological cat‑and‑mouse, driven by Laughton’s weighty intelligence and Tone’s unnerving theatricality.

1. Production & Historical Setting

Released in 1949, directed by Burgess Meredith (with uncredited work by Irving Allen), and shot almost entirely on real Paris locations — a bold choice in the late‑40s when most crime films still lived on studio backlots. The Ansco Color stock gives the film a cooler, grainier palette than Technicolor, lending Paris a lived‑in, postwar melancholy.

The film emerges from a Europe and America wrestling with:

Postwar psychological fracture — men returning from war with interior wounds and moral ambiguity
Rise of international noir — crime stories leaving Hollywood soundstages for real cities
Simenon’s influence — the shift toward procedural realism and flawed detectives
A fascination with the brilliant sociopath — the criminal as intellectual adversary, not brute

Charles Laughton plays Inspector Maigret with a mix of irritation, patience, and quiet brilliance — a man who solves crimes by watching human nature unravel.
Franchot Tone plays Johann Radek, a mercurial, taunting figure whose intelligence is both weapon and pathology.
Burgess Meredith appears as the anxious, compromised Heurtin — a man crushed by circumstance and suspicion.

The world is cafés, narrow stairways, river fog, and the iron geometry of the Tower — a Paris still recovering from occupation, where guilt and desperation linger in the air.

2. Story Summary

A wealthy Parisian woman is murdered. Evidence points to Heurtin, a jittery, impoverished deliveryman. But Inspector Maigret senses something off — the crime feels too clever, too staged.

Maigret begins to pursue:

The truth behind the planted evidence
The shadowy figure manipulating the investigation
The psychological pattern of a killer who wants to be seen

Enter Radek — brilliant, mocking, and fascinated by Maigret’s mind. He toys with the inspector, dropping hints, provoking him, daring him to follow the trail.

What follows is a tightening sequence of:

Interrogations in cramped Paris rooms
Cat‑and‑mouse exchanges between Maigret and Radek
A citywide pursuit through markets, bridges, and back alleys
A final ascent into the Eiffel Tower’s steel skeleton

The climax — Radek climbing the Tower, Maigret following — is both physical and psychological: a duel between a man who kills for intellectual sport and a detective who refuses to be outplayed.

3. Spiritual & Moral Resonances

A. Evil as Intelligence Without Conscience

Radek embodies brilliance severed from moral grounding — a reminder that intellect alone cannot order a soul.

B. The Detective’s Vocation

Maigret’s patience, steadiness, and refusal to be provoked show the virtue of constancy in the face of chaos.

C. The Weight of False Accusation

Heurtin’s desperation reflects the spiritual damage inflicted when the weak are crushed by systems they cannot navigate.

D. Pride as a Murderous Engine

Radek kills not for gain but for superiority — a portrait of pride metastasized into violence.

E. Truth Requires Endurance

Maigret’s method is slow, observational, and humane — a counter‑witness to Radek’s speed, ego, and cruelty.

4. Hospitality Pairing — The Inspector’s Table

Cognac in a short glass — warm, steady, contemplative
Crusty bread with salted butter — the simplicity of a Parisian working meal
Hard cheese (Comté or Gruyère) — sharp, disciplined, no excess
A dim lamp and a quiet room — the mood of a detective sorting clues at midnight

A setting for nights when you want to examine pride, conscience, and the discipline of seeing clearly.