My Heart is filled with sadness

[N.B.: - With permission from the author, we have taken the liberty to modify or edit]

As those of us, who are of the Orthodox faith, prepare for this most glorious season in the life of the Church, Pascha, the time when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I cannot help but feel a heaviness, a sense of dread and fearfulness deep within my heart and soul.

What is the cause of this? It is the inner knowledge that we are moving ever faster toward the time of the Great Tribulation. What is happening in America today is cause for alarm. The spread of anti-Christian sentiment, especially against Catholics, is growing by leaps and bounds. The Liberal left in Congress is fighting tooth and nail to block the Federal Court nominees of President Bush, claiming that these nominees are not qualified to sit on the Federal Court bench, but what they really mean is that no one with religiously held moral values is wanted by the left. How do I know this? One of the most out spoken mouth pieces of the left in the Senate, Sen. Charles Schumer (D.) of New York, said as much very openly. In his statement, which he made more than once and which was echoed by Sen. Ted Kennedy and others of the same ilk, Schumer said that “We do not want anyone with strongly held religious beliefs elected to the Supreme Court or other Federal courts, who may overturn Roe v Wade.”

People, wake up! There was NEVER anything in the Constitution that ever gave the Right to abortion. The judicial activist judges perverted the Right to Privacy as a means to ramming so-called legalized abortion down the throats of the American people. They have embraced a “culture of death”. They are now doing the same thing concerning “Euthanasia” or so-called mercy killing or doctor assisted suicide, remember the Terrie Shiavo case? It makes no difference what name you want to put on it; abortion, mercy killing, doctor assisted suicide, etc., God calls it murder.

This culture of death extends to the very soul of America and the individual souls of the American people. One of our most basic RIGHTS, Freedom of Religion, is at stake.

Did you know that a Roman Catholic Priest, a retired Brigadier General of the United States Army, was threatened with arrest if he attempted to place the Consecrated Body and Blood of Jesus Christ into the mouth of Terri Shiavo? He was informed by an officer of the court and by two police officers that it was a court order that NOTHING was to be given to Terri once the feeding tube was removed. Prohibiting Ms. Shiavo from receiving the Holy Eucharist, and preventing the priest from administering this rite, was a blatant violation of their Constitutional rights. The court judge, the court officer and the two police officers should and MUST be brought to account and charged with the violation of the civil and religious rights of Terri Shiavo and the Roman Catholic priest.

These are not isolated incidents. This is going on all across the United States. The Liberal left will do all they can to make sure that the courts are packed with judicial activist judges, even illegally using the filibuster to block all conservative nominees from getting a straight up or down vote by the full Senate, which the Constitution calls for. The Liberal left is so bent on getting their God-less, secularist One World agenda passed, and they are using the courts to do it. The Judicial branch of the Federal Government is supposed to be a co-equal third branch of the government along with the Legislative (House and Senate) and the Executive (Office of the President), but since the sixties, the Federal court judges have been thumbing their noses at the other two branches of the government and trampling on the wishes of the American people.

The courts have overturned the votes of the majority of people who are against same-sex marriages, they have usurped the rights of parents over their children, by declaring that underage children have the constitutional right to have an abortion or to be treated for sexually transmitted diseases without their parents’ knowledge or even their permission. The Federal courts have consistently ordered the removal of Christian religious symbols from the public venue.

It didn’t take the liberal news media very long to start bashing Pope John Paul II after his death, and it only took a few short hours after the election of Josef Cardinal Retzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, before they started to bash him, calling him a Nazi and the enforcer.

Much like the Evil One, the Liberal leftist media is very adept a taking a grain of truth and twisting it just enough so that the average reader can no longer tell the truth from a lie. The truth concerning Pope Benedict XVI is that yes, he joined the Hitler Youth Corp at the age of fourteen, but it was not by choice, it was mandatory, at sixteen years of age, he joined the German army, but he deserted shortly there after and spent the remainder of the war as an American prisoner of war. As to his being the “Enforcer”, his position during the Papacy of John Paul II, was to act as the defender of the teachings and traditions of the Church. If one cannot understand, let me explain that if the Church will not or cannot stand for the TRUTH and MORAL teachings along with the TRADITIONS handed down, then the Church stands for NOTHING and will cease to be the Church.

Those of the Liberal left in the House and Senate, are attempting to deny that there is any anti-Christian, anti-Catholic bias or bashing going on. They are accusing the conservative members of Congress and conservatives in the news media of trying to foment religious hatred, but the truth be known, the Liberal anti-God, anti-religious, (knowingly and unknowingly) 'anti-christian' secularist humanists know only too well that in order to bring about a persecution of Christians in America, you must first bring about a hatred and suspicion of anything Christian or Catholic (be it Roman or Orthodox).

It is coming, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, the day when euthanasia of the physically and mentally handicapped will become the law of the land, when the health insurance companies and the government will have the final and ultimate say as to who lives and who dies. Not you, not your relatives and not even your doctor will have anything to say in this matter, just take a look at Holland.

We are fast approaching the day when same-sex marriages become the law of the land, and priests, ministers, preachers and rabbis will face prosecution if they continue to speak out against it.

Canada already has laws prohibiting members of the clergy from speaking out against homosexuality and same-sex marriages. They can be charged with “hate speech”. How much longer do you think it will be before the Federal Judges pass a law that will forbid members of the clergy from appearing in public wearing their clerical collars or carrying Bibles?

In some states we are advised "Ohio" is one of them along with "Michigan" - a priest who speaks out from the pulpit against abortion can be arrested and the property of the church taken. How true this is, I personally don't know, but this is what has been said of recent.

This is already the law in Mexico. We are being systematically stripped of everything having to do with religion, especially if it is Christian or Catholic (Orthodox or Roman) which is the roots of Christianity. In the newspapers and on so-called comedy shows on TV, it is “open season” on Christians and Catholics. Be aware! This is not happening just here in America, it is wide spread all over Western Europe, as the Leftist Liberals, world-wide, under the control of the Evil One, prepare us for the One World Government and the ushering in of the False Prophet to head the One World Religion.

It is coming, but we do have Hope. Place all of your hope and trust in Jesus Christ. Stay TRUE to his teachings in Holy Scripture, and remain TRUE to the faith, morals and traditions that have been handed down to us through Jesus Christ and his Apostles, along with the early Church Fathers. If you remain faithful to Christ Jesus and his WORD, he will remain faithful to you, and he will grant you the strength and courage, through the Holy Spirit, to face the trials and tribulations which are to fall upon America and the world. Remain true to the Only-begotten Son of God, who was born, suffered and died upon the Cross for our Salvation. Remain true to HIM who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to sit at the RIGHT HAND of God the Father to JUDGE the living and the dead, that you may hear those sweet words: “WELL DONE MY TRUE AND FAITHFUL SERVANT”.

Yes, we are fast approaching the tribulation period, the signs are all around, so do not ask; “For whom does the bell toll?” because; “It tolls for you and me!”

(N.B.: The Very Rev. Father Abbot Gregori is the abbot in New York State for the Thaddean Fathers which is the Holy Order of St. Jude Thaddeus under the AOC/NAOC)

Look on our website for information relating to articles authored or provided by Father Seraphim Rose and you will learn more about the signs of the times and the second coming.

There are many so-called non-profit organizations that are "religious" in scope but far from being true to the Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, abusing and misusing such for their own personal aim and whim. Many of these organizations have invited much of the trouble we are seeing in these times because they have actually broken from the roots of Christianity and involved their people (sheep) in the machinations of man's politics.

If Servants of God and the people were doing what they were ordained to do, being true to the Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, they would indeed motivate the people who themselves would do what is right in bringing this country and others back from the precipice... bringing the country back to the point whereby we would be a nation under God.

Father Seraphim Rose, St. John Maximovitch and a history of saints have all proclaimed that these times would come and they are upon us now. We are entered into the very thing that prophetically point to a One World Church and a One World Government, the Anti-Christ!

Those who are anti-catholic (be it Orthodox or Roman)... bashing, so-to-speak, Catholicism as a whole, are themselves of the entertainment mentality who suffer from many ills brought upon them and by which we too now must suffer for turning away from our bounden duties as clergy who are servants of the Most High as the alter ego of Jesus Christ and the people.

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