“And behold, a leper came and worshipped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing,

You can make me clean.” Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying,

“I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”

This event happened after Jesus finished His Sermon on the Mount of Beatitudes, where He presented simple life principles leading to eternal life. To lead us to the essence, Jesus completes here what Moses had not expressed explicitly in the Law of God. Referring to the commandment “You shall not kill!”, Jesus points out the root and says that we cannot even nourish hatred in our heart. Referring to the commandment “You shall not commit adultery!”, Jesus warns that even a lustful look is a manifestation of adultery. Concerning forgiveness, He emphasizes: “God will not forgive you if you do not forgive your neighbour” etc. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks about an extremely important principle, which He explains in the parable of two builders. One of them built a house quickly but without foundations. The other built the foundation on the rock. When a storm came, it turned out that only a house built on the rock of Christ’s teaching shall stand. However, to build on the rock it is not enough to be theologically educated, even if this theology is truly Catholic. An academic Christian will not stand; one must be a practising Christian who not only hears the word of God (not modern heresies) but also puts it into practice.

16 September 2016

Government representatives of the Visegrad Four

Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

The EU in its beginnings emerged as the European Economic Community (EEC), based on the principle of economic cooperation. But soon it was transformed into a community of a politico-ideological nature which without a single shot deprived 27 states of independence, autonomy and freedom. These States are no longer free to determine their internal and foreign policy but under the threat of sanctions must follow the ideological line dictated by the European Commission. The Lisbon Treaty was and is a fraud and a crime against citizens of 27 states. During the negotiations about the Lisbon Treaty, the Parliaments of the individual States were presented an unreadable several hundred page document which referred to another thousand pages. Members of Parliaments did not even know what they signed and what the claims were arising from the Treaty in relation to their citizens. Today, however, after several years of the EU’s existence under the Lisbon Treaty, we see the fruit thereof.

The EU has been transformed into a totalitarian monster which assumes the right to dictate the political, economic, ideological and even religious direction of individual EU states. EU leadership bullies and discriminates against individual states in terms of their legal, cultural, constitutional and religious tradition.

Das Byzantinisch katholische Patriarchat ermutigt Christen, sich in einem unaufhörlichen Gebet an Gott zu wenden. Er wird euch Weisheit und Mut geben, um gegen die dämonischen Mächte der Finsternis zu kämpfen. Er wird eure Nation durch euren Glauben retten. Setzt daher eine Gebetswache ein! Jeder soll ein ganzes Jahr lang täglich das Gebet in Zeit der heiligen Stunde von 20 bis 21 Uhr übernehmen. 23 Menschen werden dann die restlichen 23 Stunden des Tages besetzen und so wird eine Gebetswache, die eine Woche lang beten soll. Danach beten drei Wochen lang drei andere Gebetswachen, ebenfalls jeweils eine Woche lang. Dieser Rhythmus wiederholt sich das ganze Jahr hindurch. Die Wachwechsel findet am Sonntagabend um 21 Uhr statt.

Stellt eine Liste mit 23 Personen für die jeweiligen 23 Stunden der Gebetswachen während des Tages auf und beginnt am Sonntagabend mit dem Gebet des Glaubens. Nach dem Ende der ersten Woche macht man eine Pause für drei Wochen und in der vierten Woche fängt man wieder an. Man tut dies das ganze Jahr über. Gott verspricht euch die Errettung eurer Nation.

Question: What does my old self see? It does not see Christ in myself or in my neighbour or brother. It does not see and does not want to see my mistakes because the old self hates the truth and humiliation. Therefore it is necessary to practise humiliation and it need not even be artificial, I just need to stop and admit the truth. And it hurts. Besides, the old self refuses to admit that the gifts are from the Lord but adopts them as its own and seeks its own glory rather than the glory of God. So it is a theft. It is unwillingness to admit the reality, the truth.

What does the old self see in my neighbour? It sees someone else’s gifts from the perspective of envy, jealousy and a kind of competitiveness, and it does not even want to admit that my neighbour does have these gifts. It puts the speck in my brother’s eye under the microscope.

The first step in evangelization is to receive Jesus as one’s Saviour and Lord, to receive the Mother of God and the Holy Spirit, and to renounce heresies and the occult. But then there is the second stage. The second stage of mission, which is vital, is to build a true Church – the true Body of Christ – rather than a mere institution. The Church is the true Body of Christ, and the necessary condition is unity. The present-day Church, unfortunately, is like a rotten stinking corpse for the time being; it is not the light to the world but darkness. If we have sorrow and grief in our hearts over the Church, God will show us the key to the deepest mission.

+ Elijah
Patriarch of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them,

I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:

and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house;

and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”

In the preceding verses, Jesus points out the essence – doing the will of God: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” If we seek first the will of God in our life and if we also try to do it, it is true about us that we are like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Sooner or later the winds blow, the rain descends and the floods come, but if our house is founded on the rock, it will not fall. The problem why we try to build a house on the sand many times is that we easily believe in what seems good to us, evokes our interest, offers advantage and makes the impression that right this attractive option is the ideal solution in our decision-making. Once we cling to this vision and try to achieve our dream, we are no longer willing to seek the will of God because we avoid the thought that we should abandon our house on the sand. It seems so hard, disadvantageous and often even repulsive to us to start building on the rock, and so under the pressure of the false good we throw away the true good, or we make ourselves believe that this false good is the will of God.

Our mission is to seek Jesus together, to carry our own cross and, as the Apostle Paul says: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” If we bear one another’s burdens, people will feel divine love which is founded on a living faith, self-denial, carrying one’s cross and the following of Christ. We must allow Christ to reign in our life, that it may be true: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” We must let Him reign so that we ourselves may be saved and so that we can make every effort to save as many souls as possible for eternal life after the example of the saint apostles. We cannot do it by our might but Jesus wants to do it through every one of us – through you, through your brother, through brotherly love. The whole reform, in fact, consists not only in evangelization but also in the building of a living Church. And this should take a concrete form in building fellowship.

It is programmed in the nature of each of us that it is natural for us to do good things, but at the same time there is a kind of spiritual poison in our nature, a specific form of pride, blindness and negative manners which practically destroy that which is positive in us. And this is the same in all people, only the tint is slightly different in each. Behind certain natural gifts there is the poison of sin which we have inherited from Adam. It only takes different forms. It is the old self in disguise which has only one aim: It refuses to repent and to call the poison in us, that which is negative, by its proper name, and if anyone touches it, the fat is in the fire. The old self has a wonderful inbuilt defence mechanism.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,

but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.

Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”

By these words the Lord Jesus teaches and warns us that in order to persevere on the narrow way leading to eternal life, we should first beware of false teachings, heresies and those who preach them (heretics and apostates). So this is the most essential thing – to keep the true faith and a true inner relationship with Christ. Therefore, the Apostle Paul says that if an apostle, or even an angel from heaven, should preach a different (i.e. false) gospel, let him be accursed (cf. Gal 1:8-9).

We know the Word of God and we know the Tradition of the Church. We have God-given conscience. This all gives us the power and the art of discerning the teaching of Christ from the false teaching of the current apostate hierarchy and theologians. The Lord Jesus established forever that he who is of the Truth and of God hears His voice and will not follow a stranger. And he who is not of God does not hear His voice (cf. Jn 7:17; Jn 8:47; Jn 18:37).

It is said: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” And then Jesus says that if two agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them. This really is the key not only to building a living Church as the basic cell but also to true unity where Jesus is in the midst and where it is necessary for both of the believers to become powerless, i.e. to deny themselves and take up their cross, and then Jesus can show His power. If we do not obey the principle of self-denial and if we refuse to carry our cross, Jesus is paralyzed.

In the reflection on Jesus encountering the Emmaus disciples, we read: “Grant to me, O Lord, that I may see You both in me and my brother who is praying with me.” We see Christ neither in us nor in our brother. Jesus wants us to look with the eyes of faith.

We must take up our daily cross. This cross is in the first place our own nature and character. If someone tells us his attitude towards us, it hurts us. The problem with many beginners is that although they have received Christ, their nature, the old self, is so strong that it cannot stand criticism and use it as an incentive for true repentance. They fail to use this inner pain to look at Christ scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified or to unite their pain to His pain. The old self, on the contrary, either turns this painful wound into hatred towards the brother – this works automatically without any effort – or indulges in self-pity, which also is a false path. We often not only nourish our wounded feelings for years, but we masterfully reopen or even deepen the wound. So we really have reason to know ourselves more and more deeply and motivation to fight against the spiritual poison in us.

On the one hand, there is a need for evangelization, but on the other hand, there is a need to pray to the Lord for evangelizations to be organized in a certain rhythm, because although they bring zeal and dedication, and one can say a spiritual harvest in their climax, they are just like the exodus from Egypt. Then follows the Red Sea and the desert, i.e. a series of trials, which are also symbolized by snakes that bit the Israelites when they grumbled, in which period God purified their hearts. And then the people of God came to the land of Canaan, but we see that they very quickly turned away to pagan practices again, as described in the Book of Judges, and actually in the entire history of Israel. The tendency to go back to the old way of life – paganism and the cult of the old self connected with it – continues. The climax comes with the coming of Christ, His death and glorious Resurrection and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the Apostolic period, we see the zeal of an evangelist and missionary particularly in the life of St Paul. After that, all of the Apostles died martyrs and a period of a bloody persecution of Christians followed.