Join Father Andre as he delves deep into the historical and current persecution faced by Christians worldwide. Highlighting vivid accounts from regions like Syria and Nigeria, he sheds light on the silent suffering often overlooked by mainstream narratives. Accompanied by poignant reflections on the meaning of Lent, Father Andre urges listeners to become active participants in promoting love and understanding, offering tangible ways to support the Mission of Hope and Mercy.
At age 10, Father Andre escaped Christian massacres by living in caves in Mount Lebanon with his family. Today, Father Andre works tirelessly to encourage American leaders to keep God in the public square, defending religious freedom at home and abroad, so that all might live in peace for the glory of God. Founder and president of the Mission of Hope and Mercy, Father Andre has learned the secret to safety, joy, and peace, love God and one another. Now, let us spend 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day, retuning ourselves to the truth of love in the hands of God.
SPEAKER 03 :
Praise be the most holy name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, now and forever and ever. Amen. Good Holy Sunday morning, my dearly beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. Give now and be the hands and feet of Christ this Lent. As we enter the sacred season of Lent, we are reminded of Christ’s 40 days in the desert, his suffering, sacrifice, and ultimate victory over darkness. Lent is a time of prayer and fasting. It is a season where we turn our hearts towards God and those most in need. Right now, as you’ve been hearing on the news, thousands of people in Africa, in Congo, in Nigeria, in Syria, and unfortunately by extension to the hardship that is happening in the region, it ends up creating a major stress also in Lebanon, where we have thousands of people being killed, unfortunately. As you have heard the news, in Syria alone, in the last two and a half days, Over 1,000 people in one night were massacred, predominantly Alawite minority, many Christians amongst them. And the news also this time on this Sunday is that even more Christians have been killed and massacred. In Lebanon, this creates major stress on thousands of Christian families and good people and refugees who are living in their own desert. They are hungry, they are afraid, they are displaced and in desperate need of hope. The crisis in the Middle East, the crisis in Congo, the crisis in Africa, all of them are different facets of the same sickness, the hate for the Lord Jesus Christ and his followers. I do not know how to make us all understand even more or in a clearer way that Christianity is actually the most persecuted religion or faith or revelation or spirituality or a group, whatever you want to call Christianity in the world. You know, in 2015, when I was preparing the studies for the United States upon returning from Rome to start advocacy about how to save and how to stop the persecution against Christians in the world, at that time, there was in the world around 255 million Christian people being persecuted because they believe in Jesus Christ. At that time, the numbers of martyrs, honestly, to my surprise, which was a shocking information, in the last 2,000, I would say about 2,000 years, Christianity’s martyrs, they come to a number over 88 million people who were killed for reasons related to their faith. Every year I was shocked to see that around 4,000 Christians will be killed for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ in the world. Every year, thousands of churches got burned and they got demolished. And then with all of this, with all of this persecution, we see also a deeper, discrete persecution, where Christians in many places, they lack human rights, they lack civil rights, they lack equal rights, equal protection, and they actually like the substance for their livelihood, that they’re not given jobs. You know, recently I was listening to some news and I was reading some news as well over the Internet. You know, in the United States, for instance, now we have the trade, the trade war and the trade advantages and the trade disadvantages. And then there was this report speaking about how the trade war is at play between countries. European Union and United States, between Canada and United States, between other places and United States. And there was this funny report, I’m sorry, I’m saying funny because I did not know how else to interpret it, speaking that the European Union is targeting actually a specific color of states. you know, put in sanctions, put in high tariffs on certain things. It happened by chance or by coincidence or by design, for instance. And that’s what I mean by prosecution in a discreet way. It’ll be a targeted prosecution that on the surface, It looks like a right response, like a justified response. But in depth, it’s actually targeting a specific group of people. So it seems that according to that report that I was reading on the news, that some or most of the European Union sanctions which were placed earlier this week, a few days before today, Sunday, against the United States did not target all the states in the United States. They, in fact, targeted a specific color in the United States, a color in the United States that voted for the current administration. So you can actually think through that, and you can search it yourself, and you will see that what I mean by discrete persecution or what I mean by discrete discrimination is actually a very clever way, astute way, that only devil and evil people could know what they’re doing and who they are targeting. So who does the enemy want to target when they persecute the Christians? Well, they want to target the Christians who have a property. For instance, if you look in Nigeria, the Christians who are being targeted in certain areas, I find it fascinating. One time I was talking to someone who is actually a businessman who supposedly was a big, big, big businessman and his business son is married to somebody here locally, a major, a big family. I do not want to use names, but I think you would know who I’m talking about. It’s a Nigerian-Lebanese family. Of course, Christian, from Lebanon. And I was saying, because of his relationship and connection to a local candidate at the time who was running for presidential election in the United States, I said, by the way, you lived in Africa, in Nigeria? And he said, yes. I said, but don’t you know why you don’t tell the president or the candidate about the persecution of Christians that is happening in Nigeria? And he looked to me and he said, really? We don’t have persecution of Christians in Nigeria. I said, sir, what do you mean you don’t have? You’ve been there for 30 years. Your father-in-law started and established major businesses in Nigeria. And you’re telling me you do not know that in Nigeria, the largest persecution against Christians has been running in that country on an unprecedented level where 9,000 people are killed almost every year because of their faith in Jesus Christ? I think it’s a blessed, you know, you may call it a selective knowledge, right? A selective piece of information that people do not want to look at. What I want to say, and it’s a part of the scandal as well, what facilitates the persecution of Christians sometimes in specific places in the world when we want our own resources and we make a deal with the evil powers in those specific countries. I was really surprised to see that in the past, since 2014 and 2012 and even 2010, deals were made between major powers here in the West with entities in Nigeria, for instance, who ended up being the actual government. who ran every Christian personality out of the government, who actually ran every Christian personality out of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, to the point that today Nigeria has actually a Supreme Court that has not one single Christian representative. It’s almost like the total application of the Sharia law. Why am I reopening these books? I’m reopening these books because today the situation is even worse. Not only in Nigeria, look what spilled over to Congo. Look in Congo over a week and a half ago, 70 Christians were praying in one church. If you saw that video, the way they were beating them up with metal pieces and with machetes. They were cutting their blood like as if they were pounding ground meat. Unfortunately, it’s horrible. And you don’t want to talk too much about the descriptive part of how they enjoyed killing those Christians. But this is almost like an offering sacrifice. It’s horrible. And we cannot, we cannot keep silence when we see this. This is exactly what the scandal is in the United States of America today. Of course, we learned also as a mechanism and as tools in recent years in the United States how a political party would want to draw more attention to itself, draw more votes to itself. It actually put down the other side, the other part, right? They look for everything that is in their closet. They look for every scandal. They look for everything that is bad. And they spend the billions of dollars, billions of dollars to take down their enemies simply by making sure that the public opinion is so negative towards them that they can’t be trusted. And then they will take them down. And they win votes, right? Sometimes it might serve the purpose because they might be saying the truth. But at other times, it might be simply a dossier that is being fabricated that destroys good people, destroys people’s lives. Justice is enough to look at the president’s folder, right? I mean, without talking politics, but if you look really at President Trump’s situation and his life, look at his livelihood, look at his family, look at his name, look how much character assassination… his enemies tried to do against him, whether it was foundation or no foundation, whether really hoax or not hoax. But the money that was spent and the energy that was spent and passing the red lights many times to endanger that man’s life, to endanger even his sons, even his children, his grandchildren, his friends. Not one single friend of that man probably remained safe in the United States. Any entities that was broadcasting policies, not even campaigning for him personally, let’s say, but saying, actually, that man has good policies for us, and these policies might do good for many people, regardless of what party you are in. Everyone was a target. So that’s a scandal. And I’m only saying this as a mere example to tell you, imagine how much larger a bigger scale is. The persecution against Christians has been in the world. I said in the United States in 2015, the world best kept secret was that United States did not speak enough until Donald Trump came in office about the persecuted Christians. And I was happy and I’m honored to be one of the many voices in the United States that brought to the attention of all candidates at the time in 2014 when I started actually even under the previous administration before the first turn of President Trump to the White House, to the State Department, to many levels of responsible and public officers in the United States to let them know there is a big global massacre happening against Christians. And I had highlighted many times the situation in Syria. It hurts me to see how next door to Lebanon, you know, Syria is a place where St. Paul converted to God, right? Damascus. Syria is a place where Naaman, the Syrian, was sent to the prophet into Jerusalem to be bathed seven times in the River Jordan so he will be cleansed from his leprosy. Syria is a place where the oldest Aramaic communities in the world uninterruptedly for over, as culture as civilization gets old. You know, as old as civilization is in the Aramaic world. So if you say the Aramaic civilization is about 10,000 years old, Maaloula, and Sinai, and a few other cities in northern western Syria, also in northern eastern Syria in the Khabur River, where there is over 36 villages of Aramaic people. It’s a population known in the history as the Syriac Kingdom. that was a part of Edessa and Nisibis. That little kingdom survived the Persian Empire, survived the Greek Empire, survived the Roman Empire, survived the Arab Empires. You know, the Arab Empires from Ar-Rashidun to the Umayyad, to the Abbasid, to the second Abbasid, to the third, to the fourth, to the Mamluk, to the Ottoman Empire, to the World War I and World War II, to Napoleon before them, even in the East. It survived all of these. Recently, I was reading a report after the trampling, the ousting of Bashar Assad regime, who stayed him and before him his father probably for 60 years, decades, five or four or five, six decades, probably responsible for the Syrian regime and whatever atrocities, whatever bad things they have done. The other part is that minorities were safe to a certain extent. And after Bashar Assad regime last year was ousted, You know, Christians in Syria were 30% of the Syrian population. So if there was 22 million in population in Syria, what is 30%? I’m not sure how much would that be. About 5 million, about 4 million, 5 million possibly. Well, we had about, until Bashar Assad, we had about two and a half million Christians in Syria left after Al-Qaeda, after ISIS, after the Muslim Brotherhood, after the first Iraq war, the second Iraq war, after all the revolutions that happened. And now in Syria, and you can search it, they tell you there is either between 300,000 to 600,000 Christians left inside Syria. When you have a population of 22 million, why do you want to persecute 300,000? What makes them a big danger for you? It’s religious hate. There is no other motive. It’s the love for peace that these Christians are capable like the grain of wheat. We are in a season of Lent, right? We are in a time where we are living inside this great season of Lent. The scandal is that no matter how, The number of Christians will diminish. The scandal is that the world authorities and the world powers are silent and they want almost to target every Christian to the very last Christian that there could be on planet Earth because they are so afraid. Because all we need is one Christian in this world. And we can win back light. One Christian in the world. We can win back peace. One Christian in the world. And we can make the world flourish again like the image of paradise. In goodness. In health. In science. In progress. In beautiful laws. In beautiful cultures. In art. In revolution of goodness on planet earth. And obviously, there are evil powers or principalities, as St. Paul calls them in his epistles, who are wrestling with us. And why we in the United States do not want to pay attention to the importance of saving the lives of these, the little brothers and sisters of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This has been the scandal. Of course there is a scandal in the hierarchies of organized Christianity, right? I mean, look at the scandal in the Catholic Church. We thought that the scandal was only limited in 2000 at the discovery of the sex abuse scandals. But the biggest scandal is that, as we say in Lebanese, I hope you repeat that word and you learn what it means. You know, the protectors are the thieves, right? Their protectors are the thieves. So the ones today who probably are governing the system and this organized big beautiful tradition of our one holy and apostolic church are actually a den of thieves probably like what Jesus spoke about. And they’re the ones who make sure that the mint is offered on time, that the outside of the chalice is cleansed and is clean and is presented on time, and that the sacrifices and the offerings are being done on time, just what Jesus said. But deep down on their inside, they are very smelly tombs, rotten tombs, what Jesus spoke about them. This category, and somehow today in the United States, is making the news, right? We see how the leadership of, unfortunately, churches is probably involved in the disappearance of over 300,000 children through the migrant movement which was happening on our borders. Listen, I do not wanna talk in depth about those things. I usually reject and I refuse. But the reason why I have to mention them, because the cries of the poor have reached God’s throne in heaven. There will be a response from God. There will be a retribution act from God. Not against the people who they on earth decided to throw under the bus. Not against the people who are sinners and seeking repentance. Because this is the beauty of our Christianity. St. Augustine speaks when he speaks about the original sin. He calls it felici colpa. Felici colpa. I do not know if you know what felici colpa means. It means a happy guilt. a wonderful, a happy, a joyful guilt. Because of that joyful guilt, which is our original sin, which is by consequence is the mother of all other sins that we end up doing as human beings, and that’s why we live and we say we are living in a human condition. St. Augustine says because of that happy mistake, because of that guilt, the original guilt, The Lord had compassion on us. God from heaven opened the door of heaven and he said, I want to save my people. And the entire history, the entire relationship between heaven and earth became a salvific history. That’s a word that we say from French and English, which means a history of salvation. And the best thing we Christians could give to the world is the right and the grace of redemption. The right because Jesus purchased our redemption, not because we merit redemption on our own. Our nature has been corrupt. As I was coming with one of our volunteers on a mission of hope and mercy to the studio today, I told him, remember this word, la potenza della lirica, la potenza della lirica. The potence, the force, the power of lyrics. The power of lyrics. The power of lyrics is something similar to what you see on media. They can create a bunch of lyrics together. They put them in a very powerful way. And they move your emotions so you act in a specific way, believing something that is a lie. to begin with la potenza de la lirica you know they make you believe in stories that they actually did not exist but the truth which needs to be told is suffocated if we speak about the way Christians are being killed in this holy season. For us, Lent, right? I mean, look a few weeks back in the beginning of Lent, there was this criticism happening how somebody like a major cardinal in the United States to encourage people to go to fasting, he used an image. He said, oh, I am a big fan of the fasting that takes place in Ramadan and our neighbor’s religions. And he borrowed that fasting image to speak about the Christian fasting, which actually the fasting that preceded every other fasting outside of our Jewish tradition, of course. And look what happens every year. You know, look at your records. Search during Ramadan every year. What happens in the world against Christians? What a coincidence. More murders, more persecution, more internally displaced people, and more hate against Christ’s followers in the world. Why? What a coincidence. And you come to speak about it, they kill you more. Well, they did kill me, right? They tried to kill me. I do not know if you know how much they tried to do against me personally. And I thank God. But do we have to be smart and keep our silence and not speak? Do we have an obligation to speak without being bigots? By telling them, why are you killing me? I have done so many good things amongst you. I have healed your sick. I have called you my children. I have offered my blood for your sake. I have purchased you. and redeemed you from death and from evil. I even went into the world of death, into Sheol, to save you, so you will be really the living image of my Father in heaven, that even dead, those who believe in me, shall receive eternal life. My dearly beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord, as we continue our conversations every Sunday morning, on Good Sunday Morning with Father Andre, I want to remind you that this land, we can bring hope to the most vulnerable, to the most needy, by supporting the work of the mission of Hope and Mercy. Whether a gift of $50 can provide emergency food and essentials for a family for a month. A gift of $100 supports a medical aid for children and the elderly. A gift of $250 helps sustain our refugee relief efforts and keep families safe. A gift of $500 could support urgent medical care for up to five families. A gift of $1,000 could supply winter clothing and shelter, could support an entire school or do a surgery for people who really need surgeries. Your gift of a prayer could help us succeed in our mission of hope and mercy. Please don’t forget to go online, missionofhopeandmercy.org, missionofhopeandmercy.org. And at this moment and every day during the season of Lent, if you can, please make a good gift so you can empower the goodness of God to trample over evil and the space of light could grow amidst darkness, that even though darkness may not receive it, But we know that our good gift will be like a grain of wheat. It will flourish 30-fold, 60-fold, and 90-fold. And Christianity will survive the ages of darkness and will be the hope for the future of this humanity. I want to tell you thank you, and God bless you on this wonderful Sunday. And now, my friends, we’re going to continue with our show. I was talking to you last Sunday. I said something about the mystery of the betrayer, right, and the one who betrays the trust of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we’ve spoken somehow about the importance of the temple of God and the entrance to the temple of God. How important was it for Jesus Christ to enter into the temple, to enter and take possession of the holy city? we also spoke somehow about how the scandal began actually when in heaven, heaven by itself was actually somehow infiltrated, as I may have called it a few times on this radio show. And then we went into the history and we got to a place where we see how in history the first two brothers, Cain and Abel, one became jealous of the other. God accepted the offerings of one and God let the other sacrifice be burned and he did not accept it. And then the brother was jealous of his brother and he goes and he kills him. But before he kills him, God warns Cain and he tells him, you know, this sin is a demon. And you can control that demon. Otherwise, that sin is spotting you, is sitting at the gate of your door, of your heart. And Cain did not listen. He went and he killed his brother. And the scandal of the original sin became circulating in the blood of the innocent, Abel, which was killed. And his blood circulated in the earth. And because it’s mixed with the original sin, you know, sin became in the blood of humanity and the earth, the entire earth. As we know, since Adam’s time, his father, when God said, curse will be the earth because of your sin, because of you. So with every mortal flesh, with every blood that is spilled on earth, unfortunately, the sin continues to abound and to affect even the cosmos, even the universe. But God gave us redemption even for that. Unless you drink my blood and you eat my flesh, you will not have life in you. And Jesus says, you know, we have this term in Aramaic, This is the bread of life that if we eat, we will never die. And if we drink the blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, we will have in us the seeds of eternal life. But of course, we prepare ourselves again through repentance from our sins, reconciliation, and healing. And solidarity with the persecuted. In recent days, on March 12, there was this declaration from one of the archbishops who stands in a unique way to speak up, basically. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. I’m not sure how many few minutes we have left on these 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day, but it is really important that you look at his last statement. I might want to call the help of my guest in the studio to tell us how in the past few days, how our special Vigano reacted to the violence that is happening against the Christians in Syria. Kev, would you please tell us some of the highlights that were found in the letter, in the declaration of Vigano?
SPEAKER 01 :
in the whole thing. So I highlighted some points here. My first point that I highlighted was in the past few days, violence and mass killings of Christians and Alawites in Syria. And then the next highlighted part was thousands of deaths. And then the next was that they were all under the control of the extremist Islamic movement, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda. And then after that,
SPEAKER 03 :
The regime changed?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yep. The regime changed desired.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, the reasons. I see. Yeah. So the reason for this persecution, according to Viganò, of these minorities by the Syrian government, I see what you mean by that. So basically Viganò is saying, due to the silence, again, here we go, due to the silence, Because NATO, it seems, the European Union, it seems, they desired a regime change inside Syria. And I do not know why they would do this at a time where the administration in the United States was actually changing, but President Trump was not yet sworn in in office. So that’s between probably the ousting of Bashar Assad happened after November, after President Trump won the presidency in the United States this past year, and before he was sworn in. It’s actually unheard of that a regime in an entire country would have changed right at that time. And now the genocide of the Alawites and of the Christians and of other minorities is happening before our eyes. So did they spare anybody, according to Viganò, Kev? Did they spare anybody, according to Viganò? Who were they attacking?
SPEAKER 01 :
It doesn’t seem like it. It seems like elderly people, women and children were the main target.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow. And you know what, guys? And because of their faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, right? this is really what’s said about it. There are people who have been crucified, I believe, right? And we have videos about those things. People who have been driven like dogs. They were told to walk on their four members, basically, on their feet and on their hands, and were treated like dogs. They would lead and then they would be slaughtered. You know, it’s a shame. Of course, it’s a criminal activity. It’s a criminal terrorism that nobody should accept. I want to encourage you one more time, one more time to all of our friends of the Mission of Hope and Mercy who listen to us on this radio show, 33 Minutes. on the Lord’s Day. And both as individuals, as society, as congregations, you know, this should be the topic. I wonder for how long the pastors on their Sunday morning, when they go to give their sermon, they’re going to say, I have a joke to share with you. I have a story to share with you. You know, we’re still living in this formal rhetoric of lyrics. Again, la potenza de la lirica. They come and they give you this beautiful sermon about theology. And meanwhile, in the world, there is a ravening wolf that is killing and that is eating the flesh of our brothers and sisters and drinking their blood. These also are the children of Abraham. These also are the children of Abraham. And it’s a scandal that we don’t make a campaign in every congregation in the United States. in support of our brothers and sisters from africa to the middle east even to latin america to china all over the world any human being who is suffering because of the religious affiliation as long as that religious affiliation does not kill in the name of god but it gives life that is the fruit of our relationship with god that is the straight path this is the true straight path in our relationship with god is that god is a god of life not god of hate not god of a murder because jesus defines well who is satan he is a murderer and a father of lies god cannot be used to kill other people god is one who will protect life So again, I want to thank you so much for being with us on the 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day. And please do not forget to go online, missionofhopeandmercy.org. That is missionofhopeandmercy.org. And support our work and our mission ministry during this season of Great Land. May Almighty God bless us all, protect us from all evil, forgive us our sins, and bring us all to the peace, joy, and victory and salvation in Jesus Christ. Amen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day. To hear previous programs, visit the show page at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Listen to Father Andre every Sunday morning at 7.30 on KLZ as he speaks on the unity of Christians, religious freedom, and the biblical foundation of Judeo-Christian values and traditions. Join him in bringing hope and freedom to people across the globe while also strengthening your own faith, family, and community right here in Colorado. Reawaken the spiritual strength of America. Go to missionofhopeandmercy.org.
