SPEAKER 02 : 0:05

One day you stole me, nuncia vit Maria,

SPEAKER 01 : 0:12

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 : 0:50

Praise be the most holy name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen. We have come near the end of our journey together in this holy and beautiful season of Lent. Earlier today, I allowed myself to finish with a good conclusion for about 33 minutes, and I felt guilty. I felt really bad. So I want to repent. I want to make sure I don’t do the same thing now. But you know, The retreat has been nice. It’s been nice to me. It’s been nice to have met the community. And we know that the beauty of our life together is this, that regardless of where life throws us or throws on us or against us, know that I love you because Jesus loves me. know that I expect that you love me. And if you do not understand me, or we do not understand each other, if you are from different race, from different color, from different civilization, from different backgrounds altogether, realize that what is common in us is that we all have been created in the image and likeness of God. And this is something so beautiful. What do we do about it? We decided that in the season of Lent, we will speak about faith, hope, love, joy, and peace through the five wounds of Christ and the power of his holy cross, according to the fathers of the church. Now faith, I’m not sure if we can still today speak, is your faith in Jesus Christ? We will see. Hope. Does humanity really hope in God or it hopes more in income, health insurance, weapons, strong powers? What is it that we hope in? What is it that we hope for? Who is our hope? Or what is our hope? We will see. And coming to talk about love, you know, one of the best encyclicals I’ve ever read in my life was Pope Benedict XVI. The very first encyclical he wrote in 2005 was Deus Caritas Est, God is Love. And in this love, he speaks about the three categories or the three levels of love, speaking about eros, adelphos, and agape. Egos in Greek meaning the physical love, the touchy love, the love between husband and wife, the sensual love, you know, the love that is somehow that satisfies the pleasure, satisfies the flesh. Egos. And then in the Adelphos, it’s the love of the brothers and sisters, the love in a community, the love in a human family. between the congregation, citizens to their nation, brotherly love, soldiers love almost as well. Patriotic love could be that Adelphos, Phileos as well. You know, like Philadelphia, the love of our brothers, Philadelphia. And the third type of love Jesus or Pope Benedict speaks about is the agape or the caritas. And that agape means if you love somebody, are you willing to die for them? So we’ll see. Do we as Christians today in the world laugh to the point that we are willing to die for somebody? To die for God? So there is a beauty and efficacy in the wounds of Christ crucified and risen that actually proves that faith, hope, love, joy, and peace are actually the truth of Jesus Christ embodied in one mystery, the mystery of his crucifixion, passion, death, and resurrection. How could the cross be beautiful? How could the crucifixion as an event be beautiful? How could all these events, which with now we’re going to enter into Holy Week, starting with Sunday of Palm Sunday, Jesus Christ is proclaimed as King, yet he’s riding on a donkey’s colt. He’s coming in and the people are laying down all their robes. You know, this is why in the East we wear those robes still from the time of the apostles. They were taking off their cloaks and they were laying them down on the streets. It’s like they’re doing the red carpet for him, but there is no red carpet. It was a people’s wear. that Jesus walked on. It’s beautiful, but it’s humiliating at the same time. And of course, there was no soldiers with their souls open on the path to Jesus to walk to Jerusalem. There was the babes and the children of Jerusalem, as the psalm tells us, with the palms of olives and palm branches, with branches of olive and palm branches. They were welcoming him. But the key is in the proclamation. Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. What does the word Hosanna mean? Does anybody know? Hushana in Aramaic means literally, it’s a cry for help. Mayday, mayday. You know that word, mayday? Literally, Hosanna means May Day. So I wonder sometimes, our brothers and sisters in the West, I go like, okay, we know the language of Christ we spoke, but do they know what they’re saying when they say, Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the highest. You’re saying May Day from heaven. You’re asking the help of heaven, literally. You’re saying, oh, Savior, save us. Oh, Savior, save us. That’s what the word Hosanna means. So now you have a responsibility. Every time you say Hosanna in the highest, holy, holy, holy God, You have to remember, you are asking for his help. And then people go to sleep. People go back to their life. And the Lord knocks at the door. You called for my help. What can I do for you? I didn’t call for help. You said, Hosanna. So the babes and the children were telling Jesus, save us. Brothers and sisters, according to the fathers of the church and in a spiritual tradition, which nurtures us from the times in the apostolic times, the five wounds of Christ and the power of his Holy Cross are actually so beautiful. A drama became a comedy. A drama became a heroic act that gave us all the beauty of our life. Why? Because the five wounds of Christ and the power of His Holy Cross became the source of the divine grace. Earlier today, I said, do you know what the divine grace is? Well, it’s very easy. Do you realize that you and me had no way to go back to heaven? There was no healing from sickness. There was no remedy from death. There was no waking up from the tomb. Whatever happened in humanity, people died. Not all the Jewish people believed in the resurrection. You know that, right? Only a few of them. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. According to the time of the biblical age, basically, there was this big fight between, in the Jewish tradition, between two theological schools. Is there really a kingdom of heaven or the Messiah coming on earth is the actual king that is going to be incorporated here? And when we sleep, that’s it, we die. As a matter of fact, on Saturday now, this coming Saturday, we in our Maronite Rite, we celebrate the resurrection. What resurrection? Can you tell me? One week before Jesus rose. Who did he raise from the dead? Anybody remembers? Lazarus. We have a special service for the resurrection of Lazarus, because it is such an anticipation. And there is a beautiful thing about the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus woke Lazarus from the dead after how many days? Four days, not three days. Do you know that in a Jewish tradition, the death is proclaimed after four days, not immediately at the death of a person, spiritually speaking, theologically speaking. Because the minute a person dies, actually their soul is like a mirror, like the aura. The soul lays around the body and it tries to come back to the body. The soul suffers for three full days. It wanders in a tomb and it doesn’t know where to go. It’s the scariest description of a death of a human being in our Jewish tradition that on the fourth day, finally the soul gives up and it withers. It goes. It goes to the Shayol, another word. Shayol in Aramaic, a place of awakening, but filled with darkness. No eyes, no ears. It doesn’t know anything. It’s in complete darkness. But also we know that Jesus gave an example to tell the people about the resurrection of the dead in an awaiting place when he gave us the example of the rich man and Lazarus, the poor, who died in front of the house of the rich man. telling us about the example that people who died and they had good deeds in their life, they wait in the bosom of Abraham. People who died and they had evil acts, they die and they are in a place of fire and thirst. You remember that dialogue between the rich man who died and Abraham on the other side of the valley. Father Abraham, send Lazarus some water. I’m burning from the flame here. Son, there is nothing I can do. There is a big valley between us. We cannot cross. Not from us to you, not from you to us. This is how life was without divine grace. Sorry, my dear pastor, I’m taking time a little bit to explain, but to tell you how important is the divine grace is for you and me that comes from the five wounds of Jesus Christ and from his holy cross. Before the divine grace, the Jewish law, the Mosaic law, the Torah, aimed to kill sin, destroy the sinner, take them out of the community. They have no place with us. Any sinner in a Jewish tradition was a liability and a national threat on the covenant between God and his people. That’s literal, by the way. I’m not joking about it. Prostitution. They have to be stoned outside of the city. Impure blood. The woman with the hemorrhage, for instance, she came secretly to Jesus. Had the people found out with her impure blood she was sleeping on the streets of the holy city, they would have stoned her to death. The people who are paralyzed, how many years the blind man was next to the fountain in the temple of Jerusalem, Jesus comes to him and heals him. How many years was that person who was paralyzed and Jesus comes to him, hey, How come you’re not healed yet? He said, how am I going to be healed? Nobody takes care of me. Nobody has the guts to come as an angel comes down to shake, hover over the face of the water. And we say in Hebrew, and the spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the water. He said, nobody is there to pick me up, to throw me in that pool so I can be healed. He said, do you believe in a son of man? He said, yes, Lord. He said, then walk, pick up your mat and walk. Jesus was the walking divine grace in his life. But then at the end of his life in 33 years, his passion on the cross, his death and resurrection perpetuated that divine grace. which reopened the door of the law to the world of the Holy Spirit. It’s no longer condemnation. We sinners today, we are no longer liability. We have become, wherever sin flows, grace abounds, says Saint Paul. Jesus, by the power of his holy passion, by the power of his holy cross, has been able to turn the curse from the tombs, as I said earlier today. What happened on the day of Friday when Jesus was dying on the cross at the 3 p.m.? The earth shook. The sun stopped giving its light. And the veil of the temple broke from top to bottom. Tombs burst open, tells us the gospel. And many saints walked from their tombs. For the first time in the Bible, we see a fact, an event, not a prophecy like the dream, I believe, in one of the prophets, Ezekiel, where God told him, go gather these bones. And he saw that God put him flesh again on these bones. It’s the event. People walked from the tombs and they went to the holy city. That’s a doing which never since the creation ever happened. Because the sin of Adam and Eve blocked the life that comes to us from God. And that is the absence of divine grace. So the passion of Christ transforms now our human heart, producing the fruits of faith, hope, love, joy, and peace. And this is something so beautiful. So let us look at faith, for instance, and learn this in your own way. There is a chaplet you can pray for the five wounds of Christ. For instance, the wound of the right hand of Jesus Christ is actually associated with the gift of intellect. It reflects the intellect because most people are right-handed and we use our right hand to pursue knowledge. And so the faith represented by right hand is represented by the wound of the right hand of Jesus Christ, which is associated with the intellect. It overcomes the darkness of doubt and ignorance. It grounds the faithful, not with the human intellect, but with divine intelligence. What is the purpose of the divine intelligence? Through the divine grace to give us back our salvation. Two, let’s look at the right foot of Jesus Christ. When you go to sprint, to run, people tend to put the right foot before and the left foot behind. The right foot is always a sign of getting ready to walk, to sprint, of course. And with that, hope is represented by the wound of the right foot of Jesus Christ, because it represents strength. and power it’s the encouraging of the soul in its pilgrimage walk do not stop as Saint Paul says I have to win this race so we receive the reward of eternal life and with that the right foot of Jesus Christ that wound is representative of our perseverance in this pilgrimage providing us with hope to persevere in virtue Let’s look at love, faith, hope, love. Which wound in Jesus’ five wounds do you think represents love? His heart. When a soldier pierced him and blood and water flowed from his heart to irrigate the whole world. The divine grace showed the divine charity of God. His heart was open and the light from the heart of Jesus Christ comes in the form of divine mercy. The red light that comes from his heart takes our sins. We keep bleeding Jesus Christ to death and to resurrection. That’s the bottom line of what we celebrate as Christians. But not anymore in the bleeding of the blood, but it’s the divine mystery of our salvation that comes in the sacrament of the Holy Mass, of the Holy Eucharist, and the gift of divine mercy, where from that, Love, there is the wound of the heart of Jesus Christ. His heart becomes the fountain of all graces and the source of divine charity. And it transforms even the hardened hearts into one that loves God. What is the fourth wound and the fifth wound is what’s left on the left, and I’m left-handed. The left hand wound of Jesus and the left foot wound of Jesus, they represent my brothers and sisters. They symbolize the atonement, which is the most important thing Jesus did on the cross. You know, we had debts on us and it was unpayable. That’s why we deserved and we merited death. And Jesus, represented by the wound of his left hand and his left foot, he actually did atone before his divine father in heaven for our sake. He atoned our sinful rebellion. He atoned our sin of pride. He atoned our sin of disorder and confusion. And in such a way, when we pray for the five wounds of Jesus Christ, we regain our inner peace and our joy. That is why the title of our retreat was Faith, Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace Through the Five Wounds of Jesus Christ and the Power of His Holy Cross. We were not joking. It’s actually the intelligence of God revealed in this mystery. The power of the Holy Cross, what does it give us? And I’ll run through it very quickly. One, with Jesus Christ, we have gained victory over sin. The cross represents the destruction of all evil. One of my favorite, favorite hymns during the vigil night of Easter, when we go at midnight mass as Easter, from the Byzantine tradition, we go to the tomb and we chant as we walk into the church.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:54

Christos anesti eknik romsana foreign

SPEAKER 03 : 19:13

Christ is risen from the dead. And he trampled death by death. And he went and he gave it to the devil down there. And he freed from the chain all the people who were held captives. And Jesus instead held captivity captive and killed death by dying on the cross. He has united your Lord. You have united your divinity with our humanity. Our humanity with your divinity. your life with our mortality and our mortality with your life. You have given us what is yours. which is the life and salvation. And you took upon yourself what is ours, which is our sin and our debt for the life and salvation for our souls. And in such a way, Jesus reconciled us as a humanity to his divine father. And he became the mediator of all graces and we received healing. In conclusion, I want to go to this, the beauty of the passion of Jesus Christ. life and death are both reality of our life we live and we die but the power of the cross the passion of jesus christ and the resurrection of jesus christ are inseparable mystery it’s an event it’s an act that god made in order to save us And the anchor of your faith in Jesus Christ lies in this mystery of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. St. Paul tells us in the first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 14, If Christ has not risen, vain then is our preaching, and vain too is your faith. Make sure you anchor your faith on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s the first conclusion. Do not let anybody separate you from the faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now respecting this mystery, St. Thomas Aquinas notes, there is nothing strange that the man should die, but the strangest thing that we Christians celebrate, God died. Can you believe? Do you recall that during Holy Week, you celebrate the death of Jesus Christ, who is the second person in Trinity? God dies for us. That’s strange. That’s why other religions cannot accept that. That’s why when St. Paul went to the Arapagos, I believe in Athena, he said, hey guys, I’m here to speak to you about the new God. And they go, okay, tell us a little bit. He said, well, guess what? God died on the cross. He said, listen, we’re busy. We’ll hear you next time. They couldn’t accept that God would die for our salvation. Such an event could only happen by God himself, not by human hands. And that’s why in our celebration during the vigil of Easter and the day of Easter, we as Maronites, we go to the tomb and we celebrate the empty tomb. It’s the most important liturgical event of our entire liturgical year. As we go to the tomb to say, he is not there. He is risen. Christ is risen. He is truly risen. And this becomes the greeting that the Christians celebrate throughout the entire Middle East. Instead of saying good morning and good evening and good afternoon and hi, how are you? We say Christ is risen. Christ is truly risen. And he’s not in a tomb. so the empty tomb is very important because the resurrection is the solid proof that this event could not be manipulated by any human being because no human being could rise from the death and god cannot die and in the death and resurrection of jesus christ this opposition is reconciled god died and man became alive in the passion death and resurrection of jesus christ The third conclusion. In this circular thing, we want to offer a meditation on the beauty and the effectiveness of the passion of Jesus Christ, Him being crucified and rising from the death. So, the five wounds of Christ heal us from our five wounds caused by the original sin. And that’s my conclusion. But do you want to know what are the five wounds caused by original sin? And I promise I stop after that. One, original sin is the cause for the death of the soul. That’s the first, unfortunately, wound caused by the original sin. The evil one, Lucifer, went straight to the heart. He gave us a blow that killed us. So the first consequence of the original sin is the death of the soul. But then Adam and Eve had a son, had two sons, three sons later on, Cain and Abel. Cain killed his brother Abel and his blood was spread on earth. And because he carries in him the poison of death, all the dirt of the earth became poisoned. And every human being dies literally, is born with the original sin literally, and dies with the original sin. And the dust from which we were made by God became the curse for us. We are born from dust that has been cursed. We go back to the dust that has been cursed. And if it wasn’t for the five wounds of Christ, his holy passion, and the power of his holy cross, and that is the source of the divine grace, we would have never been able to rise again, soul and body. so even though we die in our body we rise again and that’s a fruit of the divine grace and that’s a total divine charity that comes to us from the powerful and injured heart of jesus the second consequence of original sin the darkness of the intellect how many of you suffer from foggy brain from time to time anything gives us foggy brain anything It’s easy. We suffer from it probably every hour, every other hour. That’s a consequence of the original sin, by the way. Because the pressure of the evil tries to confuse our brain, causes oppression over our bodies, so we cannot think straight anymore. We lose our harmony. The third consequence of the original sin is malice. And you know what malice is? Malice is the mother of all evil inclinations. Inclinations to hate, inclinations to hate each other, inclinations to badmouth one another, inclinations to gossip about one another, inclinations to be mean to one another, inclinations to hypocrisy, which is the worst sin ever. All these inclinations came as a consequence from the malice, which is a consequence to the original sin. Why? Because it is one of the vices of the evil one, Lucifer. He was malicious when he went to our mother Eve and said, is it true that God told you not to eat of any of the fruits of all these trees? Don’t believe God. Malice, insiduity, insidious. I do not know the word in English. What do you say? Insidious, I believe, right? You say like the devil was deceptive and murderer. Now the fourth consequence of the original sin. is sensuality instead of soaring in the world of the spirit we fall into the world of materialism this is for me and that’s for me you know there is this beautiful um when we talk about the psychology of the children you give a child two candies and you tell the child And there is a friend next to that child. You tell him, who are those two candies for? And they say, one for me and one for Peter. That’s his own name. That’s not his friend’s name. So the child always tends to keep both candies for herself or for himself, not to share them with the friend. And that selfishness, that sensuality is the mother of the sins of the flesh, Satan of the flesh, the passions, the pleasures, the desires, anything that is the sin of materialism and of the flesh. Because it comes from the bad appetite of Adam and Eve. They left all of life to eat that one fruit. This is how bad their appetite was. They left all of the garden, which was plenty of fruits. All they can eat to eat that one fruit. It’s the concupiscent appetite, which is bad appetite, not a good appetite. It’s a disorder of a desire, not an order of a desire. And the fifth and the last one, the consequence of the original sin is what we are experiencing mostly now. Irritability and aggression. Human beings today are very irritable. And then somehow you talk to husband and wife, children, pastor, congregation, people, look in the politics for God’s sake. Look just the world today is filled with aggression. Everybody is irritable and somehow. anxiety. So my brothers and sisters, original sin brought death, caused darkness, brought malice, caused irascibility, and caused sensuality. And now we come to celebrate the glorious wounds of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, in his wounds, he remained after his resurrection with his five wounds as before his resurrection. Why? Because the wounds of Christ after his resurrection proclaimed the glory of his victory over death and evil. Why? Because the five wounds of Jesus Christ retained on his body after his resurrection is a confirmation to his disciples and to us through the eyes of faith. You have seen me and you have come to believe. Blessed are those who do not see, yet they have come to believe. And why? Because Jesus retained through his wounds of his glorious body that he might consequently present to his father our plea. His wounds before God, his heavenly father says, listen, I died for these children as bad as they could be, as sinful as they could be. Forgive them, father. He becomes the mediator and the intercessor for us. So Jesus kept his wounds on him to intercede for us before the throne of the mighty. And finally, Jesus kept his wound. So to show us the magnitude of his love and mercy. But that one I will conclude with. To tease his enemies at the end of the age. Because in the ends of the age, he’s gonna come in the last judgment, where everybody’s gathered before him. And as they tell us in the Bible, behold the man whom you crucified, see the wounds which you inflicted, recognize the side which you pierced, since it was by you and for you that it was opened. Yet you refused to enter to it. Depart from me, you evildoers, to the fire. that is prepared for the devil and his angels. And isn’t that beautiful? That the final vengeance comes to us from the five wounds of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And for us who believed in him, he will come in clouds to take us all to his heavenly Father’s house where we will enter into the fullness of glory to celebrate with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit the banquet with the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. And there we will be living the life of eternal joy, eternal peace, with no death, as Jesus conquered every enemy, including death, and we become divine. looking at the face of God and sharing in His divinity and living with the Son and the Holy Spirit forever and ever with Mary and the saints. Amen.

SPEAKER 01 : 31:51

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.