Join Father Andre on a spiritual journey as he reflects on his childhood escape from persecution and his unwavering dedication to promoting religious freedom across the globe. This episode delves into the deep meaning of the Ascension, exploring the contrast between the Mind of Christ and the influences of the world. Through engaging discussions, Father Andre and his guest, Gerard, illuminate the power of prayer and the role of divine guidance in our everyday lives.
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.
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Praise be the most holy name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, now and always and at all times and forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah. My dearly beloved brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we have just come to celebrate, as you all know, this beautiful feast day of the ascension of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, both in body and soul, into heaven. He is the risen Lord. And our Lord as Savior, as risen Lord, is ascended amidst the shout of trumpet. God is risen into, God is ascended into heaven as a matter of fact. And of course, with that, the whole world will rejoice and the whole world is glad. Today on this radio show, we will be praying and we will have a little bit of a conversation. Gerard and myself, and of course, everybody, our listeners, we will meditate continuously upon… we matured with Jesus. We want to speak about the theme of the mind of Christ. and the spirit of the world. And of course, we want to also cover our own role in this. Where are we between the mind of Jesus Christ and our own freedom, our own will, and what is the evil basically doing in this world in the meanwhile? With that, let us get to the actual word, and let us pray today with Psalm 47. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Hallelujah. All you peoples, clap your hands. Shout to God with the joyful cries. For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared. The great King over all the earth, who made the people subject to us, nations under our feet, who chose our heritage for us, the glory of Jacob, whom he loves. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord amid trumpet blasts. Sing praise to God, sing praise, sing praise to our King, sing praise. For God is King over all the earth, sing hymns of praise. God rules over the nations. God sits upon his holy throne. The princes of the peoples assemble with the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God, highly exalted. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Good Holy Sunday morning, my beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have Gerard with me after a long time, here with us in our Mission of Hope and Mercy Center in Lakewood. And today we will be talking a little bit again, as I said, I want to address with you the mind of Christ, right? The last time we did the reflection on Memorial Day, we saw that basically every nation has a council for national security, right? Let’s learn from our own history as Americans, right? We know the mind of our nation, first of all, from our way of voting. And then there is a mechanism that basically carries our voting, and it takes it through a system And with that system, we have local governments. We have sometimes private governments. We have a private sector and public sector. We have family unit. We have society. We have all sorts of groups and human formations, whether by individual, by economic institutions or educational institutions, all sorts of branches inside the government from an executive branch. to legislative branch, and of course, to the actual legal branch, which is all totally separate, which is a justice system, starting with the Supreme Court of the United States of America. And of course, you have inside this, you have the military branch, And then you have, of course, the media, you know, the influencers. And next to all of that, you do have lobbyists, you do have educators, you do have advocates, you do have, you know, people who prove wrong, people who prove right. And you have people starting with the home base of the voters in the United States. being educated, or they rally towards the specific issues that cover life, that cover economy, that cover philosophy sometimes, that cover medical fields sometimes, scientific research sometimes, human knowledge and science, space science, military science, you know, excavations, and it’s so vast, right, to build a nation, but it takes a mind. And remember, believe it or not, you, my listener, who is sitting somewhere, whether in your home or flying, listening to the podcast on KNUS or KLZ or on our Mission of Hope and Mercy website or on iTunes or any medium that is available to you where you are, at homes, at travels, or in your car, you too, and myself, we are part of the people who are influenced or we influence the mind of the nation. All these forms of governments, the trillions of dollars that we spend every year, every year, all of it to make the nation always one, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This is the mind of the nation. The mind of the nation is usually revealed in its constitution. It’s revealed in its pledge of allegiance. It’s revealed in the rules of the books of the constitutional law and the books of law that keeps developing that basically govern the relationship of all the people that live in a nation, the people who are outside our nation with other nations. And of course, sometimes it also govern us by subjecting us to the absolute law of God. There are nations, believe it or not, in whose mindset there is no God. The nation is God. Well, look at the communist regime, for instance. The communist regime states it’s agreed to be the atheism, meaning the nihilism or negation of God. There is no God. Sometimes they go more aggressive. You know, we see that some socialist and secularist sectors in life, that they actually do something to impediment God, to prohibit God from being a part of the public life. Yes, communist regime, like the one in China, for instance, now, like the one that used to be in the old Soviet Union and in other places in Latin America. They did work tirelessly and very hard to make sure that God does not speak his mind. They did not want God to speak up. Now how does God speak up? And that’s the difference between the United States of America and other government systems in the world. We let God speak. Sometimes we don’t listen to him, but we let him speak. Sometimes we try to control the way he speaks. because we think he has too much freedom, but at least we give him a space. Sometimes we give him space to tell him, listen, you can speak in a church. You can speak in my private life. Sometimes we don’t allow him in our public places. So the problem I want to lay before you today is when a nation does not allow God to speak his mind, When a nation uses God or tries to relate to God according to its own interest, to its own national security, to its own complex, complex reality of will and of dreams and of ambitions, does God speak in return? Will he ever judge that nation? Will he ever sit down with that nation and say, listen, I wanna negotiate with you and I wanna see what you are up to, but you cannot ignore me. Will God ever speak in such a way? And if God speaks in such a way, will we listen as a human beings to him and the word that he wants to say? For instance, there is a precedence to know the mind of God about the nations, right? There is a way to learn about the mind of God who speaks actually to the nations. Have you ever read Psalm number two? In Psalm number two, and I want to ask Gerard to probably read it for us. In Psalm number two, actually, it’s a psalm for a royal coronation. You know, God is king, right? And God is a ruler. And God has a message for the nation. And he said, hey, I am the Lord. I am the one who governs all the nations. Just we saw him, how he spoke in Psalm 47 in the beginning of our radio show today. I want Gerard to read Psalm 2 carefully. And I want you to see, for instance, how does God sometime reveal his mind to the nations? Let’s read it together.
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Good Sunday morning, Father Andre. It’s good to be with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good Sunday morning.
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So I’m going to go ahead and read Psalm 2. Why do the nations protest and the peoples conspire in vain? Kings on earth rise up and princes plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Let us break their shackles and cast off their chains from us. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord derides them. Then he speaks to them in his anger. In his wrath, he terrifies them. I myself have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain. I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask it of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and as your possession, the ends of the earth. With an iron rod, you will shepherd them. Like a potter’s vessel, you will shatter them. And now, kings, give heed. Take warning, judges on earth. Serve the Lord with fear. Exalt with trembling. Accept correction, lest he become angry and you perish along the way. When his anger suddenly blazes up, blessed are all who take refuge in him.
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Well, praise be the most holy name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you, Gerard. We just shared with you Psalm number two. To tell you, my listeners, my friends on this radio show, the friends of the Mission of Hope and Mercy, it is important for us in the 21st century to address this question and to think about it. God has a mind. And sometimes we may not like what God is doing or think that he’s doing. Sometimes we wonder if God is even going to speak, is going to reveal his mind. You know, we have some philosophers and some researchers and some fathers of the church, major historians, major statesmen, major people who influence humanity, who always try to look for God and to look for the will, namely of Jesus Christ somehow. Well, you all heard about the name of St. Augustine of Hippo. And St. Augustine was from North Africa. You know, St. Augustine has a funny life, has a life that knew all sorts of, we may call him expedition. But they’re not expeditions by means of natural ways. No, no, these were expeditions. He even went to some demonic religions. He went to expeditions, meaning he was on research. He was trying to search for God. And for him, God was a beauty. For him, God was the original beauty that created harmony. and that created the organization, that created order, that created law. It created a sense. It had an objective. Saint Augustine could not fathom that this creation could be without any order. He was so taken by the order that is in this life. But he didn’t know Jesus Christ per se, his mother, you know, Santa Monica. She knew Jesus Christ, and she was convert to Christianity. She was baptized, of course. So she always spent her days praying for the conversion of her son, Augustine, and his brother, who both of them were not Christians. Now, what did he do for a living, St. Augustine? He was a lawyer. And as a lawyer, for him, the truth was in the objective words and the eloquence of the words. If you succeed putting words together, you can make the bad things smell good through your words. So the oratorio, we call it. In the Latin tradition, the oratorio means to speak the public speech, the power of convincing people through the power of the beauty of how you compose your arguments and you logically connect them together, even though you might be defending the worst criminal on earth. But as long as the word sounds good and the text is put together, we call it oratorio, and people would listen and they would be intrigued by the way Augustine would bring his form of speech, a logical form of speech. So the truth was logical. for St. Augustine. And it depended on linguistics and on the form through which you put your words together. So he defended bad people. And because he was a heck of a great speaker, he knew how to put words together. He defended ugly murderers. Until he was faced one time by somebody who he convicted, honestly, I don’t know if it was a husband or a son of a lady. And she said, you know, you just killed my son and he’s innocent. He said, I just spoke the truth. And then she answered him, but you did not follow the facts of the truth. And she shocked him. And he went through his darkness of the soul. And he felt the guilt that the truth is not only by words you put together. Today, we call this propaganda. You know, media uses propaganda a lot. And the communist regime They used to do a lot of things in order to manipulate the truth, of course, so they can represent it in a way they want. Today, for God’s sake, we have artificial intelligence. That’s why we need to build a wonderful relationship in this world. If we know how to convey the truth, by fact, by principle, by character, according to the Bible, according to the law and order, according to the validation and the verification of the scientific condition and the scientific rules of this world. There are many, many, many, many factors that need to come into the play. I think artificial intelligence could be a wonderful place to make a discernment, for instance, between what’s right but what’s wrong. But look now, You take the artificial intelligence and you can make a little baby speak like an old man. You know, you’ve seen those videos on X, you know, where they take real podcasters, for instance, and they put them in a shape, in an image of little babies. And you see and you hear those babies speaking like with an adult voice, for instance. You can recreate realities in a virtual way, but it is not true. It’s dangerous. It’s not easy. The nations did the same thing with the relationship to God. Sometimes the formations of the church institutions did the same thing. Let’s go into the mind of Christ. We have a few minutes on this beautiful Sunday that we’re going to spend with you. I want to tell you, for instance, you know, there is a principle when the Reformation came. at the time of Martin Luther in 1510, when he was fighting with the Church of Rome and with the Pope and with the indulgences, and he was trying to point out how the high clergy, the bishops and the Pope might be abusing their authority. It’s a fact. He didn’t discover something new. That was not a false accusation on the part of Martin Luther. All the time, the apostles’ successors and the high clergy in a church could subject themselves to abuse of authority. Because they take this spectrum in which they connect to God, and sometimes they act for the interest of their own personal authority. So if the personal authority requires a little bit of more interpretation to interpret God’s authority, they can say, I have a supreme authority, and then they can boil people in hot oil. You know, we have popes in history of the church who unfortunately did burn people in hot oil, and they were popular popes. You had a history of an acquisition, you know, where people used to go and they would accuse falsely somebody that they’re speaking in schism and they’re not confessing and professing the Christian faith at the time of the Holy Roman Empire. And then they would sentence them and then they would put them into death and they would burn them on a stick. They would boil them in hot oil and they would, my God, take them into exile. They would make them reject. They would manipulate them. their personality, their mindset. They would make them uncover their most inner mindset that there is a possible for them so they can use it against them. They did this in history. There is the famous philosopher Bruno, you know, in the history of the Italian Renaissance. There is also, in the history of the church, a story of a saint. She was burned on a stick, and she was led to confusion and misrepresentation of what she was trying to accomplish during the time of the war between Protestantism and Catholicism. We’re talking about the French famous saint, Saint John of Arc. And, you know, unfortunately, they ended up burning her like a witch on a stick. But then the church recognized in her sainthood and they canonized her, they beatified her and canonized her, and she became a saint later on. On another level of this conversation, communist regimes used to also manipulate the mind of God. They used to manipulate the mind of God. How? They used to go to Gerard. They used to go to me, for instance. They used to go to any citizen. If they see them pious, if they see them good, if they see them like they go in prayer, they would go and they would manipulate their thought process and they will accuse them that they are making a revolution or coup against the state. And many people, many friends in Nazi Germany, for instance, led their neighbors to prison, to concentration camps, to be killed because they falsely accused them. They manipulated their mind. And they used one word that they might have spoke out of context. And they laid upon them a huge, a huge sentence that led eventually to their death. It’s sad, my friends. The manipulation of mind is very sad. But one mind cannot be manipulated. The mind of God. The mind of Jesus Christ. Now, there is another example in the manipulation of a human mind or to deprive people, to not allow people manipulate. Look at China. China went way ahead. China started studying the DNA of the people like the Uyghur community, unfortunately, in China, one of the remaining Muslim sectors from the Mongolian empire who, in an area in China, became known as the Uyghurs, and then they put them in concentration camps, and they manipulated them physically, biologically, they make experiences on them, experiments on them, and they studied their DNA to try to predict their behavior. You know, in China, since the Mao Revolution in 1955, the Christians had to go underground, catholic church predominantly in china probably about 30 million people i don’t know they say and there are a lot of people living their christian faith in china underground this is before pope francis uh did the say the secret deal for the chinese government uh between the vatican and the chinese government i’m sure you heard of those things we’ll be happy to talk about i want gerard at his in his free time to develop those arguments so we can have a good conversation about them which will be really enlightening for us to know. So anyway, China manipulates the mind of those people and it tries to take the DNA of God out of the people’s biological DNA. They want to cancel God from the mind of people. So they subject them to so much suffering, to so much pain, to remove them completely from reality and make them be responsible for crimes that they did not make. All of that because the Chinese government wants to cancel God, does not want God to speak his mind. So they target his people. Today, the nations, like every day, are still invested in the persecution of Christian people in the world. But not every Christian is persecuted. Every Christian is already compromised. If a Christian is already doing the will of the nation and using the name of God and advancing different agenda, it’ll be like a man sitting on a throne, but not really a king. You know, there is this prophecy that one time, one day will come in a church, for instance, where somebody will sit on the throne of Peter, who will be like in shape of successor of Peter, right, or a vicar of Christ, but he actually will not be the shepherd. It will be somebody who will be totally inserted in, like an antichrist. a false messiah, a false shepherd. We call him today an anti-pope sometimes when you do talk about those things. So those stories always accompany the humanity and humanity always wanted to discern and to know where is the mind of Christ? What is the mind of Christ? And what is he trying to reveal? What is the mind of Christ trying to reveal to us today in the world? Who does manipulate the mind of Christ? Who is the party who does not want God to speak at all? Satan. We call him the spirit of this world. This is a spirit who governs the whole world. This is a spirit who has access to power. Remember in the gospel of the temptation, when unfortunately Jesus, our Lord and Savior, was tempted in the gospel of St. John, and Satan comes to him and tells him, hey, all these kingdoms were given to me. I have authority over all of them. All you got to do is to worship me, right? This is what Satan said. All you got to do is to worship me and I will make you a partner and run in my kingdoms in these nations of the world. However, Jesus Christ tells him, he tells him, hey, don’t tempt your God. You shall not tempt. You shall not put your God into test. So Jesus took superiority over him. And he crushed Satan, and Satan left him for a while. But it says, for a while, because Satan came back. He never gave up. He always tried to hurt Jesus and to hurt his mission. He hurt his disciples. He went into the brain of Peter, because Jesus tells Peter one time after transfiguration, Hush, Satan. Get behind me, Satan. Your ways are not the ways of the Lord. He tells Peter that. Jesus warns Peter. He said, Peter, Satan has asked to theft you. And he’s going to start by you. So Satan tries to enter into the apostles. He tries to enter into the mind of bishops. He tries to enter into the mind of apostles. He tried to enter into the mind of Peter. He almost lost his faith. He actually renounced Jesus Christ. Okay, listen, we could be the hearted sinners, but do you know what does it mean? That Peter, the one who is the rock on which Jesus built his church, and where Jesus said the gates of hell shall not prevail against him, he actually denounced Christ three times, of course, before he repented. Yet in the mind of Christ, he remained faithful to him, And he again gave him the chance. And he did make him the shepherd of his flock. And he did nonetheless give him the keys to the kingdom of God. This is Father Andre for our listeners with KNUS who are about to go on about their beautiful Sunday day. I want to wish you a wonderful Sunday. And please do not forget to go on our website, missionofhopeandmercy.org. And please show your continued support to the work of our Mission of Hope and Mercy. Remember, we shall continue to speak about the mind of Christ, the spirit of the word, and our free will. and what we need to do as a human beings. God bless you. Amen. My dear friends, for the rest of us who are staying with us in this radio show, to continue with the KLZ radio station on 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day, I want to greet you again. In the next five minutes, I’m going to ask Gerard, actually, as we continue to reveal and to speak about the mind of God, I want us to speak a little bit. You know, there is the gospel of St. Matthew. There is a gospel of St. Matthew. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus also makes some statements about the nations. Remember, we’re going to keep talking about the mind of Christ. And last Sunday, we did introduce a speaking about the mind of Christ when we spoke about the epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians. In the epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, it is clearly stated, what does God see? What does St. Paul see that the mind of Christ is? So we’re going to first read the introduction of the epistle to the Philippians, chapter 1, verse 1 to verse 12. Listen carefully to see how does the people recommend and encourage us as Christians to maintain faith, Knowledge about the mind of Christ. Let us listen to it.
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Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus to all the holy ones in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and ministers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God in every remembrance of you, praying always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because of your partnership for the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right that I should think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart. You are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness for how long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer. that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception. to discern what is of value so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
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Look at these key beautiful words that St. Paul speaks in his epistle to the Philippians, my friends. And of course, because of the shortness of time, we will be talking just a little bit about the things. We will not cover them all in one episode. That’s why it is important. That we, from now on, have your Bibles with you when we come to the radio show, whether on Good Sunday Morning with Fr. Andre or 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day. I want you to have your Bible, speaking about the mind of Christ, the Spirit of the Word. and our own free will and making good assessment of the situation so we can do the will of God. That is in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the topic for the remaining time of this year in our radio show. We are looking for sponsors. We would like to stay on the air more and more. For anybody who knows a particular sponsor who can sponsor our radio show, 33 Minutes on a Lord’s Day and Good Sunday Morning with Fr. Andre on KNUS and then on KLZ, please do not hesitate to contact us by email, info at missionofhopeandmercy.org. That is info at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Your sponsorship will allow us to continue revealing the mind of God to each other, will continue to allow us to live in peace, will continue to allow us doing the good remembrance of the good deeds that God did in our midst, and we can continue to remember you, as St. Paul says, and praying always with joy and in every prayer we do for all of you. Because remember, the mind of Christ set us up that we do a partnership with one another. And we have to do this partnership. And this partnership almost is unavoidable. Because this partnership aims necessarily to spread the words of the gospel. And what is the gospel? The gospel is the good news. The gospel is a place where we find the peace. The gospel is the word of God incarnate. The gospel is the verbum domini. The verb of God that ended up being translated, it didn’t remain just a simple word. It didn’t remain just a simple law. It didn’t just remain a simple psalm. But it became an actual word. And the word became flesh. And the flesh dwelt amongst us. And that flesh, Jesus Christ, is our Lord and Savior. And he saved us from our weaknesses, from sin, from evil, from Satan, from death, and put us back in the fullness of the grace and peace of God the Father that came to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the objective of our radio shows from now on for a period of time, is to speak with you and listen to you. So please, if you have anybody who can sponsor our radio show or like to ask us questions as well and become a donor to the Mission of Hope and Mercy, email us info at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Info at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Also, please make sure you go on our website, missionofhopeandmercy.org, and please support us and give your donations, and you can do tithing to the work of the Mission of Hope and Mercy. In my daily Mass, in our daily prayer of the Holy Rosary, in our Novenas, now that we have entered into the time in which we pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit at the Day of Pentecost, I share with you the love of God and the grace of His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the communion and unity of His Holy Spirit. One God to whom be glory forever and ever and on us peace and mercy. Amen.
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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.
