THE SHAME OF A PEOPLE

Whereas the peace, prosperity and wellbeing of a people is the glory of their god, so also is the defeats, misery and destitution of a people the shame of their god. This is so because ordinarily, the strength and weakness of a people is a reflection of the power and authority of the god they serve or pretend to serve. And more importantly, it is a clear reflection of the relationship between the people and their god, for no matter how powerful a god is, the unbelief of the people is always a shackle on the abilities of the god they pretend to serve. And I remember the frustrations of Jesus as lamented by Apostle Matthew in Mt.13: 58 that Jesus could not do many miracles in His hometown because of the unbelief of His people.

Unbelief is the absence of faith. It is atheism; the true picture of the disconnection between a people and their god despite their pretence. It is the betrayal of a people of their god; their rejection and abandonment after the avowal. And like yesterday, I hear the Lord say to Samuel, “Listen to everything the people say to you. You are not the one they have rejected; I am the one they have rejected as their king. Ever since I brought them out of Egypt, they have turned away from me and worshiped other gods; and now they are doing to you what they have always done to me.” And I hear the ache in the heart of Jesus whom we pretend to love and serve as our Lord, Savior and Redeemer, when seeing through our humanity and our pretense, He asked rhetorically, “when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth.”

We are quick to profess, or pretend to profess a faith in the one true God who, before His Incarnation in Jesus, was the “unseen” and the “unknown” God, and we relied on the prophets of old to know His mind. But in the Nativity of Jesus, God became man and lived among men. We ate and drank with Him and He spoke to us, He taught us all we needed to know about our salvation so that we may find peace on earth and make heaven. He did not only show us the way to heaven, but walked the path Himself, and gave us necessary incentives to do the same. He gave us His Commandment; to love and live in love as children of Love, and the Seven Sacraments to help us live in holy obedience to His Commandments and to ward off the snares of the evil one, Lucifer. He thereafter suffered and lay down His life as proof of His love for mankind and to atone for the transgressions of man. And by His death, He set us free.

It is in the light of the above that the Author of the beautiful Letter to the Hebrews said in 1:1-3: “In many and various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days, He has spoken to us by the Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the ages. He, the Son, reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power”. And I repeat the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans in 1: 2-5: “the Good News was promised long ago by God through his prophets, as written in the Holy Scriptures. It is about his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him God gave me the privilege of being an apostle in order to lead people of all nations to believe and obey.” And in the words of the Apostle John: “Beloved, by this we may be sure that we know Jesus Christ, if we keep His commandments. He who says I know Him but disobeys His commandments is a lie and the truth is not in him.”

Thus, obedience to God in His Commandments is the religion of God for man, and those who truly believe in God live by His instructions. It is in their obedience to the will of God in everything that they become Christians and speak the language of heaven which is charity at work; they love God through their neighbor in holy obedience. But recent events have shown, and are continuing to show the lie; the great divide between God and mankind as a result of our unbelief which is reflected in our everyday disobedience. We live in sin and in disobedience, and thus, despite the supernatural efforts of God to reconcile with His wayward children, the void between man and God is widening every day. And many cannot help but wonder: why this seemingly state of disconnect between man and God despite the euphoria of religiosity in and around us? Why are we where we are, despite the efforts of God and our public declarations that we are Children of God?

This is so because since God is our father, we are gods, and being gods, we ordinarily should bask in the glory of our father God and enjoy his divine grace and protection. Yes, it is an acceptable premise that since God is almighty, the people of God ought to be free, safe and secured for the Holy and Mighty one is by their side to lead, guide, protect and defend. But this has not been the case because there is a disconnection between the Father and His children in the rebellion of the children against the will of their father. We have become estranged and alienated from our father God in our disobedience, and on account of our disobedience, we have lost the image of God in us and taken on the ugly face of sin to become sinners. And like Lucifer, who, on account of his sin transformed from being the beautiful angel of light to the demonic angel of darkness and the definition of ugliness, we have fallen from Children to Sinners. And as consequence for this betrayal, we have forfeited the goodwill, the blessings and the protection of our father God, and so we suffer.

And in the words of Jesus to Maria Valtorta in The Notebooks, 1943 “I had given those believing in Me all they needed to grow and grow in Faith and in my Doctrine. And I had given this in a perfect form, as only I, the Most Perfect could give it. Now it has happened, not that what I have given you has lost its efficacy, but that the capacity for understanding has diminished in you. It has diminished because you have dimmed your spiritual sight with the smoke of acts of human pride, your spiritual hearing with the sound of too many human words, your spiritual taste with the savor of so much corruption, your spiritual touch with the abuse of too many carnal contacts, your spiritual smell with your perversion, which spurs you to prefer what is putrid to what is pure. It has dimmed because you have crushed your spirits under the stones of sense, flesh, pride and evil in a thousand forms.” In other words, we have become Christians who have more or less denied Christ in everything, and for this we suffer and will continue to suffer. This is our shame.

Know that God is the first father and humanity His children, and so, He has rights over us and we owe Him obedience. But because He is love, He does not force us to love Him, but instead wants us to choose to love Him because we love Him. He asks for nothing from us but that we love and live in love as products of Love so that we may be happy in our exile on earth. In His generosity, He gave us authority over creation and demands no returns for our use of His benefits, but that we exercise our authority in love for the sake of Love. But like our fathers, we have refused to abide with the will of our Creator God, and on the instead insist on doing things our own ways, and for this we suffer. We suffer and will continue to suffer as we have refused to follow the ways of God in the exercise of our free will and in the authority He has given us over all the elements of creation. Despite His fatherly love and affection for us in the elements of creation and His supernatural love for us in the incarnation of Jesus, we have chosen to remain paralyzed; dead to Life and destined to bear gangrenous cells as we have come to deserve.

Our fathers languished and died in the wilderness of life because of their stubborn refusal to obey the word of God as revealed, and unfortunately, many of us have chosen to follow their evil steps. And so, like our fathers, we will all die in our sins and rebellion in our own wilderness on account of our sins. And whereas we are all afraid of death and of dying, yet many continue to feed at the table of death in the darkness of unbelief at the banquette of Lucifer; the blind fools we have become on account of our sins. That instead of clinging to Life through obedience so that we may have life, we have embraced, and continue to embrace Death in our darkness of sin. Instead of remaining children of Light ransomed by the Blood of the Lamb, we have chosen and settled to be the slaves of the Dark one in our disobedience.

But out of His supernatural love for us, the Master came playing the wedding songs for our union to God through the merits of the Cross, but we refused to dance to His heavenly tunes. And when in sorrow, on account of our dying spirits He sang funeral songs for us, we also refused to cry with Him. And so, I dare to ask, what do we really want from God, and why do we hate ourselves so much through our disobedience? God is the same yesterday, today and forever; He is Love, Eternal and Immutable, and will always be. His will for mankind remains the same; that we love and live in love as children of Love. Our obedience implies all possible good, for God commands nothing but good, and our obedience is our passport to heaven and the right of being called children of God else we labor for ourselves and in vain. But unfortunately many of us are Christians by name; we live in disobedience as our hearts are not with God.

Disobedience, which was the reason for the fall, has become our crown and glory as we have prospered in it to our ruin. It has brought about in many of us a rebellious mental state in which Satan is super active in us and around us, and so, individually and as a people, we can boast of no virtues but are proud to display our vices. Goodness, humility, patience, goodwill and kindness have become orphans in our circles while we celebrate and are proud of our vices. We live for the flesh and die for the flesh as we have sold our birthright to Satan in our rebellion against God, and for this we suffer. And despite our sufferings, we have chosen to remain headstrong in our disobedience, ignoring the offered Hands of Mercy. But do we not know that he, who closes his heart to his brother, closes it to God and God to him? Do we not know that he who does not love lies in professing to be a Christian, and thus it is useless for him to frequent the Sacraments and Rites? Do we not know that it is useless to pray if we lack charity, except our prayer is of repentance and for pardon else we waste our time?
And I hear the lamentations of Jesus as in Mt.11.20-24: woe to you who call yourselves Christians and children of God but who are not.

For if the supreme Sacrifice of the Man God for your salvation was for the sake of the plants and animals, they would have transformed into angels in appreciation. But you trample on the mercy of God; you exalt yourselves in your sinfulness and you scorn the benefits of your God purchased with the Blood of the Lamb. You consider the commands of God as useless and irrelevant, because you believe you are now superhuman and wiser than God. This presumption, which is the yeast of your pride, will be your ruin as it was for Lucifer, your new found love. Oh, I tell you that on judgment day, you will see my face as your Accuser and your Judge instead of as your Redeemer. Oh, how terrible it shall be for the many that have refused to acknowledge God in humble obedience and appreciate Jesus as their Savior and Redeemer.

As a people, we have proudly become Christians by name and Sinners by nature, and this is very sad considering the efforts and sacrifices of the Master to save us. And so, like Lucifer our new found love, we have descended from being heirs of the Kingdom to become brutes, as we have replaced the image of Love in us with that of the Beast, and have become beasts. We know the Scriptures by heart, but God is not on the altar of our hearts for our hearts are full of everything but of God. And in the same vein, we have turned His House to our Business Centers where we kill and divide souls for the kingdoms of Darkness, but mind you, we shall each account for every soul we led astray in our weakness and wickedness. And as we have humanized supernatural things and turned the house of God to a slaughterhouse for souls and His worship to a joke, so shall the Lord repay each and everyone according to his or her merit. It is as Jesus said in Lk.11: 52, “how terrible it will be for you teachers of the law. You have kept the key that opens the door; you yourselves will not go in, and you stop those who are trying to go in.”

Yes, we do not know, love and serve the one true God but ourselves. We call Him Lord, but we reject His authority and have conceived and made for ourselves gods of our own fancy. And like the idols we have created, we have eyes but cannot see the glory of the one true God in His creation as we are blinded by the dusts of our sin. And though we have ears, we cannot hear and comprehend the words of the one true God as revealed by Jesus the Christ as we have chosen to be deaf to the words of Life while we dance to the music of Lucifer from the pit of hell. We have eaten and continue to feast on the poisons of Lucifer, hidden in the glistening things of this world and are blind and deaf to the attractions of the Cross wherein lies our Salvation. We live for the flesh, for wealth and for pleasure as we have descended from being children of God to be the mockers of God; we have sold our heritage to the Enemy. And so, though we march under the banner of Christianity, the seal of God is not upon us for we lack love; the mark of a Christian. We have been conquered, and are been conquered by the concupiscence of the flesh; we have become slaves to sin and are happy in our foolishness.

We are not happy and cannot be happy because we have one big sore, one disease; the malady called sin and it has eaten so deep into our human fabric that sin has become our way of life. We now glory in sin that our homes, families and institutions have become cradles of sin and wickedness, instead of love and affection. And in our rebellion against God, we are breading demons that will consume us tomorrow, for on account of our rebelliousness, the abnormal has become the normal. And so, creation has revolted and turned its back on us in horror for we have profaned the image of God in our humanity and taken on the ugly image of sin. And as in the parable of the Sower in Mt.13:3, of the multitude of souls created by God, majority has chosen to be disciples and slaves of the Evil one, instead of remaining Children of God. So, we are no longer of God and for God, but for ourselves and for Lucifer, and so, despite our numerous churches, sin is spreading like a wide fire around us and many are being consumed. Sin has become our strength, our weapon and our defeat, and we will ultimately die in sin. This is our shame.

Know that where there is sin and evil, God is lacking, and so, we are Christians who have everything but God. For as we have driven Him away from our homes, our endeavors, our institutions and places of worship, so also He has abandoned us to our filths. So, we have become children of the one true God, heirs of the Kingdom of Christ the King who suffer and will continue to suffer in shame because we have forsaken the ways of our father God. We have disobeyed and are disobeying Him, and we are guilty of every sin. We did not do the things that He commanded us to do, but have turned our backs on Him. We have denied and forsaken Him and His ways, and we have censored His Holy Name from our public vocabularies. And so I ask, are we sane? For whereas I remember the lamentations of Jesus over Jerusalem in time past, I feel His pain and tears as He now laments for the whole of humanity, as majority has chosen to be lost. And so, for many and on account of their choices, the sacrifice of the Cross will unfortunately forever remain useless and in vain. But I do know that if we had obeyed His laws, we would have prospered, but now we deserve the judgment and punishment that has befalling us on account of our sinfulness, and this is our shame.

In the days of our fathers, God in justice showed His power and supremacy, but in our days and through the merits of the Cross, He showed the depth of His love for mankind. And so, in Jesus, we saw the love of God at work, and the depth of His love for man. He confirmed our faith in His power and might through the merits of the Cross, but warned that without faith in Him through humble obedience to His commands, we shall be lost. And again and again as the most loving father, He warned us to live in love and to avoid sin so that we may have peace on earth, but we have refused. On the instead, we have settled for our own definition of peace, which is nothing more than a concoction of selfishness, might and aggression, brief interludes of unrest, and jettisoned to oblivion, the cherished peace for our humanity; the peace of men of goodwill as guaranteed by our father God through the holy Incarnation of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Faithful obedience to the will of God is our faith and spirituality, our strength and our defense, but by our persistent refusal to abide with the will of God, we have killed the true faith and truncated our spirituality, and so we suffer. And like Aaron, we have abused our calling as Children of God and created gods for ourselves. We have turned our backs on the one true God, and in our romance with the evil one, we have been cut off from the vine, and so we languish and die in our misery and shame. God cannot save us because in justice, we are no longer His own as we have abandoned the Light and embraced Darkness, and so we perish in our iniquities. And this is our shame, for when salt has lost its taste, it is good for nothing and is thrown away as a light that refuses to shine will be swallowed by darkness. We have thrown away the heavenly taste of goodness and embraced the poisonous and filthy things of this world made attractive by the foul breath of Lucifer. Gold has become our god, and flesh our religion.

Our men of God are proud to be the modern day statesmen, political alleluia boys and motivational speakers. They have abandoned the mission to save souls and are now businessmen who have everything but God, and so, they give what they have; poisoned fruits. And because we have developed itchy ears and greedy tongues as warned by St. Paul in his letter to Timothy, we are happy being fed with poison and filth so long as there is a hope for a personal gain. So, we have chosen not to prosper in holiness, but in sin and in wickedness, and in our sin and wickedness at the prompting of the evil one, we unleash terror on ourselves. And so, death strikes from the north to the south, from the east to the west, and from the sky and from beneath the earth, for we have wandered far from God and lost the privilege of His grace and divine protection. This is the calamity of the human race; the shame of a people who have abandoned their God. We rebelled against light and embraced darkness, and so it will be said, and rightly so, that the children of darkness have in vain been in touch with the Light.

The disease called sin is the only affliction of the human race, for it is the open doorway for the possession and dominion of mankind by Lucifer. And once possessed, man becomes demonized; enemy to self and to others. But painfully, our possession and domination by Lucifer is self-inflicted because we drove God away from our homes, our families and our institutions, and embraced humanism; the religion of Satan, our new found love. And so, we can no longer see, hear or understand spiritual truths, and we find joy in what is killing us. And like possessed pigs, every day we plunge deeper and deeper into the river of sin and death, making of earth a hell and turning our back on the outstretched hands of love and life, and this is our shame. Like our fathers, we have rejected Life, and so, we are so dead that we can no longer feel the promptings of the Spirit who guides us in the Truth along the Way so that we may find Life. We have become beautiful sepulchers; the living dead.
But even if the body is dead, have we completely drowned the image of God in us in our sea of sin that we have completely forgotten who we are before God and how much He has loved us and still love us through the merits of the Cross? The prodigal son in his shame and pain remembered his father and went back home to the loving embrace of his father, why are we different? Why are we refusing to truly acknowledge God for who He is in humble obedience, but continue to plunge deeper and deeper into the darkness of disobedience that is killing us? Why do we hate ourselves so much? I ask because I am at a loss as to why mankind, the perfect creature in creation, continues to live and die in sin, deliberately trying to ignore the offered Hands of Mercy as if God is irrelevant, or pretending that He is irrelevant in the situation we have found ourselves. But God alone is relevant in all circumstances and situations for He alone is Able and Capable; He alone can save us from our misery and eternal damnation. He is the school and the knowledge we need to find our peace and fulfillment in all things, else we labor in vain like a dog chasing its tail. He is the answer to all questions, and so we perish for our lack of His knowledge as we have refused to know Him, love Him and serve Him in truth.

If we remain headstrong in our rebellion, we will continue to suffer on earth and also die as enemies of God instead of live happy lives on earth as His children, through the merits of Christ Jesus and share eternity with Him after death. Jesus promised that no matter how dirty we have become in sin, the day we cry out to God for mercy, He will be our Advocate through the merits of the Cross. He said in Mt. 11:28-30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” But when was the last time you heard a call for repentance from a church or any man of God? When was the last time you heard a public sermon on sin and repentance? When was the last time you heard a public condemnation of sin and evil by the shepherds of the flock of Christ? And so, I dare to ask, how can the people respect and honor God when they see that He is not respected and honored by those who should respect Him the most?
And I remember the words of St. Paul in his letter to Timothy “Rebuke publicly all those who commit sins, so that the rest may be afraid.” But then again, when the shepherd and the flock have both eaten of the same dish as prepared and provided by the angels of Darkness and has lost the sense of discernment, who will bell the evil cat? Souls are in perdition and perishing, but the men and women of God have become politicians, preaching PVC and wise voting on the Altar of God.

Souls are perishing as we have made of earth a hell, but the men and women of God are in parties and in merry, in jamborees where God and the holy Name of God is ridiculed, profaned and abused despite His Warnings. But I remember the parties and merry of Herod and Belshazzar, and I remember the encounter of Moses and the Israelites with God on Mount Sinai as recorded Exodus 19.10-13. I remember the death of Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant as recorded in 2Sam 6, and the death of the sons of Aaron for offering unauthorized fire in worship as recorded in Lev. 10.1-3. And of course, I remember the glorious Transfiguration of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels; all indicating that He Is God, Holy and Almighty, and that man should not take Him for granted.

And so, I wonder why we have completely lost the sense of what is holy and what is common, and have humanized and trivialized the supernatural. And I shiver with trepidation as to why, and also to the consequences of our taking God for granted. For though merciful, He is Just, especially as He has given us everything we needed to be saved, including Himself. We are bold and proud to profess His name but reject His Doctrine, and so it will not work. Yes, we cannot have everything on our terms, for it is either we are with Him in obedience or against Him in our disobedience. And unfortunately, it is very clear where we stand for majorities is in disobedience and happy in it. Many a Christian have adamantly refused to practice the virtues and live in love which means that they have no respect, no honor and no love for God, but they shout from the rooftops that God is their Father and they are the children of God, the liars that we are.

We claim that we love and worship the one true God, but we lie as we love only ourselves. Our worship has become jamborees and concerts for momentary considerations, rituals performed out of routine and devoid of faith and love; a theater of sorts. Whereas He has said in Lev 10.3, “all who serve me must respect my holiness.” He called us to love and worship Him in truth and in spirit without a thought for anything else; not even of ourselves, but we have refused and we treat God and the holy things of God with so much familiarity, this is our shame for God is not a fool to be continuously taken for granted. Though merciful, He is Just, and in justice will demand an account from each and every one of us for the use and abuse of His gifts and benefits. So, we need to be very careful, for those who mock God deceive nobody but themselves, and they will answer for it. We need to be careful and sincere in our relationship with God and with one another, for He sees and knows everything, else our prayers, sacrifices, songs and praises will remain useless, in vain, and to our ruin.

This is so because in our sin and wickedness, we have prostituted so much with the evil one that our Christianity has become a sham and an embarrassment to our guardian angels who have no choice but to remain with us till death. Our worship is now a show, a mere ostentation of cult for our selfish interests, as our hearts are empty of goodness and of God, but full of sin, hatred and wicked desires. We are now worse than Sodom, as sin is choking the Life out of us and we are comfortable in our descent from being human to beasts. Majority has been conquered, and is being conquered on daily basis on our altars of sin, and I remember once again the lamentations of Jesus in Luke 18. 8: “will the Son of Man find any faith on earth when He returns”? And so, heaven has turned her gaze from the hell and horror the earth has become on account of our sins, and nature is revolting against us on daily basis in “global warnings”.

But we lie and call it “global warming” in our wickedness and futile efforts to deny the existence of God and or pretend that He does not exist. We have replaced His holy prescription of love for God and neighbor with our selfish order of me, me and me, that instead of in goodness like our Father who is good, we compete and outdo one another in evil and in wickedness. And so, we wallow in sin and live as beasts, and being lesser than the beasts, we have become demons. For like Cain and despite the warnings, we have turned our backs on each other and our father God. We have thrown away His image in us by our disobedience and continuous prostitution with Lucifer and have adopted a new name and a new image. We are the people who have abandoned their God and became Demons.

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