On the Feast day of the Holy Innocents, we can invoke this prayer for the aborted. And in our time, those innocent that die in war, especially in the genocide of Gaza.
Prayer for an Aborted Child
Most Merciful Lord, the Giver of Life; we entreat You, look with compassion and tender mercy upon Your children who have been condemned to death by abortion and genocide. You, who said, “Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” do now we humbly pray, grant the inheritance of Your Kingdom to the multitude of innocents who have perished in their mother’s wombs by the unjust judgement of men. We beseech you to soften the hearts of people who seek to destroy Your little ones. Pour out upon them Your Divine grace that they may be convicted in their hearts and turn from their evil ways to embrace the True Faith. Upon those that have committed this cruelty: render not unto them according to their deeds, but rather have mercy on them. Pierce their hearts with compunction and make their eyes stream with tears of repentance, joining their weeping with that of Rachel and her beloved children. For You are a merciful God, the Giver of Life and the Lover of Mankind, and to You we render glory, with Your eternal Father and Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever.
1 Corinthians 15 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Examine this text. Paul had spent part of his ministry exhorting his brethren on Christ the King but was realizing he was meant to become apostle to the Gentiles instead (Acts 13:46). In the above passage, we see a clearer distinction of a third James, as we discuss in a prior blog post, and contrary to the belief in the Latin tradition. In this narrative of the sequence of the Risen Lord appearing to many, there is His appearance first to the 12, that we know includes James the son of Zebedee and James (the Lesser) the son of Alphaeus (Luke 6:12-14). Paul then clearly makes mention of another James before ending with himself. Why would this distinction be made if this were not truly a third James who he also calls “the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19)? And if the James he mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:7 is one of the 12, why is he not specifying which one? There IS a third James. This James in the eastern tradition is called James the Just and was martyred by being thrown from the temple before its destruction in 70 AD. He is the half-first-born brother of Jesus from Joseph before he became a widow.
This is not a matter necessary for salvation. Christians do not have to believe either way. But let us examine why this could be important. As explained earlier (1,2,3,4), there is a symmetry from the transgression of the 8th commandment that lead to the lineage of the Messiah through Isaac’s son Jacob, his and his mother Rebecca’s deception to steal the first-born birth right, and the new Jacob the father of Joseph (Matthew 1 genealogy). There is an undoing here of the temporal effect of this sin, even though it produced the Messiah (Remember the words of our Lord in Luke 8:17-“For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.” May God have mercy on us all!). This undoing became the crowning of James the Just from the genealogy, the first born of Joseph, to become the first Bishop of Jerusalem. It is the replacement of the reign of lineage of the people of God but with an Apostolic continuity sealed with blood of the Messiah. Could this be related to Paul’s realization that he was called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles and had to abandon his zeal to evangelize his people who he loved so much? This former disciple of Gamaliel would have been a reasonable candidate for Bishop of Jerusalem. Here the eastern apostolic churches originated and evolved in the east, separate from the traditions in Rome. They are the apostolic continuity of the genealogy, keeping the ancestral prophets and patriarchs in the Liturgical calendar.
We have then in the eastern apostolic traditions a type of familial order at work from this perspective that has nothing to do with denying the primacy of the See of Peter, the Holder of the Keys. We have apostolic succession but with a national or regional character. These apostolic traditions were granted an autonomy in propagating their own apostolic lineage at the Council of Nicea while defending the faith and morality. Recall that after the persecutions under the Roman Emperor Diocletian ended, all the apostolic churches emerged intact. There was no direct interventions from the Pope during the period. Administrative jurisdiction from the Bishop of Rome is unnatural in this scheme.
Think of the Roman Church as a large tree with new trees emerging around it from dropped seed. These are the eastern churches. This is the Spirit at work in the Book of Acts. All are unified by the same Spirit, Sacraments, and Love for the Theotokos. Similar to how each organic family is a domestic church. How unnatural it is then for the Holy See to demand administrative jurisdiction over all the apostolic churches. To return the apostolic administrative independence would not have altered God’s work in the Latin Church since the complete schism at the turn of the first millennium. Look at our world. The middle east could soon have no Sacramental presence, something that never happened under Moslem rule. This clinging to administrative authority is even replacing the faith, ethics and morals. Even attacking the Latin tradition itself.
We realize,” said Philomena, ” that we are before God as so many vases of honor; some larger, some smaller. The vases of our soul expand according to our desire to love God during our life on earth. As soon as we are brought into the presence of God, each vase is filled to the brim with knowledge and love of Him.
This plenitude is what is called essential glory and this, through all eternity, cannot be enlarged or diminished. God Himself can put in the hearts of the faithful to pray to Him through His Saints; and then grace descends from Him like crystal-clear water, falling on our vases. Being already full, they [the saints] cannot contain it, wherefore the water splashes from them, falling upon earth enriching you who are yet pilgrims. This is the glory which is called accidental glory, which can increase or diminish. But in either case, we lose nothing. Always, we give glory to God.’
St. Philomena can be thought of a saint in a time capsule. And may give you inspiration how to live your life.
“I adjure you by God, most venerable fathers, how can we proclaim and publish and practice a constitution established in this manner? How can we defend it before the dissidents and present it to the Catholics? Let them [Orthodox] not accuse us of despising holy antiquity and let them not despise us as contradictors of the councils and canons. What will we say to those who give extreme respect to the councils, which took place in the east? How can Catholics persevere in the faith and how can the separated return when they see in this constitution the destruction of their autonomy and the loss of dignity and rights for their patriarchal sees? Unity consists in the fact that bishops are united in faith and love with their patriarch, the patriarchs among themselves and above all with the Roman patriarch. According to divine right, one of them, the Roman pontiff, is the prince of the others; according to canonical right there are five princes of the Church and successors of the Apostles. The Eastern Church attributes to the pope the highest and most complete power, but in a manner that the fullness of his power be in harmony with the rights of the patriarchal sees…The definition in canon 3, chapter 3, entirely destroys the foundations of the Greek Church and drags it to its ruin and to its complete dissolution. Our conscience refuses to accept this constitution because, for eighteen centuries, that is, from the origins of Christianity until today, this Church has been organized and ruled according to a law which is proper and conforms to nature, according to a special discipline, according to usages and ancient customs going back to the apostles; new definitions of this kind renew troubles, create difficulties and put obstacles which harm the salvation of souls.”
Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregory II Yousef Sayour before the General Assembly of Vatican I concerning the declaration of papal infallibility. 1870. [1]
Now, 150 years later, that insistence for an unnatural papal authority over the natural canonical right codified soon after Pentecost, has come to turn on traditions even within the Latin Rite itself, where that unnatural right was defined. And in another example of how the arrogance of pride degrades, and degrades endlessly, that “authority” seems to take on morality itself.
[1] Steward of the Mysteries, Bishop Nicholas Samra, Sophia Press. West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 2010. pp 89-90.
Insight into the Paraklesis fast is insight on our Faith
“In our Tradition, the word “passion” refers to our natural tendencies which have been distorted by the Fall. Food, for example, is a gift from God for our nourishment; we are meant to use it in a nourishing way and with gratitude. Gluttony is the passion for abusing God’s gift in distorted ways – such as overeating, or eating unhealthy foods – while ignoring the Giver.”
— 🇮🇷/🇫🇷 Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance: ‘The insulting representation of Jesus Christ in Paris yesterday was completely offensive and crossed all red lines. France, a country with a major history of Christianity, must be ashamed of itself, and I implore our Christians all over the world to speak out against this – we resolutely condemn it’
A good prayer I found. I cannot take credit for it but would love to make it mine.
Thank you Father in Heaven for the trials that you are offering to the likes of me, that I have more opportunities to become humble because my heart is so proud and lacking in charity. Thank you for having patience with the long journey that is my humbling and I pray for the grace that the journey not be wasted. Father in heaven, have pity on us in this time of confusion and trials, that these things which look so senseless might bear fruit which we cannot foresee, in your goodness. We are surrounded by confusion, may our trust be in You while the chaos continues.
Psalm 119:70 It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
Today is the Feast Day of St. Joseph in the Latin Tradition, the Holy and Fatherly Guardian of Christ the Messiah, Son of the Living of God, in His early years in human flesh. Also appropriately considered Spiritual Father of the Church. So where is the feast day in the Eastern or Orthodox Church? Are the eastern churches guilty of what the evangelicals do by perpetually ignoring the Virgin Mary, the closest human that will ever be to God?
The answer is no. There is a feast day of St. Joseph. But not alone:
December 2*. SUNDAY AFTER THE NATIVITY, Commemoration of Saint Joseph Spouse of the Theotokos, Saint James, Brother of Our Lord, and King David.
Here the commemoration of St. Joseph as father of the church is ACTUALIZED as James the first born son of Joseph in David’s line, as explained in the last three posts. Proceeding from Jacob and Joseph and ending with Jacob and Joseph, James became the first Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem with the Temple still intact. Resulting in a perpetual liturgical tradition, validated at the Council of Niceae, and further codified by Sts. Chrysostom and Basil.
Kontakion of Joseph, David and James
Today, David the holy one is filled with joy. Joseph and James offer their hymns of praise, for the crown of glory of their relationship with Christ fills them with joy. They offer their hymns of praise to the One born on earth in a manner beyond description, and they cry out: “O Merciful One, save those who honor You!”
This is a great grace given to the See of Peter, severed at the end of the first millennium and one could say compensated for with the creation of the College of Cardinals. An institution now stacked for the continuity of corruption and even immorality.
We live in an age where the Hippocratic oath is not operational. One of the weapons doctors can use to help do no harm in this age is educate themselves about treatments using concepts that are understandable, to communicate the concepts behind treatments in very simple terms so that the average person can understand them. I have tried to do this with my patients so they can actually understand when a treatment is of little benefit or worse, hurtful. This way there is no hiding behind authorities, policies, marketing, technical terms, fancy names, stock quotes or statistics. Statistics is a sometimes abused field where a link between nonsense and rubbish can be made to look impressive. Things have to make sense, common sense, and in the field of health this means associations and questions have to have biological plausibility.
The following is on the nature and complications of viruses and vaccines and presents well-know concepts followed by questions that are logical, based on the underlying understanding. An average person should be able to come up with the questions. There are no links, because the concepts are well established and can be easily searched. The questions put the burden for answers on the vaccine industry, not me, nor the public. They are natural questions that arise from the understanding of the process. The simple concepts are not an invitation for attack by experts in the field. The burden of teaching concepts for the common person falls also on the industry. Remember: biological plausibility.
Viruses are non-living infecting agents that come “alive” only in our cells. In our cells, the viruses reproduce the proteins to make up the virus itself which then can be released to infect other cells. The damage is done when our immune system goes after the cells infected resulting in inflammation. This damage can be mild or can kill a person.
Antibodies are binding proteins we generate in response to the infection that can trap the virus and hold them for breakdown by our bodies. They are produced by the initial infection and saved for the next infection. They are our defense but they also bring along an inflammation response.
Vaccines are pieces of viruses we introduce to stimulate the production of antibodies, to protect us from future infections. So when we get infected, we are ready this time. The antibodies bind and our bodies clean up (with inflammation as a result). The infection is gone. Or is it? Remember we said that virus are non-living proteins. In the case of a bacterial infection, antibodies will bind and the bacteria are killed, along with the other treatments we use for bacterial infections. Bacteria are living organisms, now dead. Gone. The proteins and protein pieces that make up a virus, as well as those protein pieces that come from vaccines, may linger within or as part of our cells even after the infection and inflammation have subsided.
The vaccines are also grown in animal cells, introducing virus and host proteins that come from whatever species was used to develop the vaccine. The antibodies that are generated from these other proteins are never talked about. So along with the viruses that could linger, the antibodies we generate, with all the potentially cross-reactivity with our own tissue, are always available from that point on. Both are like a code that linger for the next trigger.
QUESTIONS #1: Since these proteins could linger in different tissues in our bodies after an infection or after a vaccine, can’t they resurface at some point? Can the antibodies that have been generated actually attack our cells even when there is no threat? Could this be a cause of the so called auto-immune and chronic inflammatory diseases that some people get? There are multiple diseases people can get after a viral infection (e.g. acute disseminated myelitis). Why then should we not expect the same after vaccines? If Chicken pox can result in a reactivation decades later (shingles-note that this is a different and potentially more severe disease) why can’t a vaccine? If a person can generate antibodies to a kidney transplant, why wouldn’t they generate antibodies to a vaccine’s accessory proteins introduced from their development using human and other mammalian cell lines? Could repeated vaccines, especially those related to each other or a prior related viral infection burden the immune system of those who are not sick? Do you think these are reasons enough that we should limit the number of related vaccines? This brings up a strange concept that has been introduced into our culture that related vaccines need to be taken more than once in a lifetime. Like the yearly flu shot. More on this at the end.
One of the defenses viruses have against our immune system is that they can mutate, or change protein codes to evade the antibodies we have made to eliminate them. RNA viruses, such as H1N1 (the flu) or coronaviruses generally have high mutation rates compared to DNA viruses. One of the ways viruses can change is via genome recombination when there are at least two viral genomes present in the host cell. Genetic recombination can be thought of as an exchange of traits between two viruses. This is similar to how a baby gets characteristics from both father and mother in their genetic code. Genetic recombination also can occur between viruses and vaccines, which are the weakened versions of the virus. Even without genetic recombination, continually treating something that is never completely eliminated is a know mechanism for break-through mutations.
QUESTIONS #2: Since genetic recombination can occur between viruses and vaccines, effectively producing a mutation, could the use of repeated related vaccinations increase the mutation rate in humans so that we actual become incubators for mutations? Could this be another reason we should limit the number of related vaccines?
QUESTION #3: Given certain viruses, like COVID-19, have no or mild symptoms in the majority of people to begin with, and have pharmaceutical cures, is a vaccine even worth it, let alone a mandatory vaccine for all, given that
Some inflammation can be started by the vaccine itself?
There is a risk of disturbing the peace to cause antibodies to attack the host?
The specific immune response may distract and even burden the body from other needed defenses?
There is a risk of mutations?
Once upon a time vaccines were designed to be done deals [1]. Get them once and you are protected for life, maybe with a booster or two. How we got to the point of accepting a yearly vaccine, I am not sure of. But to make the absurdity of the notion hit home, consider how one day appendectomies could be limited to just snipping off the end of the appendix so that we could have yearly appendectomies, for the rest of our lives. Providing sustainable income for the health industry for years to come. Not the best analogy but I’m sure you can get the point. Welcome to the world without the Hippocratic oath.
[1] Although the vaccine industry staked its proofs in the early 20th Century, their “proofs” never corrected for the emergence and coming of age of general public hygiene and increased medical and surgical knowledge , which could have accounted for much of the improved health of the public.
Update-4/17/21. This “side effect” of introducing foreign proteins or codes in our body is much more explicit in the new generation of so-called mRNA “vaccines”.
