GREAT AND HOLY SATURDAY

Although Pascha (Easter) for the Orthodox Catholics is not until April 27^th (for the Old Calendar followers), I want to wish all of my Christian friends and fellow bloggers a very blessed Holy Saturday and a most blessed and happy Resurrection Sunday.

In the Orthodox Church, Great and Holy Saturday is the day that we contemplate our Lord’s descent into Hades, the abode of the dead. Christ defeated death from within. “He gave himself as a ransom to death in which we were held captive, sold under sin. Descending into Hades through the Cross … He loosed the bonds of death” (Liturgy of St. Basil).

On Great and Holy Saturday, we meditate upon the Tomb of Jesus Christ. Unlike any ordinary tomb, it is not a place of decay, corruption and defeat. Instead it is a source of life-giving victory and freedom from the grip of death.

On this day between Jesus’ death and His Glorious Resurrection, we wait with watchful expectation, in which our tears of mourning are transformed into tears of joy. This day embodies the fullest meaning of joyful-sadness, which has been the focal point of the celebrations of Great Holy Week. The profound mystery has been penetrated, and we are able to understand it through the beautiful and poetic dialogue between Jesus and His Mother, the Theotokos, which was written by a hymnographer of the Church:

“O Weep not for me, O Mother, beholding in the sepulcher the Son whom thou hast conceived without seed in thy womb. For I shall rise and shall be glorified, and as God I shall exalt in everlasting glory those who magnify thee with faith and love.”

“O Son without beginning, in ways surpassing nature was I blessed at Thy strange birth, for I was spared all travail. But now beholding Thee, my God, a lifeless corpse, I am pierced by the sword of bitter sorrow. But arise that I may be magnified.”

“By mine own will the earth covers me, O Mother, but the gatekeepers of hell tremble as they see me, clothed in the bloodstained garment of vengeance: for on the Cross as God have I struck down mine enemies, and I shall rise again and magnify thee.”

“Let the creation rejoice exceedingly, let all those born on earth be glad: for hell, the enemy, has been despoiled. Ye women, come to meet me with sweet spices: for I am delivering Adam and Eve with all their offspring, and on the third day I shall rise again.” (Heirmos of the Ninth Ode of Matins of Holy and Great Saturday)

The icon of the Resurrection is the Descent of Christ into Hades, the place of the dead. This Icon depicts the victorious Christ, reigned in glory, trampling upon death, and seizing Adam and Eve in His hands, plucking them from the abyss of hell. This icon very clearly expresses the truths resulting from Christ’s defeat of death by His Death and Resurrection.

This is a follow-up to yesterdays post

If you don’t believe that we are being sold out, check out the following:

Wait until see the series I will be posting every Monday for the next six weeks, beginning this coming Monday (March 24^th). It will open your eyes.

THURSDAY STUFF MUSINGS - #8

Congress went on Vacation without Securing Our Borders:

This was the headline of an email I received today from RightMarch.com

It appears that the members of Congress once again did their usual disappearing act without passing the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088), which would secure our borders and give strength to our employer enforcement laws.

RightMarch.com bemoans the fact that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appears to be winning the battle to keep the Save Act from coming up for a vote. Well no Duh!

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times, the Congress of the United States has no desire to secure our borders, and that goes for the members of both parties! The only thing our elected officials are interested in is bringing the North American Union to fruition. That is why ALL of the presidential candidates; McCain, Hillary, and Obama want to continue signing more and more “Free Trade” agreements, no matter how many US jobs will be lost in the process. They all insist that our borders remain open for the “free flow” of those seeking work, which in effect means that Canada and the United States will be taking in millions of unskilled laborers who will take over what few jobs we have left. When the heck are Conservative groups like RightMarch.com, NumbersUSA.org, and all the others going to get this fact through their heads?

To make matters worse, you have the tech industry, such as Microsoft, strong arming Congress to expand the H-1B visa program to import millions more foreign workers for the tech industry because the tech industry claims there is a shortage of trained workers, but there are some flaws with this assertion. The real reason is they want cheap labor. When the immigrant workers have been here long enough to earn a raise, the employers can simply lay them off which means that the laid off immigrant worker will then have to return to their home country, leaving the employer free to hire another immigrant worker at the starting low pay, since the H-1B visa program only allows skilled immigrant workers to work in the US on a temporary basis.

The program is far more general in scope then just the tech industry. For instance, the San Francisco Unified School District has hired a number of H-1B visa-holding school psychologists and elementary school teachers, but the most common field in which employers hire H-1B visa holders is soft ware development. The industry’s claim that it needs to import workers to remedy a severe labor shortage falls flat on its face in view of the economic data.

In a Business week article, it was pointed out that starting salaries for new bachelor’s degree graduates in computer science and electrical engineering, when adjusted for inflation, have been flat or falling in recent years. Additional analysis at the master’s degree level shows the same trend, flat wages which contradicts the industry’s claim that workers at the postgraduate level are in short supply.

Our education system pushes all of the high school graduates into college, even though not all high school graduates are actually college material, costing the students and their families thousands of dollars a year, all with the promise of great jobs when they graduate. Then when they do graduate they are lucky if they can even get a job flipping burgers because they are told that they are over educated and the employers in their field of study won’t hire them because the employers would rather have immigrants willing to work for far less.

A few blog posts back, I stated (and correctly so) that the Conservatives haven’t won a thing in over 40 years that I have been a member of the Conservative Party. We haven’t gotten prayer or the dress code back in our schools; we haven’t succeeded in getting sex ed and the distribution of birth control pills and condoms out of our schools, we have not succeeded in stopping abortions, nor have we succeeded in stopping the homosexual agenda in our schools. We are NOT winning with the Sanctity of Marriage Act to stop same-sex marriages, and damn sure are not going to win getting our borders secured and no amnesty to illegals. So, why do we continue knocking our heads against the wall? Haven’t we learned this lesson in futility yet?

Face it folks, no matter what we do or what we say, we are NOT going to win, EVER, and our track record proves it.

WEDNESDAY MUSINGS - #10

This kid is only SEVEN Years-old:

The following was sent to me via email from a group of Ukrainian Christian Teenagers who hold youth night near me. I am posting it here just as they sent it.

DID YOU KNOW THE FOLLOWING?

Death is certain but the Bible also speaks about untimely death!

It is written in Galatians 6:7, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sow, that shall he also reap.”

The following are some men and women who dared to mock God:

John Lennon (one of the Beatles):

Some years ago, during an interview with an American magazine, Lennon said: “Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain. Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, today we are more famous than Him.”

After saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, Lennon was shot six times, dying on the sidewalk outside his New York City Apartment.

Tancredo Neves (Former President of Brazil):

During his Presidential campaign, he said that if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from the Presidency. He got the votes, but he became ill a day before being sworn in and died.

Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian singer, composer and poet): During a show in Canecio (Rio de Janeiro) while smoking a cigarette, he puffed out some smoke in the air and said: “God that’s for you.” He died at the age of thirty-two of LUNG CANCER in a horrible manner.

Marilyn Monroe (Actress): She was visited by Rev. Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. Graham told her that the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what Graham had to say, Monroe said: “I don’t need your Jesus.” A week later she was found dead in her apartment.

Campinas Brazil – 2005: In Campinas Brazil, a group of friends who had been drinking heavily went to pick up another friend, a girl. The girl’s mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about how drunk the others were and she said to her daughter who was holding her hand, and was already inside the car: “My daughter, go with God and may He protect you.” The daughter answered: “Only if He (God) rides in the trunk, because inside here it’s already full.” Hours later, news came that they had been involved in a fatal accident; everyone in the car had died. The car was so badly damaged that it was almost impossible to tell the make of the car, but surprisingly, the trunk remained in tact. The police said that there was no way that the trunk could have remained in tact. And to their surprise, when they opened the trunk they found a crate of eggs. Not one egg was broken.

Christine Hewitt (A Jamaican Journalist and entertainer) said that the Bible (the Word of God) was the worst book ever written. In June of 2006, she was found burnt beyond recognition in her car.

Many more people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive.

TUESDAY-LESSON IN CIVICS #35

TWO THINGS TO PAUSE AND THINK ABOUT:

THE LIBERAL SOCIETY WE LIVE IN TODAY –
By Joseph Saraceno:

Have you ever wondered why Liberals out number Conservatives and why it is so difficult to get true Conservatives elected?

I would like to illustrate the make up of the people who make up our society today by taking the smallest average percentage point of 6% and apply it to our country. Let’s use the men and in some cases it could apply to women and Conservatives as well.

6 % of society is made up of homosexuals.

6 % are adulterers.

6 % are fornicators.

6 % are on drugs.

6 % are alcoholics.

6 % are gambling addicted.

6 % are pro abortion.

6 % are masons.

6 % are crooks.

6 % are into prostitution.

This tells us that at least 60% of our society is vice or criminal addicted and I am not sure if I got all of the vices included in this thesis.

It’s no wonder 40 to 50% of new marriages are ending up in divorce in the first 3 – 5 years of marriage, if one can even call them marriages today.

So my friends, it all comes back to that old fashioned problem that continues to besiege us all, and that is plain old SIN. Let’s not blame Liberals, Masons, Jews, Communists, the illegals, etc. The sooner we clean up our own act the more stable we will become and the less problems we will have, the more stable we become the happier we will be.

A New Spin on Creation:

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God’s great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Krisby Crème Donuts. And Satan said, “You want chocolate with that?” And Man said “Yes!” and Woman said, “And as long as you are at it, add some sprinkles.” And they gained 10 pounds, and Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14.

So God said, “Try my fresh green salad.” And Satan presented Thousand Island Dressing, buttery croûtons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following this repast.

God then said, “I have sent you heart healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them.” And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof. God then created a light and fluffy white cake and named it “Angel Food Cake,” and said, “It is good.” Satan then created chocolate cake and named it “Devil’s Food.”

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed before the flickering blue light and gained more pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained more pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald’s and its 99 cent double cheeseburger. Then said, “You want fries with that?” And Man replied “Yes! And super-size them!” And Satan said, “It is good.” And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery. Then Satan created the HMOs.

MONDAY MADNESS - #34

1. When I die, I want to die like my grandfather—who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

2. Some good advice for the day: If you have a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: “Take two aspirin and keep away from children.”

3. So you hate your job? There’s a support group for that. It is called EVERBODY, and they meet at O’Malley’s Bar.

4. Relationships are hard. They are like a full time job, and we should treat them like one. If your boyfriend/girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks notice. There should be severance pay, and the day before they leave they should find you a temp.

5. My mother told me that she learned how to swim when someone took her out to the middle of the lake and threw her out of the boat. I said, “Mom, they weren’t teaching you how to swim.”

6. A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. You know what I say to the authors of that study? “No DUH!”

7. Can someone tell me why Sea World has a seafood restaurant? I was halfway through my seafood platter when suddenly I realized, “O my gosh, I could be eating a slow learner.”

8. Do you know how Chicago got started? A bunch of people in New York City said: “Gee, I love the high crime and poverty, but it just isn’t cold enough. Let’s go west.”

9. Life just isn’t fair. If it was, Elvis would still be alive and all of the impersonators would be dead.

10. My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned 65 and it’s the law.

11. Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same thing.

12. Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress… But I repeat myself.

13. Did know that our bombs are smarter then the average high school student? At least the bombs can find Afghanistan and Iraq.

14. You can say any dumb and stupid thing to a dog and the dog will give you a look that says: “By Gosh, you are right! I never would have thought of that!”

15. Do you know why they call it PMS? Because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

16. Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I’ll have my Daddy pour me another green Beer.