Iran War started. Pray for Peace. And for Victory.

From Catholic News Service:

"In the first Holy Thursday homily of his pontificate, during the chrism Mass, Pope Leo XIV called on Catholics to embrace a mission of selfless love, leaving behind comfort and control. “In this dark hour of history,” the pope urged the faithful not to shy away from this mission that calls for unity and peace.

The first step of accepting the Christian mission, he said, is to risk leaving behind what is familiar and certain, in order to venture into something new.

“Every mission begins with that kind of self-emptying in which everything is reborn,” he said.

It is through this self-emptying that Christians encounter the love of Christ, the pope said. He reflected on the nature of Christian love, saying it is rooted not in power, but in self-giving."

 

I will watch this later, thank you

 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out an unprecedented massacre in Israel, in which approximately 1,200 people—mostly civilians—were murdered and hundreds were abducted. This attack marks a turning point that would have been almost inconceivable without Iran’s years of support in the form of financial resources and weapons technology.

This attack marks a turning point that would have been almost inconceivable without Iran’s years of support. Tehran acts as a strategic backer, providing Hamas with massive financial resources, state-of-the-art weapons technology, and military training—enabling it to carry out an operation of this magnitude to assert its regional power interests against Israel.

Beyond the political strategy, the unprecedented cruelty of these acts points, for many believers, to a deeper, demonic, and diabolical influence. From a Christian perspective, this outburst of hatred and the will to destroy represents a spiritual darkness that is incompatible with the values of the Gospel and that a Christian can neither ignore nor accept as the work of the adversary.
Despite the cruel injustice of October 7, the Israeli response remains highly controversial. From a humanitarian perspective, and particularly in light of Christian convictions, it is argued that the massive military retaliation has crossed the line into disproportion.

 

The brutality—in the sense of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”—perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinian civilian population is completely disproportionate and will be understood as an apocalyptic narrative that includes the punishment of Israel. In the end, Israel and Judaism—but also Islam—will come to an end. Only then will there be peace on earth, and the deceitful President Trump, with his demons, will not be the cause of it, but rather will bring about the punishment of the United States, which God will allow and which has been hinted at by mystics. I am sorry that the US could not nominate a saintly president, but even if there had been one, they would not have elected him. I would never have voted for either Trump or Biden. I cannot understand how even exorcists failed to recognize the proximity to the demons. But any other country would have made the same decision; that’s why someone like Hitler was possible. It makes me shudder to think that our pride renders us so incapable.

 

I may be wrong but is Steven a robot AI

 

I know this is AI, but this is completely wrong and a manipulation of God’s salvation of man... According to this, it turns out that the Jews are the center of events, not God and Christ, which violates the first of God’s commandments, whom we worship. Without Judaism there would be no Christianity ??? Was God limited in the way He would save mankind? Jesus Christ is God, that is, the Son of God; He could have taken the form of any race or people He wanted and given revelation to whichever people He wished.

He had to become incarnate somewhere because that was God’s plan to become human, but from there it was always for the salvation of all humanity, not just a single nation. Does Christ not say, “Before Abraham was, I am”? This means that Christ is not defined by being a Jew; if He became incarnate as a human in that form, it was to fulfill God’s plan...

The Mother of God is fully human and was born a Jewish woman, but when she appeared in Rwanda she was Black; when she appeared in Guadalupe she was Mexican, that is, Indigenous...
God transcends and transforms what is racial, national, and earthly.


John the Baptist tells the people:
“And do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father!’ For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones.”

And that is what God did—the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, as Jesus Himself said, and then fulfilled by establishing the Catholic Church and Himself as the timeless sacrifice. All the old covenants and laws were not abolished, but were transformed and fulfilled in Christ. Reading the Old Testament makes no sense without Christ; everything leads to Him, everything points toward Him.

 

My initial impression was that he (it?) was very impersonal and maybe he was someone using AI, but then a fragment of German appeared in a reply, so maybe he’s using a translator. He got my goat with his political views and I was a bit rash in response, but more importantly he expresses a dual covenant theology.

 

I read through a number of his replies. I cannot believe they are organic.

 

Excellent synopsis.

The Jews pride themselves on being ‘chosen’, but did God ever say that He chose them because they were especially good (maybe it was the contrary)?

 

Someone not liking some of the views being expressed here? There are rumours of ‘disinformation’ campaigns.

 

God did not choose the Jewish people based on merit, and this fact aligns with His purpose of salvation by grace alone, so that no one may boast. This same purpose also harmonizes with His plan to use Israel’s fall to bring salvation to the Gentiles and to restore its original branch at the end times.

It is worth remembering, once again, that Saint Paul exhorts us not to become arrogant, for if God did not spare the natural branches because of unbelief, neither will He spare us if we follow the same path. It is very easy to interpret God’s plan of salvation as if it were merely a form of ethnic distinction. In this sense, some people may be shocked by the words of Our Lord to the Canaanite woman: “Is it right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs?” In this passage, Jesus states that He was sent first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Someone might think that He called the Gentiles “dogs” in a pejorative sense. However, this language does not contradict the theological significance of the story of the ark, which carries one animal of each kind, prefiguring the multicultural character of the new covenant. The Church is the Ark that saves, sheltering one representative from every people—that is, a people reborn from every nation. The Jews, in turn, were children of Abraham through the irrevocable calling that God made to the patriarch.

The distinction between Jews and Gentiles involves the appointed time for each to be elevated within the plan of salvation. We are in the time of the Gentiles, but it may not be long before the time of Israel’s restoration arrives.

Furthermore, complementing what has already been said, when Christ declared that He was sent first to the lost sheep of Israel, they had already gone through long periods of apostasy, such as the episode of the golden calf and the worship of Baal and Molech. Even so, Christ distinguished them as the starting point of His ministry.

Likewise, Saint Paul assigns them a fundamental role at the end times, even after they rejected the Son of God and contributed to His crucifixion—the greatest crime in their history. Therefore, antisemitism, as well as any attempt to suppress the role of the Jewish people in the end times, is never justified.

We honor both the covenant—the irrevocable calling made to Abraham—and the covenant of Calvary, in which we too may be cut off because of unbelief.

 

Money is the motivation behind the war. Satan is at the core but he needs people to do his dirty deeds. People need motivation and there is no greater evil or stronger motivator than the love of money.

The dispensationalist heresy has a following of probably 1% of Christians and the vast majority of them are in the US. With the help of the three letter agencies, they have been trying to expand into the global South but their base is the US. No believing Christian agrees with their nonsense but plenty of otherwise orthodox or semi-orthodox Christians (including many Catholics) are happy enough to go along to get along as long as it's not their children being incinerated by the missiles funded by their taxes.

People actually delude themselves into seeing evil as good. Look no further than the thread on this forum about the American pilot having been rescued. Read the post claiming that the US doesn't target civilians while the Iranians kill their own. Nobody with a smidgin of wit can possibly believe that. Delusion is the only explanation for that level of denial of the reality staring everyone in the face.

 

The energy crisis is being brought about. In that case, Ukrainians would be the ones carrying out the work, but just as with the North Stream attack, they wouldn’t do so without permission from elsewhere...

https://www.reuters.com/world/hunga...nd-near-gas-infrastructure-serbia-2026-04-05/
Explosives of "devastating power" were found near the Turkstream pipeline in Serbia that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond, leaders ‌from the two countries said on Sunday.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told him that explosives had been found near the pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to Central and Eastern Europe.

 

I will check with John. If it is AI I will throw him off the board. If he is innocent I would not like to do him wrong. AI can be such a pain.

If it is a human being he is entitled to his opinion, such as it is.

..I suppose . Sigh.

 

By the way, regarding this, it was the Romans who nailed Jesus’ hands to the cross. Even so, the mission of shepherding the flock in the New Covenant was entrusted to the remnant of His people. This is a strong indication that God’s election operates independently of any merit of our own.

This topic, moreover, sparked my curiosity about the date of Rome’s destruction, and I found on Wikipedia that historians place it in AD 64. This is remarkably close to the year of the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in AD 70. At the time, Nero blamed the Christians for the event, something very similar to the hateful propaganda Hitler used against the Jews in the 1930s, blaming them for nearly all of Germany’s problems.

I believe that the judgment of Rome and Jerusalem in the first century after Christ had the same spiritual root. However, this does not nullify the divine plan of election that God established for both peoples. It is remarkable how God reveals His purposes of love and predestination even when He judges with fairness and justice.

 

I certainly have the impression that Tucker Carlson is strongly thinking of becoming Catholic.

How wonderful.

 

I am afraid I believe this is true. I so wish it wasn't

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al...-near-irans-bushehr-nuclear-plant-killing-one

 

Trumps post was real

 

https://x.com/mhdksafa/status/2040794581503971635


"The living will envy the dead."