BFP Aug 15 Hagia Sophia Closed Lest The Angels Take Stock

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Show Notes

On the Feast of the Assumption (Dormition)… 

Mary leads the way to the promises of her son, Jesus.  She was also taken body and soul to Heaven by Jesus after she fell asleep.

Angels protect things precious to Our Lord.  The Hagia Sophia was closed this week after attempts to turn it into a militant islamic outpost…  

Our Lord does not always think it is time for the sword, but when it is, His angels are fast to use it.  The events at the Hagia Sophia seem to indicate time is up.  Buckle up.

___  next episode:  what does this all mean for prelates who ignore and dissuade the faithful from heeding her warnings at Fatima, especially that Hell is real?

That story about the angel with the sword at Our Lady’s funeral was discussed in an old post here on BF.

Dormition icon detail showing the sliced hands of Anthonius
Dormition icon detail showing St. Michael slice the hands of Anthonius

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

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Praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.

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Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. The day we celebrate when Our Lord came to take Our Lady up to heaven. Body and soul.

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It is an August feast. Get it? Let me say it again, it’s an August feast. Ivan, did you get that? August, you know, the August queen, August. Yeah, it’s an August feast. Maybe I’m the only one that thinks that’s funny.

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Look, let’s talk about what this means.

Fr. Hardon: The Assumption Has the Same Message as Fatima

The Three Lessons of the Assumption/ Dormition

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I’m pulling on Father Hardon here, Father Hardon tells us that Mary’s bodily assumption is the promise of our own glorious resurrection from the grave.

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Well, provided we pray. That’s a condition. So, provided we pray, we get to follow Mary’s footsteps. We can’t get our own bodily resurrection without prayer. And he says, why? Because without prayer, we cannot remain faithful in our service of God.

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Mary’s assumption is the proof of how profitable it is to make sacrifices.

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And finally, Father Hardon says that Mary’s assumption is a call to penance. Yes, penance.

Fatima and the Assumption: 3 Commons Lessons

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And Father Hardon ties that right back to the message from Our Lady of Fatima specifically. He says the lessons are the same prayer penance make sacrifices. It sounds like the message of Fatima, right? Well, that’s precisely what Father Hardon said. We are to pray, make sacrifices and do penance for poor sinners who are offending God. That’s what we’re going to talk about a little bit today.

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The title is: Lest the Angels Take Stock. And it’s that part for poor sinners, I’m going to tell you some things that should make you want to do that more to convert them. Do offer them to Our Lady. We just had the feast of Saint Alphonsus Liguori and he said that nobody gets to heaven without the Blessed Mother’s help. oh People say, uh oh, you can’t… oh. He’s right, though. He’s right and on this great feast of Our Lady Mary, pray for us. We need it.

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You know, I think we tend to just like kind of make everything flowers and nice. We don’t tend to think of how literal words are. And I’m going to give you some examples today. Lest the angels take stock.

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The psalm tells us: Precious in the ey-… in the sight of the Lord or something, you know, I guess the flowery translations say precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. You know, that always gives people the warm fuzzies, right?

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You see that little cherub on the cloud with his chin in the palm of his hand and you think fluffy things, so it’s nice.

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It’s soft. I always kind of get irritated, you know, it’s, uh, it’s awww, it’s precious, it makes me think of this lady when I was a kid and she was “ohhhh. It’s precious!” We do that with these words, don’t we?

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Now I see something different, though, the psalmist isn’t like, you know, those weren’t Hallmark sentiments, they didn’t write that just so you could put it on like a empty sentimental card.

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He’s talking about Our Lord’s emotions for something precious in the sight of our lord. So we do with things that are precious and our lord, I mean, think about him for a minute, he say he’s talking about himself with one sheep’s lost. He’s going to go hunt it down. Through the whole world to find it. What do you think is going to happen for His Mother? See, I think we tend to fantasize words we don’t really give them their literal meaning.

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If Something’s precious to you. What do you do? Somebody threatens something that’s precious to you, what do you do? think about that for a minute.

The Assumption is the “Little Resurrection”: the Transfiguration was a Clue

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Our Lord Jesus, He rose from the dead. You know, that means something. Can you imagine being there when that happened? and you know… think about we just had the Feast of the Transfiguration on the sixth. What a novena ago, right? nine days. Think about that. So there’s novena between the Transfiguration and the Dormition and what happened at the Transfiguration?

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You know, this year in the new Mass, the gospel cuts off before my favorite part. Can you imagine this for a minute… you’re there… just pretend you’re one of the apostles, you’re there with our Lord and all of a sudden, you know, Hollywood would be better to do this. You can hardly see anything because it’s so bright and Our Lord’s been transfigured. His clothes, white beams of light are coming.

Moses on the Mountain, Like the Old Mass Had the Priest at the High Altar

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And you hear that, making rumble noises, and you hear the voice of the Father proclaiming our Lord’s goodness and what’s Peter say? “oh, lord, it’s good we’re here!” and then there’s Moses and Elijah. You know, Moses, when he spoke to Our Lord, had to go up on the top of the hill away from the people. Kind of like in the old mass, how the priest goes up in the sanctuary and up the steps away from the people. See Moses prefigured the priesthood in that. Today, you know, I don’t know uhh. I was at Mass recently, and I had to think about that while I was waiting for the gospel because the laypeople had to do all their stuff.

Our Lord: Now is Not the Time… wait.

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And then I’m looking at all these and we’ll talk about that another time. But Our Lord. Standing there. All the sudded, boom!, the vision is gone. and I love that: Our Lord says, tell no one about this. Time… It’s not time to tell people about this story yet. Why? until you see, until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.

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Now, that’s the next part is my favorite part. it wasn’t in the gospel this year, but it’s in the gospel. It’s just not in the gospel reading for that mass at the new mass. And then they walk down the hill behind our lord, discussing what it meant to rise from the dead. I.. it just cracks me up because I just see James and John and Peter, you know, and they’re all looking between each other. You ever notice that? it’s John and Peter were the first two to come to the tomb? They were at the Transfiguration, who’s at the tomb to see our Lord is resurrected?

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Peter, John ran to the tomb. John got there first, he ran faster than Peter, but he waited for Peter to get there because. Well, Peter is special. You know, you’re not supposed to notice things like that or trouble, but. And they were the ones who were at the Transfiguration, who heard those words, who didn’t even know what it meant, they were discussing amongst themselves. And, you know, I like it because they walk behind Our Llord, you know, and Our Lord to be chuckling.

Words are Literal (not myths)

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But the point here. It meant it was literally… it was literally those words… these aren’t fantasy words, it’s not Hallmark, it’s not sentimentalities. There’s the literal meaning actually means things, and that is what’s important to us.

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So Jesus promises all who followed him would also be resurrected. So what about His Mother? The August queen, she who is full of grace. Again, more literal words, “full” means something. It doesn’t mean favored. It means she’s so perfect, she can hold grace. You, me, everybody else, we’re imperfect, we sin, and we lose grace in our imperfections caused by original sin and sin.

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We’re like leaky sieves. You know, God puts the grace in us, but it just doesn’t stick around. And not only that. We can’t hold as much as Our Lady who was perfect. Full of grace! Think He is going to leave her sitting around, she’s precious. If one lost sheep and He’ll go hunt, hunt it down through the whole world. What’s going on with our blessed mother, who is precious to him?

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Death is a punishment to sin this what you know, instead of talking about systemic oppression, I wish that our bishops would remind everybody that there’s systemic original sin that broke the world and it oppresses people and kills them.

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Death… kills them. it doesn’t just make things hard or doesn’t say unkind words. It kills them. Mary, however, was conceived without sin. She.. she is immaculate, and that was you know, it’s Fulton Sheen describes it most beautifully , Father Hardon talks about that, too, because our Lord needed to be born into a perfect vessel. You know, we could go wayyy on that, but so she didn’t die.

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You know, the East calls this feast Dormition. They emphasized that part, that she didn’t die. She fell asleep. Now, where did they get that? They got that from the Apostles, right? I mean, it’s like this didn’t make this stuff up. And I mean, you know, it’s it’s not like, uh oh, they got it wrong or they’re playing telephone tag, all the modernist errors that try to diminish the literal meaning of these things.

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We used to call it the Dormition in the West, too. You still see that word around, but there’s more of a since the declaration of. It, there is more of an emphasis on the assumption that Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul. We got to wait till final judgment for that for us. Mary could go right then and because she’s precious. Our Lord. In your state of grace, He loves you, He’d hunt the whole world for you, you’re precious to Him, too. But His Mother? think about that.

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So something fantastic happened. Literally not fantasizing it. But Mary shows us the way it’s what Father Hardon talks about with this feast, she shows us the way. And so she’s the little resurrection she’s brought to heaven the way Our Lord was. And what does she tell us to do? She tells us, do as He tells us. What does He say to do? “Follow me, and I’ll take you to heaven.” So there’s Mary being the way, right there, showing us the way.

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Let’s talk about what this means, though, that precious precious to Our Lord. And this real stuff that happens. When our when Our Lady fell asleep, the Apostles- you know… whatdy… At least the way tradition has it, and I mean this literally. They did what they thought they had, the funeral they had her on a funeral bier. They had a procession. In the course of that procession, a Jew that lived there and Ephesus was angered by the whole thing, ran up to the funeral bier, and wanted to topple it.

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As his hands touched the funeral bier, an angel appeared with a sword and sliced his hands off.

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Now, I always hate that, that uh… you know, when you read about this account from uh.. Western bloggers or modern Catholics — you read the Orthodox and they just say: that’s what it is. They get it. That’s literal.

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You know, Western people we have to present, you know, for some reason, they think that everybody in the early centuries wore a bike helmet, and drooled on themselves. You know, we treat these people like they were idiots. They weren’t, though. They saw this. *** , you know, the apostles had seen angels before, the angels at the tomb, they were angels that showed up to do things. In the acts of the apostles are angels that do stuff.

for some reason, they think that everybody in the early centuries wore a bike helmet, and drooled on themselves.

You know, we treat these people like they were idiots. They weren’t, though.

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We we’ve been lulled asleep in the 20th century into thinking that these things aren’t real. They are! They are. You know.

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Western bloggers, modern Catholics like to say, “Oh, that’s the legend of tradition.” You know, “it’s a fable, it’s it’s a Grimm’s fairy tale.” No, it happened. It happened. It was passed on in tradition, uhhh… you know, deal with it.

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An angel showed up and I’m going to give you more examples of this, that things precious to Our Lord…

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If you have something precious to you, what do you do about it: when it’s threatened? when something needs attention?

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You know. “Legends”, it sounds like marketing talked, right, “legendary taste”, you know, so people put it in that. That’s what I mean about fantasizing the language. I want to snap out of it and get to something real here. Yes, that really happened.

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Our Apostles love the Blessed mother. They were trying to do something when she fell asleep. They have this funeral thing. Some guy tried to do it … And the angels got so ticked off they came to slice the guy’s hands off. That’s key.

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You know. Think about this in the Old Testament, it’s not the first time something like this happens, but, you know, let’s go to that book of myths, you know, that they tell us need some historical-critical understanding because, you know, these people at those times didn’t talk like we did. That’s what they tell us, but I believe it.

Angels With Swords in the Old Testament (they tell us it’s all myth)

Balaam and the Talking Donkey

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There’s some things that just don’t… you really don’t need to be like in modern talk to understand, and it’s like. One’s the story of Balaam. In the Old Testament, the king hates Israel and he hires the world’s magician to go over there and put a curse, you know, cast a spell, cursing Israel. On his way there, he’s pa- he’s going in this past between mountains, riding an ass, he’s on his donkey, the donkey stops and it makes a sudden movement backwards and gets Balaam’s leg caught between him in the gorge.

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Balaam starts cursing and beating the donkey.

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Then. Only then. The donkey talks to him and says, “Hey, don’t you see that angel?”

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Balaam looks up and there’s an angel with a flaming sword. The angel rebukes Balaam says: “Why do you beat that poor animal? had he not pulled back the way he did, your head would have been taken off with my sword.”

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You see? Balaam figured it out. That Israel was precious to our lord.

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The angels know the things that are precious to our lord, and they do. They do intervene in our world.

Sometimes Our Lord Says It Isn’t Time for Swords, but Don’t think He doesn’t Have Other Times when it is

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Let me give you another example, think about it for a minute, when Our- Our Lord, you know, this idea of swords and it not being time, I think we’ve been in a period of time when it wasn’t time for the angels to do these things.

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Our Lord was precious to St. Peter, and when they came– when the guards came in the garden, what did Peter do? He pulled out his sword and he was going to defend our lord and he cut the ear off. Our Lord healed the ear of the servant, and he told Peter, put that down… in other words, not time for that yet!

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Just a few hours later. You know, people like to try to turn that discourse between Peter and our Lord into pacifism, but what does He telling Pilate? If I hadn’t been handed over to you, My servants would be fighting for my free- for me to be free. In other words, those angels with swords would be here and this would not be an issue. But it wasn’t time for that, Our Lord had something to do. Remember that… that’s the part that kind of blew Pilate out of the water. and he was he was the coward on other things, but Pilate understood what Our Lord was saying.

About that guy at Our Lady’s Funeral…

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People today don’t though — they are asleep to this. They are asleep to this. By the way, that man that the angel came and swoosh took his hands off, he repented. And he converted. And Our Lady had his hands miraculously cured.

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A lot like the ear of Malchus in the garden.

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so… It’s kind of weird, does that terror, that little bit of fright, that sudden realization that “uhh… where do I fit in the grand scheme of things” can bring people to reality, right? We used to call those “come to Jesus” moments. I think down here in the south, they still call it that.

There is a Limit Before the Angel Swings

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You know, the Hussites stormed Poland. There is an icon in Poland. It’s uh…The Blessed Mother holding baby Jesus, Our Lady of CzÄ™stochowa.

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You might heard of it — the black Madonna; you know numerous names; Our Lady, Queen of Poland. And if you look at the icon, you’ll see the two slashes on her face. And it’s pretty well known that that was from the time the Hussites came and they were raiding Jasna Gora and they got the icon out. They were trying to destroy the place and the soldier slashed the uh… the icon on the face and the first two slashes bled. This terrified most of that, the Hussite troops.

Time’s up… the Hussite who went too far despite warning signs, killed on the spot.

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But the one who had been slashing it, trying to destroy the icon, became emboldened and as he went for the third strike. He died. Never hitting the icon. Well, that did it for the rest of the Hussites — they’re like: yeah, just leave that alone! They understood that was precious to God.

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So… even to this day, those scars: they’ve tried… they tried to actually heal the scars on the icon. And uh… they can’t. They’ve tried to cover them up with paint and the scars would show back up. They’ve used this Tempora and wax to try to like, you know, like plaster over it.

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You know, they keep coming back. And I think it’s Our Lady’s way of saying careful. There’s a limit to what the angels will withstand.

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That’s what she was telling us at Fatima, too: you need to do penance, penance for these sinners. Because there’s a limit. It’s not time now. And we know from our lady of Akita that the time’s coming – that’ll end and if it does and people haven’t repented, this time’s over unless we see the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.

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Well, get fire from heaven. It’s not surprising.

Don’t Say that! You’ll get Struck by Lightning!

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You know, and think about it for a minute, I could think of when I was younger and I think some people, I don’t hear it as often, but I can think through the years, I’ve definitely heard of people that would be — without apprehension –Don’t say that you’ll get struck by lightning! You heard that before, right? You heard that recently. Maybe. I think you’re still people that think that way… for good reason.

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There’s anecdotes about stuff like that happening: People being struck by lightning for blaspheming or doing other things. And you know, they always blame it on our Lord, like our lord sitting up there and blasts them.

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I think it’s the angels. They are just like: Hey, uhh… No! you don’t say that! bam!.

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But we haven’t seen as much of that, and I don’t think it’s because it’s not true. I think it was a time of mercy. And that terrifying sinners that, you know, I mentioned St. Alphonsus Liguori earlier… we just had his uhh… his feast day. He said that people he wrote a thing on the curse of sinners, and he was pretty much criticized for being too harsh.

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And he said, no, you know, it’s good to terrify sinners that they… because otherwise they fear nothing. mmm. hmmmm…. He was kind of right, because it seems we’re in an age where people don’t understand how precious things are to our Lord. They don’t fear our Lord. Or what’s right.

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And I even kind of got the feeling with that when uh… and I think the angels have had enough, but I think our… our Blessed Mother has been holding them back, saying, “No, it’s not time yet.”

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Kind of like our lord to St. Peter: “No, it’s not time for that.” You know, let’s see if they change.

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So… think about this: you know, they try to destroy images of Our Lady recently. The protesters… I know I saw an image, a statue of Our Lady, and that was they had been spray painted on it, “IDOL” on the front. And when I saw. I thought, “Wow, those people that did that, they don’t realize.”

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Angels with swords. Lightning. And if they hadn’t been, it made me say a preparation for them, because it made me realize they got spared. It’s not that those angels wouldn’t do that. It’s that it wasn’t time.

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I’m going to tell you why I think we’re kind of at the edge of that time. Things are changing. So, you know, maybe you’ve been around somebody said something and they didn’t get struck by lightning because maybe they’ll repent later, only God knows in those things.

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But I think overall times are changing.

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The Hagia Sophia. The pride of Constantinople and all, Byzantium. It was the largest church in the world for the longest time. Dedicated to our Blessed Mother. Here we are on the feast of it. But you know, President Erdogan there in Turkey, uh… I don’t know if he’s trying to re… People say he’s trying to remake the Ottoman Empire. And that’s not quite right. I don’t know what he’s doing. But he decided that the Hagia Sophia was going to be a mosque again, you know, the detente position had been it’d be a museum, but, you know, I guess to rally the troops, to get things going again, they were going to make it a mosque.

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Then it started happening. Now, in order for it to be a mosque, they have to cover the iconography inside. So a worker had been sent up to cover, you know, icons that were up in the dome and he fell. Died.

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Then they had this ceremony where, you know, celebrating the I guess they’re trying to commemorate the reopening of the mosque. So they got another hit, 3000 people contracted coronavirus … well… they call it “coronavirus”, but 3000 people got like deathly ill — that went to that.

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You know, there’s a redneck guy, “there’s your sign!”

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and that one was still wasn’t good enough, so they still went on with making it the mosque the “mufti” — I’ve seen — I’m not sure if that’s the right name — but some of the news calls him the “mufti.” The mufti who would make the Moslem call of prayer from the minarets around the Hagia Sofia, yeah, he died of a heart attack.

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I take the hint is, ow, oh oh oh oh between I missed the best part. Between the celebration thing and when they started calling for prayer, they put up ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood flags and Taliban stuff in there. In other words, they were turning it into — this church that was dedicated to Our Lady — They’re turning it into stuff for ISIS and the Taliban. That… is the part… I wanted to point out.

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There’s something… The Angels er…Didn’t want that. Because our Blessed Mother is precious, this church dedicated to her.

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Maybe in mercy, they could tolerate actual prayer, but to turn the Hagia Sophia, this place consecrated to Our Lady. That wasn’t wasn’t happening.

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The first sign was the worker that was going to cover her icon up fell to the ground and was dead.

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Second sign: people coming to celebrate this at this “celebration function” — they all get deathly ill.

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Then these flags and stuff come up, supporting everything, you know, they didn’t get the hint.

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So then the guy, the cleric who is supposed to be calling prayer for them — suddenly dies of a heart attack.

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Yep, they closed the Hagia Sophia. At least… it took them more than it should have. But they got the idea: This is precious to our Lord, don’t mess with it.

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And that’s what I’m saying, I think times are changing and here we are in the feast of the assumption we should do it with Father Hardon pointed out: prayer, offer penance, make acts of penance for poor sinners because I…I don’t revel in the idea of angels with swords taking care of business, but I think we’re going to be seeing some more of it unless we start praying some more.

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So let’s say a prayer, but a prayer to the Blessed Mother:

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Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit to the womb, Jesus,

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Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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Stay tuned. Next time, we will be talking about fantasies and the ideas of Hell. St. Alphonsus Liguori, St.. Maximillian Kolbe. We’ll gonna wrap up a lot of these August saints and around the idea of: should we be taking these things literally? Or or fantasizing them? Is hell, just a legend? You know, we hear that today. Well, the church never taught anybody’s gone there. Our Blessed Mother did. Think about that. That’s pretty scary to me!

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Think about what we just talked about. [angels whacking errant people]. And then think about prelates in the church when our lady showed up at Fatima, and said, to these little children — gave them a vision of Hell.

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They say, “oh, you don’t have to believe that… that’s just private revelation.” I don’t think that’s going to go well. I think we need to pray for these people, but stay tuned.

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Next episode – it’ll come up and within a week and we’ll talk about all that.

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Hell is real and people can go there. We pray, we follow our lord so that we don’t. And we follow the example of Our Blessed Mother and ask for her intercession so that not only that we don’t, but that sinners won’t and that She can bring those lost souls to our Lord.

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Our lady of the Assumption, pray for us!

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You’ve been listening to the Bellarmine Forum Podcast, a production of the Bellarmine Forum, a non-profit public charity founded in 1965 on the heels of Vatican II to be an enclave of confusion free Catholicism — cutting through the confusion, smoke of Satan, and the errors and empty promises that are so rampant today from secular humanist Marxists, the errors of Russia, and everything our lady of Fatima warned us about. To remind you to say your daily rosary.

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This program is made possible through an anonymous benefactor who asks you to say your rosary daily.

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This program is distributed for the greater glory of God and the honor the blessed mother, Amen.


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John B. Manos, Esq. is an attorney and chemical engineer. He has a dog, Fyo, and likes photography, astronomy, and dusty old books published by Benziger Brothers. He is the President of the Bellarmine Forum.