Dear Parishioners and Friends

In the preaching of St. John, the Final Judgment is an inevitable necessity coming upon Israel. The fire of God will burn out everything – this is the message of John!  God reveals the roots of evil like a lumberjack before the last blow of an axe and if these people will not be cut down, everyone will fall like a tree hit by the blade. Some 40 years after preaching these words, Jerusalem’s gates were broken up with the axes of Titus’s legionnaires, and the fires destroyed homes. Josephus describes the mass crucifixion behind the walls of Jerusalem.

In every age, in every generation something gets spoiled and there is no other way but to cut off the parts of the population covered by the gangrene of sin. This happens to the human community and to each of us. How many ends of the world have we experienced already in our life? How many times has our world collapsed like a tree hit by an axe? We asked God hundreds of times: why? Why did your husband pass away, your child, why is your wife seriously ill, why do you get in trouble.  Why does multiple sclerosis come, depression, drunkenness, hatred? Why can we not accept ourselves such as we are while we still play the role of someone else, and we suppress despair? Why can’t we stop the greed, to do wrong, and because of this someone always leaves us? Why does bad luck haunt us, and God seems not to listen to us at all?

St. John gives us the answer: before a lumberjack hits the tree for the last time, he bends over and reveals the roots; he attempts to separate them and the tree.  Evil and misfortune do not appear without reason, and often they are the most deeply hidden in our memory, repressed and hidden by ourselves, rooted in the past, forgotten and trivialized.

In one family a child became sick from a mysterious illness.  The doctor could not heal her, or clearly define the illness. The disease disorganized the family’s life to such an extent that no one could control anything. It turned out that a few years earlier, the parents, a young couple, were interested in occult medicine practices. First, they practiced on their friends for fun and quickly gained fame. They felt the satisfaction because of the control of supernatural forces, and even more, because of the admiration of people that surrounded them. They felt superiority over the others. In the hidden labyrinths of their souls was a sick desire to dominate over others, even at the cost of signing a covenant with the forces of darkness. We all should deeply discern and pray before any decision we make, so we will not start to serve foreign gods or even the devil. The stakes are great. After all, your eternity, could be mindlessly lost. God Bless You!