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The Church's Unbroken Continuum
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| We're living in days of alienation. | |
| In the name of peace, we wage war on each other. | |
| In the name of honor, we smear the other side. | |
| And with broken families, broken hopes, and broken morality, we are estranged even from ourselves. | |
| We're in search of a country, a country great again, but the sins of the past have come back to haunt us. | |
| Best to look forward to the world to come. | |
| It's found in the Church, our true country, whose borders are marked by transformation and rebirth. | |
| Nothing pie in the sky about it. | |
| The Church is the embassy on earth of the heavenly Jerusalem above. | |
| Here the Lord Jesus Christ is present on His throne, not absent from the world at all. | |
| We breathe a different air here, where heaven joins earth, transfigures it, and unites humanity with divinity. | |
| No fake news here, but good news of forgiveness of sins and fellowship with the saints. | |
| And we go within to the Kingdom of God inside us, birthed by baptism, watered in prayer, and nourished through Holy Communion. | |
| We savour the Lord's Supper, not fast food for the masses. | |
| It is served not by robots, but by the successors of the Apostles, of which the Orthodox Church enjoys an unbroken continuum. | |
| It's been said that a country's culture resides in the hearts of its people. | |
| Rediscovered in Russia, where a Christian culture ripens within the hearts of both rulers and the ruled, while a culture of division and animosity splinters any shred of unity that's left in America. | |
| And when once upon a time December was a month of joy in America, we're stuck with Hanukkah menorahs that unites synagogue with state and denies the birth of Jesus Christ. | |
| The Maccabees without the Messiah only means wars and rumors of wars for the Jews. | |
| But the citizens of the church, with Christ's birth in their hearts, celebrate and taste of God's kingdom to come. | |
| We have an altar, Christ's own festal table, whereof they have no right to eat who await a sham Jewish temple, awash in stinking animal sacrifices that has no priesthood, no atonement. | |
| For without a priesthood, Jewish worship is worthless. | |
| But the church's priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek, foretold by the prophet David with Christ as high priest. | |
| Where the apostles' successors of bishops accomplished the new covenant sacrifice. | |
| I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God, the psalmist said, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. | |
| America has fallen. | |
| Everyone knows it. | |