(LifeSiteNews) – I woke up from a dream a few mornings ago.
I was at Church for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. At the sign of peace, I stood up without my face mask on and walked up towards the altar, past members of the congregation whose mouths were all masked. I was determined to break the curse of fear over the congregation. I climbed up to the altar to receive the Eucharist from the priest, who was also unmasked, and he smiled.
I have lived these past 23 years in Zurich, Switzerland. These past two years have been heavy and spiritually speaking, oppressive.
An unvaccinated outcast
I refuse to take the abortion-tainted COVID injection because both my inner conscience and reason don’t agree with it. I made a clear discernment back in March 2020 that a spirit of deception was at work, in the midst of all the media-driven coronavirus hysteria and the pantomime of fear that the very bishops of the Church, the custodians of the Apostolic Christian faith, succumbed to. That discernment was reinforced by the coercive rollout of the COVID injections and mandates around the western world since the start of 2021, together with a very personal awareness of the immense harm being done to the health of many. Tragically and perhaps also more worrying is the spiritual damage afflicting the faithful, with so many putting faith and hope in a synthetic chemical injection for the preservation and protection of their own life.
In a manner of speaking, I am an outcast in Switzerland: excluded from restaurants, cafes, hotels, clubs, gyms, and public places, because I do not have a COVID Certificate. I have to sit outside and drink my coffee in the icy cold air. I have come to embrace this hardship as a friend, going for early wintery morning runs in shorts, a running top, and a wooly hat, to the Zurich See, and plunging nearly naked into its icy cold waters for a swim. It’s very good and strengthens my body and soul.
Catholic churches in Switzerland now guarded by COVID bouncers
Some days before Christmas, I went to the 6:00 a.m. candlelit Advent service at St. Peter and St. Paul Kirche, my parish in Zurich. I entered after the service had already started and was asked by a masked gentleman inside the entrance door for a COVID Certificate. I expressed my disappointment that entrance to a service in a Catholic Church required a certificate. I told this gentleman – the “Masked Certificate Checker” – that I would stand alone at the back of the Church by the door. I was adamant that I was not going to leave and was not going to put on a mask.
I have to say, I felt within myself a mixture of anger and sadness for the duration of the service. At Communion time, I was at first reluctant to go. I felt uneasy, but waited until the Masked Certificate Checker went in front of me, then I followed. I reluctantly put my mask on, but then removed it completely as I approached the priest for Communion. The Masked Certificate Checker stood to the right of the priest after he received Communion and watched me. I did not put my mask back on after receiving Communion, but walked to the very back of the Church. About three minutes later, the Masked Certificate Checker walked up to me as I was praying and remonstrated, saying, “Shame on you, shame. You did not wear a mask when all the people were masked. You come in here without a COVID Certificate. Shame, shame on you.”
I remained praying another minute, then left.
This is the parish where I have worshiped each day of the week for the past 10 years. I don’t recall seeing the Masked Certificate Checker at any of the early morning services. What is going on? Am I having a bad dream? If this is the true Catholic Church, I no longer wish to be a part of it because it’s foreign to my spirit.
But then I thought for a few moments about the last two years, the unthinkable shuttering of Church services during the pandemic saga. Maybe it’s not a bad dream but a reflection of a sad reality. I witnessed again a few days after Christmas at Liebfrauen Kirche in Zurich, before the start of the Saturday evening service, a confused elderly gentleman being told to leave the main Church by a man resembling a masked nightclub bouncer, because he did not have a COVID Certificate. On this occasion I decided to leave to preserve my own inner peace.
I wrote these opening lines when my emotions were still rolling a few weeks ago. I wish I could smile, laugh it off. But as hard as I try, being asked to show a digital certificate to participate in what is holy and sacred in a Catholic church deeply troubles my soul and agitates my spirit. So please allow me to introduce myself first, explain where I am coming from, to put all in a very personal context. What I am going to write may offend some, but so be it. This is my personal faith witness.
My faith roots
I grew up in a very traditional Anglo-Irish Catholic family with Celtic roots. I did not go to Catholic school but practiced my faith through those teen and university years with a degree of faithfulness. Not perfect, weak in some areas, but I never abandoned the Lord by forsaking the sacraments. At the age of 24, upon completion of a Master’s Degree in engineering, I received a faith illumination, a profound experience of God’s Love, during a solo pilgrimage to Medjugorje. It changed the course of my life, which I then committed to the Lord. Please excuse me if I now boast in Him, unworthy as I am.
I responded with youthful zeal to the grace of that illumination, witnessing to Jesus Christ among my own generation in a very significant way. I was close, very close, in heart and spirit to Pope John Paul II. The Lord had given freely to me, and I wanted to give witness to Him among my own generation, freely in return. The greatest expression of that witness was starting an evangelization initiative, leading young people to encounter the Heart of Jesus through His Gospel of Life and the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Eucharist in many different Catholic parishes and shrines around the world.
The Jesus of the Gospels whom I know
The Jesus of the Gospels, whom I have strived to know more intimately each day, the God-Man Jesus I have encountered face-to-face on my faith journey, emanates through His Divinity absolute power, knowledge and love, from all Eternity. He is complete and whole, lacking nothing in His humanity. As we believe and confess in the Creed, “He was born of the Virgin Mary, and became Man, one like us, in all things except sin.”
In that first moment where the “Word became flesh” (John 1:14) as a human child, born into the poverty of an animal stable, there is complete vulnerability to the outside created world. Where was the institutional Jewish Church of the day to welcome their long-awaited Savior? Only the poor shepherds receive the invitation from the angels, by “Word and Proclamation” (Luke 2:14).
Please excuse me here; they are not handed down certificates from heaven and told to “mask up” for fear of infecting the infant savior and his parents. There are no hand sanitizers at the entrance to the stable, no “Masked Certificate Checker” from the local synagogue. There is nothing in this revelation of our God-Man and Savior Jesus Christ that is outside of our human situation. Every barrier to relationship with Him is broken down; He is freely accessible to all. It is initially the secular and later religious authorities who want to kill Him, who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6) and “Life that was Light for all mankind” (John 1:4).
The COVID Certificate and its use within the Catholic Churches of Worship in this sense is a symbol of the “thief who comes to rob, steal and destroy” (John 10:10).
The Jesus of the Gospels does not hide his face behind a mask, insisting that those who approach Him do likewise. He does not preach the taking of medications to the sick and oppressed, who seek Him out, as a condition for the fulfillment of the commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mathew 22:39). He lays His Hands on the leper, the cripple, the blind, the sick, the demon-possessed, pronouncing His “Word” (Mathew 4:24), bringing both spiritual and physical restoration, health and wholeness. There are no adverse effects from the works that Jesus performs; nothing is tainted. “He has done all things well” (Mark 7:37).
His Apostles don’t walk around the throngs of “lost sheep looking for a shepherd” (Mathew 9:36), requesting “Leprosy Recovery Certificates” bearing Caesar’s head, as a condition for being in the presence of Jesus, to hear Him preach the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), to be fed with the blessed bread and fish (Luke 9:16).
In such a vein, I could continue to walk through each encounter with Jesus in the Gospels, each encounter in the life of the early Church. No masks, no contact tracing, no social distancing, and no vaccine certificates. No fear! Only hope, faith, belief in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal and transform broken repentant humanity, all in the spoken name of “Jesus.”
Alienation
I feel alienated from what I am experiencing in the Swiss Catholic Church with its COVID policy. The Gospel of Life has been stripped of the Divine and Caesar granted rights over what is Sacred and belongs to God alone (Mark 12:17). I know the pain I experience is shared by the faithful in many other countries as well. What will the early Christians and Martyrs of Rome pronounce over those bishops responsible for this sacrilege as they face God on Judgment Day?
Walking into a Church and being confronted by a poster bearing the words “a mask must be worn” – just what profession of faith in Jesus Christ is this? Is He no longer Son of God, only Son of Man? If He is only really a man, then my faith and the sacrifices I have made throughout the years are all in vain. For “We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy one of God” (John 6:69) able to protect us from any virus, if He wills. It’s a sad sight to see Catholics leaving the celebration of the Holy Mass with their faces still covered with a mask.
But most disturbing of all is being requested to show a digital COVID certificate – that is granted on one part through the acceptance of an injection of synthetic RNA chemical into the body – to receive that which is Sacred and Divine. For me this is blasphemy, symbolically too closely linked with the Mark of the Beast of Revelation (Rev 13:16-17). I am a Christian through baptism, marked with the Divine Seal of Christ. I have received through Confirmation the Divine infusion of the Holy Spirit. Woe to me, if I put my faith in some chemical infusion tainted by the murder of innocents to preserve my life! Woe to me, if I accept another identity bearing any other mark than that which I received at baptism to preserve my life! Jesus alone holds the keys of life and death (Rev 1:18). I rather choose to lose my earthly life than that which is Eternal – “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Mathew 16:25).
I am not against medicine that is inspired by the Holy Spirit, respecting the dignity of Life. I am aware that many have lost loved ones over the last two years to COVID. But a harmful tainted injection, tied to a digital certificate, granting the user a new identity, rights, and privileges is not the inspiration and work of the Holy Spirit. This is a play of Satan, the “thief who comes to kill, steal and destroy” (John 10:10). It can have no place in the Christ’s Church.
Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more
In the midst of this ongoing COVID saga, manipulatively used by those in government and economic power, to oppress and take away from peoples of many nations their God-given freedom and human dignity, together with the regrettable and misguided collusion of the Catholic Church hierarchy and those of other Christian denominations, do I see a glimmer of hope on the horizon?
I will not comment on possible political outcomes, but limit my observations to the faith dimension and personal experience. Like many others during the lockdowns, I have suffered the pain of separation from family and loved ones. I did not find the spiritual support I had hoped to find from the local Swiss church, except with a few deeply faith-filled brothers and sisters. This consequence made me lean more on Jesus Christ Himself.
I think spiritually I have become stronger. I also came to know through my outreach to a dear friend in the Vatican, concerning the troubling adverse events with the COVID injections, many wonderful men and women, doctors, scientists, activists, and journalists, all in their own way confronting this satanic abuse of power and assault on the dignity of man.
At a critical junction, the leadership of the Catholic Church took their eyes off the Lord and fearfully looked to the world for solutions. The Word of God, the Promise of the Holy Spirit, and the Sacraments were exchanged for the closing of churches and a toxic tainted injection, linked to a digital certificate bearing “Caesar’s head.”
Something deep within the collective soul of the Body of Christ is now wounded. Without public repentance from the leadership of the Church, the Lord will look for another way to shepherd His flock.
There is now a huge need for a ministry of outreach, healing, and deliverance, to the many millions who are damaged spiritually, emotionally, physically, and economically, by sinful abusive use of power, both secular and religious. Only an outpouring of God’s Love can “make all things new” (Rev 21:5) and heal the deep wounds. Where “sin abounded, grace did more abound” (Romans 5:20).
For those who walk by the Light of the Lord (1 John 1:5-7), there is always hope.