Zac's Last Stand

Judging by the emptiness of the churches these days, sad to say, prayer is no longer something on people's agenda.

The churches are unwanted by the locals whose forebears built them.

Who needs a church now that we're "ecumenical" and we all know everybody goes to Heaven, right?

Emptied by scandals, or by a false sense of security, or the other side of the coin, despair, the churches today are their own tomb, for lack of a priest, or rather for the priest's distracted absence doing ... whatever ... fiddling while Rome burns.

Where in the world is God? Where is God in today's God-forsaken churches? Has the good Lord abandoned mankind to his own devices?

Not for old Zac. Zac reminds me of the Essene woman of the Gospel: "Anna, a prophetess...84 years a widow, who departing not from the Temple, served by fastings and prayers, night and day." For more about the Essenes see below.

Zac is short for Zachary or Zachariah and it means memory and also alludes to the last times for the world because the Old Testament prophet Zachariah wrote about the last days. Read the Book of Zachariah and you'll see.

"And they shall say to Him: What are these wounds in the midst of Your hands? And He shall say to them: With these I was wounded in the house of them that loved Me. Awake, O sword, against My shepherd and against the man that cleaves to Me, says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn My hand to the little ones."

Who will deny that the shepherds have been struck with madness now and the little ones are all at God's mercy?

The memory word-stem Zac is found in the Hebrew word Azakarah or Azkara, meaning the Memorial Sacrifice, inadequately translated in English Bibles as commemoration or memorial or remembrance.

From that word for memory also came the name, the Ezkarenes, from which evolved the shorter word Essene.

Religion is for us, the people, but not about us, as misguided modern priests allege, and then wonder why they have lost their congregations.

True religion is about our remembrancing God in the strikingly evocative ritual way that he himself specified to his Apostles in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension.

How he did this is well depicted in the book that inspired Mel Gibson to film The Passion of the Christ: Anne Catherine Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. See below.

Jesus, friend and relative of the Essenes, confounded the rich, proud and nationalistic Judean Pharisees, and the unbelieving deists or agnostics, called the Sadducees, and the Levites of the Temple, with one question. Whose son is the Messiah? And they all answered the Son of David. Then why does David call him Lord? As in the Psalm, The Lord said to my Lord. The reason the Son of David is greater than David and he calls him Lord is because he is God. How does God come to us as a man and a son of David? Through the most pure Mary ever-Virgin.

The extended family of Mary and John the Baptist were mostly Essenes. The key to understanding the Essenes is that they were the most purist, devout and faithful of the Hebrews, building their lives around waiting in expectation of the Messiah.

This Messiah would not be a conquering soldier who would take over the Roman Empire and become world leader from Jerusalem as capital. Rather "my kingdom is not of this world."

God in human form would say, "Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart," and he would suffer to give us this lesson in humility and obedience, for his trouble being killed by us. This sin of all sins he used to redeem us.

This God-man was predicted by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 9 and immortalized in the Messiah oratorio of Handel.

"For unto us a child is born, and unto to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

Zac also reminds me of Mary Magdalen on that Resurrection morn: "Woman, why are you weeping?" "Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him." See below for an imaginative account of the first time Magdalene laid eyes on Jesus.

If Zac won the lottery, he'd give the money to the same Timor village he sends part of his fortnightly pension.

Call him eccentric, call him quixotic, there he is, day in day out, keeping the doors of the local church open, inviting victims of the daily crisis to replenish the soul and mend the heart with heavenly help.

"Come to me all you that labour and are burdened and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden light."