Residents lift pictures of victims killed in an attack on the Our Lady of Salvation church, during a funeral at St. Joseph Chaldean church in Baghdad. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
On this All Souls Day, I snatched a moment from local political concerns to attend to stories of the terrible massacre at Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad. Fifty-eight Iraqis died -- one more horrible episode in the destruction of one of the world's oldest religiously diverse nations.
I was reminded of this passage from Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, an epic history about which I plan to write more in the future.
In the Syrian Churches, principally the Church known as the Church of the East ... but also parts of the Church which over the centuries have accepted the authority of the Catholic Church of the West, there remains a regularly used form of prayer for the Eucharist which is the most reliably ancient of any in Christianity. Today this prayer is the heart of a structure of eucharistic worship for the Church's year and for ceremonies such as baptism and ordination ... Nothing else preserved from anywhere in the Christian world has survived the austere scrutiny of modern liturgical scholars, to be authenticated as a form of worship that would have been familiar to very early Christians week by week.
It is a rare privilege to have been welcomed as I was to a congregation of exiled Christians from Baghdad in their refuge in Damascus, still mourning those murdered in the latest agonies of the Syriac Church, and to know that words were being solemnly sung as [they were] so many centuries ago ...
Your majesty, O Lord, a thousand thousand heavenly beings worship, and myriad myriads of angels, hosts of spiritual beings, ministers of fire and spirit with cherubim and holy seraphim, glorify your name, crying out and glorifying, 'Holy, holy, holy, God almighty, Heaven and earth are full of his glories' . . .
No doubt this atrocity was committed in the name of God. It should make us skeptical whenever anyone claims to act on any deity's behalf.
ReplyDeleteIf past history is of any guide, when bombs were
ReplyDeleteblasted inside Iraq's synagogues, Egypt's public
libraries, streets and hotels, when the USS Liberty was
attacked and the US military men were killed, when
ships carrying Jewish refugee at Haifa harbour was
bombed and innocent men, women and children were
killed, the immediate reaction was "Muslim extremist
terror'. But later from books written by a former
Mossad agent (e.g. "By way of Deception" ) as well as
books written by the culprits who bombed Iraq's
synagogue, we learned that these were Israel's acts of
terror designed to implicate and incriminate Muslims
and Arabs.
Those who have carried out in-depth analysis of the 911
terror attack have sufficient reason and evidence to
believe it may have been the work Israel's Mossad and
inside traitors. Many high ranking US military
officials believe so.
Similarly, most of the terror attacks blamed on Muslims
and Arabs seem to have Mossad's involvement. An honest,
independent, international inquiry into the USS Liberty
bombing and other terror attacks is almost impossible
because of the media control and the powerful Israel
lobby in the USA and the Zionist iron grip on other
western governments.
There is an urge to blame Muslims and Arabs. Christians
and Arabs / Muslims have lived in harmony for
centuries. We do not know for a fact who the culprits
are. When the truth comes out, if ever, it may surprise
most gullible enough to believe media stores, except
those who have the knowledge of history and patience to
wait to know the facts.
For more info, visit:
http://thecanadafreepress.blogspot.com/2008/08/missing
-information.html