Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Iraq: day of the dead, again


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' . . .

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

If past history is of any guide, when bombs were

blasted 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