Posted on 02/23/2015 1:25:20 PM PST by NYer
The mass martyrdoms we are seeing in the Middle East will be followed, as they always are, by a remarkable rise of Christianity that will change the course of history.
St. John Paul the prophet said so.
“The Church has become once again a Church of martyrs,” he said, as he looked ahead at the coming of the Third Millennium of Christianity.
Then, as the new millennium dawned, he recalled how the blood of the martyrs had built the early Church despite the “trials of history.”
“Will this not also be the case of the century and millennium now beginning?” he asked.
It absolutely will. The blood of the martyrs has always and will always bring renewal, for reasons both prosaic and profound.
For one thing, martyrdom paints an unmatchable picture of the horror of the enemies of Christ and the beauty of Christianity.
Compare the stories coming out of Al Alour, Egypt to the angry Jihadists who kidnapped and beheaded more than a dozen men from that village.
Sophia Jones at Huffington Post and Ian Lee and Jethro Mullen at CNN have collected stories of the newest Egyptian martyrs of ISIS.
Al Alour was an impoverished town, and the men who died were laborers.
Jones tells the story of Hani Abdel Messihah, 32, who leaves behind four children — three girls and a boy — and a wife who remembered him as “gentle and kind.”
“He took care of all of us. He gave us hugs and kisses,” she said. “There was a prayer in anything he said.”
Yousef Shoukry was a 24-year-old Coptic Christian who went to Libya for work despite the danger there. He said he wasn’t afraid because God was with him. His big brother Shenouda had high praise for his brother: “He lived according to the book. I can't remember something he did wrong.”
The Christians in these articles are described by their relatives in very human terms: “Very sweet”, “easily embarrassed," “happiest being with his family and kids.”
You can hear in their stories the echoes of the first millennium of martyrs: “See how they loved each other.”
It’s a harsh contrast with the call in September from ISIS spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, telling followers to find a disbeliever in Islam and: “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”
That is the first thing that martyrs do: They show the world that we are a people of love, standing against hatred. Love wins that fight every time. Decisively.
But apart from demonstrating that contrast, these martyrdoms directly strengthen the followers of Jesus Christ.
The greatest scandal in the history of the Church has been the disunity of Christians, tearing apart the body of Christ and weakening our witness. When the heirs to the truth of Christ began proclaiming vastly different doctrines, skepticism and relativism quickly followed.
Martyrdom unites the Church like nothing else.
Pope Francis stressed the “ecumenism of blood” when he spoke about the Egyptian martyrs.
“Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’ They were killed simply because they were Christians,” he said. “It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ.”
We finally find we can stand together when we have to stand at the foot of the cross — and the cross is the ultimate reason that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” in Tertullian’s phrase.
The Middle East will soon learn the lesson that the atheist communists learned after they attempted to destroy the faith in their countries. The faith is rising in Eastern Europe even as it sets in the West.
It is the logic of the cross: Faith, hope and love grow stronger by sacrifice. When our brothers and sisters die for their faith, we remember that we can’t live without it.
The heroic witness of the Egyptian martyrs is already having this effect.
Yousef Shoukry’s brother Shenouda watched the video of his brother’s martyrdom.
“I saw that he had strength in his last moments,” Jones reports the 27-year-old man saying, adding that he saw “a heavenly light shining on his brother’s face, even after he was decapitated.”
“That consoled me,” said Shenouda.
CNN reports that Mina Aziz’s brother Hana took solace in the video, too.
“To the last moment, the name of Jesus was on their lips,” he says. “As they were being martyred, they were calling God's name, saying, 'God, have mercy on us.' The entire village is proud.”
The entire Church is proud.
“The historical events linked to the figure of Constantine the Great could never have ensured the development of the Church as it occurred during the first millennium if it had not been for the seeds sown by the martyrs,” said St. John Paul II.
“In our own century the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless, unknown soldiers as it were of God's great cause. As far as possible, their witness should not be lost to the Church.”
Their witness will not be lost. The Church will rise up stronger from their sacrifice.
We will show the world once again that love conquers death.
Ping!
The Church will grow where it is being persecuted.
This should not cause whooping and hollering here in America—even though we are suffering SOME persecution.
Our apostate, pro-abortion bishops (Wuerl, Dolan, O’Malley, Cupich, Chaput, Gomez, DiNardo, and most other) insist on giving abortionists Communion, clearly sending the message that abortion is not a sin or a crime. These bishops will do all they can to guarantee that the Church in America will grow weaker and weaker, capitulating to the pagans in the government at every opportunity.
They are just hardening our resolve and allowing us to see what true evil looks like.
I disagree that ISIS attacks will grow the Christianity. It doesn’t take a Christian to recognize the difference between good and evil.
Until the Christian church grows a spine of steel, the current rampage by ISIS will go like the original Islamic rampage 630-732AD: 100 years from Medina, to the West coast of Africa, to Turkey, to Spain. While the church turns the other cheek, pretending love will conquer death as they did long ago, Western civilization will again turn ashes and dust under the relentless and brutal Islamic scourge.
There are no moderate or radical muslims, only muslims, only one form of Islam - no other, not now, not ever, unchanging. Pretend all you want, but be prepared to submit, to become a dhimmi, to pay the Islamic tax, to have your daughters once again populate muslim harems ... or die.
Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret, by Dr Bill Warner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y
For every bishop you named, there are more than double that number who have devoted themselves in service to the Lord through their dioceses and eparchies. This is the season of Lent. Perhaps you can use this time to pray for those with whom you disagree and offer encouragement to those whom you support.
Muslims in Egypt and Jordan for example are very disgusted by the carnage.
Some thought the Romans could never convert. But the savage treatment of the Christians helped to accomplish a revival.
Me too. Islam is one of the few groups that has dealt effectively with Christians in the past, far better than communism did. Dhimmitude and death together along with sharia law is a terrible combination that Christians have not been able to deal with without overwhelming force.
I don't believe there has been a country that has had Christianity stage a come back once Islam conquered it, that is unless it was taken back entirely by force and threw the Islamists out. Spain did that long ago, it may be the only way.
For every bishop I named, there are twenty others who insist on giving Communion to abortionists like Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, etc. Only about fifteen bishops in the U.S. are not doing so.
The USCCB voted to adopt a document (Catholics in Political Life) in 2004 that says that a bishop may “legitimately” give Communion to abortionists.
The problem is that giving Communion to abortionists is always a mortal sin.
That is, the MAJORITY of the bishops voted to give themselves permission to commit mortal sin. And it’s a mortal sin that is eating the heart out of the Church in America, because it means that the laity who are resisting abortion are on their own, without support from most bishops.
Love your church and its message of peace and love and the words of Jesus OR Bend your back to Mecca and become a Muslim—OR Be beheaded, burned alive, raped, Nailed to a cross, or be thrown from a tall building. Your Choice!
AMEN!
“The blood of the Christian martyrs is the SEEDS for new Christian believers”. Always was, always is, always will be.
.....Or pay the oppressive jizyra tax in order to practice your Christian faith, but with restrictions.
.....And what is happening now could plant the seeds for a new world war. We may be on the cusp of it.
We are dealing with a religion based on a god who was as Jesus said is “ a liar, a thief, and a murderer from the begining.”
......Or fight back, which will more likely happen.
But these guys mean it. They are already putting 5-year-olds in "Mohammed Youth" training camps.
This article almost makes it sound like there is some sacred beauty in being lead like lambs to the slaughter. Pacifist Christians joyfully having their blood spilled for the glory of the Kingdom. I will fight to my last breath before I allow some savage to saw my head off.
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