Remember the Iraqi Catholic Martyrs: Send a Letter and Your Prayers

Last Sunday, one week after the attack at Our Lady of Salvation, the people who worship there went back. But it wasn't like before. And it wasn't like just walking into this church today. They had to walk past police barricades and military trucks. They had to pass a security checkpoint and be frisked for weapons. But, incredibly, they went back. They had to. They walked into a sanctuary pock-marked by bullet holes, with bloodstains on the ceiling, bloody palm prints on the walls. They removed the pews. And they set out candles in the shape of a giant cross. A woman with a bandage around her knee told a reporter, "We forgive them. We're not afraid. They gave us blood and we give them forgiveness." 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (Catholic Online) - I came across this today and I had to share it with our readers.  At Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Iraq two weeks ago, our brothers and sisters in Christ were slaughtered at the hands of terrorists while they attended Mass.

I suffer nothing at all by attending Mass here in America.  Sunday or any day of the week I want, I go to Mass without fear and in complete peace.  I haven't a clue what it means to choose to worship the Lord at risk of my life.  And astonishingly, the saints of Our Lady of Salvation keep coming back, despite the threat of bullets.
 
"Last Sunday, one week after the attack at Our Lady of Salvation, the people who worship there went back. But it wasn't like before. And it wasn't like just walking into this church today. They had to walk past police barricades and military trucks. They had to pass a security checkpoint and be frisked for weapons. But, incredibly, they went back. They had to. They walked into a sanctuary pock-marked by bullet holes, with bloodstains on the ceiling, bloody palm prints on the walls. They removed the pews. And they set out candles in the shape of a giant cross."

"One of the parishioners put it so simply, and so beautifully. He said that he returned because the week before he hadn't finished his prayers. I need to finish them, he said. A woman with a bandage around her knee told a reporter, "We forgive them. We're not afraid. They gave us blood and we give them forgiveness."

I couldn't possibly say it better than Deacon Greg Kandra did, so please do read his entire homily.

Then take a minute today and write a letter to the suffering Church in Iraq. 

The Nuncio at the United Nations has offered his diplomatic mail pouch to deliver messages to the Christians in Iraq from their brothers and sisters in the U.S.  Letters must be sent to him by Tuesday night at this address:  His Beatitude Emmanuel Delli, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad at tonuncio@gmail.com.  He will print out all the letters he receives and put them in the pouch.

"They gave us blood and we give them forgiveness."

May we not forget them, the modern martyrs of the Church.

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Jennifer Hartline is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

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