By Theodore Shoebat
Muslim terrorists in Syria told Christians to submit to Islam and to Muhammad. When the Christians refused the Islamic thugs slaughtered all of them. According to one report:
Reports are emerging of the killing of Syrian Christians by Islamic State militants in the town of al-Qaryatain.
The town was retaken by Russian-backed Syrian forces and their allies earlier in the week.
Some 21 Christians were murdered when almost 300 Christians remained in the city after IS captured it last August, said the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church.
They included three women, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II told the BBC.
He said some died whilst trying to escape while the others were killed for breaking the terms of their “dhimmi contracts”, which require them to submit to the rule of Islam.
Five more Christians are still missing, believed dead. Negotiations and the payment of ransoms have seen the remainder of the group re-join their families.
The patriarch said warnings had come that Islamic State planned to sell Christian girls into slavery.
But despite the murders, he said restoring harmony among faiths remained his goal.
“We lived this situation for centuries, we learned how to respect each other, we learned how to live with each other,” said the patriarch. “We can live together again, if we are left alone by others.”
The town is now utterly devastated, with street after street and building after building – including a 1,500-year-old Catholic monastery – in ruins.
I remember one day, back in 2013, I
approached a priest and told him about our organization, Rescue
Christians, and how we were conducting rescue missions for Christians in
Pakistan. I exhorted him that we needed to inform his congregation on
this cause. He asked me if I could bring in some pamphlets on the rescue
team, and I gladly agreed to bring some. I returned back to him with
100 pamphlets, and asked him if he could spare some time so that I could
explain to him the full details on the operation. He said, “Come back
to me next month. I am running a school and would be too busy.” I
replied, “Well since we are here, we can talk for about 15 minutes and I
could just explain it to you.” He, in a somewhat rude tone, said: “I’ve
been up since 6 AM, I want to go to sleep!”
There was another priest in the room. I
pointed to him and asked, “Well, he’s here, can I talk with him?” “He’s
leaving too!” said the priest. There was another priest in the room and I
again pointed to him and said, “What about him?” “We’re all leaving!”
was his response.
He began to walk away and I followed him,
still holding my box of pamphlets. “You know, we must do what it says
in Matthew 25. ‘I was hungry and you fed me; thirsty and you gave me
drink; I was in prison and you visited me.’ Christ was speaking of the
persecuted. Our salvation depends on what we do for the persecuted.”
At this point the priest snapped. He quickly turned around and pounded his finger on the box of pamphlets and loudly said:
“My salvation is based on Jesus Christ! Not your cause, young man!”
I left the room, somewhat melancholic.
But as I look back at this story, I learn from it a kernel of truth that
is more beautiful than anything that you can learn of this world. It is
true, our salvation only comes from Christ, but to tend to the
persecuted is to worship Christ; to come to his crucified brethren, is
to come to Christ. To give aid to the persecuted, is to unite with Christ. For Christ says:
“Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)
To be persecuted is to have union with
Christ, and to help the persecuted is to be in Christ, because you are
revering a wounded fighter who is himself one with God.
When the Christian is persecuted, the flames of zeal are
increased, and he has union with Christ. When you look upon a Christian
who has caused the heathen to rage, who bears wounds inflicted by the
servants of the devil, you see Love, you see Christ. God is Love, as the Revelator tells us, and “There is no fear in love” (1 John 4:18).
And so when the Christian is oppressed, placed on the
gibbet of torture, scoffed and beaten, tormented and killed, he
exemplifies pure love, he is absorbed in Love, that is, he is absorbed
in God. “If we love one another,” writes St. John, “God abides in us,
and His love has been perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12) And no greater
love is there, “than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John
15:3)
There is no death greater than that of
Christ, for in His sacrifice, death was vanquished. So in His conquest
we too conquer, bearing His image, and emulating His victory. Christ
on the Cross, this is the very image of love, for Christ is Love; the
one who follows this, abides in Love and Love in him.
Thus, God abides in those who suffer and
are killed for the brethren and for the cause of righteousness; He is
unified with them in the divine union. The cross is carried, the soul is
detached from the labyrinth of the world’s pleasures, and the self is
lost and forgotten; one is lost in God, and his soul “magnifies the
Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:46-47). So
connected with eternal life that he forgets earthly life, so he says
with the Apostle, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
(Philippians 1:21)
His self is lost to God, so he can say
with St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who
live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). It is through this
union with God that Paul was able to endure his martyrdom. For
he found peace, through Christ, in suffering for righteousness’ sake,
saying “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in
persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
He is unified with Christ in a divine
confluence, and from this does he receive strength; he does not stumble
before the enemy, but runs the race and endures unto the end, because
being one with Christ, he emulates Christ, saying with Him to the
Father: “not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 42) So great is this union between the persecuted and Christ, that when Paul experienced his revelation, Christ told him:
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4)
Paul never met Christ before the
Resurrection. So how could he have been persecuting Christ if he had
never met Him? Before his vision, Paul saw and met Christ, in the
Christians who he was killing, for they had theosis — they were in the
divine union with Christ. St. Paul killed those who were united and
crucified with Christ, only later to detach himself from the evil he
once fervently followed and to be crucified and in union with the
Savior. St. Paul, in the words of Gregory Palamas, “was that to which he
was united, by which he knew himself, and for which he had detached
himself from all else.” (Palamas, Triads, D, II. iii.37) The union
between those who suffer for God and the One for Whom they suffer, at
times is so sublime that they are carried up to Heaven.
St. Paul being met by Christ
The union between God and Paul was so
great that he was “caught up into Paradise” (2 Corinthians 12:4), and he
suffered for God, having been beaten, rejected and sought for death.
Elijah suffered under the oppressions of Jezebel, and “went up by a
whirlwind into heaven.” (2 Kings 2:11) Enoch prophesied against the ungodly and all their ungodly deeds (Jude
1:15), and he had union with God, for “Enoch walked with God” (Genesis
5:24) and “was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not
found, because God had taken him’” (Hebrews 11:5).
The persecuted Christian is like a strong
tree, not like the one who, when “tribulation or persecution arises
because of the word, immediately he stumbles” (Matthew 13:21), but one
who “bears fruit and produces” (Matthew 13:23) — produces good works
that extend the love of God to humanity. As the holy David, in one of
his most sublime Psalms, wrote:
He does not meditate on the law, but in the law; he mediates in Christ; he is not under the law, but in the law, for he is in Christ, united with Him, the Word by Whom the Father “made all things” (Wisdom 9:1). Christ is the Divine Word of the Father, by Whom the Law was spoken to earth. Christ is Justice, He is Mercy, He is Love — He is the Law of Love. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the persecuted Christian “is truly blessed, because he uses the enemy to help him attain the Good.” And that “he who becomes an utter stranger to the corruption of sin approaches an incorruptible Justice.” (Gregory of Nyssa, The Beatitudes, sermon 8, trans. Hilda C. Graef) The Good, and Justice, is Christ, and He awaits those with arms stretched out, as He was on the Cross, for those who crucified themselves with Him.“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the death of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” (Psalm 1:1-3)
St. Jerome, who was persecuted by the Pelagian heretics, contemplating on God
God spoke the universe into existence,
and His Word was Christ, and by Him all of the cosmos were brought into
being. And so by Him all of justice springs forth, and the holy Law of
Love — in which evil is destroyed and mercy manifested — was brought in
through the Word and by the Word. The same Psalm says that whatsoever
the meditative man does, he shall prosper. What does it mean to prosper? It is not speaking of the enslaving materialism of the “prosperity” heretics who worship Mammon.
No. To truly prosper to is to face death and conquer it. To be prosperous is to follow the Life (John
14:6), and to be as Life when He vanquished death. To prosper is to say
and believe with David, “My soul clings close to you, your right hand
supports me” (Psalm 63:8), and: “I will not be afraid of ten thousands
of people, that have set themselves against me round about.” (Psalm 3:6)
The martyr meditates on the Law of Love,
for he meditates on and in Christ, preferring to be like Him in His
austerity in facing death. Phileas, a martyr who was killed by the
pagans in the 4th century, wrote that the Christians who were killed for
Christ “directed their mental eye to that God who rules over all, and
in their minds preferred death for their religion, and firmly adhered to
their vocation.” (Epistle of Phileas, in Euseb. Eccles. Hist. 8.10)
They meditated on Christ with their mental eye, and being pure in heart (Matthew 5:8), they saw God, just as Stephen saw God in his martyrdom.
The Crucifixion of Christ was the
crucifixion of Love, of Mercy and Justice. And so when we see Christians
being persecuted, we are seeing a war launched by the enemies of life
against Mercy, Justice and Love, for the oppressions are inflicted upon
the images of Christ, the Incarnation of all Virtue. All love is
sacrificial, and so Christ, illustrating the ultimate action of love, is
Love Himself.
God became Humanity, and in becoming
Humanity, His death was on behalf of all humanity; in becoming humanity,
He is the center of humanity, connecting all men together, as one. For
God created mankind at first as one man, to show that mankind was to be
united. But because of Adam’s sin, mankind was struck with disarray.
Christ did not become a man, but Humanity, uniting all men under Him.
Virgin Mary, in whose womb Divinity took upon Humanity
God brought “together in one all things
in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.”
(Ephesians 1:10) God became Man so that man could be like God, and
to be like God is to be like Love, and to emulate the selfless
sacrifice of Christ. “By this we know love, because He laid down His
life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
(1 John 3:16)
When one is unified with Christ, he is
united with Love Himself, and “Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are
killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’”
(Romans 8:35-36) Thus when one is absorbed into the love of God, fear is
struck dead by the sword of Christ, Who is pure Love in Whom there is
no fear. No one can really fully comprehend the unity between Christ and
His persecuted children, one can only behold; one can only strive to
reach this union.
The love between the Father and the Son
is so great that it overflows to us — that is, the Holy Spirit overflows
to us — and through the Spirit we are strengthened, for Stephen was
filled with the Holy Spirit when he endured his martyrdom, and when He
saw God in Heaven. It is the Holy Spirit Who speaks through the
Christians when they are under persecution. For our Lord said:
“You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” (Matthew 10:18-20)
The words that spring from the mouth of
the persecuted are inspired by the Holy Spirit. As the Jews were killing
him, Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit when he said: “Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit” and “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” (Acts
7:59-60) The Cross is the center of life, for in it is true life eternal
found. In the Cross we find ourselves in Christ, becoming one with Him
and the Father through the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit
that one becomes an image of Christ — the God-Man. As St. John of
Damascus wrote:
In being an image of God, one must envision himself nailed on the Sacred Wood with the Holy One, saying with the Apostle, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Christ was crucified, and so for the Cross are we crucified“The Son is image of the Father, and image of the Son is the Spirit, through whom the Christ dwelling in man gives it to him to be the image of God.” (John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, book 1, ch. 13)
When one is in God, he abides within Love
Himself, for God is in him, and “My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our home with him.” (John 14:23) God lives in the
persecuted, and the persecuted live in God; they are one, and “one in
Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17:21) The
world sees the persecuted and believes, for in them do they see God.
From the martyrs — images of Love — is pure love conveyed to us. The
martyrs are candles glimmering the light of God; they are a window into
Heaven, through whom we are pulled, from the inner cries of our soul’s
emptiness, into the presence of God. As the Russian mystic, St. Theophan
the Recluse, wrote on how the martyrs brought people to God:
“The Savior said that unbelievers will not come to believe if they do not see signs. Most of these signs were shown after the Christ the Savior by the Apostles during the first years of Christianity, and then, after them, by the holy martyrs. The striking force of the presence of God’s invisible power often converted entire villages and towns, and was never without fruit. The blood of martyrs truly lies at the foundations of the Church!” (Theophan, Turning the Heart to God, ch. 5, p. 21, trans. Fr. Ken Kaisch & Igumen Ioana Zhiltsov)
Every persecuted Christian is an
imitation of Christ. When They thirst, on account of the heathens
depriving him of water, they thirst as Christ did when He said from the
cross, “I thirst!” (John 19:28) When they are struck, he is struck as
Christ was scourged; their blood is His blood, their wounds are His
wounds, and they say with Paul, “ I bear in my body the marks of the
Lord Jesus.” (Galatians 6:17)
To see the persecuted is to see Christ. They bear the
image of Christ, for they follow Him in His footsteps. St. Paul
succinctly wrote: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” (1
Corinthians 11:1) And St. John wrote:
“He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.” (1 John 2:6)
Christ died, to teach us how to live. He
died on the cross to bring us to the awareness that this life itself is a
crucifixion, and that that crucifixion is a war — to conquer fear, to
conquer evil, to conquer death — that in death we find eternity; that in
fear we find strength, that in evil we see nothing but that which is
worthy of righteous destruction. As St. John wrote: “For this purpose
the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the
devil.” (1 John 3:8)
Let those who have died in the flesh,
bring to death that which is evil, and which corrupts the society with
the worship of death; let those who are fearless before death, destroy
the cults of death! The 13th
century monk, Humbert of Romans, wrote that what indicated the
crusaders’ willingness to endure travails in battle was their carrying
of the Cross, since the Crucifixion itself was a battle between good and
evil:
“It is just that we wear [Christ’s] cross on our shoulders because of him, having it not only in our heart through faith and in our mouth through confession, but also in our body through the endurance of pain.” (Quoted in Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, ch. 7, p. 184)
King David said:
“God has broken through my enemies by my hand like a breakthrough of water.” (1 Chronicles 14:11)
God works through His Church to fight His
enemies, be it in the form of teaching and exclaiming woes against
evils, or in the form of the sword — and in this battle there are
martyrs. But in the midst of these battles there is union, between the
fighter and his Eternal General, for “he who is joined to the Lord is
one spirit with Him.” (1 Corinthians 6:17)
The warrior runs the race, and God is with him — he in God
and God in him — and even when the knife is on his neck, when the gun
is pointed to his head, he his nailed onto the cross with Christ, with
arms stretched out embracing him as a father embraces his son. When
martyrdom comes, he is with Christ, his head being adorned with the
crown of glory, and it is here where he eternally is in the Beatific
Vision. His fleshly life is cut off — but he was so lost in God that he
“crucified the flesh” (Galatians 5:24) — and death on the cross is only a
transition, from temporary misery to eternal ecstasy.
Look at the cross, it is a gateway, from
that which is temporary to where there is no transient beginning or end,
but where there is endless union with the Holy One Who is the Beginning
and the End; from that which is limited, to that which is timeless. The
French mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux once wrote:
“Christ’s life has provided a pattern for living for me, but his death, a release from death.” (Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of a New Knighthood, ch. 11, p. 65)
See the cross, be as Simeon of Cyrene, and carry it with our Lord, and heavenly Paradise will be our abode. St. Theophan the Recluse wrote:
“God leads us in the way of the cross, tests us in life, and brings us to the eternal life of everlasting bliss.” (Theophan, Turning the Heart to God, ch. 5, p. 18)
The Cross is the ark that sails us across
the terrifying seas of death and ascends us up the holy mountain. When
the Christian is martyred, his spilt blood becomes his baptism, and is
body becomes but a window to Heaven. The 5th century Spanish Christian
poet, Prudentius, beautifully described this in his poem on martyrdom:
“A noble thing it is to suffer the stroke of the persecutor’s sword; through the wide wound a glorious gateway opens to the righteous, and the soul, cleansed in the scarlet baptism, leaps from its peak in the breast.” (Prudentius, Crowns of Martyrdom, 1.28-30, trans. H.J. Thomson)
The blessed Apostle St. Peter wrote that
Christ “bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died
to sins, might live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). To live for
virtue is to fear God, and “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil”
(Proverbs 8:13). Christ came and died to fight and destroy the works of
Satan, so that we may hate evil, so that we may fight evil, that Christ
may combat the contraptions of darkness and sinister teachings through
us.
The wounds he bears, are the wounds of
Christ; the torture that he is placed in, is the Cross of Christ, and
upon the Cross does he unify with the Crucified God on the Holy Wood,
and through His holy Humanity, he unites with divinity, and reaches
theosis — the divine union between man and God. Christianity is
sacrifice, it is martyrdom; Christianity is warfare, and
if any of these modern heretics say otherwise, let them look upon the
mighty armies of Israel, “who jeopardized their lives to the point of
death” (Judges 5:18) to fight the pagans; let them look at Samson who
let himself die under the pillars to destroy thousands of the pagans;
let them look to the millions of martyrs who have died for the cause of
the Faith to express their love for the One Who died for them, and then
say that Christianity is not about martyrdom and fighting and dying for
the cause of God and His Law.
What, must I quote the words of Christ to
you? Must I present to you His words: “do not be afraid of those who
kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do” (Luke
12:4)? Read the words of St. Thomas More, how he equated martyrdom to
spiritual warfare when he wrote these words in prison before being
beheaded by the Protestants:
“Wherefore when we are come to the point, that we must of necessity fight hand to hand with the prince of this world, the devil, and his cruel ministers, so that we cannot shrink back without the defacing of our cause, then would I, lo! counsel every man in this case utterly to cast away all fear. …Yea if David in the war against the Philistines was reputed as good as ten thousand … for the proof we now speak of, in the fight for the faith against the faithless persecutors, be accounted as sufficient as if I released ye ten thousand beside.” (Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ, p.26, ellipses mine)
All martyrs are warriors; be it in battle
to fight against the enemies of the Christian Faith with the physical
sword, or in the battlefield of ideas, where the dauntless fighters
wield the Sword of Truth against the Church’s foes, all those who die
for the cause of Christ are knights of Christ. St. Gregory of Nyssa
described persecution with militant words:
“Here is the goal of the battles fought for God, here the reward of the labours, the prize of our sweat, which is to be held worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
When the Turks were
invading Christian Serbia, it is said — according to tradition — that
the warrior Milosh Obilich said to the Serbian ruler Lazarus:
“I have never been unfaithful to my Tsar — never have I been and never shall I be — and I am sworn to die for Kosovo, for you and for the Christian Faith.” (Supper in Krushevats, trans. John Matthias and Vladeta Vuckovic)
The Christian armies of Serbia, fighting
for their holy land and for the Faith, marched toward the enemy with
“the cross-embroidered banner” (Musich Stephan, ibid). They carried
their cross in battle, to fight the very enemies of the Cross, and in
their self-crucifixion, laid down their lives to be crucified with
Christ — the Center of all mortals. In one Serbian poem on the Battle of
Kosovo, one Christian warrior, named Voin, says:
“I ride out to the level field of Kosovo to spill my blood for Jesus’ Holy Cross and die with all my brothers for the faith.” (Tsar Lazar and Tsaritsa Militsa)
The one who fights for God and His Holy
Cross, has God with him, and he marches in the presence of the Holy One.
The mystic Catherine of Siena wrote to the soldier, Messer John:
“Now my soul desires that you should change your way of life, and take the pay and the cross of Christ crucified, you and all your followers and companions; so that you may be Christ’s company” (Catherine of Siena, To Messer John)
The soldier who strives in holy war is in Christ’s company, because
he is united with Him. Look to the holy Stephen and you will see how
the glory of Heaven surrounded him, and how upon his persecution he saw
God. He fought against the evils of the Jews, saying,
“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.” (Acts 7:51-53)
He was driven by love, and was in Love,
being so deep in God that he took no thought for his own life, but
dedicated himself to the mission of the holy Faith. Before they slew him
and took his life, Stephen, “being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into
heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of
God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man
standing at the right hand of God!’” (Acts 7:55-56)
Stephen did not weep and cry for his own
life, there was no begging nor mourning, but rather there was ecstasy,
an ineffable bliss that can only be experienced in theosis. In both body
and soul he was absorbed into the Holy Trinity, fulfilling the prayer
of Christ: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I
in You; that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21). In the midst of
his persecution he was united with God, for he saw God and His glory in
the Heaven. St. Gregory beautifully wrote on the union between God and
Stephen during his martyrdom:
“What of Stephen, the first martyr, whose face, even while he was yet living, shone like the face of an angel? Did not his body also experience divine things? Is not such an experience and the activity allied to it common to soul and body? …such a common experience constitutes an ineffable bond and union with God.” (Palamas, Triads, C, II.i.12)
In the heart of a child one can see God,
for in its innocence lies the image of God. Christ said, “unless you
turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) If you are to become like a child, you will be
persecuted. It is children that are more honest than adults; if they see
something they don’t like, they say it. They are not confided by the
ego, nor the societal taboos of the modern world, plagued with all of
its materialist secularism and mockery of orthodox spirituality.
To have the heart of a child is to look
at evil and say that it is evil, that it needs to be combated and
destroyed. To have the heart of a child is to say, without being
precluded by fear, with Amos, “Hate evil, love good; establish justice
in the gate.” (Amos 5:15) In such an approach is pure love, for “perfect
love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) To have the mind of an adult —
hesitant and frightful from modern backlash — is to be tainted by fear —
fear for the self — and in such is there an absence of love, “and
whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18)
To be like a child is to have a pure
heart, and if one has a pure heart, then one will be oppressed,
attacked, scoffed, struck and killed, for “all who desire to live a
godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). The
pure in heart “shall see God” (Matthew 5:8), because they have union
with Christ. And those who are persecuted for the cause and Law of
Christ — with simple zeal and uncomplicated effort — their pure hearts
have the Kingdom of Heaven. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake,” says our Lord on the holy mountain, “For theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10) And “the kingdom of God is
within you.” (Luke 17:21) The Kingdom of God, then, is within the
persecuted.
St. Catherine of Siena wrote that the
poor “stand in the place of God;” (Catherine of Siena, To Monna Giovanna
di Corrada Maconi) so the persecuted stand in the heavenly Mount Zion
with God, “tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a
better resurrection.” (Hebrews 11:35)
Every battle that is done for the cause
of the Faith, and for the glory of the Cross, is an imitation of Christ.
Look upon the warriors who persevere through the travails of the holy
combat, how they sail upon the ark of the Holy Cross, through the waves
of adversity, through the tempests of persecutions, and you will see
Christ. Because in suffering like Christ, Christ identifies Himself with
them, and in the Cross do they find life eternal, for “whoever will
persevere until the end will have life.” (Matthew 24:13)
The union between Christ and the
persecuted is never more explicitly articulated than by our Lord Himself
in Matthew’s Gospel. “I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty
and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked
and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and
you came to Me.” (Matthew 25:35-36) When
the Christian is starved, Christ is starved; when he is thirsty, Christ
is thirsty; when he is in prison, Christ is in prison. Christ partakes
in our afflictions, for while He is very God, He is very Man, in Him is
the whole of Humanity, and in His suffering is the anguish of the
saints.
This is the divine union, this is the
unification of man with God! The man who suffers for God becomes one
with God. Even the one who is not theologically orthodox can reach this
union, for the Samaritan was honored above the priests, because by
having love he became one with Love.
I must return back to the story that I began this essay
with, of the priest who I met. He believed that he did not need to help
the persecuted, because ‘all he needed was Christ.’ Yet by ignoring the
persecuted he ignored Christ. He claims to be a man of God, but by
avoiding the cause of his oppressed brethren, he avoided Christ, for he
wants nothing to do with the ones who are one with the Savior. “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.” (1 John 2:9-11) ffmu.webconnex.com/rescuechristians
To love the persecuted, is to abide in God, for you love
the ones who shine ever so brightly in the light of Heaven, for in them
is the Kingdom of Heaven.
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