Syria

I had this week my homily prepared but I feel that I need to say something about the persecutions in Syria.

Over the last few weeks I have been keeping up with the news from Syria especially concerning those of our Christian brothers and Sisters that are under extreme persecution. I have been reflecting on how lucky and how much we take for granted here in England with the freedom of religion. And yet we are often complacent about our faith. Using the sacraments as an excuse to have a party coming to Mass when it suits our social calendar. And yet there are Christians in the world who are dying for the faith. I would like to draw your attention today to some of the things that are going on in Syria. There have been reports if Priests being murdered outside their Churches young women being raped and sent out of their towns and villages. When you read the reports one gets the feeling that you are reading some sort of history book but it is happening today. I would like to share with you one such report:

“Churches and Christian symbols continue to be deliberately destroyed. Fighters have even desecrated one church by urinating inside it.

Their very lives are also under threat as mortar bombs and snipers target Christian areas in what effectively amounts to a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The violence is driving Christians out of places where they had lived peacefully for generations.

Almost all of the 60,000-strong Christian population of Homs has fled but 75 Christians, many of them elderly, are being held in the Hamadiya neighbourhood by the rebels as a  human sheild. Hardship and deprivation are killing them one by one.

Understandably a large number of Christian families – an estimated 25,000 – have fled the country, and many more are looking for an escape route. It is feared that the war could result in the eradication from Syria of the Christian presence, which dates back to the days of the early Church. As one of our partners, who is delivering aid from Barnabas Aid to needy Christian families, put it:   

How can people go back and live again with people who have used their churches as a toilet? Will they really go back home again? History teaches us no… When you leave your home, someone else takes it and you cannot go back again”

In a recent appeal from the Aid of the Church in need they said.

 The people of Syria have been living through an experience of unimaginable horror.

Their homes have been bombed, their churches attacked, their schools and places of work destroyed. Their whole way of life has been swept away.

You are their hope. And after this Mass and every Mass this weekend we are having a special appeal to the Aid to the Church in need especially for the plight of our brother and sisters in Syria.