Man inhumality to Man

 

At the end of the Second World War. There was a call to stop crimes against humanity. And yet as we have seen on the news in various parts of the world we have seen crime upon crime against humanity. I think that we have all been shocked and disturbed by what has been going on in Iraq. Aid to the Church in need states “The ancient Christian community in Iraq is being decimated. People are fleeing for their lives ahead of acts of terror by ISIS (now Islamic State) and their avowed ambition of ridding Iraq of the hated Christian presence and of eradicating an Iraqi community with a 2,000 year-old heritage.”

We are reaching crisis point the international community are responding by dropping aid to the people who need it most our collection here last week was very good in response to what is happening in Gaza and in Iraq.

This is something that we can feel that we can do. Often we feel paralysed and can feel that we should be doing something more. There seems to me to be a few things that we can do. First of all we can get involved by finding out a little more of what is going on taking our time to be informed of the world around us. We can pray, and there will be a chance to do this by popping into the Church to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters but also in our Holy Hour that we will have here in the Church on Tuesday morning these are practical and good things to do.

There is also something quite important that we can also do. We live in a country that has become apathetic to religion. There are many times when I am doing a baptism here in the Church and people are waiting for the party afterwards I find that I am saying the Our Father alone without much help from the family or friends gathered around. We have an important role to play by being able to express our faith freely and without fear. We are very lucky to be able to do this in this country but how many of us actually express our faith apart from on Mass in Sundays. If we were saddened when people did not know the Our Father will people tut at us because we do not show we are Christians in the world when we have been given the gift to do so.

Let us then look at the example of the people of Iraq. They have been told that they either convert or die. According to the Bishop to date there has been no one who has converted to Islam through the acts of terror. What Bravery, what an inspiration it puts us sometimes to shame.