THESE DAYS THERE ARE NOT SO MANY MARTYRS # 1

The title of this post is a quote from the pulpit on the feast day of the Memorial of Saint Andrew Kim Taegõn, priest and martyr and  Saint Paul Chõng Hasang, martyr and their companions, martyrs.
Not so fast, Father.  You might want to check the news occasionally about what is going on in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, China, North Korea, Indonesia and other exotic and interesting places around the world.  This century is but 11 years old and there are already several people who have spilled their blood on the ground, protecting their faith and their corner of the vineyard of God Himself.  You might say that several (10+) is not a large number and indeed it is not.  But then again, when Deacon Stephen was stoned, it made the Scripture, and that was only 1.  I am not suggesting that because we now have fewer than when Diocletian was running wild that we should rewrite Scripture.  What I am saying is that giving blood witness for the sake of God is a sacrifice with eternal repercussions and should be respected and venerated as such.  In order to give some meaning to to the deaths of the people who have died for their faith in the last eleven years, I invite you all to this new series dedicated to the 21st century martyrs whose names have made it to the contiousness of the Communion of Saints dwelling here on earth.

Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni“Christ challenged evil with His infinite love.  He keeps us united, and through the Eucharist, He gifts us life which the terrorists are trying to take away.”

We start with Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni and three sub-deacons of the Chaldean Catholic Church.  The sub-deacons were Gassan Isam Bidawed and Basman Yousef Daud, cousin of Father Ganni and sub-deacon Wahid Hanna Isho.
These four men of God were gunned down after boarding their cars after the Sunday Holy Eucharist on June 3, 2007.  It seemed as though it might have been possible for Father Ganni to escape the ambush.  To his credit, he knew that the assassins were looking for him, do in order to lessen the damage and to try to  save the lives of the others, he did not run away.  The thugs threw him to the ground as they unloaded the other cars and demanded, "why did you not close the church like we told you?"  He answered, "How can I close the Church?"  With the answer, the four witnessed to their faith with their blood.  They were placed in their cars which were then blown up by bombs that were placed inside the vehicles.  Sub-Deacon Isho's wife who was spared by the killers witnessed the whole thing.
I invite you to read the more complete reporting of this incident here.


A personal note:
I know relatives of Father Ragheed who live in San Diego.  They had T-shirts made with his likeness on the front.  I know that they were angry in one way and proud in another.  There was no crying over this death.


Next to die was Father Ganni's bishop.  His story is next.

RANDOM THOUGHTS? REALLY -- UNH-UH -- IT'S GOD TALKING

OBIOU - TABOR? - SINAI? - MORIAH?

It is impossible to live a Catholic life without being a dreamer.  When I stop and think about it I realize just how much I dream.  My dreaming rarely takes place during sleep.   I dream all day long.  Sometimes even 25 hours a day!  Unlike Jacob, Joseph and the Magi, I get my dreams during the day.  I'm too busy with more important things at night.  When I'm there I'm practicing what being dead feels like.  I do admit that after a few hours of that exercise, it does feel good to be able to see the ceiling over my head.
                    xxxxxxxxxxxxx==========xxxxxxxxxxxx
The first sentence above is the driver of the following.  I have written several paragraphs of "religiously neutral" thoughts about "Random Thoughts" in other venues.  I felt empty when I wrote those because I was striving to find a "natural" meaning to the phenomenon of "Random Thoughts."  I enjoyed the search, but all the while I knew the truth.  I am more comfortable with my Catholic convictions about thoughts that "just run through my coconut."  I am 100% comfortable with the faith that what comes to me freely, not as the response to some perceptible stimulus, comes from Grace.  God and his company of saints and angels want me to know something consciously that can help me to lead a better life.  I lead a life full of these wonderful nudges to my brain and my heart and my soul.  Let me give you a few little examples of the kind of "spiritual life" that I lead.  All of a sudden I think of someone whom I know to have been critically ill.  It has been six months since the last word about this individual.  I say, "Our Father, if you're telling me that you've taken this good lady by the hand, I am happy for her.  If she has to wait a while before joining you in the Garden, please take some of my pain and put it on her tab.  Oh, and by the way, please continue to take care of those she has left behind."  It is more often than not, the case that the person has left the valley of tears.  
There is also the time when I notice a missed telephone call from an unknown number, from a weird area code.  I, have the habit of calling back to see who called.  If it is the IRS, I just tell them that they're lucky that day because I prayed for the caller before ringing it up.  One IRS lady was happy to hear that.  God bless America, right?  
Our Catholic life has changed somewhat in the calendering of the saint of the day.  We used to be able to tell whose birthday it was that day by checking the name of the saint for that very day.  It's not like that too much any more.  The old habit dies hard though.  I find myself writing E-mails to Joaquin, George, Louis, Maria, Lucia, Perpetua and some others who inhabit the spiritual part of my brain, usually referred to as the soul. 


I live this way because it is a convenient way for me to remember to pray.  Not just FOR the person I suddenly meet in memory, but to GOD whom I consider to be the master of what I am and do every day.  It is good to have a sensitivity to the divine presence.  It is good to keep ourselves alive to the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  It is not difficult to remember to pray if we stay awake to the "random" nudges that God gives us many times every day.  We have to respond immediately.  If you're like I am you say to yourself, "I'll get back to this one."  That's the one that I lose because it is here now and gone in a trice.  So I thank God that He does that for me.  Keeps me remembering not so much of Him, personally  but all those people and events that slide into my mind and heart from unexpected and even, unstimulated sources...except God Himself, of course.
If you get into this habit, you will discover a change in your life.  Don't thank me for it, just don't cry at my funeral.

YOU DUPED ME, LORD!

Reading 1 Jer 20:7-9

You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me.

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

[This resembles psalm 69.  Check it out.]

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I saw this today as I was preparing to direct my thoughts for the impending travel to Europe on the same day when this is going to be proposed by Our Holy Mother the Church for our edification. This is a powerful passage for many reasons, not the least of which is that it describes me so well.  How many times have I said that I would hold back.  I would not stand for the set backs in His Name any more.  I was going to be a Pew Sitter, mind my own business, shut up, make the sign of the Cross, sit there and listen and go home and watch football, or some such inanity.  Ha! Never happens.

I remember when I changed career and life-style [nothing to do with rainbows] I told a dear uncle of mine that I was tired of "working with people."  I was going to get a $10.00 an hour job, sit there and shut up.  Put my time in and leave.  Play pool three nights per week.  He looked at me and said, "Stercus Taurorum, you will never be unable to live like that.  Get used to it."  He was right.  He was doubly right when it came to Faith, Doctrine and Religion.  There is no way that I can camp out in a pew.  Like Jeremiah, and like Paul, by the way, I can't shut up.  I have to let God through.  

Is this pretentious?  I don't think so.  As the liturgy of the day implores, "My soul is thirsting for you Lord." (Psalm 63)  When we thirst, we say so.  When we thirst, we don't just sit there, we speak up.  It doesn't take much.  A glass of water is all it takes.  That is not pretentious, it is the voice of Mother Nature being communicated.  When we talk about God, it is not we talking, it is God Himself speaking through us.  No matter what it is.  It can be as simple as "Please remember me and my family in your prayers."  Just like asking for a glass of water.  At the same time it is a confession of faith.  We have just told the hearer that the action of God through us cannot be stifled.  Is that pretentious?  Of course not.  Am I out of school in this?  No.  Examples?  Plenty.  

How many efforts do we make every day to stay neutral?  "I hope all will go well."
"I'm confident that we'll be fine."  "You know, the doctors today can do miracles."  You got the picture.  Jeremiah is telling us that the fire of God's love in him cannot be stifled.  His prayer is that God fooled him into thinking that life would be easy.  He blames God for making his life "impossible" because even though it is dangerous for him to prophesy, he can't help it.  


As it turns out, Jeremiah was actually in hot water.  His life was, in fact, in danger.  There was a time in his career that Jeremiah escaped to Egypt to save his life.  He came back anyway, and he continued to make life miserable for the very same people that he was harassing with God's word before his exile. The urge is too great.  And, he says, "God, it's all your fault.  You duped me. But, look at me, "...it becomes like fire burning in my heart,  imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it."  


No matter who we are.  No matter what our name is.  It could be Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Samuel, Nathan, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jonah, Amos, Ezekiel, John, Jesus, Steven, Peter, James or Paul, we cannot be simple pew sitters.  We cannot be spectators in the life of faith.  The fire of the Spirit is too hot.  We have to respond.  We cannot be neutral.  When we stand up in front of the altar, walk down the aisle and confess our belief that this is His Mission and My Mission, we are signing up for the job.  We might think, like Jonah, that we can neutralize ourselves in the hold of the boat going in the opposite direction.  No way.  God's whale has a way of swallowing us and coughing us up onto the beach in front of those who need us the most.  So, we have to stay ready.  When we walk up to the altar  to join in the Presence at the table of the Divine Sacrifice we have to know that we are accepting  the mission.  We have to know that God is going to preach through us, whether we like it or not.  Just like Jeremiah.  We often have the temptation to think, "Hey, I didn't sign up for this."  Think again, little brothers and sisters, we sure did.  We will never be able to put out the fire in our hearts.  God will always keep it stoked and we will have to speak God's truth by word or by act, do not doubt it.  Like it is written in Isaiah, chapter six, ..."the Seraphim laid a hot coal on my lips..."  


I therefore leave you all with these final words.  The Sacred Scriptures are full of stories about humans who carry the Truth to the world because they carry the Flame of the Spirit of God in their hearts.    We who are brave enough to listen to the written, spoken and lived Word are among those Priests, Prophets and Kings who do God's work every day.  That is not pretentious, that is God's Mission at work in us.  When we have lived a life full of this mission, then we will be ready for the moment when God reaches out His Hand for us to take us with Him to the Everlastingly lush Garden of Heaven.  When that happens to me, be sure that I will not be expecting any of you to cry at my funeral.


  

Allow me some comments about life and some of the lessons that God teaches us through it.
Winning isn't all it's cracked up to be.  I am not making this up.  I used to think that winning was "the ONLY thing."  Then I lost a few.  The first ones were always because the other guys had been lucky.  There were some when the other guys caught us on a bad day.  Then, there were always the cheaters on the other side.  I was glad that for the most part, growing up I won more than I lost.  I never was "lucky" though.  Not me.  I was good.  Better than most of the rest.  Then I moved away from the warm confines of my small home town.  Then I really had to prove to myself that I was in fact, better.  It wasn't easy.  Nevertheless, I did manage to win more than I lost.  None of this .500, break-even bull for me.  I would wonder how some people could go through life at .500.  I still do.
If there is one important thing that I have learned it's that winning is not everything.  Sometimes you have to be able to be satisfied with survival.  As I've grown older, I have come to learn that sometimes even survival isn't anything to brag about.  I think of the 9/11 survivors.  I think of the Great Tsunami survivors.  What about the Chilean miners?  The Japanese tsunami/nuclear survivors. The prisoners of war who survive.  Escapees from concentration camps.  Do any of these humans ever regain what they had before surviving?  I often think about the soccer players who survived a plane crash in the Peruvian Andes.  They survived in large part because they ate the remains of those who had died.  You call that winning?  Do you even call that true survival?  Surely, they are alive.  I wonder if call it "being alive," boldly..  And they were athletes.  Competitive sorts.  They had to be good since they were on their way to an international match.
The Bible has some really great examples of Chosen Ones who were successful at what they did, but were never really totally fulfilled as long as they were alive.  I think of Joseph, the son of Jacob who despite everything became a powerful person in Egypt.  Thanks to his success and his rise to power he was able to provide God's people with a good life.  But before he died he won it all.  He was able to forgive his brothers.  He therefore lightened their burden by cleaning their conscience.  Then to make his survival complete, he made his brothers swear that they would bring his bones back to be buried next to his ancestors in Canaan. (Genesis, chapter 50)
The reality that shakes me the most is the one in which a person survives bad habits that are self destructive.  You'd think that this is the most exalted victory of them all.  If that is true, why do the ones that I know suffer so much from their "victory?"  I know people who have "survived" different things.  Drug abuse; alcohol abuse; the practice of violence towards others; prostitution; mental aberrations, etc.  All of the ones with whom I am familiar are happier than before.  True.  It is also true that the residue is "killing" them.  The Gospel stories and parables have strong lessons in them. They all have a "punch line."  They also have a mission attached to the punch line.  You know, easy stuff, like, "...Sin no more."
I could go on for quite a while about this.  Be that as it may, I leave you with the story the way it is.  I leave you to your own devices.  After all, I do not have the answer[s], as neither do you.  It is a mystery with which we all have to live.  I can only wish that the reward for winning was always pure and absolute happiness.  It isn't.  No matter how much you win, or how much you survive, happiness will never be distilled to its purest form.  We have to get used to it.  Sadly, some of us never do.  I hope that those of you who follow this series can handle living with this mystery.  Plus, I sincerely hope that you will win more than you lose...in short, survive.  I'm still convinced that it is better than the alternative.
Do I need to give you any more reasons why you should not cry at my funeral?

CANAANITE WOMAN -- WHO IS SHE?

It is always interesting to see Jesus being tough on someone.  For so many of us Jesus is a nice, gentle, forever merciful person.  So many of us do not bother to go beyond our acceptance of the stereotypical Jesus of the sweet holy card art.  So many of us gloss over the parts of the Jesus story that show Him exercising His Father's Justice and living out His Father's decisions.  So often we forget that Jesus had been taught The Law by his parents.  They were Temple People.  His Uncle Zechariah was a priest and Jesus' mother was close to the family.  Remember Elizabeth?  Jesus also knew the Writings and the Prophets.  He knew who the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were.  He knew who the descendants of Cain, Ham, Ishmael and Esau were.  He knew it much more than we do.
When we hear Canaanite, Edomite, Amorite, Samaritan we, if we have any idea, think of a corner of the world.  A region.  We relate to Canadians, Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese, English and French as coming from somewhere.
When Jesus saw Canaanites, Edomites, Amorites, Jebusites and Samaritans He related to them as coming from someone.  That's who the Canaanite woman is.  She comes from Ham, who came from Noah, who came from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve.  Jesus did not even have to look it up in Google.  Jesus knew that Ham was a pariah son for having disrespected his father and invited his brothers to do the same. [Gen. 9; 18 ff]  Ham was then cursed, personally as well as in his descendants, as Cain had been after his crime.  The Canaanite woman then, as so many others whom Jesus meets along the way, are the fruit of those who sinned and turned away from the righteousness of God.  Jesus, and his followers, know who they are from whom they come.  They knew that these were not the people of Moses.  They knew that these were not the people who were the children of those who suffered in Egypt for 400 years and walked through the desert for 40 more. No.  These were the people who were alive only because God had cut them some slack, big slack.  They were in the Promised Land because they, or their forebears had survived the onslaught of the Chosen People who were conquering the land in the name of God and His promise to His people.  
Jesus then has a moment, and there are many in the Gospel, when He reminds His People that His Mission is to them.  That's priority red.  Then, after the strong words fail to weaken the woman, comes the BIG lesson.  "O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done as you wish."   Faith. Faith in a son of Shem, the good and respectful brother of Ham.  Faith in a son of David.  Faith in the Son of God, the Messiah, who is not afraid to get outside of His "comfort zone" to bring comfort and solace to everyone, no matter from whom they come.  
Jesus did not follow the advice of His disciples to "send her away."  He had something to say to them, and He was going to make sure that they not only heard it, but would see it too.  He knew that she had to be undergoing strong inner turmoil because her people, her brothers and sisters from Ham, must have been emotionally disturbed by her outrageous behavior before this Jew.  The cultural clash contributes to the power of this story.  At the reading of the first words out of the mouth of Jesus, we can easily jump to the conclusion that this is a die-hard "red neck."  The full story shows us that like His Father, Jesus is at the command of the needs of everyone. In this story we have the introduction to the "Servant King" with the towel around His waist.  
Finally, there is something very important about the life of Jesus.  It is something about which we do not think enough.  It is the fact that Galilee, then as now, was not a very deeply religious region of the Promised Land.  It was, and is, a region of commerce, a region of economic stability, a region of ethnic and national diversity.  It was, and is to this day, a region that is not appreciated by the true, deeply religious Jew.  It is the region where secular action takes place.  It is the region of political dialectics.  Strength versus strength, weakness against weakness, all mixed in with ideologies, religions, politics and economics.  Look at the map.  You'll get an idea.  Then look at a New Testament map, and you'll see the connection.  Jesus lived and preached at least 80 percent of His life in the Galilee.  It is 100 miles from Nazareth to Jerusalem.  It is at least one day's walk from Capharnaum to Tyre and Sidon.  Was Jesus going to the beach?  He had it right there in Galilee.  He and His disciples had reasons to go there.  It is an area where fishing was an important part of the economy.  So He and His "buddies" were going "fishing."  Along the way, He "caught the big one."  It does not seem to be recorded what His professional fishermen friends thought about the "catch."  
So, what do you say?  Care to go fishing?  That's not what Jesus says.  He says, "Go fishing.  Throw your net over all oceans.  Take everything you catch on board and bring it to me."
By the way, no need to dry at my funeral.  I've gone fishing.