“Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:17, 20-26).
I recently read a story of a thirty-five-year-old priest who died in Iraq recently…
Father Ragheed Ganni was born in 1972 in Iraq in a town in the Plain of Ninevah. Between 1996 and 2003 he studied theology in Rome. Despite the war and persecutions of the Christians in Iraq, Father Ganni decided to return to Iraq to work as a priest and minister to the Christian community there…
Father Ganni’s parish was in Mosul. After he arrived, he began receiving threats and not just threats but he became the victim of various acts of terror. His church was blown up. His house was blown up. He offered Holy Mass in the basement because there was nowhere else to offer Mass. The attacks intensified and were relentless. In 2007 a group of armed men confronted Father Ganni after Holy Mass and asked him why he had not yet closed the Church as they had been demanding. Father Ganni responded, “How can I close the house of God?” And right then on that day (on the 3 June 2007) right there in the street, that group of men shot Father Ganni down dead… He was only thirty-five-years-old…
And I have been thinking about that story as I have been thinking about the Beatitudes… “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:17, 20-26).
The Church grows from the Blood of the Martyrs. The martyrs and their sacrifices fuel the faith of the Church. And the martyrs through their sacrifice, give such strength to the Church… Father Gani wrote, “There are days when I feel frail and full of fear. But when, holding the Eucharist, I say, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,’ I feel His strength in me. When I hold the Host in my hands, it is really He who is holding me and all of us, challenging the terrorists and keeping us all united in His boundless love.”
And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about the love of God for the meek and the weeping and those who are cast out. For He so loved those souls that He allowed them to be counted among the martyrs. And among that crowd of Saints, God is able to draw forth new life for His Holy Church. Because without the love of the martyrs, then nothing else is possible. For they shine a light on all my failings and without that light, I am completely blind…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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