Despite a lousy and crooked Egyptian tour guide, I enjoyed an exciting two-week Cosmos tour of beautiful Egypt in late 2008. One unforgettable highlight (apart from the pyramids and cruise of the Nile River) was my walking into the historic Coptic church built on the place of refuge for the baby Jesus Christ and his parents when they fled the persecution of King Herod — the Abi Serja Church in old Cairo’s Al-Fustat area which dates back to the fourth century.
I was pleasantly surprised to realize that mostly-Muslim Egypt has a Christian community which is 2,000 years old and which has resiliently survived centuries of persecutions. I believe Abu Serga Church is as sacred to us Christians as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem or the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
Another unique place nearby was an old synagogue of the once-thriving Jewish minority of Cairo, the Synagogue of Ben Ezra built in 350 BC by the prophet Jeremiah.
This visit to Cairo’s two ancient religious places of the Christian and Jewish minorities I recall now, upon reading that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has set a day of prayer for peace in Iraq and Syria for today, Sept. 14.
Although I am not religious, I thank our bishops for this timely reminder for us to pray and act in solidarity because I’ve read via Twitter so many sad and even violent news stories about Christian sufferings in non-Christian societies from the Middle East, South Asia to our ASEAN neighbors.
In fact, I have tweeted repeatedly, asking why the United Nations, US President Barack Obama, NATO and other countries have not yet intervened to prevent the unprecedented massacres and other threats to Christian and other minorities there.
Just recently, on Sept. 3, I saw on Twitter @Ellysa_Maye who posted a picture of Christian refugees escaping the ISIS terrorists in Iraq, who wrote the Arabic words “Jesus is the Light of the World” on their living tent. (http://twitchy.com/2014/09/02/roma-downey-shares-decorated-tents-of-displaced-christians-in-erbil/pic.twitter.com/Db2D4np3us)
Let us not take for granted our religious freedom
For a person who has been an inconsistent church-goer in recent years, I am reminding myself to cherish the freedom of religion in our Philippine democracy by going to church every Sunday and by reaffirming commitment to help promote this freedom also worldwide. Nobody should suffer due to their race, faith or socio-economic background.
Religious and ethnic minority persecution are pernicious evils throughout history. My paternal forebears were mostly Taoist and Buddhist Chinese immigrants who came to Manila two centuries ago. The Spanish colonizers in the Philippine isles were the same intolerant rulers who had earlier persecuted and later expelled the “infidel” Jewish minority in Spain, so it wasn’t unusual that they also hated and persecuted another similar “infidel” as well as entrepreneurial minority here whom they repeatedly over-taxed, harassed, segregated and culturally vilified.
I write this to call upon fellow Christians and even to non-Christian people of goodwill worldwide to also pray for and assist all religious and ethnic minorities not only in Iraq and Syria, but also everywhere.
The late Jaime Cardinal Sin’s former talented assistant, now CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, said the CBCP Permanent Council has declared today a “National Day of Prayer for Peace in Iraq and Syria.”
Villegas also urged bishops and priests to call for a charity collection on Sept. 14 for the victims in Iraq and Syria. Collections must be remitted to the CBCP Secretariat by Sept. 30, and the CBCP will transmit the charity aid to the Apostolic Nunciatures in Iraq and Syria.
Here are a few excerpts of the message of Archbishop Villegas: “It is Christ in Iraq and Syria who has been evicted from his home. Places of worship — many of them thousands of years old — have been razed to the ground by a godless rage with which no genuine religion can ever identify!
“For many, the food and drink that sustain life are daily issues. They rise from sleep each day to struggle just to keep themselves alive. We must be generous, and the fact that we have our own needs here in the Philippines does not excuse us from the Christian obligation of sharing with our suffering brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria from our own need,” he added.
“We pray that even as many of them now see no way out of the misery that has been visited on them, the God who opens paths through the sea and ways in the desert, may make a way for them to the future that can only be His gift!” Villegas said.
Jesus Christ as a child, along with his parents Joseph and Mary, were also persecuted and had to take refuge in Egypt for three and a half years; so let us — whether as churches or individuals — pray in solidarity and give aid to every man, woman and child minority refugee anywhere in the world.
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