Five years ago, on June 3,
2007 (Trinity Sunday in that year, as it is in 2012), Fr.
Ragheed Aziz Ganni was martyred outside of the Church of the
Holy Spirit in Mosul, Iraq, after celebrating Mass. Three
subdeacons also lost their lives in the attack.
Much has changed in Iraq in
the last five years, but very little of it for the better. Like
Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope
Benedict XVI) and Chaldean Catholic patriarch Emmanuel III Delly,
Father Ragheed had predicted that the U.S.-led war in Iraq would
be disastrous for the Christian population. By most estimates,
as many as 90 percent of Iraqi Christians have fled the country
since 2003, with many finding refuge in Syria, where they are
now once again threatened by the uprisings against the regime of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Throughout the Middle East,
Christians are the unreported victims of violence unleashed by
U.S. intervention and the so-called Arab Spring.
The threats against the priest
began less than a year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and
Father Ragheed suspected that his days were numbered. Yet he
found in persecution a renewed faith and a cause for hope. And
his death, as tragic as it was, helped at least one Muslim
friend of Father Ragheed to understand what the true Christian
life entails: the willingness to follow Christ unto death, and
through one's own death, to preach Christ and His Resurrection
to the world.
As we remember Father Ragheed
and his fellow martyrs (Basman Yousef Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid, and
Wadid Hanna) on this Trinity Sunday, we look ahead to the Feast
of Corpus Christi, of the Body and Blood of Christ, this week,
and recall the prophetic words of this martyred Iraqi priest:
There are days when I feel frail and full of fear. But when,
holding the Eucharist, I say "Behold the Lamb of God Behold, 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
united in His boundless love.
As the Eucharist gave Father
Ragheed the strength to face his martyrdom in faith, may it, and
the example of Father Ragheed and his fellow martyrs, give us
the strength as well to face the trials and tribulations of our
own lives. And may God grant Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni, Basman
Yousef Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid, and Wadid Hanna eternal rest.
