We might say the whole mystery of our redemption in Christ, by his incarnation,
his death and his resurrection, consists of this marvelous exchange:
in the heart of Christ, God has loved us humanly,
so as to render our human hearts capable of loving divinely.
God became man so that man might become God—might love as only God is capable of loving,
with the purity, intensity, power, tenderness, and inexhaustible
patience that belong to the divine love.
It is an extraordinary source of hope and a great consolation to know that,
by virtue of God’s grace working in us
(if we remain open to it by persevering in faith, prayer, and the sacraments),
the Holy Spirit will transform and expand our hearts to the point of one day
making them capable of loving as God loves.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 67-8
An Excerpt From
Interior Freedom
(St Sebastian tended by St. Irene / HT Brugghen/ 1625)
Bet you didn’t see the following story.
I hadn’t heard about it or seen anything about it either…
that is until I finally sat down, at the end of a long busy Friday, and decided to scan the
various news sites I usually scour to see what’s happening in the world.
Way down toward the bottom of one news site, following all the typical stories about
impeachment, elections to be, and entertainers talking about their sex lives,
was the headline :
ISIS savages behead a dozen Nigerian Christians at Christmas
We haven’t heard much regarding Daesh lately…
I think a few months back, the President basically proclaimed that ISIS was
pretty much toast.
Meaning they had been basically defeated…
That news was then hit with an exclamation point when the latest story broke of the
tracking down of the ISIS leader Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi and his subsequent taking
of his own life vs being caught.
Triumphant we all thought.
The scourage of the West, and particularly that of the Christian West,
had been defeated.
We need not fret or fear any longer.
Or so we were told and reassured.
Since the news media does not seem to think these sorts of stories
are significant or overtly worrisome…well, that in turn, worries me.
Over the years, since first blogging nearly 8 years ago, I’ve written so many posts about
the vicious attacks on Christians around the globe at the hands the likes of
Militant Islamic groups such as ISIS, Boku Haram, the Taliban, Abu Sayyaf,
Al-Shabaab et el—so much so that it makes my head spin.
Kidnappings, brutal rapes, the burning of villages, tortures, beheadings, bombings…
And it appears that there are strongholds that remain.
Chances are that these groups that hate all things Christian, Jewish and Western,
will always dwell among us…because much like the mythological beast, the hydra,
when one head is cut off, another remains or even grows back.
So as long as Islamic militants persist in building their armies of hate and murder,
and our leadership in the West continues to pretend that there is not a strategical
focus on destroying all things Christian…well, I will continue bringing awareness
to the globally conducted atrocities targeting the Christian faith.
Just like the days of the Roman persecutions, Christian martyrs continue
dying for the faith…
And the single difference between a Christain martyr and that of an Islamic martyr
is simple…it is the single matter of love vs hate…
ISIS released a video Thursday that purportedly shows militants in black masks beheading
10 blindfolded Christian men and shooting an 11th in Nigeria,
as part of a grisly campaign to avenge the deaths of its leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the group’s spokesman.
The militant group’s video was produced by its own so-called news agency, Amaq,
and was released the day after Christmas.
The 56-second video has Arabic captions but does not have audio.
In the video, ISIS soldiers wearing beige uniforms and black masks are lined up behind
the Christian men.
One captive in the middle is shot while the other 10 are pushed to the ground
and beheaded.
Not a lot of details were given about the victims other than they were male,
Christian and “captured in the past weeks” in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno State.
In an earlier video seen by Reuters, the captaives pleaded for the
Christian Association of Nigeria and President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene to save them.
“We killed them as revenge for the killing of our leaders,
including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and (ISIS spokesman) Abul-Hasan al-Muhaiir,'”
said a member of the terror group’s media unit, according to journalist Ahmad Salkida,
who was first sent the video shot in an unidentified outdoor area.
In October, Baghdadi killed himself during a U.S. raid on a compound in northwest Syria,
seven months after the so-called ISIS “caliphate” officially crumbled as the terrorist group
was defeated in its final swath of Syrian territory in March.
Raphael Gluck, the co-founder of Jihadoscope, which monitors online activity by Islamist extremists,
told Fox News that ISIS affiliates are rising across Africa – almost unchecked.
“We saw a terrible ambush of U.S. forces in Niger in 2017,
that played into ISIS propaganda for months and really put Africa in focus,
it has only grown in strength since,” he said.
Calls by Fox News to the Christian Association of Nigeria for comment were
not immediately returned.
Fox News’ Hollie McKay contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/isis-beheads-christians-nigeria-baghdadi
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