During this Lent, let us join in the passion of Christians in the Middle East

The Passion of the Church in the Middle East 

The stirring prayer of the 21 Egyptian Copts as they prepared for their execution at the hands of Islamic State militants was “Jesus, help me.”

“Jesus, help me.”

Pope Francis paused during his address last month before a group of Catholics from Scotland to recall the stirring prayer of the 21 Egyptian Copts as they prepared for their execution at the hands of Islamic State militants: “Jesus, help me.”

“They were killed simply for the fact they were Christians,” Pope Francis said, according to a report from Vatican Radio.

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard.”

Amid the horror of the Islamic State’s campaign of religious cleansing, the Pope underscored the truth that Catholics, Orthodox and Copts have shared the same fate and a newfound unity as they enter into the passion of the Church in the Middle East.

“They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ,” Francis proclaimed. The martyrs, he said, “belong to all Christians.”

The whole world recoiled when faced with the videotaped beheadings of the 21 Copts — humble laborers who worked in Libya and sent meager remittances back home to their families. Dressed in orange jumpsuits provided by their captors, the men stood on the beach, waiting their turn.

“Jesus, help me.”

The video was not smuggled out of Libya. It was carefully produced and distributed by the Islamic State group and is part of a recruitment strategy for attracting more jihadists. And it seems to be working. The organization is not only drawing fervent Muslims and disaffected young men onto the battlefield in Syria and Iraq — it is enticing teenage girls, too.

The unapologetic brutality of the Islamic State’s tactics offers a new vision of faith — one that celebrates the will to power and man’s age-old inhumanity to man. Religious leaders from every faith must oppose this movement, just as political and military leaders must check its advance.

The Islamic State is tempting the world with a version of faith designed to repudiate and replace “true religion.” Its policies reflect “a coordinated effort on behalf of fanatics to see that true religion, which stands for friendship, peace and the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of human life, is stamped out,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York in an op-ed in the New York Post marking the executions of the 21 Copts.

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