We Need Each Other
By: Bishop Sarhad Yawsip Jammo

Our time is a time of drastic developments on so many fields: ecclesial, social, cultural and otherwise. We might perish or suffer heavy loss, or we might somehow survive and overcome the challenges of our time. Much of it depends on factors that are beyond our control; what depends on us regards most of all the One whom we trust and the One who is our Light, but also if we face our destiny together as a united community.

In the Ecclesial Realm: Under heavy and protracted local persecution and uncontrollable international factors, our Church and community, together with the rest of Iraqi Christians, has suffered enormously in its cohesiveness. As did most of the Assyrians in past decades, lately, half of the Iraqi Chaldeans fled their ancestral land, due to the brutality of Islamic fundamentalism and the incapacity, or unwillingness, of the Iraqi government to protect them. The diocese of Basra is decimated, Mosul is half empty of its Christian inhabitants, most of the churches and Christian religious institutions in Baghdad are closed, and their communities scattered in the neighboring countries looking for a new home.

In the Social Realm: The whole social fabric of the Christian communities of Iraq has been cut into many pieces. Family members, close friends and dear neighbors, houses and properties, businesses and ways of life, all have been left behind forcefully. For many, it is impossible to retrieve an ordinary social life, and it is so hard to weave a new one.

In the Cultural Realm: The dislocation of hundreds of thousands from their land implies as well the adoption of new languages, customs and cultures, so distant and different from their own. At the present time, most European countries have Chaldean parishes and communities that are struggling to cope with their new ambiance.

We Must Establish Bridges: Unless we muster our courage and strength, and promptly establish connections and contacts with the dispersed communities, we will end very shortly with a Church and a community that is so fragmented and disconnected that it could hardly sustain its collective existence. The most efficient way to do this is to maintain and vitalize our Aramaic language and our gorgeous eastern liturgy, as well as to establish civil and ecclesial organizational structures that bind us together.

We Need Each Other: It is our call to all Chaldeans and Assyrians, especially those yearning for unity, common cause, and shared destiny, not to lose time but to come urgently together to reject and challenge the prophets of doom, as did our forefathers the Ninevites, and build with the blessings of heaven a spiritual tower wherever we reside, inside our ancestral land or in the vast lands of the Lord.