The CWR Blo
A letter from
Trappist nuns in Syria: “Blood
fills our streets,
our eyes, our hearts”
September 01, 2013 03:02 EST
By
Alessandra Nucci
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In March 2005 a small
group of nuns from the Cistercian Monastery of Valserena in Tuscany moved to
Aleppo, Syria, to found a new monastic community there. The nuns were
inspired to take up the legacy of seven monks who were martyred in 1997 in
Tibhirine, Algeria. The sisters wanted to follow the example set by these
men, who had totally dedicated their lives to God and to their beloved
Algerian neighbors, both Christian and Muslim.
The sisters’ guiding
Scripture is John 10:16: “There are other sheep I have that are not of this
fold, and I must led these too. They too will listen to my voice.”
Once they had settled in
Aleppo, with the blessing of both the Latin Apostolic Vicar and the Maronite
bishop of Tartous, the sisters gained a new awareness of the importance of
helping Christian Arabs remain in the Middle East, as well as a respect for
the diversity of their traditions. Their project was, and continues to be,
establishing a permanent monastery on the land they bought near the Syrian
border with Lebanon, in a Maronite village named Azeir, atop a hill, far from
the big cities. The monastery is at the service of isolated Christian
communities, in a land which is predominantly Muslim but which is home to the
most ancient of Christian traditions.
To the sisters, Syria
represents the meeting place of East and West, the place where Christianity
began and then spread to Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, and then Armenia and
India—all the way to China, with saints such as such as Afraate, Ephraim,
Cyrus, Simeon Protostilite, Maron, Isaac of Niniveh, and others who followed
in their footsteps, such as John Chrysostom and John Damascene.
It is this tradition the
sisters wish to honor and perpetuate, persevering in their mission despite
the fear and the hardship: to keep the
monastery going and provide those who desire it with a chance to
spend a few days there, with a church to go to.
These nuns have been
providing a much-needed independent perspective on the tumultuous events
going on inside Syria, in eye-witness reports published on their website and
in the Italian bishops’ newspaper, Avvenire.
Here is a translation of a
letter written on the 29th of August, in which the sisters seem to be holding
their breath as President Obama deliberated about what, if any, action would
be taken in Syria by the United States.
Today we have no words,
except those of the Psalms that the liturgical prayer puts onto our lips in
these days:
Rebuke the Beast of the Reeds, that herd of bulls, that people
of calves…oh God, scatter the people who delight in war…Yahweh has leaned
down from the heights of his sanctuary, has looked down from heaven to earth
to listen to the sighing of the captive, and set free those condemned to
death…Listen, God, to my voice as I plead, protect my life from fear of the
enemy; hide me from the league of the wicked, from the gang of evil-doers.
They sharpen their tongues like a sword, aim their arrow of poisonous
abuse…They support each other in their evil designs, they discuss how to lay
their snares. “Who will see us?” they say. He will do that, he who penetrates
human nature to its depths, the depths of the heart…Break into song for my
God, to the tambourine, sing in honor of the Lord, to the cymbal, let psalm
and canticle mingle for him, extol his name, invoke it…For the Lord is a God
who breaks battle-lines! … Lord, you are great, you are glorious, wonderfully
strong, unconquerable.
We look at the people
around us, our day workers who are all here as if suspended, stunned: “They’ve
decided to attack us.” Today we went to Tartous…we felt the anger, the
helplessness, the inability to formulate a sense to all this: the people
trying their best to work and to live normally. You see the farmers watering
their land, parents buying notebooks for the schools that are about to begin,
unknowing children asking for a toy or an ice cream…you see the poor, so many
of them, trying to scrape together a few coins. The streets are full of the
“inner” refugees of Syria, who have come from all over to the only area left
that is still relatively liveable…. You see the beauty of these hills, the
smile on people’s faces, the good-natured gaze of a boy who is about to join
the army and gives us the two or three peanuts he has in his pocket as a
token of “togetherness”…. And then you remember that they have decided to
bomb us tomorrow. … Just like that. Because “it’s time to do something,” as
it is worded in the statements of the important men, who will be sipping
their tea tomorrow as they watch TV to see how effective their humanitarian
intervention will be….
Will they make us breathe
the toxic gases of the depots they hit, tomorrow, so as to punish us for the
gases we have already breathed in?
The people are straining
their eyes and ears in front of the television: all they’re waiting for is a
word from Obama!
A word from Obama? Will
the Nobel Peace Prize winner drop his sentence of war onto us? Despite all
justice, all common sense, all mercy, all humility, all wisdom?
The Pope has spoken up,
patriarchs and bishops have spoken up, numberless witnesses have spoken up,
analysts and people of experience have spoken up, even the opponents of the
regime have spoken up…. Yet here we all are, waiting for just one word from
the great Obama? And if it weren’t him, it would be someone else. It isn’t he
who is “the great one,” it is the Evil One who these days is really acting
up.
The problem is that it has
become too easy to pass lies off as noble gestures, to pass ruthless
self-interest off as a search for justice, to pass the need to appear
[strong] and to wield power off as a “moral responsibility not to look away…”
And despite all our
globalizations and sources of information, it seems nothing can be verified.
It seems that there is no such thing as a minimal scrap of truth … That is,
they don’t want there to be any truth; while actually a truth does exist, and
anyone honest would be able to find it, if they truly sought it out together,
if they weren’t prevented by those who are in the service of other interests.
There is something wrong,
and it is something very serious…because the consequences will be wrought on
the lives of an entire population…it is in the blood that fills our streets,
our eyes, our hearts.
Yet what use are words
anymore? All has been destroyed: a nation destroyed, generations of young
people exterminated, children growing up wielding weapons, women winding up
alone and targeted by various types of violence…families, traditions, homes,
religious buildings, monuments that tell and preserve history and therefore
the roots of a people…all destroyed. …
As Christians we can at
least offer all this up to the mercy of God, unite it to the blood of Christ,
which carries out the redemption of the world in all those who suffer.
They are trying to kill
hope, but we must hold on to it with all our might.
To those who truly have a
heart for Syria (for mankind, for truth…) we ask for prayer…abounding,
heartfelt, courageous prayer.
The Trappist nuns from Azeir, Syria
August 29, 2013
