we pray after the attack, not protest

the news has gone worldwide – i'm sure almost everybody has heard of it. a news that we rather not let it be worldwide! i'm talking about the assumption church,  penang, being attacked by molotov cocktails, which i have blog about here.

after the provocative allah banner and the molotov cocktails incident on 26 and 27 jan. respectively, assumption church parish priest, fr dominic santhiyagu had issued a press statement, followed later by statement by the bishop.

then twp days later, believe it or not,  a group of 150 malay NGO protest of a 'possible mosque attack'!! this is so ridiculous. made me go ROTFLMAO!! yeah, stupidity!

although the allah banner were found at the assumption church and molotov cocktails were thrown on its grounds, near to the shrine, we christians did not retaliate or protest in any way. instead, we did what our faith tells us to do – we pray. 

on 3 feb. we had a mass right in front of the shrine, on the very premise where the fire-bombs fell. fr dominic celebrated the mass with two other priests. in fr dominic's homily he asked us not to fear persecution. he also said we must pray for our persecutors. jesus had said love your enemies, so we must not hate them (and go on a rampage protest, burning efifgies or calling for may 13).

of course i attended the mass as i want to take photos and to write to the herald. i was surprise to see al-jazeera tv there. there were 3 of them, the camera-man, the correspondent (reporter), stephanie and a local i forgot his name, something krishnamoorty i think. they filmed the entire mass. fr dominic said that they had written to the church to ask if they can come one day to film our church service and it so happened we were going to have a mass on the field of the shrine itself, so they came 

that day. i understand that they will be doing a feature on this allah issue, and include fr dominic's interview and the mass on sunday. so for those of you who can tune it to al-jazeera tv, do watch out for it on sunday.

i'm proud that we christians are not easily provoked and do not resort to protest. instead of praying, then come out to protest, we pray well… as a form of 'silent protest'. yes we can get a good crowd after our sunday mass in church but we will not use the crowd after the mass for our own agenda to protest. we will make us of the crowd instead to advise them or even plead with them to pray everyday, pray for our church, pray for our nation… and yes, as fr dominic stated, pray for our persecutors/enemies too.

NOTE: more photos on the mass can be found at the city parish, penang facebook page.

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