By Baghdadhope
Despite the declarations about an Iraq near to normalization, little must have changed if, has he had already done in December 2006, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, asked, by a declaration to Ishtar TV, to all Iraqis, and not only to Christian ones, to pray for “peace, security and stability”
The request has been made in occasion of the three days that the Chaldean Church, and in general the churches of oriental rites, dedicate to repentance: the “Nineveh fast time” or Ba-oota d' Ninevayee, in remembrance of the convertion to God of the inhabitants of Nineveh following the preaching of the Prophet Jonak.
The celebrations, that began on Monday and will end tonight, have been characterized by the request to God for peace for all Iraq and its Christian minority, still shocked by the recent attacks that in three days hit 9 places of worship in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk.
As referred to Baghdadhope, peace has been invoked in Kirkuk in the Sacred Heart Chaldean Church, the same attacked last week, where the people has been invited not to loose the hope of a living “in our country, Iraq, and in our loved city, Kirkuk.”
In Ankawa, where, according to the parish priest of Mar Qardagh Chaldean Church, Father Rayan P. Atto, people found the signs of hope non only in prayers but also in the baptims, during the first day of the celebrations, of 4 babies, “real signs of our future.”
“Nineveh fast time” has been celebrated not only in Iraq, but also by the different Chaldean communities in the world. So it has been, for example, as referred to Baghdadhope by a Chaldean priest in Germany, Father Sami Al Rais, in the cities of Bonn, Cologne, Essen and Münchengladbach where even if it was impossible to celebrate the rite according to the ancient liturgy because of the absence of subdiacons, prayers and hymns underlined “the importance of repentance and the hope in the Divine work”
To listen to some of the prayers of the second day of “Nineveh fast time” celebration in St. Peter Chaldean Church in California click here
To understand the meaning and the history of this liturgical tradition read the article written by Fr. Andrew Younan for Sawra magazine as published by Kaldu.org website click here.