L
LegoGE1947
Guest
I see women wearing hats all the time at mass.
- Status
L
luminoushope
Guest
After only a short time in the Catholic Church I so greatly appreciate the Church’s teaching on suffering. Like many other issues, Protestants don’t know what to do with suffering, and it makes them uncomfortable.
It is wonderful to find out what I am actually supposed to DO with suffering. It makes such perfect sense on all levels.
I had an opportunity to practice this on New Year’s Day. I went to Mass in the morning and Father talked about making a special sacrifice to the Lord for the new year. I did–I went with my husband to a gathering to which I didn’t want to go and did my best to meet, with the right attitude, people I didn’t want to be around. I am so grateful for being taught rightly about these things.
Blessings, and prayers for a break in your situation.
LH
L
luminoushope
Guest
Again, this difference is probably because I live in California.
L
LegoGE1947
Guest
He actually started out by talking about the expression “Offer It Up!” He said his grandmother used to say that to him all the time when he’d unload on her a tale of woe expecting to get some sympathy or be coddled or something like that. He said as a kid it always sounded somehow harsh to him especially when he was expecting sympathy, and he never understood what it meant.
L
LegoGE1947
Guest
A lot of Protestants, particularly some Pentacostals, believe that Jesus came to take not only sin but suffering away and if you are suffering something must be wrong with your faith or you have some unconfessed sin in your life. They of course conveniently forget about the suffering all the early disciples had to go through.
H
Holyfire
Guest
hav a litle modesty
H
Holyfire
Guest
i used to luv sience and not believ in God. Then my parents made me go to CCD classes. I learned so much there. Religion answered alot of questions that science culd never answer. I then slowly started to gain faith and a love for God. Then I went to a Catholic school and became very religious and recieved all the sacraments of Initiation and Reconciliation.
D
dawid
Guest
I think your principle of a conversion of conviction is not only sound but admirable. However, should you be interested, read about the Catholic faith and see what it entails by attending some liturgy.
I would recommend the book “Rome, sweet Home” by Scott and Kimberly Hahn who are a married couple and theologians - it shows their misgivings and reasonings over several years before converting.
M
Memaw
Guest
Yes by all means cover your head if you want. It is a sign of Respect for Our Lord as are many other signs. Such as Genuflecting when entering the pew. No need to fear, I have always been one to do as I feel is right and not follow the crowd. I am my own person under the guidance of Holy Mother Church. ( I still am wearing some of the same slacks I wore before my husband died, 26 years ago.)
God Bless, Memaw
L
luminoushope
Guest
I think coming into the Catholic Church as an adult must be very different than the experience a child has. For myself I would sum this up as “sadder but wiser”. Sadder because there are huge consequences of past sin that I cannot undo. Wiser: ready to hear Truth and obey. Children–everybody really–do need to be nurtured, but part of this nurturing should be learning to “offer it up”, taking care that the child understands this to the best of his/her capacity. Thank God your priest–and you–stayed with the Faith. Blessings, Luminous Hope
L
luminoushope
Guest
Good morning, dear Moen. I didn’t respond because I can’t. This is a whole new and unknown area for me. In the little book I mentioned by Mother Teresa, the fourth day of the novena is about Our Lady. I have reread the Magnificat and just in general rehearsed her godly life, speech and behavior. Also praying the Hail Mary. Also, our relationship with her is part of the Communion of the Saints which is arbitrarily rejected by Protestants. (Their “proof” is the story of Lazarus the beggar and the rich man, which makes no sense because the rich man is in hell!)moen said:Did / Could anyone respond w/ thoughts on the Sarah, Mary biblical/Catholic question from a few days ago?
want to throw something out for bantering, since you all seem like family at this point. This is nagging me regarding Mary as our mother. In scripture the Protestants say that when Jesus told John “Behold your mother” it was for taking care of her. CC says it’s for spiritual purposes. So it sort of is a debatable point, no?
Yet clearly in the Bible in 1 Pet 3:6 it says specifically that it is Sarah who is our (for women) mother. Yet at the same time I say this I am discovering the mystery/love of Mary, please don’t get me wrong. It’s just so difficult to “prove” this point, and is a main reason for persecution in the friends/family arena here. And for SO many people it is the Mary question that clinches the solid “Catholicism is not biblical” phrase in their thinking. Period.
I try to avoid arguing, though it would be easy to point out the many arbitrary and contradictory things in Protestant Christendom. I guess if someone wanted to take me on I would tell them to come to the Catholic Church, see what it’s really like and taste and see that the Lord is good.
By the way, this is kind of a change of subject, but I keep thinking that the Protestant church is a perpetual adolescent and the Catholic church is the adult. Last night I repeated to my husband a remark a friend made, that my former church, which he still attends, reminds her of high school. He wasn’t the least offended and said he feels the same way! I wonder what is the distance between that and his trying out hanging with the grownups. Please pray.
J
Jerry_Parker
Guest
There has been mention often in exchanging messages about “offering up” to God our sufferings. This is a very Catholic attitude, which, I firmly believe, reflects the “Theology of the Cross” of historic Christianity (i.e., Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, too, when Lutherans are true to their own heritage).
Not for traditional Catholic piety is the “prosperity ‘gospel’” and “Pollyanna” attitude towards life and its vicissitudes that the sectaries and many Protestants promote. Theirs is the “Theology of Glory”, and woe to one of the adherents of these latter-day variants of Christianity when tough times and situations arise!
Cling to the Cross, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and offer up all, personal triumphs and misery alike, to our God!
Jerry Parker
Not for traditional Catholic piety is the “prosperity ‘gospel’” and “Pollyanna” attitude towards life and its vicissitudes that the sectaries and many Protestants promote. Theirs is the “Theology of Glory”, and woe to one of the adherents of these latter-day variants of Christianity when tough times and situations arise!
Cling to the Cross, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and offer up all, personal triumphs and misery alike, to our God!
Jerry Parker
H
Holyfire
Guest
In life we need a belief. Faith or a religion. The thing is, that gives us guidence and structure. It helps us to make the right decisions and to feel love. The Catholiv Religion offers that and the fact that you have a Catholic boyfriend is a sign from God to convert.
M
Memaw
Guest
Many things we learn as children are understood much better as we grow up,
My Mom used to tell us that too and I often wondered why Jesus wanted our sufferings when he had so much of HIS own. Later I begin to understand what it really meant. I was born on All Soul’s Day and my Mom used to tell me to offer up my pain, disappointments etc. for the Holy Souls. She said, ‘they’ are the best friends you’ll ever have. they will pray for you. I have found that to be soo true.
God Bless, Memaw
J
Jerry_Parker
Guest
Holy Fire,
You wrote that God through His gift of faith: gives us guidence and structure. It helps us to make the right decisions and to feel love. The Catholiv Religion offers that and the fact that you have a Catholic boyfriend is a sign from God to convert.
I had to smile at that! Indeed, sometimes God’s inducements to convert us to the Holy Faith are very pleasant ones! Alas, the devil also uses that bait to lure a Christian to convert to something vile and false, such as L.D.S. Mormonism, from cherishing another human more than loving God! Still, our God is both wise and wily beyond the cunning of the Serpent! May your sweet inducement, that boyfriend, succeed in his persuasions, allied to those of the Holy Ghost!
Jerry Parker
You wrote that God through His gift of faith: gives us guidence and structure. It helps us to make the right decisions and to feel love. The Catholiv Religion offers that and the fact that you have a Catholic boyfriend is a sign from God to convert.
I had to smile at that! Indeed, sometimes God’s inducements to convert us to the Holy Faith are very pleasant ones! Alas, the devil also uses that bait to lure a Christian to convert to something vile and false, such as L.D.S. Mormonism, from cherishing another human more than loving God! Still, our God is both wise and wily beyond the cunning of the Serpent! May your sweet inducement, that boyfriend, succeed in his persuasions, allied to those of the Holy Ghost!
Jerry Parker
J
Jerry_Parker
Guest
Moen and Memaw,
You two had written:
Moen: *In scripture the Protestants say that when Jesus told [Saint] John “Behold your mother” it was for taking care of her. [The] C.C. says it’s for spiritual purposes. So it sort of is a debatable point, no? *
Memaw. *[Saint] John was the only Apostle at the foot of the Cross, and actually Jesus meant both, for [Saint] John to care for HIS Mother (and he did) and for her to be the Mother of the Church, us, (andhe is). If you study the Acts of the Apostles, and early Church Father’s writings, you will see that Mary had a favored role in the early Church. Protestants can’t have it both ways. Many believe Jesus had brothers and sisters, but yet none of the so called siblings ever cared for Mary after Jesus died. *
This is not to say any more about the fray over Our Blessed Lady, the Theotokos, Mary, but to add something about an holy site important to Our Lady and St. John, to whose care Our Lord, Jesus, confided Mary to his most cherished apostle. Of course, you are right, Memaw, to say that there is no contradiction between the dual purposes, to which you and Moen refer, alike relevant for all Christians, of St. John’s loving custody of Our Lady, the All-Holy Theotokos.
I had the wondrous experience of visiting a now (in the Christian West) mostly forgotten holy site in the Turkish sector of Kurdistan, the mountanous town of Egil (in the greater Diyarbakir area), when having undertaken an humanitarian mission, briefly among the Kurds in Istanbul and then more extendedly in the Diyarbakir area of Kurdistan itself in late 1997.
During my stay in Diyarbakir, I went with a group of devout Muslim Kurds (who are very hospitable to, and friendly with, Christians, Lutherans, especially) to Egil, situated on facing slopes of two mountains, towering over the Tigris River. My guides spoke only rather basic English, but I was able to learn that Egil is a site important in regard to Old Testament, New Testament, and Islam. Two prophetic figures of the Old Testament have their mausoleums there, Eleazar (the so-named, I gather, who was the son of Aaron, the priestly brother of Moses) and Ezekiel. (We often forget how important Mesopotamia was in the canonical and deuter-canonical Biblical records of O.T. history and even of N.T. times.) There also are two important saints of Islam buried in the same mausoleum, devoted to these four figures variously of Christianity and of Islam (and, of course, of pre-Talmudic, Biblical Judaism).
What is interesting here in regard to Our Lady, Mary, and to Saint John, her protector, is that, according to tradition, St. John, after Our Lord on the Cross had confided Our Blessed Lady, Mary, to St. John’s care, took her and the other holy women, who had stood at the foot of the Cross along with themselves, to Egil, high in the Mesopotamian mountains of historic Kurdistan, to shelter them from the wrath of those who persecuted Christians in the earliest years of the Apostolic Age in the populous lowland areas of the Holy Land and ancient world. The other holy women died there and were buried in graves in the grounds of the mausoleum that eventually was built, but, of course, not Mary herself, who never was buried, but rather assumed to heaven upon her decease. It was hard to figure out which grave was of which of the Holy Women, but my Muslim guides were certain as to which of the graves was that of Johanna. Of course, Our Lady, Mary, returned to Jerusalem, leaving the others behind in Egil, and St. John continued his apostolate elsewhere, after securing the safety of the Holy Women, but the other women who witnessed the entire Crucifixion of Our Lord spent the rest of their days at Egil, there to die eventually and to be buried.
In earlier times, during the Ottoman era and before, Egil had been an important site of pilgrimage. Alas, the nationalist Kemalist Turks, who took over Kurdistan and the rest of what the infamous Treaty of Lausanne (at the conclusion of W.W. I) cobbled together as the modern borders of Turkey, including this part of historic Kurdistan (which long had been a separate semi-automonous province of the Arabian and then Ottoman empires), objected to Egil being an holy site. The reason is that Egil and the Second Century church there (of which I saw the ruins, on the mountain slope opposite to the mausoleum, was an ecclesial structure which the Turks destroyed in the 1960s), had been under the aegis of the Armenian Orthodox Church. The Turks persecuted and perpetrated a terrible genocide (murderous genocide and ethnicide alike) on the Armemians, as well, of course and only starting a bit later, upon the Kurds. This impelled the Turkish authorities to try to isolate Egil from the rest of the world, in a secretive effort to enhance whatever respect Turks have in their fascisitic ultra-nationalist and racist Turkish standing.
Anyway, it was a great honour and pleasure to be one of the rare present-day Christians to see this site and to pray at it. Atop all else, the Holy Site of Egil has a spectacularly scenic setting that is visible close to the mausoleum and holy graves, near the peak of one of the facing mountains, offering a splendidly virtigionous view of the great inter-mountainous chasm and of the Tigris River far below to another side, as well as of an imposingly huge Assyrian fortress of antiquity marvellously preserved (used as a monastery in former times) that simply beggars description!
Leave to the Protestants their callous neglect of the Blessed Mother of Our Lord and any rejection of Our Lady’s claim upon true Christians for our veneration!
Jerry Parker
You two had written:
Moen: *In scripture the Protestants say that when Jesus told [Saint] John “Behold your mother” it was for taking care of her. [The] C.C. says it’s for spiritual purposes. So it sort of is a debatable point, no? *
Memaw. *[Saint] John was the only Apostle at the foot of the Cross, and actually Jesus meant both, for [Saint] John to care for HIS Mother (and he did) and for her to be the Mother of the Church, us, (and
This is not to say any more about the fray over Our Blessed Lady, the Theotokos, Mary, but to add something about an holy site important to Our Lady and St. John, to whose care Our Lord, Jesus, confided Mary to his most cherished apostle. Of course, you are right, Memaw, to say that there is no contradiction between the dual purposes, to which you and Moen refer, alike relevant for all Christians, of St. John’s loving custody of Our Lady, the All-Holy Theotokos.
I had the wondrous experience of visiting a now (in the Christian West) mostly forgotten holy site in the Turkish sector of Kurdistan, the mountanous town of Egil (in the greater Diyarbakir area), when having undertaken an humanitarian mission, briefly among the Kurds in Istanbul and then more extendedly in the Diyarbakir area of Kurdistan itself in late 1997.
During my stay in Diyarbakir, I went with a group of devout Muslim Kurds (who are very hospitable to, and friendly with, Christians, Lutherans, especially) to Egil, situated on facing slopes of two mountains, towering over the Tigris River. My guides spoke only rather basic English, but I was able to learn that Egil is a site important in regard to Old Testament, New Testament, and Islam. Two prophetic figures of the Old Testament have their mausoleums there, Eleazar (the so-named, I gather, who was the son of Aaron, the priestly brother of Moses) and Ezekiel. (We often forget how important Mesopotamia was in the canonical and deuter-canonical Biblical records of O.T. history and even of N.T. times.) There also are two important saints of Islam buried in the same mausoleum, devoted to these four figures variously of Christianity and of Islam (and, of course, of pre-Talmudic, Biblical Judaism).
What is interesting here in regard to Our Lady, Mary, and to Saint John, her protector, is that, according to tradition, St. John, after Our Lord on the Cross had confided Our Blessed Lady, Mary, to St. John’s care, took her and the other holy women, who had stood at the foot of the Cross along with themselves, to Egil, high in the Mesopotamian mountains of historic Kurdistan, to shelter them from the wrath of those who persecuted Christians in the earliest years of the Apostolic Age in the populous lowland areas of the Holy Land and ancient world. The other holy women died there and were buried in graves in the grounds of the mausoleum that eventually was built, but, of course, not Mary herself, who never was buried, but rather assumed to heaven upon her decease. It was hard to figure out which grave was of which of the Holy Women, but my Muslim guides were certain as to which of the graves was that of Johanna. Of course, Our Lady, Mary, returned to Jerusalem, leaving the others behind in Egil, and St. John continued his apostolate elsewhere, after securing the safety of the Holy Women, but the other women who witnessed the entire Crucifixion of Our Lord spent the rest of their days at Egil, there to die eventually and to be buried.
In earlier times, during the Ottoman era and before, Egil had been an important site of pilgrimage. Alas, the nationalist Kemalist Turks, who took over Kurdistan and the rest of what the infamous Treaty of Lausanne (at the conclusion of W.W. I) cobbled together as the modern borders of Turkey, including this part of historic Kurdistan (which long had been a separate semi-automonous province of the Arabian and then Ottoman empires), objected to Egil being an holy site. The reason is that Egil and the Second Century church there (of which I saw the ruins, on the mountain slope opposite to the mausoleum, was an ecclesial structure which the Turks destroyed in the 1960s), had been under the aegis of the Armenian Orthodox Church. The Turks persecuted and perpetrated a terrible genocide (murderous genocide and ethnicide alike) on the Armemians, as well, of course and only starting a bit later, upon the Kurds. This impelled the Turkish authorities to try to isolate Egil from the rest of the world, in a secretive effort to enhance whatever respect Turks have in their fascisitic ultra-nationalist and racist Turkish standing.
Anyway, it was a great honour and pleasure to be one of the rare present-day Christians to see this site and to pray at it. Atop all else, the Holy Site of Egil has a spectacularly scenic setting that is visible close to the mausoleum and holy graves, near the peak of one of the facing mountains, offering a splendidly virtigionous view of the great inter-mountainous chasm and of the Tigris River far below to another side, as well as of an imposingly huge Assyrian fortress of antiquity marvellously preserved (used as a monastery in former times) that simply beggars description!
Leave to the Protestants their callous neglect of the Blessed Mother of Our Lord and any rejection of Our Lady’s claim upon true Christians for our veneration!
Jerry Parker
L
LegoGE1947
Guest
Speaking of belief There is the bumper sticker that says “Every body has to believe something, so I believe I’ll have a cookie!”
L
luminoushope
Guest
Back to “offering it up”–so beautiful and valid–the chorus of an old folksong keeps going through my head, only I think of it as coming to me from Our Lord:
But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows,
And give them all to me,
You would lose them, I know how to use them,
Give them all to me.
(“Pack Up Your Sorrows”, by Richard Farina)
From an old folksinger, couldn’t help myself–L.H.
But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows,
And give them all to me,
You would lose them, I know how to use them,
Give them all to me.
(“Pack Up Your Sorrows”, by Richard Farina)
From an old folksinger, couldn’t help myself–L.H.
M
moen
Guest
To Jerry Parker:
You could write a book!----I watched “The Other Holy Land” (Turkey) and it had references to the Muslim respect for Mary, for sure! Very interesting. They also said that a small stone ruins of a home was where Mary spent her last days, but then others say she spent them in Jerusalem, so there’s a debate there. But they said St. John’s tomb is there, I believe…?
Memaw, your point of “where were the siblings when Jesus died” is a very valid one…I never thought of that, and will mention that to the next of my friends persecuting Mary/CC.
I will still add tho that we are Sarah’s daughters (“if we don’t give way to fear”), because that’s what Peter himself said in his NT letter.
On another subject: I know I cannot be confirmed in CC w/o being baptized Catholic, but I was baptized and confirmed a Lutheran…as well as took RCIA 2 years ago, but didn’t do the very end portion, obviously. I went to a new church this AM and loved it. They spoke of a catechumen class and a separate confirmation class going on. (IE I don’t fit either group)
It’s hard to pin the right person down it seems regarding the path to follow in this church becuase they’re a part of a much larger parish church (confusing, I know
. The priest is really hard of hearing and I couldn’t take a long time this morning to ask him after service. My son was with me and it was awkward. The sweet church is where I would love to follow through… Anyone else walked out this journey.
You could write a book!----I watched “The Other Holy Land” (Turkey) and it had references to the Muslim respect for Mary, for sure! Very interesting. They also said that a small stone ruins of a home was where Mary spent her last days, but then others say she spent them in Jerusalem, so there’s a debate there. But they said St. John’s tomb is there, I believe…?
Memaw, your point of “where were the siblings when Jesus died” is a very valid one…I never thought of that, and will mention that to the next of my friends persecuting Mary/CC.
I will still add tho that we are Sarah’s daughters (“if we don’t give way to fear”), because that’s what Peter himself said in his NT letter.On another subject: I know I cannot be confirmed in CC w/o being baptized Catholic, but I was baptized and confirmed a Lutheran…as well as took RCIA 2 years ago, but didn’t do the very end portion, obviously. I went to a new church this AM and loved it. They spoke of a catechumen class and a separate confirmation class going on. (IE I don’t fit either group)
It’s hard to pin the right person down it seems regarding the path to follow in this church becuase they’re a part of a much larger parish church (confusing, I know
. The priest is really hard of hearing and I couldn’t take a long time this morning to ask him after service. My son was with me and it was awkward. The sweet church is where I would love to follow through… Anyone else walked out this journey.
J
Jerry_Parker
Guest
Moen,
You wrote: *To Jerry Parker: You could write a book!----I watched “The Other Holy Land” (Turkey) and it had references to the Muslim respect for Mary, for sure! Very interesting. They also said that a small stone ruins of a home was where Mary spent her last days, but then others say she spent them in Jerusalem, so there’s a debate there. But they said St. John’s tomb is there, I believe…? *
Well, Moen, I have published widely as a writer, especially about music. When I returned from Diyarbakir, a press conference had been envisaged for me, but due to the physical condition that I was in, it was impossible to hold it. I had, for one thing, a colossal case of 'jet lag" (from a 36-hours aeroplane trip from Diyarbakir to Montréal with connexions in Istanbul and Amsterdam) and other fatigue. The whole humanitarian mission (under the joint auspices of a group of Independent Confessional Lutheran congregations, and those in their orb, and of Kurdish partisans in Kurdistan and Québec) was exceedingly exhausting; I do not know how I was able to do so much in basically a week and one-half’s jaunt under primitive conditions, and was trailed endlessly by Turkish government spies the whole time, with consequent need to stay on the move and to pass nights in different residences to avoid them.
Also, I was in the early throes of a parasitic infestation, apparently contracted from Tigris River water polluted non-visibly and taste-free by petroleum; that problem became so severe by the beginning of the next year (1998, the mission venture having been in late 1997) that I nearly bled to death from slow loss of blood to the point that I had lost 2/3 of my blood by the time that I was hospitalised, in semi-comatose state. A young Kurd, who is an especially dear friend, took many photos during the Diyarbakir area portion of the mission (the major part), including of the spectacular pilgrimage spot in Egil, but the photos turned out too poorly to use in publication, which was very disappointing. I still have the photos and the copious notes that I took during this mission. (Egil, at least by the local people in the region, is pronounced “EH-yill”)
So, the press conference (to have been under the aegis of La Presse, the major Montréal daily newspaper), never took place; I was in a state of utter stupor on return, needing sleep desperately for over a week after my return, as I struggled to resume my work at the music library of the Université du Québec (Montréal), and then increasingly debilitated by what turned out to be a parasitic condition extremely rare and difficult to analyse. I did succeed in publishing an article in the Lutheran weekly paper, Christian News, but it dealt only with one aspect of my mission, namely the Zionist effort to displace the Kurds from their lands in order, eventually, after seizing Arab lands to the north of the rogue state of Israel, to extend the boundaries, of “Eretz Israel”, not only to the Euphrates River, but to the Tigris River as well.
I can answer a couple of your questions, though. Our Lady, the All-Holy Theotokos, Mary, spent time in Egil, but she did not die there, nor was there any account locally or her having died in Egli. As for her supposed house in Egil, I guess that it is possible that the stone mausoleum (which, of course, is not in a state of ruin, though it may have been so at one time), which is laid out in rooms as a house of modest by certainly not tiny size, could have been that structure, but, not having know of this report, I did not ask about this matter and I have no idea when the mausoleum was constructed or converted for use as the shrine of the O.T. prophets and Islamic saints. Egil is described in older printed sources, when it still was famous internationally as a religious site, so this would be verifiable. Mary herself returned to Jerusalem, as the New Testament attests her presence there, and St. John the Apostle left Egil for his evangelistic endeavours which ended his life on the isle of Patmos. However, the other holy women of Jesus’ circle who who bravely remained by Our Lord throughout the Crucifixion, did stay in Egil to their lives’ ends, which is why their graves are there.
As for the false report that St. John died and was buried in Egil also is easy to refute. I found out why this rumour arose. The Kurds and Turks confused (and still confound) the names of John and of Johanna. Both, indeed, were in Egil, but only Johanna is buried there. Many locals still think that Johanna’s grave is that of St. John. The names, of course, are orthographically close, which gave rise to this confusion.
Jerry Parker
You wrote: *To Jerry Parker: You could write a book!----I watched “The Other Holy Land” (Turkey) and it had references to the Muslim respect for Mary, for sure! Very interesting. They also said that a small stone ruins of a home was where Mary spent her last days, but then others say she spent them in Jerusalem, so there’s a debate there. But they said St. John’s tomb is there, I believe…? *
Well, Moen, I have published widely as a writer, especially about music. When I returned from Diyarbakir, a press conference had been envisaged for me, but due to the physical condition that I was in, it was impossible to hold it. I had, for one thing, a colossal case of 'jet lag" (from a 36-hours aeroplane trip from Diyarbakir to Montréal with connexions in Istanbul and Amsterdam) and other fatigue. The whole humanitarian mission (under the joint auspices of a group of Independent Confessional Lutheran congregations, and those in their orb, and of Kurdish partisans in Kurdistan and Québec) was exceedingly exhausting; I do not know how I was able to do so much in basically a week and one-half’s jaunt under primitive conditions, and was trailed endlessly by Turkish government spies the whole time, with consequent need to stay on the move and to pass nights in different residences to avoid them.
Also, I was in the early throes of a parasitic infestation, apparently contracted from Tigris River water polluted non-visibly and taste-free by petroleum; that problem became so severe by the beginning of the next year (1998, the mission venture having been in late 1997) that I nearly bled to death from slow loss of blood to the point that I had lost 2/3 of my blood by the time that I was hospitalised, in semi-comatose state. A young Kurd, who is an especially dear friend, took many photos during the Diyarbakir area portion of the mission (the major part), including of the spectacular pilgrimage spot in Egil, but the photos turned out too poorly to use in publication, which was very disappointing. I still have the photos and the copious notes that I took during this mission. (Egil, at least by the local people in the region, is pronounced “EH-yill”)
So, the press conference (to have been under the aegis of La Presse, the major Montréal daily newspaper), never took place; I was in a state of utter stupor on return, needing sleep desperately for over a week after my return, as I struggled to resume my work at the music library of the Université du Québec (Montréal), and then increasingly debilitated by what turned out to be a parasitic condition extremely rare and difficult to analyse. I did succeed in publishing an article in the Lutheran weekly paper, Christian News, but it dealt only with one aspect of my mission, namely the Zionist effort to displace the Kurds from their lands in order, eventually, after seizing Arab lands to the north of the rogue state of Israel, to extend the boundaries, of “Eretz Israel”, not only to the Euphrates River, but to the Tigris River as well.
I can answer a couple of your questions, though. Our Lady, the All-Holy Theotokos, Mary, spent time in Egil, but she did not die there, nor was there any account locally or her having died in Egli. As for her supposed house in Egil, I guess that it is possible that the stone mausoleum (which, of course, is not in a state of ruin, though it may have been so at one time), which is laid out in rooms as a house of modest by certainly not tiny size, could have been that structure, but, not having know of this report, I did not ask about this matter and I have no idea when the mausoleum was constructed or converted for use as the shrine of the O.T. prophets and Islamic saints. Egil is described in older printed sources, when it still was famous internationally as a religious site, so this would be verifiable. Mary herself returned to Jerusalem, as the New Testament attests her presence there, and St. John the Apostle left Egil for his evangelistic endeavours which ended his life on the isle of Patmos. However, the other holy women of Jesus’ circle who who bravely remained by Our Lord throughout the Crucifixion, did stay in Egil to their lives’ ends, which is why their graves are there.
As for the false report that St. John died and was buried in Egil also is easy to refute. I found out why this rumour arose. The Kurds and Turks confused (and still confound) the names of John and of Johanna. Both, indeed, were in Egil, but only Johanna is buried there. Many locals still think that Johanna’s grave is that of St. John. The names, of course, are orthographically close, which gave rise to this confusion.
Jerry Parker
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