Living with Enemies: Saad Sirop Hanna
This post is part of a series exploring the lives of people attempting to live a life true to Jesus’ example and teaching in the midst of serious enmity. The first post focused on Jesus and the most recent one on Polycarp of Smyrna.
Chaldeans appear alongside Babylonians, Sumerians and Assyrians in the lists of ancient Middle Eastern peoples.
Today, Chaldeans are members of one of the oldest churches in the world, located in Northern Iraq.
This church is slowly bleeding to death.
Priest Saad Sirop Hanna was one of those to bleed.
It was only a month after the world saw an Iraqi crowd pull down Saddam Hussein’s statue with the help of the US army. The country was very unstable and already sliding to a state of civil war.
Saad, a Chaldean Catholic priest studying in Rome, was called by his church’s Patriarch to return to Iraq and help his people in this very difficult time.
He returned immediately, became parish priest of a church in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods of Baghdad, and assisted local Christian and Muslim families.
Bombings and kidnappings were commonplace there.
One Sunday, after speaking to his congregation about loving and forgiving in the midst of hard circumstances, Saad was picked off the street, shoved in the trunk of a car, and quickly driven away.
He had been kidnapped by al-Qaeda.
Over the following weeks, Saad was kept in various places, often made to stay outside whole days and nights in the hot Iraqi climate.
Although his captors were mainly after money as a ransom for him, they often tortured him and told him he should become a Muslim.
A learned man, Saad quoted the Qur’an back at them by saying “There is no compulsion in religion.” This enraged his torturer who rushed him to a nearby river, put a gun against his head and screamed:
Your life or Islam!
Saad refused, and his torturer backed off, apparently still more interested in the money they could get for him.
Despite his bravery in the face of death, Saad sometimes succumbed to hysteria and fell in a deep well of despair.
“This life was of my choosing,” he then would say. He had decided to go to Iraq in extreme difficulties and he had decided not to leave when the situation became increasingly dangerous. His sense of calling had prevented him from caring too much for his own safety.
“I had dedicated myself to following the example of Christ,” he said, and he wanted to endure his suffering not through hate but through love.
And in these moments of dedication to Jesus in the midst of suffering and despair, he found deep purpose and at times an unimaginable closeness to Jesus, which provided him with an immense strength and joy despite his constant despair.
My faith did not ensure that I would be rescued but that God would be with me no matter the conclusion.
In the Christian ‘life with enemies’, God does not always save people from suffering. But he promises that he will be there, suffering with them.
After ransom was paid twice, and Saad had made an attempt at escape, he was put into a car again, and told that that day would be the last.
On the way, suddenly one of his captors asked: “You don’t hate us, do you?”
After a few seconds, Saad answered “No, I don’t hate any person. My faith asks this of me, to love all people. Even those who harm me.”
“So if we release you, you will not inform on us?” the man asked.
“You will not hear from me again,” said Saad.
He was released after 28 days of hell.
Afterwards, when asked how one can realistically preach we should “turn the other cheek”, Saad replied “Love”.
Christ is love and love was never meant to be easy. It is the hardest thing of all and yet it will always be the only answer. Love is the ultimate measure of a life well lived. The shadow of death purifies this belief.
Death reveals that love is all that counts.
Read the next entry in this series on the 21 Coptic Martyrs.
