Today calls to our memory the vile horrors perpetrated by one of Europe's most 'civilised' and 'advanced' countries upon one of Europe's oldest and most decorous communities and cultures. May God protect and keep us from ever being 'advanced'. May he forgive us for our own continuing daily holocaust of the Unborn.
Today also remembers all genocides and all 'holocausts'.
As well as the Shoah, as well as the murder of the Unborn, I also recall today the Holocaust of Christians by the Turks ... of Greek Orthodox and of Armenians in particular.
Let us seek the prayers of Saint Chrysostom of Smyrna, the Metropolitan of that great Greek city. On September 10 1922, he was handed over by the Turkish regular military to be most abhominably tortured and mutilated and murdered by an Islamic mob. He was born in 1867; canonised by the Church of Greece in 1993; and is commemorated on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Hierarch and Holy Martyr, pray for us. Remember us, though unworthy, in your perpetual Liturgy.
Father, we may also remember, in compassion, the horrible crime perpetrated by Stalin and his cadre against Ukrainians and Cossacks within the Soviet Empire, the Holodomor (Death by Hunger), which is particularly relevant for our present moment. For all those who suffered such brutal miseries, let us pray: "Eternal Memory!"
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