Christmas

He has risen.

The Staff of the Mission whishes you a Blessed period of Christmas.

We thank you for your prayers and gifts.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Happy Christmas!

Let your generosity grow.

In the Spirit of Christmas

Dear friends and benefactors,

The Aid to the Martyr Churches Inc. feasts its 20th years of existence in Canada.

You have, in your hands, our call for sharing - the call for funds - of this New Year 2008. Indeed, we are confronted, day after day, with the basic difficulties of our brothers and sisters from countries as Rumania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Caribbean countries, African countries... Can you bring us help? Can you send us your gift which would fit in one of the following categories?

- Mass intentions for the priests to whom we give assistance - and which have insufficient incomes for a decent life;

- Pastoral assistance (purses for students in need, purchase of didactic material and books for the teaching of the religion; maintenance of the seminars and schools; wages for professors; financing for summer camps for rest and prayer);

- Apostolate through the media of information (financing of radio and television broadcasts, local pamphlets; booklets having as theme the Christian faith and the prayer; training for Christian agents working in the Medias);

- Assistance for subsistence, for priests and deacons;

- Construction of churches in villages, chapels, homes for children, classrooms, dispensaries, community workshops (monthly financing);

- Training of seminarians in monasteries and institutions of Eastern tradition;

- Charitable Assistance for the families of those who suffered in the totalitarian-atheist period

- Impression of books and booklets with religious catechetic subjects;

- Resourcement of priests in monasteries; etc

By helping in the past our mission, you contributed to the realization of projects like:

- Construction of a church in Oradea, in Romania. Costing 150,000 $, its plans were provided by one community from St. Laurent City, which also made a gift of 40,000 $ for its construction. The new church was built between 1992 and 1995;

- Installations and works in a monastery named Maxineni, Romania. The cost of the fence and other works was 2,000 $, the Quebecer benefactors provided this amount of money in offering;

- Medical Dispensary in Oradea, Romania. The instruments in value of 15,000 $ were provided by several benefactors and Quebecer institutions;

- Drugs for the parish of the Mother of God in Bucharest. Total value: 17,000 $. Provided by Quebecer pharmacists;

- Cars given in Baia-Mare, Cluj, Gherla, Oradea, Romania. Total cost: 5,000 $, provided by Quebecer benefactors (the new cars were worth at the time 1,000 $ each one);

- Books for schools and seminars. Total cost: 10,000 $. Provided or financed by the printing, by Quebecer benefactors;

- Sewing machines, computers, printers, in Oradea and Cluj. Total price: 5,000 $ provided by Quebecer benefactors. The sewing machines received gracefully in Switzerland were used for the needs of students in theology to sew all the bed linen necessary, and gave work to 5 people;

- Impression in Montreal, in Rumanian language, of 8 titles of books, necessary to the evangelization. Total cost of the impression: 6,000 $, provided by Quebecer benefactors;

- Mass intentions for Rumanian and Hungarian priests of 3 dioceses. Approx. 5,000 $ provided by Quebecer parishes; etc

Once again, your gifts can create great joys. An illustrated Gospel for children costs 6 $; the wages of a priest are 42 $ per month, therefore an intention of mass will make it live 2 weeks; a catechism costs 6 $; a car costs 6.000 $ and the priests cannot treat to it. Your gift can make us more effective. Help us to be able to contribute even more to the rebuilding of the life in Faith in these countries dilapidated by the atheistic totalitarianism!

It is now the privileged moment for us, to hold us ready to help, to bring the joy in the hearths and in the ravaged communities of faith, after a so long suffering.

We send our gifts exclusively to the persons in charge for the communities which we know, to the families in suffering and serious shortage, which distribute the gifts. More than one million young people await our gifts and our books. Help us to distribute much of it! And pray for the success of our apostolate, because we need your prayers!

Waiting for your contribution that we hope for generous, please receive our greetings in the Christ and the thanks of the people of God who awaits your gifts. May the Christ be born in your hearts!

Please donate.

Yours, in the service of the Mission

Rev. Radu Roscanu,

It was Christmas Eve

Dear brothers and sisters,

"You must be born again" (John 3:7).

Let me tell you about a man who was in prison with me. Dimitri was a pastor whose backbone had been beaten with a hammer. When certain vertebra was hit, he was paralysed so that he could move only his neck.

You can imagine what a tragedy this was. If he had been in a home or hospital, he would have had a wife, mother, or nurse to take care of him. How would we take care of him? There was no running water to wash him, no linen to change him. He lay there in his human waste. He could not stretch out his hands to drink a cup of water. The others who could walk and work were taken to slave labour during the day. When they came back in the evening, he had to wait for them to help him drink a cup of water. He lay like this in prison for a couple of years. It was hell an earth.

Then in December 1989 Romania had a revolution and the dictator Ceausescu was overturned. Freedom came and Dimitri was released from prison to be with his family and friends. No doctor could help him, but now he had loving hands to help him. He still could not move hand or foot.

One day someone knocked at his door. It was the Communist who had crippled him. He said, "Sir, don't believe that I have come to ask forgiveness from you. For what I have done, there is no forgiveness, not on earth or in heaven. You are not the only one I have tortured like this. You cannot forgive me; nobody can forgive me. Not even God! My crime is much too great. I have come only to tell you that I am sorry about what I have done. From you I go to hang myself. That is all.' He turned to leave.

The paralysed Brother Dimitri said to him, "Sir, in all these years I have not been so sorry as I am now, that I cannot move my arms. I would like to stretch them cut to you and embrace you. For years I have prayed for you every day. I love you with all of my heart. You are forgiven."

Dimitri had learned love from Jesus, who called Judas "friend", who prayed for those who crucified Him, and who accepted Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, and made him an apostle.

Our faith in Jesus means imitating Him. Jesus, as often as He met a sinner, did not reproach him. He took that man's sin upon Himself and suffered on the cross for the sin. I could tell you many stories of others like Dimitri.

At one point in prison, I felt very sick. I had tuberculosis, diabetes; heart problems, jaundice, and I don't know how many other kinds of sicknesses. I was near death. There was in that prison a cell reserved only for the dying. I am the only one who has survived that cell. I was in that room for over three years and came out on my feet to tell the story. It is a story not only of suffering, but also of so much beauty.

To my right side was a pastor by the name of Iscu. He had been so badly beaten and tortured that he lay dying. He was so quiet. He knew where he was going. Whenever he opened his mouth, he gave gems. In Hebrew the word TO TELL or TO SAY does not exist. The Hebrew word for SAY or TELL means SAPPHIRE, A GEM. TO SAY in Jewish means TO GIVE A GEM. If you open your mouth, give a gem. There may be times when you are sad or angry. Keep silent and wait for the moment when you can give a gem. Iseu gave gems when he spoke. He spoke about the beauties of heaven and the love of Jesus. His body was still an earth, at my right side, but mentally he was already in heaven.

On my left side was the Communist who had tortured him to the brink of death. The government had arrested their own comrade and tortured him. Now he too was near death. During the night, he would awaken, "Please, pastor, say a prayer for me. I have committed such crimes. I cannot die."

What I witnessed next was a scene from heaven (you need not be in heaven to see heaven). The agonizing pastor called two other prisoners to help him and, leaning an them, he very slowly passed my bed and sat down an the bedside of his torturer. Iscu caressed his torturer on his head. I will never forget the scene.

This was the man who had so beaten Iscu that now he waited for death, and Iseu caressed him. He said, "I have forgiven you with all of my heart and I love you. If I who am only a sinner can love and forgive you, more so can Jesus who is the Son of God and who is love incarnate. Return to Him. He longs for you much more than you long for Him. He wishes to forgive you much more than you wish to be forgiven. You just repent." In that prison setting where there was no place for intimacy, I overheard this torturer confess all of his murders to the tortured one. Then they prayed together and embraced each other.

Slowly, slowly, the pastor was helped to his deathbed. They both died the same night. It was Christmas Eve, but not a Christmas Eve at which you celebrate one who was born 2,000 years ago, far away in Bethlehem. Jesus had been born that very evening in the heart of a criminal.

This is what Jesus can do for you. I hope that I do not speak in vain. When I have a gem, I speak. This is the gem I have for you today. Jesus loves you and waits to be born in your heart.

God bless you,

Richard Wurmbrand

Feeling down

When I am feeling down, it can be from three possible sources. It is possible that certain chemicals in my body are in disarray.

A physician for my body can help me.

Or it could be that I am down because the feelings of my heart are sore and confused by the experiences of my life.

A psychologist can help me understand and accept my feelings.

Or it could be that I feel sadness in my soul because I have not chosen well or lived well.

God, the physician of my soul, can help me with forgiveness, peace, and love, and a chance to start over anew.

Help me, my God, to find the way to life again.

Christmas is coming!

Message for a friend

Dear friend,


I begin my daily work by reading the last news concerning the persecution which prevails around the world.

I hear that there are massacres in Rwanda, assassinations in Iran, in Nepal, in Bosnia...

Too often Christians of different confessions are sacrificed just because they believe in Jesus Christ.

Thinking of them, praying for them is another way of living the Good News today and waiting for the times when hatred will no longer exist and men and women will live in peace.

Each day my love grows stronger for the members of the Uniate Church of Romania who experience, since two generations, a perfidious persecution and are not free to live according to their faith. All this Church's goods have been confiscated together with some 2,500 churches, and the present authorities are continuing the persecutions which prevailed under the Ceausescu regime.

And each time I feel the pain of knowing what the women and children of Bosnia are suffering in this long and cruel war.

And I pray for these persecuted people, forgotten by this world. In fact, they are more numerous today than ever: in our century, more christians have been killed because of their faith than during the nineteen previous centuries.

Bringing back peace, respect of human dignity and of freedom of belief, helping the martyrs which are suffering today, is a blessed cause. I pray for the martyrs and for the persecuted, and I also send to you, dear friend, a complimentary copy of this information bulletin, "The Voice of the Martyrs". I only ask you to read it, today. And also to think of those who are persecuted today and of ways to help us in this fight for freedom and justice.

You can truly be helpful to those who suffer today. By giving from your surplus, you will truly help those who suffer, the hungry children and the widows of those who died fro their faith.

So how can you participate, by giving and by being informed, to our charitable work for the Martyr Churches? Just remember the women who were asking themselves, in front of our Lord's tomb: How can we move the tombstone? They did not lose hope, and the angels came and moved the tombstone.

Like these women, I am not alone in this combat. Angels are on my side. Their work has brought a partial ceasing of the anti-religious persecutions in the former communist countries. You can contribute to the work of the angels, who have already defeated communist tyrants, by helping the Uniates of Romania, the Hungarians, the Bulgarian, the eastern Slovaks, the catholic Ukrainians, the Russians, the christians persecuted in the muslim and buddhist countries, all these forgotten people in our world of wealth.

This information bulletin can become the good friend who faithfully enters your home once a month. It will bring you, if you wish, the information which will keep you in touch with a world where christian faith struggles for survival. It can be the lever with which you can move the tombstone, so that in the glory of the empty tomb, you can be the instrument and the witness of the resurrection of the Church in distress.
Yours in Christ,

Rev. Radu Roscanu, Director

Two Kinds of Knowledge - Christmas

By Richard Wurmbrand

At Christmas, let us adore Jesus and the love by which He became man. This love passes knowledge, yet Paul writes that it can be known.

How can the unknowable be known?

In Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible, the word “to know” has two meanings: to understand and to unite in ardent love. Therefore it is written, “Adam knew Eve and she conceived a boy” (Genesis 4:1).

Love can know what is unknowable to reason. This love does not stop at Jesus but embraces all babies who are cold and hungry.

Richard Wurmbrand