An Orthodox Monastic Response To Islam by Fr. James

Several generations ago, in what seemed then to be an unlikely possibility, the writer Hilaire Belloc predicted that the greatest challenge to Christianity in the coming decades would be the rise of Islam in the west. What then was oddly insightful is today the stuff of our daily news.

The responses to the rise (and, for those with a memory of history, the return) of Islam in the west are varied: psychological, legal, military, economic, sociological, theological..

What is missing is an over-arching spiritual approach, one appropriate to Orthodox Christians and monastics – an approach both simple and powerful. That approach is prayer. And the only reasonable prayer to be made is for the submission of Islam to Christ, not by means of the sword but by the weapons of Christian truth and love. To be converted to the love of Christ and his truth, the followers of Islam must come to see clearly in the followers of Christ his truth and love. And these become infused in us by the mystery and grace of prayer.

No doubt, in a general way we Orthodox Christians do pray over this issue, but our prayer may lack focus. To remedy this, perhaps Orthodox Christians (and indeed all Christians) might direct their prayers to a particular heavenly patron whose earthly life was spent in the fiery crucible of confrontation between Christianity and Islam: St. John of Damascus.

The following prayer is offered as a means of focusing our minds and hearts daily on the need for heavenly help in the deepening crisis of our times as Islam once again challenges Christendom. It does not suggest any solution apart from absolute fidelity to witnessing the Christian faith, so ably defended by St. John in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith – a witness of speaking the truth in love, and a willingness, should it be God’s will, to suffer the loss of all things for ourselves “if only Christ be gained.”






PRAYER

Most merciful God, who didst raise up thy servant Blessed John of Damascus to proclaim and defend the faith of thy holy Church, even in the midst of her enemies: we ask, by his prayers, for the wisdom and courage to show forth that faith in our words and in our works, in our living and in our loving, and – if it be thy will – in our dying; that thy holy Church may be defended against all adversities; and that we and all faithful Christians, armed with the spiritual weapons of truth and love, may join valiantly in the struggle to bring the faith and love of Christ thy Son to the minds and hearts of all who follow the way of Islam; that they may come to know and adore our Saviour Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord; to whom with thee, Father, and the Holy Ghost, the one true God, all-compassionate and all-merciful, be all honor, glory and dominion, world without end. Amen.

V. Rev. James M. Deschene
Christ the Saviour Monastery

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