"It's amazing to see people living the Christian faith -- and especially when they don't have to." That's what Chaldean Paul Thabet Habib Yousif Al Mekko of Alqosh in Iraq told me during an interview two years ago. A soft-spoken man, he knew why he and his people were following Christ. They were given an ultimatum by ISIS: Convert or die. So they left their homes, and Bishop Thabet helped lead his people to a future with Christ, in a church rebuilt.
Just short of 50, Bishop Thabet has now died after a long illness that had been slowly wearing him down. He has been buried near his friend Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who was martyred by Islamic extremists on the Sunday after Pentecost in 2007. It would be appropriate to consider them both icons of freedom.
I remember talking with Bishop Thabet at the annual Knights of Columbus convention, at which Thabet expressed his gratitude for global Catholic fraternal organization's help in rebuilding the Catholic community in Karamlesh after the ISIS genocide.
Of course, that's the least American Christians could do for their brothers and sisters in Iraq. We did, after all, have something to do with the interventions that made their lives worse, creating the instability that made the Islamic terrorism that sought to eliminate Christianity in the region possible.
What wowed him was our desire to love and serve God, even when it might be a bit of a mishmash in our minds, hearts, and practice.
Thabet was a priest who poured himself out to his people. But for him, that's just what you do. Sitting with him in a hotel backroom, I knew he was prepared in some spiritual way to be martyred. It made sense to him though, to be ready to give all when called to live in a land where Christianity is necessary, even if not always welcome.
When I asked Thabet to essentially download his wisdom and experience to us relatively spoiled and untroubled people, he probably thought I was silly. But he humored me. He modeled authenticity, albeit not explicitly, but by radiating it with his words and demeanor.
He said that what the genocide did was make clear that a Christian's identity is in Christ and nothing else. So you "fix your eyes on Christ. In his suffering. In his resurrection." Thabet faced whole new levels of challenges on top of the violence and upheaval of recent years. But it didn't dampen his spirits. "We can do it with Christ. We can rebuild. We can face new problems. With Christ. That's got to be your vision," he said.
And Thabet wanted me -- us -- to understand something fundamental: He may have prayed in Aramaic and Arabic, and his English might have been sketchy, but we spoke the same language: Christianity. It's one the world comes to understand when they see that people believe it so much that they actually live it.
Pope Francis often talked about how the Beatitudes are the identity cards of Christians. Bishop Thabet, by every testimony I've heard over the years, lived the Beatitudes. If I were asked what to put on his tombstone, it might be: "Here are the earthly remains of a Christian." As Christians do all kinds of non-Christian things, it is good to be reminded the Christian life is still possible. Thanks be to God for Bishop Thabet who reminded us.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
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