Because the suffering is overwhelming, the prayer needs are overwhelming. A single Sunday set aside for those prayers is only a way of reminding us to pray for the persecuted Church every day.

On October 31, the day before All Saints Day, worshippers arrived at their church in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad to remember the Christian saints and martyrs of the past…Soon after worship began, there was a burst of gunfire outside the church. Suddenly gunmen burst in. “You are all infidels,” they yelled, “We are here to avenge the burning of the Qur’ans [in the United States] and the jailing of Muslim women in Egypt.”

By the end of it fifty-nine were dead…and another seventy-eight wounded in what was the worst attack on Christians since the Iraq War began in 2003.

This horrific story is a fitting reminder of why this Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

That the Church is persecuted should come as no surprise. Jesus foretold that it would happen. “If the world hates you,” he said, “keep in mind that it hated me first. …in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God” (John 15:18-16:4)…

Largely as a result of totalitarianism in Russia, Germany, China, and elsewhere, more Christians died for their faith during the twentieth century than in all of the previous nineteen centuries combined. As George Weigel writes:

Because Christian faith affirmed the truth about the inalienable dignity of the human person, anyone who hated that truth hated, implicitly, the Christian faith. Modern totalitarianism was an implicit form of odium fidei [hatred of the faith], because it reduced persons to things.

Today in North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, and China, the totalitarian beat goes on.

Read More: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/commentary/11640855/

Jim Tonkowich is a Senior Fellow at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a scholar at the Institute on Religion & Democracy. He holds a degree in philosophy from Bates College and both a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. More of his work can be found at jimtonkowich.com.