St George's Day

I am no English nationalist but did observe the Feast of St George today.  Why?

He was a Christian Martyr who lost his life in a time of religious persecution and it strikes me that this is a period in history when we desperately need to remember our own history in order that we do not repeat it foolishly with the boot on the other foot.  It's all too easy to remember our history of being persecuted and use it as an excuse to persecute others.  Rather we should remember - and pray that we have the wisdom never to repeat the errors of  other, less generous, religions.  Killing others for their faith, even if it is a distortion or twisted version, is self-defeating.  It merely gives credibility and status to their untruths.  Osama Bin Laden was, in reality, a terrorist pure and simple.  His religious opinion was incidental to this.  Oh yes, his distorted understanding of Islam inspired his malign actions, but I would hesitate to call him an "Islamic Terrorist" in exactly the same way I would hesitate to describe a member of the Continuing IRA as a "Catholic Terrorist".  To use either title is to perpetuate misunderstanding of faiths that have more good in them than the evil that their most twisted followers represent.

I rather like this bit of an article from Wikipedia: 

"There is a tradition in the Holy Land of Christians and Muslim going to an Eastern Orthodox shrine of St. George at Beith Jala, Jews also attending the site in the belief that the prophet Elijah was buried there. This is testified to by Elizabeth Finn in 1866, where she wrote, "St. George killed the dragon in this country Palestine; and the place is shown close to Beirut. Many churches and convents are named after him. The church at Lydda is dedicated to St. George: so is a convent near Bethlehem, and another small one just opposite the Jaffa gate; and others beside. The Arabs believe that St. George can restore mad people to their senses; and to say a person has been sent to St. George's, is equivalent to saying he has been sent to a madhouse. It is singular that the Moslem Arabs share this veneration for St. George, and send their mad people to be cured by him, as well as the Christians. But they commonly call him El Khudder —The Green—according to their favourite manner of using epithets instead of names. Why he should be called green, however, I cannot tell—unless it is from the colour of his horse. Gray horses are called green in Arabic."A possible explanation for this colour reference is Al Khidir, the erstwhile tutor of Moses, gained his name from having sat in a barren desert, turning it into a lush green paradise."

St George, by your intercession, save us from our madness and teach us to seek the healing of the Most High God, by which ever name we call upon the Holy One.