ON GENOCIDE MEMORIAL DAY, ARCHBISHOP ANOUSHAVAN WARNS AGAINST THE SINS OF FORGETTING

Photo credits – Harout Barsoumian

On Sunday, April 27, a joint Divine Liturgy was celebrated on the occasion of Genocide Memorial Day at the St. Vartan Cathedral of New York. His Grace Bishop Mesrop, Primate, celebrated the Divine Liturgy and His Eminence Archbishop Anoushavan, Prelate, delivered the sermon. Rev. Fr Mesrob Lakissian, Pastor of St. Illuminator’s Cathedral, also participated in the service.  

After the Divine Liturgy, the audience marched from St. Vartan Cathedral to Times Square to participate in the traditional genocide commemoration. 

In his sermon, Archbishop Anoushavan said: 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

I am grateful to the Almighty Lord, that in the footsteps of the former Primate Archbishop Khajag Barsamian and the former Prelate Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan, who established a tradition of offering a joint, Holy Badarak on the centennial anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, here, on the 110th anniversary, with my spiritual Brother, His Grace Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan, again we are offering the Holy Badarak to the glory of the Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in honor of our one and half million martyrs.   

Dear all, we are here for Remembrance and Thanksgiving, as well as for Commitment. 

1. a) We are here to remember and invoke the martyrdom of our parents and grandparents. We are here also to thank the Almighty Lord because after being uprooted from our five-thousand-year-old ancestral lands, but led by His Providential care, we were welcomed and hosted in different countries, and particularly to the United States. We are thankful that as former sojourners, now we are well established citizens in respectful hosting countries. We are thankful that as a distinct nation, we are part and parcel of the larger family of nations.
2. b) We are here also to renew our commitment to raising our voice for justice and our rights. We learn from the Holy Scripture that the Almighty Source of Life called upon Cain for accountability, asking him, “Cain, where is Abel, your brother?” Upon the denial of the latter, the Righteous God gave the verdict (Gen 4:8-12). Hence, it is not only divinely ordained, but it is our bounden duty to demand accountability from the executioners for the extermination of almost half of our nation.

In recent years, we hear more often that it is time to forgive, to forget and to move on. As Christians, truly it is our duty to forgive, as Jesus Himself commanded that we must do so not only once or seven times, but seventy times seven times (Mt )18:21-22. Unfortunately, as Cain denied assuming responsibility for his audacious action by saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, likewise the perpetrators of the unprecedented Genocide not only ask for forgiveness, but deny and distort the crime, and moreover, their descendants continue their so-called unaccomplished misdeeds. Actually, we all witnessed that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first have been marked by a string of genocidal acts against Armenians, from the Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, and Maragha pogroms and the uprooting of 300,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan, followed by the cultural genocide in Nakhichevan and, most recently, the forced deportation of 120,000 Armenians from Artsakh, preceded by a nine-month-long inhumane blockade. Finally, Azerbaijan, which was created barely a century ago, shamelessly declares that historic Armenia should be deemed “Western Azerbaijan.” 

My dear brothers and sisters, to forget the Armenian Genocide means nothing less than escapism from reality.  It means willingly to ignore our conscious commitment, and to become self-content in our selfish comfort zone. It means that in our daily lives, at any time, whenever we personally become victims of any ill-behavior or crime, we should forget and not appeal to the court.  When we say that everything is okay, and that we should move on, then we are encouraging chaos and anarchy over order, darkness over light, and death over life.  

God Himself says, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” (Deut. 32:35 and Romans 12:19). Therefore, let us turn the 110th anniversary’s irreversible opportunity, collectively and with determined positive commitment, into the pursuit of justice and righteousness, and through our bitter experience, let us support all the minorities who are the victims of contemporary atrocities in the four corners of the world.  

May the Lord lead us from morn to morn (Psalm 45/46.5) to welcome and greet a brighter future for our nation and for all mankind. Amen.