Brisbane, Australia CNN — The last time Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel addressed his parishioners he was standing at the front of a church delivering an Assyrian bible reading that was dramatically cut short by the dark shadow of an alleged assailant armed with a knife.

From hospital on Thursday, after a traumatic week for the city of Sydney, the injured bishop uttered his first words to followers in an audio message posted to the Christ The Good Shepherd Church Facebook page – the same account that inadvertently live-streamed the attack three days earlier.

“The Lord Jesus never said go out and fight in the street; never said to retaliate, but to pray,” Emmanuel said, in an apparent reference to the riot that erupted outside the church in the city’s western suburbs as clips of the attack spread quickly online.