April 2011

Resurrection is an event and a meaning. The event is the emission of Christ from death with his power, and has happened on Sunday’s dawn or morning. It is the spiritual and glorified emission of the same body that was crucified, and the important thing is to assure that we don’t have here in front of us a new form of Jesus of Nazareth because this would mean that there is no salvation. We are in front of a continuation of this body, human mind, and the same human soul. However, it is a body from which the light that was hidden in it has brightened. This is why we say that it is a glorified body.

This was the event; as for its meaning and impact, it is Christ’s triumph over death since he has “trampled upon death by death” as the troparion of the feast says and as Apostle Paul clarified while talking about Baptism when he said: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death (i.e. to reach his death)? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death (for the death of the sin) in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6: 3–5).

The impact that the Resurrection left in Christ is that “since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him” (Romans 6: 9).

The event is proved through two things. The first is that the disciples and the women that went to the tomb found it empty with the stone removed and saw the appearances of the Lord that are counted and described in the Gospel. These appearances showed that the person they knew before his death is the same that they saw after it. As for the triumph over death as soon as death happened, i.e. the non-dominance of death over him, this has filled the three-day period between Friday and Sunday morning as we cannot say that death defeated Christ for three days and only at the end of this period Christ prevailed. As soon as his humanly soul left his body, Christ was victorious; therefore, we don’t say in the chants of this period the expressions “Christ’s dead body” or “corpse” but we insist on using the expression “Christ’s body”.

When we take the body and the blood of the Lord, we would be taking a living body, we would be united with him who has risen from the dead and sat on the right hand of the Father. Baptism and the Eucharist are both expressions of Christ’s life in us, i.e. the revival of our body and soul.

According to this, death doesn’t scare us after we have become alive in Jesus Christ. Through this victory that happened once, we have become “alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6: 11), and invited to the renewal of our life through the Holy Spirit.

When we answer the greeting “Christ is risen” by “Indeed, he is risen”, we do not only mean to talk about the event that happened in the person of the Savior, but also to declare that his Resurrection gives us a new life.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “القيامة” –Raiati n^o17- 24.04.2011

Palm Sunday’s Gospel starts with Mary washing Jesus’ feet and continues with the Jews making plans to kill Lazarus her brother because his existence shows Jesus’ power and that is harmful for the Jewish cause. Let then Jesus’ friend be killed: This is something common in crimes.

After that, the Gospel narrates Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem coming from Galilee and staying in Bethany, the village of Lazarus and his sister and a suburb of the holy city. Jesus enters knowing that he is going to die there as he has prophesied in the Gospel. Some people welcomed him and some of them saw him raising Lazarus from the dead. These started tending to believe in him. Did some of them favor the Chief Priests when they told Pilate “Crucify him, crucify him” as some claim? We don’t know. However, it is important for us to know that if we became his followers, it is a shame to deny him.

In the period between entering Jerusalem and crucifixion, a lot of events happened and Jesus spoke a lot. According to the Gospel of John, from which we took today’s reading, Jesus purifies the Temple on Monday. He teaches in the Temple on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the conspiracy against Jesus happens and on Thursday the Mystical Supper occurs with the farewell speech. After that, the Lord gets arrested and put under trial. Then, on Friday, there is his crucifixion, death and burial.

Jesus accepts death, the thing he came for. Through this, he was fulfilling the Father’s will and revealing his love for humans.

On Palm Sunday, we open our hearts so that the love of Christ would enter them and we respond to this love to be able to live once we take it through the Holy Spirit.

On the eve of Palm Sunday we have the service of the bridegroom and the same service on Holy Monday and Tuesday. In this service, every soul invites the blessed Christ to become its bridegroom or groom just as he is the groom of priests.

On all of the days (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) we take communion, the body of the Lord in the presanctified gifts’ liturgy so that we truly revive in Christ daily. On Thursday, we have the memory of the Mystical Supper in an ordinary liturgy which is a peak in the life of the Holy community. After that, we reach the service of the passions and the readings of its Gospels, and by that we put on Christ who is going for our redemption and love and we chant his passions throughout the day on Holy Friday getting ready for his Resurrection from Holy Saturday until the light of Resurrection appears to us.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “دخول أورشليم” –Raiati n^o16- 17.04.2011

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, showed that they loved power as they asked Jesus to make them “ministers” in his kingdom since they thought that it is a political kingdom. The Lord refused to fulfill their lust; he didn’t come to create a state on earth but to change everything through the bible. The disciple of Christ shouldn’t look for serving him through politics; we have another language and different methods.

After this fall from James and John, Jesus says to his disciples: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them”. In the Church, no one can make himself a master and no one overpowers others. Power, in the sense of giving orders, commanding, arrogance and having a desire to give commands and to be obeyed, is not something from the New Testament. All of our life in the New Testament is service; you achieve your status through service. This is why the Lord continued his talk saying: “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant”. Your greatness is valued according to your service. Your relationship with people starts when you start serving them. After that, Jesus continued this sense saying: “whoever wants to be first must be slave of all”. A slave in ancient civilizations doesn’t have any will: His master’s will is his; he is nothing in front of his master.

In Church and society, you fulfill others’ wishes. You shall feel the needs of others and try to fulfill them according to your ability. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I needed clothes and you clothed me”.

The Lord concludes this section by saying: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. This is an echo of what he said a little earlier when he spoke about his passions, death and Resurrection. You shall die in service and give your life through taking real care daily of everything God puts in your way.

This chapter from Mark suits the Lenten period that we are in because it is a dedicated service for the poor and for each other. One part of fasting is a food diet, but it is truly a service for others as we pray for them.

In this Sunday, the giving of St. Mary the Egyptian’s life to Jesus is reflected. She served Him and also serves all of us when we look at her repentance. Others are everything: If they took what you gave them, they would feel that Christ is giving them and that they are becoming great in his grace, and once they grow through it this shall be passed into their brothers. In this blessed season, commit to prayers and helping the poor through giving and praying. When all of these meet together, this shall become a journey of humility and a path towards the Kingdom.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “شغف السلطة” –Raiati n^o15- 10.04.2011

The father of a sick boy asked the Lord to heal his son saying “My son is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech”, which means that it is a spirit that made him tongue-tied and have other symptoms that indicate epilepsy. The father asks for healing “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us”. His faith in Jesus is not clear; however, he did hear that the Nazarene is a wonder maker, so he said why not ask him for a miracle. Christ faces this troubled soul. He encounters this man through his doubt so he tells him: “Everything is possible for one who believes”. The Lord goes down to him perhaps he is moved, perhaps he believes. This man cries as if he saw in Jesus’ question to him an invitation to a faith that’s shaky for him.

At this point, the man says: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief”, and in better words this means: Strengthen my desire to believe and my wish for my son to be healed.

When the disciples asked the Master: “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” he said that “an evil spirit of this kind can come out only by prayer and fasting”. Perhaps the Church wanted to read this section from Mark in this Lenten season because the text has combined between praying and fasting, the two pillars of this Lenten period.

Fasting indicates that emptying our stomachs from food is a will to fill our internal personality from the Word of God, and from this aspect, fasting and praying are one. Praying, here, doesn’t mean a collection of prayers organized in daily rituals, but means a communion with God, a unity with him in a way that if you asked for the healing of a patient for example, God would do this healing through you. You and your Lord would be doing the same job.

Back then, the disciples didn’t have this ability because the Holy Spirit didn’t descend on them yet and didn’t fill them with his grace that we see in them in the book of Acts. Disease was often a fall of the entity, a kind of falling behind, a crisis… while safety was what God wants, it was often a rising and a facilitator of our journey towards God and a sign of spiritual perfection. This is why God wants it and prepares for it through those who deserve to have it from God. He prepares for it through the faith of the healed and the in-need for safety. This is why God put the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick which expresses the tenderness of the Lord and an invitation to thank and praise him.

God is found in the believer, and this believer can Give God for any person that needs him. In the same way that you push a person into repentance towards the God that you repent to, you can also ask the mighty God in you to become on the sick person so that he rises from his collapse and sticks to his Lord healthily.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “شفاء الإيمان” –Raiati n^o14- 03.04.2011