Aziz Matta

The Biggest part of the first chapter of Luke is dedicated for the nativity of John the Baptist. The third chapter in Matthew is dedicated for the Baptist’s mission and the same is also found in the first few lines of Mark. Moreover, he is mentioned in the sixth verse of the first chapter of John. Why is all this importance given for the forerunner and the baptizer? His whole biography, from nativity to death, is found in the Gospels and takes a big part of the narrative.

What is this interest in John the Baptist? Particularly, why does Luke show this interest in his nativity? Why do we celebrate his nativity and also his beheading while for all other saints we only celebrate their death or martyrdom? I don’t know any other nativity feast except for the Theotokos. Death is our nativity in the kingdom. Without any doubt, the Gospels speak a lot about the Baptist and this must be explained.

Here, the first assumption we can make is that the Baptist is a mediator between the Old and the New Testament. He is related to the New Testament because he saw Christ, yet he belongs to the group of old prophets.

The second assumption that we can make for the richness of narration about the Baptist, is that he still had disciples after his martyrdom and those formed a danger on the new mission. Therefore, the Gospel had to show that John himself witnessed that Christ is greater than him. Although Christianity was spread, the Baptist still had disciples called Mandaeans and those still have their own religion today in Iraq and perform their special baptisms.

A confirmation for the existence of the Baptist’s nativity feast in early Christian worship is that there is a Church dedicated for this feast in Ain Karem, Palestine built over Byzantine ruins from the fifth century. Luke looked at this nativity and considered it a great event because it was miraculous as the nativity of several people in the Old Testament and this is an image of Jesus’ nativity that had a direct divine intervention.

All the narrative that is related to the Baptist resembles that related to the Savior’s nativity; however it is more connected to the Old Testament. Zechariah was given the good news in the temple because he came from a family of priests. The spiritual character that the Baptist will have is that of a harbinger in the Old Testament (Doesn’t drink any alcohol). The Baptist goes to his activity while Jesus was working too and they get connected at the Lord’s Baptism. The Baptist’s words become close to the expressions of the Gospel when he speaks about the Messiah that carries the sins of the world and this isn’t mentioned in the Jewish tradition. This wasn’t the job of the Messiah.

The messenger was Gabriel that stands in front of God’s visage and the same messenger that gave the good news to the Virgin. It is obvious that Luke wanted to show a relation between Lord Jesus and the Baptist, because the stories of the good news were similar and both delivered by the Archangel. In addition, there is a main relation between the names of “Jesus” and “John”. The expression “Jo” is an abbreviation of “Jehovah” i.e. God; and “ohn” comes from the Hebraic verb “to have tenderness”. God’s “tenderness” over human beings stands in the name of “Jesus” which means “God saves”.

However, from the beginning of Luke, the difference between Christ and the Baptist is big. The first prepares the path for the second as it is said: “You will go on before the Lord (Christ)”. What was written in the Book about the nativity of John is an introduction to what is related to Christ’s nativity in Luke particularly.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “مولد يوحنا المعمدان” –Raiati 26- 24.06.2012

This is the calling of the first disciples as narrated by Matthew and it is the same in Mark. It describes the environment in which Jesus lived; it is the environment that surrounds the Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberias. It is an environment of fishermen. He saw two brothers: Simon – who He later called Peter – and Andrew which is a Greek name because Galilee had lots of Greek speaking people that were influenced by the Greek culture and this is what makes us believe that some apostles spoke some vernacular Greek.

These brothers were casting their net in the lake. All of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen except Matthew that was a chief tax collector. Jesus called them by saying: “Come, Follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people”, i.e. to be the carriers of the gospel (which they understood later). They must have thought that Jesus had a spiritual message, perhaps a chief of a small community that is interested in God’s word and calling people for it. Such small spiritual associations were known among the people of Israel. They immediately “left everything and followed Him”. This means that they left their systematic fishing; it doesn’t necessarily mean that they left their boat on the shore to be taken by any passing person and this is proven when we read that the apostles didn’t cut all their relation with the sea.

The expression “going on from there” means that he was walking on the shore of Lake Tiberias. He passed a small distance and “saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John (John the Evangelist). They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them (using the same way)”. Perhaps the four were from Bethsaida. They immediately “left the boat and their father and followed Him”. Thos two didn’t only leave their jobs but also their father and this is even a greater alienation.

Four people followed and accompanied Him while he roamed in Galilee. Where did they go? To the synagogues; a synagogue is a huge hall in which Jews meet on Saturday to read the Old Testament and preach according to the text that was read. This text shows us that whoever knew the Holy Book can teach, without having to be previously appointed.

“Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom”. What was He saying? The core of his preaching was: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4: 17). In addition to that, he was “healing every sickness and disease among the people”.

Who were the sick people that he was healing? The Book says: “people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases”; The Book mentions those who are demon-possessed, those who had seizures (epileptic) and the paralyzed. After this scene, we see that He was healing all diseases with the divine power that He had because He had sympathy towards the physically ill as He had towards sinners. He wanted the mercy of God to appear in every person especially those who were suffering.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “دعوة أوّل التلاميذ” –Raiati 25- 17.06.2012

Strengthening the priest financially is an expression of your faith because he is a main basis in the Lord’s Church in which he serves. According to the Book, he should get his living from the temple in which you are a member. In addition to that, you might feel that he is personally close to you through his good pastoral care for you and your family and situation. A loving person takes care of the living of the person he loves.

I am saddened by our sons that shock me with such words: “Let the responsible for Church properties increase the priest’s salary”. In this case you look like someone only interested in requesting without doing anything yourself. Such people barely know anything about the situation of the properties. In many cases, you wouldn’t find any Church property in the village and the income would be limited to what people pay in Church on Sunday: Those people are few and form a maximum percentage of ten percent of the parish in most places.

Because others aren’t present in Church, it is your duty to carry the Church on your shoulders. With this expression, I do not exempt those who are responsible but absent. We are all “the body of Christ, and each one of us is a part of it”.

Do not limit your giving to occasions (baptisms, marriages and funerals). Each of these happens only once in a lifetime. In Sacraments, you are free to give or not. It is insolence from the priest to refuse the amount because it is small. He doesn’t serve for a fee. You should initiate in giving so that he doesn’t feel sad; sadness disrupts the mission and weakens it.

Do not postpone your giving for tomorrow. Even if it was a small amount, give it in order to gain God. This person has dedicated his life and depth for you; shouldn’t you dedicate for him every while an amount of money according to your ability? He would mention your name in front of God and he would have surmounted in front of God thanks to you. If you opened your heart, the difficulties of life would become easy for you. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you are in a hardship. Through hardship, you would still have the penny of the widow and it would save you as it saved her. What you spend for the poor of the earth would become savings for you on your road to the Kingdom.

Encourage your friends to be like you because you might end the priest’s shortage through this. I am a witness of how the nagging of the priest would harm him and his parish. Take the burden of sin off him so that he could go to his service with joy and not be occupied by the obsession of money but be busy with the holiness of the service and reading. The person that is occupied by the Lord would relax from the burdens of life. Then, if he didn’t go to pastoral activity, you can blame him.

We cannot blame him if he tried to make his living through an extra job, but every job would take from him the time that should be originally dedicated to service. If he was in need, he would be tempted to be close to the rich people of the parish. Rich people shouldn’t have any kind of special status for the priest for any reason. Also we must not prefer any building plan or renovation or any physical activity over the strengthening of the priest, because a building plan could wait while feeding the priest’s children cannot.

In the old Greek civilization, philosophers didn’t own anything but lived from the city. If we brought a young man from the Institute of Theology to make him a priest, he would own nothing. He should live from the church a life that any educated person lives (buy books, travel to conferences, charity). Even if we forget about those activities, there would still be the normal living for an average family.

Move your hearts for the sake of those who serve Christ.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “تعزيز الكاهن” –Raiati 24- 10.06.2012

The Pentecost is an activation for the salvation that was once fulfilled on the cross and had to be transmitted to people and this happens by accepting it. “The apostles were all together in one place”: This means that the Church was gathering and the Holy Spirit descended on the Church as a whole and on every individual in it.

After the Ascension of the glorified and triumphant Christ over death, The Holy Spirit became able to descend as Apostle John said in today’s Gospel: “Up to that time the spirit had not been given” – it wasn’t yet in people and with them – “since Jesus had not been yet glorified” i.e. he didn’t die and rise yet.

The Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father and dwells in the Son. It comes from them together and at the same time it doesn’t come except from the triumphant Christ over death. The Spirit carries to humanity the results of the saving death and shows that the apostles gained salvation and became capable of giving it to those who believe in Christ and are baptized in His name.

This shall happen until eternity. What happened in the attic happens to every baptized person if he believed and confessed and received the body and blood of the Lord. The power of all divine sacraments is in the crucified Christ and is activated in us in the life of the Church.

If we were in the Church since baptism, we would be able to derive all the powers of the Trinity that are reflected in us through the Myron, communion, repentance, marriage, priesthood, funeral, the sign of the cross and the anointing of the sick. The Church is all of these together, because it is in a state of calling for the Holy Spirit for the whole universe. When the Holy Spirit descends on us, the Church shall appear through us.

Those who became for Christ only are the ones who the Holy Spirit descended on, and those do not leave anything not for Christ in their hearts. Those are the temples of the Holy Spirit and Messiahs through grace. Those speak about God’s greatnesses because they are constantly close to Him.

Every one speaks in his own language, i.e. according to the amount of holiness in him and the amount of understanding if he had received this gift. Such person transmits the Holy Spirit through preaching and every person understands and receives this preaching according to his mind and the ability of his heart. There is no difference between the descent of the Spirit in the Pentecost and its descent today in the Holy Sacraments and the word of the Gospel if we read it while opening all our senses and with obedience.

No person can take all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives the gifts according to the ability of every person to activate. One could be a preacher, a teacher or a servant in the management of the Church or a priest or an active layman. All of these together are witnesses for the Holy Spirit and its work. From this aspect, the Church is a movement or a flow and not only an order, organization or gathering.

The Church grows through the gifts that descended on its members. If lots of people responded to the Divine Spirit and submitted their souls to it, the Church would appear alive and active in the human society and would change our situations and we would gain each other through the Spirit because gifts interact and integrate. If lots of gifts were inactive, we should try to request them from God in order for Him to appear alive and effective and for the rising Christ from the dead to be glorified.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “العنصرة” –Raiati 23- 03.06.2012

The job of a priest is to lead people to God. His purpose from fulfilling the Liturgy and sacraments is to let the believers taste the Lord and get closer to him. The community cannot just say: Our priest died, and we need to have a liturgy; therefore let us search for someone who could fulfill the divine service and has a good voice even if he knew nothing about religion. This was a phase in history and we got rid of it.

When we say that this man has to be gifted in pasturing, we mean that he should be able to deliver the Word of God. This Word could be effective by itself when a person hears the Gospel; however, in human reality, it requires to be carried by someone who had acquired it in his understanding in order to be able to deliver it to others’ understanding through preaching, human communication, conversations, visits or counseling. Christianity is based on the fact that God has become a man in order to speak with humans. He has put Himself on their level. The person that only fulfills the Divine Liturgy would be making it audible; however its meaning might not be delivered.

God’s word is a table with food that was prepared by God for His beloved ones. However, there should be a servant to deliver this food to you. In hotels, there are professional workers. In your house, this is the job of the lady of the house. Depending on the effectiveness of the Word without having someone to deliver it would be an adventure that prevents you from studying and from transferring the Word to your entity, heart and mind and from transferring it to the heart and mind of others too. The Church is based on mediation that cannot exist unless there were priests that know their responsibilities.

The common way in our days to find this mediator is a theological school or institute or a priesthood preparatory education. However, we cannot get a person from his profession and make him a priest without any educational preparation. There are also other cases such us people who had contact with spiritual youth movements and spent years there contacting counselors and reading lots of books. Such a person could be tested by the bishop who would evaluate his readiness to teach.

We speak a lot about visiting individuals and families. A priest cannot consider that he is a shepherd for simply going to a family and asking about their health and their children’s education: This is only a social contact and not pastoral care because the latter should be based on God’s words. If this priest didn’t say divine words such as verses from the Holy Book or from a life of a saint and if he wasn’t able to answer the questions people ask, this visit would be a waste of time. A shepherd is a person that leads the flock to green pastures to eat and drink, because if they weren’t given nutrition they would become weak and die.

When Jesus said about the good shepherd and Himself that: “his sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10: 4), we could conclude from this sentence that the shepherd has a voice while a tongue-tied persons doesn’t. And when He says: “I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10: 14), we understand that the priest should at least know all families if he couldn’t know all individuals and every individual must know the shepherd. Tens of people have told us: I live in this village since years and no priest has ever entered my house. Of course, they should have gone to the priest and told him: We live in your parish now. However, if they didn’t, he is responsible to search for them to let them be with Christ more than before and get them to the pastures of salvation and lead them to the gate of the Church and advice them to own the Book of God and other Orthodox books. Every one of us needs counseling and visiting, every one of us needs love.

To what extent should the priest ask about people? The answer is in John: “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10: 15). This means that I should die for them. Priests have died in Lebanon when the Plague disease was spread because they refused to leave the parish. Diseases don’t come every day, and the priest won’t get tired if he visited several houses every day. However, if a person always nags about being tired, he would convince himself that he is doing more than enough. This person shouldn’t have become a priest.

Perhaps, someone among the brothers haven’t heard this before and thought that the whole thing is about rituals. When reading these lines, this person should understand and know that he is dedicated to God and to His service through His Word. If this person didn’t have enough knowledge, let him start studying for the first time. I have some priests that have become excellent after understanding this and recognizing that priesthood cannot be separated from fatigue. This is what carrying a heavy cross means, but our love for Jesus goes beyond all difficulties.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “الكاهن الراعي” –Raiati 22- 27.05.2012

The Lord wants the priest to be dispassionate from the love for money, because once he fell in this love believers would stumble over this and might leave the Church. This fall might come from the lack of resources or his salary. However, God wants your spiritual resistance in front of temptations. Even if the problem of the salary was solved, the person that is passionate for money might not be changed automatically into a dispassionate person. This transformation is the fruit of grace only. The priest must not nag about a difficult situation.  Lots of people are in this situation, and solutions might not come easily. However, we must study the situation of the priest in a serious way starting from finding a satisfying salary which might not be possible if the small parish was responsible alone for the sustenance of the man and his family. There must be a central procedure in which the servants of small and big parishes would become equal or almost equal. Maybe, one solution would be to gather all salaries in the archbishopric and then divide them in the most possible fair way. If large parishes insisted on their complete independence, the problem cannot be solved.

If we couldn’t give all the money to the archbishopric, we could at least pay for a common account a percentage of our resources in order to sustain the priests of poor parishes. I am sure that some parishes, at least a few, store amounts of money that stay for years without benefiting anyone. They only let the parish gain some interest while other servants of the Altar live in great difficulty.

When will we understand that we are brothers and that it is a shame on those who have extra money to leave some brothers in severe need. We cannot escape forever from organizing a free or mandatory brotherhood in order not to let others feel isolated.

I didn’t force a mandatory system because I depended on the fact that sharing is spontaneous and this way I could make the most possible fair distribution. However, it is not too late; we could still get inspiration and become closer to each other.

While waiting for a complete organization, there is still the income that comes from the “Epitrachelion” i.e. when the believer pays his priest in occasions such as weddings, baptisms or funerals. Our people are used to this. There is no problem in this until we reach a full reformation. However, this system – the Epitrachelion – cannot succeed unless by having a lot of generosity and the negative point in it is that every believer is baptized only once and gets married and dies also once. This means that he pays three times for the man that fulfills the service. In addition to that, our people are not frequent practitioners, they are seasonal i.e. they attend the services in big feasts. Even in those feasts, not everyone attends. If money trays (that are collected in services) do not collect a lot of money, how can the priest’s salary be collected? Therefore, we still have a problem.

Nevertheless, a partial solution exists and it is to be generous towards our priest in occasions in order for us not to die in our stinginess and for the in need priest not to feel sad with his children who are also our children. Why is it destined for many altar servants to feel, with their sons and daughters, misery or poverty that is very close to misery?

Think together about these situations and then tell me what have you thought about in order to try to find solutions.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “معيشة الكاهن” –Raiati 21- 20.05.2012

This biblical chapter contains one of the most beautiful conversations of the Lord. The incident that precedes this passage is when Jesus was still in Judaea, the district that surrounds Jerusalem, and felt that there is a machination from the Pharisees so He decided to move to Galilee, his land. Therefore, He had to pass on his way through Samaria. He arrived in a city named Sychar which is very close to Nablus, the city that still exists in our days. In that village, Jacob’s well (or spring) existed and also this well still exists today and an Orthodox Church is built there.

It was the sixth hour, i.e. noon, when a Samaritan woman came. In our country, when I was a child, they used to use this timing and call it “the Arabic clock”. The woman had a pottery jar and the well was 32 meters deep and she was able to draw water. Jesus had no bucket to draw water. The Lord asked her to give Him a drink but she refused because He was Jewish and Samaritans were a sect that split from the Jews for dogmatic and racial differences as their race was mixed with foreigners. When she refused to give Him water to drink, He told her: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water”. The woman replied: “Where can you get this living water?” Then Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst”. What water did He mean? She didn’t understand anything.

The Lord wanted to wake her up spiritually and asked her to call her man (the word used in the American translation is “husband”). Our translation is better because she had no husband but had lived in the past with five men and now she lives with another one. She saw that Jesus knows her situation, so she said: “I can see that you are a prophet”. She also asked Him a theological question: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain (Mount Gerizim), but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem”. Then, He explained to her that worshiping God is neither here nor in Jerusalem. God doesn’t care about the location. “God is worshiped in the spirit and in the truth”; which means in the heart and in the depth of human entity. The expression “in the truth” means worshiping in God Himself; i.e. a direct worship that needs neither the hill of Zion (where there Temple was) nor this mountain that used to have a temple for the Samaritans (It was destroyed before Christ’s coming to this world).

This conversation is the most important part in today’s Gospel. The woman left her jar which was the reason she came for (getting water) and started preaching her people and prepared them for the preaching of the apostles that is mentioned in the Book of Acts. The Church named this woman “St. Photini” and our Arabic usage for the name is “Photin” which means “enlightened”.

May God help us to be guided from all our hearts, as this woman did.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “السامرية” –Raiati 20- 13.05.2012

In the early seventies of the previous century, when the Holy Synod made the law for parish councils, they thought that it is good to have a committee of several people monitoring the issues of a parish from the spiritual, educational and financial aspects. In every community, the possibility to be active in work exists but also carelessness could exist too; you could find there good tempered or bad tempered people. Now I am not evaluating the success or failure of this law, because this could vary between different places and different piety levels in people.

Among the difficulties that exist is that the bishop cannot know all people that he appoints, and believers never agree on directing the bishop to the best options. Also, in some villages of the Archdiocese people do not accept that the priest is the head of the council. Those want to monopoly the management of affairs and to limit the role of the spiritual father to fulfilling prayers without having any opinion in his salary for example or in helping poor people who are under his care at the first place. The purpose of these lines isn’t to criticize the existence of these councils because the synod made them legitimate and there is no possibility to cancel them. However, how do we act if the management committed mistakes? How can the council have a good management instead of being simply a management machine?

The real question is: How do the members of the council live with each other? Our answer is that there is no living except in love, tolerance and forgiveness in a way that none of them would be stubborn in his opinion but accept the right one.  An Orthodox believer isn’t only a human being that belongs through baptism to the Church of Christ, but he is the one that carries the righteous opinion. Therefore, if you felt during a conversation that your colleague has a more righteous opinion than yours, you should dump your opinion and follow his because this person might have gotten more inspiration from Christ or might have been directed to the right position because of his experience. It doesn’t matter if you were the leader of the thought or not; the important thing is for the truth to be inspiring for everyone in order for all of us to be sons of the truth.

What happens with us sometimes? Conflicts that are based on familial reasons or on the policy of the village occur, knowing that in this archdiocese we are a group of villages. If we carried love, we would love all families because they all belong to Christ who loves them all equally. The Church is not composed of families but of individuals. If you loved the truth, you would stand against your brother if he was against it.

The love for appearing, control and power comes from the devil. The humble person disappears; he suppresses his pride and doesn’t claim that his family is great or better than others. God judges all people: He doesn’t judge families but individuals. Your father might be a saint while you are bad. The only familial connections we have are among the good and the righteous. The bad man is a stranger for you. However, serve him well because he is Christ’s lamb.

Do not divide the parish council into cliques or groups in conflict. Unite them: Let your method be uniting the brothers. You must be one body in the council if you wanted to serve the community or if you willed to become a united community through Christ’s blood.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “مجالس الرعية” –Raiati 19- 06.05.2012

The book of Acts is the book related to the beginnings of the Church; it is a book that tells about the work of the Holy Spirit that was transmitted to the universe after the resurrection of the Lord. The passage that was read from this book today tells us that Hellenistic Christians complained about Hebraic Christians because their widows were overlooked in the daily service which is the distribution of subventions and food to those women. Hellenistic Christians are Christians that speak Greek and live in Jerusalem and they were Jews that migrated from Palestine and lived in places where people spoke Greek such as Alexandria. After their conversion to Christianity, they willed to keep Christ’s memory by living in Jerusalem. As for those who were named as Hebraic by the Book, they were from Jewish origins and converted and stayed where they were, i.e. Palestine.

The apostles thought that they should leave “the wait on tables” because this took a lot of their time and their priority which was preaching. They thought that they could delegate seven believers to fulfill the service on tables. They got them by an election, and they believed that the distribution of material is not enough and that they should be “full of the Spirit and wisdom”. Any service in Church requires virtues: dealing with people, treating them without authority, having tranquility and peace in the soul, in addition to be just with people in the distribution of money or food… Also there is the removal of barriers between two different people or races such as the Hellenistic and Hebraic.

The Divine Book named those seven and said about Stephen who was one of them that he is full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and we shall see in the Book of Acts his theological knowledge and his martyrdom.

Did these seven have a position or a rank? The common opinion is that they were deacons: The first deacons in Church. However, St. John Chrysostom didn’t agree with this opinion. The common thing in the early Church is that deacons used to be responsible for the social work in addition to their ritual service. The seven did have a kind of consecration because hands were laid on them, which is a sign for an ordination. Any consecration, whether for a reader or a bishop, needs the laying of hands. The seven weren’t deacons in the common modern sense, but they did have an official position even if it was temporal. Becoming a monk, which isn’t considered as a sacrament by most of scholars today, was considered a sacrament by ancient scholars because the bishop or abbot lays his hand. A sacrament is anything that contains dedication for God through a tangible sign accompanied by a descent of grace. Priesthood is the election of the grace for a specified service. This isn’t a privilege for anyone but a free divine delegation. Immediately after this, Luke (The author of the Book of Acts) says: “So the word of God spread (through preaching). The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly”. And when he says that “a large number of priests became obedient to the faith”, he means the priests of the Temple that joined the Church.

Then, generations converted into Christianity, and they had great struggles in faith.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “انتخاب السبعة” –Raiati 18- 29.04.2012