An-Nahar

I beseeched God, since the beginning of this distress, to overshadow Lebanon under His generous mercy. His mercy shall stop this war waged by Israel spitefully. An absurd death, evil, and terrible is falling upon us besides the annihilation, the tearing apart, and ripping to pieces of the country. This enemy is delighted in our death-the death of our innocent nation in its overall constituting sects and groups-no matter what we may consider of the wisdom of this or that of these sects.

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I am not surprised by Israel’s action; this is present in the literature of its fathers who ordered the annihilation of the Canaanites that is our people. This is ancient and is prior to the founding texts of Zionism which endeavors the founding of a racially prejudiced Jewish state. This excluding principle is opposed to the principle of founding of modern nations. This does not shock me, but what shocks me is the lineup of the Americans and Europeans in general, behind the Jewish state, and the position of the United States in stating that Israel has the right to defend itself! Who attacked it? If what Mr. Bush intended is the kidnapping of the two soldiers, does that verify all the massacres, destruction, terror, and starvation waged upon the Lebanese people? Is it necessary to burn Lebanon in order to return these two soldiers? There is no relation of causality between the abduction and this open war. Then, who can believe that such a military operation of this scale is a mere reaction; shouldn’t have taken months of preparation in the scope of a huge action against Lebanon-as a part of an international political plan-aiming at greatly shaking the whole region? The great hypocrisy is that the Americans, after their great failure in Iraq, do see Lebanon fit to become a model of a free democratic state amongst the Arabs: whilst they bless, or do not stop, the aggression against it. Is democracy feasible in an incapable country? Subsequent to the policy of “scorched earth” which the Israelis are eager to enforce; who can possibly attain a democratic and civilized state capable of inspiring freedom to the Arab world? Those who think that the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers was an act of foolishness on the part of Hezbollah (I don’t say he’s acquitted) use it as the direct reason to impede the ongoing national dialogue which was closing to a form of an agreement between it and the other parties. Either disclosed or silent disagreement with Hezbollah at the present time can only serve and support Israel and the nations behind it. Whatever it turns to be, I see that this war shall strengthen the Lebanese character of Hezbollah once it discovers that its foreign allies or those who supported it financially shall not consult Hezbollah when they shall try to negotiate an agreement with the Americans. The victory of the National Resistance in this war shall strengthen Lebanon and shall bring this Resistance closer to other national groups and confirm its pure Lebanese belonging.

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I wrote this article past Monday and maybe a cease-fire will be in place before it is published. What the Lebanese shall recognize is that they have to seek after power sources and reform for their government; a great mobilization of our resources can free us of our fragility. In times of truce or peace, we must identify, not only our enemy who is killing us today, but also to identify those who are halfhearted or just don’t care about us, and woe then to him who didn’t realize that our true national unity rests upon our complete and unconditional loyalty to our nation alone. The nations, who affirmed their support to our sovereignty after the withdrawal of the Syrian armies from Lebanon, have demonstrated that their sole unconditional support is for Israel. Are we able to prove to these nations that Lebanon is an absolute issue too, and that no one has the right to watch over its fires like Nero who observed the fire of Rome accusing the Christians of what he did? Under the shadow of death we taste today, we have the right to feel wrath, and to refuse to be exclusively dependent on others for our existence. We’re not a resented nation but don’t we have the right to feel anger?

We shall descend in total death if we, after the end of the present distress, surrender to silly sectarian tensions. We shall congratulate who made victory possible because it is our victory all. History shall thus pass, but woe to all Arabs if Israel defeats us because it shall then enslave them all.

Western nations did not yet realize that the peace of the region will not be the American peace but the Israeli. America did not understand that it is Israel which is using it; and that Israel-in its deep psychology-has no ally, despite its strategic alliance with the United States. This is a juridical alliance not a psychological one. And I wish if the world Christians could comprehend that the Jewish supremacy brought in by the Israeli victory is, in its first degree, endangering their own existence because the real clash is, on the religious doctrinal level, between the Church and Judaism. The yielding of the Christians of the West in front of Jews and Judaism, manifest in the Judainization of Christian theology since the past ninety years, did not yet influence eastern churches here, Orthodox and Unorthodox, and may reach us here causing us to fall in the heresy of Zionist Christianity. Beyond Israeli arrogance there shines a clear Jewish arrogance; they hate Christ personally, and especially, hate the Apostle Paul who prevailed over Judaism. All of this is prevailing in Jewish literature, but who is reading?

Lebanese Christians may not have today great weight in the politics of their country. But I boldly declare to them that Israel doesn’t prefer their existence over Islamic existence, because Lebanese Christians don’t have what to offer to win the hearts of Jews, meanwhile Muslims have oil. We coexisted with Arab Muslims for a long period, and mostly it was a peaceful coexistence. We found here in Lebanon a coexistence principle which granted us the greatest possible freedom and we won’t enjoy greater freedom under a Jewish peace.

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And after the pain, creativity must reign; forgiveness must reign over the whole Lebanese mosaic. But this requires from us not to hold any religious sect responsible of this war. For this we shall work together for the prosperity of Lebanon but with great sacrifices enabling us to build a great nation.

We shall endure pain, especially if the crisis prolongs, because we know that our solidarity is the condition of our permanence as a free country able to become a model to all Arabs teaching them the fullness of freedom for their nations; and then we may become a model to the whole world as well. Let us not be afraid from death, because death is the freedom of the living, this can be true, if we understood that the individual and the community are strengthened by sanctity, and that this sanctity is what makes a country strong and honest.

What remains, is that our hearts are with the displaced scattered everywhere and are in need for us all and for our prayers. I hope the Lord God shall inspire us to help them directly or through humanitarian organizations and through the Higher Commission of Relief, especially taking care of baby food and medications for chronic diseases. But most importantly, is that the neighbors of these organizations where the displaced took refuge to, do make all the possible to let them feel the solidarity of the Lebanese people in the midst of the distress.

We implore the Lord God to grant an end to the fight, that we may all return to our homes and for our country to prosper in rest and peace.

Translated by Father Symeon AbouHaidar

Original Text: “هذه الحرب الرهيبة” – 22.07.2006

This commandment ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth in fact is found in Leviticus of the Old Testament as such: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”(Lev. 19: 18); this can be interpreted to mean that you only love those of your own people. The New Testament broadened the meaning of that commandment by calling us to love all people. Yet the commandment is in the imperative revealing that love is a divine commandment and not only a sentiment; you might sense a feeling on the inside towards the other and you also might not do so. So “to love” is a law understood as such: you should love your neighbor as yourself. The underlying idea in the Old Testament is that those who love are tied together as the Law-Keepers forming together in this context the “Holy Nation”; the human-divine entity of the Jewish people.

Not so is the case in Christ. In Him one does not belong to a nation. By loving, we become the people of the “loved ones”. So Jesus offered the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to the doctor of the law who asked him: Who is my neighbor? To this question, the Lord answered by another: Which was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The doctor said: He who has practiced mercy, Jesus said to him, and you also do likewise (Luke 10.9-37). He meant that every man remains a stranger if you do not take into consideration his pain and loneliness. Do not ask therefore about the one you show mercy to. Just have compassion generously and simply. He who is shown mercy by you is loved by you. And thus the “nation” of the beloved is built with love.

The Law of Moses presents loving as a command so that, in loving, one is not left to his own caprice and passion; for if one leaves this world with resentment and animosity to others, he separates himself from others and thus the ties of love in the Holy Nation are undone. And if you refuse to love someone, you would find yourself out of love; in the same way, you alienate God from the relation between you and your enemy if you do not love him as Jesus commands: “love your enemies”. If you love your enemy you remove enmity from your heart and you might be and instrument in removing it from him; but in all cases you would bring him out of loneliness and alienation.

Since one’s love for the other is a commandment, that means that it does not spring from the lovability of the person to be loved. The other might be ugly by all means; still you have to love him. You do not love the other because he deserves your love or because you expect him to reciprocate your love. He might have nothing to offer. Do not expect anything; sufficient is the grace that comes down on you from God to give you life; and that alone can change your desert into an oasis. If God is your sufficiency you will have the fullness of life whether you have others around you who share their love with you or whether you find yourself in the desert of love; in that desert, as Mauriac says, you also will enjoy fullness of life if you know that you are God’s beloved.

The love of God saves us if we appropriate it as coming down on us personally and as sufficient for us in our lives. Sometimes we feel that the affection someone shows us is a reflection of the affection that God has for us; perhaps the ultimate value of emotional love is that it makes us feel God’s fatherhood for us. God can be seen through everything that exists in this world. The world is a great book. Blessed are those who manage to see God in what is around them.

If we explore the meaning of the commandment further, as Jesus wants us to, we find that the neighbor is he on whom we have mercy and serve till the end; and so love your neighbor as yourself would mean love your neighbor above yourself. It is ridiculous to say that the meaning of the commandment is to feed the neighbor in the same way you feed your own body. At times we have to deprive ourselves of food and clothing in order to give the other; that is the meaning of the commandment. Keeping a balance between what we have and what we give is not “love till the end”; the balance ascertains our existence for us while love might mean that we deny our existence so the other would live.

That commandment reaches its full dimension only with Him who loves all humans above himself that He gave himself to death, death on the cross. And because He preferred others above himself, He makes us understand the commandment as “love your neighbor above yourself”. You, having known the love God has for you in Jesus, have died or have “killed the world” in you so you do not feel that you exist in yourself but that Christ has called you to existence. And this new life in you, when imparted to another person, makes him live and exist after having been only meagerly existing.  You should love the other regardless of his qualities whether good or bad. He might be ugly like Christ’s face was on the cross. You do not love the other because of any beauty in him. Anyway you should not gather him to yourself but to Jesus. You have no hold on him whom you love in Christ. He might be in need of you today but not so the next day. That could be for a long time or maybe for a short time only. Someone else might be in need of your mercy. For you, the ‘other’ is Jesus who said: “I was hungry and you gave me food”. Needless to say He was referring to those who are hungry and not to himself. Having a servant’s heart, you follow up on those you serve. You comfort, you feed, you clothe others and give them guidance; all this you do because you, for one reason or another, got to know about the need of the others, so you approach them and you pour out yourself for them.

Those whom you serve might be moved by the care you give them and give you back with heartfelt genuine affection. The problem here is that that might make you aware of your own importance as a “giver”. You should not let your service make you great in your own eyes or feel important. You should love with the only purpose that those you give would know that they are loved by God. If he pays you back your love, you would have received your reward. That is all right to happen but is not of importance. What is important in people loving one another is that they should get close to God in being drawn to Heaven above.

In fact when you give, you give to Christ Who dwells in the one who is needy. Christ is the ultimate and absolute poor who took nothing from the world except rejection. So you are with Him in all those who suffer. The one who loves and the one loved are one in Christ who, by giving His blood, disseminated all “giving” that ever springs from God’s heart. He, alone, who dells in God can bring God to dwell in others. But if you make yourself dwell in others, you do not impart to others only what is good in you but also what is ugly. So you should impart only God and your faith in Him to others. I do not deny the joy there is in the exchange of affection between the hearts of people, for that is rewarding. But do not grasp on to the one you give to, because your goal is that he should turn his face to God’s face to thank Him; and so he will obtain Life.

Translated by Riad Mofarrij

Original Text: “تحب قريبك كنفسك” – 19.11.2005

It was common in the conservative societies not to say that the Church is in the wrong because the Bible and the Creed say that She is holy. And She is so because Christ Her head sanctifies Her. But the Holy Fathers and namely the Syriac among them, called her a prostitute because She has betrayed Christ, her bridegroom.

Those viewed her through her historical and social aspects and not through her Head who preserves her by His grace. The difficulty in talking about her wrongdoing in history – and not only about the wrongdoing of her members – makes us ascertain that She is forever holy and that she being a body is liable to fall. From this perspective the late Pope John Paul II dared to apologize on her behalf; he did not only apologize for the wrongdoing of Popes who came before him.  And in that he showed great humility. I think that humility is the condition for dialogue with the others. Yes She is the body of Christ but She is so because of the Eucharist that She performs and celebrates. Yet the glory She is in, does not stop us from noticing that She is also a sociological body where evil runs across. She is in what is visible and what is invisible. This holy side of her, her heavenliness, makes you live in her and from her and through her. But that “rotten” side of her makes her – as far as she is a body existing in space and time – liable to criticism; thus you cannot be ostrich-like not wanting to acknowledge that the fallenness you see in her is from her.

There are certain periods when the brightness mounts high and there are periods when the darkness is manifested. There is that going back and forth between darkness and light, between what comes down on you from God and the pitfall of mud you fall into. All this is in one body, so do not be in denial of her “divinity”, but also do not blind yourself to what you see of her decaying “humanity”. 

You cannot breathe outside the Church, you have no life without all the great things coming forth from the Saints and accumulating over the years; and there cannot be a meeting between you and the Lord if you do not offer praise through all the golden words (of the Saints in the Church) that have been accumulated for two thousand years. You cannot exist outside the magnificent prayers and teachings that make you see the beauty of the Lord. He who has not tasted that beauty finds it easy to say that “he prays on his own” and that the spiritual side of his life is private. No man is an island; in that sense that naive or deliberately-ignorant person does not know that he can pray on his own only because he is the product of this book (the Bible) and that his blood is of the blood of the Martyrs and that he is unable to utter any word had it not been for Paul and his company and Ignatius and Chrysostom and all those that have been enchanted by Jesus of Nazareth. None of us was born in a desert; we all have drunk from this living water (the Church’s life). He, who thinks he is outside this, might very much be inside; yet there are those who think they are of those inside but in fact they are outside.

Falleness is not restricted to those in positions of responsibility; but because of the authority given to them by God to manage the financial and legal matters of the parishes and their taking hold of the decisions, and the possibility of abusing authority, their decadence spreads and the Church seems “ugly” because of them. And I have no doubt that the “sins” of the Church are historically their sins. And if you track the history of Christianity, you will find that alongside the Beauty of the saints, there are accounts of divisions and of grudges; and surely there is no division without deceitfulness and individual uppity or one elevating one’s self over the other.

The Church as a slice of the society, and has in her all the sinfulness one can imagine. This is why the writer of “The Shepherd of Hermas” saw her as an old woman wearing rags and from another perspective he saw her as a young bride in splendor. There is in the Church great tyranny hidden behind the sacredness of authority. Nowadays you have “polite” ways of “polite” excommunication of certain believers that are not of less spiritual knowledge and piety than others. Each one with authority is threatened with being abusive and despotic. 

The problem is that the bishop is human and what he says is doubtful and you do not have a criterion with which you can tell whether what he says is from God or from the whims of the man; from his tendency to despotism or from his caprice. He alone when he cleanses himself and repents and turns away from being fond of this world and of himself, he can get closer to God’s will and convey it to you. This requires great detachment from and modesty concerning authority. He is supposed to practice authority being aware that he has been entrusted with it, and that he would be free of passions in practicing it and that he be ready to set straight any crookedness in him. When Paul says that the apostles have been entrusted with God’s mysteries, he means that they do not have a word of their own because they have been entrusted to speak God’s word rightfully and justly.

The First among the people is supposed to ask of God the wisdom needed to deal with a certain circumstance in what is good for building the community. He commands according to God’s word and the benefit of the person asking for advice or service. He makes decisions according to what makes people better and closer to the knowledge of God. He is merely a bridge to God.

And if he finds he has to take a position in one situation or another, he has to say what his Book (the Bible) says; that is to listen to “what has been handed down to the saints once and for all” and interpret it according to the situation. He might be very creative with what he says, but all his words are from the Tradition and those who are “in the Tradition” would feel close to him. This is why he does not stereotype any one nor does he show favoritism of some over others and he does nor take sides; he is free of all, a servant for all. And like his Master, he washes feet not counting for anyone his sins.

Not long ago I read, on a panel on the main street of my town, a prayer by some of the faithful asking God for holy priests. And I thought to myself that those brethren have longed for holy pastors due to some shocks they have had. And I think that a parishioner can forgive his priest the lack of theological education but it is more difficult to forgive a mishap that has wounded him.

Our problem is that the Church is founded on legal organization and administration and the problem of problems lies in when many use the authority for their own benefit and get puffed up with it and dominate not considering the hurt resulting from them, being in charge, but dealing with the “divine matters” out of their lustful desires and not out of obedience to God. The Church in its historical predicament is a place where the Antichrist can be as the Bible says and the Antichrist, acceding to the understanding of some of our Fathers, is not necessarily a definite individual but can be the phenomenon of deception (of one’s self and others).

I remember when we established The Orthodox Youth Movement 62 years ago that some of our elders told us “who are you to teach us”. And, out of politeness, the concealed and un-uttered response was: “who are you not to learn from others.” And I expect the reader of my words nowadays to tell me : “who gave you the prerogative to talk about the leadership of a Church you are a part of.” My clear response this time is: I preach because I get preached to. And who told you my friend that I am not exhorting myself first when I exhort others or the whole Church. I am meticulously observant of your matters and those of mine and I cannot stand the wasting of faculties and capacities whether that takes place through you or me, and my hope is that you pardon my pain so that you and I will not be in death but rise from it today to a new life. The Church is not one man’s property that I should be quiet about Her being torn apart.

And when I see this decadence I cannot stop myself from believing that the Holy Spirit is the one who leads His Church generation after generation. He is aided by “human instruments” who are traitors from the beginning or they have learned betrayal by custom. That there would be good intentions is not my concern. Only God justly examines the heart. But I feel sad over the great harm that has occurred in humanity age after age because of those who were supposed to be the “light of this world”.

What do I expect of today’s Church? I expect that Her Divine Bridegroom would renew Her through some miracle. And He has renewed Her every now and then through those who, though few, but are pure. And the crafty ones marginalize the few so that their reproaching silence of the few does not destroy them.  How has the Church crossed the desert of passions without suffocating? How has she shed off the shabby clothes and asked of the Lord to clad her with “the wedding dress”? How has the Church torn apart the wedding dress and become stripped like the prostitute?

Who whispers in the ears of the pure to speak the truth openly with that disposition of Jesus when He said to Pilate”: “I came to witness to the Truth”.  “O God I testify that I have accomplished all” and let whoever dies as a martyr does so and whoever lives does so. “Come Lord Jesus” for the “branches” have dried up and everybody is against the “sap” (that can give life). And if you send your prophets –and the New Testament mentions them –the tyrant will kill them; yet we live of the blood of the Martyrs and apart from such Martyrdom everything is “jesting”.

Will you not send down your Word anew so that the cancer of un-truth will not spread and so that our existence here will not turn into a theatrical play? Can the world go on as if you have not dwelt in it? We know who crucified you then. And you know who crucifies you nowadays.  You manage your affairs as you know, and until that great Day of renewal you do not ask us not to suffer. You do not ask of us not to cry.

You do not want us to pacify people with falsehood. You do not expect us to do less than what you did when you drove out the traders from the Temple. You do not accept to have except pristine splendor in your Temple. Did not you say once through one of your prophets “the breath of our mouth is the Christ of the Lord”?  Yes, we will cry out and tire our voices, and many will rejoice over our tiredness till they close their ears; but also in our silence we remain witnesses to you.

Before that “the new heaven and new earth” might tarry; we have become acquainted with dryness and have learned much from it. Yet our hope is that abundant waters will gush forth in the wilderness to water the few flowers that you have planted. And until those springs flow, we remain in forgiveness and prayer.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: “الكنيسة والانبياء” – 20.08.2005

Power is a responsibility predicated on love. He who is more capable of love and understanding is more capable of holding authority, which is but the station for service. And insofar as Christ made himself a washer of feet, he wanted, by this act, to go down the path all the way until death, thereby becoming a servant of mankind as a whole. Indeed, the Lord did recognize his subjection to Pilate’s authority when he said that it was granted to him from above. Virtuous, just authority is the lover of the icon of God before us. I shall not take up the topic of resistance to haughty, abusive authority which has been dealt with in Western thought (Thomas Aquinas) and the legal scholars of the schools of Islamic thought. Yet the principle put forth by the Apostle Paul is that the ruler attains the reigns of power for the sake of good because he does not show favoritism towards the men of rank. If he resorts to good deeds, he will be a ruler in the name of God.

Nonetheless, the allure of status, any position of note, exposes its holder to temptation, so that power (as-sulta) turns into domination (tasallut), leading from a serving of people to a nourishing of personal interest by him who (ab)uses people with authority. By personal benefit I do not mean to refer to pecuniary exploitation in pursuit of money only; rather, I mean to refer to the act of domineering due to the ruler’s worship of himself and his desire to turn people into servants of him.

The just ruler, if God is to consider him his ruler or if he obeys the law on account of his respect for its issuer, he will be attached to his country as a moral value (except when this country turns into an aggressor). Thus the just ruler does not ask for anything for himself, nor for his family or sect, that is to say he is completely chaste in this world and content with his salary, not accepting any gift, because all of us are obliged to the gift-giver. The ruler may have his share of friends if he knows that they do not expect any fee for their friendship, or if he is confident to possess the firmness which protects him from his friends. The great ruler, especially the judge, lives in an emotional isolation lest emotion makes him stray from (administrating) justice. If you are in a position of responsibility you do not seek to placate anybody, you only seek to please he who sits firmly on the throne.

I do not deny that the drive to attain a central position could reflect a genuine desire to serve the community, and this is a matter which has its own ethical prerequisites. Yet I see that, very frequently, the race for positions is tantamount with personal interest, even if there may be disciplined parsimoniousness in monetary matters, since what has come to dominate your considerations of power is greed sui generis, which is not necessarily nourished by the greed for money. “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Perhaps there is some exaggeration in this saying since the humble may be able to sit on the thrones. As a consequence, I warn about the dangers of status and positions; any endeavor to occupy them should proceed in fear and trembling. You are not able to rule except if you are in a state of prayer, or as if in prayer in that your heart is devoted to your divine ruler and his verdict and judgment.

If I speak about governing I do not confine myself to the men of politics, but also of he who has taken upon himself responsibility, great or small, in the church. He who becomes prideful or oppressive in the Church of God does not worship a god but has rather made himself a deity, even if he speaks with words of indigence. And oppression in the Church may indeed be fraught with greater peril than oppression in the state, since its initiator is speaking in the name of God and believes, whether deliberately or out of greed, that he represents the will of God. The same may be said about the owner of a shop or a factory, or the lord of the house who subjugates his children to satisfy the desire for domination within him. These sick men may lord over a country or something else, yet they only love themselves in the strict sense of the word, that is, they do not love anybody except for themselves upon having decided that there is no real existence to the any other. This is one facet of the vice which our fathers in asceticism named the love of self. To be sure, the spiritual vision does demand that you love your self which is rooted in God, and that you love God who is rooted in yourself. Yet if this deviates in you it becomes an egotistic love, that is to say a love for your fallen ego which lusts after the sensible world, or the world of governing for the sake of governing.

The dominator does not express himself by issuing decrees only, but in two other domains as well: money and sex. Money is not an agent of evil in and of itself, but it becomes such if and when you seek to buy and bribe the loyalty of others with it. And sex is the domain in which man seeks to dominate woman and woman man. In the final analysis, it is the temptation of power which is the strongest temptation in us. It is a temptation analogous to that which Adam yielded to, and that is to be like God. This is what casts the dominator into a terrifying void because in the final analysis he does not only not love anybody, but he does not even love himself. Indeed, he “is infatuated with himself against himself” as Maximus the Great put it. He hates himself in the true sense of the word and does not know that God alone is his livelihood. And if all his lusts mix he destroys himself by himself. The hope to be with the others – who God calls his brothers – eludes him. In frantic desire to eliminate others, he who craves for the preeminent position is bound to live according to the false glory of hubris. He is infatuated with himself and praising himself. I speak of hubris because you cannot self-aggrandize except by disparaging and despising the other whom you consider a non-entity. He is the person of continuous presumption who rests self-content and who, as soon as he occupies a position of prestige, will purport that he knows everything and that he is always in the right. We often see this in the father who will not see any virtue in one of his sons and will regularly criticize him, or with the teacher who practices an overwheening arrogance and hubris towards one or many of his students, or on the part of the cultured man of letters who deems all people below him in culture stupid. Such is the superciliousness amongst some of the ostensibly knowledgeable, who are nonetheless ignorant of their blemishes and of the limitation of their knowledge. Those people, regardless of their affiliation, reject all criticism, blame or subjection to orders. Therefore they always fall prey to enmity and sarcasm, at times motivated by a desire to humiliate so as to affirm their standpoints whatever they may be.

Let us now return to politics, the great arena for the lust for power. What does the scripture tell us? When Jesus announced his death for the third time, Jacob and John approached him requesting that one of them be seated to his right, and the other to his left during his glorification whereupon the savior told his disciples: “You know that those who are deemed the heads of nations lord over them, and the greatest of them dominate them (as tyrants). But it is not (to be) so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among, let him be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10: 42-45).

To you, whether you are a deputy, minister or important employee, I address these words: Human beings are not a flock of sheep. Your ability to perform justifies your assumption of the position of responsibility. It did not summon you to benefit and brag. A job is not a matter of strutting and showing off. Rather, it is a matter of self-effacement while serving the others who thereby will be elevated.

Perhaps you are known on account of your position, yet this does not in any way warrant a pandering to you out of fear of your overbearing self-inflation. And beware of the truth of the verse: “Say: Oh God! Lord of All Possessions. You give power to whom you please and you strip power from whom you wish, you bestow honor on whom you wish, and you humiliate whoever you want” (Sura Umran, 26). In other words, know that people do not possess when they own because God may strip them of their possession whenever he wants, even as he may honor you if you humble yourself in His presence and before people. Humiliate yourself before Him and do not humiliate people lest that your Lord humiliate you. You may consider yourself to have ascended to a prominent position, while in truth you have become abject; and the people will notice this and despise you, even if they elected you or sought a ministerial seat from you, for you become nothing in the eyes of God, after you have fancied yourself to be everything.

For you to consider yourself superior is oppression in and of itself. For the people are cherished by the Lord, and become more esteemed than you in His eyes if you belittle them. Such disparagement is pure ignorance. Do not forget what happens to a rubber ball if you blow it up to its outer limits: it tears and breaks.

He who gives you repose and returns you back to your true size has not been touched by fraudulent glory and uninhibited presumption. You are not residing in glory so why do you demand it from people? Go and defend the oppressed and the destitute of this earth, and confront every power in the country so it may become aware of its fragility. Know that you are but dust.

And beware in this your fragile earthly state that the key distinction is not between this and that political faction, but rather between the servants of the country and those who dominate it. If you want to join a party, then do so. The truth shall free you of all lust. And once you are liberated, you become capable of policies which are pure and uncorrupted.

I am not oblivious of this or that decision which is part of the life of politics. Politics is about decisions as much as dissension is unavoidable. So choose your disagreement but don’t make it your legacy, for in doing so you would loose the love which alone is the mainspring for your service. And if you become politicized for the sake of your deity, let the latter be the dignity of your country which is a setting for the Lord. And if the powers that be do not know this, then they know nothing.

Be simple in politics as God is simple and transparent. And lay down your life for the nation as the redeemer died. In this act lies your resurrection, and the resurrection of those to whom you have enslaved yourself with sincerity. Repel and banish arrogance, the desire for domination and empty glory so that God alone may become the one who is honored.

Translated by Prof. Mark Farha, Georgetown University SFS-Q

Original Text: “شهوة السلطة“ – Nahar- 12/02/2005

Each day added to Man’s life is a step in his path to the final scene of this biological entity (the body) which we are, though we do see beyond it or “above” it. I said “above” because you cannot understand death as part of life if you do not perceive life as bound to what is “above”; otherwise our end would have been only “a fling in the ground (earth)”. It is so, had not that “above” been one of Light.

Every shock, grave illness, recurring sin, disgrace of one’s country and the treachery of the institution one works in, and all what comes along with that, makes death more desired than life because Man was not created to live with deception, oppression and oblivion; all that is a disfiguration of existence. This contradiction one finds in himself leads one to long for the wholeness of one’s being; a wholeness that one does not find in this earthly life, or in getting rid of life because that is another shock also stemming from what is earthly and not from what is from “above”.

What is poured down on you from heaven (what is above you), pulls you towards it, even though you remain in this world (what is below heaven); that also refers to what is “below” you that yearns for what might end your disgrace, contradiction and sins. That is why we die and we do not die. We die in the sense that we leave for the earth what is of it and we yearn for that which we do not get from it. From the earth is disobedience and “what it builds on sand” of self worship and of the obliteration of others in one’s imagination and mind.

Logically, at death, the good deeds we have done remain as distinct from the evil deeds we have done as they were during our lifetime. And so frustrations, impurities, hatred, and all other lusts would be on one side and love and generosity on the other side; impurity in its various forms will be cast in the dust, and there remains, “above the dust”, the truth that you carried with what it had of freedom, and the purity that you have chosen to be in, because in this lifetime, these were “without dust”. Such radiance crosses over death and remains one with the light it came from, that is the Heavenly Radiance, which immediately starts giving us life right from the moment of our birth while the seeds that death sows in us lead us to death since death wants to engulf what comes from it in the same way as Light would embrace what It pours down on us.

This is a simple statement about the duality of Man in his internal paradoxes, since I am not considering here the Platonic view of soul and body as it came in philosophical writings we have. In the thought of the Old Testament from which these lines come, there is no unseen soul and a body that is visible in Man. When the Fathers speak of the theological meaning of “Man being created in the image and likeness of God”, only few of them spoke of the soul as being in the image of God. But St. Basil the Great said that Man’s freedom is God’s image in us and others spoke of the mind as being so.  But also there has been some among them who said that the human entity as body and soul together, is in the image of God because He made us in the image of Christ who was going to appear at the proper time. And so despite the various expressions they used, they believed in one natural and created entity that is whole and lacking nothing. It is sin that pulls it apart. Thus we find that St. Paul used the word “body” not meaning the flesh, but referring to that aspect of us which is under the control of evil. And when they speak of the spirit they mean that aspect of us in which the Holy Spirit is sovereign. Thus we see that the apostolic writings give no consideration to the duality of essence found in Plato but stress much the issue of light and darkness. This explains why Christianity does not speak only of the salvation of the soul but also of that of the body also; It also speaks of the sacredness of the body which It anoints with holy oil in childhood and in sickness professing that the body also partakes of the body of Christ risen from the dead.

And there is no doubt that He who is coming again is the same one who was and is now. So there is no role for time in this because what Christ gives us, that is Himself once and for all, is the same One who is in us now and the One who will appear on the last day. And because the body receives the light it will also be resurrected through the light on the last day. The body might seem dead but what comes down on it of the gifts of God does not die and does not get buried with it (the body); what is good remains good and any holiness that has embraced you does not end. But what is corrupt in you ends remaining in itself, in its earthiness. And the light that is in you is gathered to the Light because it is from Him. That is my understanding of what Paul says: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1Cor 15:43. In this passage, the body is for Paul the whole human person and not only the flesh. And then he continues saying “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body”. Paul does not mean here that it is an invisible body or an invisible person, but he means the entity that has been freed of the corruptibility of sin and death or of that (i.e. sin-in Paul’s thought) which leads to death;

The way Paul sees it is that the human flesh lives to unite itself to the spirit which has remained alive as he says: “what is corruptible cannot inherit what is incorruptible”. The association or the contrariness is not between the flesh and the spirit but between what is corruptible and what is incorruptible. The body is not an independent entity which in itself is liable to dissolution. What makes us disintegrate is sin. And this entity (the body), mortal due to sin, will put on itself immortality when God in His mercy puts an end to sin and Man is raised in glory upon glory.

So, if you seek after this mercy longing to see that glory, you would as well long for death, not to rid yourself of the humiliation resulting from the wounding of your spirit by the never ending daily falls into temptation, but to get to that peace which Light alone can bestow.

Yet God, in keeping you in this world, has some wisdom and purposes for you and wants to discipline you in doing what is good, by His grace which is in you and is sufficient; and probably He intends to spread it to others through you. And as you live He chastises you and in that He purifies you. And you always try to do what pleases Him and He knows when to call you to Himself or when to sympathize with your weakness. When you feel your body is ruined, and your soul is in torment, when you are in doubt of your ability to be patient and you languish for long under your burden, when you are tired of life’s course and in doubt of whether it is of any benefit or not, and when you do not see any good fruit from your efforts, He knows how to extend His sympathy to you in all this fatigue. Yet you are not to long for death due to fatigue; for it has become clear to me in my old age that long life is often a grace from the Lord so we can repent further longing for Him more and more. And most probably, that fatigue strengthens hope in you fortifying you against despair; such despair is usually despair of His mercy and that is an immense slip.

Moreover you are not in a position to pass judgment on yourself or to condemn it. He alone is the one who knows how to pass judgment. He has kept from you the ability of knowing yourself till the last hour; in His eyes, you might be either better or worse than you think yourself to be. That is why He kept judgment to Himself. And you might think that you have been and still are a failure. What measure do you use for this? God does not care much whether you are successful in your field of work or not. His concern is that you grow spiritually in all what you do. 

You shall stand naked before your Lord and He, from His throne, shall cast on you the bright wedding gown and gather your goodness to His after He would have washed you with mercy which is your only gateway to Paradise. And there you will see those on whom His mantle of love has been cast and you shall see the light of His face and you shall move from glory on to glory forever.

And because you love this encounter (with God) you have to prepare for it in “fear and trembling” (as Paul says) not because of your ability to effect your beauty with your own effort, but because you are given to rely on Him for that and to hope in Him for compassion. And when you know that the kingdom is in you as the Lord said, you shall be open to receive It (the Kingdom) there (in you). In that the Kingdom is not yet to come (in the future) but it has already come (by Christ reigning in you in the Holy Spirit). And so you live in this world by the glory of the Kingdom, and you rejoice in the Heaven residing in you; you do not ascend to It, but It has come down upon you and dwelt there in you. Man does not ascend to a heaven which transcends him, because it has come down to him in his world and abided with him. That is what the incarnation of the Word in Mary’s womb entails; Mary in whom dwelt all of Heaven. In the Arabic language the meaning of the word heaven (Sama’a) refers to God’s transcendence and to where His throne is. Except that God has chosen your heart a throne for Him and the Lord is exalted by you and in you. And when He implants His heaven in you, it does not cease after death; and the sins that you have, He will not take account of because of His good will. And when He finds light in you, He will acknowledge that (the light) which He himself has instituted in you. And He does not take you to Himself (in the afterlife) except because He has gathered you to himself (in advance) in this world of yours. The radiance you carry is neither from you nor from what you have endured in this world; for you gain nothing from the good you have done, except the dwelling of God in you. In that (dwelling in you), He has done goodness to you. So you lean on his breast when you get up there, in the same way you leaned on him in this world when you answered His knocking at your door and you opened for Him; and He supped with you and you also had supper with Him, that is you had Him and He had you. And when you realize this companionship brought about by this closeness, you do not fear death anymore; death becomes for you a door, leading to an end stage, to Him who is true vision and knowledge.

And if you know that, you shall not see (know) death.

(Translated by Riad Mofarrij)

Original Text: “الموت” – 27.11.2004

God has ultimately come to us in Christ Jesus; yet the question remains as to how Christ continues in us after having left this world? Some have said that His presence continues in us through the Bible; and that is what all Christians believe. And it was said that His presence continues in the Church; and that is what the Traditional Churches strongly believe in. But when the Lord comes to us with His words and revelations (like Baptism, Chrismation and the Eucharist) we need to appropriate the words and have them reach our hearts; the lukewarm will not pick any of God’s words but the believer whose heart is on fire for the Lord will live by them and also by them move to further depths with God. You can internalize the inspiring Word; but God can also instill it in you.

The ongoing Pentecost and the work of the Holy Spirit is to activate in your soul the Sacramental grace thus renewing the power given you and making it functional in you and the community you belong to. The work of the Holy Spirit is that the death and resurrection of Jesus are active in you now; also that you bridge the gap of time and have Christ, after His ascension, always come down afresh on you and the people you are with.

In the Epistle of the feast of Pentecost, we read: “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.”

“In one place” and with one heart and one expectation; that is what the Church is about. You must be of the community who received the Scriptures so that you inherit the Spirit; that is you have to follow the words that Jesus has spoken. Grace has to fill the whole house because it (the house) is founded on obeying Him. Then fire from Heaven will descend on you and all of your being will be turned to “fire”. And that is what the New Testament calls the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And the fire in you might be enkindled always – a great fire. And when others find you fully given to the word of God, that word which has become alive in you will inspire you with “new words” that give new life to you and those with you.

This is why the Church has life through those who in Her are “alive”. She is not an institution with a hierarchy of those who are above and others who sit at their feet. There is none above and none below. All of them speak in the Spirit who is in them. There are no classes in the Church. And in our Tradition, we choose for the priesthood those who are illuminated and for the episcopate those who are deified; that is those who transcend their passions. So the priesthood is not an office which those who hold are there to obey those above them, but they are there because they have received it from God in this earthly life. So the Bishop is so only if the “fire” descends on him; and through Him (the Spirit) he (the bishop) listens to what He (the Spirit) has to say to the Church. And the Church here does not mean certain groupings exclusively, but the individuals that the Spirit has anointed. Such individuals who are in a position to exhort the Bishop, whom they consider to be anointed of God, meekly and humbly in the name of the Holiness of the Church. To both, Bishop and people, the truth of the hymn we sing for the feast of Pentecost has been revealed: “The Holy Spirit is light and life and a spiritual spring of living waters, the spirit of Wisdom and Knowledge; He is good, upright, active. He purifies from wrongdoing, He is God, and the One who deifies, fire of fire; He speaks to us and distributes His gifts to us….” The Spirit as the distributor of the gifts is an essential truth that fosters our togetherness in one body. One is gifted to serve the poor, and another for teaching and another for preaching and another for administration and another for works of mercy and all are bound in love. So let no one despise the other and let not one consider the gift he has better than that of another. And when we consider the Fathers of the Church, we find the same gifts distributed among them in the same pattern; we find one more gifted in something than another. We also find them disparate in their theological knowledge and abilities and depth in theological thought and intelligence. So you might find those among them who are less dazzling, very active in serving the poor. In all that they make the One Church. And in that the human being becomes a word (God’s word).

It seems that the conflict between the Eastern and Western Churches on the procession of the Holy Spirit (as to whether He proceeds from the Father as the East says or from the Father and the Son as the West says) is being resolved after Rome has issued a theological document in which there is much similarity to the position of the East from that matter. And as I see things, the Orthodox Church will not stir up the old conflict when the dialogue between the Churches is resumed. Yet the good thing resulting from that is that the Holy Spirit who was not adequately prominent in Catholic teaching has started to show in both, teachings and life (practice). But at any rate those who are filled with the Holy Spirit are one in all churches. Holiness is the same anywhere though different churhces use different expressions in talking about it. Holiness shines brightly as the sun in the lives of many here. In the Orthodox Church, each of the Patriarchates proclaims its own Saints.

Is the Holy Spirit sent to those who do not belong to the Church? This is a very delicate question. Thirty years ago I have lauched an understanding expressed as “Christ as existing in the ‘night’ of religions”; I meant by that the latent or concealed truth in those religions that is the truth which God sends to whoever He wishes. And after those thirty years, I am here to say that when one does not reject or oppose the gospel openly, that means that its words have found a way to his heart though he might not be too involved with it. Yet I am more inclined to say that I refrain from evaluating religions in their doctrines but I cannot but notice people of those religions who are pure in their ways; and if such purity is very prominent then it comes from the spirit of holiness, since human effort on its own is not a source of purity. Of course there is nothing wrong in saying that the Church is extends beyond the present Christian community. I consider that when the Hallaj (A Muslim mystic), as he was praying, says when his hands were cut off: “Two prostrations in love, the only ablutions of which is blood.” I see in that the Spirit descending on him with martyrdom and the he is gathered to the cross of Jesus.

Thinking of the above, a prayer of a Byzantine saint, Symeon the new Theologian, comes to mind: “Come O true light. Come O eternal life. Come O great mystery. Come O who cannot be understood and uttered. Come O light in whom there is no darkness. Come O hope who desires all to be saved. Come O resurrection of those who are dead. Come O immutable one who is always on the move; come to those who are in hell. Your name no one utters…….come O whom my soul loves. Come by yourself only for me. Come O who has separated me from all and made me lonesome in this world and have become my desire and wanted me to want you. Come O unreachable One.”

And so with things as those the Spirit has enriched us; and the poor in spirit found life in Him on the hope that the world will be set on fire by Him – fire that makes this world mere light.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الروح القدس” –An Nahar- 14.06.2003

No one would ever author you my Lord. You authored the universe with your blood. Only your blood is true utterance. Only your blood is the word, and through it we got to know that God is unique in that He loves. We are towards You because of that freedom with which you removed slavery from the meaning of religion saying that we are beloved of yours and that we have a daring with your father because we are of his house.

You tell of all of your father’s inner being, you reveal His compassion and from it comes forth all that is tender, coming into the core of our pain, to the hearts of the myriads of sinners; So the compassion of your father is captured with our eyes so we can see the ultimate truth that God has sent you so you would tell of Him (reveal Him) nailed to the cross in what seems to be His weakness.

 You have refused to come down from the cross because had you done that they would have kept on thinking that God would bring them signs and miracles from him, and you did not want any sign for them except that of you stranded on the cross. With that death you joined the game that the devil wanted for you because he thought he could conquer you with what is his, that is death. It did not occur to him that a human being would volunteer to die out of love and that only love is able to destroy death.

No poet in the world is able to put together a love verse like the one you uttered with your suffering and blood. The people who lived south of us (in Palestine) were told, before you were born, that they were loved by their Lord. But they did not believe that because they were under the yoke of misery, the misery of their sins and they did not even dream that that God is the one able to lift from them the burdens that laid heavy on their souls.  

All human beings knew that God is able to shake the world, but one did not know truly that he is God’s beloved and that through this love he is equipped to be greater than the universe and more effective than all its elements.

Oh Jesus of Nazareth! If it happens that I think of you independently of the faith I have in you, I would have told the people who are well versed in human civilizations that no one before you or after you or those that lived at your times ever spoke about love like you did. Their words were ethical commandments close to poetic verse. But you said: “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you.” You might gather form the dialogues of Plato and the amiableness of Plotinus something that resembles love, and one could find some hints for it in the ancient mythology of the East, yet I do not know in the ancient writings, those of religion and those of literature, one who spoke (about love and other) with the impetus and the wholeness of what you uttered.

Yet that was not the moat excellent. The most excellent is that you said: “…..as I have loved you”. That is I have loved you till the end, till death. And above all that is that you revealed your love for Man in the reality of your body and blood. I know no one born of a woman who did not have a discrepancy between what he said and what he did. Let us consider for instance the Way you have established the followers of which were called Christians in Antioch. Those followers, the greatest among them, are “midgets “compared with you. All the Saints are small in that sense. Those among them that slightly measure up to you, are those that have shed their blood (for Christ). You alone in the history of Man had no discrepancy between what you said and what you lived. Even your enemies who have written against you could not but testify to that.

Bishop George Khodre

 April 19, 2003

The sermon on the mount of Mathew and Luke, and the farewell discourse of John are two summits (of literature) which no one can read and remain the same after having read them if one does that comprehending what he reads. And there are sections of the gospels that one does not find them of greater spiritual value than other books. There are texts of religious thought whether before you or after you, that are more beautiful in expression and more profound than what you have said. In the world there are very capturing ecstatic sparks that we do not find like them in your gospel; and people get mesmerized with the enchantment there is in language. but that’s not how your Good News (gospel) is read. The whole of it, from its alpha to its omega, is associated with the blood you, on the cross, have poured. You did not seek eloquence of speech; you are a carpenter and the friend of fishermen. You are not so keen on the glitter of words. Nothing indicates that you have were skilled at rhetoric; and if people are drawn to you because of it (rhetoric), they would not be drawn to the Divine presence hidden in you but only to what is external of you.

Love oh my Lord, is in the capacity of God only. But you have brought that down to the level of Mankind making them, courtesy of you, to live that love. There are many sides to love. But what draws my attention most, I, the author of this invocation, is that your love among humans, utters and forges forgiveness. You have forgiven the Jews because they did not know what they were doing. You ask more of your followers for you want them to forgive those who hurt them and who constantly work wound them and to slander them. You say that you have to forgive him who deliberately and intentionally seeks to destroy you and your affairs. You have to forgive him unconditionally without him asking you and without you asking anything of him in return. And all that because you want him to be of the children of the Kingdom. And you want him greater than you because the kingdom is for all God’s children and it is open for thieves and murderers to enter because those also are your loved ones and because you might have been one of them whether consciously or unconsciously. Such love oh Lord is what draws me to you most, oh Master of the hearts that are wounded by your kindness and meekness.

Oh sweetest Jesus! Dwell in the hearts of the poor and the vagabonds on this earth, those who follow you and those who haven’t heard of you. All of them are yours because of the love that you have for all the same. Be with the children whose parents neglect them leading them to impunities. Help people oppressed with illness and be the companion of those who are alone in their sorrows. And for married couples be a bond of unity and a caretaker of their children. Take into your care the peoples who are called underdeveloped by the great of the Earth. They are the apple of your eye oh My Savior. Tell those oppressed that you have come to relieve them from oppression. You are against the oppressor until he repents to you.

Wipe oh Lord every tear from our eyes so that weeping would cease from the face of the earth and Joy would be a resurrection.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: “يا يسوع الناصري” – 19.04.2003

We are in a theological disagreement with George Bush even before we start criticizing his conduct. This disagreement, if you want, is about his ambiguous theory concerning the viability of the divine promise of the Promised Land.  The disagreement is about what divine promise of land for a chosen nation, no matter, was it Hebraic or American. The founding fathers of what became to be the United States were saturated with Jewish perceptive of the Old Testament, that is, they took its literal meaning to be perpetual. The Zionist movement did not start yet immigrating to that country, when these founding fathers arrived to the new world; why then this land was called with a biblical name borrowed from the “new earth” of the book of Revelation (Rev 21: 1; Isa 65: 17), despite the fact that for us it symbolically represents the longed-for Kingdom of Heaven? Those fathers, fleeing persecution in their native England, sought for a world of justice similar to the world of the Second Coming of Christ. The founders felt that they were called to live the evangelical purity there, and after the secularization of their society, this purity was called “democracy and freedom” which they, later on, confused with the concept of God by the very indication that their children have inscribed on their currency: “in God we trust”; in a manner that, when dealing in dollars and making a more or less profit, they linked it to God and started believing that He rewards with this money.

Max Weber believes, and he might be right, that capitalism flourished first in Calvinist environments, which echoes the subject of “material blessings” rewarded to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in numbers of sheep as symbols of God’s contentment for them in the Old Testament, forgetting that the Nazarene poor came and preached that all material belongings are but nothing, and that the poor shall inherit the Kingdom of God.  Nothing in common can unite between pursuing more dollars in this country and between the ascetic way that flourished and continue today in old Christian Tradition or in the Muslim Zuhd [ascetic] movement.

Americans kept this spirituality until the appearance of the Zionist movement whatever origin it may have come from. This movement has a characteristic that keeps it seeking after these Old Testament’s “material blessings” and after the promise of a land for the offspring of Abraham, although the link of today’s Jew to Abraham had become weak in numbers, because nowadays great Jewish numbers are coming mainly from conversion [Khazar] and are not physically descendants of Abraham…

But many of the West’s people saw in the founding of the Sate of Israel the fulfillment of the Promised Land in its flourished agriculture etc… Many spiritual leaders led their flock to visit occupied Palestine to show them God’s blessings for Abraham fulfilled anew.

We had the occasion, some of my Arab Christian colleagues and myself, to meet and discuss with theologians and biblical interprets in Lebanon, especially those coming from Holland believed that the State of Israel and Ancient Israel are one and the same, and that the proof of the authenticity of the Old Testament is in its accomplishment today in the founding of the State of Israel; later on, this wave passed away, and they understood how to differentiate between the Zionist organization and the Land which God promised to Abraham.

But this movement has awakened today in the United States and its followers believe that all Jews have to gather in Palestine as a staging point of their conversion to Christianity and the Second Coming of the Savior. Jew believers dislike this theory off course because they are enemies with Jesus of Nazareth, but they use this movement because it is serving their political program of violating Palestine.

Here we have then an alteration of the original plan of the founding fathers of the American nation. This alteration enabled the declaration that the Promised Land is Palestine besides that America is still the “Blessed Land”. This last statement is Zionist but on a different soil. There is no difference if the Zionism was Americanized in planting it in the new world or if it was Hebraized in planting it in Palestine because the common task between the two plans is nailing God’s promises to a land, notwithstanding that Christ freed us from lands, from soils and from everything related to possessions because He has become the King, the Kingdom, the Promised Place and the end of all promises.

In an Orthodox reading of the New Testament you are no more prisoner of the Hebraic reading of the Old Testament because you shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the coming Savior in Heavens. We have then a serious disagreement concerning the very essence of our faith with George Bush and with his fellow members dominating the Republican Party.

In their courses, great American presidents until Eisenhower (included) held fast to the heritage of freedom even if they believed that money played a guarantor of freedom. This course was ruined when the American nation started cooperating with dictatorships and militarized regimes in Africa and Latin America in the very manner taught by Henry Kissinger who also wrote about it. Here we discover a new revelation: instead of calling for freedom, now freedom and democracy are to be imposed upon other nations. This exactly is the definition of an empire. Firstly, America shifted from the phase of preaching freedom, to the phase of destabilizing small nations (they’re all small now), in order to finish by creating free “satellite” nations.

I only want to note that the old American calling was replaced with a new system, democratic by appearance, but mandating by essence. This mandate over the earth’s nations is not authorized by the U.N., which created this system, but this mandate is directly commissioned from God because America is well pleasing to God as it declares it on its dollar.

In this historic drift from its initial calling, the United States will invade Iraq as it appears. This will involve genocide or mass destruction of an innocent people. I won’t, in this case, add to what it has been said over the illegitimacy of this war, because I read the complete reports by both chief weapon inspectors. But the decision to kill Iraq has been taken. We, the genuine children of freedom and real purity, will stand with those led to the slaughter. We will pray with all the nations praying for peace. We are united in solidarity for Iraq, despite our different religious beliefs, and we shall stand united even if the East was hit by a terrible earthquake. Perhaps the choc may enlighten our conscience and for this we shall thank God.  Maybe some comforting, we may draw from the fact that crowds in many nations started understanding how much humiliated and mistreated is the Arab world surrounding Iraq.  Mayhap this great feeling shall help us curing our sores, and healing us from the hate of foreigners.  For it clearly appeared now that all peoples are good and cordial and understand that cooperation and dignity are the spirituality that must bring us together.

And after that we comprehended how bad is the international violence, we understand that violence on Arabic soil must cease and be replaced with clear and quite minds in course of control. I don’t mean by this the international relations, because this is ruled by political logic; but I wish for these nations to become mirrors reflecting their peoples yearning for life in peace. There are no warring nations, but rather there are conflicting interests and I pray that wisdom may overcome it.

Moreover, we witness now, in the Arab world, a very strong accord between Muslims and Christians. We should encourage this spirit, as we have done in the past, in general, in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Our hope is to transfigure this Middle Eastern land to an example of coexistence. Good intentions alone are not enough; we need to re-establish our mentality on mutual respect and acceptance of the other.

In front of the upcoming crisis we must believe in God and in His inspirations. The secret of the Resurrection is in our souls. If the tragedy befalls on us, we will not lose hope, but shall endure patiently until death is cast out from this East.

After the calamity we shall be renewed to become serious, very serious to participate in the spiritual, cultural and political great renewal. This is conditioned by great repentance of our nations, in order to be laid to the straight way and start drinking from the Truth that springs from the rising of a new morning.

Translated by Father Symeon AbouHaidar

Original Text: “فكر جورج بوش ومسلكه” – 15.03.2003

In struggling for perfection, we are told to strive because the grace by which we are saved has outrun us. Our books say that God saves us when we fall or when we are “assaulted” by temptation. This is true; our books speak of resisting the evil one with the “full armor of God” and when the apostle lists that armor he mentions that it is truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, the helmet of salvation and the word of God. These help us “extinguish” all the arrows of the evil one. Yes, Paul here calls for much patience, gentleness in the Holy Spirit, love and the word of truth.

In the face of human weakness that threatens us from the inside – as James says – the Bible tells us to pray that the Spirit who is in the depths of God, would come down into our hearts. As such I do not find in the New Testament the idea of “strengthening the will” that we were brought up with in the missionaries’ schools. And it became clear to me later that that is the genius of the West which is enchanted with the human power that springs from Man’s inner being despite Augustine’s (the Father of the Christian West) stress on the supremacy of the action of Grace.

From what I know of the asceticism of the East  – and l have assimilated thousands of its pages – in this field, I did not come across any talk about the strengthening of the human will except the little that came concerning the education of the human being (and we find this with St. John Chrysostom).  And it appears to me that this is so due to the concern our Fathers have in distinguishing between mere human strife and the grace that comes down on us freely from God. Christian Eastern spirituality shuns what is merely human. But it also shuns the idea of man being at the mercy of the arbitrary temperament of a god who forces himself on man; such a forcing implies that we are still in the realm of animalistic dealing and that we have not gotten into the logic of the incarnation based on the participation between the Deity and the humanity, in Christ and in us. And so the Christian Eastern spirituality sees salvation as a combined effort between God and Man; an action depicted by the word “synergy” which implies the accompaniment of the divine action to the human effort. Yet what sounds as a contractual understanding is superseded with what is mentioned about God’s action in the practice of the invocation of the name of Jesus that God, by coming and filling one’s heart,  purifies as a resuly the soul from all defilement. And only He (Man excluded) is able to save us from the spiritual death that lurks around us.

 There remains a “big” question: “Why do we sin?” In other words, what is inside us that causes us to sin as the Bible says: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23). The universality of sin and its prevalence in the human race is a point stressed in the Bible.  When we see that the apostles sinned as they were following the Lord, and when we read in the Epistles how the apostles denounce the Christians for their sinfulness and they mention their (Christians) sins to them, we are faced with the question: “how can that be when Christ has arisen from the dead and He raises us with Him (that is He raises us from sin)?”

Here, I think we have to consider the dialectic of St. Paul. After Paul says: “If we have died with Christ we have faith that we will live with Him” and then he goes on saying: “Consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord”; he calls us not to let sin reign in our mortal body obeying it in lusting for things; then he goes on saying: “Do not offer your organs (meaning our whole body) as instruments of iniquity”. The Apostle knows that sin can be an obstacle in our way of beholding the resurrection of the Savior. In spite of this, he hopes that in being filled with the victory of Christ, we would not fall, so he says – in hope – “sin will not have dominion over you because you are not under the Law (the law of Moses) but under grace”. 

Here, I have to remind us that our Fathers greatly stressed the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God. The image – whether it is freedom of will or the mind or our total being – is that we, structurally, resemble God and the likeness is the “movement” towards God. This likeness, which is the “movement towards Him”, is fallen and this is why we need redemption. But the image in us has been marred; yet we remain in the image of God since the image passes away but we do not. Here sin corrupts the likeness and only Grace can bring it (the likeness) back. The Bible mentions “the mystery of iniquity” and answers the question “Why do we sin?” only through the Epistle of James where it says that lust moves us to sin and it has not ceased to do so despite the resurrection of Christ and His victory over death.

Yet we have two discourses on the resurrection the best of which is what the Lord told the sister of Lazarus: “I am the resurrection and the life” after a conversation between them about the resurrection of her brother. When Jesus told Martha “your brother shall rise from the dead” she said to Him I know that he will rise on the last day in the resurrection. It is then that Jesus tells her:  “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” As if Jesus wants to tell her that there is something more important than the resurrection on the last day, which is the resurrection in the present time for all those who love the Savior. It is a resurrection that eats up the weakness of Man and his lust.

Yet Paul gives the full understanding of the resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians saying: “Now Christ has risen from the dead and has become the first fruit of those who die ….. in Christ all shall live”; “…shall live” indicates the future, and so the possibility to sin remains in the present time in Paul’s dim understanding of the mystery of sin. Somewhere else he says “now we see dimly in a mirror”.  

And perhaps the greatest vision is this “that we all and together shall be saved on the last day”. Sin, the sting of death remains now. When our being which is now marred by death will be redeemed on the last day, we shall be raised whole. Then God will give us full victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.

When in my youth I got interested in the subject of evil no one helped me as much as my instructor the great Russian theologian Father George Florovsky; he told me that we do not have a philosophy of evil in Christianity even though he exposed to me what other schools of thought say about that matter. We believe that Christ remains close to the sinner; so when we notice the presence of evil, we undertake to combat it in Christ who is in us. We are concerned with being rid of sin and Christ is our deliverer, individually and as a group, today and in the future.

Yet our curiosity leads us to some questions; why does one lie and another steal? Or why do you find some who are pure or almost pure, as if they are like that without making effort? We are told that people are like that as an answer but such an answer does not help; there is nothing that says for certain that we inherit out weaknesses in the genes. You find one addicted to crime and another is addicted – if one might say – to righteousness; I do not know, God knows. And none of us can pass judgment on others or examine the evil that is in the others; not even one’s own.     

Yes we know that there are some people who immediately rise from their sins by God’s grace, and we find people who find it hard to rise.  The repentance of the human being is as much a mystery as massive tendency of committing sins is. And from experience, we know that for some repentance is impossible while for others, falling into sin is impossible. Experience also shows that the virtues are strongly related together and that on the other hand, sins are also associated together. It is self-evident that the thief is a liar by definition and a potential killer at times; in the same way, the modest and humble person is virtuous, turning away from lust for money and power. And so, as you observe others and yourself, you could become either sad or happy.

The main thing you have to believe in is that even though you inherit this fragility of your nature – and that is what original sin, as Augustine said, is – yet nothing can make you one overcome by sin as if it predetermines you; you also are not predetermined in being virtuous either for it is written: “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” but in the hope of becoming free, the Blessed Lord says: “I do not call you slaves……..but I call you friends”.

In the face of the intensity of sin and its repetitiveness, the apostle says: “Where sin abounds, grace also abounds”. So we live in the hope of becoming righteous after sinning. And that is why the Saints of the Christian East call us not to brood over our previous sins, our souls being sapped with regret and pulled backwards to our past, so that we could go forward to the presence of the Lord who when He draws us to Himself, helps us not get carried away anew with our lusts.  

Yes, the Saints speak of passionlessness or the state of serenity in the soul, or the state of freedom from the unconscious tendencies that compel us, but they also warn us that having that state is not a guarantee for its continuance; the enemy lurks seeking to harm us and only vigilant prayer reminds us of God’s power to overcome him. We do have a group of combatants whom we call the watchful and vigilant fathers. He who acquires watchfulness and vigilance is able to confront the seduction of the devil and to host (receive) Christ.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “جهد أو تجدد” – 8.12.2002

A spirit of individualism dominates the dispositions of the Arabs to such a degree that there is no value is given to social solidarity. For this reason we find the stark contradiction that, despite his progress and material advancement, the Arab of today has not exited from the tribal frame of mind.  He lives in a system in which one tribe is pitted against another.  Recall that even when the tribes struck alliances between one other in the desert of yore, this did not produce any fundamental integration between them.  And even in cases in which such a pact may have resulted in an approximation, the Bedouin remained a hostage of his extended kin.  Within the kin he was a prisoner of his house, and within this family he was held as a prisoner of the branch and its subdivision.

The extended family is predicated on tribal solidarity which however does not strip anybody from his or her individualism and egoism.  The Arabic word for living quarter (al-hay) refers to an assembly of tents which do not, by necessity, establish a sincere affinity between the residents of this and that tent.  If you are invited by the people of a tent, you do not automatically become a friend.  They dispense on you a favor that you relied on them but the pride remains theirs.  The desert therefore is not predicated on the group.  Individuals may fall silent when they gather around the Shaykh of the tribe.  It is this silence which is the telling sign that all of them remain enclosed on themselves and doubtful of the others.

Might this fear be a product of the harshness of Bedouin life? Or from the fact that God remained unknown in the [pre-Islamic] age of ignorance?  Perhaps the spirit of tribalism persisted after the advent of Islam.  City quarters were built in Kufa in which each tribe withdrew into a quarter.  The flag of the ancestors appeared after Islam, and everyone took pride in his lineage, and those who invented pedigree for the Arabs came with a lineage which befitted their ambitions and vanity. 

The Arabs were governed by this superciliousness, the essence of which was that each party considered itself superior to the others.  This is what explains the spread of the genre of deprecatory poetry (hija’) which I do not believe any other literary tradition embraces in quite the way our literature does.  The potency of this kind of poetry lies in greater implication that the Arab is fortified by what he considers great in his people and himself.  This is why we have amongst us this preoccupation with lineage and pedigree (hasab and nasab) which is but a token of (false, vacuous) mundane glory.

It seems that knowledge, once attained, does little to refine this sort of mentality. So you may substitute the tent with the castle, full with all amenities of luxury and sophistication, and yet you remain as if you lived in one of the Arab alleys of Mount Lebanon.  Instead of mounting a camel you now enter a car, and the street always remains yours and not that of the other drivers.

When man vanishes in what sociology designates as a “patriarchal,” extended family, it appears to him that he has gained space yet this family cements his individuality, and he does not dissolve in it except by ways of appearance, for the important thing is for the family to strengthen him.

Certainly: Man does not live bereft of any communion with anybody.  Yet true communion cannot occur without friendship and love.  And both of these connote a departure from the ego enclosed on itself to the ego of mutual sharing.  My entire being is fortified through the friend, through his guidance and his tenderness, just as he is strengthened by me.  You also will exit from your [limited] self in terms your scope of understanding so that the joint community of the understanding is created.  And the true friend will ask you and you will ask him, and he will animate and unsettle you and you will animate and unsettle him in so far as you both want this company to be based on truth and rooted in reverence.  At that point, what arises is a community not based on communalist passion [‘asabiyya] but on the choice of love.  The shell of your self is broken so that the free and growing “we” can spring forth.  All this is unavailable within the tribe.

Each agreement and concordance involves a mutual accounting and interrogation.  And an interrogation of the self consists in you allowing the other to limit and define you.  In truth, it implies that you strip yourself naked before him, and this requires courage.  For you to consider the other to be coming to kill you means that you are assuming the role of  a Bedouin Arab preparing for battle before the other Bedouin comes to kill you.  And if you brought your Bedouin identity to Lebanon or the Arab World even though you may wear Western garb and drive a car you have armored out of a fear which shelters you from challenges and does not compel you to an honest word. 

It is from this desert Angst that Arab eloquence sprouted forth.  “Eloquence can be enchantment” (goes the famous proverb from the Hadith).  A language of sublime beauty such as Greek was nurtured in the shadow of cities waging war with each other.  Arabic poetry was  a necessity for the tribes.  If for some reason they were unable to engage in battle, they found resort to the searing word, and to the imaginary notion that, in doing so, they had prevailed.  Today, we find the Arabs still issuing declarations which, they believe, will come true if read.  They do so out of their non-existent sincere sentiment for truth, or their lack of understanding that life is not about statements and not (verbal) enchantment but about being.  And being, in the true sense of the word, requires a good deal of ascetic devoutness, and a surmounting of pleasures, including the enjoyment of money.  Mere existence is a lesson for being, and the latter requires long hours of staying up and an investment in the future; yet they immerse themselves in illusion because they are the sons of the desert.

The future is not formed from roots alone, nor by the return to roots, but rather it is a barging into the unknown.  To orient oneself towards the future means that truths come from what lies ahead and not just from the past. You do not remain a prisoner of your tent in which you welcome the shade, but rather you travel under the scorching sun and construct under it a building of bricks and ideas instead of using an old stone as a peg for the tent.

Perhaps the reason for all this ossification and withdrawal is that the Arab has adopted and internalized the old Roman saying: “Man is a wolf to man.”    He accuses and suspects the other before having dealt with him, believing that he knows the position of the other, assuming that he is a bedouin Arab like him, whereas the divine word is: ”You shall love each other.” This implies that one is not to inquire whether the other deserves to be loved. Rather, one loves without any condition placed on love or the other. 

Out of his faith that the other does not constrain him but expands him and is capable of having mercy on him because the other too is a being made in the image of the God who is complete in his integrity and goodness.  As he trusts in his Lord so too he trusts in the other and does not anticipate any recompense from him.

My readers always ask me: “Who did you have in mind when you wrote this or that,” or, “what was the situation which inspired you to write this article,” or, “who was it who shocked or injured you?” And many a times they will not believe me when I say: “This is an idea which is applicable to the human reality as a whole, and it may correspond to the state of several individuals.” Once one of the believers asked me at the end of a mass: “Why did you cite me today in your sermon today?” And I responded that “I did not see your face when I was speaking.  My evidence that I did not impugn or target you is that another person posed the self-same question to me just two minutes ago. All this proves is that the sermon reached your heart and his heart, and this is good.” This indicates that these two men were in a state of antagonism, in an inherited ignorance, and that they did not strip before the Truth which descended on them from the Word of God.

If you meet a person, trust in him at first.  After your first association, or limited interaction with him, you will know whether he deserved this trust. Certainly our scripture says that trust must be placed in the Lord, and that we ought to bring it to the Guide of all blessings, and that faith itself is trust.  Yet man is God’s expanse and his seat of manifestation, and therefore, you must trust man, place hope in him and bond with him.  And the covenant is a form of friendship and concord.  At the root of matters of the heart lies a mutual agreement, acquaintance and contract. And a contract or covenant requires an initiative.  So open your heart, or your hand, and they will enter into a contract with you.  And if a human being speaks to you with candor from the start, then it is better that he deceive you (openly) from the start rather than leaving you in the dark and in doubt (of his intentions).  But if he sees you doubting him even as his intentions are pure, he will  succumb to disappointment and perhaps suffer from great distress.

Perhaps you are endowed with long experience which allows you to see through whoever approaches you in an a matter of minutes. Yet, in the end, “God is the examiner of hearts and judges all with justice.”  As for us, we must test and learn from experience.  Should you judgment be amiss, your interests will suffer.  But if you injured another soul, the wound may be deep.  And know that trust generates trust.  And the fear born from mistrust may lead to the loss of a precious opportunity of the meeting of two souls.  How many souls were saved by trust.  And remember – if you do not know it – John the evangelists saying: “Love banishes fear into exile.” And our frailness, or part of our frailness, stems from this deliberate separation out of antipathy.    

 It is, in fact, impossible for you to live without warmth, without intimacy and a sense of kinship, without that kinship and proximity to the other which makes you through love.  Make friends for yourself who will be a family of your heart.  “Oh servant, everything is of the heart.” (al-Nufari). Only with it can you free yourself from the straightjacket of the tribes and this primal fear which strips you of all life and vitality.  Trust, trust until you dissolve out of love. Thus, the mirage and delusion shall come to an end.     

Translated by Mark Farha, Georgetown University, Qatar

Original Text: “الثقة” – Nahar 25/5/2002