An-Nahar

Once, as I was approaching old age, someone asked me: Is there any statement through which you present yourself, from your birth until today, which might serve as a succinct statement of your self-understanding, a statement that does not detract anything from you, and you would be eager to remain on it, since there would be nothing else which people compound to it as of your identity? I said to him: “I am a poor boy from Ḥāret al-Naṣara [the Christian quarter]”.

At my childhood I did not know the meaning of ‘naṣara’ [the Islamic term for Christians], since my people were not using it. It is a word from the Qur῾an and also from the civil organization at the era when the Arabs had invaded our countries. The political and the constructive notion behind the term is that those who were called by the Arabs naṣara, while they call themselves Christians, should gather in one quarter, around their church so that they may remain under the protection of Islamic rule, and the rabbles would not assault them. At that time I could not understand why it happens that someone might assault them. What have they done? As I became a young man I started to understand that there is someone to attack any community in the world, regardless whether it committed a fault or no. And this is written in books, or sometimes the books come from people.

However before I was born, namely centuries after the emergence of the law of protection for naṣara, Christians have started to live far from the church. They started to intermingle with other people of the country, and none of the two groups has had the responsibility of protecting the Other. This was so since after the Ottomans were associated with the West they said to their subject-citizens: you are all citizens and whenever the Ottoman nation is assaulted, the Ottoman Christian will be taken to war. Thus, the Christian knew that the sultanate is one since death is one, and many legislations had shown that this people is one.

Once I asked someone: Why is it that if our [two] social segments are neighboring each other at the gate of Haddadin in Tripoli and if all are working together in the same market, there remains no need that any of the two groups protect the Other, rather good neighborliness remains the norm? And good neighborliness arises from the neighbor’s kinship to the Other or the collegiality in work, and no one asks the Other about the quarter where he/[she] rents a house. They converse together and each of them respects the traditions of the Other. One morning, I was visiting a friend in Ramadan. He said to me: forgive me, I cannot offer coffee to you, since we are fasting. I said: I would not expect anything else. And whenever [the neighboring groups] spend the night together they do that with yearning.

All over the people of the city, the Christian quarter has remained and also at its borders the Jewish quarter. Since the Jewish quarter was a different civil entity, I had never thought about crossing it or entering the synagogue. Each group was [for the second group] the Other.

I have not remarked any partisanship in the Christian quarter, or any disparity among its families. Perhaps what has united them was this church existing in their midst. They were always around it, so that whenever the bell chimes they know for example that it is the Vespers, and some of them run to it and at the end of the prayer they return to their houses to have dinner, or stay up a little with the relatives, regardless whether the distance was big, since cars were not common for the non-wealthy people. And in case you visit them they receive you though they would not know previously about your visit, and sometimes they converse about some interesting issues.

I remember that my father was a good converser and he would not depend, for his talks, on the newspapers, which he used to skim. He used to talk about his experience with the Turks. He never hated them. They were [for him] the masters of the war. We have never asked why we fight for them. They were the masters of the country. And we were dying at the waterway, that is the Suez Canal, or return from it, or from Baalbek, after we pay the recompense.

The educated ones were saying that they were Arabs. This notion has emerged in Paris, among its Maronites residents, who were writing in French. My parents were saying that they were the kinsmen of Arabs [or the children of Arabs]. How did they find that, I do not know? Only at the end of the First World War the ID cards have appeared and there was a struggle in that concern. However, I remember from the days, at the end of the twenties of the nineteenth century, that the older generation still used to say that we are the kinsmen of Arabs. And whenever they wanted to express about what they feel in their depths they used to say we are Christians, and they meant by it only an affiliation which is not related to this world. The country was at the hands of the Turks, and then, it became at the hands of the French, while they were at the hands of God and God’s Church, around which they used to gather. They have not known anything about a different church; unless when they went to villages for summer resorts, since they knew that other Christians were inhabiting the mountains and that they pray and sing with different languages and different tunes. And I have not felt any partisanship among them, since the Others were the Others.

My people are pastored by priests who would have received basic knowledge which enables them to perform the service. ‘Service’ refers to our liturgies, since the good performance of all the services, though they were many, was the condition to receive priesthood. The Bishop alone would attain full theological knowledge from abroad, and abroad would refer to the countries starting from Constantinople (i.e. Istanbul in Turkish) to Petersburg in Russia, passing by Kiev, Kazan and Moscow, so that every one of our bishops would master Greek, Russian and solid Arabic, which enables him to preach. And the head, or the Bishop, not long ago, used to reside within the church-haven, namely in the Christian quarter.

My father and grandfather were born there, and I used not to go there unless to visit my aunt, who was living with her two sons, after her husband had died in the war with the Turks. My parents, after their wedding, lived in a new quarter called al-zāhiriyya, and then in an Islamic district called bāb al-raml, where I was born. Thus, there was not any affiliation in my identity to the Christian quarter.

Hence, why should I be a poor boy from the Christian quarter? Is it because my grandfather had built the dome of the cathedral there or because in my youth I loved to become rooted in this identity, which has descended upon the people of the quarter from heaven? Where are their origins, other than in heaven? Have I adopted the quarter or it has adopted me, after its people were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 26: 11)?

It does not worry me that all the people of the quarter, except few, have immigrated. The human being is in immigration to the end of times. What matters is that they are in the Church on Sunday, and they become the Church whenever they receive the body and the blood of the Son of God, so they spread, knowing that they are in the care of God alone and they are to be buried in Christian cemeteries with the saints.

Their comfort is that they carry the Christian quarter in their minds, since their fathers have testified to them, and they will found it in unlimited reaches and teach their children to cross their faces as the sign for the victory that Jesus declared on the wood [the cross]. Their number is not a concern for them, and if the Christian quarter extinguishes, in any sense, they will remember that someone said to them: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 20).

The dome of the cathedral had fallen in the life of my grandfather Georges Khodr, and when he saw it rifting cried out for the believers to come out, and no one of them died, since the heaven was their dome.

We will be scattered in the whole earth. However, this is not a concern. We are not the inhabitants of the earth. Our bodies are here and our heads knock the heavenly throne until the Father sits us with the Son on the right hand of the Father. The Christian quarter is gone. Christians are now retained between heaven and earth, till the Day when the earth passes away.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “حارة النصارى” –An Nahar- 10.03.2012

The Christians got to Lent one or two weeks ago and their destination is Pascha (Easter) since Pascha is the Vision; and the goal of Lent is to behold the glory of God shining from the face of Him who has risen from the dead. Asceticism is the human means enabling Man to get to the Light. And, the Light and Man’s efforts, work synergistically so that one receives the power of God. There is no spiritual existence outside the meeting between the Divine Grace and Man’s efforts. And through such struggling your confidence (or daring) before God obtains as well as the wonderful intimacy between you and Him.

Since “Vision” is the goal and since the vision of Pascha is the “Vision”, we have arranged to have this period of fasting before we feast with the Resurrection; and that does not prevent us from having other periods of fasting to prepare us for other feasts which in the final analysis are reflections of the “Great Feast” or “Eid el Kbir” (in Arabic) which is Pascha. And no fast that you choose to do on your own is but a seeking of the face of your Father who is in Heaven. And I have no doubt that fasting Wednesdays and Fridays is none but a preparation for the approaching Sunday which is the Day of Days par excellence. We celebrate the Holy Liturgy on Sunday to declare that it is the “day of glory”. The above meanings are supported from Exodus with what happened with Moses who had been fasting for forty days and nights on the mountain of Sinai where “the Lord was talking to Moses face to face as one talks to a friend”. Yet the glory of the Lord did not appear to Moses as it says “No one sees my face and remains alive”.

Something like a vision took place with Elijah also on Mount Sinai. After having fasted for forty days and nights, as he was fleeing from the Queen Jezebel, God appeared to him in the form of “the sound of soft breeze”. Yet that is different from the event of the Transfiguration when the above mentioned prophets were brought to the Mount by God and they saw God’s light on Christ. The latter event is a direct communication with the Lord while previously, in Sinai, what happened was only a proximity.

The same period of time Moses and Elijah spent fasting, Jesus also spent fasting after his baptism. The number (40) was considered as sacred, as other numbers also, in the Old Testament. The number 40 for those fathers (in the OT) meant going back to one’s self and as such holds in it meanings of repentance. Except that the period of fasting in the Church was not defined at the beginning since each church used to fast the number of days they chose; until the number 40 was set as universal in the First Ecumenical Council in the year 325 AD and in that of Latakia in the year 365 AD.

I mention that to affirm that the number of days we implement in Lent came to us from the spiritual heritage of the Fathers.

What was Lent like in the old times? A testimony comes from the sayings of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus in the fourth century; he says that the monks used to have one vegetarian meal which has no meat of any kind in it. And it appears to me that the above saint received this from a former tradition which kept that practice till the Council of Trullo when eating meat and all its derivatives like eggs and cheese was banned (cannon 56). And this tradition still goes on in the Orthodox Church till now.

At this we have to mention that there are other churches that have freed themselves partially or totally from these rulings in the consideration that these are Church orders or arrangements that change with the changes of the times. The Orthodox have since a long time been looking into the possibility of making adjustments in the above mentioned rule of fasting, and perhaps the Orthodox Council might be looking into this matter.

Here also we need to mention that for us fasting is a Divine call spoken of in both Testaments, the Old and the New. Yet that Divine call does not contain any form or manner of diet. There is a flexibility here of a pastoral nature. Also it is understood that drinking alcoholic beverages is not favored during Lent.

Fasting Lent does not revolve around abstaining from eating meat and its derivatives but hinges also on asceticism; that is staying away from what we find pleasure in including food allowed during Lent. The idea goes beyond abstinence in order for us to get closer to those who are poor and their style of food; also it is meant that you do not remain spendthrift in your expenditures so that some money can be given to those who are in need. Such people were at the top of the concerns of the Christians at the beginning; one of them wrote in his apologetics (defense of the Faith) to one of the Roman Emperors of the second century, saying: “Why do you persecute us when we are a people who would abstain from food in order to give what it costs us of money to those needy among us?” Such communion was so at the beginning of the Christian Church. And until now, almsgiving is a practice that is one of the pillars of fasting. The almsgiver does that for God and so he does not reveal himself. In the same way the one who fasts does so for God who sees the hearts, and He who sees the hearts rewards him openly.

This view of fasting makes it a path for humility, that is to see one’s self as nothing but seeking and receiving everything from God; in that he grows to become one who is poor in Spirit, that is in need of God. He who by grace reaches this status becomes ready to do without much of what is around him. Finally, fasting is exercising one’s self in following Jesus’ words: “Do not treasure for yourselves treasures on this earth………….but treasure for yourselves treasures in Heaven.” He who trains himself to identify with the status of the poor and suffers from need like they do will have his heart become a dwelling for God. And when he does so during Lent and the other fasts of the Church, he would acquire the poorness in Spirit which is a state of being in need of God perennially.

There remains an essential matter of doctrine. What is in us that fasts? Is it the soul or is it the body? The body does not sin and so it does not fast. It is a place for the soul that desires to be sanctified. It is an appearance for the self which is whole, wise and loving; but it is not a machine. It is part of the individual person existing in both the body and the soul together which also together express the “I” or self on which Grace is poured down to purify it of pride and self-fullness.

The self can be arrogant, authoritative and grabbing, but also can be open to the Divine in its heavenly generosity. And when the body becomes whole, it is not due to a diet or so but primarily because of its surrender to the “human being” (one’s Person) who is united in itself in love and self-giving. The body as such is bound with the giving soul which has tasted effacement in the presence God. And God’s Face is always revealed to those who love Him to give them New Life.

And that New Life reveals itself in the approaching Pascha in the hope that it comes back again for us before the Lord receives us to His mercy.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الصيام” – An Nahar – 03.03.2012

Repentance, being a coming back to God, to His being and His life, takes place in the coming down of His life on you. You suffer at the beginning because you have veiled His face from you to give yourself the right to see what He does not want you to see, and to give your hands the right to touch what He does not want you to touch and to give your feet the right to tread where He is not. In other words, you come back to Him from an estrangement because God is not where you have set yourself (in the estrangement) thinking you will have happiness there flying away from toiling in this life; yet one cannot enter the Kingdom of God without striving.

And you have forgotten that you would be yourself only when you open your heart to receive Him; and without Him being your guest, you would have serpents nesting in your heart and your heart would dwell in an unreal world. Through the Lord you would be able to behold yourself. And you will see some of His image in you in the midst of the delusion you are in; and that would put in you a longing for Him. And when you remember His ancient splendor in you, you would set forth anew towards Him. The point of encounter between Him and you is a mystery. And the meeting takes place in His pleasure and in His ongoing care for you but you prefer yourself to His visitations because sin has made you shallow and deceived you into think that it is “real being”; you think that it is existence, yet it never was so.

I am not one of those who say that there are people who are wholly pure. Our Fathers desired that but they considered themselves sinners. Such consideration has brought them to Heaven. The human heart, for those great Fathers, is in a tension between the “residues” of sin and the virtues they aspire for. And so the heart is the arena where that strife takes place until the human being is put to rest through death. The remembrance of death purifies us if we love God. Remembrance of death is a seeking after Heaven until God receives us in it through His mercy. Until repentance starts springing from our heart, we would be only in a longing for it. Repentance is in changing the longing to a decision which God would receive you for, when He knows it is authentic. Then the “latter” longing will descend on you, the longing to behold the Divine Glory.

Repentance is the fruit of faith; if you believe that sin is a stain and that repentance is a new baptism, then the journey of repentance has started. But if your longing for the good is only emotional and aesthetic, then that is a type of a poetic move. If one longs for the good to adorn himself with it, then that is not repentance. Repentance is the longing for God’s face (person). It involves exchanging everything else in one’s life with the Lord. And so though we weep and ask for mercy, the human soul has the residues of sin there.

Those we consider perfect do not get to complete purity while they are still in the body in the realm of space and time; which means that it is imperative for us to strive continuously. We would be truly virtuous, if after we accomplish a loving deed we still regard the corruption that is in us amidst that loving act. You are pleased when many speak well of you, and that is a type of pride; any bragging after doing good is a stain on that good act. If you are not convinced that you are nothing, all what appears good to you in you is an attack of that pretentiousness and boastfulness in you. That is why the Church finds it important that one should examine one’s heart always so the “serpents” would have no access to it.

You examine yourself in the light of the commandment: Love the Lord… Love thy neighbor as thyself. In the first part of the commandment, one might get deluded since you might consider yourself pious because you fast and pray while your prayers might be a repetition of words only and your fasting might be a food diet in which there is no compunction or brokenness. In this you are in need of a spiritual guide who can tell you what it is that makes your prayers and fasting of no spiritual value. Yet it remains that the “great” test is the love for others. And in this, one can also be deluded. The issue is not whether you have forgiven him or not, the main issue is that you have to have your heart “filled with him” so that you would always be in his service. And another question comes up here; do you show preferences in your service caring for one and neglecting the other? Or does the Divine Generosity in you cause you to give to everybody alike so that they can see the tenderness of God through your love thus they “repent to Him through your repentance” and with that the Church obtains?

From where do we get the power of repentance or the power of its continuity? We get that from hope; that is from the trust in Go, from our belief that He keeps us from temptations. That’s why despair is considered to be the enemy of repentance; same is true of despondency and lethargy when we fall repetitively.

The great mystery is in the fact that a quick passing prayer is not going to save us but there should be a striving to see the Divine Glory. If yearning for Him is not enkindled in such a way to make us more attached to Him, we will not go back to virtue.

Repentance is a flame in the soul; it is love and passion for Christ. This does not mean a senseless dependence on His love. You always need to have reverence for Him; we need to fear getting back to sin. Reverence and fear keep us and educate us (spiritually) and if they remain with us, they would lead us towards loving God which itself is repentance. Lent is the time for repentance because it surrounds us with the Divine Word and makes us absorb it so fully that what remains is only the presence of the Word and its action in us. And if we do not fall in despair, then the countenance of the Resurrection looms before us.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “التوبة” –An Nahar- 25.02.2012

I have read about Wilayat al Faqih (The State of the Jurist – A Muslim religious government) in the 299 pages of a Persian book that was translated to Arabic. And discussing that view is not my aim in this article. But I noticed that on page 162, it says that he who presides is he who does not commit iniquity, and is just and is not capricious going after the passions of one’s soul.  It also states something to the effect that the above qualifications are found universally. I understand by that that the presidents of non-Muslim nations could have the same virtues that are bestowed on the Faqih and as such we do not have to consider that the presidents of the nations of the world are immoral.

And according with a great Shiite master in this country, I further say that there cannot be a “religious nation”. Logically, the term has no real meaning since it is the individual who is the one to believe in a religion and not a nation.  It is the individual who is clad with a heart and a mind while the nation is not a being and as such, it is impossible to say that “a nation ‘believes’ in a religion”.

I understand that a religious group can take over the government in a certain country and would get inspired by their religion to govern the nation. Even secular governments use the teachings of the religion to which most of the people belong to in order to explain its policies and laws. For example, France, which is the most secular country, considers three Catholic feasts as official holidays; moreover, the official day-off of the week is Sunday.  And if you read the French civil law you will find that much of it is based on the Catholic Church Canon Law. The governor of a country comes from a certain background. No one comes from nothing (no background). I understand through the said statement above, that in a country where Muslims are the majority the people come from Islam in their juridical mentality.

People come from several denominations, including those who are atheists. They seek to enact laws that apply to their life situations which are in constant change. The question posed to the nation that considers itself Islamic is how to reconcile between the divine absolute and the vicissitudes of human experience resulting from changes in one’s circumstances, changes that are relative and have nothing to do with what is absolute. Every divine law, or what is thought to be so, comes down on people in a way to suit the times they are in; and whatever is the product of a certain period of history is conditioned by its times. And if you know some psychology and anthropology and sociology and history, you realize that Man is in constant change, change that is always a challenge to his mind and thought. I do not intend to distort the holy books, but I want to understand what they say in the scope of their times and the extent of its absoluteness. If you take them literally in a universal way, you would be unaware of the reality of time and its place in the divine economy concerning the matters of this world. Time is also the book of God.

The Europeans did not go back to the Gospel to launch its industrial revolution inventing the train, the car, the airplane and the study of the human body. As such scientific research has its own independent realm.

I find the modern trend of seeking to place scientific discoveries in texts that do not have a reference in them to such discoveries strange; so it is not appropriate also to “insert” the perfect eternal God in matters that belong to the human mind in its endeavors. People question why God does not say of things by name as if He has to assign names for things before those things come into existence.

It is high time we separate scientific research from what we presume is linked to it in the holy books. It is high time we believe that the mind is free. There remain behaviors that science has realized are of an ethical stance. Here the argument as to whether it is alright to experiment with the embryo and the fetus arises. The researcher does what he can. But not all discoveries violate morality.

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Going back to confessional nations, I know that all of them do have secularists or liberals. I do not believe those who do not accept the term “secular” just because they consider it to be anti-religion; I also do not excuse them for not putting an effort to get acquainted with its denotation. Except that I would like to ask Islamists whether they count on their large number for imposing their jurisprudence on the rest of the nation; and by “nation” I mean, here, a group of citizens. Do we legislate and govern together, or the minorities are considered as “Ahl Dhimma” (Koranic term referring to non-muslim protégés under Islamic law)? In situations like the above, minorities have to emigrate.

But I see things differently; I as a Christian, am the “protégé” of God alone, and as a citizen, I participate equally with all citizens, together enacting the laws of the nation. I am under the supervision of God alone, and in my free mind I am constantly seeking the political reality that draws my existence with other free minds (citizens of other Confessions).

In this admixture of people, my love for the freedom of others implies on me not to impose laws in the name of my confession or religion. I do not have a problem with that because my religion has no laws governing civil life. Spiritually and culturally, I come from one situation and the other comes from another situation, yet we dialogue and associate together. I am guided by the doctrine I want and he the same, by the doctrine he wants.

There remains certain matters concerning the personal status of the citizen, like the law governing inheritance which is not a matter of conscience in my case; my parents lived under that law for years until another law was issued for the non-Muslims. The Christians had nothing to do with the law of having four wives; yet Muslim countries like Tunis, canceled it. The Christians have been quiet about the Muslim law of cutting off the hands of thieves. It is not civic thinking for one group of citizens to say for example: “Marriage laws of those of other confessions are their business”. No group has a “business” independent of the other citizens in a unified nation.

What does the Civil Nation mean then after the “Arab Spring”? Until now I do not have the slightest idea. The “democracy” which the Arabs speak of is precisely the system of dialogue that the British philosophers and French Revolution leaders spoke of long ago. For those, “democracy” refers to the people with no consideration of the problem of confessions. The Jew became a Prime Minister in France as well as the Protestant. How can democracy be the order or government for both the majority and the minority while the minority has no say in anything?

I understand that things are not like that in Lebanon. This is a country governed equally by both Muslims and Christians. And that for me shows the magnanimity of the Muslims here. The citizen finds it hard to live under religious ideologies. Religion in for the individual as my friend, the great Shiite master, once said.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “طوائف ومذاهب وعلمانية” – 11.02.2012

My having no affinity to Hinduism and Buddhism explains my uneagerness to visit India as a tourist. Buddhism, which came after Brahmanism, does not acknowledge a God, something which is difficult for the people of our country to understand since religion here is founded on the God who has wrought that religion or even dwells in it. What is there in the religion of India then? The God of the Hindus is outspread universally, that is he is in all parts of this universe; that is called “pantheism” a school of religious thought in which one does not distinguish between the created and the creator or between what is visible and what is invisible. Thus, in Hinduism, there is a fusion, a melting and dissolution of the Deity and the Humanity in each other; there is no encounter between God and Man. There is no “I” and “You” because there is no “created” facing the Creator. There is no one “above” and another “below”. All existence is one great expanse; much as the Indian continent is.

This view of religion does not mean that Buddhists are not of the most moral and good people; that is so because religion, for them, is Ethics and they strive in asceticism and they purify themselves on their own without a god. The center is “one’s self”; and if they get to purify themselves, what need do they have for a god? That is how they think.

I think that the basic difference between them and us is that they begin in themselves and we begin in God; we come from our “contemplation of Him” and we feel that we grow morally in Him and that “in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17: 28). We examine ourselves checking as to whether He dwells in us by Grace as St. John says in his gospel. And what we call piety is only an expression of His indwelling in us. And what we call virtue and good is only a revelation of Him in us. This is so not in the sense that he is “contained” in us because He cannot be contained, but that we are His presence; in that He does not make His presence known in the world except through the grace that He has poured in us and the words He has spoken to us that have become a part of us.

Between us and Him there is a union. And union implies the presence of two persons since one does not unite with himself. And the Christians dare to call that union a participation in or communion in the Holy Spirit. The separation has been abolished when God proclaimed His love for us. And this union or communion comes from Him in His mercy as we accept it and receive it face to face according to what He says in Matthew 11: 27, “No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.” The Holy Trinity is the one who knows Himself in the sense that He exists in the Love that flows in Him; that love itself is His “oneness”. And He brings us to communion with Him through His “bending down” towards us. Union between us and God is a gift. And that reveals His independence from us but at the same time His love for us.

God has to be distinct from us as the Islamic philosophers say. Here I borrow their vocabulary only to emphasize the possibility of our union with God, something that is not found in Islam. Since if God is not willing to unite with me, then what do I have to do with Him. In that case His word would be above me but not in me. He, then, would be my supervisor who cares to be above me but not with me. In that, His words carry the power of uniting with Him only through having me understand them. At that, my communion is not with Him but with His words. But His words are not mine though mine can be the underwriter of His words.

He and I are face to face with each other; that is His “face” is His Divinity and mine is my humanity. And since Divinity and humanity do not annihilate one another, we remain two distinct beings but we are able to be together in His love.

And since the Son became human, I am able to meet other humans in the sense that I offer them my Lord through loving them; that is, our point of meeting is the Divine love that dwells in me and not my humanity. I must give them God himself so that each of them would become a “real” human being, thus leaving their sins which bring them to the destruction of their humanity. From that we see that God is essential in human communication.

The atheist does not understand that since his mind is not set on God, even though in the pureness of his humanity, he is not fully void of God. Yet the atheist does not offer humans “humanity”; he offers a certain divinity of himself though he does not realize that.

Communion among the believers is a divine one which, though corrupted by sin, yet is not canceled by it. Such communion is carried by the people of God who enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong.

After the only Son of God came to our world, God adopted us since before that we were the children of wrath; not only did He reveal His love for us, but He revealed that He loves us with the same measure He loves His Christ with. “Our adoption” is not a poetic phrase here, it is rather the essence of the relationship we have with the Lord as our Savior.

God then is not one who is “up there” for there is nothing “up there” except the atmosphere and what is beyond it. God is not in a place. God dwells “down here” in the hearts of those who love Him and those who do not love Him since through the “uncreated enenergies” that proceed eternally from Him, as the Orthodox Christians say, He cannot but have a dwelling. The human soul cannot be void of God even for a moment, or it will essentially die. Every atom in us exists due to the Divine compassion that surrounds it. Even our body holds well together due to the Grace that bends down on it. It will rise on the Last Day because it has put on the Grace that will not leave it. In the light of that, I understand what came in the Koran in Sura 39: 42 “Allah carries off the souls of men upon their death” meaning that God does not leave us on our own but gathers us to our bodies on the Last Day. After He has brought us back to Himself through death, He brings back our bodies to us.

Our life would be meaningless if we do not “know” God’s presence with us, and Christianity goes further in saying that He is in us, and that He is the source of our love for Him and the strength to obey Him. And our love comes from His tenderness. And our love is in contingent with His love; and His love is the “beginning” of love in us and its “end”. Such love is my religion wherever it is found; since the One Who gives such love in the gratuitouness of His compassion, is the Source of all things in us and all things in us end in Him.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الحب فينا” –An Nahar- 04.02.2012

All that stirs within us whether they are thoughts, longings, or desires, are either an internalization of everything by the self to enliven us or is an exodus of the self for indulgence in pleasures. We either live, or die in our inner associations. For if goodness or love enters us, we exist; whereas, if despondency, or sins enter us we disintegrate. We are moving either towards fuller existence or towards death. There is no stagnation in our being. There is the tranquillity of virtue, if we will it, or there is a gradual inclination towards nothing, and a propensity towards non-existence until God, on Judgment Day, sees if we are subject to judgment or are found not guilty. He does not judge us, unless He finds evil in us; wherefore, it was from the beginning, for the adamant to pursue freedom of the Judgment; thereby being transformed in their Lord’s presence into figures of Light.

“God is the Light of the Heavens and the earth.” He either sees you as He is, or rather He sees you as darkness. If you insist on the Last Day, not to be like Him, darkness will multiply in you and you will become as one who resembles nothing. Whereas, if you love His Light, which is in you, you become a language – God’s language. For, the celestial beings will converse with you in glory, in which you will become a partaker.

Naturally, God’s Light, is uncreated not as sensible light is; meaning it is not a sensible object. It proceeds from Him before things came into being. This Light comes from Him and if it descends upon you, you cannot comprehend it with your mind, for your mind is created; while the, Divine Essence, is uncreated. You, nevertheless, partake of the Divine Energy emanating from Him.

What are the virtues… or rather, where are the virtues in this theological discourse? The virtues are not acts per se; they are characteristics of acts in a way. If you do them you become the Divine Light that is within you. Virtue, therefore, is the radiance of Divine Light. You are resplendent and the result is that you are righteous in that you share in God’s righteousness, i.e., you sit alongside Him. When sins grow in you, they appear as acts, or the accumulation of evils. Sin in its reality is darkness that is to say, it is the expulsion of God Himself from your soul; thereby drowning in the obscurity of everything which is not of Light.

Your conduct, is not just between you and your acts – this is only apparently so. It is a personal relationship between you and Him. Either He dwells in you as Light or you plunge into darkness unable to see His face. Whether you move towards the Light or towards darkness, you always return to the beginning that is within you. If you continually return to God, you become like the Word, of Whom John said, “In the beginning was the Word”. As the pre-eternal Word, is the perfect articulation of God, so do your virtues come to utter the Word. For, if you are enlightened you cannot say anything except Christ. In contrary, if you are extinguished you say nothing. God maintains His image on you. If you, therefore, mar His image, He will speak to you on the day of His good will, to take away your darkness, and send you His gift of virtue. You will then move in Him anew and sing His song.

To be calm and peaceful; patient and meek; humble and chaste; obedient to loved ones; these are all the same virtues. Simply stated, you may bask in the splendour of virtue, yet, they are only apparently differentiated as they are merely expressions of this or that strength within you. In truth, the virtues are linked together as are the vices. In other words, if God’s grace overshadows you, it will unify your personality and He will join your virtues one to the other. For humility is strengthened by meekness, patience by calmness; and all will be fortified in tranquillity. What seems to be virtue in you is in reality, the Divine Presence, within you.

My words lead me to affirm that purity is unique in our being, and is capable of returning to us by divine approval if lost. For the Lord, is not neglectful, nor will He wholly withdraw from us; unless we insist on withdrawing from Him. Albeit, God loves us more than our infatuation with our passions; for the, Lover of mankind, as He is called, is not parallel to sin which, Mercy can eradicate. For the atonement of sins requires discipline, unceasing terrible toil; it is the putting to death of something enormous, that is, sin.

The death of sin will not come to pass unless you agonize only then will God find you worthy of His peace, in your last hour of existence. This occurs in our spiritual literature: When a group of, St. Sisoe’s, disciples gathered around him on his death bed and said to him, “Oh, Sisoe, give us a word of life!” He answered and said, “Me, give you a word of life? How? I have not even repented yet?” This great ascetic was afraid he had not purified himself completely and that he was still subject to the Divine Judgement. Day after day, it is a conflict in the soul until light streams down upon us and fills the heart, in the moment of His pleasure; so that we may die blissfully. With unfailing virtues, let us be prepared for His divine approval, drawing upon us an abundance of light. The Divine Presence is something you seek, but God does not guarantee such, although He promises it. Wherefore, if you receive humbly and sincerely this divine pledge, you will not know anything about it until the Last Day, when Christ pronounces these words, “Come, blessed of my Father, and inherit the Kingdom I have prepared for you”.

It was prepared for you before the world was. Do you believe this? Do you feel that you are God’s beloved? You walk in God’s words, and know in faith that Christ, came down to you; even though you do not fully comprehend that you have welcomed Him. God alone, “justly tests the minds and hearts”.

You live with hope and fear together, mixed with joy that is if you are a striver and crucified, weeping for your sins in request of free salvific Grace. God’s word to you is significant and it is great that you welcome it. When you bow down and kiss the Crucified’s feet and wipe them with your tears, you welcome it. Prior to treading this Golgotha, you are nothing save an energy. Your existence begins there.

If you therefore, grasp, Christ’s wounds then you go to the brethren and preach His love for them, so they might repent. Since, if you do not spread His love to them you cannot see Him in yourself, nor will they be saved. If they weep with you because they have felt their own falling away, the Church of our Lord is then established by you both.

This community will remain a small handful; wherefore, God will be glorified in it. Repentant sinners have always been the little flock that receives Him in blessings; if having understood that Christ alone was their portion. This is the perfect peace that directs you to the Saviour, with complete submission; then your faith works in you through hope.

Hope alone will assist to convey you to the moment of your departure from this life, which is the door to Mercy. Live to greet death. This is your resurrection hence forth. The Lord, will forget all your indiscretions if you do this, and will overlook all shortcomings in your life. He will complete your soul with remission of sins, and then you will find yourself tenderly embraced. His embracing is the Light which you have been waiting for. Light will wholly be poured upon you in His embrace and your Lord will be pleased and He will hold you to His bosom in order that you may understand the last of all understandings.

Translated by Monastery of Kaftoun

Original Text: “النور الذي لا يُدنى منه” – Nahar- 28.01.2012

A discussion about the being of God is unthinkable of in Eastern Christianity since its heritage says that He is transcendent in His essence and beyond comprehension; comprehending Him implies getting to His essence and getting to His essence implies that you become He thus mixing the Creator with the creature and that is unacceptable. Still you have to connect with Him since without this relation there is no Lordship; for without this relationship, whose Lord would the Lord be?

Before Man got to monotheism, Plato made god to be the “Form of Forms” (Form of the Good) attributing a form in “heaven” for every existing object, and God would be the crown of all these forms. But for his student Aristotle, God is the Cause of Causes or the “unmoved mover”. Judaic monotheism takes us to a different realm expressed in the Exodus 13: 3, “I am going to the people of Israel to tell them that the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and if they ask me about his name what shall I tell them? God told Moses: “I am Yahweh”. And in the original Hebrew, “I Am”. And I go back to the original Hebrew because the name Yahweh is a verb in the present tense and not a noun, meaning “I Am Who I Am”, or “I Am Whom I Will Be”; that is He introduces himself through His existence among His people. That is not a definition of the Divine Being but of the Divine action. In that sense God told Abraham, “I make a covenant with you; I will be your God.” Genesis 17: 17. Those are not words about the Being of God that is self existent but about God’s accompaniment to Abraham in the context of the covenant “I will be their God and they will be my people”. (Jeremiah 7: 23). The same is found in Ezekiel, Luke, and the Acts; what is implied in Jeremiah is that “my being your God” means that I will turn to you today and tomorrow (meaning always), and if you know me as your God, you will be me mine in the sense that: “as I “move” towards you in my care, kindness and tenderness, you will be “moving” towards me in obedience. Without a compassionate God, you are merely a social group of people like any other group, and you have no being except in my mercy. The term “People of God”, the object of the preposition is “God” indicating that God is known through His relationship with the people and not in His essence. This nuance of meaning is repeated in phrases like “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” or “the God of Israel” or “the Lord of Hosts” or “the God of our Fathers”.

In the dealing of God with His people, His attributes are understood – that He is righteous, just, able, a shepherd, a bridegroom, a father, a mother. All what God does is a relationship. Even the attribute of “creator-ship” is relational; Genesis starts with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Perhaps of the most eloquent of what has been said of God is that He is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1: 3 and 2Corinthians 1: 3). The aforementioned characterization of God is also relational.

In this article’s title, we face for the first time, what we might consider at first glance a description of God in the phrase: “God is Love”. That came in 1 John 4:8; after he says “for love is from God”, he says “God is love”.

My conjecture is that “love” as it is here, is not one of the qualities of God; it is His name. It is Himself. It gives content (or meaning) to God’s word and expresses His movement in Christ and in His holiness.

Love is the “Origin” that is in the Father from which (love) came the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the Eternal Being who with the Son and the Holy Spirit are in oneness, that of love. And that oneness is the depth of the Lord and not a number that follows the arithmetic of our world. Love is this relational oneness (literally, the oneness that moves) that gives life to humans. And God has tied himself to Man since the time of creation. Humans exist in Him if they love Him and if they love one another. So when they dwell in love, they would be walking in God; and what they need is only that love would dwell in them and that they dwell in it finding peace in it, as such the chasm between Heaven and Earth is abolished.

And because Love is perfect, God eliminates the false gods created by the human desires and passions. And it is idolatry when you consider your desires as the source of life; as such your desires become hostile idols that “kill” you, thus proclaiming with Nietzsche “God is dead” while in fact He is the One who really is and exists and in Whom the existence has life.

But God’s life that is renewed in you requires that you fight the false gods that you have accepted to make you, while they plant spiritual death in you because they snatch you from Love.

It is this Love, which when you really “taste” (experience), makes you become God’s companion. We are His companions through His word which He speaks into us; thus we become His word and it becomes us. So in our companionship with God, we become one spirit with Him as St. Paul says, and we would desire nothing except His “face” (i.e. His presence) which when we long for, His Lights will show on us.

If you understand that, you would do away with the false qualities that the world has attributed to God concerning the nature of His dealing with His people and you would start understanding the love that comes down on you from above and you would dismiss away from God all what is really not He and of Him. You will not remain captive to popular ideas (in the world around you) that can produce spiritual death in you. You would not view God as one who punishes you like a policeman does, or one who sends you illness or one who takes you life in a car accident.

You die because of fear. And fear makes God an enemy of life. Life, in its spiritual and physical aspects is a gift from God, not only in Him creating us but in the permanence of His love for us generation after generation.

To this, the Lord is not what Man pictures Him to be. It is He who “pictures” (forms) man. Therefore it is wrong to project on to God bad human qualities, like wanting someone to die. I know some people who attribute to Him the planning of a certain harm that befell someone. God does not harm anyone, and He does not get a germ into a human being. All what comes from Him is goodness and truth and charity.

The Lord is pure, and you need to purify your mind from all what can harm you in your coming to Him or else you would not enjoy the love that comes down on you from Him.

All that is other than love is the kingdom of sin. And “the wages of sin is death”. Drive away death from you through love so that you become a son of the light; only love does throw you into the light.

Decide truly that you would not do anything that would put the Love in you and in the others to shame. That is Light in all its fullness; aside from that do not think about a fatigue that might come your way or a temptation that seduces you because Love cleanses all the harm that comes forth from the corruption that surrounds you and from those who are corrupt.

Love even those corrupt ones and forgive them for if they taste through you the Divine Love given them, they will discover something they have never dreamt of before. In Love, there is the possibility for a new humanity, the people of which come down among us from Heaven.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الله محبة” –An Nahar- 21.01.2012

Feasts are a break in the rolling of time; they are an exodus to what is absolute, to what is hoped for, to joy and to communion with the community and to what you become when you embrace God. New clothes and good food are only an outer image of the spiritual beauties that descend upon us in feasting.

All peoples do make a break in the monotony of time with their feasts; but Christianity has given feasts a breadth and a vastness which is unheard of. First, Christianity infuses eternal life in each day of the year since there is not one day in which is void of feasting for Christ’s life events or that of a Saint or that of a group of Saints. The life of each saint is told in a book called “The Sinxar” to which you can refer for knowing a Saint’s life and be sanctified through it. From that perspective, there is a daily exodus from the temporality of our days; and this exodus takes us to the splendor of piety and the different aspects of virtue practiced by the celebrated Saint, as they come in the worship service of that day. You do not reckon a day by what comes before it or after it; but you draw yourself to Holiness that is not defined by time.

Therefore, the feast gives you a freedom from your days and routine and so you are able to live the feast. And if you rid yourself of the weight of your day, you live the remembrance you are holding for that feast day. That is a way of life for you in time. You make the past present in you and in the community. This is what we have meant with ‘bringing the past into the present that you live now’ as if there is no time separation between them. And that is not a matter of mere reminiscing or imagining; you live the past in the present and so there remains no past in your conscience. You experience the reality – of the past – now.

That cannot take place unless there is a spiritual stir in you. This is why the feast is an event that the community experiences in its ‘now’ (present). In general, that is in need of a Liturgy or a celebration that is similar to it (the event). And you long for the return of the season of feasting for yearning to experience that splendor every year. And at the base of this is that the re-tasting of the splendor is the uniting factor (between past, present and future) which transcends time since it refuses to consider eternity as only for the end times.

Joy gives rise to joy; so in the same way the feast is a remembrance, it is also an in-advance-tasting of what is to come. That is in the same way the feast is a now-experience of the past, it also is also an in-advance tasting of what is to come, since what is to come is always the Kingdom. And so, God’s face appears to us. As such the feasts are the presence of God in the present which is renewed in you and in the community.

You live the festive season with the community which in its ties of unity receives the eternal meaning (from the past) and expands to things of the age to come making these things heavenly.

The splendor of the feast obtains only if you participate in it with repentance; as such the festiveness of the season takes place in the heart since the heart is the meeting place with God. And all festivities and seasons are nothing if God is not at its core.

With the above there is generally a difference between the religious feasts and the national or civil holidays since the latter are merely a reminiscing of what is old and past the core of which is nostalgia. While the remembrance that is based on faith and that “lives” by faith has its reality in the experience of and tasting of the Divine in us. As such we celebrate the feast by Grace. In other words, it is the Lord who is in us feasting for Himself.

What is it that threatens the feasts? It is the absence of God from the hearts of people; that distorts the feasts and changes its nature. For instance, when Christmas, or the feast of the Nativity, becomes the feast of “children” or the feast of “the family”, then no relation between the feast and the “child of Bethlehem” remains. In that sense we have a feast other than Christmas. I have no objection to “the feast of children” or that of the “family” or to the parties that come with the good food of the feasts; I am only saying that that has no relation to Christmas. What we have in the Bible is: “Be vigilant and pray” (Matth. 26: 14).

Christianity knows nothing of the parties that accompany feasts. There are foods that go with the feast. The Church did not say no to that since regular social life carries within it the joy of the feast; but it is important that food should not be the focus. Things that have beauty are surrounded with danger. This is why we need to be adamant in having our feasts focused on the Divine, that is our feasts to be a celebration of and a rejoicing in God and His Saints so that the sense of entertainment does not take over the feast and spoil it and thus, through it, spoil us also.

I come from a simple and humble family which holds the great and the small feasts alike so that it does not miss a chance for sanctification. And sanctification in that family is hidden in the icons and in proper hymning which was carried over with my mother from her father and she carried it over in the Church.

That is why my parents used to say the Lord’s Prayer in Russsian which some of the lowly members of our Church learned it; while the children of the high class families, as we call them, used to study in the French schools of the Monks. And we, the lowly, were rooted in the Eastern aspect of the family though we studied deeply, in fluent and eloquent French, what we were able to express concerning the heritage of Antioch, the capital city of our ancient country and the heart of Christianity before the Arab conquest of our lands.

I was born into that type of home which cherished old customs. And once towards the end of July and beginning of August, while my mother was still in bed recovering after she delivered me, her father entered the house and found it full of packed things to be taken up with us to the mountain resort for the summer. And he asked my mother: “What is this”? And she answered: “I have decided to baptize the child after our return to the city in October”. Then he said: “This is worldly talk. What if something wrong happens to the boy’s health? ‘How can we sing to the Lord in a foreign land?’” (Plsams 136) (That is in a place where you can find no one to baptize him). My mother had to obey him and call the priest who came with all what was needed for the baptism; and he baptized me in the Orthodox faith.

All my life, I have tried to comprehend my “coming” from such a faith and the feasts related to it.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الأعياد” – An Nahar – 14.01.2012

Is the purpose of one’s profession to make a living? [Surely] it is a means for it since we have to live. Yet, livelihood can be made by any profession. Thus, there is the question of choosing it and the person might be confused in that concern. All professions yield. Thus, there is a taste for this profession or that. There is an element other than the financial one. There is [a possibility for a] work that accompanies our inner reality, i.e., there is an enthusiasm of existence and the feeling of the necessity to produce through certain instruments and with different tastes. In order to obtain money there is the manner for creation, self-realization and the conviction of the person that something calls him/[her] to walk the path, which is part of him/[her]self. Profession is an expansion of the self, similar to the language that we use, or the clothes that you put on.

Thus, there has been the need for creativity, or that which we thought it is; in the sense that it might be frail. However, it is our contribution since there is kind of an inner drive which makes you feel that it is present in the work that you offer. Thus, you emerge through that which you produce and you receive from it some of existence.

Years ago, I have noticed that the food which a woman provides is definitely better than what another presents, though the used materials are the same. What is the difference between the two?

There is kind of creation, a kind of creativity, and a personality that is committed to the food or to its preparation. So are the properties at home. How did these come skillfully, while others appear in a studied manner? There are many innovators in the economic society, except in those huge industries, where there is no big space for subjectivity in production.

In creativity, there is praise to God the Creator; a kind of an expansion of God’s creativity or God’s participation, as Christian theology expresses itself [in these terms]. There is a kind of unity [or commonality] between us and God which elevates the material that we produce to a state higher than its being merely touched by our humanity. If it were other than this there would be a separation between humanity and divinity, and the earth would not have heaven as its goal, or as if there is subject cut-out from its predicate, or an ‘alpha’ which does not expect its ‘omega’, or as if there is a creation which was found in order [merely] to observe.

This is why economics will end up as theology. If it were otherwise, God would not be the source of everything. Is the human being thrown into the world in order to produce or to praise [God], i.e. to praise as he/ [she] produces?

You would be working with others; not only in the case of huge industries, but also in a simple factory for wood-work. Nevertheless, the feeling of unity presumes a spiritual community rather than a dry political society, built on collectivism in place of cooperation. A spiritual community, in a mysterious sense, is one entity or one existent, having an organism, and is to be conceived as one regardless of its plurality. This does not mean falling apart. To fall apart is a sin and it is contrary to sharing and the inner interpenetration among the existents.

What saves humanity is that money does not interfere in all domains, and thus, they do not become blurred. Blessed is the person who does not attach importance to money and acquires only little of it. At that point, one is free and is not forced to lie. When Socrates was asked by those who passed judgment on him, how could you prove your honesty? He said: I am poor. One of the greatest painters, Van Gogh, had died as indigent. This did not prevent the beauty of his works. The great, great ones, in all areas of art, most of the times experience financial lack. The creative one is then free.

All the saints were poor and were striving to live in poverty, in order that they might own the only treasure that is God, through whom they could give up everything. Those did not have something to eat, drink, or something to shelter them or to clothe them. The ‘nothing’ for them was the condition for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, according to the statement of St. Seraphim of Sarov. Poverty was for them the guarantee for their emergence.

This dispossession is a condition to till the earth, as God has ordered us at creation. God has made it a possession with the condition of work, and in this way the human being comes to be on the image of his/[her] Lord. “My Father is working still, and I am working.” (John 5: 17)

The purpose of work is the human being and not production for its own sake. The purpose of work is the growth of the human being in virtue, and not constructions of thought or stone. This accompanies human advancement, which needs much complexity in order to occur. It might seem that we are after a culture that is about intellectual and material levels established for their own beauty. And the truth is that the purpose behind all our establishing of cultures is the joy of the human being by the angelic [or heavenly] state, which one might attain, and his/[her] establishing cultures is an image of divine life which cares for us from above.

The [notion of] work was in the paradise before Adam’s Fall, and the present world is the recovered paradise, or this is how it is hoped to be. However, this might not be realized unless each one of us does not complete his/[her] existence through that which descends upon him/[her] from above. Thus, that which is heavenly in our hearts unites with the earth that makes us, and at the very end nothing remains in us other than divine light.

Whenever we exclude those who follow a special ascetic method, nothing remains for us other than to work, which makes us think and through it we serve, whenever we aspire [to work] as a path to virtue, which is alone our light.

As we are surrounded by work we become saints, and sainthood [or holiness] is in the relentless pursuit, which knows neither tiresome nor boredom. In modern societies researches revolve around production, so that the rich and their countries eat and remain entrenched to the earth, as if they were independent of heaven. They would let the poor and their countries die. Our Fathers were not mistaken when they said: all sins begin with devouring, since it settles your body and declares it as independent of the bodies of the saints.

We need to construct a new philosophy as the foundation for political economics, which might reveal to us a new human being. That is, we need to bring economics back to God, and the inner reality of the human being to his/[her] virtues and the greatest virtue is love, without which there would be neither earth nor heaven.

You might repent, as you are in your work, whenever you find a way to become a new human being who makes good. Has the time for the Church, the bride, come?

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “الأرض الجديدة” –An Nahar- 03.12.2011

God’s face is known only when projected on the face of human beings. And you cannot know yourself unless you see beauty in the face of others, that is if you consider them “beautiful” as you think you are. You come from him (the other) when you realize that he is not “ugly”. And the other will not be yours if you do not accept by faith that God has lifted away from him all ugliness. And the lifting away of ugliness does not come from Man, but from grace, that is it comes down on you. And you establish a kinship with God in the sense that you become related to the Lord. And because He sees Himself in you, He makes Himself your kin conjoining Himself to you and that strengthens your kinship to Him.

Your beauty does not come from outside you for God bestows it on you so you can become what you are called to become; and if you acquire much glory, it becomes the natural means for others to see the Lord in you.

The reflection of the Divine glory on you is impossible if your eyes behold other than God. God is revealed in Nature and it is His mantle. And when you read Him in it, you will “ascend” to Him with that reading; yet the center of nature is the human being, and it is in him, above all, you can “ascend” to the Lord.

Yes God is revealed in nature but His loftiest revelations are in Man. And God offers Man His beauty freely though God is not in need of him; while Man derives his richness from God only, God being the source. And when God pours of His love on one of us, that love reaches to the others but it is not from us. Love is imparted from God to whoever wants and He helps him with it such that if the person builds his reality on that love, then that Love will be able to reach whoever one wants. Man is a carrier of the Divine love after it has acted in him and wrought him in the sense that it is a life that you live such that when others sense it in you they would say: “That’s how the power of God changes people”.

If you do not become a new person who authentically acts in love, you remain one who only speaks of love and not one who has tasted it and been changed by it. If the Lord becomes your ideal that is you have become someone who is turned to Him, you become in His likeness. And he who is illumined, becomes a god, that is a beginner in deification, acquiring the attributes of God and in communion with Him. This entails the dismissal of all false gods and pretentiousness, that is you have to purify yourself always so that you receive from God only what He wants for you in the hope of you giving to others what you have received. And if you look at the faces of the illumined believers, you will behold the one light of the one God who reveals Himself in the same way in this person or that.

The oneness of God is revealed in the oneness of His manifestations; then you are like your brother, yet each one of you keeps his own personality and that unique manifestation of God in it. Holiness does not imply the dissolution of one in another. The one who unites is God, and his manifestations in different people are different. Such a difference accounts for the communion of saints. Communion presupposes variety and plurality in the manifestations of holiness and its actions; one person has a Church rank while another does not, this one is a monk while the other is a married man, this one is a martyr while the other is not. The manifestations of holiness are different yet their essence is one, and it is one in the oneness of holiness since this unity is in the Lord himself who is our holiness and its giver.

Holiness does not mean spiritual perfection. That pertains only to God. But holiness means that you want it (holiness); it means that you seek to be nothing before God and you see yourself as nothing on the path of striving for holiness. That means that you should know that you are a sinner, a broken one on whom God will have mercy.

Yet when the devil suggests to a person to mar his “face” because he is bored of God, then the Light will leave him. His being will be destroyed or at least it will crack. Each one of us is prone to falling, and as far as being virtue is concerned, none is guaranteed. Virtue is the result of daily strife and an awareness of our fragility and God’s protection for us. You have to seek after the Divine help always when you are attacked with seduction of any kind; or we would be getting a ticket to take us to “hell” which will “burn” us in this world and the coming one.

God’s face might shine on you to remove the ugliness that has dwelled in you. That is the business of His love which can make you grateful. And beauty might come back to you suddenly and not in stages. You learn much about sin; it educates you, it makes you cry, it hurts you. Keep what it has taught you in mind; be concerned for the downfalls without panicking because the trust you have in the Lord is more powerful than fright. In that you are pampered by God. You are in the bosom of His Fatherhood until He takes you back to Him and you “sleep” (i.e. die) in His mercy.

Your coming back to God can be of importance in that the brethren can benefit from your repentance; if they find “beauty” in that (your repentance), you would draw them to the beauty of your face when your God was visiting you, and then, with them, you come back to the communion of saints and you would become the Body of Christ.

Then you would know the freshness of what you have been dreaming of as if you have been “kidnapped” to Heaven and all what is in you would sing until you hear the sound of angels making music around the Throne; and you wonder asking “how come the angels sing a new song to the Lord?”

This angelic situation can obtain here in this world as you go about your daily job and service. Heaven is not a place; it is the depth of existence in you or your own depth in existence and those “depths” are God who gives you life as He beholds you. And when His goodwill is on you, do not seek anything else because nothing can be added above that.

I meant to say that, in this world, God is with us and in us and He fills the universe. That does not mean that God is mingled with what is created as in pantheism; He is distinct from the Creation and is above it, but He is “strewn” in the universe or else He would be considered as “absent” from the creation.  Therefore, as the Orthodox say, our relationship with Him comprises our seeing Him in His Energies; and when you see Him in you and in the universe then it means that you have accepted Him. But if you see Him “dissolved” in the material and psychic existence, then it means you had denied Him as Creator.

The issue here is that the Creator is always “up there” and always “down here”. And if you do not receive Him as one with you and in you, then there is no real creation (new birth). Creatorship carries createdness in the sense that the Lord, being the Creator, is in an ongoing movement towards you (the created) and you are always beholding Him. Creatorship has no end. The Lord did not make an object that He would throw away. He shepherds it or else it would become lifeless. All what is of our being of mind, spirit, soul and body exists through the Divine Providence; the former is an expression that implies the continuance of “creation” or in other words the continuance of God’s embrace (lit. bosoming) of the creature.

Between you and your Lord, there must be an encounter; that is your face is towards His face in order that His face would forge yours. And if you become intimate with Him to the point of constant companionship, then that would be a union – one in which there is no dissolution. He would “put you on” and you would “put Him on” as St. Paul says in 1Cor. 6: 17 “The one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.”

At that words become powerless and tasting (experiencing) takes over.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “وجه الله” –An Nahar- 26.11.2011