This is one of the most important parables that invite us to love our neighbor and enemy. It starts with a dialogue between an expert in the law and the Lord, and this expert is a teacher of Moses’ Law and of the whole Scripture in general. He was probably a Pharisee because he believed in eternal life after death. Jews, except for Pharisees, didn’t believe in life after death, and they got this idea after the emergence of Christianity. The Lord answered his question with another one: “What was written in the law?” He answered: “Love the Lord your God… and your neighbor as yourself”.

This answer combined Deuteronomy 6: 4 and Leviticus 19: 18. In the book of Deuteronomy, the commandment starts this way: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”. While in Leviticus it says: “You shall not bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.

And when Jesus answered this man by saying: “Do this and you will live”, he said to the Lord: “And who is my neighbor?” Is he the Jew that lives in Palestine with them? Then, Jesus started to tell a story that he composed, and the most important thing in it is that it shows a Samaritan, i.e. a man from another religion, taking care of a wounded Jew on the road and healing him while the two people didn’t have any contact between each other especially that the Samaritans depended on the Five Books of Moses and refused the books of Prophets.

The Samaritan went beyond the existing religious separation and took care of this strange man, and our Fathers say that the Samaritan in this parable is a symbol of Christ who doesn’t consider anyone strange but he is the one made strange by people while he takes care of everyone through his love, clemency, death and resurrection.

Notice that the law master asked the Lord: “Who is my neighbor?” This question was answered by Jesus with another question: “Which of these three (The priest and the Levite that passed by and left the wounded and the Samaritan) do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The answer was: “The one who had mercy on him”.

The question, “Who is my neighbor?” seemed wrong in the biblical text. The real concern is “who do I consider my neighbor”. The answer is that through the love that you have, you make the other your neighbor. Any other person is your neighbor if he needed your care regardless of his religion, color and country. You are a brother for every needy person, but do an act of care and attention so that he feels that he is your brother and neighbor. Love is a motion, and with it differences vanish.

All humanity is God’s nation, and you are one with every person that might consider you his enemy. You serve him without looking to his feelings towards you or towards your religion or country. You walk on all roads of existence to search for a person to serve so that he believes in your and his humanness. Love destroys the differences between you, him and every other person. It purifies yourself, it makes you another person and, through it, you feel that you are God’s son. Remember that if you said in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven”, you declare that all people, whether they sinned or not, are God’s sons, and you should understand that the kingdom starts now in the hearts of loving people and in the hearts of those who they take care of. Search for those that have a bigger need because the Lord is very close to them.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “السامريّ الشفوق” –Raiati 46- 13.11.2011

The priest, even if he became a spiritual father, is one with every individual in his parish because they are all together a royal priesthood and a holy nation as Saint Peter says and they have together Christ’s love. A father looks over his sons with one jealousy and a father honors his son even if he knew his faults, and a creature can’t escape from faults because we are all human beings.

And for this relationship to stay healthy, no one should ask anything for himself especially that this will make him avoid shock if he wasn’t regarded. One shouldn’t say: “I have my dignity”. If it wasn’t regarded by others, your dignity is with God and it doesn’t decrease in his eyes. If you know that you are God’s beloved one, why would you search for a dignity expressed by a creature? Jesus didn’t want you to request. He wanted you to give and to ask yourself if you respected the dignity of others.

The relationship between the priest and the believer is bidirectional. It is true that he is your pastor, but on the other hand you should also take care of him. You should initiate by greeting him, and if you were a conservative Orthodox, you should ask for his blessing because you believe that he gives you the Lord’s blessing. And if you had some affluence, you should strengthen him financially without waiting for a ritual occasion such as a wedding or losing a member of your family.

A lot of mistakes were committed in the past because the priest didn’t do all his duties towards you or your family. You wanted to punish him so you left the Church and went to another Church without understanding that you are being separated from the remaining Orthodoxy in this priest or another one. This priest will die and you, and your family, would be on the wrong path. Thank God that this has decreased a lot after the others discovered that they are our brothers and stopped stealing people from our own pen and we stopped stealing from theirs.

If you have anything against the priest, complain to the bishop because if he discovered that he has mistaken he will discipline him without emotions but according to the law and would reconcile you with him and straighten his behavior so that love would be back between you.

You are a shepherd and a shepherded at the same time. You might have more awareness than the priest and guide him to the truth and urge him to have knowledge and to love his fellow priests if he needed that.

It is your job to push the priest into expressing his needs to the bishop because the bishop might not know all of them, and he can’t do that especially that the number of priests is large. Do not give the priest the chance to gossip or to criticize bitterly because this harms himself. Let him open his heart to his bishop that doesn’t have any need to take the side of any priest or to neglect, but he is a human being and can’t know everything. Give the bishop the chance to love him.

Give your brother the believer a chance to love the clergy so that we stay one royal nation. Do not leave any space for babbling or hatred or partisanship in Church. And if the parish was divided because of familial or political reasons, ecclesiastic meeting is the perfect opportunity to unite people. And if our Baptism was one, then our living is one and our giving becomes one through God’s grace.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “الكاهن وعامّة الشعب” –Raiati 45- 06.11.2011

It is a parable from Luke, and parables in the four Gospels are stories made by Jesus and were not told before among people. He pictures in this parable a rich man and a poor one. The rich dresses in purple and fine linen, i.e. silk, and “lived in luxury every day”. Obscene richness is through dressing, food, shelter and furniture.

The evangelist pictures next to him a poor man thrown on his gate. He was thrown because he had sores. He was always hungry and dogs used to come and lick his sores. We are in front of a severe illness that exposes the sick person to living with animals. His name is Lazarus, which means “God is our aid or assistance”. Perhaps Luke gave him this name to indicate that the poor has no one but God.

“The angels carried him to Abraham’s side”. This is an expression for Jews that refers to living in the Kingdom. Therefore, the poor man was among God’s companions. The Evangelist wanted to say that God gives the poor their sustenance and he is their aider.

Then the text says that the rich man “dies and was buried”. And Luke said that he is in hell, and in the language of the Old Testament, hell is the Kingdom of death, and Luke clarified that he is in torment. The Evangelist doesn’t say why he is in torment, but from what was already written in the biblical text we understand that because he didn’t have any compassion towards the poor man and didn’t notice him thrown in front of the gate of his palace. This rich man looked towards Abraham and saw the poor man by his side. He desired to be in the Kingdom but he couldn’t cancel the punishment that he deserved in his world, and the writer clarified that by saying: “between us and you a great chasm has been set in place”. He wished that his fellow rich people would change their behavior through receiving a messenger from heaven. This man requested that from Abraham who receives in his bosom the sons of the Kingdom.

The answer was straight: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them”. By “Moses and the Prophets” he refers to the books of the Old Testament that teach mercy and how man is saved through it not because God, in his nature, is a severe punisher but because sin punishes the sinner and denies him from seeing God and from being in communion with the Saints. Luke was very clear in what he said concerning the rich man and his friends: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”.

We are tested through our love that we show in this world. If it existed in us on earth, it shall stay in the soul that God takes back to him, and the love that stays in us is our salvation. Love is first to see the other and his needs and to make him feel that he is a brother and that he owns what we have. He is a partner in what we own. It is his right. If we gained a fortune, we are responsible for it not for the sake of our pleasures but through confessing that it is a credit for all the people that are with us and around us since it is not acceptable for someone to stay without any food, clothes and shelter.

What we own is not for our service alone. It is for all the brothers and especially for the needy as we are God’s delegates for their service so that we glorify God through what we gave and they glorify him through what they took.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “الغنيّ ولعازر” –Raiati 44- 30.10.2011

In today’s epistle, Apostle Paul says that he preached the Gospel to the Galatians. By this, he refers to his teaching and doesn’t mean the four Gospels that were not written when he sent this epistle to the Galatians. Then he says that he didn’t receive this teaching from any man or from one of the twelve apostles but he received it directly from the Lord through a revelation that the Lord revealed to him.

He proves this by saying that when he was in the way of life of Judaism, he intensely persecuted the Church of God and destroyed it. We know that from the book of Acts where he said it. When the Lord appeared to him on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, he transformed him into a unique disciple for him in his enthusiasm, loyalty, capacity of work and depth in theology.

Paul felt when the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus that God set him apart and chose him from the womb of his mother to be a disciple and the Father called him through his grace to reveal his son in him so that he would preach him among Gentiles. And later he took a delegation from the disciples to do this job: “my immediate response was not to consult any human being” and this means that he didn’t behave according to human reactions but gave his soul to Jesus’ voice and order.

Paul knew that it is important to contact the apostles to unite himself with them and not to take from them an authority as he has already taken that directly from Christ. He clarifies that from Damascus he went to Arabia. And interpreters believe that this land is “Houran” and it was called Arabia under the Roman administration.

What did he do there? Maybe he found a few Christians and lived with them because Houran is not far from Damascus. There is no doubt that he used to pray and stay alone with his Lord that revealed to him the truths of faith, and this confirms what he said at the beginning of the epistle.

Then he says: “After three years, I went up to Jerusalem”. He didn’t spend any time in Jerusalem after becoming a Christian. The purpose of going there after such a long time was to visit Peter. This means that he knew that Peter didn’t leave Palestine during the years that Paul spent in Arabia. Paul knew that somehow. So he said: “I stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother” (i.e. Lord Jesus’ relative).

What did Paul do there? Without any doubt, he used to pray with Peter every day and talk together about theology.

In addition to that, this means that the rest of the apostles had left Palestine to the lands of preaching. We don’t read in the book of Acts that Paul succeeded in contacting any of them, and then we see him in a relationship with Peter in Antioch.

We conclude from these words that Paul tried to stay close to the apostles. We stay with the Church of the apostles which is our Church. We cannot live away from the brothers. They are the body of Christ.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “مِن سيرة بولس” –Raiati 43- 23.10.2011

Every sowing has the sower, the seeds such as wheat, and the planted land or the land that we are trying to plant. These are things that Jesus said in a parable that he composed. Jesus, from the literary aspect of the Synoptic Gospels, i.e. the first three gospels, is a parable composer.

In this parable, he talks about kinds of ground. A kind of seeds, in the first ground, fell along the path and not on the ground so birds ate the seeds. On a second ground, the seeds fell on a rocky ground, so no plants grew because thorns choked the plants. On a third ground, they yielded and every seed gave hundred multiples and this is very rare. When the disciples asked him about the meaning of this parable, he clarified that the disciples have an understanding that others don’t have. Unlike the belief of some people, a parable doesn’t facilitate understanding. Your heart should be open in order to understand.

Jesus took his disciples into this understanding and said: The seed is the word of God, and the sower is of course God, and God and his word are one. He went back to the first kind of ground and clarified that the ones that fell on the path are the ones that the devil comes and takes the word away from their hearts. Those people didn’t hear anything or didn’t want to hear. This is the case of many of us. There is another group that hears the word for a while but doesn’t have a continuation in obedience. These don’t have a root. And here Jesus insists that you add the Divine word to previous divine words. You develop your knowledge of the word when you give your heart to God. You have a continuation in accepting the word or else you would fall in front of the first temptation. You don’t have the power to repel temptations.

The soul that resembles this ground that had thorns is the one that is “choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures”. A part of these words is echoed by the Church in the Cherubic Hymn in the Divine Liturgy: “let us now lay side all earthly cares”, this means that the world shouldn’t occupy us and put pressure on us. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do any work in the world, but it means that our heart should stay with God. The world shouldn’t limit us in it.

The worries of life are clarified by Luke the Evangelist through two things: Riches and pleasures. The richness that we keep in our pockets or banks and don’t share with the poor controls us until it becomes a Lord. Then, you will hear its whispers or insinuation and you will not have any more time or power to hear God’s word. You will be controlled by richness and not by the Word.

You are a slave for the thing that you obey: You are a slave for money if you wanted or for God if you wanted, you are a slave for sin or righteousness. This means that you store righteousness in your soul and yield through righteousness because it increases once you acquire it. This requires a lot of constant patience. Patience is to always receive God in you so that the Lord repels everything that tempts you if the tempter came. Christian patience is to love God that works in you. To continue this way means to accept the grace once it descended on you and to immediately give it. This means that you shouldn’t postpone charity to tomorrow because you might not have a tomorrow. This means that you should love God’s word and believe that it renews you and repels every desire for sin away from you.

Understand that you are not the sower and that you are only the receiver of the Divine seed in order not to become arrogant. Obey your Lord and nothing but his effect will remain in you and you will become a divine person.

In Jesus’ thought, the Temple of Jerusalem will be destroyed, and in Paul’s thought, this Temple has no importance anymore because God doesn’t live in temples made with hands. God replaced the temple by living in people himself. “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people”.

When he says “I will live with them”, he means that he will make them a Church for him and a holy nation as he lives in the heart of the believer through the Holy Spirit. As for his saying “And I will be their God, and they will be my people”, it is in the present tense i.e. a continuous act, and this indicates that God’s love to his people will stay forever and the Lord’s divinity appears through his constant attention towards his people. This Lord will have his own people when these people know that they are loved. There is no “people” in the social sense. A nation for God will be formed when people respond to God’s love by obeying the Lord. God loves, and people obey his words. God forms his people; they can’t form themselves.

This special thing that these people have, i.e. God’s love, pushes them to accept the Lord’s word: “Come out from them and be separate”. This is a moral separation through faith from paganism and not a social separation because the civil and political societies must still exist, but some people are for God through faith and others don’t have this faith.

God clarifies one of the faces of his divinity which is that he becomes a father for us and we become his sons and daughters. This is the family of the Father as Paul names it. This is the new birth or the birth from above as the Lord described it in the fourth Gospel. And if we were the Father’s family, we are asked to continue in this family, and therefore the Apostle commands us to purify ourselves from “everything that contaminates the body and spirit”. Some sins are committed through the body, and others are committed only through the soul such as pride, aversion and all kinds of hatred.

When we try to stay away from every sin, “we make holiness perfect out of reverence for God” because holiness is trying to be like God who is pure from all wrong and sin. In this sense the Lord said: “Be Holy, because I am Holy”. This requires having reverence for God. Educationally, the New Testament still had the thought of having fear for God, having fear from punishment.  There is no joking with God; there is no softness even if we had a special status with him. Fearing God doesn’t mean being afraid in his presence but means being serious in fulfilling the Lord’s commands. There is no possible compromise between you and sin. You must know that sin is death, and that your life with the Lord requires obeying all his words and living with him in full trust and dependence and asking for his mercy.

In the New Testament, we continue to have fear from punishment and at the same time we hope to get the reward through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in us and to taste the Kingdom in us from now and hope to gain it on the last day.

We become together the people of God through ecclesiastic communion and through God’s transfiguration in the Church and in individuals together. The important thing is to feel that we are his sons and daughters because we have knew him as an embracing father for us, and become able to tell him: “Our Father who art in heaven” because we have tasted through grace his daily renewal to us through his grace.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “هيكل الله الحي” –Raiati 41- 09.10.2011

From the Sermon on the Mount, which is the basic rule of Christian behavior, the Lord begins the section thus: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” The other is everything to you. He needs to be your beloved. Is he in need of food? Give it to him. Is he in need of comfort, to be near you? Offer it all, for he exists by you.

Christianity is not the exchange of affections. Love –without waiting for the beloved to return the same affection. “Freely you have received (from the Lord), freely give” to your brothers mankind. Do not differentiate in giving between those who love you and those who do not. God commanded all the faithful to love as God loves.

Then He arrives at the quintessence of his discourse in saying:  “Love your enemies.” If someone becomes hostile towards you, do not return the enmity. He has sinned against God first, then against himself, and you do not expect affection from him who is unable to give such. He is what is important in your eyes, and not that he has hurt or devastated you. Your concern is his spiritual advancement. You know that he has fallen in the sickness of sin, and God wants from you to raise him from his fall. His spiritual interests are your concern and not just to be above the injury. It is sufficing for you that you are God’s beloved.

His enmity has appointed you as his physician, just like the one that was wounded on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, for whom God had appointed a physician, i.e. the compassionate Samaritan who had been a non-Jew, and of another religion. In our tradition, the Good Samaritan is an image of Christ, who takes care of those in the Church and outside the Church equally.

It is meet that no grudges or hatred touch your heart and that you keep in your heart everyone that you have encountered in the course of your life. In so doing, God will dwell in your heart; if he does not, your heart will be void, for the Lord is the abundant presence. Your goal is for your heart to become like Christ’s who forgave His murderers. The one who hates you does not know that he injures himself. If you love him, he will feel that he is hurting himself.

Matthew ends this passage from the Sermon on the Mount with the saying of Jesus: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”. The rule is to be like God. He is the model of your behavior. He is a Father to the thankful and the evil, and His grace is the same to the first and the latter. Although He has various ways of rearing, God is one in severity and benevolence, just as every father in the world loves his children, both the mild mannered and the bad tempered, with the same love, even though the approach may differ.

Mercy is all embracing. By His words, the Lord commands us to give ourselves with abundance to those who wish not our favor, according to the need that we know they have. You, therefore, wherever the need be, embrace them just as a woman coddles all her children without discrimination. Therefore, look out for those who need your mercy in the time of their hardship; for every soul has a different affliction. Search for various necessities and fulfill them. Now, this moment – and not tomorrow- act and let the one in need understand that you are an apostle of God sent to him, and through you he will know God.

Mercy is an aspect of love when the other is in a particular condition. Understand his plight, enter therein and have mercy on the other from your stance and his, whereby the giver and receiver become one in the Lord. For you will not be merciful unless you are with the Lord, who is the source of mercy.

Go and give yourself to others until nothing remains in you except love.

Translated by Kaftoun Monastery

Original Text: “الرحمة” –Raiati 40- 02.10.2011