Jesus chose his disciples and they accepted his call. Jesus used the way that rabbis used to have (the Hebrew word used for rabbi is Hakham). These rabbis used to gather disciples around them and teach them the holy word. These were gatherings without any ranges as this was not known in the Old Testament. The Gospel of John narrated the story of Jesus gathering his disciples in a clearer way. “Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples; And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus” (John 1: 35–37).

According to Matthew, this calling happened when Jesus was in Galilee which is his home and the main place for his movement. The Gospel mentions from the disciples first Andrew and Simon which is a Hebrew name (Shimon) and Jesus called him later (Matt 16: 18) Peter (Petros) and he took this name from the word “Petra” that means “the rock”. These two brothers (Their father’s name was Yona) were casting their fishing net in the lake of Tabariya which is called here a sea (It was also named as the Sea of Galilee). This lake is formed from the Jordan River after the latter emerges from Lebanon. Both of those were fishers as all the disciples were except for Matthew. The Lord said to Simon and Andrew: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”. The disciples caught (fished) people through the Word. There is no other mean to gain people for Christ. Preaching in the whole world is the miraculous fishing. “Follow me”. There is no real effective preacher unless he loved Jesus from all his heart.

“And they straightaway left their nets, and followed him”. Every real joining to the Lord starts when we leave the things that used to hold us back from uniting with him. These things are our harmful desires.

After that, the Savior meets others, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John the writer of the fourth Gospel. They were with their father on the shore of the lake mending their nets, and this indicates that they were affluent since they had nets and not one net. They also followed him and left what was more important than the nets, i.e. their father. This has a very high emotional cost.

The names of the rest of the disciples come later in Matthew and the other Gospels. After the beginning of this call, The Lord cruises in Galilee which is the region in North Palestine next to our Lebanese borders. He taught in the Jewish synagogues. The synagogue is what we call today “Knesset”, and the Knesset is a large hall where the Jews gather on Saturdays to read the Old Testament and preach.

The Lord used to preach about the Kingdom in and outside the synagogues on the basis of this phrase “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near”. With this preaching he also was “healing every sickness and every disease among the people”. Matthew will also mention in details many of these miracles. Jesus didn’t only talk, but also loved. He directed his disciples towards taking care of the sick. He used to give those a large part of his compassion. Christianity took from Christ his attention towards the sick through the sacrament of “the anointment of the sick” and through building hospitals. The Divine Word and a word of comfort to the sick go alongside with his medication through the means of science.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “دعوة التلاميذ” –Raiati n^o26- 26.06.2011

Making the Sunday that follows the Pentecost as the Sunday of all saints comes from the spiritual piety since the Holy Spirit is the creator of holiness in the church and the faithful. The phrase “All saints” refers to those who their saintliness is declared, and have a feast on a specified day of the year. It also refers to those who their holiness wasn’t declared with an official beatification through a decision from the Holy Synod.

The epistle to the Hebrews tells us about the saints of the Old Testament: Moses and the prophets that left for us prophecies such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, in addition to those who didn’t write such as Prophet Elias.

The writer of this epistle describes the fights that those had and the pain they have endured. However, he says that those weren’t “made perfect” without us the Christians since they had to wait for the perfection that Christ reached on the cross. Those in the Old Testament were sanctified and waited Christ, and then those who came from his Gospel in the New Testament were sanctified.

In the Biblical passage, the apostle comes with a partial definition concerning saintliness as he says “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven”. Christianity is based on your declaration of following the Lord that comes from your mouth for we do not have any secrecy as we don’t hide our faith in Christ or say something contrary or incompatible. This confession might lead us into suffering and death. This is why we call those who taste the pain of the enemies “confessors”, and if they were killed we call them martyrs.

The second element in confession is carrying Jesus’ cross, i.e. to carry all the hardships of life and follow him. These might be daily hardships in your home, job or any social and political activity.

The third element in saintliness is to leave our homes, brothers or sisters for the name of Jesus Christ. This means not to be attached to any earthly thing. It doesn’t mean to leave your house and live on the street; however, do not make your heart concentrated on houses, cars, power and control. You are poor in Christ and he dwells in you. The loyalty of the heart is for him and not for any leader or party or any other materialistic thing. It is required for your heart to go completely towards Christ and for him to become your pleasure. You should use all other things according to your need. Serve your family members sincerely. This service is your love and you should put Christ into this love. However, people around you could become an obstacle in front of your encounter with Jesus, and your livelihood could also become an obstacle in front of you embracing Jesus. These people have the interests of Christ’s enemies in common. Leave them; pray for them but have no contact with them. The important thing is for Christ to fill your mind and nourish you with his teachings. Know where to stand; know who you are embraced to; know the center of your heart. Is it Christ? You shall know that if you followed his commandments as he said: “If you love me, keep my commandments”. Christ is everything. If you let people become embraced to him, you shall then have all good things for you. If you didn’t seek this you would be wasting yourself. The important thing is for the Lord to be the source of your life.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “أحد جميع القديسين” –Raiati n^o25- 19.06.2011

When the disciples believed that Christ became through his crucifixion their rock, the Church started. Nevertheless, this faith still needed to be supported and strengthened in order for the Church to become alive, active and spreadable. So, the Holy Spirit descended on the Church to change them into new creations that could fulfill everything found in the Lord’s Gospel and live through his words. This is why it is wrong to say that the church was created in the Pentecost, because everything was fulfilled on the cross, and this is what Jesus said. However, the Church flourished in the Pentecost. It constantly lives from the descension of the Holy Spirit on it through the Word, the sacraments and especially through the Divine Eucharist. The Church continues through the power of the Spirit that goes beyond our mistakes and sins, erases them and leaves in us every power of the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies every person through grace and dwells in all of the Church as well as in every individual, and embraces the individual in a deeper way into the Lord’s body which is the Church. Therefore, the Spirit works in the individual and the group in a way to lead us into the truth that Jesus showed in his life on earth and his miracles, teachings, passions and victory. The Spirit doesn’t add anything to the Gospel but makes us understand it if we read it day after day, taste it and put it in our hearts deeper and deeper.

The Holy Spirit, therefore, creates holiness in us, purifies us constantly and puts in us a growing understanding of what the Lord has taught. All of this, of course, is taken from the Father since the Spirit proceeds from him and also taken from the Son as the Spirit settles in him.

He is the Person (Hypostasis) that carries the truth and distributes it, and if we were connected to him through repentance, Christ would then be reflected in us, ascend us to his Father and unite us with the saints in the heavens so that we all form the one Church of Christ.

He who is filled from the Holy Spirit shall be united with Christ and moving towards the face of the Father and consequently, would be beloved from the Holy Trinity. He who lives in the bosom of the Trinity shall not be in need of anything because the Trinity is the perfection of glory. This person would have his heaven with or in him. This is the truth of the Church because it is found in order for the faithful to be sanctified through the Heavenly Spirit.

The Lord wants us to be sanctified all the days of our lives through the Spirit so that we give our brothers the power to become renewed members in the church, overcoming sin, unafraid of death, loving, and away from hatred so that we won’t appear dead after Jesus has made us alive.

It is important to pray for the Church to be obedient for the Holy Spirit, to be a keeper of the Father’s will, and independent from this world and waiting the grace in every moment so that no one would see anything but light in every Christian; this way, Christ’s victory would witness in every faithful and God’s life would be reflected in every disciple of Jesus.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “العنصرة” –Raiati n^o24- 12.06.2011

The first ecumenical council which is also known as the Nicene council in reference to Nicaea, a city next to Constantinople, is the council that put the largest part of the Orthodox Creed. This Creed starts by mentioning the Father: “I believe in one God, the Father”. Then comes the part that’s related to the Son and the most explicit phrase is what it says about the Son being “of one essence with the Father”, and this means that He has the same essence that the Father has.

The council was held after an invitation from the Emperor St. Constantine in order to refute the heresy of Arius who was an Alexandrian priest and taught that the Son is the first between all creatures and through him God created all other creatures. The Church understood from this position that Arius destroyed the Holy Trinity as he refused that the Father and the Son are one and that the Son is co-eternal with the Father in a way that both of them are before time.

This heresy was terribly spread and is today renewed with the heresy of Jehovah’s witnesses. They are actually Arians as they deny the Divinity of the Son.

In order to confirm the common faith between us and other Christians, the Church read over us first the text from the book of Acts containing a speech for Paul to the elders of Ephesus saying: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood”. This means that the apostle has called the person that gave his blood as God. Christ is not only human; he is both God and man together.

Then, the Church read the second biblical passage that says that our knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ together gives us the eternal life as you cannot have an eternal life without knowing Christ. The second thing is what the Lord said: “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began”. It is clear from this phrase that Christ existed before the creation of the universe and that he had the same glory of the Father.

The Christian faith is all based on the fact the Jesus existed (without a body) before the world did, until the time has come when the Holy Spirit made for Him a body from virgin Mary and therefore he became with two natures: A divine nature (which he always had) and a human one, which he got through the power of the Holy Spirit from Mary’s womb. This God-man is the one who was crucified on the cross and his Divinity was not touched by death but stayed complete on the cross. Jesus, therefore, did not abandon his humanity nor erased his Divinity. They both stayed united in death and in the grave and then his body rose from death that didn’t touch his Divinity. We worship a God in the body and worship him free from the dead and un-subjected to the laws of death and rottenness.

We also worship the Father and the Holy Spirit; however, we don’t worship the saints but venerate them. We live united with Jesus and take from him every grace and holiness.

Christ became a man through the will of the Trinity and stayed on this earth united with the first hypostasis, the Father, and the second hypostasis (the Holy Spirit) in every moment he lived on earth un-separated from them and having the same glory, honor and worship.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “المجمع الأول” –Raiati n^o23- 05.06.2011

John the Evangelist didn’t write this long chapter about the man born blind only to talk about a miracle Jesus made, but to say through it that Jesus is the giver of light and that the non-recognition of Christ is blindness itself. Since the beginning of the fourth Gospel, where this passage is found, the apostle says: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world”. The Gospel of John talks a lot about the light.

The Jews used to believe that a disaster hits a person as a punishment for a sin he did. The Lord replies saying: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”. One doesn’t inherit the results of the sins his parents did. The Master goes beyond this debate through healing the man blind from birth. “He came home seeing”. In the end of the talk about the healing this man becomes “seeing” from the spiritual aspect since he believed in Jesus. The physical healing was a way into the spiritual one as the man told Jesus: “Lord, I believe’ and he worshiped him”.

The Evangelist uses the occasion of this miracle to insert a theological debate between Jesus and the Pharisees because the miracle happened on a Saturday and they used the Law of Moses to say that the miracle is a work and one should not work on a Sabbath although they have heard what the Lord said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.

The issue of Sabbath as explained by the Pharisees was one of the main reasons that made them provoke the people to kill the Lord. Lord Jesus was the victim of this wrong interpretation of Sabbath, the victim of the tyrannical system that people put and didn’t come from Moses.

There is also another part of the debate, which is the debate that happened between the parents of this man and the Pharisees. Was he blind or not? They refused the fact that the blind was healed and that they entered into darkness although they saw the truth. However, they didn’t want to admit it because if they did they would be then admitting that Jesus is at least a prophet or the anticipated messiah. They refused to admit this in order not to lose their power over the Jewish people and for the doctrine of the Pharisees which they inserted into the pure Jewish doctrine won’t be lost. This young man can’t be blind; they had to insist on that in order to save themselves.

Even if the truth appeared to us, we could sometimes escape from it because it is the surrender of soul to the savior and a complete repentance of all our sins. You can either be with Jesus, and consequently with all what he taught and asked for or with the darkness of your heart and sins.

The Gospel of the blind man is the choice between being completely to the Lord or not. It is nothing to be partially for him. “Your will be done”: This is how we are saved and not through our own will.

Christ is the complete light and we cannot choose parts of the light. Choosing parts of the light is blindness.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “أحد الأعمى” –Raiati n^o22- 29.05.2011

When Jesus was going from Judea to Galilee he had to pass through Samaria, so he went to Sychar, a city close to Nablus. There, was Jacob’s well that still exists today and an Orthodox Church was made next to it. So, Jesus sat down by the well…

It was about noon when a Samaritan woman arrived- which means a foreigner that is also split from the Jewish religion- and one of the finest conversations in the Gospels was held between Jesus and that woman. The Lord asked her to give him a drink as she was carrying a jar, but she was surprised from his request because Jews did not associate Samaritans. Jesus went beyond what separates people and promised her to give her the living water. She did not understand that this was something different than the water found in the well. So, she said: “Where can you get this living water?” and Jesus took her into another level saying: “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. This is, therefore, water with a different nature than that in the well. What is this water? How is it?

She wanted it, but Jesus couldn’t give her immediately water from his kingdom because she was an adulteress. She did not deserve a gift from heavens because she insisted on the bad behavior she’s behaving. This is why the Lord changed the path of the conversation and told her: “Go, call your husband”. She confessed that she had no man and then she confessed to her people that Jesus is a prophet. She wanted to enter into a theological discussion; so she said: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem”. Christ abolished the doctrine of the Samaritans concerning worshiping in their region and also abolished worshiping in Jerusalem: “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth”. Their hearts would worship if they knew the Father, his Son and his Spirit. The old temples coming from Moses have no value anymore. God does not live anymore in Jerusalem’s temple after the Jewish return from the Babylonian captivity. After that, Jesus called himself the Temple, and we have become an extension of this temple after his resurrection. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?”

This woman moved after the words of the Lord into the way he thinks and the behavior he wanted for her and preached all the people of Samaria about the Master. When the Samaritans asked him to stay at theirs, he stayed for two days and a lot of people believed in him after seeing and talking to him. The woman took them to the savior and they confessed saying “we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world”. The idea of the Messiah being the Savior of the world was not known for the Samaritans or for the Jews. The Content of the Bible descended on them, and then after the resurrection of the Savior, the people that followed him knew that he is the savior of the whole world and goes beyond Jews, Samaritans and all nations. The Holy Spirit revealed for people that Jesus is the savior of the world through his death and resurrection.

When our heart discovers Jesus, we become attached only to him and not tied to anything, any place, family, memory or sins. Jesus takes off us all the weights and makes everyone of us a beloved disciple lying on his chest and a great in the Kingdom.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “السامرية” –Raiati n^o21- 22.05.2011

The word “saints” used in this chapter (of the book of acts) refers to Christians. When Paul wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians, he called them saints because they are sanctified through truth and baptism. This was the early period of the growth of Christianity.  After they took their preaching to Antioch, they were called Christians there. In the city of Lydda- a Palestinian city that still exist today- Peter found a paralyzed man and told him: Get up and roll up your mat, so he immediately got up.

Then, this chapter tells us about a girl in Joppa that got sick and died. Peter was invited to her house so he got down on his knees, prayed and said: Tabitha (which means doe), get up, and she did.

The result of healing Aeneas in Lydda and Tabitha in Joppa was that a lot of people believed in Lord Jesus. This is not something weird as the Lord has told his disciples: “Heal the sick, cleanse those who have leprosy” (He gave them the power he had from the Father and they transformed it through the power of Resurrection).

These miracles continued in the Church with the saints that were, like the apostles, working through the power of resurrection. We do not say that every saint has surely done a miracle. However, we do call some saints such as Saint Nicolas and Spyridon as wonder workers.

The idea falls into the fact that God is able to heal the sick regardless from the laws of medicine because he is not limited with the law of nature. We don’t know how does the miracle happen, how does the blind get his sight back or the paralyzed his movement. Healing happens through the will of God.

We do not have a medical office that decides whether a miracle happened or not. We just notice that something supernatural happened and glorify God. This doesn’t mean that we should be automatic believers of everything people talk about. You are free to believe or not when someone tells you about a miracle, but no one should accuse others of blasphemy in such cases. You are free to believe or disbelieve all the miracles except those found in the bible. However, if you saw any fruits, thank God.

Other than healing, our Lord has made much more important things than miracles that happened through people. His incarnation from virgin Mary, transforming bread and wine in his body and blood, his Resurrection from the dead, the sanctification that occurs after repentance…, all of these indicate that God does miracles constantly and always remember us with his mercy.

Everything started with the Resurrection of the Savior. We should know that we are people of Resurrection that wait the miracle in every moment and sanctify our souls through the interferences of God in our life so that we recognize that the New Testament is still active.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “عجائب الرسل” –Raiati n^o20- 15.05.2011

What was this complaint that came from the Hellenistics and Hebraics in the early Church in Jerusalem? The Hellenistic Jews are Jews that became Christian and lived for a long period away from Palestine where they received some of the Hellenistic culture. Those were not able to understand the Aramaic language that was used by the people in Palestine including Palestinian Christians. On the other side, those who the book of Acts calls Hebraic Jews were the Jews of Palestine that became Christian and didn’t immigrate, so they refused to speak except using the national language of the people of Palestine, i.e. Aramaic.

The Hellenistic Jews complained against the Hebraic Jews saying that “their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food”, i.e. in the aids that were distributed.

Each of these two communities had its own synagogue (It is what we call today the Knesset) so that they could understand preaching with their own language.

It is known that the Torah was only read in Hebrew for both the Hellenistics and the Hebraic, however that language was not used anymore. Therefore, they used to preach using Greek or Aramaic according to the linguistic knowledge of every nation.

When this problem appeared, the Apostles assigned seven men. Most of the interpreters said that this selection was the establishment of the system of deacons and the church named the martyr Saint Stephen, who was one of them, a deacon.

The apostles laid their hands on them and this expression indicates the process of the sanctification of a work that’s related to Sacraments and is not a simple blessing. Assigning a person to take care of the widows’ aids does not require the laying of hands. It is significant that in this selection the first one named was Stephen who was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”, and this means that he was not ignorant in the knowledge of faith and this is obvious from his speech to the Jews who killed him by stoning.

After that, the epistle says: “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples (i.e. number of Christians) in Jerusalem increased rapidly”. Later, the word “disciples” was replaced by the word “Christians” in Antioch. Then the epistle says: “and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith”. This refers to the Jewish priests that started believing in Jesus, and this explains that the Jewish community persecuted them because of that and that’s what made one of the great Christians to write an epistle to the Hebrews to strengthen through faith the priests that converted into Christ and the Jews that were under oppression.

Translated by Mark Najjar

Original Text: “السبعة” –Raiati n^o19- 08.05.2011