Again mount Athos, which overwhelmed me in terms of my understanding of watching it. The monasteries are covered or concealed by the length of the trees. Does the tree have the spirit of smashing, or, does the monastery’s scent smash? And the ceiling of the monastery conceals all the monks, while their society strikes their individuality.

[Only] whatever is hidden [truly] is, and whenever you come to the fore in order to show your existence, it is not you who comes out, rather your pettiness. The humble person is the one who does not see him/[her]self above the earth, i.e., he/[she] perceives his/[her] soul smashed. He/[she] might feel the smashing, since he/[she] feels his/[her] soul trampled down and because of being the victim of injustice he/[she] delights and rejoices as the Book says in Matthew. When the Lord had said, “learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart”, (Matt. 11: 29) He revealed that the source of this great virtue is the enlightened heart through Chris. This is to say that one might acquire this virtue after immense purification. There is no place for false glory in the heart of the believer and only the Lord, who humbled Himself unto death, death on a cross, dwells in it. (Phil. 2: 8)

Whenever you perceive this, you understand the words of the apostle: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the foremost of sinners”. (1Tim.1: 15) Paul, who had exceeded many in virtues, even was caught up to the third heaven, was thinking of himself as the last of all people. And St. John Climacus [of the Ladder] had said, “Humility is a blessing for the soul, it does not have a name which expresses it, other than the one that those who had learned it through experience have.” Then, the great monk elaborated his speech on the beauty of humility, saying: “whoever unites him/[her]self with humility in a similar way as the unity of the bridegroom with the bride, he/[she] would be always kind,  ardent, thrilled, quite, cheerful, does not sadden anyone, and in a word free of caprices.” Caprice is a term used by the ascetic Fathers and it refers to the source of sin, and it is our irritability that creates it. As if the monk is saying that whoever reaches at the virtue of humility, he/[she] had reached the peak of purity, this would be a person for whom heaven has been opened, while on earth. He/[she] trusts the gifts of heaven and does not trust oneself, rather he/[she] awaits God’s judgment upon him/[her]self. Thus, he/[she] does not pride him/[her]self on any good thing that he/[she] has. A person like this has attained resurrection before the general resurrection.

Does this mean that the humble person does not perceive in him/[her]self merits? Socrates had recommended that the person should know oneself, in order that he/[she] might know his/[her] abilities and serve. And the Lord had said, “you are the light of the world”, and ordered us to enlighten others, and not to put the lamp under a bushel. [Matt.5: 14-15] Your ability of speech e.g., or your ability to manage the public affairs, these could not be hidden to you. Nevertheless, the apostle orders you not to think of yourself as higher than what you ought to, since then you will become nothing. You would not acquire humility, unless you realize that whatever lofty and true within you comes from God. You have been entrusted the above virtues and you are not their owner. You enlighten people by divine light, which owner you are not. You are a channel for compassion, which you give, and you are not the Compassionate one, similar to the canal of water which is not the water. Whenever you are in a state of constant thanksgiving to your Lord, people trace the lights of the Lord which are delineated on your face, and praise God because of you.

Thus, humility does not come to us by the way of nature that we inherit. To be kind, quite, shrewd and humble does not mean, according to St. Isaac the Syriac, that you have reached the height of humility. If once, or at some occasion, you have regretted a wicked thing, do not think that you have attained humility. One cannot attain humility unless one ascends the whole ladder of virtues. The virtues succeed each other and humility is the culmination of the ascent.

It might be that only those who have been the victim of boastfulness, and have got rid of it, the ones who can truly perceive the meaning of humility. Boastfulness is when you consider certain details in your nature, and you think that you have obtained them as the outcome of some works, which you think have honored you. You feel that you have surpassed your measure and you might not know that you have puffed yourself up. Each one of us is a frog, who aspires to be as big as an ox, as La Fontaine’s fable maintained, asserting to him/[her]self that it might be realized, while it won’t, until life strikes him/[her] and then he/[she] blows up.

This prides him/[her]self on his/[her] money and that prides on his/[her] authority, while neither your money nor your authority is you. You perceive yourself through whatever you gain, while you are [truly] the way God sees you, namely that which you have not gained. At a true repentance you shall be stripped from whatever you have gained, and you shall understand that God, through God’s love, fashions you. Hence, you carry your belovedness and become splendid, guiding [others] by it. Why have our masters thought that arrogance is the greatest sin? Since through it you divinize yourself, i.e. you apostatize. Arrogance is apostasy in its density. On the other hand the humble person, who thinks of him/[her]self as nothing, reveals that it is God who shed’s light upon him/[her]. Therefore, he/[she] prides on God and excludes apostasy fully, and thus, becomes of a deified nature, entering the state of deification and carrying out within him/[her]self the characteristics of God.

Humility is the complete tranquility and the complete certitude, since it is the vision of God’s face. [In this state] the person enters the glamor of freedom, i.e. the freedom from the ‘I’. Yes, no one reaches at putting the ‘I’ to death unless at his/[her] death, since the death of the righteous one is the Holy Saturday, on which Christ has rested in the tomb. No one attains the complete rest unless in the tomb, since it is the final baptism.

The ‘I’ does not die completely in this world, since as long as we are in flesh, sin or its delights, i.e., the wavering between righteousness and perversity, attack us. Complete repentance is a yearning, until God takes us to Godself. Great humility brings the yearning to an end and gives us the vision, which we might be given through the vigilance of the soul and the Kingdom, which has started to dwell in us.

In Byzantine Liturgy, we call the communion of the Lord’s body “the Completion of the Kingdom of heaven”, though its author, John Chrysostom, was aware that we might be given completion only after our resurrection. As if he says that if on Sunday morning you unite yourself with Christ, do not expect any other thing yet to come. Whenever God acknowledges you as a humble person in accordance with the image of the crucified one, nothing is required from you other than the completion of love, which John the apostle had made the true name of the Lord, saying, “God is Love.” The humble one loves, since nothing has remained in him/[her] other than God.

Whenever we believe in this, there would be no difference whether you are a minister, a doctor, a carpenter, or a shoeblack. What matters is that you accomplish your duties with obedience to God, and that you do not consider yourself as great if you were from the elite of your community, and do not belittle yourself whenever you were from the little ones. I know people who had gained important status in the society and have not become arrogant. They have not prided themselves neither on the properties in their houses, nor on their wealth. They remained on the humility that they previously had. The inner soul does not fall always by the beauties of the lower world. Nothing corrupts you, whenever you determine to keep the Lord in your heart, since you know that nothing can add one cubit unto your span of life. You might rub out whatever your friends think that you may pride yourself on. You pass through all worldly splendor, you pass through your intelligence, or your beauty, as if they are nothing. The brilliance of your mind, or any other created thing, cannot attract you. Only God’s glory and the glamor of the saints, of which some are alive, arouse your attention. So you live to receive from them, since you believe that you come into being through them, without knowing that you were fashioned through them. You leave your own judgment to your Lord and wait for His compassion. You fear that you might not attain the heaven, since you think of yourself as a sinner. You live with this awe and come closer, “with the fear of God, faith and love”, to the table of salvation on the Sunday morning. Through that you become wholly a new person, and only the Lord knows that you have become new.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “التواضع” –An Nahar- 23-01-2010

Whom should I write? [I write] to the one who can read, the one who wants to free him/herself from an erroneous thought, or mostly erroneous. [This would make him/her] transcend in spirit to God, who is disseminated to the reader through his/her readings. He/she might transcend to Christ, who did not write, so that he/she aligns him/herself with those who had understood. Thus, he/she would be able to leap to the spirit of the writer and from him to the minds that come from their hearts, since the heart is the true source of the minds and the imaginary. The assemblages of the minds of all welded cultures with truth and through truth are the abode of divine mind, which is love. I say this in compliance to what is written in the First Epistle of John, in the New Testament, that God is Love. It is my presentiment, concerning this Johannine statement, that love is not an attribute of God’s attributes, which our Holy books contain, rather it is the name of God, the complete name, above which there is no other name. Since God shapes you out of God’s love, and before God’s inclination to you, you receive your knowledge through contemplation. As to God’s knowledge of Godself, God loves you and endows you with [feelings of] belovedness. The human consciousness of yourself comes from feeling your belovedness; thus, you become one with the whole humanity, which views itself as forming the sphere of divine descent.

No matter how different people’s faces, religions and languages are, it is certain that, howsoever existence has been rationalized, [all people] are one. Christ has not died for a faction or for some scattered factions, but for the mass of the whole human race. The Savior has wedded Himself to the one humanity, whatsoever was its affiliation, in its own knowledge of Him. Since Truth is in God’s act toward humanity, in that God associates humanity to Godself and to God’s works, while God’s works are the light of humanity. Humanity has no other light than the light that God radiates over it. Once, it had attracted my attention that Jesus had said to His followers, “You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14) However, He said it since He said somewhere else, “I am the light of the world” (John 8: 12). Every one of us comes from a gleam of Him, [that radiates] over you and me.

From this unity between Him, and us I write, to arouse the readers to the truth that is in them, so as they know that they are deific or deified. This is a dialogue, since the reader receives the truth pronounced by the writer and becomes it, whenever the writer has become it. That is to say, that the reader writes him/herself whatever he/she reads, and that is only possible whenever he/she humbles him/herself to receive that which has descended upon him/her. At the end of this explanation, the writer, the written text and whatever proceeds from their interaction is one and the same thing.

Loving the one reading me, I give myself to him/her, but I try not to give my sins. Thus, you are not a true writer unless you free yourself from the burden that your self puts upon you, whenever this burden is from the world. However, if God seizes your fingers as you put down a line or a paragraph, then God is the author and you are the written thing. In other words, do not put a letter on paper, a sacred letter, unless freedom from your burdened or impure self descends upon you. Since [this burden] does not free the one who reads you, rather it imprisons you in the impurity that is in you. Hence, art is not for art; plane art does not have a language or an ornament. Beauty is not about popular aesthetics. It is the beauty of the truth, which knows always how to select from within you what purifies you and others. Beauty is sublimity and splendor from above, so that you may not fall into worshipping beauty, or worshipping your own self and destructing yourself in it. Whenever beauty, that you consider it literary, fails to move as splendor to the others’ souls, then, it becomes an enticement in which both the writer and the reader fall.

Literary writing is not preaching, i.e. religious teaching repeated in different expressions. A sermon might be literarily beautiful; since you need that the text crosses to the heart, while the insipid form does not do that. It is possible to master a sermon, nevertheless, it is with the truth, which it holds that both the one who declares it and the one who receives it live. The threat in preaching is to worship the old repeated words, while the old does not descend on the person who lives in his/her own age. You change the words for him/her, in order that he/she might receive the eternal truth latent in the transmitted Word. Yet, the truth would not become a spirit unless it meets the spirit of the listener. The Word is the experienced truth, so that it might create a soul that tastes [the truth] and is transformed [by it].

The people of God, or the Church as Christians call it, are the community of the transformed ones, and in its religious term it is the community of repentants. Those know that they are sinners and that they are nothing unless they eat the divine words poured out for them through living human beings, who have attempted to convert in order to become mediators of the old word, since not only their manner but also their person has been transformed. The style is a skill, namely, it is an instrument in the hand of the one giving the new words, but he is to remain faithful. Whoever has not become the child of grace brings to you dead words, and this is not something eloquent. God would not use you whatsoever you borrow from language-sciences, unless you serve God by turning to Him. You are not a mediator except in your obedience to God. Whoever listens to you remains dead, since he/she receives dead words. However, if you become a new person you can make new people. The new [person] is old, whenever he/she is carried by a soul renewed through love and humility.

Then, why do I write?  The more correct answer is that I write so that I might be purified, that I might approach God who urges me to write, that I might speak God’s word, not a word emerging from human desires. I write to recount whatever God has placed on my pen, and I do not have a thing in it. Whenever I do not become one with the written thing I break my pen, and whenever I do not seek to be one with the person who reads me, the one whom I think is receiving God, then I would be doing wrong to him/her. I would be accepting his/her sins, colluding with him/her against my Lord, forming with him/her an [assumedly] educated clique. These words would be “the flowers of evil” as Baudelaire had called it, i.e. poisonous flowers.

This brings upon me my own judgment, and silence in this case is my rescue from the poison. I am a Christian writer, and whenever I feel myself mature in Christianity I would have something to say to all people, since Christ touches all hearts, and the hearts take whatever it can take. The human soul is prepared for Christ. However, this does not mean that I am completely purified. Thus, the wholeness of Christ would not pass across the writing that I employ. The saints live the life of God, though many of them could not write. They have enlightened us and we were illuminated by their light. The writer has always some of his human nature and whenever he is a believer, he is afflicted because of that. Nonetheless, he attempts to be an apostle and the forgiving [God] forgives him when he makes wrong, and whatever passes through [the writing] would pass through. However, the one who is given to write is burdened with the yoke, and he writes since he obeys. And whoever does not obey would have eliminated the talent which he had to utilize in order that God might be glorified through it.

The perfect writer, then, is the one who has been completely purified, the one who has achieved divine enjoyment, since one in both enjoyment and suffering writes. However, suffering sometimes is caused by sin, or by the difficulty of dispensing with sin. There is always a turmoil in the soul that occurs to us as the result of our stumbles, or our attempt to repent from them.

Both rejoicing and suffering write. At any rate, writing takes place as the outcome of astonishment, and with the saints, it is the outcome of amazement [bewilderment], your being amazed [or bewildered] in the presence of divine glory. This means that you have surpassed the pain of transgression. Whoever sinks in it would not have a pen anymore, since he would not be a witness or a spectator of the glory. As for the one who still has a little of love, he necessarily loves a reader whom he does not know.

Whoever writes does not know his readers. He writes the way he writes, the way his pen moves, since this is how he lives and becomes united. [Once] Abi Tammam had been asked, “Why do you write what is not understandable?” He had answered: “Why do you not understand what I write?” You write in your way, in the way you like, to arrive at those who strive to understand. And whenever they feel you they reach at that which you wanted to convey to them. Your consolation in this is that some people have become from the people of God.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “لماذا أكتب؟” –An Nahar- 31-07-2010

When it comes to society, you are known by your family which you belong to because one’s life is a relationship or relationships. This is so because naturally you tend to associate with others and build relations with them; or else you would become entombed in your own shell as an isolated individual that cannot be broken into by others, or be open to others. It is well known that if you long for another person, that other person would become part of your world. Thus you become one with him. Life is a belonging, but not to your father and mother; it is a belonging to those whom Grace brings in to you.

And if you get into a relationship with another person, you will not be really one because each of you lacks something. And he who is lacking cannot complete the other who also is lacking. God, who is said to be complete in himself, has made Himself in a relationship with others through the incarnation of the Son; thus establishing a reciprocal relationship between Him and Man.  Your identity is that link between you and God; and I think that the word identity – “hawiyya” in Arabic – is derived from the word “houwa” indicating the third person. Thus you know who you are through the Sole Other who is God. You acquire an identity when He knows you, as such you will be “from Him” and formed by Him.

In the absolute, Man is because God loves him. All else that has been said concerning Man’s being is of this world.  Your identity card is to distinguish between you and citizens of other countries. But you do not come from the mountains and sea of a piece of land even though you might have acquired the prevailing temperaments in the culture of that land. But all this is relative in the sense that you belong to this humanity which everybody else belongs to with all what they have of “createdness”.

But when you realize that you are one loved by God, you become one with those you love because they do not receive that love from flesh and blood and what is created. As such the reality of the love they receive making them who they are, has descended on them from above.

What I said above is based on the Scriptures. God tells Moses on Mount Sinai: “…….for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.” (EX 33: 17) So his name that was known by God was his identity. And when Moses wanted to see God’s glory meaning to know God’s essence, God said:”But my face you cannot see.” Thus God did not reveal His name to Moses; but He said:”… I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.” (Ex 7:6). As such God reveals Himself through the moves He makes towards His people. In the desert of Sinai, God does not reveal His identity as one Who is self-existent, but in how He sees the People and relates to them.

This supports the scene of the burning bush when Moses told God: –“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM….” (Ex 3:13,14) This is not a name in the literal sense of the word. This is an act. God introduces Himself as one who does acts of mercy towards His people.

Afterwards, God tells Jeremiah: “I will be their God and they will be my people”. (Jer 7: 23). And those words are repeated by him and by other prophets. And St. Peter explains in his first epistle that the people are those that receive mercy (1Peter 2: 10). A people, then, is not an ethnic group or social grouping. It is that community which God has chosen for Himself and they have accepted to obey Him so that He will be God to them and they would belong to Him. So when we say “the people of God, we mean to say that God is the subject doing the action; that is it is He who makes a human group become a divine people, that is a kingdom of priests according to the Old Testament and  a royal priesthood according to the New Testament. God and Man are in motion, one towards the other.

When you are a believer, God will bestow on you an identity. Even if you were of little faith, He gives you your identity because He loves you though He knows that you will not respond to Him. The Father has made you his son; and that is your identity. You have been named such since eternity. And that identity has fulfilled itself in you when God created you in His image and likeness. Through the Sonship of Christ to God (which He gives us), the Lord elevates you from the state of limited “createdness” to that of unlimited “createdness” which is moved by the Spirit.

Thus the “houwa” (the third person) makes you the “ana” (‘I’ in Arabic) that is what you are; and when He(God) becomes related to you, you become related to Him and you live His life; all other relations and identities  are of this world and are limited in themselves;  that is why Amin Maalouf gave his book the title “Al Hawiyyat al Qatila” (The Identities that Destroy); it is because he has realized the destruction that can result from the limitation of “identities” like one being from a certain village, or belonging to a certain confession or other qualities. The aforementioned, when considered each by itself, he thinks, can destroy. But when good things come together they can produce a refined and civilized humane human being. At its best, what is good remains something given by God. And it is common that we use the good in us in clubs, or charity institutes which are not necessarily from God who moves towards us with His love and implants in us the love that moves us towards Him and towards those who love Him.

At that we see the limitation of nations and families whether in bringing people close to each other or in making them distant from each other. All what there is in this world has ups and downs; and all that is in it is in transit either from glory to shame or vice versa. But both the glory and shame of this world remain delusory until you receive your inner being from the One who beholds it; and you are bestowed a name from Him, a name of your righteousness. But here in this world, you might have no name except that which is imposed on you through some social genre.

When Divine Love weaves our identity for us, then we would not make distinctions among others because Love creates them through itself. You can distinguish between them, but Love which enfolds them all, makes them all children of God whether they believe in that Sonship or not.

The Lord might chastise or coddle a person yet we do not comprehend how the Lord will reward him. God always forgives and grants mercy so that we are found before Him in great brightness which is a reflection of His brightness.

Our purity is a legacy from the Lord. Such purity that descends from above is

What fashions one’s identity.

When it comes to society, you are known by your family which you belong to because one’s life is a relationship or relationships. This is so because naturally you tend to associate with others and build relations with them; or else you would become entombed in your own shell as an isolated individual that cannot be broken into by others, or be open to others. It is well known that if you long for another person, that other person would become part of your world. Thus you become one with him. Life is a belonging, but not to your father and mother; it is a belonging to those whom Grace brings in to you.

And if you get into a relationship with another person, you will not be really one because each of you lacks something. And he who is lacking cannot complete the other who also is lacking. God, who is said to be complete in himself, has made Himself in a relationship with others through the incarnation of the Son; thus establishing a reciprocal relationship between Him and Man.  Your identity is that link between you and God; and I think that the word identity – “hawiyya” in Arabic – is derived from the word “houwa” indicating the third person. Thus you know who you are through the Sole Other who is God. You acquire an identity when He knows you, as such you will be “from Him” and formed by Him.

In the absolute, Man is because God loves him. All else that has been said concerning Man’s being is of this world.  Your identity card is to distinguish between you and citizens of other countries. But you do not come from the mountains and sea of a piece of land even though you might have acquired the prevailing temperaments in the culture of that land. But all this is relative in the sense that you belong to this humanity which everybody else belongs to with all what they have of “createdness”.

But when you realize that you are one loved by God, you become one with those you love because they do not receive that love from flesh and blood and what is created. As such the reality of the love they receive making them who they are, has descended on them from above.

What I said above is based on the Scriptures. God tells Moses on Mount Sinai: “…….for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.” (EX 33: 17) So his name that was known by God was his identity. And when Moses wanted to see God’s glory meaning to know God’s essence, God said:”But my face you cannot see.” Thus God did not reveal His name to Moses; but He said:”… I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.” (Ex 7:6). As such God reveals Himself through the moves He makes towards His people. In the desert of Sinai, God does not reveal His identity as one Who is self-existent, but in how He sees the People and relates to them.

This supports the scene of the burning bush when Moses told God: –“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM….” (Ex 3:13,14) This is not a name in the literal sense of the word. This is an act. God introduces Himself as one who does acts of mercy towards His people.

Afterwards, God tells Jeremiah: “I will be their God and they will be my people”. (Jer 7: 23). And those words are repeated by him and by other prophets. And St. Peter explains in his first epistle that the people are those that receive mercy (1Peter 2: 10). A people, then, is not an ethnic group or social grouping. It is that community which God has chosen for Himself and they have accepted to obey Him so that He will be God to them and they would belong to Him. So when we say “the people of God, we mean to say that God is the subject doing the action; that is it is He who makes a human group become a divine people, that is a kingdom of priests according to the Old Testament and  a royal priesthood according to the New Testament. God and Man are in motion, one towards the other.

When you are a believer, God will bestow on you an identity. Even if you were of little faith, He gives you your identity because He loves you though He knows that you will not respond to Him. The Father has made you his son; and that is your identity. You have been named such since eternity. And that identity has fulfilled itself in you when God created you in His image and likeness. Through the Sonship of Christ to God (which He gives us), the Lord elevates you from the state of limited “createdness” to that of unlimited “createdness” which is moved by the Spirit.

Thus the “houwa” (the third person) makes you the “ana” (‘I’ in Arabic) that is what you are; and when He(God) becomes related to you, you become related to Him and you live His life; all other relations and identities  are of this world and are limited in themselves;  that is why Amin Maalouf gave his book the title “Al Hawiyyat al Qatila” (The Identities that Destroy); it is because he has realized the destruction that can result from the limitation of “identities” like one being from a certain village, or belonging to a certain confession or other qualities. The aforementioned, when considered each by itself, he thinks, can destroy. But when good things come together they can produce a refined and civilized humane human being. At its best, what is good remains something given by God. And it is common that we use the good in us in clubs, or charity institutes which are not necessarily from God who moves towards us with His love and implants in us the love that moves us towards Him and towards those who love Him.

At that we see the limitation of nations and families whether in bringing people close to each other or in making them distant from each other. All what there is in this world has ups and downs; and all that is in it is in transit either from glory to shame or vice versa. But both the glory and shame of this world remain delusory until you receive your inner being from the One who beholds it; and you are bestowed a name from Him, a name of your righteousness. But here in this world, you might have no name except that which is imposed on you through some social genre.

When Divine Love weaves our identity for us, then we would not make distinctions among others because Love creates them through itself. You can distinguish between them, but Love which enfolds them all, makes them all children of God whether they believe in that Sonship or not.

The Lord might chastise or coddle a person yet we do not comprehend how the Lord will reward him. God always forgives and grants mercy so that we are found before Him in great brightness which is a reflection of His brightness.

Our purity is a legacy from the Lord. Such purity that descends from above is

What fashions one’s identity.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “الهوية” –An Nahar- 17.07.2010

I would not care if my name would become rubbed out of the soul of the earth.

I would not care if the world would move along forgetting me.

Hanan ʻAd

How could I define humility as it is a virtue that does not tell about itself. Thus, it does not speak. It does not have an ‘I’. [However,] its existence speaks and creates worlds in the souls. It cries since it is wounded as it is the victim of injustice. It does not admit glory for itself. It is intoxicated by divine beauty, which hides it. It sees only that beauty without seeing itself within it, since, like Mary, it has fallen into utter oblivion. Hiddenness has dwelt in it. [Nevertheless,] no one eradicated it. No one could do that.

People come to God through the gate of humility. It is thrilled by them all. It sees them as figures of light and it is unconscious that it reflects them. They pass through it and it does not stop them, and whenever they pause, they marvel its sublimity. Then [God] their Lord recognizes them and assumes that they are aiming at God. God carries them to the glory, since they have passed beside it, they have perceived the marvelous, they have dwelt in the marvelous’ poetry and played on the marvelous’ harp, as the angels have envied them and have kept silence. Did they ascend to heaven or heaven has descended? The Compassionate [God] has made this excellence, among the virtues of your Lord, a throne and [God] has sat [became on the same level] on it. Whatever you have in your world is nothing if humility does not shine on a surface that God has chosen it for its radiance. Whenever science disappears transfiguration becomes essential. Transfiguration becomes the utterance, or the language between a glory and another. Those who attain this language will dwell in the coming age, in which God will condemn those arrogant ones, who thought of themselves as gods and thus they died since they have not known that the Lord is God and that they are to fall into oblivion.

Once, a prince in Balkan had written to the crown prince (and he was going to succeed his father’s rule on the emirate): “Do not desire to become a bishop, an abbot or a prince. Do not desire, since all this is the glory of the world.” Contrary to that, whenever you desire the glory of God you partake in it. Nothing brings this and that together, since either you come from heaven and you conduct the earth through that or you come from the earth and die in it. The people of heaven are buried in earth; however, they are not from the earth. They have ascended.

“Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.” [John 17: 5] When Jesus said this he was on the way to his unjust death. To be subject to injustice is the condition of humility. People are subduers of one another. Few are those who accept injustice and love their subduers. Whenever the mercy of the subdued ones falls upon the subduers they might understand and repent. Thus, we do not attain understanding unless we are loved by someone. And no one loves unless he/[she] hides him/[her]self. Only the one hidden admits the Other. He/[she] admits that the Other, any Other, is better than him/[her]. This is a condition for the spread of humility. This is a condition for the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

When Mary has said, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree.” [Luke 1:52], she was referring to those powerful in the earth, whom she had seen magnifying themselves for their things. Belongings are not beings. But whenever God raises the humble ones, God grants them eminence from God, namely that which is not created. And according to our Book [the Bible] God makes them gods, and God knows while they do not know. In this they become deified.

The one raising oneself is unable to reach at God, since God does not love the arrogant ones, thus they blow up from their own exaggeration. However, those who make themselves to the same level of the soil, their Lord will raise them and will sculpture them a new and will appreciate them, while they do not appreciate their own selves, since the essence of their virtue is that know that they do not have any virtue. On this matter Basil had said, “we have not done any good work on earth.” This echoes the words of the Savior: “No one is good but God alone.” [Mark 10: 18] That is why we remain in ignorance of our virtues till the day when “God judges the secrets of men”. [Rom. 2: 16] Then, when God declares the righteousness of those righteous ones, they refer their righteousness to God and are glorified on their own.

The whole thing is that you recognize God as the sole and the only giver, and you humble yourself to God for this knowledge and be thankful. Humility is an admission about the centrality of God, that is to say that God alone becomes the object of your sanctification. Sanctification within you lies in your confession that you are a sinner. That is the beginning of your trust on God, which is a plea for divine giving.

Whatever has been said so far does not invalidate the word of Socrates: “Know yourself”, since you have to know your abilities in order that you might work, contact people and build relationships with them. This is not limited to your rational abilities and your qualification for this or that activity. Civilized life requires competence, sciences and experiences. Thus, the human being should appreciate the talents he/[she] has in order that one does not undertake that for which he/[she] is not prepared, rather commit him/[her]self to the society, of which he/[she] is a member and has his/[her] political deliberation, and maybe commit him/[her]self to the political work. In this, one should not underestimate oneself and should not be inattentive to the development of one’s talents. And in this there is no arrogance.

Where does the merit of humility come in the human being’s awareness of his/[her] scientific and vocational talents? It is possible that a person is great in his/[her] academic or vocational mind and at the same time he/[she] is aware that the Lord is his/[her] help in this. And if he/[she] perceives his/[her] long struggle, it remains that he/[she] should thank God for these natural and vocational talents. We know that it is common among scholars their love of the truth and their acceptance of each other, whenever they disagree theoretically. The Quran had expressed this through the saying: “Of His servants, only the learned fear Allah.” (Fatir [The Originator of Creation], 28)

You might be very brilliant and at the same time poor to God. Whoever denies his/[her] rational or vocational talents and abilities ignores God’s gifts to him/[her]. If you pretend that you have knowledge, while you don’t, or that you are ignorant, while you are not, then this is false humility close to arrogance.

People perceive humility directly and at once. However we should not conceive that the humble person accepts whatever you say, without challenging or discussing with you. He/[she] might be a person of confrontation and struggle to the extent of intellectual contention. Yet, others love him/[her] since they perceive his/[her] honesty and faithfulness to the truth.

To be rubbed out for God does not mean to rub out your intellect in front of another person, regardless whether that was in a social setting or personal life. The beauty of the humble person is that he/[she] accepts the truth from whatever side it came. It does not matter here if there was a strong confrontation and his/her convictions were different than yours. The humble person thinks that whenever truth comes from you, then it is a message from God that reaches him/[her] sometimes through his/[her] opponent. Thus, it must be said that since the humble person asks God for inspiration, he/[she] does not take sides in his/[her] choices; and he/[she] does not have a package of boxed-in thoughts. He/[she] does not live through whatever he/[she] has collected from his/[her] memories or friends. In this sense the humble person is always a new, or a renewed, person. He/[she] encounters you through the dawn, and comes upon you through the light, by which he/[she] has been enlightened, and frees you from the trivialities and prompts you not to puff up, since he[she] dislikes the vanities. The humble person reminds you that your salvation comes from that which is true, in order that you might dwell in it through the blessings. Humility rubs out all the sins of the person.

Whoever opposes boasting and pretention provides with integrity whomever he/[she] befriends with, and whoever inclines to serenity. And God dwells in serenity.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “التواضع” –An Nahar- 26-06-2010