Soon is the feast of the Elevation of the Cross. Two incidents wrought it. The first is in the fourth century when Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, found the Savior’s cross which was covered with earth and the second incident is when the Emperor Hercules brought that cross back to Jerusalem from the Persians who had taken it from Jerusalem. The Christians find joy in those two incidents and see them as an act of mercy from God towards them. I will not comment on the above because I want to pass on from what is temporal concerning them to what is essential.

I would like to say that the cross without Him who was crucified on it is of no significance. All religions have symbols and use symbolic language to convey their content. It is of no concern for me whether the relic you hold around your neck is really from the real cross of Christ or not. No one can show evidence for that. But your concern as a Christian has to be in the profession that the death of Jesus and his resurrection is the heart of Christianity; and that every ritual or worship service or doctrine is there to point to that Death and Resurrection.

That is our foundation and that is our scope and to that we witness. Historically speaking, no one can dismiss the historicity of the Gospel story. In that sense the veracity of Jesus’ death has evidence outside the gospels. The gospels are the journals of those times; three of the four evangelists were eyewitness to what happened and the fourth one researched what those said. You can ignore believing in the crucifixion of Jesus as an act of redemption and salvation, but you cannot but admit that that man from Galilee was arrested, put on trial by the Jews and the Romans and was given over by Pontius Pilate to be nailed on a cross which was lifted on the hill of Golgotha; moreover He was stabbed with a spear in his side to make sure He died and then Pilate gave His body to be buried.

The crucifixion is significant for the faith due to its meanings. Your true faith is based on accepting its meaning. The meaning of the death of Jesus is that He accepted to lift the sin of the world; that he should become sin so who believes in Him will live without sin and so that one can be resurrected daily from the wrath of God and thus he abides in the Divine Favor.

A cross made of two pieces of wood; one is vertical and the other horizontal. The vertical which Christ was laid on signifies that the Lord was “outstretched” from Earth to Heaven and those who love Him are “outstretched” in the same direction. As for the horizontal beam on which His arms were outstretched, that speaks of Jesus’ arms embracing the whole universe and gathering it to him always. And because Jesus is always elevated, we called that feast as that of the elevation of the cross. That is quite symbolic, but in reality the ‘elevation’ of the crucified (Jesus) is for the life of the world.

There are misleading phrases in the Old Testament that must be read In the light of the New Testament. For example the word ‘atonement’ – which on the outside means that Jesus died in our place – when read with the juridical sense of the word (which is well known in our Penal Code) might make the reader stumble. This has no basis in our belief. It was said in the West during the middle Ages that sin has elicited God’s wrath and that wrath cannot be removed unless God removes it by bringing evenness between God’s anger and His atonement. Many still hang on to this interpretation, those who desire to put an end to revenge through a ransom as the habit goes in tribal regions. That also has no basis.

We use the word ‘redeemer’ – translating it from the Greek – meaning ‘deliverer’ and not in the juridical context described above. Jesus delivers us from the fear of death as it says in the letter to the Hebrew: “And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” If you overcome the fear of death you dwell in Life”. Christianity is founded on the antinomy between life and death; and what is meant here is not only spiritual death and spiritual life, but the antinomy between the death of the body and the resurrection given us on the Last Day.

The only thing Man fears is death. He fears car accidents, sickness and going into coma; and all that is death. And if he cannot face that in a realistic fashion, he is utterly in fear ever. No one is comforted when told that this is “something that has to happen”. God is the lord of “what has to happen”; in that, He can put an end to death here and now. How can you be rid of death when it is going to show itself in your body some day? There is no escape from death except through belovedness (being loved). And for you to feel loved, you need to be loved by a god. No one can substitute for God as the source of your life. This was made known by Jesus of Nazareth in a most eloquent fashion in that He brought the life that was in Him into the kingdom of death. He blew up death from the inside; “He trampled death by death” as the paschal hymn goes.

And as Christ was bringing life into the realm of death, He brought in Love with it. And Life is Love. Only through that you can exit nothingness. The voluntary yielding of Jesus to death is an expression of what came in the Bible in John 3: 16: “So much God loved the world that He gave His only Son…..”

With that there is no more room for the questions: “Why should God do all that? Why this Divine strategy? Why this Divine stir? Could not God have shown His love in a different way?” God did things that way because His wisdom is in that way. His wisdom is revealed in the incarnation of the Logos so He can be united with Man to explain to him that God has filled the chasm that is between Him and His children. Is there a more eloquent means than that? That God would share with us our world, in a body like ours with its weaknesses, its death and entombment? That a Christian knows that His Christ is his companion in every pain, and that when laid in the coffin, he is not alone, and that there is something in him that the grave cannot destroy. The Christian knows that he is not a slave to the world. He can fall into sin but he can also rise to righteousness because he carries in himself the power of love; and he can always forgive and taste Joy in the middle of his illness and taste wholeness in the middle of his handicap; he can experience in the Liturgy the fullness of the Kingdom of God and the confidence before God which is not for judgment or condemnation because he has been lifted through the resurrection of the Savior from death to life.

That is what the feast is about.

Translated by Riad Moufarrij

Original Text: “عيد ارتفاع الصليب” –An Nahar- 12.09.2009

The arrival of Ramadan is delighting for me, since in that month Muslims are purified. [In Ramadan] the great ones in piety receive eminence from their Lord, and there is no doubt that they become closer to the depth of prayer, and in their recitations they seek nearness to the gracious God.

This period is a [chance for] perfect solitude in order to endorse truth and patience. And whenever you bear your hunger and thirst patiently you would also be receptive of people, especially that they walk the same path as you. And maybe the splendor of this commitment is what is mentioned in the Hadith, on the lips of God: “Fasting is for me and I shall reward for it.” This is a spiritual pilgrimage not to the House [Mecca], but to the Lord of the House, as Saida Rābi῾a al-῾Adawiyyah said. It is a [spiritual] exercise, which seeks the face of God, and nothing other than it remains. Our worldly desires fail as they encounter it. And the Prophet says: “God, the almighty, is proud about the young worshipping man; and says: O young man, who is renouncing his desires for my sake and exerting his youth for me. You are to me as one of my angels.” [Hadith]

Those who pursue the obligations, the laws and the rules for break-fast ifṭār know that this is not the ultimate [end]. Some people are of great awareness and spiritual strive that is deeper than what appears. What matters is the purpose from this, which is possible to be viewed as the greatest jihād. [The purpose] should be putting on the divine attributes, namely the eternal nature, since whoever holds fast to his/[her] purity of heart inclines to the realm of angels. And whoever imitates the angels approaches his/[her] Lord, thus, the light of the Lord’s eternity reflects upon him/[her].

As the believer longs to the climax of this spiritual exercise we have to note the truth in the saying of Imam Ghazali: “Fasting is of three [successive] grades, namely, the common fasting, the distinctive fasting and the distinguished of the distinctive.” The common fasting is about complying with the known obligations, which may be summarized by abstaining from the desire for food and the marital relations (at the time of fast). For the distinctive fasting all senses refrain from sins, the tongue is to be guarded and the ear should refrain from listening to what is abhorrent “because that which is prohibited to speak about is also prohibited to listen to.”  A beautiful saying by al-Ghazali is: “one should not demand much of the lawful food at the break-fast, such as one’s abdomen is full, since there is no more detestable vassal to God than from an abdomen filled with lawful food.” The meaning of this rule of al-Ghazali is that the fasting person should eat whatever he/[she] used to eat every night if he/[she] was not fasting. And the prominent in distinctive fasting is the one who, after the break-fast, does not know whether his/[her] fasting was acceptable or no. The issue is not automatic in Islam.

As for the distinguished of the distinctive, their fasting is “the fasting of the heart from the worldly worries and thoughts and its complete unconcern with anything but God … and thus the breaking of the fast (al-fiṭr) occurs by thinking about anything other than God, mighty and majestic, and about the Last Day, as well as through the concern with this world, except in so far as it promotes religion”.

This tells us that each of Islam’s pillars is founded upon determination and sincerity. Thus, we should not be disappointed whenever we think that this or that person is satisfied with pretense. God alone judges the hearts. We pray that God might grant those, whom we find superficial in their exercises, depth in their piety so that the common in his/[her] faith might become from the distinguished or maybe from the distinguished of the distinctive. Perhaps his/[her] fast becomes similar to Mary’s fast associated with silence and tranquility. She said: “’I have vowed to the Compassionate to fast, and so I shall not talk today to any human being’” [Sura Maryam [Mary], 25]. And in this the truth of this saying is manifested:

Whenever the person fasts from the world all the months, which he/[she] lives, those months become months of fasting.

The whole path is a path of compassion, as this prayer says: “O my God, the fasting ones have wined, and we are Your sinful servants. Have compassion upon us for Your mercies’ sake, grant us from Your grace and kindness. Forgive us all by Your mercy, O most merciful of the merciful ones”. Whenever this comes to be true for a person, he/[she] becomes a window to the inclusive divine love.

All believing nations, who feel that through fasting they might appeal to the manifestations of truth, practice fasting. Buddies practice asceticism, purification and repression of desires and these, for them, lead to death. In the Gospel it is a recommendation and not a divine order. In different places in the New Testament fasting is associated with prayer. Fasting does not desist from prayer, rather, as if it sustains prayer. This tradition has continued in the First Church, as we read in the Book of Acts that the Holy Spirit addressed the Church of Antioch as it was holding the Divine Liturgy and fasting, and asked from it to send Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13: 1-6).

At this first journey there was no rule to specify the kinds of food people should abstain from, but Epiphanius of Cyprus in the fourth century speaks of abstaining from meat and its derivative products. He speaks of one meal per day, and this is confirmed at the council of Trullo [A.D. 692] at the end of the seventh century. While at a time I could attain, the break-fast has been for Christians after the sunset prayers.

And since fasting has been a church-provision, our Fathers have considered it mandatory. The churches have differed in the form of their disciplines. Today, in Orthodox Church, fasting implies abstaining from food at certain hours and refraining from meat and dairy products. However, this no longer has remained on its sternness as in the past. In Middle Ages the Orthodox Church allowed the fruits of the sea, for the lack of vegetables and herbs in certain areas. Other churches have expanded the period of fasting and elaborated on the kinds of food. The Evangelicals alone have voluntary individual fasting, not bound to a specific period.

Fasts have varied in every church. The Orthodox have four fasts in addition to the Wednesdays and the Fridays and at some feasts. Nevertheless, not only the type of fasting but mainly the intensity of prayers is perceptible, [particularly at] what is called the Lent, which prepares for the Easter.

Lent remains the most important fast in its significance and strives; since it is associated with the preparation to what we call the Holy Week or the Passion Week, which ends after Resurrection, “the Feast of the feasts and the Season of the seasons”. As for the significance of Resurrection [or the Easter, it is possible to say that] every important feast is derived from it.

As for its perception, fasting, for Jews, is concentrated on repentance, namely the seeking of God. For Christians and Muslims fasting is the plea for the face of God, and this [also] involves repentance. Thus, the fast of the Monotheists is distinguished from the Buddhists’, who do not have faith in God. And I do not doubt that the one and the only God accepts the fasting of the Buddhists as God accepts the fasting of the Abrahamic religions.

And whenever we want to read fasting at our times, we understand that it is a protest against the excessive use of food prevalent in this era of consumption. It is a confirmation of the words of Christ: “One does not live by bread alone” (Matt. 4: 4).

The human being lives first by the Word of God, and the rest is given to him/[her] as supplementary.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “االصيام” –An Nahar- 29.08.2009

It is natural that the mention of light as the antithesis of darkness would occupy a major status in the Biblical text: “And God said: ‘Let there be light’.” (Gen 1: 3). It does not speak of light in the absolute, but it speaks as if it is assigning a specific task for that “light”, one of dispelling the darkness. The writer of the passage does not stress the relation between light and the sun. And this brings us to the understanding of light in the Bible.

When we read the beginning of the gospel of John which relates to the above passage in Genesis, we understand that “life was the light of the world” (John 4: 1). And the life that the Gospel author refers to is in the Logos (the Word) who was in the beginning. This above mentioned life is uncreated; and if the task of the created light is the dispelling of darkness, then the life which is in the Divine Logos is the same divine life that is in us which takes us from the “spiritual nothingness” we are in to “spiritual existence”. In this context, we have two sayings of Jesus the first of which is “I am the light of the world” (John 5: 9) in which the light is again the antithesis of darkness and the second saying is of the disciples “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 14: 5) as it came in the “Sermon on the Mount”. Putting the two sayings together, we find that Christ reveals himself as the source of light and He calls his beloved to acquire His radiance.

The light shines by itself and if you forget the source of its emission, you remain in the darkness. We are in a dynamics of giving and receiving light; this is clear in the Psalms of the Old Testament where it says: “In your light do we see light” (Psalms 4:34). The emphasis in these verses is on the light of the righteous. Loving God in righteousness is the dwelling in the light and betraying God is darkness. That is the kingdom of Joy and love.

That is revealed in the Last Supper when Jesus was asked about who would betray him, Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot……………….. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.”(John 13: 26-30). The word “night” here could be considered as a figure of speech meaning that Judas’ heart has become darkened as opposed to the spiritual light in the glory of Christ; for John says that after Judas had gone Jesus says, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him’.” We find much symbolism in the Gospel of John.

We also find that symbolism of light in the rituals of the Church. The gold which is the foundation color in iconography, the halo around the Saints’ head, the lighting of candles by the faithful, the candles lit for use in the Liturgy….etc. In one of the services of the Great Lent, the priest carries a candle before the faithful proclaiming: “Come take light from the light in which there is no darkness”. This is done nowadays during daytime when no lighting is needed. In the Latin Church, there is a similar service to the Orthodox service of Holy Saturday during which the eyes of the believers are looking at the visible light while the hearts go beyond that to behold the Light who is Life.

One of my favorite verses in the Qura’an is Sura24: 35 “God is the light of the heavens and the earth; a likeness of His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, (and) the glass is as it were a brightly shining star, lit from a blessed olive-tree, neither eastern nor western, the oil whereof almost gives light though fire touch it not– light upon light– God guides to His light whom He pleases, and God sets forth parables for men, and God is Cognizant of all things.” The Qura’an here confirms that God is light in Himself, and then compares the radiance of God with the sensory radiance of the light of an oil lamp, then ascends with a move of love to God saying: “light upon light”. Yes the Creator is light in Himself and He brings people out of the darkness to the light in general and He specifically says that there is guidance in the Torah and in the Gospels. The Quran rejects any claim of light the source of which is not God; it says in Sura 24: 40, “Whoever God does not attribute light to him does not have the light.”

This indicates that the meaning of the word light in the three monotheistic religions is the same; light is God and only God, whence He is the source, the origin and radiance regardless of what disapprovers say.

Since all religious groupings seek the light and its guidance, then it remains our duty towards Truth that we love God as light not only in Himself, but also in how He shines in the others in the text of their scriptures; because everyone who teaches his religion to his own people, is supposed to reveal what light there is in the religion of the other. That does not reduce our commitment to our own religion in the way The Light is revealed in it.

If you are committed to a certain religion, you do not necessarily reject all the others. As someone said: “My religion is that of love wherever it is found.” So of you find the light outside your own religious boundaries, you feel you belong there because you seek that Love that “broadcasts its tunes” here and there. That is the true openness that saves you now and at the resurrection. And such a blessing can be given to the common people and not only to those who are knowledgeable in religion. This is so because the illumined hearts can see what great intellects cannot.

Before you are open to others of different religions, it is important that you submit yourself to God making only Him the lord of your heart always returning to Him in everything. Without that condition, there is no Light. Without that you become a slave to the “letter” in religion and the meanings of words and rituals the warmth of which you do not experience. Those who have their hearts set on God, those whose pilgrimage is to His Blessed Face, are his people and beloved. Those, whoever they are, have been illumined with His brightness. I do not say that all religions are one and the same; and I do not say that they teach the same about God, but I see God in His followers wherever they are found and I get blessed through them. Those who do pilgrimage to God, to His person and to His light are my brothers; there are no limits for those who love. We do not stop at the fact that God is light; but that He illuminates those who want, and the light in me yearns for the light in you.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: ” – 01.08.2009

The fears of the human being concerning one’s life, property, destiny, family, folk, or denomination cast the person into anxiety and panic, or depression, since one feels that these fears threaten, his/[her] being, grab, diminish or disperse him/[her] to the extent of being vanished. In reality, whenever one fears nothing, one becomes aware of one’s existent being. However, whence for the person to experience happiness, as it is an aspect of integrity, if one does not become a free existent, free from whatever is thrown in time, and from time itself in its becoming worn, free from war, politics, sex, enemies and friends, free from the spouse and the children, though living with them, free from all who have resorted to him/[her] or those to whom he/[she] has resorted, [and thus] laying the foundation upon that which does not pass away.

Surely you are in the world, however, are you of the world? Who has explained what Jesus had said in this context, when he prayed for His disciples in His farewell address: “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth.” (John 17: 15-17) The world, here, is the historical universe and the disciples are placed in it and cannot afford departing it, since there is neither a different world nor a different history. Jesus asks His Father not to save them from [worldly] existence, but from the evil, which surrounds [worldly] existence or forms it.

Hence, truth does not emerge from history, though it dwells in it, since truth should have a scope. Truth is something else. It descends, from above, upon some hearts and spreads from there to other hearts, who are thirsty to truth, who become contiguous with truth, or it resides in them as they descend from heaven, as John the evangelist puts it. Thus, we have this tangible existence, which is temporal, and sometimes stormy, which always proceeds blunderingly, and admits the resolution falling upon it. Existence calms down sometimes, through that which descends upon it, regardless whether it was in an individual or in a group. Time after time the human being become flawless and those great ones in divine praise become more often flawless, though they might fall sometimes. The great ones might fail whenever they bypass the vision of that which they need to approach in order that truth might descend upon them, and hence, the saying will be true for them:  “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1: 25), until they became “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Rom. 1: 31).

As we speak about sin we do not employ psychoanalysis, though it might be helpful to understand yourself and the people. If you were neurotic, and most of us are, this does not exempt you from the responsibility toward sin, which controls you, whether you have chosen it willingly or unintentionally. The biggest trick the devil uses is to convince you that there is no such a sin. This relaxes your stay in it and it seems to be good in your eyes, and hence sin puts on itself the garment of virtue. All those who fell in mass hysteria accompanied with hatred, at the last elections, thought of themselves as enlisted for the truth. And before long, you would advance from your political position, which was somehow moderate or even soft, to personal enmity. And in reality, hatred would be hidden within you and it would adopt a political issue, which might seem to be praiseworthy, to hit the other. Thus, you would become patronized (and half of the Lebanese people do not know why they have become patronized), and since you are unable to argue [or debate], you insult [the other] to the extent of beating. Hence, friendships might disappear in all this, while the righteous ones break up, and their hearts do not become ruined.

My father was a simple man. Before forty-seven years I accompanied him in order to vote, in the same polling station, and I felt, without me asking him or him asking me, that each of us had a different list than the other. Then, I accompanied him for lunch at the family’s house and we kept our friendliness. Why does friendliness fall in Lebanon? Isn’t it more important than the pandemonium of the elections?

In the world, but not of the world, rather of God; this is the rule of salvation. God is within you or with you; God frees you and brings you closer to the truth, in order that you would not become paralyzed spiritually, rather you become the emersion of God in this world.

God dwelling with you and within you is your salvation from this world in which you live.

An example of this would be a friend of mine who was great and one of the elite intellectuals. I did not know about his deficiency at the beginning of our friendship. He encountered two disappointments in his life, in the national-patriotic domain, I will not mention them. Two choices he made, and I know their importance, however they are almost completely collapsed at the present. He fell into great sadness. He fell to the extent of frustration and he did not rise. I said to him: The greatest cases perish; this is the oppressiveness of the epoch. History is the grave of great causes.

Thus, those who disappoint you are the ones closest to you, who were known by their love and truthfulness. Suddenly, after long years of companionship, you find out that they have betrayed the loyalty or have fallen in sins you would never expect, or faults, or hidden inclinations are revealed to you that you would never know. In case you were bound to those close ones to you to the extent that you would come from them, or in case this or that person was the one you have counted on or you have laid your confidence on, you will be befallen by great sorrow out of which you might not emerge.

The notion of ‘letting go’ is essential, in the Gospel, for salvation. In the Master’s calling to Matthew, the Master says: “Follow me. And he left everything, and rose and followed him.” (Luke 5: 27-28) The Lord has, more than once, spoken about leaving the close relatives (father, brother, sister and others). Clearly the Savior does not call to a physical or a social separation from the family and the relatives. Rather, he wants that you do not make any person a center of your life or a source for it. Christian love is about giving and there is no slavery in it. Love, which ancient Greeks called it Eros is a feeling of possession; hence you posses and you become possessed [by another]. However, in evangelical love you eliminate your ‘I’ within you and you extinguish it completely, in order that you might become for the Other. And whenever you eliminate it, God dwells within you and raises within you a pure ‘I’, thus, the Lord becomes your face since there remains nothing from the earth within you.

Then, you will serve but you will not possess and you will not ask for reword or thanks, you would not expect that someone might acknowledge you or remain faithful to you. You have loved him/[her] so that he/[she] might know that he/[she] is the beloved of God, and might feel within him/[her]self God’s kindness and compassion. Thus, you have become poor to all people; to those pure and malicious, who were showing affection to you. You grieve for their deliverance and not for they have offended you. You pray for them in purity of thought and life, and your inner being does not separate from them, though they keep you away from their company.

Whenever you become free of all people and all the benefits that you used to draw forth, and you prevent them from extolling you, whenever you dwell in God, you will not become proud of yourself, and if God is everything within you, you exist through God and God becomes present within you, and then you will not separate your ‘I’ from God’s presence since you do not perceive your face as in a mirror. The deviators do this. The one who loves the face of God does not deviate, since one thinks of oneself as nothing. And one’s Lord makes him/ [her] something, but without his/[her] knowledge. And if one can, one would cover one’s outer and inner form, in order that nothing appears from him/[her] other than the Word, and God alone remains manifested until the world transforms into “a new heaven and a new earth” [Rev.21: 1].

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “الكون الجديد” –An Nahar- 28.06.2009

Nietzsche said: “The last Christian died on the cross“. I do not consider what he said fully wrong though he did not hit the mark because he did not know the glory of the martyrs and the saints or perhaps he did not want to know. But he is right in that you cannot be another Christ though you try to be like the savior to a great extent. What Man cannot do is to have his heart, his words and his actions be one and in unity with each other. Only the Man of Nazareth could do that. You cannot be the Absolute He is. Yet He likes you to aspire to the absolute. Perhaps the characteristic of Christianity is that it always draws you to Christ the Lord and His commands for you. This is why Christianity does not place a ceiling that you stop at but wants you, as you soar upwards, to realize that the grace which comes down on you from above, always draws you to Heaven and does not accept that you stand below the Divine Throne but facing it.

The ascension of Christ after the resurrection renders the humanity which He has assumed to be seated with the Deity (at the right hand of God). This happened in Him because His humanity is made whole by His Deity in that He had full obedience to the Father; and His obedience was not an imposition of His Deity on His humanity since the two natures in Him were not mixed. Voluntarily, with His free will, He did what pleased His Father always. And He desires that we always please the Father likewise. He has promised you that you can transcend your earthly whims as much as you can, and refuses that any sin would find a dwelling place in you. In Heaven, He intercedes to His Father to make you whole. And being whole in your humanity is to ongoingly seek the perfection your humanity is a potential for. And if you could not get to that wholeness, then you should desire it or else you are in the wrong. Christianity is this ongoing leap to that wholeness accompanied by this constant sadness over not being there yet. Without that sadness, you would have a compromise between you and iniquity, whether it is small or great. Any blemish in you that you have consciously accepted is a pact between you and the kingdom of evil. And if you neglect becoming conscious of that blemish, then that neglect in itself is sinful.

I understand the position of the Protestant Reformation when it asserts that the Scriptures are the only reference to the faith. By that, it wants to attach little importance to Tradition, seen as the result of human effort. But what I embrace in the Protestant Reformation is the desire that every human individual be in harmony and unity with the Word of God in the Bible.

We understand that the Word continues in the Tradition knowing that some detail of linguistic décor in the Tradition is dispensable since it (language décor) is inevitable not to use in religions. But Christianity wants itself to be the mere Word of God and it is not difficult to distinguish between what is divine in the Church’s heritage and what is earthly.

It makes me sad to see some leaders in the Church here on Earth, who do not care about God’s word that governs every speech or action or organization; they have adapted to the décor and have exchanged the wisdom of God with that of this world. This reminds me of a story in the ascetic literature about one of the novices to the monastic life who lives with an elder who trains him in the spiritual life. The story says that the novice died a year after he joined the monastery and the elder saw him in his dream in a fire reaching to his knees. He told him: “I have trained you in holiness, what did you do to yourself that made you go in the fire?” The novice answered saying: “Be at peace my father for I am standing on the shoulders of a bishop.” No comment. The meaning is clear.

I know that righteousness is not the monopoly of anyone, and I know that it has nothing to do with the hierarchy in the Church nut I am tired because I know well the history of the Church and I know well that it is not all Martyrs and Saints. I have read Gandhi well and I understand that he was very fond of “The Sermon on the Mount” and I admit that he did not convert to Christianity because he had not met a single Christian who took the Sermon seriously.

The saints are my only consolation. I know the lives of many of them, and that is sufficient to make me know the power of Christ and His glory particularly in those who have testified with their blood, in a manner beyond all understanding and beyond all description. But what shocks me most is to see someone trying to live according to the Gospel, totally misunderstood and even accused of ignorance and stupidity. Isn’t the Gospel God’s policy? Some people prefer the ways of this world with what it has of falsehood and empty talk. I am not unaware that the ways of this world can do better in several areas, but only according to the criteria of the world. I do not criticize Christians who sin. I am one of them. My only complaint is that they mock, consciously or unconsciously, the criteria of the Gospel.

Let no one confront me with the Lord’s words: ‘Do not judge lest you be judged’. I know too well that judgment belongs to God. I only blame those who are baptized and have accepted the Gospel as the reference for their faith but do not want the Gospel to be applied in their daily affairs and life.

This situation will last forever. Man will go on sinning. This is not my problem, but God’s: the Scriptures speak of that often. Jesus knows that in his Church, many people will continue to wallow in their mire.

But the above condition of Man does not convince me that we have to present to people a Christianity watered down with a mediocre morality to make it more available to those who are corrupt in this world. Such a Christianity has no chance of being considered as authentic by Jesus of Nazareth. In Christianity, only the word of Jesus must prevail. Only His words, and nothing else, bring salvation. I know that I am Christian if I strive in the limitations of my weaknesses to become like the Lord; as such I would have kept the faith in Christ the Absolute. But if I sell Him away by diluting His commandment, then I would be a traitor and, like Judas, I would have hanged myself with a rope or without one.
Why not tell the sinner that he is a disbeliever and a renegade? The miscreant is better than the believer who takes pleasure in his sin; in that, one flatly refused Christ, while the other accepts Christian belief without really giving himself fully to Christ. Those who refuse the Lord to govern their lives are not baptized with the Holy Spirit, but only with water. Their judgment will be even greater.

Is the history of the Church one of treachery? Yes. And on the other hand, does the history of the Church have accounts of people who passionately loved God? Also Yes. Therefore you need to put treachery aside and love God so that you can prove Nietzsche wrong. You yourself, accept to be crucified. This is your only option if you want to have salvation.

Those who loved God with all their heart have always been a dear few. Andre Gide told us in Beirut half a century ago:”The saved have always been few”.

We will finish the course. Each one of you is able to do that if He accepts the Gospel to govern him. If one’s heart is convinced of that, then he will have a greater chance in overcoming his sins and in seeing Christ as his savior; not two thousand years ago, but now in the present daily moments of his life.

Christ only? Yes. Yet that is not His wish. “God wishes that all will be saved”. He wants all people to carry His mark and to put Him on. He did not want Himself to be the voice of one who cries in the wilderness. He died so that you would be able to eliminate any opposition to His Word your mind can have and so that nothing other than His Holy Spirit would nest in your flesh and bones.

There are some who love Jesus passionately and exalt Him; and He in His turn raise them to the Heavenly Throne and seats them with Him at the right hand of the Father.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: “المسيح والمسيحيون” – 16.5.2009

Whenever we look at ourselves from a historical perspective, we are a group of people who come from Lebanon, from the wrongs and the virtues of its children, from its aspirations, from its government with its deficiencies and failures. Some of us come with a lot of the sins of this nation and others with a little. Some of us collapse under the burden and other try to rise up. However, all inherit the country somehow, yet, few know that destinies are not inevitable and that God is the God of change as God is the God of preservation, in order that no one remains under the yoke.

What matters is that the person does not only think that he/[she] comes from the country, but that he/[she] gives something to it. What matters is that the person might believe that history is not blind. History is not a product of unending storms, rather the greatest thing about it is that it makes people whether geniuses, or saints; and if you are unable to order intelligence as you order goods, you are able to aspire about spreading the light in your surroundings, so that it might bring about change in some people. The question of the state is the same question of the human being and his/[her] deep spirituality and the integrity of his/[her] thought and ethics. Yes, the state is a construction, a philosophy, a capacity and regulations, laws, mechanisms and ministries. These all are carried out by the human being. Forming the state is not a mechanical industry, rather people work for it. Hence, countries differ according to the scientific and moral level of their people.

Surly countries differ according to the different societies, since the society reflects the moral character, the nature and the historical legacy. In this region there is the Christian ethos and the Islamic one. And in some aspects of existence and living-routs human patterns originally differ, though they come, to a great extent, close nowadays. Sociologists have noticed the difference in Europe between the Protestant community and the Catholic community, and they have observed quite a difference in ethics between these two societies, whenever they were independent of each other and not mixed.

Every society has its means for spiritual sophistication and the literature resulting from it. Maybe moral deviations have obliterated all societies, making them converge in evil, or maybe advancement has occurred in all societies, for some cultural reasons that have emerged.

Then, at the end, the state is the offspring of the people for whom it takes care and they embrace it. Thus, the question that this or that political group has brought up “which Lebanon do we want” is only a presumption. The issue of external communication, which was described as cultural direction, is bound to the state’s foreign policy. As I recall, not any of the two groups has raised the question: which Lebanon we want in its spiritual dimension, so that all our problems might be solved through spiritual whiffs that descend from above. The charges issued against this or that segment do not address [merely] matters of rights or management, or the political work, as if our concerns are looked upon from abstract angels, independent from the human inner reality.

If it would be possible to describe the Lebanese people consisting of a number of citizens, who exercise bribery or accept it, this will result in an invalid electoral law, and if some of us practice lying, what is then the benefit of transactions, reports and testimonies in the courts? The establishment of a country does not stand only on studied mechanisms and arrangement of the legal status; rather it stands upon the refinement of this people far from the structures of the state.

At the end, the question comes whether you believe in God. In case you believe, you do not lie, you do not bribe, and you do not lure a doctor to give you a false health report, and you do not ask the priest to give you a forged certificate for the baptism of your son, in order that he might benefit financially from it in the country where he lives abroad.

If we have here a morally corrupt pattern, widely spread, then political disagreements, for me, come secondary in importance. Let me here confess somewhat. When I returned from Paris [at the end of my] study, in 1952, I felt that I could not cope with the situation because of its large falsehood. And stifle [that I experienced] has aggravated especially because at my stay in Europe no one has lied to me and I have not lied.

I was appointed as an instructor at Balamand, and at that time it was a secondary school. We trained the students on honesty to the extent that we were able to leave them without an observer at the written exams. Some of the virtue is education. I have not found in Lebanon centers where the person is trained on honesty and on integrity in financial dealings.

The problem is that the East believes in God and accomplishes the prayers, but it does not consider generally that faith constrains it [or the people] by a behavior that is in harmony with this faith. Some people in the West are atheists and they behave in a way that is in harmony with faith.

 Who can educate us in order to become a clean society, and then a viable state, as they say nowadays? I am completely far from all parties, hence, I cannot know about its ability of moral education. However, supposedly it discharges some of its members when they commit a great offense which affects the reputation of the group. Further, I remember from my childhood, that the book called ‘civics’ includes ethical principles.

However, the origin of education lays in religions. I know nothing about how Muslim Imams pursue the believers, at this level. However, the Friday speech can do much if it devotes part of its word to morals. And in Islam there are great ones who know, better than I do, how to contrive the nation on this point.

I do not have a complete study on ethics-education for young Christians and adults. At a first glimpse seems to me that there is great concentration on the theological and the liturgical address at the expense of moral education. I do not deny the existence of a large number of pure ones within the Christian communities. However, I do not sense the preachers’ anger about violence and bloodshed, and their outrage concerning intolerance and the deception of accounting records. I have not heard an urgent call to honesty and purity in commercial dealings, and chastity of the tongue in political talks, sincerity toward the adversary and forgiveness of the enemy.

I remember when we were children, the priest, by whom we used to confess, would prevent us to receive the communion if we had not apologized to the one and had not forgiven those who offended us. Reconciliation was required; [good] intentions were not enough to approach the body of the Lord.

There are Arab people, I know, who do not practice cursing, insulting and filthy communication, especially blasphemy. Some of our people confuse God, God’s prophets and the sacred things with defiled talks. How could those people have discipline in any verbal or non-verbal area?

There is no space in the church for coddling and the lubrication of all restrictions. There is, rather, place for discipline, since the church is a holy nation [1Pet.2: 9], as the Bible says. The church of the fourth century was expelling from its ranks the apostate, the pagan, the murderer and the adulterer. I do not call for a return of excommunication in relation to committers of these sins. However, the mass of people which does never expel one of its ranks, whenever he/[she] is approved of great offense, according to the community, this turns to be pilling up of both good and bad ones. In other words, if you allow me to use popular saying, it would be for gentlepersons and mobsters. This is not a church.

Which Lebanon do we want? The simple answer is that we want Lebanon of the uprights, on the condition that this goodness becomes the predominant stereotype of our people. All other questions of political or economical nature would be solved, if we can, during twenty or thirty years create a new people, obedient to God. Then, the Lebanese would be descending from heaven.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “الانسان النازل من السماء” –An Nahar- 11.04.2009

Can the church, as a structure, be alongside the state, in a way that we can bring the two together with the conjunction ‘and’, for the purpose of distinction, separation and confrontation of the two? In the New Testament the only book which refers to divine condemnation upon the Roman state is the Book of Revelation. Nero in this book is the beast. In the Gospel, Herod is a fox. This was a divine verdict concerning two governors. However, as the Gospel was spread and as Rome had to confront heathenism, Peter and Paul have spoken about submission to the authorities and they have not addressed the rights of the church in relation to the state, nor of an integral relationship between the two. This relationship has not started until Constantine, in the beginning of the fourth century, and particularly with his dynasty. As Constantine converted to Christianity, he has known that the church is something else since it cares about the inner things, i.e. the spiritual matters, the sacraments and the doctrines, while the emperor is “the bishop of the outer things”.

The Roman emperors’ worry was to organize the kingdom. And here the theological controversies have to be considered, since they were dividing the kingdom, and the emperor used to intervene in favor of what he considered orthodox against the holders of heresies. Then the notion of ‘synergy’ has spread namely the consistency [or the harmony] between the church and the state, with the consideration of each one’s independence. The Eastern Roman Empire is the continuation of the ancient Rome that is why it considers itself as standing on its own, though the people are Eastern Romans on the one hand, and Orthodox Christians on the other.

Russia has followed this manner until Peter the Great came and subjected the church to the state. And now after the fall of the communist regime Patriarch Cyril, who is newly elected, speaks of the consistency between the state and the church, however, each as independent of the other.

I will not speak of the West which in general has followed secularism, with its different spectra, which does not consider the religious affiliation of the citizens; however, it might support the church as in France and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the philosophy of cooperation in Eastern Europe would not have been possible except for the fact that the citizens were from the same religious background, so that there could have been a common language between the church and the state. But whenever the state is multi-religious, then, how could discourse occur between the state and the religious minorities? Then, there would not be a religious discourse between the denominations and the governing authority. And if the government is based on a religion, then, some of the arguments of a religious discourse would be invalidated between the religious communities and the government.

Then, we would have to return back to the apostolic era, when the church was not addressing the state; rather all believers were subjects to the state, even the persecuted heathens.

This is the case concerning history. However, from the doctrinal perspective there is no theoretical confrontation between the church, which exists in the heart of God moving toward eternal life, and the state which governs the human times or is governed by the human times. These are two realities which are not related by any conjunction.

It is through the individual believer that the spirit of the Lord is disseminated to the people gathered in a state. These are prophetic whiffs. Thus, the structured church and the structured state do not meet. The prophets, namely the ones inspired by the spirit, change the people, and it is from the people that laws originate and the political engagement arises. And if the state is multi-religious, then, diverse whiffs appear from the followers of the religions, which sometimes are convergent, and some other times are divergent, and the national texture comes to be multicolored.

Thus, it is not possible to bring the state and the church of Christ into an encounter, whether of association or dissociation, since there is no such encounter in principle. Though some countries consider working with denominations and this makes secularism truncated or relative in those countries. Nevertheless, it seems that in France [for example] there are tendencies for working with religions, since they are carried out by ethnicities of strange origins, which have not been integrated into the French society.

An accountable answer concerning this relationship [between state and religion] from the Christian side will not be given unless the church is perceived as moving toward eternal life, while its children utilize this world and witness in it. And the testimony is left to everyone of them based on his/[her] own analysis of the political situation of his/[her] country. One of the believers might come up with an analysis different than other believers, and thus, he/[she] might take a different practical position [than others]. Political fragmentation in the church community is not only possible but also it is spiritually sound, since it signifies maturity, and variety is the fruit of maturity. However, whenever church leadership strives to convene its children upon that which is different than the Gospel, the doctrine and the inner purification, this would mean that it has forgotten the unique nature of Christianity, which soars above the obsolescent. The church exists in time, and by this it is the expansion of Christ’s presence in it, however, it is not of this world, as the Gospel of John tells.

No doubt the church observes what is going on in the world, however without any competence, since its members work with competence in society. The rulers and the legislators have studied politics and its branches as a science and they are practicing politics as they have studied it. While those, responsible for the salvation of the souls, have studied, so to speak, the art of the salvation of the souls. And whatever is void of science [or knowledge] is expressed in an experimental or approximate manner. And thus, they do not meet the people of science.

Therefore in this matter the clerical referentialities do not mean much to me. Their work is sanctification itself and the purification of the believers. And whenever they delve into the political discourse they would be saying, or as if they are saying, that they do not have confidence in the efficiency of the Holy Spirit, which they are entrusted to convey to their communities. They do not believe in the efficiency of the Spirit and [thus] add to it the efficiency of the political discourse.

Similarly, the so-called lay-people (i.e. non-priests) are not capable of delegating their spiritual leader for a task other than the calling by which God has called him/[her]. This does not prevent that the bishop or the priest is from those who carry the Holy Spirit. This, however, is not of the sacramental priesthood. Rather, this is of prophesy, in the sense used in the New Testament, meaning that the bishop or the priest, through grace, can address the kings, the governors and the presidents in the name of the Lord, and not on behalf of one’s denomination, nor in the name of the country. The bishop or the priest can advocate for the oppressed and the weak from any religion or denomination and can uphold the endurance and the unity of the country, since this is a matter of love of all the people of the country.

You work and teach in the name of Christ, namely in the power of the Gospel and not of the numbers or the ancient mythologies. Christians are not privileged in any country, and they should not be so, since then they would be conceited while they should be washing the feet of the poor and the weak of every religion and denomination. Christians are not a denomination or a group of denominations. This is rather because of Lebanon’s sociological system. Christians are only the body of Christ and not the accumulations of history. Thus they are not on any side since Christ was not on any particular side. And whenever they do not have a power from above they will be wasting their and others’ time if they were searching for a power that comes to them from the texture of this world. They have to decide whether they are of the Gospel or no. While they contrive their stay on this earth with wisdom, which might be of this world since endurance is the condition for witnessing, but death also is of witnessing. The one crucified was a king, and He was raised on the wood bleeding till the end. I do not call anyone to being crucified; however those capable of it are the partners of the Lord in creating a new world.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “الكنيسة والدولة” –An Nahar- 28.03.2009

Tomorrow we would be halfway through Lent and the Church places the Cross in front of us to encourage those who might have become bored or tired of the struggle in fasting. The Cross is placed in the midst of different kinds of fragrant flowers and plants; the cross is also surrounded with three candles pointing to the eternal sacrifice of Christ where-by the Father had seen His Son crucified before the creation of the world ready to offer life to the world through Love.

Each of the Faithful walks over to the center of the church, where the Cross is, kisses it and receives from the priest a flower denoting that the Cross that has been accepted is our way to Paradise and Joy. And to make sure that the faithful do not think that Joy comes to them from much ease and a base sense of exhilaration, the Church reminds us through the Gospel reading of what Jesus says: “He who wants to follow me let him deny himself, carry his cross and follow me”. The Lord says “If you want to follow me” because nothing can force you to seek Jesus and commit yourself to Him. Freedom is your kingdom and from there you choose to go to either salvation or perdition.  And God is happy with your freedom though He does not desire your destruction. You cannot be in His image if you do not act freely like Him, for God did not create human robots to amuse Himself with what they do. The un-coerced free person is the one that goes to God and commits himself to Him or rejects Him.

“Who wants to follow me let him deny himself”. That means let him consider that his “I” does not exist. In that he is a slave though Jesus has said: “I do not call you slaves anymore”. There is slavery only in the world of sin. God has canceled our slavery after He made us sons in His beloved Son. Even though there is the risk of lazing as sons, yet God is pleased with the relation of Fatherhood after He has lifted His wrath from us in the Beloved Son Jesus with all what it entails of an adventure because there is no other alternative for sonship except slavery.

You throw away your “I” according to what Paul has said:” It is nor I who lives but Christ lives in me.” You are “He” through love and He is “you” even though your natures are different from each other and the persons are also distinct from each other.

“Let him deny himself, carry his cross and follow me”. Here the evangelist speaks of the many “crosses” that come your way in your life. According to the Old Testament, the cross is an abomination since it says: “Cursed is he who is hanged on a tree”. Christianity is realistic since it considers you crucified on the existence we live. Christianity is not a rose garden. It can become so if you choose to make your daily sufferings, the physical and the psychological, a path for you to see the Light. We suffer pain not considering it as coming from God in order to purify us or test us. God is not whimsical and tyrannical as some policemen are. You throw yourself into God’s bosom the way you are, and after that you lean on His breast as John did during the Last Supper.  Jesus in turn will take away your cross from you and He would nail Himself on it though He does not find it pleasant; but He has become “drunk” with you with what you are about of misery and He wants you to be with Him so you can savor His Splendor. The Lord ends His call by saying “and follow me”. That is that you would have enough of His mind so you would follow Him to the end of His earthly course which is Calvary. And so when you sit at His feet, you would receive all of your life and existence from Him.

Jesus confirms this course by saying: “For what benefits Man if he gains the world but he loses himself”. If you accept your crucifixion, it is that the Savior would take away from you all what you have or what you think you have or what you consider is yours. Thus there is complete emptying of self such that there is no décor in you, no gold or prestige or power that brings you joy, no beauty tempts you, and you are not ashamed of your poverty and the limitations of your intellect and your culture, and you would be ready for hunger and scorn and mistrust and disrepute coming from those who are jealous of you, and when you are insulted by those who insult God and speak ill of you; if you can bear all that with a loving heart for the sake of Jesus’ little brothers, you would be thus losing this world and gaining yourself in the true reality which is the reality of Christ.

With that you would have moved out of this present time to the one coming though your body is still here. It is not important for them to kill you but to overcome you thinking that with that they can efface you; they do not know that you efface them.

Man is at a loss thinking that what he owns can make of him a good human being or can make him more important. All those who think that Man’s value is a function of his externals make a great mistake. When Jesus says: “What can a man give for himself”, it is as if he is saying that nothing can amount to the inner being, or real Joy, or the divine dignity that is poured on Man. The choice is between real being and additions to that. When God “creates” you, you do not put on any other garment and cannot add anything to what He has wrought in you.

Strange is the saying of the Saints that “poverty is richness”. Perhaps this is what Paul meant to say by “all those who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ”. Ant this is told to the newly baptized while they are still naked. One wonders at those Christians who believe that they have a garment of gold on them when in fact they are clothes-less.

Whoever speaks about the cross has to understand the above speech or else he does not belong. We (Christians) are as such and that is all what we have. When we preach Christ crucified, we would have preached him as having risen from the dead. That is a dual action pursuant to Jesus’ words “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him”, or when He says somewhere else “Glorify me Father with the glory that I had with you before the beginning of the world”. In both sayings His glory is in the love He has revealed to his disciples in voluntarily dying for them. The moment He willed to die, He achieved victory. And the appearances to His disciples afterwards were only a conveyance of this victory. Telling of His death as we are commanded by St. Paul is a proclamation fo His resurrection and a living in it and through it free of death.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: “أحد الصليب” – 21.03.09

Last Monday was the Feat of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and in Greek it is called the Feast of the Meeting. I take this opportunity as a symbol to say what I intended to speak about. Maybe the deep meaning lies by what Luke had written in this chapter [of the Gospel] saying: “And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord” [Luke 2: 22-23].

This is a meeting with the temple, the meeting of the New Living Temple with the old one. There was a man called Simeon, who was not of the priests. He received the child and said that He carries salvation to the Jews and to the nations. I stop here to say first that Judaism has come to an end and its temple has been extinguished as the Romans burnt it in the year seventy. Thus, every old thing has passed away as Paul has said [2Cor. 5: 17], and as we feel, we, the children of the New Covenant, which God has established with those whose hearts were renewed and dwelt by God. Thus, contrary to what people think, the religion of the Old Testament has not survived purely as it was. In the Jewish conscience the religion of the Old Testament is crowned by Talmud, and the daily life of the Jews is dominated by Talmud, which was written five centuries after Christ. Jesus of Nazareth has brought Judaism to the divine purposes, which were encapsulated by ostensible address. Whenever religious ordinances become letters that we accomplish they kill the self, or enslave it. And the culmination of this situation was when Jews became adorers of themselves and of the land. As if they, as the group set upon the “Promised Land”, are the saviors of themselves and of the world. This is their theology sine long time ago, as if God’s concern is the dust of the earth, or as if God is the land register for their benefit.

We Eastern Christians say that Judaism, as it represents the laws and the temple, has come to an end (even when its stones have not been extinguished). And that the Jewish mentality as it is about the letters of the laws, has no more place for God. Consequently, our conflict with the contemporary Zionism, concerning the concept of the Holy Land, is a theological conflict. Thus, we do not understand the Western Christian theology which claims that Jews are still God’s people who carry God’s message to the world. After the Church has become the people of God, Christ has absorbed everything old, in order to make it new. Whoever brings the old things, that are within him/[her]self, to death, will live with Christ, who is the whole of newness.

This is why the old structures, which carry the seed of death and the culture of death, have been destroyed in order that they might carry the seed of life and the culture of life. In every one of us there is the tendency toward rigid conventions, i.e., the tendency to change life into temples made by hands, of which the fountain of its enlivening, which was dripping in it, has been cut after its eruption within God. And hence, the old is to be considered as old, similar to the cells which become old and cause death. The structures of old mind are fake by their nature and they erode us from inside, similar to the cancerous cells, and there is no revivification possible for the body unless all of its components are renewed.

Every human being is inclined toward the old, since the new disturbs as it requires responsibility, namely the will to change, similar to being born anew, and this in its evangelical terminology is called being born of the Spirit.

Our story with life is about how we can fight the power of spiritual death that is within us? How can we confront senescence? The Fall, in the Eastern Church, is not about a sin that we have inherited from the beginning. You do not inherit another’s responsibility, rather every soul dies by its own death, i.e., by its inner evil and it carries its own sin and not another’s. Nevertheless, the human being is born blemished and everyday of his/[her] life brings him/[her] closer to death and brings into his/[her] existence that which hinders the realization of his/[her] divine calling. And that prevents or delays his/[her] ascension. In this deep sense we say “every soul shall have a taste of death” [Sura Al-῾Imrān (The Family of ῾Imrān), 135]. In the old expression, these are the devil’s temptations or the attacks of lust, so if you become immersed in the lusts of the earth you will lose interest in heaven, where is the renewal of life.

Every fear of death makes you create structures, or conventions to which you retreat and think that they might protect you from the various expressions of the fall. In reality the human being is in a situation of escape. He/[she] feels that the face of God is pursuing him/[her] and that God demands a lot and requires effort, and this threatens the temples that we made inside us, to which we resort, yet, soon we discover that they do not heal us.

As old Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms, he prayed [for himself] that God may take him, and he said, “for my eyes have seen your salvation” [Luke 2: 30]. Salvation is the newness of God and God was never old. This statement hides the intention of the one who uttered it to say that the old temples within me should extinguish as I encounter the tenderness of Christ, in order that, similar to this baby, I also might become tender. And if I become so I would desire the tenderness of God and God’s healing.

Salvation does not only save you. It renews you, since whenever you perceive God as life-giving, you will live. You will live through God’s life. “He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth belongs to the earth, and of the earth he speaks”. (John 3: 31) This has nothing to do with ages since “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3: 6).

Yes, every human being has body and mind. This is from the created nature and it has great value on this level. However, it is immeasurable with the grace that has descended. On that level, bodies and minds would not be considered, since all of them are incomparable to the grace. Thus, there is no similarity between that which has come of nature and that which has come of the supernatural. That which has come from below is preservation and human training. While that which has descended from above is not in need of bodies, minds, government, world systems and the order which the human being has established for him/[her]self, thinking that he/[she] might benefit from the arrangements of science and that he/[she] grows and is founded through them.

You are renewed whenever you perceive the Kingdom of God, as He says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3: 3). Being born from a woman is of nature. Being born of God is of the will of God and of its acceptance by the human being; however, this needs a continuous strengthening through obedience. There is no such a treaty that guarantees your being contiguous to God. You are exposed to spiritual damage. Thus, you have to be awake. Spiritual vigilance requires that you love it, and that you find joy in God’s accompaniment to you. Your accompanying God and God’s presence with you do not create temples within you. You always need that God provides you with God’s grace and you receive it as the old Simeon has received Jesus.

This constant watchfulness liberates you from fear. Ask God that God may accompany you, and that God may make you always a new creature who rises from death. The most dangerous temptation is fear. “Perfect love casts out fear”. [1John 4: 18] This firmness is not from you, and it does not last by its own. It lasts through persistent prayer, and through reciting the name of Jesus, which whenever your tongue repeats, becomes a presence and at the presence fear disappears. Then, the old things pass away. And then you know that God has made you from the children of the Kingdom.

Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi

Original Text: “الأشياء العتيقة قد مضت” –An Nahar- 07.02.2009

I am not here to compare and favor one religion over the other or to define the nature of religion as to whether it is laws, obligations, regulations and prohibitions or not. Christianity is not any of the aforementioned even though they are indispensable in regulating human temporal life. But Christianity, in the absolute, is something else. Love which is the whole of Christianity, its doctrines included, is a divine movement in the heart and through the heart and a “move” towards the brother; and in that it is like nothing else. If we say that God is love, it is clear that He does not have countability in Him, He who “counts” God, as Imam Ali says, limits Him in the sense that the rule of numbers (Arithmetic) does not apply to Him. If you consider His oneness as a negation of “twoness”, you would count Him. And if you say that there are three manifestations in Him you also would count Him. What you say is not meant arithmetically. The oneness of the God we believe in is free of any numerical meaning. In that cadre of oneness we can see God only as adjectives we describe Him with, but His essence is manifested by all of His works which are summed up in Love.

One of the expressions of that love is the Eucharist that is our participation in the Communion Cup on Sunday about which much theology has been written and around which many unending arguments have been spun yet that mysterion (sacrament) is but the pouring forth of Christ’s sacrifice which He lifted up to the Father and itself is what we participate in. The life that spread from Golgotha to the whole universe, we take it in so we can live by receiving the love that God has loved us with. And we surround this communion with hymns and readings. But the essence of the mysterion is the descent of the Divine Love upon us and our response to it with obedience.

I have shown at different times that Pascha, “the feast of feasts and the season of seasons”, is our only real feast because Christ’s victory is celebrated and that every other feast is only an elucidation for the mystery of that victory. But what we have in the feasts is only icons of that love.

The issue is that the Lover pours down his love wholly on the beloved if the latter receives this love personally. God calls us to know our belovedness (that we are loved) and to tell others of it; and Christ is in all of that. It is true you are in need of teachings but that is only to lead you to understand that you are called to enter the Divine bridal chamber. Verily, apart from that, every discourse is garrulity (chatter).

There are some who are unable to have such vision due to darkness in the soul or insensitivity in the heart until God “throws” His light in that heart.

And light, from light obtains. Hence he who senses his belovedness carries it on to the others. So after the commandment of loving God comes the commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. How could you love the other despite the hurt he has caused you? Because you know that he is God’s beloved and hence you cannot but love him with the love that you have begot (inherited) from your Lord. All else, that is not according to that measure of love is prosecution; and prosecution presupposes that there is on Earth those who condemn others with laws made by Man. To prosecute you implies that I look down at you or that I see you against me and that I want to get back what is mine through the power of the law.

In the Kingdom of Love there is no prosecution. In the world of sin you resort to law courts in that you have practiced love towards the other but he rejects it. Yes in this world there is money, rights and property. And these are governed by those in the world and these are necessities in the world of sin. And you might not be able to fly from this present world era but in Christ Jesus I take you with me to the era to come. I pull you towards it with all my affections; I pray that you would go along with me there. You might abhor the world to come because it threatens your interests. And the clash is always there, while you are in this world, between your desire for god and the application of yourself to worldly desires. The choice is yours.

Quite often people face us with the question as to how can one live according to the Gospel? If we do not tell lies, cheat or pilfer in our work we cannot earn a living. That is not true in reality; not all the institutions are founded on corruption. I knew several among the judiciary (I know several judges) who were content with their income; and if any conflict arises between what is Divine and your performance in a certain job, you have to chose  what is Divine.

A young woman once told me that her employer makes improper advances to her and if she did not comply with him he would dismiss her from her job. I told her that she should have no reason not to leave the job. There are some radical decisions one has to take sometimes in this world concerning one’s closeness and commitment to God in order to strengthen the bond of love with Him. This means that you understand what Paul says, “It is not I who live but Christ lives in me.”

If you perceive this status in your relationship with God, you sever yourself from the evil world. You get bothered when that world (of evil) slips into yourself after having accustomed that self to the peace that obtains from behaving “Divinely”.

Sin is always attractive and at times it appears enchanting for you. I have known no deception as that that is in sin. It “dances” before you with pleasures that you soon realize are temporary on one side and are painful on the other; or they are painful because before committing yourself to them, they show you dreams and expectations that they do not accomplish for you. Divine love is par excellence the power in which no disappointment resides; because God does not offer except that in which your good is.

Yes, there is a massive corruptibility in Man when faced with the seduction of sin; and he seeks to bridle himself away from that in subjugating his will.

In the ascetic writings we have extensive work on the different passions that attack (scare) us but we rarely find in the literature of the East what is of benefit in taming the human will. It is true that there is a fleeing away from sin but what stands in its face is knowing God’s will for that matter and that is in knowing what God says in the Bible so that you equip yourself with the word as a shield and a helmet and a sword as Paul says. In that God would be your fortress and would drive away from you the attacks of the evil one. But most people do not love what God considers good for them and favor what is named as evil by Him. There are those who delight in stinginess, hatred, lying, opportunism, and it is hard for them to alter that love to another (that of God’s) because this would destroy the setting they have founded in themselves for sin. And if they got so engrossed in it to the point of becoming allies, they would ask you about the path of salvation.

After a long time of intimacy with sin, repentance and faith in the possibility salvation become difficult and that is so only due to your alliance with sin and it becoming a part of you. Do not you know that intimacy God’s love truly saves you and supports you all your life.

In the sermon on the mount Jesus says: “If your piety does not exceed that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 20: 5). The issue as Jesus presents it is that our piety of prayer and fasting and reading the Divine word and devotions, be not one of appearances based on duties but one based on welcoming God in our hearts.

After that he says “”You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Eye for eye was an amelioration or progress over policy of vendetta. Yet that remains in the realm of the rights and the legal.. And you do not want to cancel the rights, since you are of the rights –the nation. The question is how do you move from the realm of legalism and prosecution to that of the Divine Kingdom? The answer is “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you so you can be the children of your father who is in heaven.” And that means that you have put an end to punishment and entered the kingdom of equality between God’s good children and His wicked ones. You would be able to understand that if you know that the Lord’s mercy is poured on all people. Christianity, understood in that way, is reasonable.

Translated by Riad Mofarej

Original Text: “هل المسيحية معقولة؟” – 31.01.2009