A Visit from Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory Laham

The Arabic original can be found here on the Patriarchate's website.

On Thursday, September 23, after a long absence on account of his pastoral visit to South America, His Beatitude Gregory III Laham, Greek Catholic Patriarch visited His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim in the patriarchal residence in Damascus to discuss church matters.

Tripoli: New Patristics Center and Relics of St. Seraphim

The original can be found here.


The Center's Strategy and Aims

To undertake studies of Patristic personalities.

To research topics connected to the thought of the Church Fathers.

To return to Patristic sources and learn from precious texts and thoughts.

To publish texts and documents.

To organize study groups and intellectual seminars.

The goal of the Pastoral Center for Orthodox Patristic Heritage is to transmit the Tradition of the Holy Faith, "delivered once to the saints" (Jude 3) to the people in contemporary language.The Archdiocese of Tripoli, al-Koura and their dependencies has taken the initiative, whose first goal is to instill Orthodox Patristic culture in our children, both clergy and lay. Acquaintance with the roots of the culture of the Church allows us to have a conscious openness that is fruitfull in our surroundings and in our world today.

The Center's work has two aspects: One is theoretical and centers on bringing to light the Patristic heritage, with special focus on the Antiochian aspect and will include the preparation and publication of Patristic studies. The second is practical and includes the creation of an education center to educate the clergy and laity with monthly seminars which will discuss new and old topics.

And so there will be study, teaching, internal and external evangelization. May the Holy Spirit breathe on us anew for the salvation of our souls and of the world.

+Ephrem

Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies



And also:


Relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, a Gift from His Monastery in Russia to the Monastery of Our Lady of Hamatoura and their Reception this Thursday at Balamand Monastery

The Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Hamatoura and the Patriarchal Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand are pleased to invite you to participate in the reception of relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov which are arriving from the Patriarchate of Moscow as a gift to the Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Hamatoura.

The reception is at the Patriarchal Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand on Thursday Sept. 23, at 5pm and is followed by vespers in the monastery chapel with the blessing of the holy relics.

Update: This is following a visit of Fr. Pandeleimon and some of the monks of Hamatoura to Nizhny Novgorod and Diveevo. News about this visit, with pictures can be found here. A video can be found here.

Sulayman al-Ghazzi on the Cross

The writings Sulayman al-Ghazzi (or Solomon of Gaza) are one of the great hidden gems of Arab Orthodoxy, though not a word of them is yet available in a western language. I'm doing a little work on them for a different venue, but would like share something about him on this blog. I'll do another post soon about his life in more detail, but he was an Orthodox bishop in Palestine in the 11th century, during the persecution of Christians under the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amrillah. He is the first Arabic-language poet whose poetry was entirely dedicated to Christian religious themes. His Diwan is extensive; it consists of 97 long poems, amounting to over three thousand lines and treats a wide variety of Christian and personal themes. But that will have to wait for another time. Below is his treatise on the Cross, which is interesting, well, because of how weird it is. Connected closely to another of his treatises, On Man as Microcosm, I strongly suspect that they are an apologetic for Christianity aimed at adherents of certain esotericist currents in Islamic thought encouraged by the Fatimid regime. The Italian scholar Paolo La Spisa has a forthcoming article detailing parallels between some ideas of al-Ghazzi's and the Ikhwan al-Safa, for example...

On the Cross

Know, you who abide by the Law of the Cross of Christ, that when you are ignorant of it you become like children who abide by something whose value they do not know and who do not respond to one who asks about the meanings of its mysteries.

If someone asks you, “Do you love what Christ loved or what he hated?”

If you say ‘we love what he loved’ then the Holy Gospel shows you to be liars when it says ‘O Father, if you desire to pass this cup from me, do so’ and this is proof that he did not love to be crucified and he did not choose death. If you say, ‘We love what he hated,’ then you have gone against him by loving what he hated. If you say, ‘We love it because it was the cause of our salvation,’ then you make the instrument loftier than the maker, because Christ was the cause of salvation and the Cross one of his instruments. If you say, ‘The Cross is the image of his death in the flesh, which opened the gate of life,’ this statement is the best by a little.

Anyone who has the slightest knowledge has no doubt that there are two natures in Christ which are brought together in the hypostasis of the Son. One of them is pre-eternal and everlasting and the other come into being after having not existed. The one which hates death is the perceptible human nature which suffered in order to heal us. The one which does not hate death is the divine nature which is imperceptible and cannot suffer. It made the human nature taste the bitterness of bearing to drink the medicine which cured the affliction of death. The latter raised the former after three days unto eternal, everlasting life. By this death God removed from Israel’s neck the yoke of the Law of Moses which judges that he who deserves it should be crucified, and so when this was judged for one who did not deserve it, it saved those who did deserve it, those who were baptized with the death of Christ in the flesh.

The prophecies mentioned beforehand His crucifixion and His death and the nailing of His hands and feet upon the wood, as the prophets prophesied about Him. The first of them was Moses, when he said to the Children of Israel, “You will see your life hanging before your eyes.” The Prophet David said, “They surrounded me like bees and burned like blazing thorns and in the name of the Lord I fought them.” And he also said, “They pierced my hands and my feet and counted my joints and divided my clothes among themselves and cast lots for my robe.” The Prophet Isaiah said, “Truly he suffered for our transgressions and bore our sins. He suffered for our transgressions and was in pain for our sins and by his wounds we were healed. And we are like lost sheep each one of us following his own passion and he cut off all our sins. He was humble and did not open his mouth. Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a ewe before the butcher he was silent, to be taken from the land of the living and for the wickedness of my people he was judged.” The Prophet Zachariah said, “Come let use waste his flesh on the tree and remove him from the land of the living.” He also said, “On that day they shall look upon the one whom they pierced.” The Prophet Ezra said, “The immoral ones who speak evil will speak evil of the Most High and will work great evil. Life will appear from the wood and blood and water will drip from flesh and the voice of the Lord will be heard. On that wood the body will be stretched for six hours and the one who should not be buried will be buried, and a dead man will arise and life will be known among the dead. He will go up from earth to heaven and he will surely be on the right hand of the Most High because he is from before, and before all things he was begotten.” Solomon son of David said, “The footstool of the Holy will be glorified by the cedar, the fir, and the sycamore.” When Jacob blessed the sons of his son Joseph, he placed his right hand on the head of the one to his left, and his left hand on the head of the one to his right, with the sign of the Cross. Likewise God, may He be praised, commanded Moses to strike the sea crosswise, and when the people crossed it, He ordered him to strike it lengthwise, with the sign of the Cross. He also ordered him to crucify the bronze snake, so that all who looked upon it would be saved from the bite of the murderous snakes which afflicted the people. How many signs of the Cross are there among the people of the Children of Israel! The Prophet Habakkuk said, “between the two lives you are known,” meaning the life of the body, that is Christ’s body before His death and His life after His death. If Christ’s body did not die, than the yoke of the Torah’s requirements would not have been loosened from the faithful.

We have found that the wise logicians spoke of the virtue of the Cross when they said that the two double-edged blades, which are cause and reason, became four elements, which are held together by one pole which is the soul. This is the image of the macrocosm, whose borders and sides and natures and elements are four, just like the Cross. They are east, west, north and south; hot, cold, humid, and dry; fire, air, earth, and water; the fifth of them is the pole which is ordered by the Lord.

Some Christians believe that the Cross resembles the tree of knowledge which was the cause of humankind’s death in Adam and which became the cause of life in Christ. Others say that those who believe in Christ must honor the Cross because it because it is their final covenant with Him.

Upon the wood of the Cross, He said to those who were crucifying Him, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up anew.” Just as lovers remember the hour of their beloveds’ farewell and pine for that image, so too Christians remember the hour of their farewell to Christ, when He was on the wood of the Cross.

Among the virtues of the Cross is that none of the Apostles achieved any miracle until they said to the blind, or the leper, or the lame, or the dead, “In the name of Christ whom the Jews crucified in Jerusalem, be healed of your ailment!” and he would then be healed of his ailment immediately. How many kings strove to make them abandon making that sign out of disgust for its ugliness, but they did not obey.

These are the strongest proofs for the majesty of the Cross, which resembles a man standing. Its top is like the upwards direction and its bottom is like the downwards direction. Its front is like the east and its back is like the west. Its right side is like the south and its left side is like the north. The world does not lack the four subtle boundaries which contain all things found within it. Knowledge and clear vision, which are substance, then mass, then living, then breathing, then intellect, which is the pole around which they rotate and which holds them together.

The proof of what we have mentioned is that every rational being is alive and everything alive is breathing and everything that breathes has mass and every mass is a substance. This is its illustration:

God, may His name be exalted, gave to this noble temple—I mean the body—reason by which to order things, in order to rise to higher levels.

Ordering is divided into three parts. The first is man’s ordering of himself, then ordering his family, then ordering his flock. One who orders himself must make himself averse to blameworthy evils, and make himself do specific good things, remind himself of death and cause himself to fear God, and encourage himself toward good works.

One who orders his family must care for them as one who loves, honor them, listen to those of them who complain, and help those who ask for help, teach those who are ignorant, treat those who are sick. He must not be jealous of those who are rich or be haughty with those who are poor.

One who orders his flock must not be unjust in his judgment. He should enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, but he must not forbid something he does himself. He must manage works and inspect the workers’ accounts. He must build fortresses and repel enemies and be awake to uncover what happens. He must protect the weak and honor the ascetic and chaste and punish offenders. He must prepare for excessive ease.

Everyone who is ignorant of what we have said is ignorant of himself and he who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of his Creator and has disobeyed the commandment to honor the precious temple which God raised up to the Kingdom of Heaven in Christ’s human nature. To him is due glory, honor, and respect unto the ages of ages, amen.

The above is translated from the Arabic text, published in "The Prose Theological Works of Sulayman al-Ghazzi", edited by Neophytos Edelby and published in the series al-Turath al-Arabi al-Masihi in 1986, pp. 102-114.

The 18th Century Bishop Anthimos of Irinoupolis

The indispensable Cypriot blog NOCTOC has posted in Greek and English a fascinating article about the Bishop Anthimos, titular bishop of Irinoupolis and aid to the Patriarch Sylvester. It is of high interest for the history of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the period immediately after the Melkite schism, as well as for the history of relations between the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Church of Cyprus. Too little work has been done on the Patriarchate during this historically crucial period, so go and read it!

Click here. (And bookmark NOCTOC...!)

A Sermon on the Cross

The following sermon is taken from this week's al-Karmeh, the bulletin of the Archdiocese of Tripoli. It was published online without a byline, but it was likely written by Met. Ephrem. The original can be found here.

The Cross

The cross is connected to witness because it is a sign of love and a sign of patience. Many are those who are called Christians but there are few who have patience. Perhaps the occasion never comes when people ask you if you love Christ or not, but you are constantly asked and you must respond, not with words but with your comportment. Those who call themselves Christians, how can they allow themselves to be absent from the church many times during the year, not coming forward for communion, for confession and repentance, and not actively striving every day for the love of Christ? This too is witness, but without words. This is a cross, with patience and with concern for every day’s hardships. Because He says: He who wants to follow Me, let him deny himself, that is, let him disregard everything his life and his passions require so that he may have a single desire, to attach himself to Christ. Let him deny himself and carry his cross every day and follow Me at every moment, in every place. How can they call themselves Christians, those who do not wear clothing appropriate to modesty and order, and who need someone to hit them with a stick in order to understand that they are not as they should be. How do they witness to Christ in this nudity and shamelessness? How are they not patient in the face of many difficulties?

The Christian life needs more seriousness. We have become slothful. We have become without foundation, without strength. We are accustomed to words, we associate ourselves with Christ loudly and in a partisan way, but our belonging to Christ is not embracing Him while He is on the Cross. Look, all the disciples loved Christ. Thomas said, “I will go and die with you” but when He was given over to the Cross, they became afraid and went far away. John remained with Christ, the one who perhaps the disciples murmured about with jealousy because he loved more than them. This love is not mere sentiment. It is a commitment resulting from John’s attachment to Christ.

God is not lacking justice in this matter, however He will respond in the measure that you give and that you offer. He gives us more than we offer, because He is patient with our repeated offenses at every moment. We deny Him when we adopt the ideas of the world. We deny Him when we become partisans of mortal men who are without thought and we forget His thought and His teaching and His sacrifice, that He died so that man may live and that it is within His power to give them life. But what can men do besides agitate us and divide us into camps and estrange us from the truth and from Christ.

O beloved, on this Sunday after the Feast of the Cross, Christ calls us to hold fast to His Cross. To hold fast to the Cross means being nailed and suffering, not that we decorate ourselves with it and carry it like a banner. The Cross means death for the sake of Christ. He calls us, then, to hold fast to the Cross, that is to bear witness to Him to the point of death in the sincerity of our life and our behavior until we reach the Resurrection. This requires of us that our life and our comportment be completely upright through these circumstances according to Christ’s teaching in the Gospel so that it is fitting for us to be witnesses to Him. We confess Him not by using many words, but through our firm and steadfast comportment, and when we confess Him He gives us glory and holiness.

May the Cross of the Lord preserve us in our life and sustain us so that we may live as is fitting, glorifying to the Lord, to whom is all praise and glory, amen.

traduttore traditore

Readers of this blog know that I very rarely give my own thoughts or opinions here. I prefer to provide translations, which is more fitting with my purpose of increasing knowledge and appreciation of Arab Orthodoxy among English speakers. However, I think that the current controversy in the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America is a very good illustration of the need for more activity like this, done by more people.

I would suggest that all those interested take a look at Fr. George Aquaro's analysis of the Holy Synod's recent decision. It can be found here. Fr. George consulted quite a lot of knowledgeable people when he was writing it, and from my own point of view it is the most plausible interpretation of the Holy Synod's reasoning.

However, a reader who has only been familiar with the language used in official communications of the Archdiocese of North America might be forgiven for perhaps feeling a bit tricked. After all, how could an 'archdiocese' be an eparchy, and a 'diocesan bishop' essentially be a chorespiscopos? But in my experience, it is common that when communicating between two languages, that both sides agree on the equivalency between two words and both think they are communicating when in fact each side has a completely different notion of what is being said. Another pitfall of the translator's art is to translate a text that is ambiguous in the original into terms that are unambiguous in the translation. This is at times inevitable, but the result is an interpretation, not a translation.

Bearing Fr. George's analysis in mind, and also keeping in mind the Patriarchate's ambivalence about the whole notion of 'autonomy' or 'self-rule', I think it is worthwhile to take a look once more at the text of the 2003 decision of the Patriarchate of Antioch granting 'self-rule' to the Archdiocese of North America. Try to find the Arabic equivalent of 'diocesan bishop'. There's not one. Where the English says 'Recognition of Auxiliary Bishops as Diocesan Bishops and Eparchial Synod', the Arabic says "iqamat al-asaqifa al-musa'idun 'ala usqufiyyat wa-l-majma' al-ma7alli" This is literally "establishment of the auxiliary bishops over bishoprics and the local synod." It's clear from the meaningless switch from the Arabic "local" to the English "eparchial" that the translator was not pursuing literal accuracy. In that case, it's not a big deal. But when it mentions bishops, this is a very big deal, because the English is not a translation of the Arabic but rather an interpretation of what the translator believes is implied by the Arabic text.

So what does it mean to be muqam 'ala usqufiyya? In earlier translations I've done on this issue, I've been translating the word 'muqam' as 'assigned', but it's probably better rendered as 'established' or 'set up' or something like that. The Arabic text, then, is not discussing the recognition of a new status for the auxiliary bishops, but rather their establishment in new roles. Therein lies the ambiguity that is interpreted by the English translation: does the establishment of the bishops in a new role alter their status as auxiliaries? In an October 2003 article in an-Nahar (available in a serviceable but imperfect translation here) Metropolitan Georges Khodr seems to believe so, as he says that they will no longer be auxiliaries to the metropolitan, but rather 'territorial bishops' (asaqifa al-ard) who will have the authority to choose the priests whom they ordain. But notice that he does not use language perfectly corresponding to the English notion of 'diocesan bishop'.

In Metropolitan Basil's study, he makes a big distinction between titular bishops, a practice which the Patriarchate has more or less abandoned, and auxiliary bishops. That is, he assumes that the 2003 decision changed the status of the Antiochian titular bishops, who were canonically auxiliaries to the patriarch, to auxiliary bishops over a territory, who are canonically dependent on the metropolitan and have authority in a defined territory. He is, however, unclear about their exact authority or the authority of the Archdiocesan Synod. In that regard, Met. Basil's own suggestions are quite interesting and it seems to me that his vision of an auxiliary bishop has more authority than American Antiochian 'diocesan bishops' have had over the past seven years. Suggestion six, for example, implies that the auxiliary bishops' territories will have their own finances, out of which they will provide a fixed sum to the Archdiocese.

However, the Patriarchate has not officially spoken on these details, most of which were also left unaddressed in the 2003 decision. Thus Fr. Touma Bitar's frustration at the ambiguity of the recent decision and his appeal for further clarification. To his mind, a bishop cannot be both an auxiliary and established for a territory and a people, and so their status may have been reduced in practice to that of titular bishops. He highlights how the decision was likely cobbled together to include language preferred by parties who were at odds with each other and is thus ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness.

It would not be unwise to expect further clarification. As Fr. Touma points out, this decision effects the life of all the archdioceses of the Patriarchate, not just North America. In this process of clarification, we must be aware of the role that translation, both official and unofficial, plays. We must be aware of its pitfalls and of its capacity for concealing agendas. The act of translation requires trust and familiarity. We must work for broader communication between Arabic and English speakers within the Patriarchate and we must do all that we can to encourage greater familiarity between these two communities, these two nations, lest we allow only a small group of people to act as the sole bond between us.

What can we do to achieve this?

The Crucifixion in Islam and Christianity

The Arabic original of this article, by Fr. Georges Massouh, professor of Islamic Studies at Balamand University, appeared in today's issue of an-Nahar. It can be found here.

The Cross as a Subject of Debate

Christianity is based on faith in the resurrection of Christ from the dead after his crucifixion. Someone who denies the Cross or the Resurrection removes himself from Christianity. For this reason, the Cross is considered to be the sign and symbol of Christianity. In contrast, Islam, on the basis of the Quran denies the crucifixion of Christ and adopts an opinion that had spread among certain Christian sects that Christ was not crucified but that it seemed to the Jews that they crucified him. These two beliefs, the Christian and the Islamic, will not and debate among the two sides is useless for changing perspectives or for bringing them closer together.

The “Gospel of Barnabas” will not change the certitude of faithful Christians in Christ’s crucifixion, especially given the consensus of experts that this so-called “Gospel of Barnabas” was written some time during the 14^th and 16^th centuries, that is centuries after the spread of Islam, and that the book has no connection to the apocryphal books which appeared in the first two centuries of Christianity. Thus it seems bizarre that some Muslims rely on this counterfeit gospel in order to support their belief that Christ was not crucified, when the history of Christian apocryphal literature has many accounts resembling the Quranic account. It is also known that the “Gospel of Barnabas” contradicts certain basic Islamic beliefs, since it says that “the Prophet Muhammad is the awaited Christ,” which contradicts the Islamic account of the Prophet of Islam.

In the first centuries of Christianity, certain Gnostic sects appears which believed that the world of matter and the body is a corrupt world, and so they denied the belief that Christ had a real body, only having “the resemblance of a body.” The most important of these sects was that of the Docetists, or “Resemblancists” who were refuted by St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107) who affirmed the reality of the Incarnation when he said, “If Christ only had an apparent body, then he only apparently suffered and so we only apparently received redemption.”

Likewise St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202) combated the heresy of Basilides who said that Christ was not crucified, but rather Simon of Cyrene who bore the Cross of Christ on the path to Golgotha was the one who was crucified. Basilides said, “Simon was the one who was crucified, unknowingly and erroneously, after his form was changed to resemble that of Jesus, while Jesus’ form was changed to that of Simon and he mocked the leaders.” In the apocryphal book called “the Acts of John”, which was written in the end of the 2^nd century, the statement “I am not the one who was hung upon the cross” is attributed to Jesus.

There is also the sect of Cerinthians who followed Cerinthus and believed in the existence of two persons in Jesus Christ: the first person whose name is Jesus who was born of Joseph and Mary like all humans and suffered and died and rose from the dead, while the second person whose name is Christ is a spiritual being who cannot suffer and so Christ was freed of Jesus at the time of the crucifixion and ascended into heaven. So Jesus alone was crucified while Christ was saved from torment.

In contrast, the Quran only treats the question of Christ’s crucifixion in a single verse (al-Nisa 157) where it affirms that the Jews did not kill Christ but rather that this was made to seem to happen to them. In the same verse, it talks about his being raised to heaven. The Quran does not provide information or details about this event, leaving the door open to two readings: either the Jews crucified another person upon whom the image of Jesus had been cast or that the entire event of the crucifixion was made to seem to them to have happened. For this reason there is a large number of differing Islamic accounts about what happened to Christ in the period of time between his being saved from the cross and his ascension to heaven and his second coming.

As for the person who took the place of Christ on the Cross, his name differs according to the account. Al-Razi in his commentary provides five accounts about this person who was made to look like Christ for them: 1- “They took a man and killed him and crucified him and dressed him like Christ for the people.” 2-“Titayus”, one of the companions of Judas. 3- They assigned a man to guard Jesus and God cast his resemblance upon that guard, and they killed him while he said “I am not Jesus.” 4- “When the Jews planned to take him, Jesus had ten of his companions with him. He said to them: Who wishes to purchase heaven by having my resemblance cast upon him? One of them said: I. So God cast Jesus’ image upon him and he was brought out and killed.” 5- A man from among the companions of Jesus was a hypocrite, so God “cast Jesus’ resemblance upon him and he was killed and crucified.” Al-Razi admits that “these accounts are contradictory and confused, and God knows best the truth of the matter.”

Despite the heresies and sects which denied the crucifixion of Christ, Christianity continued to hold fast to the Cross as a basic belief for salvation. And despite the proliferation of Islamic tales about the end of Christ’s life on earth, the Islamic belief remains deeply rooted that Christ was not crucified. However, all this does not prevent Christians and Muslims from working together for the good of humanity.