A Meeting of Arab Orthodox Living in Romania

Romanian original here.

Meeting of Arab Orthodox of Romania

Around the great feasts, the community of Arab Orthodox Christians in Romania meets at the Patriarchal Palace. On the occasion of Holy Pascha, representatives of the community were received in the “Christian Europe” hall by patriarchal vicar, His Grace Ciprian Câmpineanul, reports Trinitas TV.

“Every year, with the blessing of Patriarch Daniel, there is a meeting at the patriarchal palace on the occasion of Easter between the bishop of the place or the bishop’s delegate and the community of Arab believers who are also to some degree pastored by an archimandrite, Father Qays, sent by Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch. On Thomas Sunday, with the blessing of Patriarch Daniel, I met with them at the patriarchal palace and gave them a message from the patriarch and from myself. Then we began to discuss various problems. It is something extraordinary, since they try to be together as much in the church as outside of it, which contributes to their maintaining both their national identity and the identity of their faith,” said His Grace Ciprian Câmpineanu.

Recently, the Arab Orthodox community in Bucharest has grown, which has led to the allocation of a designated space for their liturgical activities.

“We should mention that in Bucharest there are very many Christians of different confessions, including Arab Orthodox Christians from many countries, from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, or from Palestine. They have become established in Bucharest for a long time on account of their work or because they have married Romanian Orthodox, they have children whom they educate in the spirit of Christian faith. They study in Romanian schools and participate in services on Sundays and feast days for the most part at the church of St. Dumitru-Poştă, though also in other churches. However, on the two greatest feats, the Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Resurrection of the Savior, Archimandrite Qays comes specially to perform the services in Arabic, to hear their confessions, and to listen to their problems,” His Grace said.

The Patriarchate of Antioch has delegated an archimandrite who comes to Romania on various occasions and officiates services for the Arab Orthodox.

“They are very happy when they hear the service in their native language, as in the Romanian proverb ‘blood doesn’t become water’ and it is very important for them to be able to pray the liturgy also in their own language. This has been possible through the blessing of the .Patriarch of Romania, who has allowed them to meet at the church of St. Dumitru- Poştă,” pointed out Bishop Ciprian Câmpineanul

“It is something normal for the flock to meet with shepherds and it is a space for meeting and communication with the Church’s hierarchy, that is, between the flock and the shepherds in order to discuss all the challenges that the Arab Orthodox community of Romania faces,” said Archimandrite Qays Sadiq.

The reunion at the Patriarchal palace has become a tradition that seeks to strengthen relations between Arab Orthodox believers.

Fr. Touma Bitar: What Comes After Pascha

The Arabic original can be found here.


What Comes After Pascha

In order for the Pascha that we celebrated to be a true Pascha, then every day after Pascha must be a Pascha. Every day since the resurrection of Jesus Christ has become a feast! The feast is not purely celebration, like the parties and festivals that are held and then left to be anticipated for the next year. Neither is it a celebration of a memory that has past, only the meaning of which remains, nor a celebration of one who was here and then departed. It is true that the feast comes in time. Everything before it comes together toward it and everything after it transmits its sweetness, even if only for a while. However, the feast in Christ has become a new existential reality that remains, a transformational event on the level of creation in its entirety. Pascha, a passing from the old to the new, from a life that dies to a death that lives. Life has become new! Christ rose in the body after having died in the very same body. He only died in the body because out of love he wanted to unite himself to human suffering. The Cross, the cross of the Lord Jesus, is in its most precise definition is an expression of the ultimate divine love for humanity. There is no genuine, profound love that can be sought which is deeper than unity of suffering. Man’s condition was not like this at the time of creation. No, suffering is not from God. But this is how man’s state became after he ended up, in history, nailed to the cross of pain and death because he was separated from God and cut off from Him. He was no longer God’s companion, out of love. When man was nourished with the love of God, as they say “in Paradise”, there was no place for pain or death. However, after man turned his back to God and did without His love, which is what in any situation we call sin, he entered into a sphere that his own action brought about. That is, the sphere of death. This caused everything in man’s life to become a factor of death. Internal suffering, the pains of the body and the illnesses of the soul and ailments of the body, all came about because the heart became unwell and impure. Confronted with this reality, man finds himself before two possible results: either to be destroyed because he is created, or for the Lord God, the Creator, to take the initiative to return him and give him life so he does not pass out of existence. We do not believe that the soul in itself is immortal. Even if we believe that before the Lord Christ there was some remnant that persists, it would almost be without any value worth mentioning!

The solution was humanity’s renewal as mortal creation and the bringing forth of a completely new life by the grace of God and His establishment of a new creation. This only happened because God is love. All of Him is love, and love is always creative and there is no death in love. But how? How does the Lord make man new? Does He take him apart and put him back together again? This could not be a solution, because man, in the way that God created him, could once more turn his back on God like he did the first time, which would mean once more a fall into what he had already fallen into. So what is the solution? Since man did not have the will to leave sin, and through sin suffering and death, there was nothing that could help him! And so the Lord God relied on something that did not occur to the mind of man. This is the mystery—which is beyond understanding—which was concealed in eternity but has now appeared… in Jesus Christ, glory to him forever (Romans 16:25, 26, 27). The Lord changed the nature of death by accepting death! Death, prior to Jesus, was the end of man’s life on earth. But after Jesus it became a crowning of man’s life in Christ on the earth, unto eternal life. How did the Lord God achieve this? He prepared humanity, after their wandering away from him, through a very long journey along the path of promise and covenant, reward and recompense, in this age, toward the coming of the Savior. The Savior was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God or the Word of God who is God Himself in essence. Here, so that things do not become mixed up in our minds, we make a distinction between essence and person. The person of God the Father is not the person of God the Son, but the essence of one is the essence of the other. And so, because the essence is one, everything that is the Father’s is the Son’s and everything that is the Son’s is the Father’s. This means that the Savior is God the Son not God the Father despite the fact that salvation, as a divine energy realized in humanity, is from the single activity and according to the single will that is of the Father and of the Son…. In this way God desired by His love, for the Son of God to become incarnate from a woman, considered to be the flower of humanity, the Virgin Mary, through the Holy Spirit who rested upon her. This event, at a specific point in history, in a specific place, and under specific circumstances, was hidden from the eyes of the people. So Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, was a human being like other humans, except in sin, since it was impossible for him to know sin because he was himself God and sin is separation from the love of God! Jesus suffered everything that humanity suffers as a result of sin, and thus suffering and death. He suffered it providentially, in order to unite himself to humanity, out of love for humanity, in order to draw humanity out of suffering. After designating the markers along the path of salvation, with the new commandment, and making it clear that “there is no salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12), and giving proofs that what he was saying is true with the sings and miracles that he worked—including healings and expulsion of unclean spirits and dominion over the elements of nature and raising the dead—I say that after Jesus designated the markers along the path of salvation, he tasted death on the cross as a righteous man. The death of the Lord Jesus was the completion of God’s purpose and the most perfect manifestation of God’s love for mankind. Since Jesus died in the body, being the incarnate God, through him death became a new reality, different from what it had been before. Death—his death—became, following his example, a composition with human and divine aspects together. Jesus experienced death as a human and through it—that is, through death—his life reached all the earth, that is its ends, but as God he made death into a Passover, a crossing into new life, into eternal life, the very life that God has!

This is what the Lord Jesus achieved in the body, glory be to him. But how did he bring what he realized close to people? Through two necessary things: through faith and through the Holy Spirit. Through faith, that is, through knowledge of Jesus, through obedience. This occurs profoundly to those who love the truth, through the word of God and the grace of God. If one becomes sure of what Jesus said and acts on it, that he, that is Jesus, is in truth and submits to it and practices what he commanded, naturally this is not without faith from above, then at that point the Holy Spirit dwells within him. In reality, to be more precise, the Holy Spirit mystically dwells within him through baptism and is activated within him through keeping the commandments. This is what makes one, through the Holy Spirit, a participant in Christ’s death and resurrection. Christ’s death in the body means that death is active in the body but leads to eternal life and the resurrection means an experience of all the success and failure, hardships and breakthroughs, sorrows and joys, health and illness, anxiety and relaxation, fear and calm, that can happen to a person on earth. I say the resurrection meaning the experience of all this and the like as existential loci of God’s hidden presence and activity in one’s life toward a life of holiness through total submission and reliance on God, toward a life that is formed by death to this world in the body in the mold of the divine light and eternal life!

All of this leads us to a new reality for the feast. The feast that we have is called an entrance into new life! However, for the feast to come and go, this has no value and no meaning in itself because it does not change man’s deep reality in any way. Naturally, at the time efforts toward pursuing newness of life increase with regard to preparation for the feast and one rushes to renew the hoped-for endeavor and toward sharpening the focus on a new life. This is because each one of us, under the influence of the hardships and pleasures and experiences of worldly life are susceptible to wavering, laxity, and heedlessness. And so we put all our focus on the feast, on the lightening of penitential effort away from the path of persistence in imitating the cross of Christ, that is following his example at all times, in order to reach a resurrection that will gradually become established within us, not as an event, but as a state of being that will become established and remain. So long as the resurrection does not become a state of being within us, then we treat it, if we treat it at all, as a pagan state of being. If the heart is not converted upwards, everything that it receives externally is a pronouncement of the passions of soul and body that possess it. Indeed, God can be treated in a pagan manner, and this is the most dangerous kind of paganism because at that point one worships idols, the idols of his soul, under the name of God! But the time has come when we no longer worship God, as Jesus said, in this mountain or in Jerusalem, since true worshippers worship God in spirit and in truth because the Father sought such worshipers for Himself. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth (John 4: 21, 23, 24).

The Jews of old would celebrate feats with burnt offerings, sacrifices, riches, and music. Despite all this, the Lord God said to them though His prophet Amos, “I hate, I despise your feasts… may truth flow like water and righteousness like a constant stream” (Amos 5). The feast is a feast toward a change of heart in one’s life. So how is this, if the fullness of time came and the Son of God became incarnate and gave us His Spirit and the commandment of new life? There is no longer value for a feast except within the framework of complete repentance unto the new life and the new way of life that we have gained through the Lord Jesus Christ, extending to the life of evangelical perfection in holiness!

The Pascha that we just came through is precisely the dividing line between the paganism of the feast and worship in spirit and in truth, between worldliness and otherworldliness, between the old and the new, between wretched joys and bright sadness, between a life of constant decrease until death and a life of constant growth unto eternal life, passing through death, between becoming like the devil and theosis! There is no neutrality in things divine. Either one or the other. We have either learned or we have not learned.

Melkite Greek Catholics and the Life-Giving Spring

So in one of my several day-jobs, I'm helping to catalog Arabic manuscripts from a Greek-Catholic monastery in Lebanon. Most of the manuscripts I've dealt with so far are liturgical, and somewhat repetitive, but they do occasionally provide interesting insights about the relationship between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities in the Levant. Here is an announcement made by the Greek Catholic Patriarch Maximos Mazloum (d. 1855), where he gives his reasoning for replacing the Feast of the Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring, found in a manuscript from 1888.

Glory to God forever, by the Mercy of God, may He be exalted

Maximus, Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and all the East

An Announcement in the Lord to the order of clergy of the Rum Melkite Catholic Community, esteemed generally and individually.

We have found that in most books of the Pentecostarion on Friday the sixth day after glorious Pascha there is a canon to the Mother of God called the Spring of Life or the Life-Giving Spring . First of all, this canon is not originally found in the Typicon, as the Pentecostarion itself explicitly states. Second of all, many of the priests read it, either out of a spirit of worship toward the Mother of God or because they find it written there for the appointed day, without knowing the reason, even though the majority of the priests ignore it. However, the schismatic Rum [i.e., the Orthodox] vainly celebrate this day and on it perform this service in addition to the ritual for Easter.

When we ourselves looked for information on the matter, we learned with certainty that these aforementioned Rum only celebrate this day vainly and celebrate the aforementioned service in celebration of the consecration of their church in Constantinople in the district named Balikli where there is a spring of water that is drank from as holy water in worship, with the intention of healing illnesses through the intercession of the Virgin, the patron of the aforementioned church.

From one perspective, we recognize the desire of many people from our Rum Catholic parishes to honor Our Lady the Mother of God on the aforementioned day with a special service to the point that some of them take part in vainly celebrating this feast to Our Lady. From another perspective, we cannot participate in honoring the consecration of a church for people who have left the communion of the Catholic Church and from our holy Catholic Communion. Thus we designate by our patriarchal authority Friday, the sixth day after Pascha as a remembrance of the visit of Our Lady the Mother of God to her kinswoman Saint Elizabeth, especially since it falls at an appropriate time, because the appointed day always comes very shortly after the Annunciation, as according to the text of the Gospel Our Lady’s visit to the house of Zacharia, the father of the Forerunner came after the Angel Gabriel announced to her that she was with child. For this reason we have released the following canon about this visit, officially registering it with this announcement of ours in all books of the Pentecostarion in place of the canon of the aforementioned spring, which we order to be immediately removed wherever it is found in all dioceses subject to our patriarchal authority through the honorable deputies just as we hope will be achieved in other dioceses by our dear brothers their honorable metropolitans so that throughout the community there will be the same order for the liturgy and the feasts and commemorations and so that it will be preserved forever without differences according to the priority of our community and of our Greek church or of all the eastern churches.

Sent from the Patriarchal Diwan on April 1, 1844 in Constantinople.

Met. Georges Khodr: The Resurrection

Arabic original can be found here.



The Resurrection

Tomorrow we commemorate the event of the Resurrection and we strive toward its meaning. The event is that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead and conquered death according to the words of the paschal hymn of our Church, “trampling down death by death.”

The people who wrote the New Testament were concerned with explaining this event on account of how hard it is to believe and on account of their belief that it is the foundation of the Christian faith. If it did not occur then there is no faith and preaching the gospel of Christ is in vain. The issue is that the Resurrection is a reality but its reality has to be established. This is from one perspective, and from another perspective is firmness of faith. Thus we have two perspectives on this issue. The first is the testimony of witnesses to the appearances of Christ and the second is certainty in faith.

This is the heart of the Christian faith and the Apostle Paul takes this up because he is the first person in Christianity to write, meaning that this resurrection about which he taught he received from his predecessors and he did not separate the event from its meaning. He set down a theology that can be summarized in these words: “If it is preached that Christ rose from the dead, how can some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” Belief in the resurrection is supported by the words of the Apostle, that “He was buried and that he rose again on the third day and that he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve apostles, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still alive and some have died, then he appeared to Jacob, then to all the apostles until he finally appeared to me as well, as one out of due time” (1 Corinthians 15:4-8).

To make this clear, we have eyewitnesses of his death who remained eyewitnesses of his appearances after the resurrection, meaning that they knew that the one who appeared to them was the same one who was hung on the wood. These are Mary Magdalene and the Myrrh-bearing Women, Simon Peter, the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, the apostles gathered in Thomas’ absence then in his presence, some of the apostles on Lake Tiberias, the apostles in Galilee. He also appeared to them when he ascended to heaven. These appearances number eleven, and we read about each one on a Sunday in the Orthodox Church.

Mention of these appearances shows the critical spirit of the apostles. It is obvious to me in this account that the apostles were free of any reckless popular mentality. They were far from believing hastily out of excitement.

Thomas’ denial of the resurrection at the beginning shows that he had a strongly critical spirit and that he was not convinced by the words of the disciples. The next week he appeared to them while Thomas was with them.

+ + +

However, the feast is not limited to the departure of the Nazarene from the tomb, which is a cave and not a hole in the ground. The feast is an expression of all the salvation that has been brought to us since the incarnation of the Son of God, and especially that which we received from the cross. Before the moment of the crucifixion, Jesus said “it is completed” that is to say, I have completed everything my Father sent me to do and I have fulfilled every word of the prophets. We must understand that everything that is sublime, pure, and true after Christ we owe to him. That is to say that completeness of thought, artistic and intellectual production, the victory of oppressed humanity, all of it draws its inspiration from the life and words of Jesus. From this angle we hope on this day for a resurrection from personal toil and the fall, and for glimpses of heaven. From the angle of dogma, we have in Easter a promise that we shall rise on the last day. God’s perfection has appeared in Christ. The Savior’s resurrection shows us that Jesus’ call to us is to “be perfect.”

The feast is salvation from every kind of death in our personal life and in the life of those around us and those we serve. It is a continuous event within us unto the end of the age. This is why the Feast of the Resurrection extends from Good Friday until the morning of the feast. If we strongly enter into each of these three days, then we will have celebrated the feast and promised that every day of our life will be an eternal Pascha. Our joy is established in Jesus’ victory, and we do not accept joy on one day and grief on another. “Rejoice also at all times, and again I say rejoice!” This is why if some people say that we suffer with Christ, we do not mean that bodily or psychological pain is better than health. We must accept the sufferings because they brought us life through one kind or another of internal health. If heaven in the end is our victory over sin and death, then we are in it, and if heaven pours out to us in our daily life, then we become a paschal people and at that point we must sing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death”.

For that reason, it is not true what was once said to me, that “Christianity is a religion of tragedy.” I said to the person who told me this that tragedy, in its Greek sense, means for you to be imprisoned in a locked room. At least we do not have a roof above us. There is nothing above us except for the roof of heaven. We have left all prisons into “the freedom of the sons of God.” This is why one of our recent saints greeted every friend he met saying, “My joy, Christ is risen.”

This is the word that I submit to all who read me between today and tomorrow, until sorrow passes out of existence.

المسيح قام

Another Difficult Holy Week in the Middle East

From here:


Celebrations for Easter in Syria Will be Limited to Prayers inside Churches

The heads of the Christian churches in Syria announced that celebrations of the feast of Easter for all Christian groups will be limited this year to prayers inside churches on account of the current circumstances occurring in Syria. The leaders of Christian churches in Damascus announced that celebrations of the glorious feast of Easter will be limited this year to prayers and religious ceremonies in the churches. The announcement stated that this is on account of the current circumstances occurring in Syria and in honor of the souls of the martyrs and innocents who fell during the recent painful events and as an expression of the unity of the Syrian people. In their announcement, the heads of the churches expressed their hope that security and peace will envelope Syria and that God will return this feast to Syria, its leaders and its people, with goodness and blessings.




From the LA times Middle East blog, here:

WEST BANK: Palestinian Christians denied access to holy places in Jerusalem during Easter

As Christians get ready to celebrate Easter, Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are envious of fellow Christians from all over the world who are able to visit Jerusalem’s holy Christian sites and worship freely while they cannot.

Since Israel cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories in the early 1990s, Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been required to get Israeli army permission before they can enter Jerusalem.

The situation worsened since the turn of the century and restrictions got tighter after a 20-foot concrete wall was built all around East Jerusalem barring both Muslim and Christian Palestinians from reaching their holy sites in Jerusalem and its Old City.

“For Christians, Holy Week in Jerusalem has a special spiritual connection,” said a statement issued by the Christian community in the West Bank. “The Old City, its gates and roads, the Mount of Olives, Via Dolorosa and the Holy Sepulchre Church, where pilgrims from all over the world journey to, are equally important to the Palestinian Christians of Gaza and the West Bank, who want to join their Jerusalemite Christian brethren in the liturgical events leading to the resurrection, the holiest celebration in Christianity.”

But West Bank and Gaza Christians reaching Jerusalem even during holidays has become a privilege, rather than a spiritual right. To get to Jerusalem, any Palestinian resident of the West Bank or Gaza of any age or religion has first to get a permit issued by the Israeli military government.

These permits do not come easily. They are usually issued to sick people trying to get treatment in Jerusalem or Israeli hospitals, or to businesspeople. Often they are given to workers because Israel can use the cheap West Bank and Gaza labor force. But for people who want to visit family members living in East Jerusalem or take a tour of the Old City or pray at their holy sites, permits become a scarcity.

“In every country that respects and implements freedom of worship, worshipers of different faiths live their faith and express their prayers without restrictions from the governing authorities,” said the Christians' statement. “In Jerusalem, and for the past decade, this has not been the case. The occupying power is denying free access to holy places of worship to both Christians and Muslims on several important occasions,” the statement said.

“The local faithful … see that the restrictions made against them are violations of basic human rights and religious freedom as well as a violation of … centuries of religious traditions for the indigenous Christians of this land,” the statement continued.

Though Israel began recently issuing between 2,000 and 3,000 permits for Christians to visit Jerusalem holy sites during Christmas and Easter, the figures remain relatively small compared with the number of Palestinian Christians, and permits are issued only to older married people, not the young and single. Christians also have to apply through their churches to get the permit, a process Christians say is done on a first-come first-served basis.

“The permit system instated by Israel is in obvious violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants and treaties to which Israel is a signatory,” said the Christian community. “Regardless of the number of people from the local congregation allowed to participate in the celebrations, we reject the imposition of a permit/quota system to access our churches.”

Unfortunately for Palestinian Christians, Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover holiday. Israel usually imposes a closure on the occupied territories during Jewish holidays, which means permits are automatically canceled and people with permits will not be able to cross checkpoints into East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its territory since it annexed it after its occupation in June 1967.

-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

Not to mention Egypt.....