Met Ephrem (Kyriakos): Satan, the Ruler of this World

Arabic original here.

Satan, the Ruler of this World

"The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified" (John 12:23).

"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12:24).

"Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out" (John 12:31).

*  *  *

Satan is the ruler of this world. Where lies his authority to tempt man? It lies in that he is the seducer, who seduces man and his mind.

From the beginning of Jesus' life in the Gospel, He was appointed to combat this seducer and his seduction. There the devil tempted Him for forty days and He finally replied to him after reaching the point of starvation, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4).

The purpose of this temptation of hunger is to create disorder and confusion in the heart of man. In the end, Christ defeated Satan through His death on the cross, and His resurrection on the third day.

Jesus was not only glorified in smashing the devil's authority. He was also and especially glorified in His drawing "all" to Himself-- all people, no matter their nation or race. This final victory did not take place with spectacular worldly pomp, but with His being raised upon the cross. The Lord Jesus, in His divine wisdom, is also a seducer of humankind, through his ultimate love and not like the devil who seduces in order to corrupt.

In the Gospel of John, the Lord says, "Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to Myself" (John 12:31-32). By virtue of the cross, God reaches the pinnacle of His dispensation by smashing the power of Satan and liberating man from his seductive shamelessness. So the Lord returns everything to Himself. Thus before giving up his spirit, He says, "It is finished" (John 19:30). 

Therefore, it is enough for us humans now, after this victory, to stand in our life beside the suffering, victorious Jesus Christ, for us to escape from Satan, the ruler of this world. Beloved! How many times has Satan seduced in this world by means of money, so that we think that happiness is in the accumulation and stockpiling of wealth in order to enjoy the pleasures of this deceitful world. But the Lord says to us, "Man does not live by bread alone..." Likewise he deceives us when we chase after worldly positions, glories and authority. But we hear the Lord say, "You shall worship the Lord God and Him only shall you serve" (Matthew 4:10).

+Ephrem
Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and Their Dependencies

Constantin Panchenko on the Sunset of Melkite Syriac

From: Constantin Panchenko, Arabic Orthodox Christians under the Ottomans: 1516-1831 (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2016), p. 443

The Sunset of Aramaic Writing

In the early Ottoman era came the final decline among the Orthodox of Syriac liturgy and writing. The German semiticist Anton Baumstark presents data about fifty-two Melkite Syriac manuscripts preserved from the sixteenth century, whereas the number of manuscripts is markedly reduced during the last three decades of the century. From the seventeenth century, he reaches a total of nine manuscripts, of which six are from the first two decades, with the latest from 1654.

Some Antiochian hierarchs continued to sign official documents in Syriac or garshuni [i.e., Arabic written in Syriac script]-- examples of this are known until the 1630s. Often, however, this was just a tribute to ancient traditions and the signatories themselves had a weak knowledge of Syriac and poorly remembered the alphabet. In two garshuni signatures on a letter from Antiochian clergy to Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich in 1594, some forgotten Syriac letters are replaced with Arabic.

However, there is evidence indicating that Syriac writing continued in use even after the mid-seventeenth century. The Syriac liturgy was preserved in the area of Maaloula and surrounding villages up to the present day, so accordingly, Syriac liturgical texts were copied. However, the scope of the use of Syriac writing shrank to the narrow limits of liturgical literature and thus acquired a marginal character.

Fr Georges Massouh on National Unity and Religious Difference

Arabic original here.

National Unity and Religious Fabrication

Most clerics, both Muslim and Christian, tend toward a sort of fabrication when they try to deny doctrinal differences between religions or when they try to affirm that religions are in reality one religion. This usually occurs when they try to mix dogmatic religious discourse with unitary national discourse, especially during crises of wars, civil strife, and trials.

It goes without saying, in the manner of "after great effort, explaining that water is water," that the religions are not one religion. It is as clear as the noonday sun that there are many religions and certainly not just one religion. Therefore, it is necessary for those engaging in national discourse to transcend religious differences and stick to the domain in which they want to engage. They can, however, seek inspiration from the values of their faith and their religion without having to search in other religions for what they think is something in common, and so fall into what they should avoid-- that is, fabrication.

It is not a problem for us to disagree about religion. Indeed, the problem lies in slipping into a falsified "national" discourse that separates us from the true diversity that calls us to accept our difference with the other and that this difference does not prevent us from respecting the other in his faith, worship and traditions. What is needed, in order for us to live together, is not a structural rapprochement that leaves us all without an authentic identity. Rather, what is needed is actions inspired by the values that each one of us finds in our scriptures, doctrines, prayers and living heritage, and in our vision of man and his role in the universe.

We do not doubt the sincerity of those who fall into this sort of fabrication, neither their motives nor their good intentions. There is no doubt that through their discourse they are advocating peace, harmony and well-being among their fellow citizens. We cannot, however, tie citizenship to a single religious affiliation, since unity of faith is not one of the conditions for national unity, such that if unity of faith were negated, so too would national unity. Hence the necessity of separating religion and the state among those who call for a civil state.

This fabricated discourse also proves that combining the two forms of unity-- national and religious-- is useless and does not build a firm foundation for citizenship, since it changes with changing circumstances and political contexts. Citizenship is based on equality between all people of the same nation and on equality of rights and responsibilities, regardless of citizens' religious affiliation. The only role of religions is to guide the faithful to serve the nation and humankind, without regarding faith as a requirement of good citizenship. The separation, then, between religious affiliation and belonging to the nation is necessary for sound, correct citizenship. There are non-believers and non-religious people who are good citizens who surpass believers and religious people in their love of the nation and their defense of it and its children.

Religious difference is a source of richness for societies and so it must be preserved in the religious framework and not be cast aside in political or national affairs. Hence the necessity of pointing out that religious difference does not mean that religious people do not love one another. Love does not mean fabrication in matters of doctrine. Love does not mean an absence of honesty, nor does honesty mean an absence of love. Do those who advocate denying differences between religions realize that in doing so, they are not being honest and not practicing true love?

New Book: Arab Orthodox Christians under the Ottomans by Constantin Panchenko

I am told that copies just arrived to the publisher today... This is a translation of Panchenko's monumental Ближневосточное Православие под османским владычеством. Первые три столетия. 1516–1831 (Moscow: Indrik, 2012). 

Arab Orthodox Christians Under the Ottomans 1516–1831

By Constantin Panchenko

Foreword by John X (Yazigi)

Over the past two decades, society’s attention has increasingly returned to the forgotten world of the Christian East—the whole constellation of bright and now nearly endangered cultures of the Christian peoples of Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa.
                                                                                              -From the Introduction
      
Following the so called "Arab Spring" the world's attention has been drawn to the presence of significant minority religious groups within the predominantly Islamic Middle East. Of these minorities Christians are by far the largest, comprising over 10% of the population in Syria and as much as 40% in Lebanon. The largest single group of Christians are the Arabic-speaking Orthodox. This work fills a gap in the scholarship of wider Christian history and more specifically that of lived religion within the Ottoman empire. Beginning with a survey of the Christian community during the first nine hundred years of Muslim rule, the author traces the evolution of Arab Orthodox Christian society from its roots in the Hellenistic culture of the Byzantine Empire to a distinctly Syro-Palestinian identity. There follows a detailed examination of this multi-faceted community, from the Ottoman conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt in 1516 to the Egyptian invasion of Syria in 1831. The author draws on archaeological evidence and previously unpublished primary sources uncovered in Russian archives and Middle Eastern monastic libraries to present a vivid and compelling account of this vital but little-known spiritual and political culture, situating it within a complex network of relations reaching throughout the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The work is made more accessible to a non-specialist reader by the addition of a glossary, whilst the scholar will benefit from a detailed bibliography of both primary and secondary sources.

"This manuscript fills an important lacuna in the wider history of the Christian Church as it unfolds the presence and extent of indigenous Arabic-speaking believers in the Levant...These are matters of great complexity and a fuller understanding of them will help to shape our understanding of the takfirism against which we now struggle." 
 - from the Foreword by His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East

Now available from Holy Trinity Seminary Press here.

Met. Ephrem (Kyriakos): I am the Resurrection and the Life

Arabic original here.

I am the Resurrection and the Life

Jesus said this to Martha, Lazarus' sister, before the lifted the stone from the entrance to the tomb and He raised her brother from the dead.

Then he continued, "He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die" (John 11:25-26).

Here there is a dialectical movement between the present and the future. "He was and is and is to come" (Revelation 4:11), a movement between the past, the realized present and the eschatological future. 

In another place the Lord Jesus says, "he who believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life" (John 5:24). For the believer, death becomes sleep, or rather a crossing into eternal life. It becomes a Passover.

Here He is speaking about the resurrection that happens in our life here, in faith in Him. The Apostle Paul discusses this resurrection and says that it happens in the mystery of baptism: "Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). The grace of the resurrection is embedded in the depths of the heart from baptism, says Saint Diodochos of Photiki, from baptism it is a divine planting, potential energy that awaits, on account of our freedom, the first step in order to become active in our life and become kinetic energy, just as gasoline in a car awaits the driver with the key in order to activate it and drive.

For someone who struggles and loves Christ, says Saint Basil, this grace is active in all his members when we receive the Body and Blood, even in the senses of the extremities. Our eyes become Christ's eyes. Our mind becomes Christ's mind... This is the first resurrection or, rather, a foretaste of the general resurrection.

* * *

Jesus alone is the light, the truth and the life. This light is traced upon us in joyful behavior, kindness and humility. The resurrection translated in the believer is all of life. 

Christian spirituality is a paschal spirituality. Christ's passion is not a site of grief, but a site of joy. The Lord Jesus told His disciples before His passion, "Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy" (John 16:20).

We want the mystery of the resurrection of Christ our God to be realized within us. If, in the likeness of Christ's passion, we enter into the tomb of humility and repentance, He enters into our body as into the tomb, in His union with our souls He raises them, as they are truly dying. And in this way He makes us who are risen worthy with Him of seeing the Glory of His mystical resurrection.

+Ephrem

Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and Their Dependencies

Fr Georges Massouh: Syrians and the Joy of the Resurrection

Arabic original here.

Syrians and the Joy of the Resurrection

"Christ is risen, my joy." This expression never left Saint Seraphim of Sarov. It was his only greeting for the people he would meet day and night.

"Christ is risen, my joy." Where did Seraphim's joy come from? From the hope that Christ's resurrection was meaningless unless its purpose was the resurrection of all people. He was immersed in joy because he realized that he was risen, without a doubt, not only on the last day but from right now. " I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.  And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die" (John 11:25-26).

"Christ is risen, my joy" is our only weapon in the face of oppressors. "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God. They have bowed down and fallen; But we shall have risen and stand upright" (Psalm 20:7-8). Yes, some trust in airplanes, tanks, missiles, machetes and knives... but we shall rise and stand upright. 

We do not know what kind of weapon Cain used to kill his brother Abel. Whatever kind it was, it was ineffective. Abel's blood continued to cry out from the earth. His blood remained alive, crying out. Since Abel, blood has never ceased being shed. But all the murdered and murderers have died. Death is just and is not afraid of any human. Even those who slake their thirst with death will be eaten by death.

However, the Lord of Life does not let His saints see corruption. Life cannot coexist with death. He who has abided in  God from today will not be abandoned by God at the moment of death. He will give him life. He will not leave him in hell. Rather, the death of a righteous person is transport from the earthly hell to eternal joy. These words do not mean that we call for craving death. That is a sin. We must love life and work for the reign of peace, love, gentleness and kindness. However, not remembering death is the beginning of falling into sin and transgression. For someone to think that he is eternal on this earth is shirk [i.e., believing that not-God is God] itself.

"Christ is risen, my joy," we say to all who are tormented on the earth and especially to all Syrians, even if this expression is hard on their ears. What does it mean for us to say these words to those who want salvation from the evil surrounding them from every direction? How do we say this to those who want an imminent salvation, a loaf of bread for their children, a roof to shelter them and their family? In reality, we cannot say these words if we do not love them, honor them, and strive to meet their needs-- that is, to bear their cross, the cross of joy that leads to the resurrection.

Syrians are called to hold firm to hope. Despair is a death that is even more bitter than bodily death. Nothing angers the Adversary more than to see those under attack standing courageous, holding to their principles, clinging to hope, unbowed. There is nothing that angers him more than to see them rising from the dead before they die.


"Christ is risen, my joy." The greeting of Seraphim of Sarov is, without a doubt, the greeting of the bishops of Aleppo, Boulos Yazigi and Yuhanna Ibrahim. They are crying out, wherever they are, along with the Holy Apostle Paul, to all Syrians, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand" (Philippians 4:4). 

No one will snatch this joy away from us. Whether we are in this world or the next, our mark is joy. And by their sign you will know them. Christ is risen, my joy. 

Met Georges Khodr: The Cross

Arabic original here.

The Cross

For us, victory in the name of religion is a heresy because the Christian is victorious if they strike him unjustly and he is never victorious if he is the one who strikes. If he strives for freedom, it is not only to liberate himself, but in order to liberate his oppressor as well. He does not liberate himself from those who assault him unless he also liberates them as well. He does not seek to be crucified. Seeking out suffering is not a part of our religion. Liberation from suffering is at the heart of our religion. It is an error to say that we welcome suffering. We only welcome patience in it. For this reason, we have many prayers for the sick. We do not thank God for having permitted illness. We give thanks when He heals it. We are not the ones who said that Christianity is the religion of the sick, the insane, the broken. That is an accusation from Nietzsche. We are a religion of well-being, inasmuch as our religion is fundamentally the religion of the resurrection.

You do not have to seek out suffering. It will seek you out. Proof of this is that Christians were the first to establish hospitals and that the Church established prayer for the sick as one of the cornerstones of worship, with its own night during Holy Week. It is clear in the Gospel that one of the chief tasks of Jesus of Nazareth was that He healed the sick. If you want to give a true definition of the Nazarene, say that He is a teacher and healer of the sick. The great focus on the cross among us is not that it is the site of suffering, but that healing begins there. All those who have taught that we enjoy suffering are wrong. Our true teaching is that our enjoyment is in liberation from suffering.

When I was a boy, I hated it when women would wear the cross openly on their chests. Why this display, when the cross is a sign of Christ's hiddenness? This was not an easy question for me, as the son of a jeweler, someone who made his living from selling jewelry to women, to those who were honorable and to those who were immodest. Women required gold, then, in my childhood. And after childhood, I realized that it was the woman who was showing off and that jewelry is secondary for men.

What does the cross mean, apart from that one must die before he can live? Why was there this focus in Western Christianity on the cross and not on the resurrection? This is the reality of Christians in the West-- I did not say that it is the thinking of their church. I know very well that there is no neglect of the resurrection in Western Christianity. Nevertheless, on a popular level the Western Christian's prevailing concern is with the Lord's defeatedness, even though this is absent from dogma and liturgy. Perhaps this came from people taking pleasure in their suffering, thinking that it was God's having mercy on them. I have absolutely no issue with Catholic services in this regard. They are all pure. My issue is with the masses that love suffering. Perhaps many feel that they will acquire piety through their pain.

Of course, we do not look to make ourselves suffer. That is a sick pleasure. But we must remember that suffering exists and that you cannot flee from it. You do not bear it if it doesn't exist. I know that it is always in your being and resting within you. There is absolutely no distinction between the Christian churches with regard to suffering. No church loves it, even if some take pleasure in their suffering, believing that it will necessarily bring them closer to Christ. It is right to say that I will die in the religion of the cross, if through this death I strive for resurrection.