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.....

Met. Ephrem's Sermon for Forgiveness Sunday, 2011

The Arabic original of this sermon, given in Kousba on March 6, 2011 can be found here.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Beloved, we are on the threshold of Great Lent. Today is called Forgiveness Sunday or the Sunday of the Expulsion of Adam from Paradise. At this beginning, we must follow a new upward path, as the Apostle says today in his letter to the Romans, “the night is over and day has drawn near,” which means that we must say in our mind that we want the day. Night, as the Apostle explains it, is darkness, it is negative actions, but we must adopt the light because the day has drawn near and we must not live in darkness, but rather in light and day. This is because from today we are preparing to go up this ladder in order to taste the resurrection of Christ. The light is Christ, so let us put him in the center of our life and accept the fast.

For a believing person, the fast is not a period of sorrow but rather a period of joy and this is why you heard the Gospel say, “do not look somber like the hypocrites, but rather wash your faces.” So let your faces be washed with joy. Do not scowl—be joyful in the fast.

Why do we fast? So that we can be light and not heavy, not only with food but also with cares, the cares of life. It is so that we can put them off to the side and not fear and not be bewildered by all the news of the world, no matter how disturbing they are, or by making a living, no matter how difficult it is. Instead, let us have this hope in Christ, that we may live and be victorious in Him and that we will see everything positively.

The we pray day after day, fasting with our brothers and praying with them, since the fast is so that we can draw near to God and to our brothers, so we can step out of ourselves. We fear because we cling to ourselves, so let us pay attention to others. The Gospel asks us to pay special attention to the weak. All of us are weak, but the Lord puts before us people and says to us, “help these weak people.” When we help a weak person, who is poor or ill, we rejoice more than him, as though he is the one giving us help.

This is the ambiance of the fast. It is in refraining not from foods and animal fat, but in refraining from all that does not pertain to God, that we sacrifice a little bit of our evenings out, a little bit of our pleasures. The faithful youth sacrifices and fasts and repents for the sake of all the other youths. A person (a man or a woman), when he fasts or prays or repents does not repent and fast and pray only for himself, but rather he prays for others who do not repent, do not pray, and thus we are given grace upon grace. This is our tradition, the tradition of the saints.

Let us ask God to give us this grace, so that we can pray and fast and rejoice and forgive and not be jealous in our hearts and then the light of Christ will shine in our souls and we will see everything clearly with Christ, amen.

Fr. Georges Massouh: Towards a New Muslim-Christian Agreement

The Arabic original can be found here.

Toward a New Muslim-Christian Agreement

Metropolitan Georges Khodr says, “What truly allows us to characterize Christianity as Arab is that each of its groups without exception for the past thousand-odd years has written in Arabic. Graf’s book in German Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur gives the titles of Christian books that were written in Arabic by Copts, Suryanis, Nestorians, Rum, and Maronites, including thousands of titles, although they are not published […] and so if we do not resort to the nationalist argument, which did not exist in peoples’ minds in past ages, and content ourselves with the concept of civilization, then it must be affirmed that Christianity spoke Arabic both before and after Islam.”

Needless to say, from the beginning of Christianity until today Christians have been present in all the countries of the Middle East and Christians make up an essential part of the mosaic of these counties’ native populations: Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey. We do not possess any precise information about their numbers or their proportion relative to the general population. If numbers are true and unambiguous in the science of mathematics, for Arabs today they are a matter of opinion or perspective, like their polls, their elections, and their budgets. Thus the numbers of Christians in the Arab world range from high and low estimates depending on the goals of those announcing or publishing the numbers and their aims in doing so. Because the numbers are not precise we will not deal with them.

For years Arab societies have witnessed a withdrawal of the Christian presence in public life. The shared domains that had been able to gather Muslims and Christians together for common work—I mean Arab nationalism, socialism, and the secular parties—failed in creating a state of the people, democracy, freedom, citizenship, scientific and cultural revival, the liberation of Palestine… while at the same time they contributed to many frustrations. Even worse, the states that raised these banners turned into unbearable dictatorships. So the Arab Christians, after having shared a single common fate with Arab Muslims and after most Arab Christians having adopted Arabism as a common denominator with Muslims against the Turkification of the region then against the European mandates and against the Zionist Entity, the “Arab Nationalists” who held the reins of power deviated from the lofty goals that they had raised. And this is what gave people the notion that religious fundamentalism was the ideal alternative for solving all the problems.

This withdrawal of the Christian role from public life has been accompanied by intense emigration that has led to a worrying diminution the numbers of Christians. Dr. Tarek Mitri says that a group of writers and specialists estimated the proportion of Christians in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine to be around ten percent. Mitri attributes this decrease in the number of Christians in the Arab East, which at the beginning of the 20^th century is estimated to be a quarter of the population, to various causes depending on the time and the region. Mitri rejects the reduction of the reasons for the decline to a low fertility rate and high emigration rate among Christians caused by increasing feelings of estrangement and anxiety over the future. In talking about emigration, he points to very important economic factors. Christian emigration at the start of the 20^th century cannot be separated from the increase in the number of Christians and the improvement in their standard of living. However, emigration in the 1960’s “was in turn fed by a desire for economic advancement.”

The issue of Arab Christians rests on the extent of their view of their role in this dear East. The role of eastern Christians first of all comes out of their faith in the importance of their presence in this East and in their speaking the language of the Qur’an, the Muslims’ book. We affirm the importance of their presence, while presence is not the same thing as mere existence; it is possible to exist without having a presence. Secondly, the existence of Christians in the Arab East must not be merely an accumulation of numbers, or museums, or memories, or traditions. They must be active in the life of their nations through being involved in the issues of their countries and peoples. The participation of the Copts in the Egyptian uprising, despite the support of their patriarch for the former president, is only a promising start that must be crowned with the adoption of a secular constitution based on equality, freedom, and human rights.

Despite the rise of fundamentalisms and religious extremism, Muslim and Christian Arabs must begin to think together about a new Arab agreement based on citizenship, equality, freedom, and democracy. Christian (and Muslim) fears are growing over the increase in religious extremism that uses violence as a means to realize its goals. On this level, Christians are the full partners of Muslims in building the future. However, until today there is no complete plan that puts Arab citizens at rest about what will happen tomorrow. Let us begin from here.

Met. Georges' Eulogy for Fr. Elias Morcos

The Arabic original can be found here. A photo gallery of Archimandrite Elias' funeral service can be seen here.

Living is the God before Whom I Stand

When the patron of our brother Archimandrite Elias, the Prophet Elijah, was resisting the world for the sake of God, the world rejected God and was worshiping idols. That poor, hungry prophet stood before the king and queen of his land in order to say to creation, “God is alive.” No one comes before God, not kings and not great men. There is one being and He is God and I am His servant and His messenger before this people that entrusted me with prophethood.

The young Elias Morcos, living in Lattakia, saw that laxity was afflicting our people who are called to be Orthodox, and so he wrote to a friend of his and said, “We are called to aright this people who consider themselves Orthodox.”

And so, from the very beginning of his spiritual awareness, he struggled for the sake of Christ without any visible sign of vocation, without a robe, because he was unable to bear this holy people decaying in their sins and ignorance. He wrote to his friend who was on summer vacation, “We want to aright the Orthodox people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with His love and His obedience, because we want our people to be a church. Because we want the people to shine with the Spirit, to burn with divine love, yearning for the One who announced His longing for them, who was nailed to the wood.”

Elias Morcos understood two things about this topic discussed in the letter. He understood that he was called to adorn himself with the virtues and that all our brethren are called to this, because in the past we grumbled and gossiped and criticized the spiritual leadership and we thought that through this chatter we would revive our people. That was before this young man realized that the issue is for you to put the passions to death in order for it to be right for you to speak. It was not enough for him to purify himself. That on its own would be closing himself off. He had to purify others through the love of Christ. And so he reached out to others in order to be able to reach the Lord. After this, he saw that we have a model for purification and this is monasticism. It is not that this is the sole means of purifying oneself, but it is the means that the Church considers to be the model. And so he came to this place and he prepared for the arrival of some of his comrades from Syria and Lebanon. It became clear that the monastic community is not by itself the model, but rather the individual person who trusts Christ is the model. He read—and I hope that we all become readers of the divine Word, because our Church is the Church of the Word that comes down to you from God as the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

It occurs to my mind that when an institution is founded that it needs organization, cultivation, management, writing. However, the Christian who lies before us in the presence of his Lord understood that there is no institution- there are people who love God, who desire to be purified, who struggle as they go up the ladder or virtues. Because if you see that God is everything, as the Prophet Elijah saw, then you aspire to be like God. It is not enough for us to be human beings. We want to be gods. This is in the books of our Fathers.

This person who was immersed in humility wanted to be beloved of God, to be a witness to the Word, to extend it to his brothers, to not be credited with any virtue he may have, to be broken to the very end, because humility is for a person to become effaced in the presence of God. Because, as the Apostle says, someone who thinks he is something is nothing. Elias Morcos thought he was nothing and this is why he was able, through great difficulties, to gather this small flock in this high place. He was able by the grace of God, hidden by his humility. He did not read his humility. People read him. We read him ourselves. This is why he wanted to be the model of a saint. This is the only thing that is worth striving for.

This did not happen without his constant joy. He felt Christianity to be joy. The joy, however, requires continuous struggle. You cannot go up to the divine presence unless you are convinced that you are nothing. He disciplined as he needed to and he reminded them that they have no partner except the Lord Jesus. He continued to struggle until the very end against the spirit of laxity, but always without judging anyone… If you are beloved of God, He always exempts you from judging before you yourself are judged. The leader of this house, Father Elias, was exempted from judging. And so it is right for us to ask his intercession in the hope of his resurrection and our resurrection and eternal life.

This place renewed men’s monasticism. He and his comrades, those who have departed and those who remain, they wondered, “What is monasticism in its profundity, in its truest theological definition?” It is for a person to cleave to eternal life, as though this world with its delights and pleasures did not exist. From now on we will fight, relying on God, we will fight so that from now on God will take our eyes up to the Kingdom…

He tried to think this and to practice this with humility, with dedication, with brokenness, with indescribable love for his brothers and for all of us, constantly bowing before the face of God. So we would come to this monastery to learn humility, to learn that there is no one besides God, and to proclaim this to the mighty ones of this age and to become simple and content with God’s grace and God’s Word.

God will say to him without judgment: You have made yourself faithful over a small group of men, a small group of monks, and I will put you over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord so that the people will believe that there is nothing other than the face of God and that if we cleave to that face, then we are imitating Archimandrite Elias, even if it is only to a certain degree. We long for that great vision, so that we might die for right belief and for giving right glory, preparing here to enter into the heavenly Jerusalem. May God be with you all and strengthen your hearts.