Bp Constantine Kayyal: Meatfare

Arabic original here.

Meatfare

The topic of today's Gospel passage is love.

The Lord Jesus gives a parable about the Last Judgment and affirms to us that the standard of judgment is love, personal and tangible love for the people that God puts along our way.

Love that corresponds to our social, economic and political interests and concerns is good and useful, but it is not pure and uniquely Christian love.

It is true that we are called to establish a just society governed by equality and brotherhood, but the true Christian love to which the Gospel calls us and on the basis of which humankind shall be judged is "that we love one another" and reconcile with one another so that all may know that we are Christ's disciples.

This is the true Church, the living Church of Christ, not a social or national institution.

The sole standard of judgment is man's relationship to his fellow man, not only man's relationship to God. Our sole path to heaven is through our fellow man.

Yesterday we prayed for our departed loved ones. We pray for them because we love them and so that we may encounter them in Christ who is love and in whom there is no difference between living and dead because all are alive. When we love Christ, we also love His elect because He endured disgrace and crucifixion for the salvation of all humankind.

Today we also remove meat from our tables in order to prepare to enter into greater struggle through fasting, prayer and self-discipline in order to make the soul close to others in order to draw closer to God.

The purpose of refraining from meat and its derivatives is to make money more available to give to our brothers in need out of love for them. This is the most important expression of true love and of the communion that exists between the members of the Church, the body of Christ.

Let us pray that our mighty God may grant us the strength and love to pass through this holy forty-day fast and to bear love for our brothers in our hearts and minds every day and every moment, so that we might be worthy to attain the most sublime goal, the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus.

Bishop Constantine

Abbot of the Patriarchal Monastery of Mar Elias Shwayya

Bp Constantine Kayyal: The Rich Young Man

Arabic original here.

The Rich Young Man

"What should I do to inherit eternal life?" This is the question that every person who aspires to a good life asks, in order to attain the crown of holiness.

The young man in today's Gospel reading is no different from other young men who wish to live a good life, and this desire and longing for a good life is planted in us because we were created in the image and likeness of God.

This is because Jesus waits for all of us. No matter what questions, cares and worries we bear, He wants to hear them with love. He is neither a psychiatrist nor an ethics professor, but rather Lord and Savior, because He is all love and only gives love.

Since doing good deeds and works of mercy does not in itself mean avoiding sin, you must go beyond all these things and follow Jesus, who waits for you. You must become free of your concern for yourself, of your selfishness, of every earthly thing, follow your Teacher and be a living bridge that connects God and people.

Here Jesus focuses on the commandments that order our relationship to our neighbor, among them worship, which requires two things: the first is with regard to God and the second with regard to the neighbor.

In order to proceed towards the kingdom, you must be free of fornication and preserve your life and the life of your neighbor. Otherwise, you are infringing on another's possession. You must be committed to the orphan and honor your parents and support them. The young man responded:

"I have done all this since my childhood. What do I still lack?"

So Jesus said to him, "Sell everything you have and come follow me."

That means, get rid of everything and follow the Lord. Join Him and commit to the path of perfection. But on account of his heart's attachment to what his hands possessed, the young man went away sad.

Therefore, live a life of giving, so that you may feel true happiness. Do not be like this young man who was attached to his wealth. Trust that everything is possible with God and He alone is able to help you, support you and lift you up to Himself.

Yes! The young man went away sad like any person living on earth, while the Christian is a person created for heaven. It is true that the Christian lives on earth, but he is not of the people of the earth. He is a heavenly person born from above, born in water and the Spirit. His concern is heaven and his mind is on heaven.

His faith is translated into good deeds that benefit others so that he may inherit eternal life. But here we must be aware that we do not inherit eternal life while we are sitting in our places, but rather when we are active and act in love, because the kingdom of heaven does not come to us ready-made. The kingdom is taken by force and we must rightly deserve it.

This is eternal life. It is not in obeying the laws and rules and keeping the divine commandments, for the Ten Commandments have no value if word is not attached to deed and if man is not the purpose for which these commandments exit.

Dear reader, always remember the Lord's words in his famous Sermon on the Mount, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Our only treasure is not in banks, in income or in possessions, but rather in heaven. This treasure is good works, mercy and love for one's neighbor. It is faith in God and acting according to His will so that we may inherit the desired kingdom.

Bishop Constantine Kayyal

Abbot of the Patriarchal Monastery of Saint Elias, Shwayya

Bp Constantine Kayyal: Freedom of Reason

Arabic original here.

Freedom of Reason

Man today lives in a state of great separation between God and knowledge. Some behold God, united to Him in the simplicity of their piety, their faith and their surrender to God's self-disclosure, while others attempt to comprehend Him and discover Him through the power of reason, to subjugate Him and to restrict Him to the scope of scientific knowledge.

Today's world needs to be humble and leave room for divine grace to work, so that it may know God's will.

Divine grace supports human freedom and man advances in knowledge. This is the teaching of the fathers! Man cannot advance in knowledge without the activity of grace. This advancement is a progression from disclosure to disclosure.

Freedom is the driving force by which we strive for God and divine grace rests in us and draws us to Him.

Freedom in no way means liberating reason and immersing it in philosophical theories by which it attempts to know God. Our Church believes in reason and its role in us and she also believes that its existence comes from its Creator.

The rational person, as we learn from the teaching of Saint Anthony the Great, "is not someone who thinks and searches, just as he is not someone who is educated and debates. The true rational person is the one who is focused on God."

The Church is no stranger to the ways of science and knowledge. Since she received, at Pentecost, the gift of knowledge and enlightenment of reason, she has been concerned with revealing Jesus to the world, He who is the way, the truth and the light (John 14:6).

Over the course of history, the Church has endeavored to show the truths of the faith through philosophy and dialectic, but she has not made God into an object of rational knowledge. "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24).

This worship is the beginning of knowledge. It is bowing before the activity of grace.

The rational ability that man possesses prepares him to understand that what is created and helps him with this. That is the scope of its work. But with regard to the Creator, it stands helpless and must stand helpless, admitting its helplessness and beholding this mystery in silence.

He who desired to draw us to Himself, in His goodness came to us, perfect in his His divinity becoming man, entered into our life and caused us corrupt ones to participate in His life. This is the God who is incomprehensible. Here lies the mystery.

The rational man is the one who is always pious before God. He strives for complete unity with Him in his soul and his mind. When man strives to attain this longing, he becomes free. With this freedom, he will attain joy and peace and be made worthy to meet Jesus.

The holy Church is the only place of divine disclosure. We who are members of this body-- bishops, priests, monks and believers-- are merely beholders and servants of this disclosure, since by it we live and are divinized.

May the God who loves mankind make us worthy to attain wisdom from Him, so that we may remain faithful to our true faith and become worthy of His glory that was prepared before the foundation of the world.

+Bishop Constantine Kayyal
Abbot of the Patriarchal Monastery of Saint Elias, Shwayya

Bishop Constantine Kayyal on Joy and the Sanctification of Time

Arabic original here.

How do we Relate to the Joy of Christ?

The word 'joy' (in Greek, χαρά) is derived from the verb χαίρω and various philosophers have attempted to define it. Some of them completely distinguished it from what is known as pleasure (ἡδονή) and others regarded it at a type of pleasure. There is, however, a consensus, if one can say that, among the philosophical definitions that joy is merely a phenomenon.

In both testaments of the Holy Bible, the word 'joy (χαρά) is connected to the word 'grace' (χάρις).

This connection becomes clear through the use of the word 'grace' (χάρις) to indicate the Hebrew word hesed (חֶסֶד). This connection is made manifest in the angel's good tidings to the Mother of God, "Rejoice O full of grace!" (Luke 1:28).

Starting from this simple linguistic description, we see that in our Orthodox Church joy is not a mere phenomenon with this emotional and affective dimension. Our true joy is that which comes from God. It is the result of the work of divine, uncreated grace within us.

The work of divine grace within us occurs in the Church and through the holy mysteries which are, in other words, the channels of uncreated grace which sanctifies us and sanctifies our time. For this reason we find in our Church what is known as the liturgical new year, which is a wonderful expression of the purpose of our creation. That is, the sanctification of our time.

On September first, this liturgical year begins in order to transport us within the vastness of the holy liturgy to the first object our desire, which we lost as the result of our selfishness, leading to our fall from the world of grace to the world of chaos and corruption.

God, however, in His love for humankind, desired to send His only Son, the eternal Word, into the midst of this chaos in which we live, to prepare a way for us that would bring us back to what is loftier and more sublime, that would bring us back to the state of grace from which we had expelled ourselves.

We follow this way sacramentally in our liturgical life, which is nothing other than that path arranged for giving praise to God.

Through the incarnation of God the Son on earth, He restored holiness to our time. He sanctified it simply by dwelling within it. The Creator unites with creation to prepare it, sanctifying it. We came to know the Lord Jesus as perfect man and perfect God. He lived among us and interacted with us, all of this out of love for us, seeking our salvation. So how do we relate to that love? Do we interact with it?

Or does it remain for us merely the commemoration of something that has passed? Our life with Christ is a life renewed by grace, a life whose foundation is prayer and whose goal is ascent and joy at beholding the glory of the Trinity.

Wherever Christ is found, there is true joy and true consolation. If we want to enjoy this joy, then let us seek Him and know that He is present, springing forth from the holy mysteries to permeate our depths. So let us enjoy God's richness and let us become constantly joyful, so long as we seek to be close to Him. "Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:24). Our refraining from participation in the mysteries of the Church is a separation from grace and an abandonment of Christ. It is a rejection of true happiness. Every joy ends after a few moments. Material happiness is for what is material and the material has no life within it. But our joy with Christ remains as long as Christ remains within us. Our God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

It is not enough for us to have superficial, intellectual knowledge of Christ in order to obtain true grace. If we do not strive in our effort for purification and the support of uncreated divine grace, our joy will not be perfect. When Christ is firmly fixed within us and in our minds, we will hear His voice saying, "Come, blessed ones of My Father, inherit the eternal kingdom." Then the Good News of the kingdom will spring forth from us because through baptism we have been made worthy to be called children of the Most High and temples of the Holy Spirit. This intimate bond between us and the Lord Jesus becomes manifest and grows within the prayer that we lift up like incense before the throne of the eternal God and which Christ personally offered us. So let us walk with Him toward His great and holy Pascha which is the perfection of the liturgical year, the perfection of the feasts, and the perfection of joy.

Bishop Constantine Kayyal
Abbot of the Patriarchal Monastery of Mar Elias, Shwayya