Met Ephrem (Kyriakos): The Divinity of Christ

Arabic original here.

The Divinity of Christ

"And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine" (John 17:10).

Here we reach the summit of the Lord's farewell discourse. The Lord Jesus Christ prays to the Father and says, "Father, the hour has come" (John 17:1). It is he hour of death, indeed, it is the hour of glory. He moves from eternity to time and from time to eternity: a circular movement. "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3).

Knowledge of the true God causes us to enter into eternity from this moment, despite the weight of the present unhappiness and misery. We feel the presence of eternity, which comforts us and makes us shine.

How do we know God and believe in Him if we have not known Christ, the Son of God, and believed in His words?

"The hour has come." The hour of crucifixion. The hour of death. The hour of glory. "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was" (John 17:5). Do you see what this glory is that was with God before the creation of the world?! Here the divinity of the Son becomes perfectly clear. This hour is also the hour of sacrifice. "Sacrifice to God is a broken spirit." The words of the Lord Jesus are sacramental words, eucharistic words, a priestly prayer.

The Lord Jesus is the lamb slaughtered before the creation of the world. Glory is the cross. The Lord is continuously crucified before creation and after the resurrection, mystically for our sake and for the sake of the world according to His great love because Jesus, God, is love (cf. 1 Peter 1:19-20).

He suffers for man whom He created, even before He created him. He gave him a body capable of sin and death. He gave him freedom that is capable of falling, as opposed to God's freedom, which can only love what His hands have made.

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Therefore He prays for His disciples and says, "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word" (John 17:6).

"And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them... that they may be one as We are" (John 17:10-11). What do these words mean!? First of all, it is an expression of the unity of the Father with the Son and so of the unity of the Trinity and the communion of the three hypostases: communion of unity and love. Secondly-- and this is what concerns us disciples of the Lord Jesus-- it is an expression of how our behavior must be, we who are created in the image of God, the image of the Trinity, toward each other. What do you want, beloved brothers, more clear than this as an expression of unity: "all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine."

This is Christian behavior: we are one in Christ just as Christ is one with the Father.

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

George Ghandour: The Great Orthodox Council between Rhodes and Crete

Arabic original in an-Nahar here. George Ghandour is the author of The Road to the Great Orthodox Council (in Arabic), published by the Patriarchate of Antioch and is the foremost expert on modern Antiochian canon law.


The Great Orthodox Council between Rhodes and Crete

After the eyes of the world have been directed toward Crete for the period from June 19-26, 2016, where it was decided that the Great Orthodox Council will be held after sixty years of preparatory work, inaugurated by Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1961 on the island of Rhodes, developments have occurred that presage either postponing the council, cancelling it, or holding it with whoever attends. The Church of Bulgaria has asked the Ecumenical Patriarch to postpone holding the Great Council until a later date or it will not participate in its work on the set date. The Patriarchate of Antioch has decided not to participate until "peaceful relations between the autocephalous churches prevail, and Orthodox unanimity about the Council’s agenda, regulations and executive and practical procedures are guaranteed" and "until the reasons, which prevent participating in the Holy Eucharist during the Council, disappear." That is, until a solution is found for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem's violation of its territory. Likewise, the Church of Serbia has stated that it will not participate in the work of the council on the set date in light of the differences over the topics on the agenda and the absence of a number of autocephalous churches. As for the Church of Russia, it has not yet specified its final position with regard to participating in the council, but it has stressed "the necessity of respecting the principle of unanimous consensus through the participation of all the autocephalous churches in this council" in order for it to be present on Crete.

It is noteworthy that none of the churches mentioned above requested the council's cancellation, but all of them proposed postponing  it until a later date, pending work to remove the obstacles related to its organization, working mechanisms and agenda. Each of them made proposals in this regard to His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch in order to avoid cancelling the long-awaited council. The Church of Bulgaria proposed continuing the preparatory work for the council without proposing any mechanism in this regard. The Patriarchate of Antioch did likewise, proposing that work be done in the period left before the council is held to build agreement and ensure unanimous consensus about the topics without specifying any detailed mechanism for this. As for the Moscow Patriarchate, it has proposed that there be an invitation for holding "a preparatory conference ahead of the date for holding the council," while the Church of Serbia has proposed converting the upcoming meeting on Crete into "a consultative rather than conciliar gathering" or into "a preliminary session for the conciliar process."

In response, however, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has stressed that the Great Council will be held on the date set and has asked the autocephalous churches to come to Crete according to the agreed-upon program with a view to examining all the issues at the council. The Church of Romania has stated that it will participate in the council, while the Church of Albania regards it as unacceptable for the call to postpone the council to be made by any church on its own and that the decision to delay or cancel cannot be taken except by a summit of the heads of the Orthodox Churches, which made the decision to call for it by a majority of its members, with one member (that is, the Church of Antioch) not agreeing. The Archbishop of Cyprus has issued a communiqué in which he called upon all the churches to participate and to leave secondary disagreements between themselves aside, because the decision to hold the council was made by the unanimous consensus of the heads of the Orthodox churches and the council can directly address the controversial issues. The Church of Greece has not officially expressed its position, but the bishop assigned with following up on the dossier of  the Great Council has stated that everything that is happening was planned ahead of time and is intended to weaken the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch in order to give the Russian Church the role of arbiter of decisions made in the Orthodox world.

There is no doubt that all the above proves that even before it is held, the Great Orthodox Council may become a factor for disagreement and fragmentation among the Orthodox. In the case that it is held by those churches that show up, this will lead to the splintering of the Orthodox world and its decisions will not be accepted by those churches that are not participating. It will provide an opportunity to the opposition movement within the churches that do participate to also reject these decisions and will inevitably lead to weakening the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch, who for a long time in the future will no longer be able to head gatherings of the leaders of the Orthodox churches. All of this will open a new stage in the history of the Orthodox Church that will not be without difficulties, disputes and divisions.

The most dangerous thing, however, is that holding this council without the participation of all the autocephalous Orthodox churches in its activities will be a sad and disappointing conclusion to the promises initiated by Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1961, when he was able to unify the Orthodox world at the First Rhodes Conference, which launched the preparatory work for the Great Council on the basis of a golden rule that he and his collaborators called "holy unanimity." Though this unanimity, he intended allow the Orthodox Church to avoid divisions like those that the Orthodox world knew after the pan-Orthodox summit that was held in 1923 in the absence of certain churches. Throughout his time of leadership, Patriarch Athenagoras followed this golden rule and worked intently to preserve Orthodox unanimous consensus as the guarantor of the unity of the Orthodox world under difficult and complicated historical circumstances. This rule was subsequently consecrated in the internal statute of the Orthodox preparatory conferences that was unanimously agreed upon by the  autocephalous Orthodox churches in 1986 and which expressed "traditional Orthodox practice and canonized it in writing" when Section 2 of it stipulated that the Ecumenical Patriarch calls for the preparatory conference after "the consent of the heads of the local Orthodox churches through patriarchal letters addressed to all the heads of the autocephalous and autonomous Orthodox churches." Section 15 stipulated that "the Orthodox preparatory committee will undertake the work to ensure Orthodox consensus on each topic placed on the agenda for the following Orthodox conference and for preparing a joint text on each topic." Section 16 of this statute stated that "all texts regarding the topics placed on the agenda of the Orthodox preparatory meetings will be adopted by unanimity."

However, with the renewal of preparatory work for the Great Council in 2014, certain facts emerged indicating that His Holiness the current Ecumenical Patriarch would not apply this "traditional Orthodox practice" mentioned above and that he is inclined to hold the Great Council with whoever attends and relying on the principle of "agreement" of those churches participating in it and not the principle of "the unanimous consensus of all the autocephalous churches." The Church of Antioch has rejected this proposal, stating that the Great Council cannot be held unless all the autocephalous Orthodox churches participate in its activities. This is in accordance with the clear and precise internal statute of the council that was agreed upon by all the autocephalous churches before the call to hold the council. During the work of the committee in charge of establishing an internal statute for the Great Council, it proposed adding a section stipulating that "announcing the inauguration of the sessions of the Great Orthodox Council will take place in the presence of all the heads of the autocephalous Orthodox churches. The attendance of the heads of the churches or those designated by them must be secured throughout the work of the council. Otherwise, the work of the council will be suspended until the presence of all the heads of the autocephalous churches is again possible." However, this Antiochian proposal was met with fierce opposition from the head of the session, the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, who came back and rejected the formula stating that "the Ecumenical Patriarch must ensure (safeguard) the participation of all the heads of the universally-recognized autocephalous Orthodox churches or their representatives in all conciliar procedures and deliberations." This is despite the presence of a representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the commission that formulated it, which also included representatives of the Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Moscow. This led to suspending the meeting designated with setting the internal statute and referring the issue to the summit of the heads of the Orthodox churches that met at Chambésy in 2016 and formed a committee to set the internal statute, where again the Ecumenical Patriarchate refused to include the rule of unanimity in the text of the statute. The Ecumenical Patriarchate's abandoning the golden rule upon which all the preparatory work for the Great Council forced the Patriarchate of Antioch to refrain from signing the internal statute and the decisions of the aforementioned summit, which lost the unanimity of the Orthodox Churches. In another sense, the Church of Antioch has never agreed to hold the Great Council on the aforementioned date, so long as there is no unanimous consensus on its topics and peaceful relations are not guaranteed between all the autocephalous churches. This is in order to safeguard the unity of the Orthodox world and preserve the inheritance left for the Orthodox world by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras.

However, contrary to all the norms governing joint Orthodox work, His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew undertook to call for holding the Great Council. This led the Church of Antioch to take the unanimous synodal decision to affirm its previous position of not participating in the Great Council "so long as there is no agreement" about all its mechanisms and topics, so that the council will not be a cause for fragmentation and for wasting what has been built by joint work over the past sixty years, especially given that the council would be held in the shadow of disagreements over the documents being referred to it and the breaking of communion between two apostolic churches (that is, Antioch and Jerusalem).

Historical experience over the past century has proven that the Istanbul summit that was called by Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis) in 1923 led to the splintering of the Orthodox because it made important conciliar decisions in the absence of apostolic churches. The Orthodox world suffered from the results of this summit until God sent Athenagoras, who worked to build unity calmly and without haste or hurry, respecting the specificities and situations of all the autocephalous churches. He patiently worked to build up Orthodox agreement about the topics of the great council. The path that was begun in 1961 has realized palpable results, whether on the level of the unity of the Orthodox world or on the level of dialogue with the rest of the Christian world.

But today, so that the Orthodox Church may preserve its unity, it is needed of the Ecumenical Patriarch that he read the signs of the time clearly, especially the restlessness resulting from the Ecumenical Patriarchate's management of the latest preparatory stage, which was not without heavy-handedness and ignoring the positions of the other churches which, whenever they raised a voice in objection to the direction taken by the preparatory work for the Great Council, their concerns fell on deaf ears.

Perhaps what is also needed, so that the Great Orthodox Council on Crete will not turn into another Istanbul summit, destroying what the Rhodes Conference built and wasting all the joint work among the Orthodox churches that followed it, is for the Ecumenical Patriarchate to recover the experience of Patriarch Athenagoras. That is, to not understand its primacy as rigid leadership and to regard its patriarch as the first among equals, not primus sine paribus!

Perhaps the opportunity has not yet passed for Patriarch Bartholomew himself to be this savior. Is anyone listening?!

Carol Saba: The Orthodox Churches' Accelerating Crises and the Holy Spirit's Agenda

Arabic original here.

The Orthodox Churches' Accelerating Crises: 
The Fractiousness of the Orthodox Churches and the Agenda of the Holy Spirit

Are the accelerating Orthodox developments a crisis or an awakening? Both the Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox Churches have withdrawn their signatures, having previously signed all the decisions by the preparatory conferences and committees for the Great Orthodox Council, including the Synaxes of 2014 and 2016 in Geneva (I myself was present at the latter). Today they are withdrawing and today they are saying the opposite of what they said yesterday. Is this an awakening from an extended coma or was there yesterday a watchword for signing, then today there was a watchword for withdrawing the signature? Is the Orthodox world today at the end of a crisis and the beginning of an awakening? Are things escalating and colliding or will there be a course-correction and a renewed course of unity? I have previously said and written that there is an "official agenda for the council" and then there is the "agenda of the Holy Spirit" who sometimes intervenes without us realizing it, especially when we do not leave the way open for the Holy Spirit to blow along our paths.

Are we at the beginning of an awakening or the beginning of a state of fragmentation because of the Orthodox world's inability to reconcile tradition and modernity? Modernity isn't "modernization" in the sense of taking the superficial aspect of modernity but remaining in essence petrified. Not everyone who uses an iPhone or WhatsApp has reached modernity. Rather, it is a modernity of thinking and vision and a capacity for looking forward to the future. It is as though today, the Orthodox Churches, each of which until now has acted as though it sees itself as the entire body and not one of the members of the body, have started to realize that today they need the rest of the members of the body and that they cannot continue to live in parallel to the other churches because each is a member of the body and not the body itself and so, consequently, each must interact with the rest of the members of the body in order to build up the unity of the body. It appears that today "the razor reached the chin" and a brake was necessary. It remains that unity is not given to us so that we can treat it like someone making a withdrawal from a savings account.

For a long time now, Antioch has not ceased repeating and cautioning the churches that unity cannot be divided as it is a state of mutual participation between all the members, that if one member suffers, all members must heal its wounds, and that the issue of Qatar is not an issue of a boundary disagreement between two patriarchates, but rather an issue of indivisible communion between all the Orthodox churches. Their unity is based first of all on communion of faith and secondly on respect for the canons of the ecumenical councils in cooperation with each other, so any attack on a part is an attack on the whole.

Yes, unity is the "stature of Christ" which is indivisible and to which we must rise. It requires of all the members effort, taking things slowly, patience, and awareness, ways of communion and cooperation, ways of unity, spiritual discernment and apprehension. Is what is happening today part of the agenda of the Holy Spirit, who enters into us like a fireball, corrects the course, and brings us out of competing policies between the churches to mutually complimentary policies among the Orthodox churches? The council is not a goal in itself. Unity is the goal. Not a simulated unity, but actual unity in the image of the Trinity: unity and diversity. Let us pray to the Lord!

Below is what I wrote in the preface to my study for the latest meeting of the Holy Synod of Antioch, before all the latest developments, whose positive and negative aspects we must analyze equally and take from the positive aspects, so that the Lord may speak to us through them.

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Conclusion One: The Orthodox Churches' Accelerating Crises
+ The Orthodox world is experiencing a great crisis, a crisis of "fleeing forward", a crisis that in essence is not a crisis of faith, but which may lead to a serious ecclesiastical crisis and a crisis of unity if matters are not set in order and the course leading to the abyss-- which, in the words of Fr Touma (Bitar), is taking the Orthodox world in the "wrong theological, ecclesiological and pastoral direction"-- is not set aright.

+ The driving forces behind the crisis are many and varied. There is no room to delve into them here, but two fundamental driving forces can be highlighted. The first of them lies in the repercussions of the "age of globalization" which is hastening-- indeed, exploding-- the conflict and collision within the Orthodox churches between tradition and modernity. The second is the repercussions of the acute political competition that has been accelerating for two decades between two basic Orthodox pole: the Hellenic, Greek pole on the one hand and the Russian, Slavic pole on the other hand. It is a crisis of competition of a new sort, whose goal is to strive by all available means for primacy in the leadership of the Orthodox world. It is striking deeply at all the elements of Orthodox conciliar life and communion, on which the Orthodox Church's ecclesiology is based.

+ In this context, the Great Orthodox Council appears to be a cover for these competing ecclesiastical politics-- competition that will be ongoing before, during and after the council set to be held on Crete this coming June. The truth is, one can say more than this-- that by not addressing the Orthodox Church's real dilemmas, the council is a facade of simulated unity for Orthodox churches that have not yet undertaken a historical evaluation of their path in today's world.

+ Consequently,  there are enormous real dangerous hovering around Orthodox unity,with an increasing escalation of criticism against the hasty, hurried approach to the preparation and call for the Great Orthodox Council. This growing critical movement comes from various Orthodox actors in Greece and elsewhere, whether episcopal, theological, academic or in many circles of the faithful in the East and the West. Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus in Greece has expressed its seriousness when he said, "the Pan-Orthodox Council is a council without the Orthodox." This movement may subject the Orthodox world to dangers of schisms that might appear here and there and which may grow today more than at any time in the past because of the effect of rapid communications that link various actors across borders in a networked world.

+ The crisis of the Orthodox churches today is not a crisis of faith or a crisis of unity or a crisis of dogma. Rather, it is a crisis of modernity and of how to deal with the modernity of today's world. It is in form and essence a crisis of fractiousness that is increasingly keeping the Orthodox world away from the engines of true witness to Christ and from the engines of evangelism in today's world. It may lead the Orthodox world to modernization in form and petrification and museumization in content. The transformations in today's world, which the Orthodox world has not yet analyzed sufficiently, are a lightning-bolt that is exploding the internal situations in all the Orthodox churches inclined toward traditionalism that are living in history more than in geography and reality and are therefore completely estranged from the geography, psychology and sociology of today's world.

+ The greatest evidence for this is the ambiguous relationship between the mother Orthodox churches and their diaspora across the five continents. This dossier is the heart of the issue, and the arena for strife, competition and hot and cold wars between the two poles and between the churches. It is the axis of all the battles before, during and after the Great Orthodox Council. This relationship between the mother church and its diaspora exists and is understood-- implicitly, not openly-- in a single administrative direction. That is, the direction of the mother church which does not realize that its diaspora is a new life for it and for the Orthodox Christian message. It does not realize the necessity of prioritizing evangelism over management, since the Orthodox diaspora is a grace from God's economy that can only be aright through a mutually-participatory and mutually communicative relationship between the mother churches and their diasporas.Today's world, the world of networks, globalization and the revolution in digital communications has exploded the situations of all the Orthodox churches inclined toward traditionalism. A significant proportion of these churches have not yet realized the importance and necessity of undertaking a critical review of the Church's ways of governance and of launching them into today's world and the necessity of departing from traditional approaches that have become obsolete in order to renew pastoral care and evangelism in today's world. Consequently, the most important challenge that the Orthodox Church is experiencing today is the challenge of fractiousness and petrification and of holding back from looking at the reflection in the mirror.

+ The Orthodox churches that have started to understand these dynamic factors in today's world, the interconnected world of networks and not the world of a unilaterally-acting center-- churches such as Romania, for example-- have started putting into place mutually-participatory, cumulative policies to build up the influence between the mother church and the local churches spread around the world. Here the Russian and Romanian Churches seem to be leading the way in this direction, each of them in its own way and with its own means, while the other churches that are still stuck, to varying degrees, in old-fashioned methodologies are candidates for increasing the elements of the crisis and deviating toward becoming historical museums.

+ The Great Orthodox Council is an outward facade that does not address these critical dilemmas, but rather ignores them while at the same time expansionist ecclesiastical politics continue on the ground. Consequently, the escalation of internal crises in the churches that do not protect themselves in these new situations and continue to act internally and externally in an old-fashioned manner, have not endeavored to develop their concepts, and have not undertaken historic reviews in order to modernize their positioning, discourse and their ways of working are now subject, more than any time in the past, to predation and proselytization by other Christian churches that are more dynamic and active in today's world.

Fr Georges Massouh on the Ascension

Arabic original here.

God Humanized and Man Divinized

Tomorrow, the Orthodox Church will celebrate the Thursday of the Divine Ascension, Christ's ascension into heaven forty days after His resurrection from the dead. It is noteworthy that until the fourth century, the Church combined this feast with the Feast of Pentecost on one day, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles fifty days after Easter. The Church of Jerusalem, however, started a tradition that was very rapidly adopted by the other churches, separating the Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost and making them independent of each other.

When did the ascension happen? The Holy Evangelist Luke mentions the ascension in two different places in his writings: in the last chapter of his gospel and in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In the gospel, Luke mentions that Christ ascended on the same day that He rose. After appearing to the disciples, "He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven" (Luke 24:50-51). In the Book of Acts, Luke mentions that Jesus showed Himself to to His disciples to be alive after His passion with many proofs and that He appeared to them for forty days, speaking to them of many things pertaining to the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3) and He "was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9).

Is there a contradiction in Luke's two accounts with regard to the time of the ascension? Can the writer fall into a gross error that would make it impossible to believe entire gospel from a to z? So then, did the ascension happen on the very day of the resurrection or on the fortieth day after the resurrection? There is no doubt that Luke, the Syrian, Antiochian physician, did not fall into a contradiction, but rather distinguished between the two things: the time of the ascension that took place on the day of the resurrection on the one hand, and the forty-day period during which Christ continued to appear to His disciples on the other hand.

The fact of the matter is that in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, the number forty is a symbolic number indicating the holy time in preparation for a significant event. So in his two texts, Luke wanted to stress that the cross, the resurrection and the ascension all three constitute a single event that happened all at once, while at the same time he wanted to affirm that Christ appeared to His disciples for forty days so that they would be completely sure of His resurrection and in order to prepare them for a new time through His presence among them before He was lifted up to heaven.

The Orthodox Church believes that the event of Christ the Lord's ascension to heaven and sitting at the right hand of God the Father is just one link in an unbreakable chain reaching from the Word of God's becoming human to His crucifixion, to His resurrection from the dead to His ascension to His sending the Holy Spirit into the world. The purpose of all these events is the inauguration of a new covenant that God Himself initiated so that man may receive eternal life in the presence and company of God. This new covenant is established on a series of divine condescensions required by God's infinite love for humankind. The the Word of God's becoming human is nothing other than a condescension that God undertook in order to share in man's created nature. His passion, crucifixion and death are another condescension... In the ascension, divine-human communion was affirmed, that which God has initiated from the first creation of man until the last day. In man there is a divine presence and in God, by virtue of His becoming human, there came to be a human presence. The importance of this event lies in that the human nature that was taken by God the Word, true God, is seated at the right hand of God in heaven. Human nature came to be present in God Himself and became capable of eternal salvation.

Fr Touma (Bitar): A Letter to the Patriarch of Antioch about the Upcoming Council

Arabic original here.

A Letter to His Beatitude, Our Father Patriarch John X and the Members of the Holy Synod of Antioch regarding the Great Council

His Beatitude, Our Father
John X (Yazigi)
and Their Emminences, the Members of the Holy Synod of Antioch
the Patriarchal Center, Balamand

Our Father, Your Beatitude the Patriarch,

After asking for your blessing and prayers, I present you, as a child of the Orthodox Church in the Holy See of Antioch, this analysis and some questions and impressions regarding the "Great" Council that is to be held in June 2016. I present these to you and the Holy Synod as a modest contribution to approaching the coming council. May they be of benefit as background and for shaping the possible end result of this extraordinary event in the life of the Church today.

Your child in Christ,
Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Holy Trinity Family
May 21, 2016


The "Great and Holy" Council
An Analysis, Questions, and Impressions

The synod is not "power" in the juridical sense of the word, for there can exist no power over the Church, the Body of Christ. The synod is, rather, a witness to the identity of all churches as the Church of God in faith, life and "agape".
-- Alexander Schmemann, 1963

A Necessary Preface

This is the council set to be held between June 16 and 27, 2016. Its characterization, by those who have prepared it, as "great and holy" does not mean anything at this stage, even if perhaps they meant things by it. We are a theanthropic Church. The Church is Jesus Christ! That which belongs to the Spirit of God is only judged spiritually (cf. 1 Corinthians 2)! The Spirit works and speaks in the consciousness of the Church, which is neither limited to an individual nor to a group-- including a council, any council, no matter who they are who gather in it, what their number may be, or the issues that they examine! This, in the expression of the Acts of the Apostles, at what is known as the Council of Jerusalem, where the Apostles, presbyters and all the mass of the faithful gathered-- that is, the Church there-- I say is two statements taken from the message to the brethren from among the gentiles in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. The first: "it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord" (Acts 15:25). The second: "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us" (Acts 15:28). These two statements are not made as representation, because the Holy Spirit is a revealer of secrets and the final say belongs to divine truth. It is not the property of "pillars". God is not a respecter of persons, as the Chosen Apostle says, because the Spirit can raise up the little ones without them as bearers of His word. The final is not the property of those who are regarded as wise and knowledgeable because the Spirit reveals the truth, again and again, and sometimes causes the ignorant of the world to shame the wise (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:27)!

Therefore, the current council is nothing more than a council or even a meeting of bishops, even if they are the "representatives" of what are considered to be all fourteen of the "autocephalous churches" in the Orthodox world. Sees increase and decrease-- this is a human arrangement! In the Church, there are not representatives of groups, but voices for the Spirit of God in the Church because they do not derive their value from themselves or from their blocs and they are of no regard in themselves! Only if the Spirit is in them and in what they bring about do they become a "great and holy" council! I say this so that no one will think that the Church of Christ is a pagan tribe or that she is kingdoms ruled like the people of the world are ruled, those of whom God's Word judges: "the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them.. but but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant" (Matthew 25-26).

These six papers that were the product of meetings and preparations that lasted fifty-five years and which bear the signatures of the representatives of the Orthodox Churches as the Orthodox meeting in Chambésy, Switzerland on January 21-28, 2016, as also their quasi-final formulation that will be presented to the coming council for one last look and a decision-- I say that these papers are presented to the conscience of the Church, not imposed upon it! Therefore, whatever their final formulation may be, they do not derive their authority over the Church from their having been issued by those gathered at the coming council! That is not correct! The decisive say remains with the Spirit of God who is active in the Church! No identification is possible between any council and the Spirit  in the Church! Consultation at the council, even if it is discussed, cannot be considered to be a foregone conclusion. Even if the council speaks in the name of God and His Church, its decisions cannot be considered to be expressing the truth of the Gospel automatically. The council, as individuals, has respect in any case, but what is issued by it is not automatically accepted. It does not oblige the Church unless it is in transparency and according to the Spirit of God and the conscience of the Church! We cannot submit to the decisions of a council, any council, unless it submits to God, in Spirit and in truth! Identifying the correctness of the conciliar statement is the responsibility of the Church in her entirety, and therefore of each believer in her, by the power of the grace that is liberally bestowed upon the people of God to be kings, priests and prophets for God!

Therefore, those papers marked with the signatures of those who attended the Chambésy meeting-- not to even speak of what came before it-- are, until further notice, nothing more than indications of the presence of those who attended! Their positions, whether out of conviction, ignorance, or acquiescence, toward what is in them, do not oblige the Church. The Church may reject what these papers contain, either wholly or partially, if they sense, in the Spirit of God, that it is defective! Is it not that God is the one who must be obeyed, not men? Therefore, we are not bound by a paper or by signatures! We are not in chains for the sake of men, but ambassadors in chains for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, like Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles (cf. Ephesians 6:20).

I say this so that none of those who signed will reckon himself obliged, or obligating the Church, on the grounds that they previously agreed on a text or were bound to a position! Their signature is their conscience in Christ first of all! Repentance from error, which may occur, is better than persistence in it in order to preserve human honor. Herod, who ordered John the Baptist beheaded knowing that John was a prophet, and did not turn back from this, in order to save face in front of the dignitaries and officers because, in addition to an adulterer, a criminal! Therefore, that which appears Article 11, Paragraph 2 of the Rules of Operation of the "Great and Holy" Council, regarding amendments to the texts, that amendments, additions, or corrections " that [are] not approved unanimously shall not be passed" is not in harmony with trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, to Him be glory. This does not leave room for any significant change to the prepared texts, as though they were sent down from heaven! Flexibility is necessary! Only that which is in the Holy Bible and what is established in the conscience of the Church, we do not change a letter of it. Apart from that, everything is under examination and testing, no matter how much time looking in to them has taken! There are no acceptable limits in dealing with the proposed texts, especially if there is ambiguity in them or if they touch on dogmatic or ecclesiological issues, as is the case with some of what is contained in these texts. Therefore it is assumed that, until the end, they remain open to addition, editing, and even total deletion, because "the word of God is not chained" (2 Timothy 2:9).

Then, it is not acceptable to gain the conscience of the bishops or of the people of God by arm-twisting or extortion! If the work of the council is not open to Spirit and truth in every case, then it ignores God in God's name! God forbid that this be! The final say, in every matter, belongs to the Word alone! The council acts in Christ, or what value does it have?

[Read the rest after the jump...]

Met Saba (Esber) on the Leavetaking of Pascha

Arabic original here.

The Constant Pascha

Tomorrow evening we say goodbye to the Feast of Pascha. For forty days, we are in the midst of the joy of the resurrection. For forty days, we chant with joy, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!" at the beginning and the end of every individual or group prayer, at home or in the church. There is an Orthodox tradition in which Christians substitute "Christ is risen!" for their everyday greetings for the forty days that follow Holy Pascha.

Tomorrow, we will say goodbye to the services of Pascha, while its spirit will remain with us, since we cannot live without it. "And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins1!" (1 Corinthians 15:17). Christ's Resurrection loads us up with hope, strength, action, steadfastness, and the best life, which is always to come! It provides us with the strength to rise after every time we fall, to start building after every collapse, to once again spread the joyful spirit of life after every catastrophe-- and there are so many in our tormented world! You live the resurrection every time you return in it to yourself and pay attention to what you have missed, when you rise to make right the sins you have realized, in yourself and in your society. You live the resurrection when you realize that you are a child of life-- not passing, temporary life, but eternal, lasting life-- a child of the life that brings tenacity out of pain, patience out of trials, strength out of weakness, joy out of sorrow, and hope out of despair.

Your believing in Christ's resurrection from the dead means that you believe in your own resurrection and so in the resurrection of the world from every death. Or rather, you translate it in your life into resurrectional action, and so you are not happy to remain as you are, so you continue the struggle, seeking what is higher and better, striving for the good portion, which will not be taken from you (cf. Luke 10:42). A Christian is a person of the resurrection, in the sense that he lives the resurrection at every moment. Otherwise, he has not yet stepped onto the threshold of Christianity. If he languishes under a death, then he will quickly perceive his weakness and return to raise himself up by the grace of the resurrection of his Lord, to remain in the mystery of the resurrection, despite the many forms of death that may surround him. He receives from his risen Christ the pulse of life, hope, optimism and especially a correction of vision toward the highest and most fundamental purpose of his life.

These are nice words, but how are they lived? How are they realized in daily life? We have memorized the golden answers to this by heart. Most of the time, we repeat them without any internal awareness. We say: Christ rose to grant salvation to humankind and to open to them the way to the second life, which had been closed by Adam and Eve's departure from living in the shelter of God. He rose to grant us the power to live eternal life, this that had been constantly forgotten by humankind. He rose because God does not die. And other correct answers that we have become accustomed to repeating. But we often forget that their live and demonstrable activity within us is the most important thing.

A person is aware of the activity of the resurrection and lives it when he realizes that he is created for eternal life and arranges his life on the basis of that conscious realization. He sees that he will not live upon this earth more than a number of years that, no matter how long, will not be more than a hundred in the best of circumstances, most of which are labor and sorrow, as the Psalm says (Psalm 90:10). He is aware that he is created for unending life and not to pass away with the passing away of his earthly life, but that it only starts in its fullness at that moment.

This consciousness grants him a new reading of his earthly life, its pains and difficulties. He sees in it what he did not see before and realizes that through his resurrectional faith he is able to derive benefit from it for himself and for others. The words of the Apostle Paul become true in him, "All things work together for good to those who love God" (Romans 8:28). In the cross, he sees joy and consolation because it makes it possible for him to struggle and ascend. He learns patience, kindness, mercy and sensitivity to those in pain, those suffering, those who are abandoned and acquires from his Lord an inexhaustible wellspring of tender compassion that can only be acquired through sincere suffering. He experiences the serene joy that wells forth from the presence of his Lord within himself, where he had prepared a place for Him and He will come to him and make a home with him (cf. John 14:23). He tastes the peace that no evil, no matter how great, can take away from him (cf. John 14:27).

The best sign that we have attained this level of faith is the degree to which we have been freed from that which binds us in this world and its lusts. Seeking eternal life requires of us constant change and an experience of God's presence in our life. So let us love simplicity of life. Let us seek the essence and not give any importance to showiness material gain. Let us be strangers to extravagance and spectacle and instead be disgusted by them. Let us feel the suffering of others and be delighted to share in it with them. Let us sit, like Mary, at the feet of the Lord because our joy at that point is indescribable. Those who have touched it experience the grace of the resurrection and have truly known a change of mind and thus a change of their entire being.

The cross leads those of little faith to disbelief and perplexity, but it brings those who believe to grasp the most perfect meaning of life. The unbeliever detests hardship, trials and suffering and so despairs and rages at life, taking vengeance out on others, and his despair may lead him to suicide since he has no hope. The true believer sees ways to transcend his stumbles and space to make his love active, to give life to his faith, and a resurrection unto the best life, which leads him to thank God in good times and bad.

Many seek joy in the wrong place. They become dejected at the plight of our country and flee to a way out. They vent their anxiety and seek an outlet in things that grant them imagined happiness and temporary joy, winding up with what they had sought to replace and finding themselves in greater anxiety and deeper fear. Is there any clearer sign of the absence of the resurrection from our lives than our failure to realize it despite the adversities and fears that we are experiencing on account of what is happening in our country? If the resurrection is not present in us today, when will it be?

The Leavetaking of Pascha, tomorrow, is a reminder to us to live it throughout the year.

Met Georges Khodr on Health and Illness

Arabic original here.


That We Live

What I do render to the Lord, for all his benefits to me? A question of the Prophet David, to which he responds: "I will take up the cup of salvation." That is, I do not give the Lord anything, I return to Him what I have received. I think that this is the faith, that we believe that the Lord is everything, if He gives and if He takes.

It is for the Lord to give and for the Lord to take and in both cases He is our point of return. We give thanks when He gives and when He takes, He has His wisdom and in both cases He is the one who loves. He does not tell you why He takes and sometimes He does not tell you why He gives. If you become very attached to Him, you will understand in most cases, and if you come to be profound in understanding Him, you will know why He gave to you and why He stripped away from you. That is, your attitude towards Him is always to be thankful.

Then what does it mean for Him to take something like money or health? If you are strong in faith, you will understand in most cases. If you lose something of yours, including your health, do not think that the Lord was lying in wait for you, because God does not punish anyone. The loss of health sometimes indicates God's love. Do not be concerned with your health to an unimaginable degree. Take care of it with medicine, but it comes and goes. Its loss is not a punishment. God arranges your affairs in health and in sickness. Sometimes He gives you understanding of your situation and sometimes He permits you to be ignorant of your situation. You do not impose upon Him giving you health as a condition for you to love Him. He has the right to deal with you because He has wisdom. But do not accept your illness, treat it. Do not say fatuously that God made you sick. He does not harm anyone!

You beg for His grace. He gives it as benefits you. Do not impose anything on Him. Take care of your health, because this is something from Him. Each of us gets sick and each of us dies. Sickness is not the exception. Taking care of your health is a spiritual duty. Our guiding light in this is that the New Testament led us to reveal a mystery in the Church, the healing of the sick. Therefore, if someone leaves himself in sickness and does not treat it, he commits a sin. It would be irresponsible for us to say that God sent me this illness. God is not the cause of illness. He has his ways with this universe, with our bodies and what enters them. God only heals. And along this way, we die.