Orthodox Synaxis: The Special Bishop of Caesar

This overview of the history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople reveals much of the psychology behind why that church caused so much harm to Orthodoxy in the Middle East and the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule, when the direct oppressors were more often Phanariots than Turks.



While criticism of the close relationship between the Russian Church and state is (with good justification!) common, less attention is paid to the fact that the Patriarchate of Constantinople exists and claims primacy solely due to its relationship with now-extinct civil authorities. But it is only this history that can explain much of Constantinople’s modern-day behavior. There is, to put it bluntly, an emperor-shaped (or, more accurately, a sultan-shaped) hole in Constantinople’s heart that forces Ecumenical Patriarchs to court the support of the most unexpected worldly powers, from Harry Truman in Athenagoras’ day to Petro Poroshenko today. Writing in 1911, the English Roman Catholic scholar Adrian Fortescue sketched the pathos of Constantinople’s role as ‘the special bishop of Caesar’ with equal erudition and acerbity:

Read the rest here.

Jad Ganem: The Conspiracy of Silence

Arabic original here.

The Conspiracy of Silence
For Metropolitan Onufry and his struggling Church

On this sorrowful day for the faithful belonging to the legitimate church in Ukraine, and along with them everyone around the world who loves the Church of Christ; on this sorrowful day that we have reached as a result of the recklessness immersion in the politics of this world of the one called "first" in Orthodoxy and the hiding of those called leaders in the shameful conspiracy of silence; on this day when hatred overcomes love, the desire for revenge overcomes the desire to build up unity, political considerations overcome ecclesiastical considerations, and nationalistic retrenchment and enmity overcome openness and reconciliation between peoples, this words of Metropolitan Georges (Khodr) serve as a reminder for us that "the Church that is impossible by human standards is made possible by the righteous."

"The Church, as the Bible describes her, is something that comes from Christ. In her situations, she is a human gathering that has the fragility of all institutions. In her, you receive the beauty, majesty and truth that come down upon her and in her you suffer your sins and the oppression that besets her sincere children. She is a place of unpleasantness that will repeatedly make you nauseous. This is the paradox. The Church is the place of splendor and stunning liturgies on the one hand and on the other hand the place of oppression and human banality.
The tragedy is that the man of sin sits "as a god in the temple of God" (1 Thessalonians 2:4). This may be related to "the lusts and bodily pleasures", as Chrysostom says, one who is "contentious, a lover of authority" as Ephrem says, irrational, unfit for teaching, intemperate, overbearing (cf. 1 Timothy 3:2-3). At that point, groups are led by the whim and fancy of sects that dream of God, but are a part of society's games and banalities, of influence-peddling, and the slyness of glory. The scepter often breaks the backs of those reaching the threshold of the kingdom. Shepherds relay liturgies that are not from them and might not be within them, if they are immersed in the conspiracy of silence and have traded eternity for the snares of this world... Only by disobedience does the Church devolve into an institution. At that point, her powers are enfeebled, her resources depleted and the Spirit is extinguished within her. She is a theater for great anger, great injustice, scandalous compromises, a playground for authoritarianism, a kingdom of fear.

Jad Ganem: Who will Protect Constantinople from the Phanariots?

Arabic original here.

Who will Protect Constantinople from the Phanariots?

Tomorrow, a "unifying council" will be held in the Church of Holy Wisdom in Kiev, called by His Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The holding of this council comes as the crowning event of a political plan in which Constantinople has become embroiled, with the cooperation of temporal powers in the country, to establish a national church in Ukraine. This plan would have never seen the light of day were it not for the Ecumenical Patriarchate's disappointment with the fact that the Church of Moscow did not go Crete, where the "Great Orthodox Council" was supposed to be held and her desire to take revenge on her especially after this council turned into a meeting of disputed legitimacy that exposed Constantinople's inability to play the role of first among the Orthodox churches, the impotence of Patriarch Bartholomew, and his failure to lead this world and coordinate activities between its various constituent parts. 

All the above, moved Constantinople  complex of inferiority towards Moscow, her pathological fear of the specter of "Third Rome", and the hatred that rules over some of the Phanariots because of the numerical superiority of the Church of Moscow. This is connected to the lack of any critical analysis in Constantinople of the mistakes committed by her delegates during the preparatory meetings for the Great Council, their arrogant behavior and indifference to the concerns of the autocephalous churches, in addition to the hazy image that Constantinople has created of the situation of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

These accumulating factors drove the Phanar to hastily enter the “Ukrainian minefield”, ignoring all the appeals and warnings from the leaders of the Orthodox world, who warned of the dangers of rewarding schismatics, dividing the Orthodox Church and weakening her unity.

Perhaps Constantinople seized the favorable political opportunity to use Ukraine not only to punish Moscow, but to establish her papism over the Orthodox world and to subjugate the churches and their leaders to the Phanar's synod. But it escapes her that this papism, which is alien to Orthodoxy, will sooner or later be expelled by the ecclesiastical body, just as the body expels strange things. But to describe the punishment and persecution of the faithful in Ukraine on account of being disappointed by Moscow as a "unifying council" that will only unite the schismatics in the face of the Church struggling there is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Hope remains that God will inspire the Phanar's leaders to realize that "hatred only kills the hater" and that repenting of unilateralism and imperiousness would protect the great Constantinople from the inevitable fate that the arrogance and historical hatreds of some Phanariots will bring upon her.

Fr Touma (Bitar) on Partisanship in the Church

Arabic original here.

Lest Vision be Lost in the Church

"...wounded for our transgressions..." (Isaiah 53)

When two people disagree about something in the Church of Christ, if mutual understanding is not reached between them, they go to a third, whom they agree will judge between them and they are completely prepared to accept what he decides, as though it is from God. If they harden their positions and don't agree on any judge as an intermediary, advisors suggest a third party to come to them on their behalf. If they accept him with soundness of heart, because he is delegated by the group and the group has its right and precedence over its members because the spirit of prophecy is in it, as the Lord says to Moses, "Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel... elders of the people and officers over them... I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you" (Numbers 11:16-17). Moses was not reckoned as one of the prophets, but as an image of the coming Messiah, and so the Lord God spoke through Moses, "face to face, even plainly, I speak with him" (Numbers 12:8). I say that if those who are in a disagreement accept the one that the group names, the disagreement is resolved in humility and by imitating the Spirit of the Lord. Otherwise, the entire group must act on its own to settle the matter -- that is, the advisors within it. Call upon each other! First with a verbal call, as a preface to holding a council on the matter. Bilateral meeting is important, but honesty and mutual support is more important. So if the meeting bears fruit, this one and that, that one and this, meeting and understanding each other, the path of truth becomes clear. Otherwise, something hidden and harmful becomes clear in the positions, something alien to the Spirit of the Lord and thus to the Church of Christ. In that case, what should those who are zealous for the house of God do? It is no concern if they are few, nor if they are regarded as small in their nation. Greatness is in truth and not in station. Greatness is in speaking the Spirit and for us to reach in speech and truth the point of saying with the the apostles, the elders and the brothers, "It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us...." (Acts 15:28). Those who are zealous, then, in prayer and fasting, speak the word no matter their number, as a testimony to God. What happens after that? The Spirit and the Word have their own way, and your Lord knows best. But if none of the traditional praiseworthy things happen, then we are without a doubt in a painful place. When witnesses who have been delegated by the group in the Spirit are no longer witnesses to the legitimate truth, God brings forth from the impotent visible presence a fruitful, unseen presence that bears witness. In the end, the word belongs to the Lord and not to those who reckon it to be theirs. The Church perseveres, no matter the circumstances, with the little flock, which your Lord alone knows, forever leavening the dough in the Church and in history until the end.

When two people disagree about something in Christ's Church, and each is hardened in his position, it is no longer possible or permissible for the issue to be, for you and for me, who is right and who is wrong, but rather who is in the truth. Each one regards himself as being right and his own position as correct, otherwise there wouldn't be a disagreement in the first place. The important thing isn't each one's perspective-- this we ear, examine and weigh-- but how they treat the issue. With what spirit? With a spirit of confusion or a spirit of understanding? With a spirit of listening to one another with the heart or a spirit of making pronouncements ex cathedra? With a spirit of aggression or a spirit of harmony? With a spirit of enmity or a spirit of peace? With a spirit of division or a spirit of unity? With a spirit of extermination or a spirit of reverence? With a spirit of submission to the powers of this world or with the fear of God? With a spirit of aversion or a spirit of friendliness? With a spirit of revenge or a spirit of conciliation? In a word, with the spirit of the world or the Spirit of God?

When the dispute broke out, then, I cannot consider myself-- you and I-- unconcerned with what is happening because in truth Christ alone is concerned; as it is neither fitting for me or for you to be partial to one side or the other, even if my conviction as a human inclines me one way or the other. Being satisfied to express an opinion at the level of who I think is in the right and who I think is not right keeps me at the level of human concern for the issues. But is there true human justice? In the Church, our concern rises above that! The question, in a situation of disagreement, is: what must we do to help both sides remain in the truth? That is, to keep the spirit of agreement, peace and unity in Christ between them, despite their disagreement. For us to really have an effective contribution in this regard, we need to mentally distinguish between the person and his position regarding the issue at hand. I am not committed to your opinion, whatever it may be, but I am committed to you. You are my brother by divine appointment! "You are all brothers," said the Lord Jesus. I may or may not like your opinion, I may or may not benefit from it. Here I am not talking about established dogmatic truths, but about procedural positions. And in procedural issues there are different opinions and the space for differences of outlook is wide. Factors of history and temperament, passions, sensitivities and similar things are not easily overcome. The matter requires that they be transcended with great humility and by the power of the Spirit in the soul. Therefore, the important thing in this case, in the absence of agreement, is for the Spirit of God to remain what brings together and for disagreements not to lead us into the depths of conflict. Therefore, you are my goal in the case of conflict, not your opinion. Confronted with people who disagree, you and I no longer have a position about what they say, but about who they are. We work hand in hand to affirm love in truth, despite all the difficulties. It is not only if we leave the disputants to harm Christ and His Church, and thus themselves, but we also participate in doing harm because he who is not with Me, so the Lord says, is against Me.

When the powerful are divided, the little ones are confused. And this at a time of weakness! Most are inclined to hesitation and reservation. They think over the steps to take a thousand times. Their primary concern is keeping what belongs to them. They go along, show deference and do not love. They say what they're not thinking and think what they're not saying. The priority for them is their own gains. Over the course of time, we have become accustomed to fearing the powerful in this world and likewise also in the Church, more than fearing God! This is even true with regard to those who are regarded as good. As for intruders in the Church-- and there are many of them-- there is no point to discussing them. As it appears, the spirit of weakness predominates. A very few walk in the spirit of bearing witness. Only a rare few accept do die for Christ's sake. Politics, in the worldly sense, has become a way of life in the Church, even if it has not generally kept pace with its malignancy and self-striving in the world. Dealing with God's wisdom, in love and truth, in a context of prayer and fasting, has little impact on the people of the Church in general. Most are satisfied with the wisdom of this world. This is because apathy overwhelms their souls. The warmth of the Spirit permits neither fabrication nor bargaining. And bargaining has, for the most part, become the accepted manner for resolving problems in the Church, just as it is in the world today, though naturally wrapped in an empty show of divine words. The exterior speaks of reason, logic, data and history, but where is the Spirit of God? Much talk and many arguments, but they embitter the soul, which means that the spirit behind them is unclean and not from the wisdom of God because the wisdom of God is peaceful, kind, full of mercy, without fear or hypocrisy. Has it not been said, "If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there..." (James 3:14-16)?

Nothing justifies partisanship in the Church. The people of partisanship do not obey the truth (cf. Romans 2:8). The discussion of partisanship comes in the exposition of contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, backbitings, whisperings, conceits, tumults (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:20). Partisanship is a work of the flesh and not a fruit of the spirit (cf. Galatians 5:19). Thus there is no praise for partisanship, but rather a warning about it. Let us not consider ourselves better than others. Instead, "let each esteem others better than himself" (Philippians 2:3). Even if there is good in us, let us turn a blind eye to it and look for the good in others without favoritism, to the glory of God, so that the good may be our goal and not love of appearances and superiority over others. What is partisanship? It is when you are attached to a personality and thus to what he says and claim that this is from God and attack others who do not say what he says about procedural matters in the life of the Church! And when you attack him, you accuse him of unbelief, work to defame him, display his flaws, and invent things about him that do not exist in order to tarnish his image. Where does partisanship lead? To schisms and rivalries. Did the Chosen Apostle not warn about them? "May there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10). Neither Paul is what is important nor Apollos, nor Peter, but Christ in all and for all! So unity in Christ refutes partisanship and partisanship topples unity.

In confronting the repercussions of partisanship, holding fast to the spirit of unity, peace and agreement in the Church, you do not stand with someone against someone else, even for a moment. You might point out a point of truth that one side has or a fault in the other side. But in the present context, it comes as a presentation of falsehood even if it's true because it causes harm and is taken differently from its intent. Academic and historical arguments, in the context of an emotional confrontation, inflame the conflict and don't put an end to it. In a case such as this, every argument has its counter-argument. So what's the use? When the heart's intention is in the balance, the voice of reason is of no use. The heart is only calmed, if it is to be calmed, with the balms of gentleness and kindness. At the end of the day, man is a heart. "Give me your heart, my son!"

People form parties against each other out of ignorance of deceit. In either case, because they do not speak with the Spirit of God. If their intentions are good, your Lord finds a way to turn their path toward Him. If their intentions are wicked, they twist in abysses of loss, hatred and emotion, thinking that they are zealous for God in a good way. In the end, they are filled with bitterness and a sense of decline. They blame God's Church and accuse God of being unjust. They turn away from Him, as though they are the ones in the right and surrender themselves to great pains.

Within this framework, the issue of the Church and politics has its own dialectic. From the beginning, the Church suffers from the pressure of politics and politicians on her. In history, religion was a tool in the hand of rulers, to the point that kings sometimes considered themselves gods and demanded that they be offered worship. Authority, in this age, is inclined to seek worship. The temptation has always been that the only purpose for God or the gods is to support authority and those who wield it. This has gone on throughout history. Therefore, politicians have rarely refrained, practically speaking, in the history of the Church, from deifying themselves and then from eagerly working to lobby the Church or subject her to their aims. Since the Church by nature has no master but the One in heaven, even if she commands that what belongs to Caesar be rendered unto Caesar, freedom of conscience in Christ was generally not preserved in her, especially in lean times, except by undergoing violence, persecution, imprisonment, torture or martyrdom of blood. In this regard, there are great models from Saint Athanasius the Great to Saint Ambrose of Milan, Saint Basil the Great, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Mark of Ephesus and many others. Despite the occasional good times and many bad times that the relationship of the Church to the state has known, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine system made the framework of the empire ecclesiastical and the emperor a representative of Christ in governing the oikoumene, in principle according to the faith of the Church, preserving and supporting her.

Today, with globalization, things have changed. We are faced with a sweeping current that is totally alien to Christianity. Politics has become completely worldly. It no longer has a religious character. It has its aims and its agendas and the Church in itself means nothing for it. Or perhaps, on a personal level, for very few. This being the case, if the Church is anything other than a moral force, politicians will attempt to seize her, wanting to dominate and exploit those belonging to her within the framework of a worldly vision that has absolutely nothing to do with the Church. In this sweeping system of globalization, if the Church holds fast to her traditional identity, she not only annoys policymakers in the world, but also constitutes a threat to their efforts and an impediment to their arrangements. Therefore, the politics of globalization seeks to fragment and dissolve the Church. On the level of the spirit, the Church is in an existential confrontation with the spirit of the world. Convergence is impossible. In a case such as this, without any exaggeration, the Antichrist, in the precise meaning of the term, comes today in the garb of politics, seeking, in disguise and putting on the appearance of Christ, to overthrow Christ the Lord in those who believe in Him.

"I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). This is the credo of one who holds fast to Spirit and to truth, in Christ and in his relationship with people wherever they may be, to whatever nationality they belong, and whatever country they are from. Constantinople, apart from Christ, means nothing to us! But the faithful who are zealous for the Spirit of the Lord, whether or not they are called by the name of Constantinople, wherever they reside, mean everything to us. We belong to them and they belong to us, for we belong to the same land: the land of the living-- that is, Jesus Christ. Everything else is external adornment, chatter and vanity. So too the Moscow of the faithful. They are dear because the Lord's Christ has made us their brothers in His flesh. And Ukraine, which has been sacrificed in history for Christ's sake, with the blood of her martyrs, the sweat of her ascetics and the toils of her faithful. This is what has meaning for us! And so, in this manner, in every place and region. The martyrs of Christ in Russia are our Church. The monks of Mount Athos are the body of Christ within us. The relics of the saints in the Kiev Caves are our bones! If the wounds of history divide us, what will dress the wounds, unless it is the Spirit of Christ, who alone brings us together? A church based on disagreement, coercion, enmity, division, hatred and struggle between brothers is the Church of Satan and not the Church of Christ! If canons, arguments and historical facts lead to estrangement between believers, then what do they have to do with us? Let them fall. Shadows and silhouettes do not quench our thirst for the Spirit of the Lord. Nothing brings together except the crucifiedness of your Lord. But the one who bows before his brother as the Lord bowed His head upon the cross alone stands in the truth. Everything else is false.

Do not call politics your imagining that in it you have a concern other than the concern of your Christ. Christ alone is the concern! Behold, Satan has sought you in order to sift you and beware of letting things go too far!

Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Abbot of the Monastery of Saint Silouan the Athonite-- Douma, Lebanon
Sunday, November 4, 2018

Patriarch Ignatius IV on Antiochian Identity

Arabic original here, with thanks to Jad Ganem.

Antiochian Identity

In his response to those who think that "If we speak as Orthodox, then we must be like each other," Patriarch Ignatius IV of thrice-blessed memory rejects the opinion that all the world's Orthodox must say the same thing about everything and stresses that Orthodoxy as a faith is one, but the Orthodox are not one. He sharply criticizes those who "believe that if you are different from them, you are not Orthodox enough," regarding this as "evidence that they themselves are not Orthodox enough. People are different and each expresses the one faith in a different way." He pauses on Antiochian identity and opines,

"From the age of the Apostles, Antioch was a bastion of Christians' encounter with peoples of different origins. Our church grew using the Greek language for a long time in an Aramaic and Syriac, then Arabic cultural environment. This multicultural context, alongside the fact that we have never been the church of a state or an empire, helped to form our identity, which is characterized by our deep conviction that the Gospel stands above every racial barrier and our unshaking attachment to Orthodoxy which, with its deep respect for the special gifts of every culture, should not discriminate between Greek, Russian and Arab, but rather just the opposite: it should believe that "Christ is all in all" (Colossians 3:11). Our identity is a loving openness toward the other churches and denominations, in constantly-renewed hope that we are working as servants of reconciliation. Due to historical contingencies, we have become 'the Church of the Arabs'. We have learned to always live face-to-face with believers of other religions and especially with Muslims. Although we have a long list of martyrs, we have chosen by our own free and resolute will to coexist and engage in profound dialogue without hatred, without compromises and without fear. On numerous occasions, when we were confronted with the spirituality of the Crusades and holy war, we chose firmly and without hesitation to commit to the spirit of the Cross. Our mission today is to continue to bear witness to all who speak Arabic in the Antiochian space and the western world, just as our vocation is to perfect this witness through full communion with the other concerned Orthodox Churches and cooperation with all."

Orthodox Synaxis on the Problem of Romiosyne

The must-read blog Orthodox Synaxis has posted a translation of a speech by Patriarch Bartholomew where he speaks of the "precedence" of his people in Orthodoxy and as the center of "Romiosyne". Because this ideology lies at the heart of the Greek occupation of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, readers of this blog should take note of how His Holiness speaks off cuff on such issues.

 The introduction states:

In addressing the ongoing political and ecclesiastical conflict in Ukraine, many have rightly brought up the Russkiy Mir (“Russian world”) ideology promoted by many in the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. This ideology, concocted as a reaction to the loss of Russian control over Ukraine and Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union, seeks to assert a spiritual and cultural unity of the peoples descended from the Kievan Rus, presumably under Russian leadership. Perhaps not totally unexpectedly, there has been much less analysis of the dominant ideology of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the concept of Romiosyne. This culturally and ecclesiastically irredentist ideology seeks to regain the preeminence in the Orthodox world that the Greeks of Constantinople enjoyed under the Ottomans, just as the Russkiy Mir attempts to regain the preeminence that Russia held under the Soviets.

The 75-year period of Soviet rule left an inescapable mark on the leadership of the Church in Russia, Ukraine and the other former-Soviet states and similarly the 500 years of Ottoman rule inevitably left its enduring mark on the worldview of the leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We can see this in the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s reliance on Ottoman-era documents to assert territorial claims in Ukraine and the way that recent statements (e.g., Patriarch Bartholomew’s 1 September address) borrow from the rhetoric of this period to speak of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as the “source” and “beginning” of the Orthodox churches.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s ideology of Romiosyne is a no less desperate attempt to cling to a bygone empire than Russia’s Russkiy Mir ideology even if, in the absence of military strength to back it up, its field of action is largely ecclesiastical. This can be seen on display in a recent speech by Patriarch Bartholomew to an audience of parishioners from Istanbul. In it, he speaks of the preeminence of their common genos in the Orthodox Church and triumphalistically mocks “Slavic” attempts at usurping it. The language that Patriarch Bartholomew uses is somewhat difficult to translate into English precisely because his is a post-imperial ideology rather than a nationalist one of the sort that we are more familiar with. That is, where one might use Hellenismos to describe the nationalism of the Greek nation-state (ethnos), Romiosyne describes a concept of Greekness that transcends nation-states and is centered more on the role of Greeks in the Orthodox Church than in worldly politics. The key term in this speech is the word genos, which is the origin of the word ‘genus’ and could be translated as ‘race’, ‘kind’, ‘sort’ or, as we’ve chosen to translate it below, ‘people’, though it is noteworthy (not to say alarming) that in this speech Patriarch Bartholomew uses the term phyle (‘tribe’ or ‘race’) as a synonym of genos.


Read the speech itself here.

Fr Touma (Bitar): For Those Who Want to See

Arabic original here.

For Those Who Want to See

Today is what is known as the Sunday of the Blind Man. This is the blind man of Jericho. In ancient history, when Joshua led the Hebrew people to the Promised Land, Jericho was a symbol of sin. For this reason, it was completely destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah. There are cities and towns which, in the Old Testament, came to have the meaning of sin, such as Jericho, Egypt, Babylon... This blind man was sitting on the road by the entrance to Jericho, as though he were representing, historically, the spiritual reality of that city.

It is true that this man was blind with his sensory eyes, but the discussion is, deep down, about blindness of the heart, which is the blindness of sin. Of course, the Lord raised the dead, healed the sick, returned sight to the blind and cleansed the lepers. His primary intention was not, however, to be a physician of bodies. His profound intention is to be a physician of souls. He healed the sick and raised the dead in order to give proof that he is capable of healing souls. The Lord's primary work is the forgiveness of sins. Absolutely nothing else is more important. If the one who was blind in the body was suffering to this degree, then how much more are we supposed to realize that inner blindness, which is sin, is painful, very painful? Sin is the pain hidden behind all human suffering. So the Lord God came first of all to forgive sins, to wash humanity which was defiled from within. As the Prophet David says in Psalm 50, "Cleanse me from my sin." Man primarily needs to be purified from his sin, to be washed on the level of the heart. On the level of the body, if we are not washed, a stench wafts from us, little by little. If it is not possible for us to bear bodily uncleanliness, then it is supposed that all the more so we will not be able to bear defilements of the heart, which are sin. The odor of sin is like hatred. The man who hates suffers from mold in his heart. The filthy heart hates. The filthy heart fornicates. The filthy heart judges. The filthy heart lies. All of this horrible stenches waft out from the heart. Man is in dire need of being cleansed, of being purified, in the heart, more than of being purified in the body, even if he doesn't know it.

Here in the Gospel, sin is equivalent to blindness and blindness must be healed so that man may see. Man needs to have his sin erased so that he may see in the heart, so that he may see the light. If sin remains, tyrannizing us, then the inner eye does not see. Man needs to be released from his sin so that he may see God's light, and then so that he may see God's light in others. For example, someone who only sees bad things in people is, without a doubt, blind. Of course there are bad things in people. Each of us has his bad things. But there rarely exists a person devoid of good. If the Lord did not find a little bit of good in him, He would not keep him alive. It is very important to see the heart, for one to see the good in others, not just sin. We are always ready to accuse others of being behind not only our personal worries, but also of being behind the world's worries. We rarely see someone blame himself. I remember during the events of 1975, there was an enlightened priest. Once we were talking. He suddenly opened his eyes and said of the civil war, "All this that is happening is my own fault." For him, he was a participant in the suffering happening to others. Let us never imagine that we are cleansing society when we accuse such-and-such and such-and-such of being wicked and it being necessary to get rid of them, at which point society will be made right. This is empty talk! In order for society to be made right, I must learn to see my sin and, at the same time, to see the good in others. When we reach that level of dealing with things, we have really started to be purified. When someone starts to be purified from within, society starts to really be purified because what happens in society is nothing other than the result of what occurs in the heart of man. As we clean the heart, society is cleansed. And as we keep the heart filthy, we find defilement in society to increase.

Let's return to the blind man of Jericho. "He was sitting in the road begging." I would like to linger a bit on the word "begging." He asks for charity. He does this because he is handicapped. He can't work. Perhaps he has a wife and children. In any case, he lives from the charity of others. One who is immersed in his sin lives from begging! In other words, there is no blessing in his life. He toils very much and receives little, like the disciples. Before the Lord Jesus came to them, the said to Him, "We have toiled the whole night and caught nothing." They were talking about fishing. Everyone's sin worries its owner and, in the end, only gives very little. It is as though he is begging, as though he is poor, while the Lord makes man the son of the king! He says, "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and everything else will be added unto you." In other words, man's concern must be to sit at the right hand of God the Father. This is the concern. The concern is to be with the king, to be in the royal palace, in the presence of God the king. This is the concern and there is no other concern worthy of man. Everything else is given to us by the Lord from Himself and in abundance: "Everything else is added unto you." What do we need? Anything we may need, the Lord provides us with, in one way or another. Perhaps some of you remember this story: There was an ascetic monk sitting in his cell and he prayed day and night. He prayed and worked and during his work he prayed. Then he prayed and made prostrations and lifted his heart upward. He had only one job: delighting in God. That is, he constantly occupied his heart with the remembrance of God. This was his concern. This was his work. And because this was his work, he didn't work to earn money and eat from his toil. His entire concern was, as I said, delighting in God, praying to God, glorifying God, giving praise. When it was time to eat-- and monks in ancient times would only eat once, after the ninth hour, that is, after three in the afternoon, the time for vespers-- he looked out the window and found that the Lord had given him a loaf of bread. He took it, gave thanks and ate. That would happen every day! Once, he thought in himself about working and earning some money. Of course, the evil one wanted to turn him away from his prayer, so he accepted the idea and started to make baskets to sell and save up money for times of need, doubting in God's care for him. On that very day, he prayed and worked. When it was three in the afternoon, he prayed vespers and then looked out the window, but he did not find any loaf. He was surprised and disturbed and started to cry and say to the Lord, "Why have you deprived me of your grace?!" A voice came to him and said, "When you worked with Me, I sustained you. And now, you work for yourself, so eat from your toil." This is to say that God wanted us to be children of the king. We bear absolutely no concern, so that we may not beg, because we have no need for that. The Lord sends us, in ways that He knows, what we need. Whenever we complete His work as is fitting, whenever we walk in the divine commandment as is necessary, if we delight in God, if we praise, glorify, thank and put all our trust in God, then the Lord takes care of us in hidden ways we don't know. He provides what we need completely. One who works with the Lord is one hundred percent ensured. There is a monk who died in 2006. They asked him, "When you pray, does God answer?" He looked at those asking him with surprise and said, "If the Lord didn't answer, then why would I have anything to do with the Gospel? Of course the Lord answers!" If we do not reach profound conviction that God is alive and that He is in complete control, then what faith do we have? Faith is total surrender to God. If someone does not know how to hand his affairs over to the Lord God completely, let him learn. Such a person cannot truly be a believer. For someone to be a believer in his mind, convinced that there is someone who created the world, this has no value. The faith that we are talking about is surrender: total surrender, total trust in God, in the image of what the Lord Jesus said on the cross, "Into Your hands I commend My spirit." The believer commends his spirit to God every day, every moment. Of course, no one reaches this point without toil. One must toil. He must exercise. He must learn how to walk in the divine things as is proper. Do you believe that those saints are necessarily of better stuff than we are? No. We and they are of the same stuff. Many of them were wicked sinners, sometimes even more than us! But they realized at one point that sin leads them to the abyss. If man does not work to purify his heart, then he lives like an animal and dies like an animal. Those saints realized their true condition and endeavored to change. Then the Lord God saw their good intention and He started to open their hearts for them and clean them. They started to see more and seek Him more. They started to seek more and the Lord gave them more. And thus they grew until they became great saints, like Saint John Chrysostom. Don't think that a saint is someone who has no sin. Never! No one is without sin. A saint is a person who realizes that he is a sinner and is aware of his sin to the degree that he can no longer see any other sin. Indeed, his sin is so that he may say with the Apostle Paul, "Christ came to save sinners of whom I am first." If one does not feel his sin like a knife in his heart, he does not truly know his sin. Does a person know his sin with words? That is never enough. He must know it in his being, in his heart. He must feel it. If one of us gets a tiny splinter two millimeters long in his finger, he can no longer sleep at night because he feels it. We can't know our sin if we don't feel it. Those saints are a bundle of feeling. A saint is a bundle of feeling sin, and at the same time, a bundle of feeling that he is a handful of dust, no more and no less. A bundle of feeling that if the Lord did not build this house-- which is me-- then it will not be built; the builders toil in vain. His entire concern comes to be with what is above: "Help me, O Lord. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." His entire mind and heart come to be above, because he senses death every day. He feels that he is dust every day. He feels that he is nothing. Inasmuch as a person cannot bear something like this, the saint's sense of nothingness is transformed into a sense of the Lord God's greatness. Therefore he magnifies the Lord, glorifies Him, praises Him, remembers Him wherever he goes: "Lord have mercy on me a sinner! O Lord, help me! O Lord, come to my aid!" In this way one grows in grace.

What is man? If we want to define what man is in himself, then in himself he is a handful of dust! But the Lord God was pleased in His great love for His light to dwell in this dust. We are a little bit of clay and light. This is man, if we want to boil him down, and no more. All that you see, after a hundred years, will be dust. All of us will become a bit of bone that gradually disintegrates. In the end, in human terms, we are a handful of dust, but nevertheless the Lord was pleased to dwell within us! Therefore our entire concern, if our path is straight, must be to say and repeat, to pray: "Come and abide in us, cleanse us of every stain, and save our souls, O Good One." The Lord gives us salvation for free! The Lord granted that we become children of the king! What are we worried about? Everything that we see around us, if the Lord did not give it to us, then it would vanish. If the Lord did not give us rain, then people would die of hunger. If He gives us two hours of rain, then we live for the entire year off these two hours. All of this is to show that we live by God's grace, by God's mercy and nothing more. Someone who does not see, whose mind does not go in this orientation, has something deviant in his heart. Sin is truly the distortion of man. For this reason, we do not need to trade the simplest commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ for anything in the world. We hold to the simplest of the commandments completely so that if we die of hunger, since only the Lord can snatch us away, at a time that He knows, and fill us with His heavenly manna, from His body which He gave us, so that it may be heavenly food for us. For this reason, it is not fitting for a believer, if he is a believer in spirit and in truth, to live with worry. What do we worry about if the Lord has provided everything for us, if He has given us everything now, later and forever? He has given us eternal life! We must worry about one thing: how to stay attached to the Lord. This is the only concern and we may have no other concern. This is how one is supposed to live: staying attached to the Lord. So we say to Him, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Have mercy on me. That is, I ask Him to take me so that I may remain attached to Him. What is the deep meaning of "have mercy on me"? Does this mean that He gives me sight? No, for there is much more than that! When I say to the Lord, "have mercy on me, O Lord," I am asking for Him Himself, His Spirit. I am asking for Him! I am not asking for what belongs to God, but rather I am asking for God. When I say, "have mercy on me," I am saying to Him, "take me and place me inside you, in your bosom, in Your womb." The word "mercy" [ra7ma] comes from "womb" [ra7im], the woman's womb, where man comes together. This is his fundamental home, from which he goes out. When I say to Him, "have mercy on me," I say to Him, "Place me in Your bosom! I want to remain attached to You!" I want to be close to His heart just as John the Beloved was close to God's heart, to the heart of Jesus Christ.

So the one thing for which I must toil day and night is to remain enveloped in God's mercy. I must avoid anything that separates me from the Lord's mercy. At that point, I no longer need to worry about anything else at all. So the primary task of the believer in his life in the world is to seek God's mercy in every moment of his life. To strive for God's mercy by keeping the commandment in every moment of his life. To refuse to be separated from God's mercy at every moment of his life. One who proceeds in this manner never has a problem. Wherever he goes, the grace of the Lord precedes him. The grace of the Lord preserves him, carries him. The Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount: "Why do you worry? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Therefore, seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and everything else shall be added unto you!" This blind man, it is true that he became seeing, but more important than that is that his heart became seeing. This is expressed in the text that was read to you today because the Lord said to him first, "Your faith has saved you." He didn't just open his external eyes. The Lord God opened the eyes of his heart. That is, He cleansed him of his sin. He forgave him his sins and saved him. This is truly salvation. The result was, as the text says at the end, "Immediately, he could see." His heart was opened and he followed Him. He went after Him. He ran after Him! He no longer had anything else to follow. He no longer needed to beg. He found the precious treasure. He no longer needed to have any worry. "He followed Him." He followed Him, giving glory to God. "When they saw this, all the people praised God." God is so sweet He makes you cry. Anyone who doesn't see the beauty of the Lord lives and dies without meaning. The important thing is that we behold God in His mercy, in His love, in His light. Glory to God for all He has given us!

Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Abbot of the Monastery of Saint Silouan-- Douma, Lebanon
Sunday, December 2, 2018