The following is taken from today's edition of the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar, which is owned by the Orthodox Tueni family. The Arabic original can be found here. Another summary of his life, written by Metropolitan Phillip of the Archdiocese of North America can be found here.
Here is a short summary of the life of the Metropolitan of Tripoli and al-Koura for the Greek Orthodox, Elias Kurban:
-- Born in 1926 in Ein al-Sindyaneh, Dahour al-Shoueir, Lebanon.
-- Ordained deacon in 1946 by the thrice-merciful Patriarch Alexander Tahhan in the Church of the Cross in Damascus. He continued to serve there until 1948.
--Came to Beirut in 1949 and served its church as a deacon. He studied in the American University and graduated with a diploma of higher studies in history.
--Travelled to the United States of America in 1954 and served as a deacon at the Cathedral of St. Nicolas in Brookyln. He enrolled in St. Vladimir’s Seminary and received a degree in theology.
-- The thrice-merciful Metropolitan Anthony Bashir ordained him to the priesthood for the parish in Boston in the United States in 1957, where he served for five years.
-- The Holy Synod elected him metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Tripoli, al-Koura, and their dependencies, on February 10, 1962. The thrice-merciful Patriarch Theodosios VI consecrated him on March 18, 1962. He would continue to serve the Archdiocese until his last breath.
-- He wrote studies and articles in various Orthodox papers and journals, as well as a number of books, including “The Orthodox Patriarchal Crisis: 1890-1900” and a series of booklets about the Church’s Holy Mysteries.
--The archdiocese witnessed a material and spiritual renaissance under his tenure, including all the parishes, the schools, the technical institutes, charitable institutes, centers for the mentally disabled, homes for the elderly, health centers, and a school of church music.
-- He built a new metropolitan complex in Tripoli after the destruction and burning of the old complex in al-Zahiriyya during the painful events in Tripoli in 1985. Likewise, he erected many new churches and parish halls in each parish of the archdiocese.
Friday, July 31, 2009
ليكن ذكره مؤبداً
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A Wise Comment....
This was written, anonymously, in the comments to a post from a few days ago, and I think it's worth your attention----
FYI, Father Touma is fluent in English. He studied theology in the U.S. and is a graduate of Saint Vladimir Seminary in the 70's. You may not find articles written by him in English because he went back to Lebanon after he graduated and has been ministering to mostly Arabic speaking spiritual children since.
The problems that we have now in North America are not specific to this land. They are spiritual problems par-excellence manifesting themselves in one way or the other. They have problems in Lebanon and Syria too. I am sure that there are problems in Greece, Russia, Jerusalem, and other places. They may not have attracted that much attention on the internet but this doesn't mean that they did not exist. Any person with enough spiritual depth from any country, whether they are fluent in English or not, whether they live in the U.S. or not, would easily tell you that the problem we're going through is a spiritual problem and is inherent to any man-made organization as it relates to our fallen human nature. It was only a matter of time before the symptoms started to show up, and they will continue to take us from one crisis to the other until either the whole thing collapses, or until we recognize that we're all in need to refocus ourselves on repentance and love. The Church of Christ is where love abounds and nothing else. Money, buildings, investments, endowment funds, financial assets, publications, etc, are not what kept Orthodoxy alive for hundreds of years. If anyone just imagine how life was 50 years ago and more, and think of all the hardships that our ancestors went through from famine, disease, illiteracy, poverty, persecution, wars (with the last 2 recent ones WW I and WW II)... What kept the faith alive? Wasn't it because of the grace of God and the prayers and the sacrifices of our holy mothers and fathers who did their best for their church and for each other! That's what we need to work on! "In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, for I have conquered the world"... "Do not be afraid little flock, for it pleases your Father to give you the kingdom"... "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and all things will be added to you"...
God bless all of you!
FYI, Father Touma is fluent in English. He studied theology in the U.S. and is a graduate of Saint Vladimir Seminary in the 70's. You may not find articles written by him in English because he went back to Lebanon after he graduated and has been ministering to mostly Arabic speaking spiritual children since.
The problems that we have now in North America are not specific to this land. They are spiritual problems par-excellence manifesting themselves in one way or the other. They have problems in Lebanon and Syria too. I am sure that there are problems in Greece, Russia, Jerusalem, and other places. They may not have attracted that much attention on the internet but this doesn't mean that they did not exist. Any person with enough spiritual depth from any country, whether they are fluent in English or not, whether they live in the U.S. or not, would easily tell you that the problem we're going through is a spiritual problem and is inherent to any man-made organization as it relates to our fallen human nature. It was only a matter of time before the symptoms started to show up, and they will continue to take us from one crisis to the other until either the whole thing collapses, or until we recognize that we're all in need to refocus ourselves on repentance and love. The Church of Christ is where love abounds and nothing else. Money, buildings, investments, endowment funds, financial assets, publications, etc, are not what kept Orthodoxy alive for hundreds of years. If anyone just imagine how life was 50 years ago and more, and think of all the hardships that our ancestors went through from famine, disease, illiteracy, poverty, persecution, wars (with the last 2 recent ones WW I and WW II)... What kept the faith alive? Wasn't it because of the grace of God and the prayers and the sacrifices of our holy mothers and fathers who did their best for their church and for each other! That's what we need to work on! "In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, for I have conquered the world"... "Do not be afraid little flock, for it pleases your Father to give you the kingdom"... "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and all things will be added to you"...
God bless all of you!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Intellectual Life at Deir el-Harf
The following is also taken from La Communaute Monastique de Deir el-Harf by Houda Kassatly. The manuscript collection of Deir el-Harf is digitized and can be obtained from the wonderful, glorious Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. They even have extensive sample images from that collection, among many others!
Manuscripts
Copying manuscripts was considered one of the most important activities prescribed by the monastic life insofar as this work allowed for a form of bodily action to be associated with intellectual activity. As a general rule, monks would not sign the result of their efforts, their anonymity corresponding to their detachment from the world. For this reason, manuscripts that are signed by monks are accompanied by many formulas of humility, compunction, even of contrition and repentance.
It is not necessary here to study the manuscripts of the Monastery of St. George since they are already catalogued and their contents analyzed in the recent publication “Les Manuscrits arabes dans les Monasteres orthodoxes d’Antioche au Liban” (Beirut: Centre d’Etudes Orthdoxes d’Antioche, 1991). Suffice it to note the existence of sixteen manuscripts, the oldest of which “The Ladder of Virtues” dates to the year 1704 and the most recent to the year 1867. The existence of these manuscripts, some of which are signed by the monks of St. George who copied them, and the theological character of a part of the texts allows one to presume that at an early point this place must have been a center of spiritual life.
Theodosius Moutlaq, in his book on the monastery, notes the presence of a manuscript containing sermons and that the patriarch Cyril VI al-Za’im gave it as a “waqf” [endowment] to the monastery, and that it dated to the year 1713. Our attempts at finding a trace of it have been in vain, the manuscript remaining lost.
According to the diary of the monastery, a priest, Youhanna al-Kassouf copied some texts of which we unfortunately find no trace.
Literary Production
For the monks, adherence to the monastic life means the responsibility to spread the word of Christ. The higumen of the monastery should see to it that intellectual work be one of the activities of the community. Translation and writing are part of monastic work. A monk should always seek to learn deeply-- but also to make known-- the tradition of the Fathers of the Church. From the beginning of monastic life at Deir el-Harf, the monks pondered what the contents of a library should be. Gifts from many friends allowed them to realize their project and to assemble a great number of books in Arabic, French, and English, as well as some in Greek. These books cover various subjects: theology, spirituality, liturgy, literature, and patristic. The monks thus succeeded at putting together an important library containing more than four thousand titles.
However, local conflicts, especially the events of the Mountain War (1983), which forced the monks to flee the grounds for a period of four years, are the cause of the disappearance-- during the displacement-- of a large number of the works. Still, we count some 1500 titles which are again within the monastery library.
In order to promote the spiritual life among the faithful, the monks edited between the years 1959 and 1969 a journal called “Cahiers de Deir el-Harf”. This publication included principally biblical meditations, articles on monasticism, texts from the Fathers of the Church, apothegmata of the Desert Fathers, and studies on the liturgy. It ceased publication after the twenty-fifth issue.
The monks went on to translations of religious works and have published a certain number of books which appeared in the editions of al-Nur and Patrimoine Orthodoxe des Peres. Additionally, father Elias, current higumen of the monastery, has published many articles in collective volumes. [An complete list of the books written at the monastery, 28 in all, is found on pages 87-88 of Kassatly's book.]
This contribution to the domain of writing and these numerous books make the place an important center of spirituality. The publications of the monks, some of which have had multiple editions, are distributed on a large scale in Lebanon, as well as in Syria and Egypt, where they are considered standard reference works.
Monastic life lived in unity (interior spiritual life, shared community, and liturgical prayer) are always offered and available to others. According to their availability, the monks of the monastery of Saint George took charge of pastoral care for the parishes of neighboring villages, chiefly in the villages of Ra’s el-Matn, Jouret Arsoun, and of course Deir el-Harf, before the events in Lebanon. Additionally, father Elias, superior of the monastery, occasionally gave a course on the spirituality of the liturgy at the Saint John of Damascus Institute at Balamand.
It must be noted that, born from the results of the renewal that was carried out by the Orthodox Youth Movement, the monastic community of Saint George maintains close relations with the members of that movement. The monastery remains an important place of spiritual retreat, for gatherings, and for the organization of summer camps (a pine forest near the monastery is reserved for this use). It is a center of intense spiritual life for the adolescents who find the necessary conditions there for contemplation, spiritual guidance, and confession: the fathers of Deir el-Harf are the spiritual fathers of a great number of young people.
The reception of guests remains the difficult but radiant task of the monastery’s monks. Many people have accomplished the first steps of their spiritual life while with them. Some have even later on become priests and bishops and continue to keep privileged relations with the place.
It also must be noted that, during the period preceding the Civil War in Lebanon, a certain number of people came from the West to experience eastern monasticism, the faithful reflection of which they found a living example at the monastery of Saint George.
During the fifteen years of the war, the monastery of Saint George suffered from the vicissitudes of local conflicts. It was not able to preserve its territory as a haven of peace and the monks had to provisionally abandon it. This detachment from the place is not something new for monks who over the course of history have, as is recorded in the chronicles of church history- often been forced to abandon the place they had chosen as the refuge of their faith. The monks of Deir el-Harf were forced to leave the monastery in 1983 for a period of four years. They went-- first and for a period of one year- to the monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Kaftoun and then established themselves in the village of Dhour el-Choueir in an apartment offered to them by a friend. They reclaimed the monastery in 1987.
When peace returned to Lebanon, the monastery was entirely restored and the traces of the damage that it suffered is no longer apparent. The monastery has confidently taken back up the path that it had led. With peace, it has again become the intense center of spiritual life that it seemed to be destined to become since its beginnings and which its geographical location in a region difficultly accessible to all, had overshadowed. The monastic community has countered external instability with its own interior quiet and stability, passing the years of the war faithful to itself and confident in its path.
Manuscripts
Copying manuscripts was considered one of the most important activities prescribed by the monastic life insofar as this work allowed for a form of bodily action to be associated with intellectual activity. As a general rule, monks would not sign the result of their efforts, their anonymity corresponding to their detachment from the world. For this reason, manuscripts that are signed by monks are accompanied by many formulas of humility, compunction, even of contrition and repentance.
It is not necessary here to study the manuscripts of the Monastery of St. George since they are already catalogued and their contents analyzed in the recent publication “Les Manuscrits arabes dans les Monasteres orthodoxes d’Antioche au Liban” (Beirut: Centre d’Etudes Orthdoxes d’Antioche, 1991). Suffice it to note the existence of sixteen manuscripts, the oldest of which “The Ladder of Virtues” dates to the year 1704 and the most recent to the year 1867. The existence of these manuscripts, some of which are signed by the monks of St. George who copied them, and the theological character of a part of the texts allows one to presume that at an early point this place must have been a center of spiritual life.
Theodosius Moutlaq, in his book on the monastery, notes the presence of a manuscript containing sermons and that the patriarch Cyril VI al-Za’im gave it as a “waqf” [endowment] to the monastery, and that it dated to the year 1713. Our attempts at finding a trace of it have been in vain, the manuscript remaining lost.
According to the diary of the monastery, a priest, Youhanna al-Kassouf copied some texts of which we unfortunately find no trace.
Literary Production
For the monks, adherence to the monastic life means the responsibility to spread the word of Christ. The higumen of the monastery should see to it that intellectual work be one of the activities of the community. Translation and writing are part of monastic work. A monk should always seek to learn deeply-- but also to make known-- the tradition of the Fathers of the Church. From the beginning of monastic life at Deir el-Harf, the monks pondered what the contents of a library should be. Gifts from many friends allowed them to realize their project and to assemble a great number of books in Arabic, French, and English, as well as some in Greek. These books cover various subjects: theology, spirituality, liturgy, literature, and patristic. The monks thus succeeded at putting together an important library containing more than four thousand titles.
However, local conflicts, especially the events of the Mountain War (1983), which forced the monks to flee the grounds for a period of four years, are the cause of the disappearance-- during the displacement-- of a large number of the works. Still, we count some 1500 titles which are again within the monastery library.
In order to promote the spiritual life among the faithful, the monks edited between the years 1959 and 1969 a journal called “Cahiers de Deir el-Harf”. This publication included principally biblical meditations, articles on monasticism, texts from the Fathers of the Church, apothegmata of the Desert Fathers, and studies on the liturgy. It ceased publication after the twenty-fifth issue.
The monks went on to translations of religious works and have published a certain number of books which appeared in the editions of al-Nur and Patrimoine Orthodoxe des Peres. Additionally, father Elias, current higumen of the monastery, has published many articles in collective volumes. [An complete list of the books written at the monastery, 28 in all, is found on pages 87-88 of Kassatly's book.]
This contribution to the domain of writing and these numerous books make the place an important center of spirituality. The publications of the monks, some of which have had multiple editions, are distributed on a large scale in Lebanon, as well as in Syria and Egypt, where they are considered standard reference works.
Monastic life lived in unity (interior spiritual life, shared community, and liturgical prayer) are always offered and available to others. According to their availability, the monks of the monastery of Saint George took charge of pastoral care for the parishes of neighboring villages, chiefly in the villages of Ra’s el-Matn, Jouret Arsoun, and of course Deir el-Harf, before the events in Lebanon. Additionally, father Elias, superior of the monastery, occasionally gave a course on the spirituality of the liturgy at the Saint John of Damascus Institute at Balamand.
It must be noted that, born from the results of the renewal that was carried out by the Orthodox Youth Movement, the monastic community of Saint George maintains close relations with the members of that movement. The monastery remains an important place of spiritual retreat, for gatherings, and for the organization of summer camps (a pine forest near the monastery is reserved for this use). It is a center of intense spiritual life for the adolescents who find the necessary conditions there for contemplation, spiritual guidance, and confession: the fathers of Deir el-Harf are the spiritual fathers of a great number of young people.
The reception of guests remains the difficult but radiant task of the monastery’s monks. Many people have accomplished the first steps of their spiritual life while with them. Some have even later on become priests and bishops and continue to keep privileged relations with the place.
It also must be noted that, during the period preceding the Civil War in Lebanon, a certain number of people came from the West to experience eastern monasticism, the faithful reflection of which they found a living example at the monastery of Saint George.
During the fifteen years of the war, the monastery of Saint George suffered from the vicissitudes of local conflicts. It was not able to preserve its territory as a haven of peace and the monks had to provisionally abandon it. This detachment from the place is not something new for monks who over the course of history have, as is recorded in the chronicles of church history- often been forced to abandon the place they had chosen as the refuge of their faith. The monks of Deir el-Harf were forced to leave the monastery in 1983 for a period of four years. They went-- first and for a period of one year- to the monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Kaftoun and then established themselves in the village of Dhour el-Choueir in an apartment offered to them by a friend. They reclaimed the monastery in 1987.
When peace returned to Lebanon, the monastery was entirely restored and the traces of the damage that it suffered is no longer apparent. The monastery has confidently taken back up the path that it had led. With peace, it has again become the intense center of spiritual life that it seemed to be destined to become since its beginnings and which its geographical location in a region difficultly accessible to all, had overshadowed. The monastic community has countered external instability with its own interior quiet and stability, passing the years of the war faithful to itself and confident in its path.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monastic Renewal in Lebanon: Deir el-Harf
The following is my translation of a passage from the book La Communaute Monastique de Deir el-Harf by Houda Kassatly, published in 1996 by Balamand University. Deir el-Harf was one of the first monasteries in Lebanon to become renewed with vigor and activity during the 20th century and it remains an important monastic center and place of pilgrimage in Lebanon. I hope this will be the first of several posts on this monastery. For another account of the monastery's history, go here.
Though the origins of the monastery of Saint George goes back into legend, from the eighteenth century written documents allow us to establish an exhaustive list of the superiors who succeeded each other in directing the monastery and who were regularly named by the bishop of Beirut and, from 1901-- the year of the creation of the diocese-- by the bishop of the diocese of Botrys, commonly called Mount Lebanon (the diocese on which the monastery of Saint Georges canonically depends). The diary of the monastery allows us as well to recover the history of the school that would be created in 1922 at the monastery under the mandate of father Basilios Sidawi.
But this list and the information collected does not allow us to assume the existence of a well-established monastic community. Even if various superiors succeeded each other at the head of the monastery, it is difficult to affirm that the higumen gathered around himself monks desirous of consecrating their lives to God. The monastery of Saint George suffered, it seems, the consequences of the decrease in vocations recorded at this time. The twentieth century, however, will reveal itself to be the century of the restoration of the monastic life. The first attempts at giving a new spiritual impulse to this place will, however, not last long.
Between the years 1939 and 1941 a female monastic community was founded by Adele Kazan, Mother Anastasia. Designated superior of the monastery of Deir el-Harf by the metropolitan of Byblos and Botrys, Elia Karam, she established a rule for the monastic life of a community of nuns to which she gave the name “al-thaluth am-aqdas” (the Most Holy Trinity). However, due to the opposition of certain priests, she had to put an end to this brief project and establish herself in the village of Amioun where she founded a school named “Al-Islah” (Reform), open until now.
In 1949 bishop Elia Karam gave his agreement to the project of archimandrite Theodosius Moutlaq of founding a monastic community named “al-Fadi al-Salih” (the Good Redeemer). It was planned that the members of that community would dedicate themselves to priestly service and the education of the young. The archimandrite also hoped to form an association of laymen with the same name who would care for the expenses of the community and he proposed the opening of a school and an orphanage. In 1950 he accepted his first novice who had to leave the monastery the next year, however, due to family opposition. The project was the definitively abandoned.
In 1954 some young women, members of the Orthodox Youth Movement, moved into the monastery with the agreement of bishop Elia Karam and under the direction of a Russian nun, Mother Blandine. But very soon the community preferred to choose a residence, and this for good, at the Monastery of Mar Yacoub in the village of Dedde in Koura.
1957, the monastic renewal
It was in 1957 that the Orthodox Church of Antioch was renewed with monastic tradition, thanks to the aspiration of certain members of the Orthodox Youth Movement to the monastic life. Monasticism had passed through a serious phase of decline in the absence of male vocations even while monasteries with nuns stayed lively. Metropolitan Elia Karam gave for the use of the group one of the monasteries under his jurisdiction, and it was the monastery of Saint George of Deir el-Harf that was chosen in 1957 to house this monastic renewal. Father Daoud el-Mur, who was charged with the handling of the assets of the monastery was moved some time afterward into another monastery. On November 7 1957 Chafic Mansour and Elia Yaccoub, both originally from Lattakieh, moved into the monastery, followed on November 27 1957 by Habib Fahde and on December 5 of the same year by Marcel Morcos. Monastic life was organized, divided byween work, prayer and study. At the beginning, the direction of the monastery was confided alternatively (every three months) to Chafic Mansour and Marcel Morcos. However, at the end of August 1958 Chafic took charge of the monastery. On June 8 1958 bishop Elia Karam vested brother Habib in the habit of novices under the name Agapios. On February 9, 1959 father Anthony Mansour of Lattakieh, after having served as priest in the monastery of Our Lady of Bkiftine, joined the community. He was followed on the 17th of the same month by a student from Beirut, Ibrahim Bedrane.
It was at this time that a letter was sent to Father Andre Scrima who was in India. They asked him to join the community so that it could profit from his experience and knowledge, since for the Orthodox East, the monastic life is essentially a living tradition. One does not improvise a science, and even less so the “spiritual science” , the most demanding of all. Since its origins, it was received, assimilated, lived, renewed, and passed along. The arrival of father Scrima marked the link between the monastic tradition, coming through Romania, and the new life being reborn on Lebanese soil. For this purpose father Andre Scrima arrived at the monastery on Palm Sunday 1959 and began to give daily lessons in monasticism.
On August 28 1959, at the service of vespers for the Beheading of John the Baptist, in the presence of bishops Elia Karam and Elias Mouawad of Aleppo, the brothers Chafic, Marcel, and Ibrahim were vested in the habit of novices.
In 1960, Fr. Simon Khoury of the Orthodox Youth Movement went to the monastery several times a week in order to give the monks lessons in the Psalter and Byzantine music. In the spring of 1961 brother Marcel Morcos was chosen as higumen of the monastery. In 1962 father Andre outlined the rule of monastic life, and continued to provide, every summer, his teaching on spirituality, monasticism, the liturgy, and Holy Scripture. In addition to these courses, brother Marcel gave the monks supplementary lessons and undertook the translation of articles and books.
The monks organized the everyday life of the community. They shared the work in the fields and current affairs. Metropolitan Elia Karam confided the handling of assets to brother Agapios, the monastery was put back in order, the buildings repaired, and a reservoir and wells were dug. The monks made many indispensable acquisitions and repaired the rooms in order to be able to receive visitors.
In the month of February of 1962, brother Chafic Mansour left the monastery, opting for ministry in a parish (he would later become bishop of Lattakieh in Syria). Four brothers remained: Marcel, Antoun, Agapios, and Ibrahim gave their monastic vows on June 24, 1962.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
More Pertinent thoughts from Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
My last translation of the essay by Archimandrite Touma of the Monastery of St. Silouan in Douma, Lebanon, “Pastoral Care and the Crisis of Power” , has apparently made its way across the internet in a way that I’m not all that comfortable with. It always needs to be pointed out that these things are amateurish translations from a semi-anonymous blog by a layman not associated with the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America. But then, in that whole mess, I think this is the first time that someone bothered to listen to a Lebanese or Syrian voice... let alone a monastic voice.
[Correction-- the editors of ocanews.org were very gracious in correcting their original ambiguity in attribution. I greatly appreciate this, since I know right now is very busy for them.]
All that said, Fr. Touma’s essay for this week, published on his website on July 19, is interesting when read together with the one from last week. But, the Arabic is in a couple places frustratingly oblique to me, so if you can make suggestions for improvements to this translation please, please do! Also, please if you’re going to repost this (or anything else I put here), link back to me and to the original Arabic so people will know what the source of the text is, take it with a grain of salt, and hopefully help me to improve my translations….
Thoughts for Inner Ears
In paradise, anger was blessed. The Lord God sewed it in man to give him an instrument for violently repulsing from himself every trick of the devil that aims to separate him from the true God and to remove him from keeping faith in God. The devil tricked Adam and Eve and they did not use the incensive faculty within them to deter it. If they had done so, they would have been saved and would have been preserved from the grief that followed. When the devil’s trick appeared to them, they fell into the same thing that the devil had fallen into-- worship of the self. Man, through accepting the devil’s advice, left the sphere of God and entered into the sphere of the devil. Since then, he has been behaving, in a spontaneous way, according to the devil’s behavior. As for anger, in the state at which Adam and Eve arrived, it became an instrument of oppression and devastation, of man having power over man and of death. This is how man’s worship of himself began to be expressed. Anger became a faculty destructive to God’s creation after having been a faculty for preserving it. It was no longer and instrument for defense of truth. Instead, it became a weapon for falsehood.
The Lord Jesus’ human nature was the nature of man in paradise before the fall. For this reason his incensive faculty was centered on zeal for God. When he went up to the temple and saw people buying and selling and realized how they had turned the house of God into a merchant’s bazaar, he became fiercely angry out of zeal for the Truth. He made a whip and beat those who were there and overturned they moneychangers’ tables and the seats of the dove-sellers, saying to them: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, and you have made it into a den of thieves.” (Mark 11)
In order to return man to the worship of God in spirit and in truth through the keeping of the divine commandment, it is not permitted for those who consider themselves to be of God to resort to violence. The counsel for them is: “Be as wise as serpents and as meek as doves” (Matthew 10:16). In order for man to reach the humility which the Lord God desires, one must imitate him in this. His incensive faculties do not return their right state and they do not recover their divine role in the defense of the truth and the preservation of God’s creation. Up to that point violence remains an evil and a tool in the hand of the devil. The apex of the devil’s tricks and Satan’s deceiving man is for Satan to push man to violence and killing in the name of God. Jesus pointed to this matter when he said to his disciples, “The hour is coming when those who will kill you will think that they are making an offering to God. They will do this because they did not know the Father and they did not know Me.” (John 16:2-3)
***
The devil sometimes speaks the truth. He spoke the truth, for example, when he once called the Lord “Jesus, Son of God” (Matthew 8:29). Not everything the devil says is a lie. That said, he remains the deceiver and the father of lies (John 8:44) because he intends to deceive people at all times, whether he speaks the truth or lies. His first and final goal is not to witness to the truth but to cast man into error. He forever moves with the spirit of falsehood. Thus, when he speaks the truth it is only for the sake of falsehood. This is his art and his wickedness. If he only spoke lies then no one would believe him and everyone would leave him. For this reason he weaves truth with falsehood and falsehood with truth. It is impossible for man to know the truth of the devil from the exterior. It is only exposed through the Spirit of God.
Let us understand: the devil has only one goal in his dealings with people and that is to distance them from God. In order to reach that goal, he works to make people think as he does. He does not want to dominate us from the outside so much as he wants to dominate us from the inside, by putting his thought inside us. He makes us think that what he wants for us is exactly what we want ourselves. His motto for us is this: “Realize yourself and do what you yourself want.” He spreads his thought in people and disappears from sight. In this way he makes us like him and turns us into his workers. He succeeds when a person makes his own way of thinking and says, “This is my thought. This is how I think” or when a person reaches a degree of blindness of heart that he thinks that his thought, which comes from the devil, is from God.
This is the logic of the worship of the self and secondly it is the logic of the most wicked power among people. The further man gets away from God, the deeper he is mired in worldly power. Jesus warned us about assuming power, in general, on this earth, because it is impossible for us to take it on without being subject to the thought we talked about above. It is impossible for a person to assume power according to the world without the thought of the devil arising. Power is the first step of the devil’s work and the ideal field for the realization of his thoughts and plans. After man fell, the acquisition of power according to the world became automatically the thing that his soul most desires. Man is born strongly inclined towards this-- every man. Thus, for those who believe in Jesus there is another saying and another commandment and another logic. This is how Jesus spoke: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10)
The great temptation for every person, whether he believes in Jesus or not, and so especially for those who are considered servants of Christ -- and we do not have church leaders in the exact sense of the word but rather servants-- I say that the great temptation for all people is the temptation of power. For the servants of Christ, this is even more so, considering their position, being exposed to power not only according to this world but to wielding power in the name of God. That is, to give power, which is from the Holy Sprit, a divine dimension as well. For that reason the servants of Christ, if they are not so in truth, then they are among the children of Satan and his workers par excellence, whether they know it or not, because they steal what is God’s, by ill will or by stupidity, and they sign it over to the devil. In this context, their problem and what causes them to fall into Satan’s trap is not that they do not preach the Gospel but that they “speak but do not act (Matthew 23:3).” By their extended pretense of ignoring practice, they lose their sense for divine things. Their exterior says that they are men of God, but their interior is firmly rooted in the service of Satan. This is the typical state for the devil’s work. Thus they claim service and they insist that they are servants of God, all the while wielding power through the spirit of the world. They call for Christian love but they do not love. They always have their excuses. They call for tending the flock of Christ but they only tend their own notions and their own passions. They call for mutual forgiveness but they hate and take revenge. They call for guarding the lost sheep but they drive away people. They call for the worship of God but in the depths of their souls they only seek veneration and honor and flattering words. With words, they show zeal for the Gospel but in their inner hearts they only have zeal for what is their’s. Their honor is above Christ’s honor! They go against the smallest ordinance of the Church for a tiny gain and they consider it pastoral care and economy! They hold services but they only worship themselves and what is their’s: their appearance and their voice and their clothes and their sermon. Their concern is for people to hold fast to them and not to God and for the people to speak well of them. When they speak the truth, they sign their truth over to the falsehood which is in them because their hearts are not for God. Truly they are not!
This sort of satanic temptation, and this poisoned internal environment which reigns in an almost generalized and automatic way over most of the people in our church, especially the pastors, cannot be opposed with theoretical knowledge, but rather with the Spirit of the Lord and the exercise in practice of keeping the divine commandment and walking in holiness. The ignorant is led to God by one who knows Him- that is, one who loves Him. When one blind leads one blind like himself, they both fall into the devil’s pit. For this reason the Church has historically taken great care with the selection of her pastors from among the saints and those who know God and practice the principles of the spiritual life. You cannot give what you don’t have in Christ’s Church. Only one who fears God is able to lead Christ’s flock to the fear of God. Only one who is repentant can lead Christ’s flock to repentance. Only one who loves God can lead God’s flock to the love of God. Only the servant of Christ can lead for Christ’s service. One who keeps fasting and prayer and vigil [can lead people] to fasting and prayer and vigil. One who walks in holiness [can lead people to] holiness. Only one who has the Spirit of the Lord can lead Christ’s flock to the Spirit of the Lord. This is true practical knowledge for us and divine philosophy. Theories and knowledge have no value in themselves in this matter except as preparatory education, but they do not make saints. Experience shows that one who does not know puts value on the formulation of theories and the collection of information, but one who knows does not value theories and only has need for a little theoretical information. Most of his knowledge is practical, so what he learns, he learns from above. One who walks in holiness is the knowledgeable one for us, even if he doesn’t have an elementary education, and one who does not walk in holiness remains ignorant even if he memorized all the books in the world!
Today, unfortunately, the standards have changed. Holiness is no longer the environment and the school and the concern for most of the flock of Christ or its pastors. In any case, holiness is no longer in the consciousness of the ordinary faithful, but of wonder-workers! We no longer insist on our pastors being saints. In any case, there are no longer many saints. The environment that we have become self-satisfied with does not lead to bringing forth saints. We are satisfied, in most cases today, with people who have ordinary, acceptable behavior. We rarely look into the internal condition of our candidates for our pastors or even into their past behavior. The matter is entirely set aside when selecting a bishop. This makes for a not insignificant possibility of an error happening and causes embarrassment for the church when it is uncovered after some time. that some who are ordained have a shameful past. Other times, some bishops lay hands on men whom they know, more or less, to not be worthy of service and they find no fault in this, even when they stumble.
The sort of pastor that we are talking about today is seen as being more fit if he is educated, with a university degree and a theology degree and is clever with words. He is admired if he is seen as a thinker and an eloquent speaker and a writer. His stock goes up if he knows foreign languages and has a beautiful voice and is enthusiastic and socially conscious and has a knowledge of organizational matters and religious education and has a likable personality. It is not required that he be a man of prayer. That’s his own concern! It’s only necessary that he perform his ritual duties well. Likewise it’s not required that he be a man of fasting! That’s also his own concern! Most people think, in any case, that fasting is excessive in the Orthodox Church and that it is not appropriate to the times or the situation! In general, people get used to living with some of the pastor’s inappropriate proclivities, if he is greedy or vainglorious or self-aggrandizing, or quarrelsome. As far as Christian virtues are concerned, they are rarely met by the people in their pastor and they have no real acquaintance with them anyway. Some take joy in them, when they abound, and some don’t pay attention to them. In any case, most of them are, in our worldly age, superfluous. What’s important is ordinary ethics-- that he not be a fornicator or a thief or a murderer… In this absence of the Church’s original upbringing, it is natural for the standards to be human and worldly!
All these things and others are part of our current situation today because holiness, as we said, is not our concern nor is the pastor as a good example our concern. Our concern is the Church as idea, as institution, as an organization, as a teaching. Our concern is the services and the choir, the social and cultural groups and the religious instruction and church-tourism and so forth. It is not that these questions aren’t sometimes important. But there is one thing needful: the purification of the heart and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This is a deviation from the essence of the matter that keeps those who are considered believers-- most pastors and flock equally-- pagans, worshipping themselves, seeking their own glory. They are only concerned with their own power and their own reputation and their own honor. They are satisfied with only the outward form of the worship of God. What is sought in any case, in the understanding of the people, is not change of heart but rather some practices and the keeping some obligations and giving lip service. In what pertains to the exterior of the church, today, it is sometimes, but not always, gleaming by worldly standards, souls graze in their own impurities and lack of awareness. Is this not the ideal church the devil desires and lords over? A worldly church, ritualistic, like a museum, a nominal Christianity but without Christ and without holiness and without truth and without Spirit and without new life, filled with the thoughts of the world and the concerns of the world! Is this not the church that most people receive today and for which they work? The devil has succeeded in making people think that this is the true and desirable church of modernity!
This is exactly a church against Christ! And we, without our attention to holiness, are building it contentedly, persistently and continuously!
[Correction-- the editors of ocanews.org were very gracious in correcting their original ambiguity in attribution. I greatly appreciate this, since I know right now is very busy for them.]
All that said, Fr. Touma’s essay for this week, published on his website on July 19, is interesting when read together with the one from last week. But, the Arabic is in a couple places frustratingly oblique to me, so if you can make suggestions for improvements to this translation please, please do! Also, please if you’re going to repost this (or anything else I put here), link back to me and to the original Arabic so people will know what the source of the text is, take it with a grain of salt, and hopefully help me to improve my translations….
Thoughts for Inner Ears
In paradise, anger was blessed. The Lord God sewed it in man to give him an instrument for violently repulsing from himself every trick of the devil that aims to separate him from the true God and to remove him from keeping faith in God. The devil tricked Adam and Eve and they did not use the incensive faculty within them to deter it. If they had done so, they would have been saved and would have been preserved from the grief that followed. When the devil’s trick appeared to them, they fell into the same thing that the devil had fallen into-- worship of the self. Man, through accepting the devil’s advice, left the sphere of God and entered into the sphere of the devil. Since then, he has been behaving, in a spontaneous way, according to the devil’s behavior. As for anger, in the state at which Adam and Eve arrived, it became an instrument of oppression and devastation, of man having power over man and of death. This is how man’s worship of himself began to be expressed. Anger became a faculty destructive to God’s creation after having been a faculty for preserving it. It was no longer and instrument for defense of truth. Instead, it became a weapon for falsehood.
The Lord Jesus’ human nature was the nature of man in paradise before the fall. For this reason his incensive faculty was centered on zeal for God. When he went up to the temple and saw people buying and selling and realized how they had turned the house of God into a merchant’s bazaar, he became fiercely angry out of zeal for the Truth. He made a whip and beat those who were there and overturned they moneychangers’ tables and the seats of the dove-sellers, saying to them: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, and you have made it into a den of thieves.” (Mark 11)
In order to return man to the worship of God in spirit and in truth through the keeping of the divine commandment, it is not permitted for those who consider themselves to be of God to resort to violence. The counsel for them is: “Be as wise as serpents and as meek as doves” (Matthew 10:16). In order for man to reach the humility which the Lord God desires, one must imitate him in this. His incensive faculties do not return their right state and they do not recover their divine role in the defense of the truth and the preservation of God’s creation. Up to that point violence remains an evil and a tool in the hand of the devil. The apex of the devil’s tricks and Satan’s deceiving man is for Satan to push man to violence and killing in the name of God. Jesus pointed to this matter when he said to his disciples, “The hour is coming when those who will kill you will think that they are making an offering to God. They will do this because they did not know the Father and they did not know Me.” (John 16:2-3)
***
The devil sometimes speaks the truth. He spoke the truth, for example, when he once called the Lord “Jesus, Son of God” (Matthew 8:29). Not everything the devil says is a lie. That said, he remains the deceiver and the father of lies (John 8:44) because he intends to deceive people at all times, whether he speaks the truth or lies. His first and final goal is not to witness to the truth but to cast man into error. He forever moves with the spirit of falsehood. Thus, when he speaks the truth it is only for the sake of falsehood. This is his art and his wickedness. If he only spoke lies then no one would believe him and everyone would leave him. For this reason he weaves truth with falsehood and falsehood with truth. It is impossible for man to know the truth of the devil from the exterior. It is only exposed through the Spirit of God.
Let us understand: the devil has only one goal in his dealings with people and that is to distance them from God. In order to reach that goal, he works to make people think as he does. He does not want to dominate us from the outside so much as he wants to dominate us from the inside, by putting his thought inside us. He makes us think that what he wants for us is exactly what we want ourselves. His motto for us is this: “Realize yourself and do what you yourself want.” He spreads his thought in people and disappears from sight. In this way he makes us like him and turns us into his workers. He succeeds when a person makes his own way of thinking and says, “This is my thought. This is how I think” or when a person reaches a degree of blindness of heart that he thinks that his thought, which comes from the devil, is from God.
This is the logic of the worship of the self and secondly it is the logic of the most wicked power among people. The further man gets away from God, the deeper he is mired in worldly power. Jesus warned us about assuming power, in general, on this earth, because it is impossible for us to take it on without being subject to the thought we talked about above. It is impossible for a person to assume power according to the world without the thought of the devil arising. Power is the first step of the devil’s work and the ideal field for the realization of his thoughts and plans. After man fell, the acquisition of power according to the world became automatically the thing that his soul most desires. Man is born strongly inclined towards this-- every man. Thus, for those who believe in Jesus there is another saying and another commandment and another logic. This is how Jesus spoke: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10)
The great temptation for every person, whether he believes in Jesus or not, and so especially for those who are considered servants of Christ -- and we do not have church leaders in the exact sense of the word but rather servants-- I say that the great temptation for all people is the temptation of power. For the servants of Christ, this is even more so, considering their position, being exposed to power not only according to this world but to wielding power in the name of God. That is, to give power, which is from the Holy Sprit, a divine dimension as well. For that reason the servants of Christ, if they are not so in truth, then they are among the children of Satan and his workers par excellence, whether they know it or not, because they steal what is God’s, by ill will or by stupidity, and they sign it over to the devil. In this context, their problem and what causes them to fall into Satan’s trap is not that they do not preach the Gospel but that they “speak but do not act (Matthew 23:3).” By their extended pretense of ignoring practice, they lose their sense for divine things. Their exterior says that they are men of God, but their interior is firmly rooted in the service of Satan. This is the typical state for the devil’s work. Thus they claim service and they insist that they are servants of God, all the while wielding power through the spirit of the world. They call for Christian love but they do not love. They always have their excuses. They call for tending the flock of Christ but they only tend their own notions and their own passions. They call for mutual forgiveness but they hate and take revenge. They call for guarding the lost sheep but they drive away people. They call for the worship of God but in the depths of their souls they only seek veneration and honor and flattering words. With words, they show zeal for the Gospel but in their inner hearts they only have zeal for what is their’s. Their honor is above Christ’s honor! They go against the smallest ordinance of the Church for a tiny gain and they consider it pastoral care and economy! They hold services but they only worship themselves and what is their’s: their appearance and their voice and their clothes and their sermon. Their concern is for people to hold fast to them and not to God and for the people to speak well of them. When they speak the truth, they sign their truth over to the falsehood which is in them because their hearts are not for God. Truly they are not!
This sort of satanic temptation, and this poisoned internal environment which reigns in an almost generalized and automatic way over most of the people in our church, especially the pastors, cannot be opposed with theoretical knowledge, but rather with the Spirit of the Lord and the exercise in practice of keeping the divine commandment and walking in holiness. The ignorant is led to God by one who knows Him- that is, one who loves Him. When one blind leads one blind like himself, they both fall into the devil’s pit. For this reason the Church has historically taken great care with the selection of her pastors from among the saints and those who know God and practice the principles of the spiritual life. You cannot give what you don’t have in Christ’s Church. Only one who fears God is able to lead Christ’s flock to the fear of God. Only one who is repentant can lead Christ’s flock to repentance. Only one who loves God can lead God’s flock to the love of God. Only the servant of Christ can lead for Christ’s service. One who keeps fasting and prayer and vigil [can lead people] to fasting and prayer and vigil. One who walks in holiness [can lead people to] holiness. Only one who has the Spirit of the Lord can lead Christ’s flock to the Spirit of the Lord. This is true practical knowledge for us and divine philosophy. Theories and knowledge have no value in themselves in this matter except as preparatory education, but they do not make saints. Experience shows that one who does not know puts value on the formulation of theories and the collection of information, but one who knows does not value theories and only has need for a little theoretical information. Most of his knowledge is practical, so what he learns, he learns from above. One who walks in holiness is the knowledgeable one for us, even if he doesn’t have an elementary education, and one who does not walk in holiness remains ignorant even if he memorized all the books in the world!
Today, unfortunately, the standards have changed. Holiness is no longer the environment and the school and the concern for most of the flock of Christ or its pastors. In any case, holiness is no longer in the consciousness of the ordinary faithful, but of wonder-workers! We no longer insist on our pastors being saints. In any case, there are no longer many saints. The environment that we have become self-satisfied with does not lead to bringing forth saints. We are satisfied, in most cases today, with people who have ordinary, acceptable behavior. We rarely look into the internal condition of our candidates for our pastors or even into their past behavior. The matter is entirely set aside when selecting a bishop. This makes for a not insignificant possibility of an error happening and causes embarrassment for the church when it is uncovered after some time. that some who are ordained have a shameful past. Other times, some bishops lay hands on men whom they know, more or less, to not be worthy of service and they find no fault in this, even when they stumble.
The sort of pastor that we are talking about today is seen as being more fit if he is educated, with a university degree and a theology degree and is clever with words. He is admired if he is seen as a thinker and an eloquent speaker and a writer. His stock goes up if he knows foreign languages and has a beautiful voice and is enthusiastic and socially conscious and has a knowledge of organizational matters and religious education and has a likable personality. It is not required that he be a man of prayer. That’s his own concern! It’s only necessary that he perform his ritual duties well. Likewise it’s not required that he be a man of fasting! That’s also his own concern! Most people think, in any case, that fasting is excessive in the Orthodox Church and that it is not appropriate to the times or the situation! In general, people get used to living with some of the pastor’s inappropriate proclivities, if he is greedy or vainglorious or self-aggrandizing, or quarrelsome. As far as Christian virtues are concerned, they are rarely met by the people in their pastor and they have no real acquaintance with them anyway. Some take joy in them, when they abound, and some don’t pay attention to them. In any case, most of them are, in our worldly age, superfluous. What’s important is ordinary ethics-- that he not be a fornicator or a thief or a murderer… In this absence of the Church’s original upbringing, it is natural for the standards to be human and worldly!
All these things and others are part of our current situation today because holiness, as we said, is not our concern nor is the pastor as a good example our concern. Our concern is the Church as idea, as institution, as an organization, as a teaching. Our concern is the services and the choir, the social and cultural groups and the religious instruction and church-tourism and so forth. It is not that these questions aren’t sometimes important. But there is one thing needful: the purification of the heart and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This is a deviation from the essence of the matter that keeps those who are considered believers-- most pastors and flock equally-- pagans, worshipping themselves, seeking their own glory. They are only concerned with their own power and their own reputation and their own honor. They are satisfied with only the outward form of the worship of God. What is sought in any case, in the understanding of the people, is not change of heart but rather some practices and the keeping some obligations and giving lip service. In what pertains to the exterior of the church, today, it is sometimes, but not always, gleaming by worldly standards, souls graze in their own impurities and lack of awareness. Is this not the ideal church the devil desires and lords over? A worldly church, ritualistic, like a museum, a nominal Christianity but without Christ and without holiness and without truth and without Spirit and without new life, filled with the thoughts of the world and the concerns of the world! Is this not the church that most people receive today and for which they work? The devil has succeeded in making people think that this is the true and desirable church of modernity!
This is exactly a church against Christ! And we, without our attention to holiness, are building it contentedly, persistently and continuously!
Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Abbot of the Monastery of St. Silouan the Athonite Douma
Sunday July 19, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Agapius of Manbij's World History
Roger Pearse, a very active amateur of patristics, has just put online his translation of Alexander Vasiliev's 1915 French translation of Agapius (Mahbub) of Manbij (Hieropolis, Mabbug)'s world history, the Kitab al-'Unwan. This important work had not been previously available in English despite the French and Arabic editions having been prepared almost a century ago. Roger has been quite interested lately in encouraging, often with his own money, translations of otherwise unavailable patristic works, especially from Arabic and Syriac. He then releases everything into the public domain.
Agapius was the Orthodox bishop of Manbij in what is today northern Syria in the 10th century and is the earliest Christian historian to write in Arabic. His history is particularly notable because it preserves otherwise unknown fragments from the 2nd century Christian writer Pappias of Hieropolis as well as some philologically important citations of Josephus.
You can find the text on Roger's patristics website here.
Agapius was the Orthodox bishop of Manbij in what is today northern Syria in the 10th century and is the earliest Christian historian to write in Arabic. His history is particularly notable because it preserves otherwise unknown fragments from the 2nd century Christian writer Pappias of Hieropolis as well as some philologically important citations of Josephus.
You can find the text on Roger's patristics website here.
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