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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
New Patriarch of Antioch Comments on the Plight of Christians in Syria
Monday, December 17, 2012
A Light in the Darkness: Homily for the Sunday of the Forefathers in the Orthodox Church in the Aftermath of the Tragic Shooting in Connecticut
Gospel According to St. Luke 14: 16-24
St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians 3:4-11
This
Friday’s unbelievably horrible school shooting reminds us of the depths of
evil, wickedness, and pain that have corrupted and distorted our humanity. It is difficult enough when our loved ones
die of natural causes after a full life, but we do not even have the words or
categories of thought to make sense of the terror of the intentional murder of
young children and their teachers in a school.
Where is God when such things happen?, it is fair to ask. Well, as hard as it may be to believe, He was
born as a defenseless baby in a world where the evil King Herod plotted to have
Him killed; and when that scheme didn’t work, Herod slaughtered all the young
male children in the region of Bethlehem.
In
the Savior who is born at Christmas, we behold the glory of a Lord who truly
becomes one of us, sharing our vulnerability and pain, and even allowing
Himself to be nailed to a cross until He was dead. Jesus Christ is no stranger to the insane
evil of human beings who have so horribly distorted their nature as those
created in the image and likeness of God. And His glorious resurrection is a powerful
sign that His love conquers even the grave, even the worst that the forces of
wickedness can do even to the most innocent.
Our
calling as Christians is certainly to pray for those who died and for those who
mourn them. Even more fundamentally, it
is also to reject from our lives whatever darkness has taken root there so that
we will become beacons of Christ’s light that invites others in our darkened
world to the brilliant banquet of God’s Kingdom. St. Paul reminded the Colossians to have
nothing to do with “fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and
covetousness…anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language” and lying. Those are simply the ways of death and there
is no telling the damage that they will do to us and others if we let them take
over our lives. Evil is an insane spiral
that takes us further away from reality one step at a time. That is the way of the old Adam who brought
sin and death into the world and which, if we let it, will suck the life out of
us and leave us half human at best. We
know all too well what depraved human beings are capable of and we do not want
to follow their path that leads only to the grave. The good news that we prepare to celebrate during this season
of Advent is that Jesus Christ comes to deliver us from that kind of warped,
miserable existence.
We sometimes forget that life was cheap in the
world to which He was born. For example,
the pagan Romans routinely exposed unwanted infants, which meant they literally
abandoned them to whatever wild animal or slave trader came along or simply to
die of hunger or thirst. They did not
recognize the human dignity of poor people, slaves, or their enemies. They literally killed human beings for
entertainment in the coliseum. Their
sexual immorality was legendary, which is why St. Paul and others had to
respond to cases of prostitution, incest, and other forms of debauchery in the
early Church. No, not much is new when
it comes to sin. The Messiah entered
such a corrupt world in order to save it and to invite anyone who would
hear—Jew or Gentile, slave or free, rich or poor, male or female—to a radically
different way of life characterized by selfless love toward anyone who suffers,
forgiveness of those who wrong us, and control over the self-centered desires
that threaten to dehumanize us all.
Unfortunately,
many were so distracted by earthly cares that they insanely excused themselves
from the blessed life of the Kingdom to which the Lord invited them. As in the parable in our gospel lesson, they
obsessed about money, power, status, possessions, and even their families in
ways that made them blind to the brilliant light of Christ shining right before
their eyes. The terrifying truth is that
we can do the same thing, shutting ourselves out our Lord’s salvation because
we insist that we know better. We can
become experts at coping with the darkness in our lives, or accepting the lies
of the world that this, that, or the other thing, will make our problems go
away. The harsh truth, of course, is that more of the same isn’t going to
help. They say that the definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The more we choose the world over God, the
further we drift from reality, truth, and holiness; the greater mess we will
make of our lives. The results are
always the same.
In
one sense, we are all the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind who were
brought into the great banquet described in today’s gospel reading. We have wounded, weakened, and distorted
ourselves with our own sins. We have
also suffered the consequences of the corruption of everyone else from Adam and
Eve to today’s criminals and terrorists.
We have all harmed one another. And
terrible tragedies like Friday’s shooting reveal an impossibly hard truth about
the human condition in the world as we know it.
In
the midst of our sorrow today, we must remember that Christ was not born simply
to make us feel better about our collective failings and struggles, but to save
us; that is, to heal and set right all that has gone wrong with those created
in God’s image and likeness. He came to unite
our poor, maimed, lame, and blind humanity with the holiness of His
Divinity. He is the God-Man who took
upon Himself all our corruption to the point of death, burial, and descent into
Hades in order to rise victorious over them and bring us into the eternal
blessedness for which we were made.
Let’s
be honest. Who doesn’t want to make the
world a better place? Which of us hasn’t
asked what we could do to bring our culture more in line with God’s
purposes? Aren’t we all wondering what
the solution is to horrible acts of violence in our society and to other
manifestations of evil? Well, Orthodox
Christianity points to the heart of the matter:
Our most basic calling is to become holy by being as fully united as
possible with Jesus Christ. Whatever is
not Christ-like, we should remove from our lives. The excuses that we make for not doing so are
simply that, excuses that reveal our spiritual sickness. St. Paul told the Colossians to put their
sins to death. The gospel reading tells
to get over our excuses and accept the invitation to the great joy of the
Kingdom. Unless we are seriously
responding to Christ’s call to holiness in our lives, we will have nothing to
offer the world that it doesn’t already have.
We must take the logs out of our own eyes before taking the specks out
of other peoples’ eyes. If we don’t do
that, no one will pay any attention to what we say or do any. And why should they?
So
we need to prepare to welcome Christ in our darkened world by first welcoming
Him into even the shadowy corners of our lives.
If we do so, our parish, our families, our friendships, our workplaces,
and our relationships will become beacons of light that model for others a
better way and draw them to the healing that is found only in the Lord. If we want to reduce violence in our society,
we must first remember Christ’s teaching about murder in the Sermon on the Mount
and root out anger and judgment from our own souls. If we want innocent life to be protected, we
must take off whatever blinders have limited our vision of the threats to the
well-being of the weak and vulnerable and do what we can to help them. If we want some level of moral decency in
society, we must first become holy in our own lives.
Our
Savior brought light and life to a darkened, dying world. The good news is that He still does. Our calling is to respond as fully as we can
to His gracious invitation to share in His joy.
If we do so, our lives will become beacons of hope to a despairing and
often insane world. That is how we as
Orthodox Christians should respond to this week’s tragedy even as we prepare to
welcome the baby born in Bethlehem: By growing
in holiness and drawing others to the heavenly banquet of the Kingdom of God.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Orthodox Monastery Vandalized in Jerusalem
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=295596
PHOTO: MELANIE LIDMAN
Price-tag vandals hit J'lem church, Palestinian town
12/12/2012 09:50
PHOTO: MELANIE LIDMAN
“Price-tag” vandals targeted sites in Jerusalem and near Ramallah overnight Tuesday, spraying extremist graffiti and puncturing car tires.
The words “tag mahir” – “price tag” – have become affiliated with the extreme fringe of the settlement and right-wing movements.
For the second time in less than a year, vandals targeted the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park.
This time, the vandals wrote: “Happy Hanukka, the Maccabees will succeed” on a stone wall surrounding the structure. They also spraypainted graffiti on a car with the words “Jesus is a bastard,” “price-tag,” and “Happy Hanukka.”
They vandals slashed the tires of three cars.
In the second incident, which took place in Shukba, 18 km. northwest of Ramallah, unidentified persons set a car on fire and spray-painted the words “price-tag” nearby, Judea and Samaria Police reported on Wednesday morning.
Police opened an investigation, but have yet to make any arrests.
Father Claudio, the superior of the monastery, said he discovered the graffiti on Wednesday morning after morning prayers. “I forgave them the first time, I will forgive them the second time. I will forgive them the seventh, and 75th times, the 77th time I forgive,” he said.
“This person needs to write outside. Okay. But he needs to come inside the Monastery. Sit with me, drink one coffee, and I will explain to him why I believe in Jesus and why that is my freedom [to believe],” Father Claudio said. “He needs to come face to face. And I will tell him, ‘Welcome.’ Or with me, or with another priest. Let’s sit, and speak. This is the heart of the religions... I say to these people, ‘Hanukka Sameach’ [‘Happy Hanukka’].”
Father Claudio added that he understands that 99 percent of Israelis support his church, and only 1 percent is responsible for the extremism and hatred.
“This is terrorism. It is terror against Christians,” said Maroun Reem, who lives in the monastery. The tires of her car were slashed, the same car that had graffiti spray-painted in the previous price-tag attack on February 7. Then, the vandals wrote: “Jesus, drop dead,” “Death to Christians” and “Kahane was right.” They called themselves “The Maccabees of Migron [an outpost in the Binyamin region]” and also left the words “price tag.”
“They did it because I have a cross in my car,” she said.
“This does a lot of damage to the country.”
This is the fifth price-tag attack against a Christian site this year, including the previous vandalism at the Valley of the Cross Monastery, and at the Latrun Monastery, the Baptist Church in west Jerusalem, and the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion.
Police have arrested six people – three adults and three minors – in connection with price tag incidents over the past three months. Only two of the suspects were arrested in connection with an attack against Christian holy sites, in connection with the vandalism at the Dormition Abbey’s Franciscan Convent in October.
National Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers were alerted to the incident at the Monastery of the Cross early on Wednesday morning.
They had no leads but the investigation was continuing, and may be transferred to a special unit established last year that looks into price-tag attacks, he said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the two price-tag attacks “revolting.”
“The Jewish values according to which we were raised and according to which we raise our children reject outright such behavior. Freedom of worship for all religions will be upheld in Israel and we will bring to justice these contemptible beings who perpetrated this crime,” Netanyahu said.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also condemned the vandalism.
“We cannot accept this disgusting and extremist phenomenon, whose only goal is to damage the coexistence in Jerusalem. We must tear this up from the roots,” Barkat said.
In response to the price-tag attacks, activists from the Bright Tag anti-racism coalition held a candle-lighting ceremony in the Valley of the Cross, near the monastery, for the fifth night of Hanukka with local rabbis and Greek monks.
“Law enforcement agencies in Israel do not take sufficient action to end these violent acts, thus encouraging the Jewish terrorism,” Bright Tag founder Dr. Gadi Gvaryahu said ahead of the candle-lighting.
He blamed extreme-right rabbis, websites, and politicians, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, for encouraging acts of violence against Arab and Christian sites.
The Monastery of the Cross is an Orthodox Christian monastery built around the 11th century on the spot where Christians believes the tree grew that was used to make Jesus’s cross. The monastery has roots in Georgian and Greek Orthodoxy and flies a Greek flag above the fortress-like building, which could be one of the reasons it was targeted. During Hanukka, Jews commemorate a secondcentury BCE victory over Syrian- Greek oppressors.
Ben Hartman and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
"Woman, You Are Loosed": Homily for St. Anna's Conception of the Theotokos
Epistle to the Galatians
4:22-27
Gospel According
to St. Luke 13:10-17
None of us likes to be sick. It’s very frustrating to want to get up and
do what you want to do and not to be able to do so. Illness separates us from our usual
activities and relationships, and even from our selves. When our lives revolve around our own pain
and disability, we aren’t really ourselves anymore. And that’s just a miserable way to be.
When Jesus Christ was teaching in a
synagogue on the Sabbath, he saw a woman who was bent over and could not stand
up straight. She had been that way for
eighteen years. Just think of how she
felt, how limiting and frustrating that illness had to be. The Lord said to her, “Woman, you are loosed
from your infirmity.” Then He laid hands
on her and she was healed, was able to stand up straight again, and she
glorified God.
But there were those standing around
just waiting to criticize the Lord, for He healed her on the Sabbath day, when
no work was to be done. Christ answered
these critics by pointing out that everyone takes care of his donkey and ox on
the Sabbath. “So ought not this woman,
being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen
years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” The truth of His teaching was so clear that
those adversaries were put to shame and the people rejoiced.
In these weeks of the Nativity Fast,
of Advent, we are preparing to celebrate the wonderful news of the Incarnation
of the Son of God, of our Lord’s birth at Christmas. And we see in this gospel text a beautiful
image of what Jesus Christ has done for us by becoming a human being. For every one of us is like that poor woman
bound with an infirmity for eighteen years, unable to straighten herself up.
For we live in a world of corruption, of
illness, pain, and death. We don’t like
to think about it, but there are harsh, impersonal realities from which we
can’t isolate ourselves. The horrors of war, crime, and terrorism; the
ecological effects of pollution; cycles of violence, abuse, and brokenness in
families and in society; and the inevitability of the grave: We don’t have to
look far to find ways in which we are held captive.
We
all have diseases of soul, of personality, of behavior, and of relationships
that cripple us, that keep us from acting, thinking, and speaking as the
children of God. For we have all fallen
short of God’s purposes for us, as has every generation since Adam and Eve. And we are all bent over and crippled in
profound ways in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves.
Joachim and Anna knew all about long-term
struggles and disabilities, for like Abraham and Sarah they were childless into
their old age. But God heard their
prayer and gave them Mary, who would in turn give birth to the Savior who came
to liberate us all from sin and death. Today
is the feast of St. Anna’s conception of the Theotokos which we celebrate as a
foreshadowing of the coming of the Lord to loose us from the infirmities that
hold us captive and hinder our participation even now in the life of the
Kingdom.
The story of the Old Testament
unfolded through the family of Abraham, who was told by God that he would be
the father of a large, blessed family. Many
Jews continue to think of life after death as being accomplished through
ongoing generations of children and grandchildren, not by victory over death
itself. But if God’s blessings extend no
further than the grave, then we will never be loosed from bondage to the wages of
sin, which is death.
The history of the Hebrews was
preparatory for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah in whom God’s promises
are fulfilled and extended to all who have faith in the Savior, regardless of
their family heritage. Christ did not come
to privilege one nation over another, but to fulfill our original calling to be
in the image and likeness of God; and, yes, that means to share in the eternal life
of the Holy Trinity as distinct, unique persons. God breaks the laws of nature in order to do so, enabling elderly
women to conceive and bear children and a young virgin to become the mother of His
Son Who Himself rises from the dead. Yes,
this is a story of liberation, of breaking bonds, and of transcending the brokenness
and limitations of life in the world in the world as know it.
Fortunately, the Lord did not treat
the woman in today’s reading according to her physical condition as simply a
bundle of disease, even as St. Anna’s fate was not to be defined by barrenness.
Instead, He gave her back her true
identity as a beloved person, a daughter of Abraham. And on that particular Sabbath day, that’s
what Jesus Christ did. He treated her as
a unique, cherished child of God who was not created for a corrupt, impersonal
existence of pain, disease, and despair, but for blessing, health, and
joy. She glorified God for this
deliverance, as did those who saw the miracle.
The good news of Christmas is that
the Lord is born to do the same for us and for the whole world, to set us free
from the slavery to decay, corruption, and weakness that distort and weaken us
all. He comes so that we are no longer defined
by our infirmities and can leave behind our bondage and enter into the joyous
freedom of the children of God. He comes
to restore us as living icons who manifest Christ’s glory and salvation in
unique, personal ways. Have you ever
noticed that icons portray people as distinctive persons, that the personality
and character of the Theotokos or St. John the Baptist or St. Luke shines
through their icons?
The same should be true of us. We become not less ourselves, but more truly
ourselves, when we open our lives to Christ’s holiness and healing. In contrast, sin and corruption are pretty
boring. No matter how creative we try to
be, there are only so many ways to hate, lie, cheat, and steal. You can only say so much about murder and adultery. Holiness, on the other hand, is infinitely
beautiful and fascinating. For the more
we share in the life of the Holy Trinity, the more we see that the process of
our fulfillment in God is eternal, that there is no end to it or to Him. And since our fundamental calling as human
beings is to grow in the likeness of God, we become more truly ourselves—as
distinct, unique persons-- whenever we turn away from slavery to sin and
passion in order to embrace more fully the new life that Christ has brought to
the world.
Unfortunately, people in our culture
usually do not view Advent and Christmas as opportunities to be loosed from our
bondage to sin and death. Too often, we turn
them into occasions for strengthening our addiction to money and possessions,
to excessive food and drink, and unhealthy relationships with others. Of course, that’s really a way of saying that
self-centered indulgence is nothing but bondage to ourselves, which ends up
leaving us hollow and miserable. And
that’s not surprising because we weren’t created to find eternal fulfillment
and peace in the things of the world, even in one another. That’s why we must resist the cultural
temptation to be so busy with shopping and planning and partying this time of
year that we ignore the glory and gravity of our Lord’s Incarnation. For He comes to make us all the sons and
daughters of God, to extend to us all the blessing and joy of the heavenly
kingdom, to loose us from our weakness and infirmity, and to conquer sin and death
in us.
So let us not remain stooped over, bound,
and barren this Advent. Instead,
let us use the remaining weeks of this holy season to prepare to receive the
Christ who heals us, who sets us free, and who makes us the unique, distinctive
children of God we were created to be in the first place. Let us embrace our spiritual disciplines with
joy, fighting our passions and serving Christ in our neighbors, especially
those who are lonely and in need. For
we, too, have become the daughters and sons of Abraham in Christ Jesus; we too
are have been loosed and are to glorify God by living as those who have found
new life in the Second Adam, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the One who comes to us
at Christmas. Now is the time to get
ready for Him.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Memory Eternal!: His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch and All the East
MEMORY ETERNAL!
Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch Has Reposed after Suffering Stroke
Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim of Antioch and all the East passed away on Wednesday after suffering from a stroke.He was admitted to Saint Georges Hospital after suffering from a stroke on Tuesday.
Born in 1921 in Mhardeh in Syria’s Hama province, he pursued his studies at the American University of Beirut and soon entered the service of the local Orthodox diocese.
He was one of the founders of the Orthodox Youth Movement in 1942.
He was appointed as bishop in 1961 and was elected as the Metropolitan of the Latakia province in Syria in 1970.
He was elected as patriarch of the Antioch and all the East in 1979.
Source: Naharnet
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