Father Lazarus Abboud
The Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross is not a Sunday in which we boast of it, or offer it veneration, nor for consolation in the fast, but to ignite our revolution. It is the Sunday of the awareness of its meaning: that it is a stance in existence, the readiness for witness. For Christ is a revolution that descended from heaven like a thunderbolt: “to preach good news to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to send forth the oppressed in freedom” (Luke 4:18). He came to defend the dignity of His image (man). And when we prostrate ourselves in veneration before the Cross, we declare our joining of that revolution, to defend the dignity of His image and to overturn the standards, even if the price is that we be crucified like Christ. Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says: “This is the permanent challenge of Christians: to prove that they are like their Christ, otherwise Christianity died with Christ on the Cross” (1). The Cross is the first price, and the price: a witness of blood (red) or a witness of conscience (white).
Christ put death to death on the Cross, and cast out the devil and condemned him: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.” (John 12:31). And it remains for us to wage war against the forms of death and the kinds of evil. By His death on the Cross, Christ restored to man his sovereignty over the world, and gave the believers in Him “authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19). Christ came and accomplished salvation by power, and it is upon us to make Him present in deed in the social structures of society.
As for the forms of death and evil, they are: sin, corruption, theft, favoritism, partiality, bribery, social injustice, the absence of justice for citizens, persecution because of freedom of opinion, thought, and belief, the rise of taxes, the detention of people of opinion and thought, the theft of people’s money, sectarianism, political corruption, despotism, the violation of human rights and dignity, the failure to achieve justice, wars, terrorism, the violation of the rights of women and children, the recruitment of children, killing, disfigurement, rape, sexual violence, torture, inequality, discrimination in employment, displacement, and the persecution of the other because of his thought, his religion, and his belief, and discrimination on the basis of color or race… etc.
The Sunday of the Cross was placed in the middle of the way, so that we may ask: where are we today? Have we, as a Church and as Christians who believe in Christ, carried the first banner of Jesus and applied His program of work: “…He has sent forth the oppressed in freedom” (Luke 4:18), and God’s commandment: “Defend the oppressed. Plead for the orphan. Protect the widow” (Isaiah 1:17)? Are we defenders of the suffering, the oppressed, and the downtrodden, and do we wage war against the forms of sin in the structures of society, liberate political life, and work to create a civil society?
Original sin is present in the social structures and in the exploitation and crushing they contain. The wretched in the countries are not wretched because of the will of God, but because of the morals of the fallen human race. For sin is not only a free personal responsibility, but a permanent evil, a structural injustice, and a continuous division among people. On this basis, redemption is not confined to blotting out individual sin after death, but includes liberation from the despotic systems of the world. For liberation means work and a revolution to launch toward a new age, in which every person is free and independent and lives his responsibility with dignity within his culture.
Salvation is not an event linked to what comes after death. When we say that salvation is eschatological, we describe its extent, not its exclusivity. For the power of the Cross is a power of outpouring and change. Moses’ liberation of his people from the bondage of Pharaoh is not a symbolic story (about), but a real story (in history) of a people who suffered slavery, despotism, and persecution. Moses went before and carried the sign of the Cross and delivered his people from the despotic authority, the authority of Pharaoh. Therefore the work of Moses is a liberation that is political par excellence (1). And Metropolitan George Khodr says: “The Gospel is nothing but a call to revolution after Christ filled it with love and inner freedom, and the Church was nothing but to preserve this holy revolution for all generations. The Church wants the revolution to be comprehensive against rigidity, superficiality, social injustice, moral decay, and sick reactionism” (2).
Unfortunately, the problem is that when religious institutions and religious discourse address people, they do not address their material needs (other than the food box), and they do nothing to overturn the unjust political structures. We observe their total silence toward the public injustice in Syria and Lebanon that characterizes society, as if the work of the religious were the performance of rituals, instead of working and striving to build a civil society and contribute to building a state of citizenship and democracy. The theologian Alexander Schmemann says: “Is it a coincidence that more than ninety percent of the Orthodox today live in despotic states… Does this not point to the failure of the (contemporary) Eastern understanding of the problems of the world?” (3). And this is what Berdyaev confirms: “The sins of the historical churches were very great, and these sins are: the betrayal of Christ’s covenant and the use of the Church to support the ruling class — they carried their punishment with them… We cannot ignore the chasm that separated Christianity from those groaning under the yoke of suffering, for because of this betrayal the Church went astray” (4).
The religious institution contents itself with distributing aid as if it were a charitable association, while we see that Jesus did not come to feed people but to liberate man so that he might live in dignity and freedom. We see that Saint Basil did not content himself with alleviating the pains of the poor through his charitable works, but he fell upon the roots of the evil hidden behind the arbitrariness of the rulers and their injustice, and in the depths of the hearts of the rich and their increasing greed. He waged war against sin and confronted vain extravagance… exerting his utmost effort to defend the dignity of the humiliated man, demanding his natural and social rights (5). He also worked to pressure the emperor and wrested from him an explicit decision condemning the sale of children (6).
Saint Nektarios (+1920) also labored to liberate Greek political life from clan conflicts and corruption, by emphasizing to his spiritual children the broad lines of a kind of electoral ethics, saying: Do not elect divided, troubled, and self-interested people immersed in the love of matter, who regard parliament as a commercial commodity and not a means of serving the greatest possible number of the people. They are thieves and intruders; cast them far away from the management of public affairs” (7).
And Saint Gregory Palamas was a fighter against social injustice in his diocese, crying out: ” Who among the influential does not share in the thefts? …They swallow up all that belongs to the poor, the soldiers, and those who serve them; they impose taxes without mercy, harboring hatred for mankind; and as for those who are stronger, they are unable to confront them”.
In the end, on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, we draw strength from the strength of Christ and the valor of His martyrs, and we pledge to wage war against the forms of sin, and to work to activate salvation in time: “I came to cast fire on the earth…” (Luke 12:49). The one who prostrates before the Cross pledges to ignite a revolution, “a revolution whose revolutionaries offer even their blood when circumstances demand, and offer their conscience at every moment; for its sake they die all day long. When the witness of blood ceased, the Christians did not spare their Master the witness of conscience,” says Metropolitan Paul Yazigi (8). For the Christian who remains prostrate before the Cross with his eyes shut to the reality and the sufferings of people, and who does not reflect Christ’s victory in the social structures and civil life, makes Christ’s victory a myth that benefits the dead, and Christ then becomes the last Christian.
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References:
- Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, The Book of the Word (Sermons on the Gospels of the Sundays and Feasts), Part One, the Triodion and the Pentecostarion, Al-Nour Orthodox Cooperative for Publishing and Distribution, p. 66.
- George Khodr, The Sunday Talk, Religion and Religions, Part Two, An-Nour Publications, p. 106.
- Orthodox Liberation Theology (The Russian Model), Father Sami Hallaq the Jesuit, Theological Studies, Dar Al-Mashreq, Beirut, Achrafieh, p. 17.
- The previous reference, p. 91.
- Saint Basil the Great (His Life, Studies on Him, His Homilies), The Christian Thought Series between Yesterday and Today 12, written, compiled, and organized by Father Elias Kwiter the Salvatorian, Paulist Library Publications, p. 102.
- The previous reference, p. 102.
- Dialogue with Patriarch Athenagoras, Olivier Clément, Contemporary Orthodox Figures 5, Arabized by Dimitri Koutya, Al-Nour Orthodox Cooperative for Publishing and Distribution, p. 106.
- Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, The Two Travelers between Earth and Heaven (God and Man), Part Two, Publications of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Annunciation, Aleppo 2008, p. 17.