We look out upon the new year, carrying to it many tragedies, frustrations, despair, wars, and pains. We have lost the meaning of the Christianity to which we belong, so that all of time has come to mean nothing but the succession of numbers. Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says “the Christianity to which we belong is not a religion; rather it is the striving and work for achieving a human civilization in its completeness. The kingdom of God is the world in which man lives the fullness of his life, and in which he realizes the most complete face of human civilization.” The kingdom of God is not Platonic ideals, nor an otherworldly life in a world to come after death; it is now and here.
The year 2024 dawning upon us becomes the acceptable year of the Lord if we repent to God and adopt His work in the world and work for its salvation and for its building now and here. Then the kingdom of God begins its presence in us, when we work as Christians to build justice, mercy, freedoms, human rights, and the defense of the oppressed in our countries, and to proclaim salvation as a historical event, not an otherworldly one, touching people’s daily lives and the political, economic, and social domains, and entering into them Gospel values.
Metropolitan Paul says “the Church is the factory of human civilization.” But the question: how will the Church today be a factory of human civilization in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq? We Christians suffer from terrible divisions — between Christianity and the Church, between the Christians themselves, and between the Church and the faith — and a frightening struggle over power, influence, and thrones; and on the other hand we adopt Caesarian political work programs that serve the interests of power and the existing regimes.
The first division is a hidden one between Christianity and the Church. Its reform is that Christianity and the Church meet for the sake of a new stage in the history of Christianity in Syria and Lebanon, and that they be great by the measure of their humility and their self-giving. This separation means precisely that we have sentenced ourselves, and consequently Orthodoxy, to spiritual and geographical emigration and to symbolic sufficiency,” Patriarch Ignatius Hazim.
The second division is among the Christians of the East. Unfortunately the Christians are divided among themselves. The Teacher says “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” (Matthew 12:25). The division of the Christians has divided the power of our witness to Christ on the one hand and the efficacy of our existence, and on the other hand it has made us ineffective in this society. Nay, more: if the salt becomes corrupt, it is cast out. Ought not the Christians in the East meet for the sake of the unity of their destiny in Syria, and the unity of their destiny in Lebanon? And ought they not hold Eastern Christian councils together to discuss the destiny of their existence, their peoples, their citizens, and their partners in these homelands?
Are these not our tragedies today, and is this not the product of the work of our own hands? We have expelled Christ by our grudges, our pride, and our Pharisaism. We have disfigured the Gospel, so Christ fled. Patriarch Athenagoras says “we expel Christ from the place where He gives Himself wholly, that is, in the cup. The divided Church tears apart its Lord. We are at ease with ourselves, we the pure, possessing the truth and condemning others, but life and history lie in wait knocking at the door of the Church.”
We do not need plans, ideas, consultations, and the creation of Christian churchly work programs. What we need now and here is to meet together. For the program of work for the Christians and the Church is prepared, and the Lord prepared it since He set out on His public preaching:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).
We need nothing but to adopt the Teacher’s program and to abandon our own narrow, selfish programs, and to cease confronting the crises of our countries, their problems, and the emigration of Christians with beatific preaching, and to call out as Saint Gregory Palamas called out in the cause of social justice, and to demand the liberation of man like Saint Basil the Great, and to set an approach for political work like Saint Nektarios. We must search for and defend freedom, justice, peace, and the rising of our peoples whose dignity was humiliated and violated by tyranny and despotism, and the liberation of woman and equality, and the rights of citizenship, and the defense of the rights of Muslims as of Christians and of atheists as of believers.
We must defend the right of every human being to life, and demand justice, change, the release of prisoners, the return of the kidnapped, and the building of systems that protect man and do not violate his dignity. We must demand for all, for Christ was crucified for the sake of every human being without exception; He was crucified for the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Hindu, the atheist, the deist, and the Christian. Therefore all we must do is imitate the Teacher who willed the salvation of all, and so work for the salvation of all.
Patriarch Ignatius Hazim once cried out “we must confess that we were unjust, and that we were harsh, and that we were ignorant and did not care for what belongs to our brother, as though God had spoken to none but us.” We need a Christian renaissance in Syria and Lebanon. This renaissance does not care about the number of its proclaimers nor their ranks; rather its leaven is Christian statures, lay and priestly, and our loyalty in it is to Christ wherever our work requires raising this world to Him, through institutions and systems that translate God’s work into a creative act in history and in our countries, before we turn after a while into archaeologists excavating the Christian existence in the remnants of homelands, and nothing remains of us but remnants of temples and the memory of an existence.
We need in this year to be prophets of renewal, looking to Christ who became incarnate to turn the word into an act that pierces history, and to have a prophetic Church that speaks with the authority of Christ and creates His work among people and for the sake of all people. Then the year 2024 will be an acceptable year of the Lord.