Author: lazarus abboud
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Your Cross Is Not a Fate: How Did We Turn the Cross into a Tragedy?
“God does not distribute crosses to hang people on them, and the message of the Gospel is not the glorification of pain. Popular thought has turned the God of life into a tormentor who sends calamities and illnesses under the name of the cross! The cross is not an imposed fate; rather, it is a…
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Service
Some see that service is limited to the priest alone, as the servant of the entire parish, or that it is confined to the parish council together with the priest. And although the great organizational role falls upon the council, and the priest represents an essential axis in this service, the letter of the Apostle…
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“Beseech That Your Servants Be Written in the Book of Life”
How do we understand what we are heading towards, that is, the Passover? How do we understand that we are going in our course to the table where “the fatted calf, so that none departs hungry,” as Saint John Chrysostom says? And what is the connection of food to death and victory? Are they symbols?…
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His Name Is Jesus
His name is Jesus, in the sense of a new presence, when He entered time and illuminated the obscurity of history, “God redeems.” And when man ascended to Him, he repented, seeking Him, and the fire of longing in the depths inflamed him; he forsook heaven and came to Him, that perchance, if he met…
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The Trial of God
He fell silent in their hall after the final transfiguration revealed among them that He had come, and left them, tearing at His body with their words, with their unbelief, with their torment. They spat upon His radiant face, then struck Him with blows as moist wheat is pounded for flour, that perchance they might…
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I Love You, O Lord
I loved You, and Your love flowed like a river that overflows. Is my heart a sea? How, O Lord, can my heart contain Your pouring love? I adored Your face, and it inclined toward me, illumining my face. I lost my mind to the fire of Your love, and the direction of the people…
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Between Kadim Al-Sahir’s Lament and the Apostle Paul’s Vision: Where Does Creativity Go?
A deep lament that the artist Kadim Al-Sahir utters, wondering about the fate of human toil and music, meeting the theological vision of the Apostle Paul and the Fathers in affirming that human creativity and art do not perish in annihilation, but are kept in the essence of eternity and are transfigured in the light…
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The Resurrection Is Our Passage to the Father
All of us will remain in perpetual search for this homeland, and we may lose the way as the ancient people lost it, who believed that God wanted to give them a land to dwell in, whereas God wanted to make of Himself the homeland of the new man.
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The Wicked Servant
The Gospel does not demand of us that we receive the one who wronged us with open arms and overflowing love, ignoring our wounds and our human feelings; rather it asks of us what is deeper and purer: that we purify our hearts of the poisons of resentment, hatred, and the desire for revenge, and…
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The Sunday of Saint Gregory 2026
After we met Jesus last week and asked Him: “Where do You dwell, O Lord?” and wished to follow Him, this Sunday comes for us to begin discipleship at His hands. But discipleship with Jesus means changing our thinking, changing our minds, and also changing our standards and values, changing our view of everything. Discipleship…