Author: lazarus abboud
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Criticism and Awareness
Many Muslims criticize the scattered positions of Christian clergymen on various Arab issues, especially regarding Palestine today. This is not said to evaluate these positions or whether their criticism is sound or not; but have Muslims — especially the various leaderships of Islamic parties, or even official Muslim officials — asked why Christians take these…
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No Compassion for the Heretics?
Yesterday I read many posts and comments about the assault on Metropolitan Mar Mari Emmanuel. One of the posts that spread on some pages of Orthodox / by Orthodox people says: ” no compassion for the heretics” I will shed light on this phrase from several angles: First: for one who understands only the language…
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Great and Holy Friday, or the Sad Friday
The Easterners (the Byzantines) call the Friday “Great,” while the Westerners (the Maronites, for example) call it “Sad.” So we chant the blessings of the Resurrection today and wear white, while the Western Church considers these days a period of mourning, and childish annual quarrels occur over who is right, as is our custom in…
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The Book of Revelation Was Fulfilled on the Cross (the Book of the Resurrection)
The Book of Revelation is the strangest book for those who do not know it, and it attracts readers’ attention in times of disasters and wars, as they try to read the future in it. For whoever reads the Book of Revelation as being about the future has not understood Jesus’ saying during His trial:…
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The Holy Light and Populist Faith
Every year on the great and blessed Holy Saturday a flood of light emerges from the Holy Sepulcher (the tomb of the Lord Christ), and this event raises many questions, especially when the talk turns to saying that the Resurrection is realized at the flood of light. Consequently two problems arise for us: the first…
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A Critique of Ecclesiastical Tradition and the Sacred Inheritance
Father Lazarus Abboud: Critique is a process of analyzing texts and rereading them, distinguishing in them their essence and the circumstances of their writing, and understanding their content in a new way. This critique applies to all human intellectual production, even the theological, and Holy Scripture has been subjected to a harsh critical process. For…
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Immortality
“Beseech that Your servants be written in the Book of Life” How do we understand what we are heading toward — that is, the Pascha? How do we understand that we go in our procession to the table where “the fatted calf, so that no one departs hungry,” as Saint John Chrysostom says? And what…
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My God, my God, why have You let me down!
I cried out to You: Come, O Jesus. So You came, and You let me down. I imagined You coming from heaven upon the clouds (Acts 11:1), a judge and arbiter, judging and waging war in righteousness, with eyes of flaming fire and a whip of fire in Your hand, clothed in a robe dipped…
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Come, O Jesus
Come, O Jesus. Come quickly, O Lord, for Your Church, which You founded, is not well — and neither are we. Come! Did You not say, “Behold, I am coming quickly”? Then why the delay, O God? Have You forgotten us, or are You sleeping in the stillness of the stars? Have the clouds secluded…
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The New Heresy
The Orthodox world today suffers from numerous divisions on the ecclesiastical level, for you see the various schisms and quarrels plainly and without concealment, affecting our internal community and our dealings with both the Christian and the non-Christian world. And on the other hand there is no longer a unified Orthodox vision of the world,…