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Last Updated: 19 February 2013

(14 December, 2011) - The Assembly of the Catholic Hierarchy in Syria met in regular session from 12 to 14 December, 2011 at the Syriac Catholic Archbishopric of Damascus, and was chaired by H.B. Gregorios III, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, in the presence of H.B. Mar Ignatius Youssef III Younan, Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and Archbishop Mario Zenari, Apostolic Nuncio to Syria and the Catholic bishops of Syria.

The very reverend Fathers examined the documents on the agenda for the day and focused particularly on those presented by the ad hoc commission on Holy Scripture, the welfare committee (Caritas-Syria), the family and youth, and adopted the relevant decisions, recommendations and guidance.

Similarly, the very reverend Fathers examined the recommendations concerning the Eastern Catholic Churches, published by the Synod for the Middle East, held in Rome last October, and focused on those relating to inter-Church co-operation, Christian unity, Christian witness and Muslim-Christian dialogue.

The Assembly also studied the theme of “The New Evangelization,” which will be the subject of the Synod to be held in Rome in 2012.

V. C.

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Archbishop Paul Antaki was born in Cairo on January 16 1927. Having obtained both French and Egyptian baccalaureates, he studied theology at the Seminary of St. Anne of Jerusalem from 1946 to 1951. Ordained on July 2 1950, he was appointed parish priest in Alexandria from 1951 to 1954, then Superior of the Patriarchal College in Cairo, 1954-1957, Secretary of the Patriarchate of Alexandria from 1957 to 1960 and Vicar of Alexandria from 1960 to 1966. In 1966 he was appointed Superior of the Minor Seminary of Rayak, a position he held until his episcopal ordination. Appointed Patriarchal Vicar for Egypt and Sudan in 1967, he was elected by the Synod on September 9 1968, Titular Archbishop of Nubia, and consecrated on December 1 at Beirut Cathedral by Patriarch Maximos V, assisted by Archbishops Elias Zoghby and Joseph Tawil. Emeritus on June 21 2001. He died on December 29, 2011. May his memory be eternal!

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The Vatican - Dear Brothers and Sisters! The reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus that we have just heard begins solemnly with the word “apparuit,” which then comes back again in the reading at the Dawn Mass: apparuit--“there has appeared.” This is a programmatic word, by which the Church seeks to express synthetically the essence of Christmas. Formerly, people had spoken of God and formed human images of him in all sorts of different ways. God himself had spoken in many and various ways to mankind (cf. Heb 1:1 – Mass during the Day). But now something new has happened: he has appeared. He has revealed himself. He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which he dwells. He himself has come into our midst. This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God has appeared. No longer is he merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a picture of him on the basis of mere words. He has “appeared”. But now we ask: how has he appeared? Who is he in reality? The reading at the Dawn Mass goes on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed” (Tit 3:4). For the people of pre-Christian times, whose response to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that God himself might not be good either, that he too might well be cruel and arbitrary, this was a real “epiphany”, the great light that has appeared to us: God is pure goodness.

Today too, people who are no longer able to recognize God through faith are asking whether the ultimate power that underpins and sustains the world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as the good and the beautiful which we encounter in radiant moments in our world. “The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed”: this is the new, consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas.

In all three Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, which describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater detail: “A child is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end” (Is 9:5f.). Whether the prophet had a particular child in mind, born during his own period of history, we do not know. But it seems impossible. This is the only text in the Old Testament in which it is said of a child, of a human being: his name will be Mighty-God, Eternal-Father. We are presented with a vision that extends far beyond the historical moment into the mysterious, into the future. A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God. A child, in all its neediness and dependence, is Eternal Father. And his peace “has no end”. The prophet had previously described the child as “a great light” and had said of the peace he would usher in that the rod of the oppressor, the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood would be burned (Is 9:1, 3-4).

God has appeared--as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and brings a message that is peace. At this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord: O mighty God, you have appeared as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the One who loves us, the One through whom love will triumph. And you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you. We love your childish estate, your powerlessness, but we suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: manifest your power, O God. In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours.

Christmas is an epiphany--the appearing of God and of his great light in a child that is born for us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, not in the palaces of kings. In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi called Christmas “the feast of feasts”--above all other feasts--and he celebrated it with “unutterable devotion” (2 Celano 199; Fonti Francescane, 787). He kissed images of the Christ-child with great devotion and he stammered tender words such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells us (ibid.). For the early Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the Resurrection Christ had flung open the doors of death and in so doing had radically changed the world: he had made a place for man in God himself. Now, Francis neither changed nor intended to change this objective order of precedence among the feasts, the inner structure of the faith centred on the Paschal Mystery. And yet through him and the character of his faith, something new took place: Francis discovered Jesus’ humanity in an entirely new depth. This human existence of God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God’s Son to take the form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. “The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed” – this phrase of Saint Paul now acquired an entirely new depth. In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a second focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart.

This has nothing to do with sentimentality. It is right here, in this new experience of the reality of Jesus’ humanity that the great mystery of faith is revealed. Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.

Francis arranged for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between the ox and the ass (cf. 1 Celano 85; Fonti 469). Later, an altar was built over this manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now receive the flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul and body, as Thomas of Celano tells us (cf. 1 Celano 87; Fonti 471). Francis himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night in Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas singing, the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy (1 Celano 85.86; Fonti 469, 470). It was the encounter with God’s humility that caused this joy – his goodness creates the true feast.

Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of Saint Francis--the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions--the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable. Amen.

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Dec 20, 2011

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(15 December 2011)

The three Patriarchs – H. B. Ignatius IV (Hazim), Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, H. H. Mar Ignatius Zakka I (Iwas), Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and H. B. Gregorios III (Laham), Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and Jerusalem – met at the Monastery of Saint Ephraim the Syrian at Ma’arrat-Saydnaya, on the morning of Thursday, 15 December 2011, and examined together what is going on in our beloved homeland, Syria, namely, the events that have been raging now for nine months.

They examined these events and their after-effects on the country and among the faithful: tragedies and sufferings on several levels. They expressed their deep pain at what has happened, and their sadness for the victims who have been killed, as well as their fear about the deterioration of the economic situation. They expressed their fervent wish for Syria’s wounds to be healed, for reconciliation among its people in love, tolerance, co-operation and wisdom, and for them to prefer the homeland’s welfare to any other interest, returning to their roots, heritage, conscience, trust in mutual exchange and in solving their problems by themselves.

The Patriarchs rejected any kind of foreign intervention from any source, and asked for the lifting of sanctions on Syria imposed upon whatever pretext.

Similarly, they rejected recourse to violence of any form whatever, and called for peace and reconciliation of everyone in the name of God and country. They encouraged the reforms and positive steps promulgated by the government, by appealing to respect for the principles of justice, freedom, human dignity, social justice and the rights of fellow-citizens.

Finally, they prayed fervently to Almighty God for him to have mercy on the slain, comfort the hearts of the afflicted, protect Syria and its leaders and guide them to a safe haven, peace, sovereignty and prosperity, and for them to ask everyone’s participation in unceasing prayer, and not to allow fear to take hold of anyone or for a hair of our heads to be touched save by the leave of God, our heavenly Father, as our Lord Christ taught us.     

As we are in the period of preparation for the glorious Feast of the Nativity, we send to all our sons and daughters and to our fellow-citizens our cordial good wishes, asking our Lord Jesus, the pre-eternal God, become man for our salvation, to fill our hearts with the joy and peace heralded by the angels on the glorious night of Christmas, at the intercession of the Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, and of all the saints.      

+ Ignatius Zakka I Iwas
Syriac Orthodox Patriarch

+ Ignace IV Hazim
Greek Orthodox Patriarch

+ Gregorios III Laham
Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch

Saydnaya, 15 December 2011

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Damascus - On Tuesday evening of 13 December, 2011, in the context of the session of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops in Syria, there took place in the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Cathedral in Damascus, an ecumenical prayer vigil for peace in Syria, with the participation of representatives of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches present in the country. The liturgical texts for this celebration, which was broadcast live on Syrian television, were taken from the seasonal cycle for the Nativity.

In his address, H. B. Patriarch Gregorios III, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, affirmed loyalty to the Syrian homeland from all Christian Churches, and their unanimous wish to work for national unity and Christian-Muslim living together, and their rejection of any foreign intervention to resolve the current crisis.