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Patriarchal Letters

 

 

 

Good wishes for Eid ul Fitr
                          

As Eid ul Fitr once more brings to an end the Ramadan fast, the Arab world is in the throes of a series of bloody revolutions. We say with the poet, “In what conditions do you return, O feast?”
As we have always done, as President of the Assembly of Catholic Churches in Syria, we address our Muslim brothers and sisters with hope. We lovingly offer our good wishes for the feast, in our own name and in that of our Patriarchate and our Melkite Greek Catholic Church, our brother bishops, priests, monks and nuns and all our faithful in our Arab countries and everywhere else. Indeed, we all live together on a daily basis, in charitable work (sadaqah) and cultural, economic, national and political life. We and earn our daily bread together, working together for the development of our society.
This year we fasted at the same time as our Muslim brethren during Ramadan, because for us it was the Fast of the Dormition of the Virgin, “Our Lady Mary,” as Muslims say. At the beginning of Ramadan/August we launched an appeal to our sons and daughters, inviting them to fast and pray with our Muslim brothers and sisters for the end of these bloody revolutions so destructive of human beings and their hearts and feelings of brotherliness and compassion, destructive too of state and private institutions, creating millions of dead and wounded victims in our bloodied, sad and pained Arab world.
We wish to express our wishes for a blessed Eid ul Fitr this year, as a bouquet of considerations and thoughts inspired by the painful situation of our Arab countries, for as Arab Christians rooted in our Arab world, we feel aware of our comprehensive responsibility with regard to this Arab world of ours. Indeed, we have lived through our common history (1432 years 1 ) in solidarity with our Muslim majority Arab world; we co-operated in its foundation, culture, civilisation, poetry, Arab character and also in its wars. This gives rise to our spiritual conviction that we make up one body and “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.” (1 Corinthians 12: 26) As the respected hadith says, “The example of the believers in their affection, reciprocal compassion and sympathy, is like the body; if one of its members suffers, the whole body will suffer too and remain awake and feverish. 2 ”
We expected the whole Arab world to move on the occasion of these tragic events: and for the Arab Muslim countries to convoke summits in consequence, to address the pains and aspirations of their peoples and for there to be some interaction with the revolutions of the rising generations. Together they would have analysed the causes and parameters of these revolutions, their extent, goals, risks and opportunities that they represent for us all, instead of allowing foreign forces, whatever their intentions, to get involved in our affairs and dictate their ideas to us, threaten our governments, call upon our presidents to step down and desert their countries and then inflict on those who have been figureheads of our Arab countries removal and humiliating trials.
We were expecting the sovereigns and presidents of Arab countries to organise themselves and close ranks, setting aside their disputes and individual interests and overcoming and transcending their respective partial, narrow divisions and pacts to unite in a single rank and face up to this tsunami of revolutions that has overwhelmed virtually half of all our Arab countries.
It is not too late! The opportunity is still there for leaders in our Arab world to take into good and due consideration the slogans that have been ringing out in the squares of our capitals, towns and villages. They must be gathered and made into a common Arab, Eastern, even, let us say, Muslim-Christian plan of action, for a better future for our young generations who have taken to Arab streets.
We cannot and do not have the right to ignore these voices, slogans, demands, whatever the underlying motives and reasons. We are convinced that our Arab world needs an intellectual, spiritual, social, political and economic revolution, but just not in the way we have been seeing on television screens through biased media coverage since the beginning of this year 2011.
Based on our faith and our responsibility as Patriarch, holding both Syrian nationality and Lebanese, Egyptian and Palestinian passports, and as spiritual head of a Church which has been distinguished by its position of loyalty, firmness and perseverance with regard to the Arab world and especially the Palestinian cause, with sincerity we write this message.
Similarly, we allow ourself to take stock of the questions and problems which have emerged during these revolutions. We expressed that in several articles, interviews and letters sent to sovereigns and presidents of the Arab world, to several heads of state of Europe, the Americas and Australia and to cardinals, bishops and presidents of various episcopal conferences in the Catholic world on the occasion of the holding of the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Churches of the Middle East.
On the basis of our faith in God and country and our spiritual and national values and convictions we invite our brothers and sisters to work together in these difficult circumstances to preserve our Arab national  unity, and our Muslim-Christian unity, by overcoming this ordeal and these wounds and by working for a civilised Arab society in which social, denominational and ethnic differences  disappear and in which all our hopes of justice, equality, dignity and religious and personal freedom are realised, where corruption is fought, the countryside developed, the poor and dispossessed supported, especially in the provinces and areas disadvantaged by nature and deprived of modernisation.

We have to work together to realise these prerequisites for political, social and family reform in the Arab world, proclaiming our solidarity with it, for we love it and want to be builders of a better society, where the civilisation of peace, brotherhood and love prevails between the many, different denominations which have been living alongside each other for centuries.

Thus we continue the way of living together as Christians of different Churches and Muslims of different denominations, as is the case in all Arab countries.

Thus we shall give to the world after these revolutions a unique Arab Muslim-Christian pattern, which will help the dialogue between the Middle East and the West, and Islam and Christianity throughout the world. It is desirable for states’ action to implement these rights to be a synthesis for their interaction with the situations of their faithful peoples.  The rights should be enshrined in a modern Arab Human Rights Charter.

Thus will be put into practice the call of the Qur’an, “Come to a common word between us and you.” (Al ’Imran 3: 64) And thus we bring about Jesus’ prayer from the Gospel, “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” (John 17: 21)

There is the promising programme! There is the new order! There is the new Middle East! There is the flourishing future that Arab countries will be able to bring about if they are united in solidarity. There is the real roadmap for realising the hopes and expectations of the young generations and of citizens of all classes, a roadmap for bringing about just, lasting and global peace that will pave the way to prosperity, development and sovereignty, freedom and dignity for all the peoples of the region.

Dear brothers and sisters, dear friends,
These are our wishes for Eid ul Fitr. I offer them as spiritual wishes to my Muslim brothers and sisters and to our fellow-citizens of all communities, that our feasts may really be feasts for all. We ask in prayers, invocations and supplications for the clouds of these dark months to dissipate and for God’s Sun to shine on all us Muslims and Christians, the Sun of Faith, Hope and Love.

Happy Feast!

+ Gregorios III

Patriarch of Antioch and All the East

of Alexandria and of Jerusalem