Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Today Christ is born of the Virgin in Bethlehem. Today He who knows no beginning now begins to be, and the Word is made flesh. The powers of heaven greatly rejoice, and the earth with mankind makes glad. The Magi offer gifts, the shepherd proclaim the marvel, and we cry aloud without ceasing: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.

Today the Virgin giveth birth to the Transcendent in essence; the earth offereth the cave to the unapproachable One; the angels with the shepherds glorify him; and the Magi with the star travel on their way; for a new child hath been born for our sakes, God before the ages.

Holy Land Christians issue their own Manhattan Document - will anyone heed it?

Friday, 11 December 2009, a group of Christian religious leaders of Palestine and Israel met in Bethlehem where they issued The Kairos Palestine Document. In many ways, this document constitutes a kind of Middle Eastern Christian Manhattan Document. Not only arguing for the removal of the many restrictions and human rights violations claimed against the government of Israel, the document also challenges the "Christian Zionism" that is almost a hallmark of many US Protestant groups. Some of these groups support Israel believing that by destroying the Dome of the Rock and building the "Third Temple" the Second Coming of Christ will be brought about. The Kairos Document also frames the situation of Palestinian Christians as apartheid. Thus far, only Speros News has reported on the document.

It is a fact that for many people in the United States, the dispute and ongoing conflict in the Middle East is solely understood as Israel against Muslims. The Palestinians are seen as being a Muslim people. While it is true that the majority of Palestinians are Muslim, a significant - but tragically shrinking - minority of Palestinians are Christians: Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and a sprinkling of Protestant groups. Often Christians are caught in the crossfire between militant Palestinians and Israelis. When Israel imposes curfews, Palestinians Christians suffer along with the many local Palestinian Muslims who have no part in the terrorist acts perpetrated by groups of militants. In recent years, a curfew of Bethlehem during the season around Christmas severely impacted the local Christian community, and other curfews have adversely affected Christians whose businesses rely on pilgrims during the Lenten and Paschal Seasons. (There are increasing reports of young Israelis spitting on Orthodox and Catholic Christian priests and using vulgar language to insult them.)

The cause of peace cannot be forwarded by ignorance of the facts. Acts of terror are not justified by oppression, but neither is oppression against the many justified by atrocities committed by the few. ("The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." Ezekiel 18.8 ESV)

I will let The Kairos Palestine Document speak for itself. I anticipate that the site itself will grow over time.
For myself, I reproduce a most important and inspiring talk given by His Eminence Archbishop Elias Chacour at the 2007 Presbyterian Global Fellowship Conference. His message of peace, love and seeking the good of all the people of the region - as well as a kind request for Protestants to roll up their sleeves and help versus rolling up their pamphlets to convert Middle Eastern Christians - is well worth your time.

LESS ME AND MORE WE THE TRUE WAY FOR SELF-HELP

An obvious, although often overlooked, aspect of our calling to live out God’s Will is that we must do so in a community. The large selection of “self-help” books available in book shops and libraries offer great assurances of help and cures for the various problems confronting the despondent reader. Yet the reason these all fail – and they always fail – is that their focus is on helping “me” – the individual, on my differences, my uniqueness, my particularity. It is truly a ‘self-ish’ endeavor.

One of the major errors of the modern world, and western Society in particular, is this emphasis on “self”, the individual. Help for the sufferer is thought to be found in isolation from others, from family and friends, from society and humanity itself. I would argue that this tendency is as old as humanity itself. This is humanity in its fallen state seeking solutions to our problems in isolation from interaction with others

However, our own experience and our Lord’s testimony teaches us that we have an inherent need for others. Recall the observation, “How can you remove the mote in your brother’s eye when there is a plank in your own.” This points to the reality that our humanity can only be revealed, the fullness of our personhood can only be discovered and flourish, in community. The extent to which we insist on differentiating ourselves from our shared humanity is the degree to which our lives are diminished and our very personhood impoverished.

The Holy Trinity Himself provides the greatest example of this truth. The Essence of God, that basic Nature that uniquely characterizes Him, is Love. The hypostases (concrete realities that instantiate, or give what we would loosely call “reality” to that Essence) are the Three Divine Persons – Father. Son and Holy Spirit .These three Persons equally possess that Divine Essence by which we affirm that each of the Divine Persons is fully God. At the same time, this hypostatic reality fully embodies (as it were) the Essence of each Divine Person.

Our Faith teaches us that we are created in the Image and Likeness of God. As there is a common Divinity shared by each Person of the Holy Trinity, so also each man or woman shares in a common humanity. While the Divine Essence is at once all love, all knowing, all powerful and eternal, the human essence is limited, capable of love but also subject to experience the absence of love (originating either in ‘me’ or experienced by ‘me’ due to another). Similarly, the immortality of human existence is purely dependent on our willful acceptance of the gift of love and life from God.

Therefore, true “self-help’ comes not through focus on ‘me’ but on God, through Whom we find true peace and harmony with all others. In this encounter with God we find healing in Him. And what’s more, this healing necessarily takes place in the context of a the community, the Church. Here alone we discover the realities of our dignity, our poverty, our need and our sin.

In experiencing these truths selfishness gives way to a selflessness that if filled with the grandeur His Life. The limitations of our broken existence finds healing through sharing our humanity with others in the shared reality of Christ’s self sacrifice for us. Our life becomes one with the Trinity and thus one with everyone of His children. No matter what our earthly circumstances, we are freed and no longer need live as victims. Forgiveness of those who hurt us is easily achieved in the superseding action of Divine Love that allows to see beyond the petty myopia of this broken world to the heavenly perspective where we are all God’s children and worthy of love, forgiveness and life.

In conclusion, let the words of the Prayer Book and Divine Serves bring healing. Spend time before your Icon corner and be open to experience the true Victory that comes from complete submission to the Holy Trinity. Discover the fullness of your personhood in the God who gives us His Divine Body and Precious Blood.

Thanks be to God.

Prayer Request

Let us all pray for peace in the Republic of Georgia and the suffering Georgian people.

What Price Peace?

Peace is God's gift that requires human cooperation, pope says

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Prayers for peace demonstrate a recognition that peace is a gift of God that requires human cooperation, Pope Benedict XVI said in a message to a summit of religious leaders meeting on Mount Hiei in Japan.

"Peace is both a gift from God and an obligation for every individual," the pope said in the message to the Aug. 3-4 summit organized by the leader of the Tendai Buddhist community.

Members of the community consider Mount Hiei to be the holiest site in Japan; the Tendai school of Buddhism was founded on the mountain in the 9th century.

When Pope John Paul II invited religious leaders from around the world to gather in Assisi, Italy, in 1986 to pray for peace, the leader of the Tendai Buddhists accepted the invitation. The next year, the community began hosting Japanese religious leaders for an annual prayer for peace service on Mount Hiei.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the head of Tendai Buddhism began inviting international representatives of Christianity, Islam and Judaism to join Japanese religious leaders for the prayer service.

In his message to the 2007 summit, Pope Benedict said, "The world's cry for peace, echoed by families and communities throughout the globe, is at once both a prayer to God and an appeal to every brother and sister of our human family."

The pope expressed his hope that the religious leaders gathered for the summit would be filled with God's peace and strengthened in their resolve to give witness to the logic of peace, which surpasses "the irrationality of violence."