Syrian Christians Prefer Assad

On this blog I generally eschew news or commentary about political or geo-political events. In this instance, however, the situation in Syria is especially relevant to a priest in the Antiochian Archdiocese.

Seeing and hearing precious little about how the Syrian "revolution" is affecting minorities and why the dictator retains support, I found this NY times article especially helpful. The following excerpt is especially of interest to me:

Syria’s minorities have the example of Iraq in considering their own future, should the Assad government fall: Assyrian Christians, Yazidis and others were brutally persecuted by insurgents. In Egypt, where a similar paradigm was toppled with the long-serving dictator Hosni Mubarak, Christians have experienced more sectarian violence, increasing political marginalization and a growing link between Islamic identity and citizenship.

“Christians are all saying that Syria risks becoming the new Iraq, a country divided among ethnic and religious lines where there is no place for Christians,” said the Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, the editor in chief of AsiaNews, a Catholic news agency. Syria, while not a democracy, “at least protects them,” he said.

Not a legalistic exercise but a spiritual discipline

In the midst of a lengthy post concerning the Byzantine Lenten fast, John, at Ad Orientem, offers these sage words which we do well to heed:

[F]asting is not a legalistic exercise. God does not particularly care how
strictly you are able to observe a 5th century dietary code. Eating a
Cheeseburger during Lent on a Friday is not a mortal sin (except possibly to
your waistline). If you do eat one and happen to die before going to confession
you do not need to plan on being buried in an asbestos suit. Point in fact very
few Orthodox laymen keep the fast in its full rigor. I certainly have yet to
keep the fast with anything close to perfection.

That said one should not just blow it off. Fasting is a spiritual
discipline intended to stretch the body and help tame the passions. And it is a
very important weapon in the spiritual warfare that we are engaged in more or
less continuously until we die. So when you fall, don't give up. Pick yourself
up, dust yourself off and get back on the wagon.

Also it serves no purpose to abstain from all manner of food and drink if
we do not also give up our vices. In particular be wary of gossip.
Your fast is your own business and no one else's (save God's and your
confessor's). Likewise how others are keeping their fast is not your
concern.

Dying to Self: The Lenten Fast

With its fast and penitential exercises, Lent enables us to associate ourselves with and participate spiritually in Christ’s work of redemption. In rebellion against God, our souls have truly become slaves of the world, the flesh and the devil. To break that slavery, we need the grace of God which comes with abstention and fasting coupled with prayer and almsgiving. For as the holy fathers teach us, our fasting from food is unhelpful unless we are striving to fast from sin by subduing our passions of our flesh, which are enticed by the devil and fueled by society’s aberrant morality. Therefore, during the holy season of Lent, we are invited by the Church both to put into practice the teachings of Christ and to follow His example in fighting the devil and the powers of evil by means of self-denial as we attend to His holy Word.

Lent is a kind of retreat from the world. Just as Our Lord, after His baptism, retreated from the world for forty days to immerse Himself in fasting and prayer, so we follow His example. Yet our retreat is not to fight our own battles, just as Our Lord’s retreat was not to fight His own battle. Our Lord retreated in order to enter into our fray; and we retreat in order to participate in His passion. He strove against Satan so that, on the cross, He might overcome Him and win for us the victory. We wrestle and strive “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” so that we might not lose the blood-bought victory, and might attain the crown. This retreat, then, ought not be seen as a means of winning what we do not have, but as a means of not losing what we’ve already been given, and also a means of growing in what we already have.

Dying to ourselves so that we might live to God in Christ is the purpose of this holy quarantine. The question the devil continually put to Christ is little different from the question the accuser asks us. To Our Lord he said, “Are you truly the Son of God?” To us the devil asks, “Are you truly a child of God?” As the accuser, Satan produces evidence of which we are all too familiar—evidence from our past, evidence from our desires and passions, evidence that may even lurk deeply within us. This evidence the devil with throw up against us in order to cause us to question our status as a child of God. Because this evidence comes to mind especially when we fast, we need to be more reliant upon the grace of the absolution of God. Frequency in the Sacrament of Penance, then, is necessary during the Lenten fast.

Yet we must not also lose sight of the devil’s desire. With Christ, the devil desired that He not re-enter the world as the Savior and Messiah. With us, the devil desires that we not re-enter the world as children of God. His goal is to beat us down so that we question both Our Lord’s love for us and our desire to live for Him, and thereby give in to our passions thinking that we can put off holiness for another moment or day. So during this Lenten fast, let us be clear-minded by recalling both that Our Lord was tempted in all points as we are so that He might overcome our adversary; and also that we retreat not to avoid re-entry but so that we might increase in holiness. To increase in holiness means that we decrease in self-reliance while increasing in our dependence upon grace.

Decreasing in self-reliance is the death of self that fasting seeks to instill in us. No longer do we live to gratify our flesh; now we live to love God by gratifying whatever another desires. Our hold, then, on the things of this world must loosen, as Christ teaches us so plainly in His great sermon (cf Luke 6.27-36). Likewise, our fear of missing out—which so often drives the “need” to feed our passions by the feeling that we need to experience all that “life” offers—also must die. Fasting, when properly practiced, teaches both our body and our soul this self-mortification. As we put to death the desires of the flesh, we will see, through prayer, that the desire of the spirit will enhance our life and thereby increase our joy. A greater detachment from the empty pleasures this world offers will lead us to be more generous both in our almsgiving to others as well as in our time to God in worship and prayer.

Let this Lenten fast, then, be the occasion and means for leaning less upon our desires and more upon God’s unending grace. Let it purify our souls as we seek to cleanse our bodies. Above all else, let this holy season by a time when we immerse ourselves more and more in the faith and love which the Spirit has so generously poured upon us so that we might truly seek and find our happiness and treasures not in the pleasures of this world but in the unfading riches of the life of the world to come.

Orthodox Ash Wednesday

For all Orthodox Christians, the Holy Season of Lent begins on the First Sunday in Lent (4 March in 2012), and the Lenten fast begins a few days prior. For Byzantine Orthodox Christians, the First Day of the Great Fast is on the Monday before the First Sunday in Lent; and for Western Orthodox Christians the Lenten fast begins on the Wednesday before, commonly known as Ash Wednesday.

While both traditions observe a 40 day fast, the different starting dates for the fast are related to how the fast is calculated. Among the Byzantine Orthodox the 40 days include only weekdays (not Saturdays or Sundays), and are figured by including two weeks of pre-Lenten "preparation" when abstention from first meat and then dairy are enjoined. (The Sunday before abstention from meat is known as "Meat Fare Sunday" and the Sunday before abstention from dairy is known as "Cheese Fare Sunday.") Early on in the West, however, the Lenten fast never included Sundays and the pre-Lenten "preparation" was limited to monastics and clergy. (This preparation begins three Sundays before Ash Wednesday on Septuagesima Sunday). Therefore, in order to achieve 40 days, since at least the 7^th century the Western Orthodox have fast not only for six fully weeks (i.e., 36 days) but also four additional days. Hence, for about 1400 years the Lenten fast in the West has begun on the Wednesday before the First Sunday in Lent.

It is not clear when the Wednesday beginning the Lenten fast began to include the imposition of ashes. Originally, the imposition of ashes was one of several public rites required of those penitents who wished to be restored to the church. As early as the 4^th century, these rites were associated with a 40 day fast. Most likely this fast was the Lenten fast, but the evidence is too thin to be conclusive. What does seem clear is that, by the end of the 10^th century, it was customary in western Europe (but not yet in Rome) for all the faithful to receive ashes on the first day of the Lenten fast. In 1091, this custom was then ordered by Pope Urban II at the council of Benevento to be extended to the church in Rome. Not long after that, the name of the day was referred to in the liturgical books as “Feria Quarta Cinerum” (i.e., Ash Wednesday).

The ashes that are placed on the heads of the faithful are made from burning the blessed palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. Parishioners are taught to place these blessed palms behind crucifixes and icons in their homes throughout the year, and then return them to the parish church during the weeks before Ash Wednesday. After they are burned, the ashes are then blessed by the priest, usually immediately before the Ash Wednesday mass.

While they may be distributed outside of the mass or any liturgical service, commonly the faithful receive their ashes immediately before the Ash Wednesday mass. As the choir sings various chants, the priest places the ashes on each person while saying, “Remember, man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” (Gen 3.19) These words indicate that the ashes are a sign of mortality, and thereby spiritually call each person to mortify their flesh during the season of Lent through the sacrificial acts of prayer, fasting, almsgiving. In fact, the Scripture readings for the Ash Wednesday mass say as much. From the prophet Joel, the faithful hear that they are to return to the Lord with all their heart by means of fasting, weeping, and mourning; and in this way, they rend their hearts and turn to the Lord God. Likewise, in the Gospel lesson the Lord admonishes the faithful to fast in order to recall that their hearts are to be fixed not on earthly but heavenly treasures.

For Western Orthodox Christians, the reception of ashes together as a community on the first day of the Lenten fast is a tactilely poignant sign that their fast is not simply the denial of foods, but the ascetic discipline of subduing the passions and putting to death ungodly ways so that they may strive to attain, with repentant joy, not only the great celebration both of the Queen of feasts, but also the heavenly riches and abundant life that await those who remain faithful in word and deed.