Letter of Bishop Ibrahim Michael Ibrahim
by the grace of God, Bishop of the Melkite Greek Catholics of Canada, whom we are proud to have as spiritual guide of our radio, Sawt el Rab Radio.
Great Lent 2017
To the priests, deacons, monks and nuns, the faithful and the friends of our God-protected eparchy.
My beloved children,
Lent is a time of repentance, prayer, almsgiving and balanced training of soul and body, to prepare ourselves to welcome the feast of feasts, the greatest of all: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.
To live this holy season deeply and sincerely, we must spiritualize our choices, so that we are not overcome by routine practices that leave our efforts fruitless and barren. Fasting has two inseparable wings: if one of them is paralysed, the fast falls out of the sky and can no longer soar.
The first wing is fasting itself, that is, going without food for set periods, and the well-known “abstinence”, which aims to train the body in mortification and self-mastery, so as to create a meeting point between the soul that longs for goodness and holiness, and the body that must rise to the level of this pursuit of righteousness and purity. The first sin arose, symbolically, from eating a forbidden fruit, when the Lord God commanded Adam: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:16-17). But “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6). Sin is attractive and desirable, a delight to the eyes, but its result is death and ruin. And what sin corrupts in us, grace purifies, in Christ Jesus our Saviour, who exchanged the food that kills for the food that gives life, becoming for us the tree of life: whoever eats of it will never die. “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26).
The second wing is prayer, living out love, upholding and practising the Gospel virtues, and doing good out of respect for the worth and boundless dignity of the other, created in the image and likeness of God, even if he differs from me in race, colour, religion or belief. This second wing also means not setting myself up as a judge of others, and keeping the will of Christ, who commanded us: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).
To spiritualize the fast means giving our decisions and actions the colour of the Spirit, so that there is no longer a split between what we say and what we do. What good is it for someone who fasts to discipline and subdue the body if the fruit is not goodness and kindness? How often do we fast from food without fasting from tearing others apart! As Saint Basil the Great says: “You may not eat meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you do not bridle the passions that burn in your soul. You wait until evening to eat after fasting, but you spend the whole day in the law courts quarrelling.”
To spiritualize the practices of fasting means making our conscience the judge of our actions. What good does it do me to keep the fast as a duty that suits my wishes, pleasures and comfort? For example, I might abstain from meat on Friday when I am a vegetarian: what merit is there in that? Or replace meat with the most expensive kinds of fish, or keep the fast perfectly while spending money without limit and giving nothing to my brother who is choked by need.
To spiritualize the fast means not clinging to the letter, becoming a slave to the Sabbath and stifling the Spirit who is trying to guide my steps. For all these reasons, I invite you to live a fast built on balance and harmony between faith and works. A spiritualized fast, in which love abounds and mere practices count for less. Let our whole fast be built on love, so that the “I” may grow smaller in us, the Lord may grow in me, and the other may find his rightful place in my life and my concerns.
In closing, I wish you a blessed Lent, in which you walk with confident steps towards sharing in Christ’s victory at glorious Pascha, opening the doors of our hearts to God and sharing our blessings and the joy of the Resurrection with the weak and the poor. I entrust myself and my eparchy to the intercession and protection of the all-holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, asking her to keep Canada and our beloved East from all harm, to restore peace to us, and to pour out on our Canadian eparchy
the blessings of her Son, the Saviour Jesus Christ. Alleluia.
