The Morning Offering

Syria

Syria, the Arab Spring, and Russia

 

A year ago, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia joined his Syrian counterpart, Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch, whom His Holiness has known for forty years, in a street procession that took place in Damascus. During this same visit, Patriarch Kirill made an appearance with President Assad, thanking Syria’s president for the treatment of Syrian Christians.

The events in the Middle East have made it important for the Orthodox Church to involve herself directly in foreign affairs. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations, has defended the Russian Church's involvement in State affairs, stating, “they are killing our brothers and sisters, driving them from their homes, separating them from their near and dear, stripping them of the right to confess their religious beliefs.”  The Metropolitan, along with other bishops of the Patriarchate, have asked the Russian government to protect Christian minorities in the Middle East. Patriarch Kirill, seeing similarities in the Middle East, has reminded his countrymen of the Bolshevik persecution of the Church, and “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country."

Most Americans see no problem with Billy Graham having attempted to influence American policies by meeting with our presidents Nixon or Reagan, yet are disturbed when reading of the influence Patriarch Kirill has on Russian national leaders. Our government looks upon the Russian Church's close ties with the government of President Putin with concern, while courting  American Christian leaders as political allies, all the while stifling the moral authority of Biblical Christianity.

American foreign policy has been catastrophic for Christians in the Kosovo, Egypt, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East, leading to the deaths of thousands of Orthodox Christians, and the destruction of many Orthodox churches and monasteries. American foreign policy, because it has not taken into account religious factors, has continued to lead to the devastation and destruction of a Christian minority that has been in the Middle East from the very foundations of Christianity itself. Because our government has refused to take into account the moral and religious views of civilizations that hold to a completely different worldview, we've continued to undermine the very fabric of societies that have lived in peace with their Christian neighbors for centuries. 

The American insistence on placating a militant form of Islam, without taking into account the safety of Christian minorities, continues to lead to disaster for the Christians of the Middle East. That the American media's one-sided coverage of the conflicts on the world front have contributed to an ignorance on the part of the American public could be seen as pathetic, if not for the tragic consequences for the minority Christians in those lands. Egypt's Coptic minority is a prime example of a whole Christian population being discounted, and forgotten, by an American public that has chosen to believe a blind sighted media holding to Christianophobic views.

American governmental officials who have urged Christians of Syria to join their Islamic counterparts in the uprising against President Assad, have failed to notice that Coptic Christians did the very same thing during the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, only to suffer greatly once the Islamic fundamentalists gained power, pushing for an Islamic State.

No one in the Orthodox world is justifying the dictatorial and despotic regime of President Assad, but we have noticed the opposition has not even attempted to hide their intention to build an Islamic state, with Christians of the Middle East left to pay the price. I for one, stand with my Christian brothers and sisters of the Middle East. I also stand with His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

May God preserve Orthodox Christians throughout the Middle East, and may Orthodoxy triumph against the powers of darkness.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Friday June 1, 2012 / May 19, 2012

Apososis of the Ascension. Tone six.
Fast. Fish Allowed

Hieromartyr Patrick, bishop of Prusa, and his companions: Presbyters Acacius, Menander, and Polyenus (362).
Venerable Cornelius, abbot of Komel (Vologda) (1537).
Right-believing Prince Demetrius Donskoy (1389).
New Hieromartyr Victor (1937).
New Hieromartyrs Onuphrius, archbishop of Kursk; Anthony, bishop of Belgorod, and with him priests Metrophan, Alexander, Michael, Matthew, Hippolytus, Nicholas, Basil, Nicholas, Maxim, Alexander, Paul, and Paul, and Martyrs Michael and George (1938).
New Hieromartyr Onuphrius, archbishop of Kursk (1938).
New Hieromartyr Valentine (1940).
Venerable Cornelius, abbot of Paleostrov and Valaam (1420).
 St. John, prince of Uglich, tonsured as Ignatius (Vologda) (1522).
Venerable Sergius, monk, of Shukhtom (1609).
Martyr Acoluthusofthe Thebaid (284-305).
Venerable John, bishop of the Goths in Crimea (787).
Sts. Parthenius and his brother Calogerius (250).
St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury (988) (Celtic & British).
Entrance of St. Nina (Nino), Equal-to-the-Apostles, into Georgia (323) (Georgia).
Monk-martyrs and confessors John, Conon, Jeremias, Cyril, Theoctistus, Barnabas, Maximus, Theognostus, Joseph, Gennadius, Gerasimus, Mark, and Herman of Cyprus, who suffered under the Latins (1231).
Synaxis of Hieromartyrs of Kharkov.
Martyrs Cyriaca and Theotima (311) (Greek).

You can read the life of the saint in green, by click on the name.

Our thanks and gratitude to all of you who have contributed to the monastery through your generous contributions. May God richly bless you for your kindness, and support, of this monastery.
With love and blessings,
Abbot Tryphon

Donations can be made directly to the monastery through PayPal, or you may send donations to:

All-Merciful Saviour Monastery
PO Box 2420
Vashon Island, WA 98070-2420 USA

Romans 11:25-36

²⁵ For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. ²⁶ And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
²⁷ For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”

²⁸ Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. ²⁹ For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. ³⁰ For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, ³¹ even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. ³² For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

³⁴ “For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has become His counselor?”
³⁵ “Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?”

³⁶ For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

Matthew 12:1-8

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. ² And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”

³ But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: ⁴ how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? ⁵ Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? ⁶ Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. ⁷ But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. ⁸ For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

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