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Speech of Patriarch Gregorios III (Laham)
To His Holiness John Paul II
Damascus May 5 2001
Most Holy Father,
You have come as a pilgrim to this holy city of Damascus, city of the holy Apostle Paul, and as a pilgrim to Syria, crossroads of cultures and cradle of Christianity.
In this city, Saint Paul was converted after having encountered Christ near here (tradition says that it was in the village of my birth, Daraya.) In Damascus, in this very quarter where we now are, he discovered the Gospel and the meaning of the Resurrection.
Paul then spent the three years of his noviciate and his eremitical life in what is today the Hauran, which is also called “Arabia” (Galatians 1:17), not far from the village of my mother’s birth. So, in Syria and not far from Damascus, Paul had his experience of Christian initiation into the early Church; with the first Christians of Syria, in the Damascus region, he became the Apostle of the Resurrection. From Damascus and Syria he set out to carry the Gospel into the whole world.
Most Holy Father, you are undertaking this pilgrimage to live, like Paul, with us, the Church of Syria, these all too brief days of meeting, prayer and deep Christian experience.
Most Holy Father, the values of the Resurrection – of life, defence of life, struggle against ways and means of death and destruction and against war and injustice – are those which shape your Gospel, which you have tirelessly preached in your numerous apostolic visits, with your appeals to the values of peace, justice, charity, living together, dialogue of civilisations and cultures.
During your pastoral journeys to different countries including our East, to Lebanon first, then last year to Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, and just now Greece before coming here, you have carried and do carry to the world, to Christians and non-Christians, instead of the civilisation of death, hate and injustice, the message of the civilisation of love, that is, the message of the Resurrection.
That is why we greet you, Most Holy Father, with the paschal greeting, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”
The President of our country, Doctor Bashar al-Assad, wished to allude to those Resurrection values when he entitled your historic visit: “Syria, meeting-place of civilisations and cradle of Christianity.”
The Church of Syria is the Church of Saints and Martyrs; a believing Church, jealously guarding the traditions of the Fathers and Councils and of all those who have enriched our spiritual patrimony, as well as family values, relations across the generations.
The Umayyad Mosque preserves the memory of Saint John the Baptist. But we are also the heirs of Ignatius of Antioch, Thecla, John Chrysostom, Simeon Stylites, Ephrem of Syria, Sophronios of Jerusalem, Andrew of Crete, John Damascene and Cosmas the Hymnographer. In modern times, besides the Armenian Martyrs of genocide and the three Massabki Martyrs, we have had the righteous laypersons George Bitar and Matilda Salem of Aleppo.
We should add the writers who won fame for Arab literature through their sacred or secular writings. All that shows that we are an Arab Eastern Church, an integral part of Syria, of the Arab world, the great Arab homeland, Arab culture, Arab thought and Arab history, the Arab present and future.
For the service of Arab people, we have been called, “Church of the Arabs.” We hope that our Western fellow-Christians will become accustomed to using this title, so as to understand us and not consider us as a foreign Church, merely a guest of this country and on the way to disappearing. We are the local Church of Syria, planted in this country since the times of the Apostles and Fathers, whatever the historic, cultural or ritual names attributed to us.
Here in Syria, we enjoy security and stability. It is the Middle Eastern country where there is most security for the Christian presence. In fact, we are Syrians, with the same rights and duties as all our Christian, Muslim and other fellow-citizens. We have our Churches, Patriarchates, Eparchies, Bishoprics, parishes, presbyteries, institutions and social, medical, cultural and charitable works, our confraternities, apostolic movements for adults, catechetical centres, youth movements...
We are also the Church of Islam. The Church of Syria has its own specific role in this domain, in the sense that we are a Church which lives in a world that is mostly Muslim. For over 1400 years, we have had the experience of living together and we are concerned, here above all, with Islamic-Christian dialogue, in which we are jointly responsible partners.
We are in fact responsible for our Muslim brethren, who have the right to service from us and to whom we ought to bring the Good News of the Gospel and to make known Christianity and Christians, just as we have the responsibility to make known Islam and Muslims to Christians.
Syria has a unique importance for continuing this dialogue, especially with regard to relations between East and West. The dialogue of cultures was precisely the theme, Most Holy Father, of your Letter for the World Day of Peace at the beginning of this millennium. Syria, with you, does not seek the clash but the dialogue of cultures.
All we, Syrian believers, Muslims and Christians together, say, “Believers of the world, Muslim and Christian, Arab, European and other, unite to build together the civilization of cultures, civilization of love.”
Most Holy Father, Syria is happy because of your visit, gratified at hearing your pastoral voice. Syria asks the Lord to give ever-increasing strength to that voice loudly and clearly proclaiming the causes of truth, justice, peace, human rights and dignity, especially in our Arab countries, all concerned by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We thank you for your visit to our country, to our city, to our churches and to this Patriarchate, to our Christian and Muslim holy places, all linked to Saint Paul’s mission. We also thank you for your visit to the city of Quneitra. Besides the fact that the road from Jerusalem to Damascus passes through the Golan, this visit is the symbol of your concern about the problem of peace in the Golan, Palestine and especially Jerusalem. Syria in fact is and always has been at the heart of the process for just, stable and all-encompassing peace in the Middle East.
We know your position, which is the same as that of your predecessors of the Church of Rome, on the subject of the problems of this region and we should like to repeat what we said in February during our historic visit to Your Holiness: it is impermissible for a small nation to shake the stability and security of the region and to allow it to sink into a spiral of violence, terror, war and destruction, thus wasting its strength, resources and potentialities on the mad adventure of war, losing precious time in the history of our peoples, reducing their opportunities for progress, development, prosperity and creativity.
These splendidly firm positions of Your Holiness and your pilgrimages to Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, the Holy Land and now Syria represent a very powerful support for the Christian presence and converge with the efforts of the Church of Syria in the struggle against the current of emigration, which causes our Church and country to lose the power and rich potential of our young people, whose role should be to build up the future of our homeland.
For our part, we assure you, Most Holy Father, of the firm resolve of all our communities in Syria to remain here, where God has planted us, forming, as you said in Rome, a strong, united Church, present, witnessing, serving, loving and placing the potential of our Churches at the service of everyone.
The presence today, around you, Most Holy Father, of your Brother Patriarchs of our different Churches is the sign and symptom of our ardent desire and the urgent necessity for us all, despite obstacles, for the unity asked for by Christ and sought for by our faithful, especially by young people who, with regard to our Muslim brethren, refuse to play a role in perpetuating our historic divisions.
Yesterday’s meeting showed that the problems are not negligible in the search for restoring ties with the sister Orthodox Churches. May your visit to Syria, Most Holy Father, help us to move forward in our progress towards unity, necessary for our witness to the Risen Christ.
We hope that under the guidance of our dear President Bashar al-Assad, we shall be able to resume our pioneering role in our private schools, which have had the great merit of educating a great number of our fellow-citizens.
We assure you, Most Holy Father, that we in Syria have the most ardent desire to celebrate Pascha all together always, as is already the case in Egypt, in Jordan and in the regions of Palestine.