“I will have mercy and not sacrifice!”(Hosea 6, 6;Matthew 9.13)
With these words, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, began his discourse on the occasion of Lent 2016, saying:“In the bull of indiction of the Jubilee, I gave out this invitation so that Lent in this Jubilee year might be lived more internally as a strong moment to celebrate and experience the mercy of God.” (Misericordiae Vultus, 17).He went on to add that “the mercy of God is in fact an announcement to the world:but every Christian is called upon to make experience of this mercy in the first person.”
Every time I try to write these lines to you, our dear friends, I am confused, because the words betray me and do not help me to convey the bitterness that is in my heart: The confusion that occupies my mind because of the pain and sadness for what we experience in our dear country, Syria. The love of homeland in me is strong and deep, which opens a wound in my heart and I find no remedy for this other than prayer, as many Syrian do these days.
Submitted by jens.petzold on Tue, 01/08/2013 - 19:34
Here is the Angel Gabriel who carries the Good News to my saddened country, in a time in which all his children need a new birth ; icon by Nada Sarkis.
Submitted by alkhaliladmin on Sat, 06/02/2012 - 11:22
Dear Friends,
We greet all of you and thank you for your solidarity. We called today Father Paolo who is at the moment in the town of Qsayr and has confirmed to us that he is staying well.
We tell you this because in Syria there is ciculating an sms message that a monk was injured the town of Qsayr. We hope that it is just a hoax and if it should be true we wish the to us unknown hurt monk, as all injured of Syria, a swift recovery and a total restoration of health.
Submitted by alkhaliladmin on Sun, 04/08/2012 - 15:43
Translation from Arabic
Easter comes after a year of untold suffering, unpredictable and unimaginable for most of us. Unfortunately, what we wrote on the same occasion a year ago still applies to the current situation of our unhappy country. At that time, we had expressed our solidarity with the victims of the conflict and our participation in the expectation of those who were hoping for a deep reform of Syria without falling into the logic of violence, and fearing the explosion of civil war and loss of national unity. Misfortune has reached us and we fear the worst.
Submitted by jens.petzold on Sun, 01/01/2012 - 00:53
h1 class="western">Christmas Letter from Iraqi Kurdistan
Kirkuk, December 20th, 2011
Dear friends,
Thank you again for the warm welcome I received this fall from the Swiss and Italian members of the associations of friends of our monastic community. It felt good to have you near. Many thanks also for your numerous expressions of solidarity in these turbulent times for the Middle East. Our website's statistics and our “inbox” that you are following us attentive, thank you! The Middle East, and especially Syria, really needs much prayer and solidarity. We are witnessing a continuous rise of violence, and we cannot but call with all our energy to non-violence and reconciliation.
