Submitted by alkhaliladmin on Sun, 09/09/2012 - 13:00
Sulaymaniyah, 9 september 2012
An apologie:
Dear friends I am really sorry that I had not the energy to provide some of texts which will be read during the ordination. Please forgive me. I will try to do better. I hope that I can give you still during this year the oportunity to understand the celebrations of the Chaldean tradition.
A thought: (Isa 30:15-21, 2Th 2:15-3:5, Mat 13:1-9)
Maybe, it is because this is a special Day for me here in Sulaymaiya, but also because of these series of texts we read over the last few weeks, it seems to me that vocation is very much in the centre of the readings today. In Isaiah we find God again waiting for his people, true to his vocation which he will not withdraw. However there is a step to do. The conversion of the heart is the only way to be able to approach the Lord. He will help. He will stay beside us but we have to do this step by our own. For it is the design of His creation that we will able to approach him with the same free relationship of love as the Three Persons offer to each other. Therefore not to taint this freedom with his overwhelming force, he leads us trough our steps toward him, but it is to us to do the stepping. And the son shows us that the way to the Father might be painful. To strengthen us we have the support of the Holy Spirit who helps us to transform our suffering in hope.
Submitted by jens.petzold on Wed, 08/29/2012 - 07:58
A thought
(Isa 30:1-6, 1Th 2:14-20, Luk 18:9-14)
In our readings we see the pictures of three communities or kinds of believers.
The first one has lost its trust in the transforming power of the Spirit of witness. The nobles of Judea flee to Egypt, which in turn will not be able to defend itself against the coming invasion of the Chaldeans. Many times the Prophet Isaiah was asking his people to stay but they would not listen. But if men do not listen to the voice of the Spirit, the prophecy, it means that they are refusing their vocation; and refusal of vocation is nothing else than disbelief.
Submitted by alkhaliladmin on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 19:00
Mariyam al-Aadhra Church, Sulaymaniya-Iraq, 29 May 2012
Houla
Last Friday and Saturday, I watched with complete bewilderment the news. I asked myself sincerely if this is the same country that I have known for nineteen years and in which I lived ten years. Was it really the same country I left some months ago for my new mission here in Kurdish Iraq.
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.
Submitted by alkhaliladmin on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 09:21
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2011
Mar Musa or Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi literally The Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian is a monastic community Syriac Catholic rite, situated near the town of Nabk, approximately 80 kilometers north of Damascus. Paolo Dall’Oglio SJ is the leader of this community and Sebastien Duhaut is an inmate of the monastery. Both Paolo and Sebastien tell Victor Edwin SJ about the present situation in Syria for Jivan. Read interview...
