Patriarch Youssef
Greetings for Eid ul-Fitr
4 7 2016
Greetings for Eid ul-Fitr
1 Shawwal 1437 AH / 6 July 2016 AD
Damascus
Eid ul-Fitr concludes the fasting month of Ramadan, during which we have been witnessing a tragic situation. Nevertheless we send our Muslim fellow-citizens and companions in history and destiny sincere congratulations on Eid al-Fitr, together with prayers for safety and security, reconciliation, love and peace in our Arab countries, especially in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.
Today, more than ever before, all we Christians and Muslims need a new spirituality to bring us from exclusion to inclusion, rejection to acceptance, stereotyping to understanding and from distortion to respect; from condemnation to compassion, hostility to friendship, competition to integration, and from hatred to love and the broad bosom of God, because God is love.
This spirituality will help us rebuild our homes that are currently threatened with physical and spiritual destruction, and enable us together to rebuild what has been broken down spiritually in our society, and reconstruct its material and human social fabric.
I invited everyone to this in my most recent letter entitled, "Message of an Arab Christian Patriarch to his Muslim brethren." I hope this letter has reached its designated readership.
I close my greetings with a passage from the above-mentioned letter:
“The task entrusted to us in the Middle East is to challenge the West and the whole world by our Eastern Christian-Muslim unity, based on a new type of civilization: the civilization of love.”
Happy Feast!
With love and prayer
+ Gregorios III
Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Of Alexandria and of Jerusalem
For the Melkite Greek Catholic Church
1 Shawwal 1437 AH / 6 July 2016 AD
Damascus
Eid ul-Fitr concludes the fasting month of Ramadan, during which we have been witnessing a tragic situation. Nevertheless we send our Muslim fellow-citizens and companions in history and destiny sincere congratulations on Eid al-Fitr, together with prayers for safety and security, reconciliation, love and peace in our Arab countries, especially in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.
Today, more than ever before, all we Christians and Muslims need a new spirituality to bring us from exclusion to inclusion, rejection to acceptance, stereotyping to understanding and from distortion to respect; from condemnation to compassion, hostility to friendship, competition to integration, and from hatred to love and the broad bosom of God, because God is love.
This spirituality will help us rebuild our homes that are currently threatened with physical and spiritual destruction, and enable us together to rebuild what has been broken down spiritually in our society, and reconstruct its material and human social fabric.
I invited everyone to this in my most recent letter entitled, "Message of an Arab Christian Patriarch to his Muslim brethren." I hope this letter has reached its designated readership.
I close my greetings with a passage from the above-mentioned letter:
“The task entrusted to us in the Middle East is to challenge the West and the whole world by our Eastern Christian-Muslim unity, based on a new type of civilization: the civilization of love.”
Happy Feast!
With love and prayer
+ Gregorios III
Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Of Alexandria and of Jerusalem
For the Melkite Greek Catholic Church