Lebanon Today
Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi presided over the Divine Liturgy on Sunday at the Church of Our Lady in the Patriarchal edifice in Bkerke.
After the reading of the Holy Gospel, Al-Rahi delivered a sermon entitled: “I was hungry and you gave me food,” in which he said: “Lebanon, a homeland of mission, is being tested today before God and history. It is being tested in the extent of its responsibility to serve mankind, and in the extent of its people’s loyalty to the values of truth, dignity, and justice. Christ the Judge asks every ruler and official: Have you fed the hungry among your citizens? Have you quenched the thirst of the thirsty who await a morsel of decent living? Have you sheltered the refugee, the displaced, and the expelled from their land? Have you bandaged the wounds of the sick and the oppressed? Have you heard the groans of the poor, workers, and farmers? From here, this Gospel becomes a resounding call for national repentance, collective and individual.”
Then he added, saying: “In light of this Gospel, national responsibility in Lebanon is manifested as a duty higher than just an administrative or political task, it is a spiritual and moral duty. For Lebanon does not belong to anyone, but is God’s trust in all our hands. Every official is an agent, and every citizen is a servant. And judgment will come according to our faithfulness to this trust. The Lord has entrusted us with this homeland to be a land of dignity and humanity, not a field of hunger nor a farm of interests. Christ asks us in the Gospel of the General Judgment: “Where were you when your people were hungry? When its institutions collapsed? When its youth emigrated? When your people suffered in silence?” When martyrs, victims, and injured fell as a result of your negligence, deals, or influence? We live in a time when souls are searching for salvation, as the earth searches for a drop of rain. And the Gospel reminds us that the salvation of homelands begins with serving mankind. For whoever feeds the hungry supports a homeland, and whoever quenches the thirsty irrigates the roots of dignity, and whoever opens a door to hope closes the gate of hell.”
Al-Rahi continued, saying: “This is how homelands are built, not with slogans but with action, not with promises but with giving, not with fear but with faith. We want a homeland that heals its wounds with prayer, restores its health with love, confronts injustice with truth, and rises from the rubble with the will to live. Lebanon is called to a new resurrection, not only with politics, but with the spirit of service that the Gospel spoke of today: humble, honest, pure service, that restores meaning to our institutions, its moral dimension to our authority, and its lost dignity to our people. Let us all hear the voice of judgment now before we are told one day: “I was hungry and you did not feed me, thirsty and you did not give me drink, a stranger and you did not shelter me.”
In conclusion, he said: “May this Sunday be a voice of conscience for every official in Lebanon, to remember that he will be judged on the measure of his love for mankind, not on the size of his authority nor on the number of his supporters. And may it be a call for every citizen to live his responsibility with sincerity and honesty, for every reform begins in the heart, and every salvation begins with love. Only then, the homeland is sanctified, politics becomes service, authority turns into a mission, and Lebanon truly becomes a land of holiness and resurrection.”
source: 961 today
