What is happening in the Middle East—specifically its Levantine part—is almost beyond description.
Utter chaos engulfs the region, spreading crime and corruption everywhere: fighting, looting, kidnapping, and oppression under the waning of certain regimes and the emergence of others whose contours remain unclear.
As if all this were not enough, rumors—some spontaneous, others organized or deliberately planted—further add to people’s psychological confusion, intensifying their loss, misery, and distress.
The situation is alarming, and we all look to the future with apprehension, fearing what the coming days may hold. Our fate is unknown, leaving individuals unsettled, with no choice but to bear these psychological and material burdens and wait.
Yet everyone has become convinced that we are victims of conspiracies hatched against us in the shadowy corners of the “deep state” that controls the world’s resources and devours its peoples. None of what is happening is a coincidence: from the extermination of scientists in Iraq more than a decade ago to the assassination of scientists in Syria during the current events. The killing of intellectuals is but the tip of the iceberg in a Levantine conspiracy that has persisted for over a century.
Does the Christian West realize that the conspiracy it devised and is executing actually, targets the very source of its values and faith—those that made it what it is today?
Amid this massacre, amid this sweeping political, economic, and social chaos, and amid this psychological disorientation, the Church stands firm, steadfast, neither yielding nor bending, not allowing fear to seep into its spirit. It addresses time—past, present, and future.
The Church stands firm with its children, with its people of all backgrounds. It provides them with morale, guidance, and material support—an essential condition for resilience—despite the scarcity of resources.
We are countries under siege, not only by the “sanctions” imposed on us for about a decade but ever since the so-called “human rights” and “justice” nations placed their hands upon us. We are besieged on all fronts—financially, materially, and morally. But we must ask: are we not partners in the siege laid upon us?
In an era of great transformations, the Church remains the sole constant in our present and future. It is an eternal faith-based institution that has embraced our lives and nurtured our growth and advancement for thousands of years. The Church was and will remain the guarantor framework of our continuity.
Through the spirituality it spreads among the people, encompassing all facets of our societies; through its institutions that have served the community for hundreds of years; through its model of patient and loving resilience, exemplified by those it embodies; and through its example for society to follow, the Church remains a refuge for people, regardless of their identities, beliefs, or tendencies.
Today, as always, the Church fully understands its role in all its dimensions. It recognizes the implications and consequences of every decision it takes and every action it makes. It acts with foresight and deliberation, considering every caution demanded by the current phase, and relying on the love it holds for all members of our societies, whoever they are and whatever their beliefs. It knows well that love is the guarantee of reaching a safe harbor for societies undergoing the kind of radical changes we are experiencing today in the Antiochian Levant.
With the faith, wisdom, and values it holds, the Church remains a beacon by which societies can navigate when they enter times of confusion, for it is the covenant, the rock, and the entrusted legacy.
