The Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros, the patron, presided over the festive mass in the Cedars of God Forest – Bcharre, on the occasion of the Transfiguration Day. The Cedar of the Lord in the courtyard of the Church of the Transfiguration and it is an occasion to offer you congratulations on the feast with all my best wishes to you and to all those who visit the holy place and all the beloved sons of humankind who preserve the cedars of the Lord.In this feast we stop at three main dimensions: The first dimension: The transfiguration happened after it was announced Peter believed in Jesus in Caesarea Philippos, that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, so the Lord Jesus revealed by His transfiguration that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God and manifested in the perfection of His divinity and expressed that it is hidden in man, but he wanted to say through this event, what does grace do in man? In the image of God and shows us the face of the righteous whom the Lord Jesus says in the Gospel in another place, and the righteous shine like the sun in the kingdom of his Father. Through the transfigured face of Christ, and this invitation is directed to us to open ourselves to the grace of Christ, which alone beautifies and purifies man and gives him the splendor of his humanity as an image of God.
He continued: “The second dimension is anticipating the resurrection and showing that it makes it deep in the divinity after the pain and the crucifixion to assure us that all of us through our pain and the difficulties we are going through, the most of them today and the most difficult these days, are called to the resurrection. Spiritually, but we are called to live the hope of the Resurrection.The event of the Resurrection was preserved by the transfiguration event with the three apostles, Peter, who handed him authority, and Jacob the brave in transmitting the Gospel, the Bishop of Jerusalem and the first martyr among the disciples, the Apostles, and John the beloved disciple, who was delivered by his mother.The three principal Apostles made them witnesses to the secret of his transfiguration and anticipate his resurrection. He told them that he would be crucified, and that he would be tortured, suffering, and dying. They all grieved and were shocked, and Peter said to him, “We will not accept that for you, but Jesus answered him: You are still thinking like humans. His fate does not end with the crucifixion, but on Sunday with the resurrection, and this is an affirmation for each of us that we are a group of hope, and no matter the difficulties we hold on to the risen Jesus, the master of history who knows how to bring us out. From the state of death to the beauty and hope of resurrection. As for the third dimension, which is the presence of Moses and Elijah to indicate that first, Moses means the law, and Elijah means the prophecy, and this means that in the person of Jesus the completion of every law and the completion of every prophecy, he is the whole of the Holy Book, all the divine revelation, the first and last foundation and the essence in everything, and this is also a call for us to We know how we can see through Jesus all that we desire, for He is the answer to all human questions, and there is no answer to the meaning of death, the meaning of life, the meaning of success and failure, and everything we go through in our lives has no answer except with the Word who became human, the only teacher Christ, otherwise everything in our life A mystery, if we do not read it in the light of Christ.
And the shepherd concluded, “We beseech the Lord today, on the day of His transfiguration, to strengthen our faith, and we ask Him to grant us the grace to overcome all life’s difficulties with the power of hope, and to continue our way, to find with Him alone the answer to all life’s questions and difficulties, and to know how to read in the light of the Word all the signs of the times.”
The shepherd and the general patriarchal vicar on Jubbah and Zgharta, Archbishop Joseph Al-Nafaa, had visited, before the liturgy, Youssef Rahma barracks in Al-Arz – the ski school.
During the tour around the headquarters, Al-Rahi stressed “the role of the army in providing for the homeland and protecting it,” addressing “greetings to the commander, officers and individuals, on the occasion of the Army’s Day, hoping that the Lord will take care of them and protect them in their military missions.”