Show Notes
A daily note from the team at OCABS.ORG, drawing on the published works of Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, with citations to his books and lectures.
Readings: Colossians 1:18-23; Luke 9:44-50.
Fr. Paul reads the awkward phrase "in the body of his flesh by (the) death" (
1:22) alongside "by the blood of his cross" (
1:20) as two statements about the same event: a mere human being, flesh and blood, through whose death God reconciled "the body of the church." He stresses this is not incarnational theology but a description of the community, the household in which "all the fullness was pleased to dwell." The reconciliation changes behavior, turning people once "estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds" into a people made holy, and it is sustained only by continuing in the gospel heard "in all creation under heaven."
For Fr. Paul this reconciliation is not a visible reality but an aural one: it exists as the actual words Paul speaks, since, as with the cross in First Corinthians, only a word, not a piece of wood, can be voided of meaning. The Colossians trust something they hear, not something they see.
In the Gospel, Fr. Paul notes that after Jesus foretells his delivery into human hands, the disciples "did not understand this saying," using a verb for deeper perception; the meaning stays hidden and they are afraid to ask. Immediately they argue about greatness, and Jesus sets a child beside him, declaring the least among them the greatest, and tells John not to forbid the outsider casting out demons in his name. Fr. Paul ties this whole unit to the Lucan stress on "logos": the words must first sink into the ears before they can be grasped, and preaching must answer the actual situation rather than repeat itself unchanged.
The root pair of the day · כ-ז-ב kaf–zayin–bet, כָּזָב kazab · ك–ذ–ب kāf–dhāl–bāʾ, كَذَّبَ kadhdhaba · lie; be a liar; his hope has been made deceptive. Šamaʿ and samiʿa both mean to hear, matching the note's stress that reconciliation in Colossians and the saying in Luke are aural events, not visible ones. Luke 9:44 commands the words to "sink into your ears," and akouo appears in the Greek data exactly where hearing becomes the condition for perceiving what is hidden. The disciples fail not because they cannot see but because they do not yet hear rightly.
cf. The Consolation of Consonants Sources: Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 51; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 51; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 50; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 54; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 52; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 55; Tarazi, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary, p. 53; Orthodox Audio Bible Commentary, Luke (vol. 42), part 1, at 3:36:40; Orthodox Audio Bible Commentary, Luke (vol. 42), part 1, at 3:38:56; Tarazi, Philippians: A Commentary, p. 81.
Opening music: Taksim Arbi, Bichi Slama, oud (Tunis, Archives de la Parole, 1930s), public domain. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.
The digital voice Fāṭima (فَاطِمَة) is named in honor of the learned women of al-Andalus, particularly Fāṭima bint Yaḥyā al-Maghāmī, Fāṭima al-Sharrāṭ, and Fāṭima bint al-Muthannā, whose legacies embody the Andalusian traditions of scriptural scholarship, jurisprudence, education, and wisdom.