Syriac in the Maronite Tradition: The Importance of Memory (7/7)

The Maronite liturgy, as a synthesis of the arts, is a living treasure. Yet without the Syriac language, this masterpiece would lose its coherence and its soul. Benedict XVI reminded us that “the Church does not live in the present alone; it draws sustenance from memory.”

When Syriac is lost, the deeper memory of words fades, the musical structures specific to the language are altered, the iconographic art that engages in dialogue with the texts is corrupted, and the architecture designed for this rite is changed, along with its chants, texts, liturgy and theology.

The deliberate erasure of these distinctive features in an effort to create an ideal Christian who transcends all cultural boundaries is inherently contradictory. By sanctifying the human person as endowed with a transcendent dimension, Christianity presents itself as the principal obstacle to the advent of the new, universal and deracinated human being championed by modern progressivism.

“Without roots, a tree dies,” Cardinal Robert Sarah⁽¹⁾ reminds us. In this regard, Saint John Paul II speaks not only of the right but also of the duty to preserve the historical legacy and the inheritance of identity⁽²⁾.

Progress and Otherness

Preserving the liturgical tradition in no way means rejecting progress. Rather, it means safeguarding a language, an art form and a worldview; maintaining the invisible bond that unites us with past generations and prepares the way for those to come. The future is built on the past.

Evolution and enriching influences are not opposed to tradition; they complement it. The fact that identity is changing and evolving does not negate its existence. Far from being fixed, identity is dynamic in its very essence. It is constantly rewritten, as Charles Taylor⁽³⁾ observes. It is both evolving and cumulative. Michel Foucault⁽⁴⁾ likewise stresses that identities are shaped by the successive accumulation of layers and through the interplay of otherness, of which they are the product. There is therefore no opposition between identity and otherness, and nothing justifies abandoning one’s heritage in the name of engaging with the other.

After the altruistic arguments, those who favor practicality ask what purpose there is in preserving a language understood by so few. Yet this language contains more than words: it carries the memory of the ancestors, the voices of the saints, and the echo of prayer and of Jesus’ own words. It embodies the tangible dimension of a heritage built around faith, with faith at its heart.

The Process of Abstraction

Stripped of its embodiment in spirituality, history, tradition, heritage and language, faith loses its concrete form. The living Christ recedes behind an abstract ideal that places ideology above faith, religious experience and lived existence.

Separated from its cultural roots, faith undergoes a process of abstraction that leads to its systematization and, ultimately, to a totalizing ideology. Faith is not universal in the abstract; rather, it can become universal through the particular forms in which it is culturally embodied. Tradition provides the tangible, concrete reality that prevents faith from hardening into a concept or, in Hegelian terms, from being reduced to a mere moment of the concept⁽⁵⁾.

Once transformed into a system, faith is codified, simplified and closed off, taking on the characteristic features of ideology. When it ceases to invite questioning, it becomes dogmatic in an absolute sense. For Søren Kierkegaard, faith is subjective, paradoxical and irreducible to conceptual thought. Christianity cannot be reduced to an objective doctrine⁽⁶⁾. To turn faith into a system is already to betray its very essence.

Ideology and Totalitarianism

Ideology is characterized by its claim to be irrefutable. The transformation of faith into ideology entails the closure of the system upon itself. Hannah Arendt⁽⁷⁾shows that totalitarianism rests on an all-encompassing explanatory system that claims to account for the whole of reality on the basis of a single principle. It thus claims universality and denies reality whenever reality contradicts it. A faith uprooted from its cultural roots becomes particularly vulnerable to this drift, lacking cultural and hermeneutical counterbalances.

No longer tolerating ambiguity or nuance, this abstract faith moves inexorably towards totalitarianism. The distinction between religion and politics fades away⁽⁸⁾, leading to a shift from belief towards what Max Stirner describes as an oppressive system⁽⁹⁾, and therefore a totalitarian one. For Stirner, it is not belief itself that oppresses, but its transformation into an abstract absolute.

A rooted faith remains open, symbolic, nuanced and interpretive. Tradition, heritage, language and their preservation serve as bulwarks against faith’s transformation into an abstract, absolutized, politicized and all-encompassing ideology. Faith remains rooted in mystery, incarnation and hope.

By contrast, a deracinated faith becomes closed, literal, uniform, absolutist and abstract, whereas a rooted faith remains open, symbolic, plural, humble and embodied. Rooted faith sets humility against universality, mystery against certainty, and incarnation against abstraction. Far from implying a retreat into identity, restoring the cultural rootedness of faith is the very condition for keeping it from becoming ideological.

The abandonment of the Syriac language by the Maronites is sometimes justified by a desire to remain open to their surroundings and by their universalist vocation, as Father Youakim Moubarak⁽¹⁰⁾ suggests. Universalism is thus idealized. Yet Benedict XVI reminds us that “the unification of humanity is not a political task but an eschatological hope, and that ignoring the identity of peoples in order to merge them into a global mixture is a sin of pride, akin to the biblical sin of the Tower of Babel.”

(1) – Robert Sarah, interview with Jean Sevillia, “The West Has Renounced Its Christian Roots,” Le Figaro, 14 October 2016.

(2) – John Paul II, Address to UNESCO, Paris, 2 June 1980, §§ 6-14; and Ecclesia in Europa, Vatican City, 28 June 2003, § 120.

(3) – Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, op. cit.

(4) – Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Paris, Gallimard, 1969, pp. 50-60; and The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982, Paris, Gallimard/Seuil, 2001.

(5) – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Paris, Aubier, 1991, pp. 420–430; and The Positivity of the Christian Religion, Paris, PUF, 1983.

(6) – Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Encyclopaedia Universalis, 2015; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Paris, Gallimard, 1941; and The School of Christianity, in Complete Works, translated by P.-H. Tisseau and Élise-Marie Tisseau, Paris, L’Orante, 1982.

(7) – Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, pp. 215–220.

(8) – Eric Voegelin views modern ideologies as forms of “political religions,” in The New Science of Politics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952 and 1987.

(9) – Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, Paris, Éditions Rivages, 1999, pp. 45–50.

(10) – Youakim Moubarac, Pentalogie Antiochienne / Domaine Maronite, Beirut, Cénacle Libanais, 1984.