My favorite is by Jean Corbon, The Wellsprings of Worship (Ignatius, 2005). http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/jcorbon_divinization_oct05.asp

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The Christian Middle East ", a single review in its kind

The Middle East Chrétien is a quarterly review of studies and information single in its kind, published under the direction of the White Fathers of Sainte-Anne in Jerusalem, in collaboration with the religious Faculty of Science (FSR) of theSaint-Joseph University. The Middle East Chrétien publishes, in an oecumenical spirit, articles and chronicles followed on the history, the theological thought, the spirituality and the current life of the Churches of Méditerrannée Eastern. The contributions are hand of theologists and researchers as well of the Middle East of the Occident. The review is available in certain specialized bookshops. One can also obtain it from the religious Faculty of Science of the USJ, telephones (01) 327459 or with the electronic address: pblinled@dm.net.lb. The normal subscription and the subscription of support are possible.


by Fady Noun - August 2003

Special number of "the Christian Middle East" devoted to the author of "The Church of the Arabs"

Father Jean Corbon more current than ever

He was significant because he could speak without wounding.

The quarterly review, the Middle East Chrétien (POC), publishes a special number (volume 52) devoted to the French priest Jean Corbon, one of the ecclesiastical figures deeply attached to the Lebanese religious landscape of second half of the XXth century. The review reproduces the texts of a special conference devoted to Father Corbon, at the University Holy Spirit de Kaslik, one year after his tragic death. It gives the measurement of a man whose main work, the Church of the Arabs, published here thirty years, preceded all the way that was to achieve, during three decades which followed, catholic Churches of Lebanon, to join their destinies and to be identified with the vocation that the history had chosen for them. Born in Paris on December 29, 1924, Jean Corbon, decides as a very young person to enter the White Fathers. Mobilized by the allies, in 1943, he takes part in the liberation of Italy. Ordained in 1951, he goes in 1955 to Egypt for a training course with the Dominicans. In 1956, on holiday of summer in Lebanon, he is victim of a serious accident of motor bike on the road of the small seminar of the Church Greek-catholic, in Rayack. His stay prolonged in Lebanon enables him to seize the vital role which this country in the oecumenical relations and the dialogue islamo-Christian can play. He discovers its final Eastern vocation thus. Following a series of decisions and revisions of life, he will join the Church Greek-catholic and will settle in Lebanon, where he is devoted in particular to the training of the clergy. By one of these ironys of the fate whose the lives are woven sometimes, the Corbon father will die tragically in Beirut, at the wheel of his car, Sunday February 25, 2001.

The review reproduces the texts of the conference, divided into four great meetings: testimony of life, reflexion on the Church of the Arabs, the Master works of Father Corbon, the unit and diversity and the spiritual oeucumenism. The two last parts speak about the oecumenism which, with the interreligious dialogue, occupied most of the life of the Corbon father. The biographical part of the conference would have gained to be packed. Fortunately, the testimony of Mgr George Khodr, Greek-orthodoxe bishop of Mount-Lebanon, compensates for this lack by its sensitivity and its beauty "the large heritage received by those which keep alive in them the memory of Jean Corbon is, beyond all the literature which he left, which he was meek and humble of heart in a transparency which for me was in particular feeric. The total absence of ego hateful, anger, academic vanity, the sectarian spirit in an exciting purity showed that Christ was for him only fascinating reality ", writes in particular Mgr George Khodr.

What could be more banal...

With the work the Church of the Arabs, which summarizes in a direction the life of the Corbon father and precedes the synod for Lebanon, is devoted for the second meeting of the conference "What could be more banal today than of reading a title thus formulated, writes the archbishop Boulos Matar, in a word of opening. But 25 years ago, he was thrown like a paving stone in the pond. The Occident in general was not yet able to include/understand him, because he continued to live under the influence of the imperialisms, and a primary relation of the relations between Christianity and Islam. As for the East, he accepted with difficulty such a formulation. It is hardly if he could accept titles like the Church in the Arab world or the Church with the Arabs (...). Imagine the traversed way! "the work is then commented on by Tarek Mitri, laic Greek-orthodoxe, and the father Samir Khalil, a Jesuit who governs the destinies of Cedrac, and the Christian Arab research Resource centre of the USJ. Here are what in particular Tarek Mitri says, coordinator of the office of the interreligieuses relations to the World Council of Churches (COE) in Geneva: "(...) In the logic of the Church of the Arabs, the vocation of testimony has to correct the preoccupation with a survival. Thus, the Christians are called, beyond the Community narcissism which analyzes Jean Corbon without too condemning it, to be opposed to oppression majority and minority, threatened together and not only in parallel. Less alarmist vis-a-vis Islamism, conscious of the limits of its project but sensitive to its call and its resonance - insofar as he wants to be a denunciation of real injustices and a call to ressourcement against the increasing vulgarizing of the life -, the Christians would seek an authentic dialogue of the citizenship and a true opening to the common good. "

An overpowering testimony

For the contribution of the Corbon father to the oecumenical dialogue, "not only Lebanon and the Middle East, but the whole Church is indebted to the Corbon father", writes the archbishop of Vienna, the cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The one half-century synthesis of oecumenical dialogue is made by the father Frans Bouwen, member of the Company of missionnaires of Africa, the "white Fathers", exerts his ministry in Jerusalem since about thirty years. The Bouwen father is a director of the Middle East Chrétien. Its talk is overpowering, for the Churches engaged in the dialogue. It is seen there as clearly as the day as theology has a lead over the institutions, and that these last remain, even when there is no more no theological reason which they remain separate. Thus, in the case of the Greek-orthodoxe Church and the orthodoxe Eastern Churches of tradition not chalcédonienne (Armenian, copte, Ethiopian, syriaque). "Why continue to work, to tire themselves, request for the unit, if our Churches in any event do not have courage or the will to go from the front one? We do not have the right to draw aside with light such questions ", comments on the Bouwen father. For its part, the Shönborn cardinal makes us discover a facet unknown and attractive of the personality of the P. Corbon Théologien Dominican, the Schönborn cardinal was the project superintendent of the catechism of the catholic Church, and the Corbon father was one of his collaborators. To this last returned "by I do not know which risk of Providence" says Schönborn, the privilege to give an Eastern dimension to the theological reflexion contained in catechism. he commented on the Our-Father in particular there. The Corbon father also contributed to the articles of the cathechism on the sacraments. One also asked him, at the very last minute, a small text on the funeral. he wrote there in words of light: "the Christian who dies in the Jesus Christ leaves this body to go to remain in the Lord (...). the day of death inaugurates for the Christian, at the end of his sacramental life, the completion of his new birth started with the baptème (...). the Church which, like a mother, sacramentally carried in its centre the Christian during his terrestrial pilgrimage, accompanies him at the end of his advance to give him into the hands of the Father." Where is today a man who was "modest until obliteration", to quote Mgr Joseph Kallas, archbishop Greek-catholic of Beirut, during the mass One owes to the Corbon father the texts of many articles and homélies, as well as personal notes and a family correspondence. These writings will be the four separated volume object, of which the first, a collection of homélies, should appear with the autumn or the winter 2003-2004.