Lebanon: Friday Prayer Ceremony led by Sayyed Ali Fadlullah

The First SermonPurifying the soulIn the first sermon, His Eminence, Sayyed Ali Fadlullah, talked about the need to purify the soul to face Satan and his temptations as well as those of the soul itself.Allah, The Most Exalted, says: “And the soul and Him Who made it perfect, Then He inspired it to understand what is right and wrong for it; He will indeed be successful who purifies it, And he will indeed fail who corrupts it.”(91:7-10)It is evident that Allah did not leave man to face Satan and the temptations of the soul without a weapon. He has asked him to purify his soul and make it reach the most perfect state possible by abstaining for all sins and deviations and turning to a soul that serves Allah alone and clings to the straight path. A soul that is not selfish but makes every effort to alleviate the pains and sufferings of others..This building of a purified soul stands on three pillars. The first is man’s awareness of the state of the world he is living in, by knowing that he was not found on this earth to satiate his desires and whims but rather to serve Allah and ensure that his stay on this world is but a path to the eternal world which is secured by obeying Allah and doing good.The second pillar is strengthening the presence of Allah in the soul by strengthening His love and fear and feeling of His power as well as trusting Him.The third pillar is good deeds as no purification of the soul could be perfected without doing good.The Sayyed ended by noting that the month of Ramadan is a perfect occasion that Allah asked us to intensify our purification of our soul in. it is a workshop for both the body and the soul.May Allah give us in this month the success to:“Tighten our bonds of kin with devotion and gifts, attend to our neighbors with bestowal and giving, rid our possessions from claims, purify them through paying the alms, go back to him who has gone far from us, treat justly him who has wronged us, make peace with him who shows enmity toward us (except him who is regarded as an enemy in You and for You, for he is the enemy whom we will not befriend, the party whom we will not hold dear), and seek nearness to You through blameless works which will purify us from sins and preserve us from renewing faults, Hence that none of Your angels will bring for You the kinds of obedience and sorts of nearness-seeking unless they be less than what we bring.”(Imam Ali bin Al-Hussein(a.s.) in his supplication for the coming of the month of Ramadan)The second sermonIn the second sermon, His Eminence, Sayyed Ali Fadlullah, began by commenting on the new settlement plots in the Negev desert, Palestine.He said that this project comes at a time the Arab and Muslim countries are preoccupied with their strives and crises that threaten to turn Palestine into a marginal cause and not the central cause as it should be.In the meantime, America is trying to resume the Palestinian – Israeli negotiations promising the Palestinians some empty dreams that are not accompanied by any pressures on the Zionist Entity, even at the level of ending settlement expansion.Thus, the Sayyed called on the Palestinians not to make the same mistake of resuming the negotiations, for their only goal is to gain time to build more settlements.The Sayyed said that the blood-shedding in Syria will go on for years, since the plot is to make everybody tried, and then any solution that might emerge will be in the interests of the arrogant powers, and not those of the Syrians.Egypt is the prisoner of an acute division that threatens the unity of the Egyptian people and might lead to a civil war. Therefore all Egyptian parties should meet and engage in a dialogue to reach a formula that ensures the stability of the country and guarantees the participation of all parties.The Sayyed ended by talking about the policy of crippling Lebanon’s political and security institutions, in response for regional interests that wish to turn Lebanon into a mail box for exchanging political and security messages. The Lebanese should be aware of this scheme and put all their stakes on their unity and internal peace.  /129