The Writings of Metropolitan SABA

His Eminence, the Most Reverend Saba Isper, is the Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East and the Holy Synod of Antioch elected His Eminence to lead the Archdiocese during its extraordinary session on Feb. 23, 2023, in Balamand, Lebanon. His Eminence leads and oversees the Archdiocese's parishes, missions, departments, institutions and organizations in the United States and Canada from the headquarters in Englewood, New Jersey. The auxiliary bishops aid him in his administration across the continent.

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Christ Is Risen -- Paschal Letter 2025

​Christ is risen! I greet you with the most beautiful proclamation on this radiant and divine
Pascha. I offer my heartfelt prayers for each of you daily, asking for God’s abundant mercy and the
joy of victory over death—every kind of death—for all of you.
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Entering the Newborn into the Church after Forty Days 

​Many questions surround the tradition of introducing a newborn child to the church after forty days.
The first question: Why forty days, and can it be done before that?
​The number 40 carries spiritual significance in the Bible, dating back to the Old Testament. It symbolizes encounters with God.
An Exceptional Example of Freedom
This Sunday, we celebrate a great saint, a saint who experienced the divine love to the highest degree a human can ever experience it. She is St. Mary of Egypt. Beautiful and attractive, she sold her body in her youth, and her burning bodily desires and passions led her to live in sin. She embarked on a trip to Jerusalem for tourism and in pursuit of new bodily adventures. There, the divine grace touched her. Among the many pilgrims, only she felt an invisible barrier stopping her from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This experience pricked her heart, and she deeply felt the gravity of her sins and, thus, her unworthiness to venerate the Holy Sepulcher.  ​
Christians
While praying before His passion, the Lord Jesus asked God the Father to preserve His people, saying, "I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one" (John 17:15). That is because, in His divinity, He knew that the world would fight His people. This was proven throughout history and continues to be proven today.
Love: A Cross and Resurrection
To love and to be loved is the dilemma of human beings. Every one of us wants to be loved, and no one does not want to be loved and to be the object of another's love.
To be loved means to exist and to be secure. It grants a spiritual and emotional energy and, moreover, helps release our potential. The human being was created to be loved and to love. God, who is love, created "the beloved" and called them human beings.