Elijah21. Jesus Christ for MuslimsRamzi Saadé is a French-Lebanese priest who received a special calling: to accompany Muslims who want to convert to Christianity.
In this interview he tells us about his call to the priesthood, after a life as a businessman, and his evangelizing mission in Paris.
How was your priestly vocation born?
-I am Lebanese, of the Maronite rite, and like all Eastern Catholics I was proud of my Christian identity. I like business and I studied computer engineering. I worked for many years in business in Arab countries. I traveled a lot and handled large amounts of money. I was doing well and thought I was happy, but over time I lost my faith. I must admit that it is not always easy to follow the commandments of the Church in the professional world in which I worked.
A new professional opportunity took me to Marseille, France, where I met the Emmanuel community, and a priest in particular, who answered my questions and made me understand that God wanted me to be happy. Little by little I began to develop a spiritual life, to give up some bad habits I had, I began to struggle to be closer to God, with ups and downs, until August 15, 2002.
That day, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, I was in Paray-le-Monial, where I had decided to go for a few days because I was not feeling well spiritually. I needed a change of environment, I didn't know what was wrong with me, and I went to pray. There I had a very particular experience, in which I somehow saw Jesus, I don't know how, but the important thing is that I understood that God loved me and wanted to show it to me.
I cried a lot: it was a decisive experience in my life, but the vocation to the priesthood came some time later. At that time I was 30 years old and I did not want to be a priest. A priest accompanied me a lot in my vocational discernment until God's will became more concrete and I also began to be excited about the idea of becoming a priest.
Indeed, God respects our journey, the stages of each life and does not ask us for things that make us sad. On the contrary, God loves us and asks us things to make us happy. So here I am: priest and happy.
What does "Ananie", your mission in Paris, consist of?
-For the past twenty years we have been witnessing in the diocese of Paris an objective increase in the number of Muslims coming to the Church to ask for Baptism. This is an unprecedented situation: more and more Muslims are encountering Christ (sometimes in extraordinary ways, such as apparitions or dreams) and are coming to the parishes with requests for accompaniment. From this reality, the diocese entrusted in 2020 to Ananie, our association, the mission to support this movement, helping parishes in this delicate task, contributing to the formation of reception and accompaniment services (catechumenate-neophyte) to "walk with" these new Christians.
Being in charge of this initiative, I have created teams with a twofold mission: on the one hand, to welcome and accompany Christians coming from Islam and, on the other hand, to share, help and support parishes that need to know more about this topic.
Ananie is a place of welcome and meeting to share, to have an experience of fraternity and to be helped to integrate into a parish when they do not have one or when a first experience has not been satisfactory. In fact, Ananie wants everyone to find a parish community and to feel welcomed there because the parish must remain the first place where their Christian life is rooted. In short: Ananie's vocation is to be a concrete pastoral support for Parisian parishes and their teams.
It is said that there are many Muslims who convert every year and there would be even more if they lived in countries where their freedom of religion was respected: How many Muslims convert every year in France and in the world? What is the relationship between religious freedom and conversion?
-That's right: more and more Muslims are converting and asking to be baptized. In Iran, for example, if there were religious freedom, millions of people would ask to be baptized. But not only in Iran. In Algeria too: in that country the law, in the Constitution, protecting religious freedom was recently modified to be able to condemn converts.
The problem is not mainly legal or of the State: the main threat for these people is in their own communities and families who do not accept a change of religion. In many countries there are people who want to take the step, but they have no one, no Catholic institution to receive them, and there is also the case of people who, in the West, convert, but do not say anything to anyone because of the fear they have.
One of our main challenges is to preserve religious freedom in Europe where, as I said, many families do not allow their members to leave or change their religion. Freedom of religion is a big issue that can best be explained from the point of view of access to the Good News. In the West there is often this idea that the Muslim religion is equivalent to ours, and it is common to hear stories in which Muslims wanting to know more about the Christian faith, even from the parishes, advise them to return to the mosque and ultimately prevent them from accessing the Gospel. We must avoid at all costs the creation of closed circles, and it is a priority to have and maintain contact with these people.
Religious freedom is fundamental for the spread of faith: people are free and must feel free, and in the case of Christianity a conversion has the effect of a "snowball": one conversion leads to another and so on with many people. But this effect is possible only if people feel free. The situation in Muslim law is extremely serious for converts because the person who renounces Islam loses everything.
As far as numbers are concerned: it is very difficult to know precisely the number of converts from Islam. On the one hand, there are people who adhere to Christ in their hearts ("baptism of desire") but have not been able to take the step towards baptism. On the other hand, there are people who, having been baptized, do not say so or do not share their story. Or, if it is known in the parish, it is often not told publicly to protect them. In Paris, it is thought that 20% of the adults who are baptized come from Muslim backgrounds. In Arab countries, 100% of these people were Muslims, which is explained by the conditions in these countries with a Muslim culture and where Christian minorities have the habit of baptizing their members when they are very young.
How and thanks to what factors do Muslims enter into a relationship with Christ?
-There is a phrase that has always guided and inspired me: "He who sincerely seeks God, finds him". Every person needs to meet with others, and with the Truth, with God, in particular. This encounter changes a person's life, as it did for me. I think of St. Paul who was sincerely seeking God, but in the wrong way because he was a violent extremist of the faith who killed Christians. And God appeared to him and converted him.
Among Muslims there are many apparitions and dreams of the Lord and Our Lady. This may seem surprising and even unfair to us: there are Catholics who ask me: why do they receive these apparitions and not us? The answer is very simple: we have the means (the sacraments, the Word, etc.) to receive grace, many Muslims seek God wholeheartedly and, without having anyone to speak to them about the true faith, God intervenes directly in their hearts and lives. A
In turn, when God touches the soul of a person it is because he has a mission to become "light of the world and salt of the earth" so that other people may know the Truth.
Grace is never a "selfish" gift for the one who receives it; on the contrary, it is a responsibility and a mission to be apostles.
We Christians have that light, received in Baptism, and many times, unfortunately, we do not live up to the mission we have received and we do not let the light pass so that others may receive it.
How can Christians be better witnesses of their faith with Muslims?
-This reflection is at the heart of my mission: many Christians of Muslim origin are excluded from their family and friendship circles and, surprising as it may seem, from the Christian community. On this last point, it should be pointed out that, in general, integration is quite successful, but there are quite a few cases in which parish leaders reject Muslims because they tell them that it is not necessary to convert. Or, if they do convert, they continue to treat or refer to them as Muslims. There is a big wound in these people who are Christians of Muslim origin, but not Muslims.
We have to be very delicate and respectful with them. Even I, who am an Eastern Rite Catholic priest, have been asked many times in the West if I can have pork or alcohol.
Concretely, in order to be good instruments of God's grace, we should not be afraid to manifest our faith in our environments. For example, it is very interesting to note that many Muslims approach nuns or priests who are dressed as such on the street or in public places.
Another idea that seems important to me is to know how to explain well the differences between the two religions. If we tell a Muslim that "we believe in the same thing", as is often heard in some environments, this will discourage and disorient him, because what he is looking for is precisely that novelty and genius of Christianity, that "good news", the living God in Christ. For example, it is true that Muslims recognize the figure of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, but they do not occupy the same place as in our faith. And we must know how to explain this without hurting, but without hiding the Truth, because this is exactly what they are looking for in Christians. These differences are not an obstacle to love our Muslim brothers, they are a way of dialogue and encounter.
Finally, it should be noted that many Christians of Muslim origin suffer from depression a few years after their conversion. This is due, in part, to the feeling of having rejected their origins: their family, their culture, their national identity, etc. It is a very understandable reaction and we must be attentive to know how to accompany them in this process.
Our job at Ananie is precisely to help them understand that most of their identity is compatible with Christianity: language, dances, cuisine, family ties. This is what we see for example in Lebanon where the Maronite rite, in Arabic and Aramaic, is perfectly adapted to the local culture.
How to proclaim the Gospel to a Muslim?
-This question applies to all people, Muslim or not. I think the first thing is to love the other person. To proclaim the Gospel is to give God to the other person. If I love the other person, I want his or her good, I am giving God in some way, because God is Love.
It also seems to me that joy, a smile, is a primordial element. Joy attracts enormously, people need hope, and joy based on the hope of knowing that they are loved and saved by Jesus is key.
