The first Sermon

 Allah says in His Glorious Book:

O you who have believed, fear Allah. And let every soul look to what it has put forth for tomorrow – and fear Allah. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what you do.

This Holy Ayat calls on man to act in a responsible manner towards the day in which he/she would stand before his/her Lord Who will ask him/her about how he spent his/her life. Did they benefit from its minutes, hours, days…in shouldering their responsibilities or they wasted them? How one spends his/her time is a responsibility man would be held accountable for… the Hadith says: The feet of a servant will not move on the Day of Resurrection until he is asked about: his lifetime and how he used it. That is why the Holy Ayats and the Honorable Hadiths have advised man not to waste the chance of his limited lifetime. Several Hadiths have reminded man that his life span is limited and that he should spend it in what remains for him/her and that they should be at their age, more expensive than at their  dirhams and dinars.  For your money could be regained, while every hour that goes will not come back.  The Quran warned about the fate of those who waste their life: They will cry out in Hell and say: Our Lord, let us out so that we may act righteously, different from what we did before.” (They will be told): “Did we not grant you an age long enough…As for the path one should follow to achieve the goal of life, it is elaborated in the following Hadith: Your age is the dowry of your happiness, if you save it in obedience to your Lord.Since you are going to lose your age anyway, you should turn it to an asset to you before your Lord. Surat Al-Asr pointed out to what man should fill his life with: By time, Indeed, mankind is in loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience. This Surat explained that man is always in loss, since he/she loses every day a part of their life. But this will not be the case if they exploit it doing righteous deeds and advising others to truth and patience.

However,  this does not mean that Islam denies the right of man to enjoy the leisure of life, but this should conform with the responsibility towards Allah and the people: The believer should have(divide his time into) three hours: one hour to worship his Lord, and one hour to work to earn a living, and one hour in which his soul engages in leisure in what is allowable or something not prohibited, and this hour is a help for(attending to) the (first) two hours.

Dear loved ones: we can do a lot to ourselves and to the people around us, when we learn how to benefit from this great blessing of life that Allah has distributed equally on His servants. Every minute that passes, which we might neglect and not be aware of its significance, is a minute we can achieve a lot in: we could phone a relative, call for the good, advise someone in need to be advised, make someone smile, listen to someone’s complaints … In a minute that we consider negligible, we can thank Allah and mention Him… We can be generous and share Allah and His angels in blessing Muhammad and his Household… In our life there are numerous minutes that we would regret not having exploited before we stand before God…

Der loved ones: the expression of killing time has become commonly used in our society. We have become accustomed to waste time in any way we can, even by idle talk, gossip and backbiting or by watching television, and other activities we invent to share on social media, although we can fill our time with what enriches our knowledge and what earns us Allah’s satisfaction and Paradise.

We need to keep a permanent track on the movement of this life span so that we will not be heedless of the way it is spent and how we have benefited from it under any pretext. We should not also let those around us dictate how we fill our time. The best way to do that is by holding ourselves accountable. The Hadith says: He is not from us a person who does not hold himself accountable for his deeds; therefore if he has done good deeds, he ought to ask Allah to increase his good deeds and when he has committed sinful and bad deeds, he ought to seek forgiveness from Allah and return to Him.

Furthermore, we should also plan for our coming days, as Imam Zein AL-Abidein(a.s.)said in his supplication of the morning:

And give us success in this day of ours,

this night of ours,

and in all our days,

to employ the good,

stay away from the evil, give thanks for favours,

follow the Sunna’s norms, avoid innovations,

enjoin good behavior, forbid the disapproved,

defend Islam,

diminish falsehood and abase it,

help the truth and exalt it,

guide the misguided,

assist the weak.

 This sense of accountability towards the past and the planning for the future was expressed by the Messenger in the beginning of every new year: O Allah, as for any act that I have done in this year

from those that You have warned me against doing and You have been displeased with it ,I have forgotten it but You have not and You have called me to  repent after I have dared to challenge You,

O Allah, I am now praying You to forgive those actions ; so, (please) forgive me.

As for any action done that draws me near to You,

(please) accept it from me and never cut off my hope in You, O All-generous…

The second sermon

Worshippers of Allah, The Most Exalted, I advise you and myself, to recall, as we commemorate the death anniversary of Sayeda Az-Zahra, which passed on thirteenth of this month, Imam Ali’s grief when he stood before her pure body and said: O’ Prophet of Allah! Please accept my salutation and those of your daughter who is being buried not far from you, and who is to meet you so quickly. O the chosen Apostle! The death of your daughter has left me without patience and solace. I have lost my self-restrain and the power of endurance.

After having from endured the separation you I shall have to bear this catastrophe patiently O Prophet of God! I laid you down in the grave with my own hands, your soul departed from my body while you were resting upon my breast and your head was lying between my neck and heart.

Your trust (your daughter) which was entrusted to me is taken back from me. Sorrow now abides with me and happiness has taken leave. This grief is so overbearing that it engulfs and swallows other sorrows, and it has left me with sleepless nights and joyless days. From now onwards, my life will be a continued heartache until God gathers me with you both in the realm of His favor and peace.

O’ Apostle of God! Your dear daughter will tell you how your followers have behaved with her and how they have mistreated . Please both of you accept my parting salutation and goodbye. It is the wish of a sincere heart which has loved and will always love you both, a heart which will cherish and will carry your tender and loving memories to its grave. Goodbye O daughter of the chosen Apostle of God! May you rest in peace which mankind has refused you in this world. Goodbye, may God’s peace and blessings be with you both.

 Our grief for the death of Az-Zahra should not be restricted to weeping only. Although this in itself is important, our grief for Lady Fatima Az-Zahra(a.s.) should be embodied also by emulating her in her worshipping, her love for the Messenger, her morals, her sacrifice and giving, her boldness in telling the truth, her refusal of deviation and her concern for the unity of Muslims.

By this we would be faithful to Az-Zahra and keep her alive in our behavior and stances as well as our feelings. And by this we confront all challenges:

We begin by Lebanon, which bid farewell to a year that was the toughest, due to the corona infections on the one hand and the economic and financial hardships on the other, especially due the ongoing increase of the unemployment rate, the decrease in the buying power of the citizens, the increase of crime incidents and the catastrophic repercussions of the port blast, and the besiege and the sanctions imposed on the country.

It is the responsibility of the political class which has drowned the country in its corruption, incompetence and indifference towards its assets and made it dependent on the foreign powers and a failed state, which led to its being aimed at not only by the Lebanese who rebelled against it but also by  the entire world,as no political class was subjected to their insults and rebuke as this class.

As we receive a new year which we hope it would be better than the previous one, we fear that the picture we saw last year will not change. On the contrary, things might get worse at all levels.

This is because the new government that is supposed to play its role in getting the country of its crises is trapped in the conflicts of the political parties concerned with its formation on who would control it, without any of them offering concessions for the interest of their homeland. Thus, it seems that the new government will not be formed soon and some say not before the end of the sitting President’s term, as if the country and the Lebanese can wait and there are, in addition to the internal hardships, no tensions in the region that can affect them.

 Nevertheless, we do not wish to spread pessimism among the Lebanese and we do not advocate pessimism in the first place. We only want them to shoulder their responsibility  for they are capable of turning against their reality , by abandoning the mentality of dependency and fear and  voicing their opposition to all those who are tampering with their fate and their future as well as that of their children…We believe that things will change  when the political leaders feel that they are facing a nation that do not compliment or compromise  in return for personal interests, but one that keeps an eye on them and  holds them into account.

 We reassert that the problem of Lebanon lies in the mentality that governs the country, the mentality of quotas and partisan interests and foreign dependency, instead of seeking to serve the country and its people, being the only way to relief them from their sufferings,

On another level, and due to the continuous rise of the numbers of those infected with the corona which almost reached four thousand and may become even more in the following days, we warn the Lebanese from the catastrophe that will occur if this trend continues, for the hospitals have no more beds to receive any more patients.

Therefore, we renew our call to the citizens to abide by the protection measures and demand at the same time, that the government should be stricter in enforcing them, enhance the hospitals’ capacity and secure the vaccines.

Regionally, we are afraid that the normalization of the Arab regimes with the enemy would expand, although it still occupies Arab lands, colonizes Palestine and threatens and aggresses Arab countries. But we would continue to bet on the awareness of the Palestinian people who prove daily that they will not accept humiliation and defeat and that the Arab peoples will never accept normalization.