O Heavenly King

"O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who is present in all places and fills all, the treasury of good things and the Life‑Giver, graciously come, and dwell in us and purify us from all defilement, O Good One, and save our souls."

+ From The Third Hour Litany, Prayer of the Canonical Hours (Coptic Rite)

The Descent of the Holy Spirit
Icon at St George Coptic Orthodox Parish, Toledo

The Holy Spirit is very meek. He answers the call of man at once – provided that the person calls in sincerity, faith and simplicity. It would be enough to call Him as one calls a pure and simple child, and he would listen and respond right away. The book of the Coptic canonical hours teaches us to address Him in these words:  “kindly come and abide in us.”

So it is that the Holy Spirit rests in one’s heart, by means of a simple but firm faith in God’s mercy. Now the abiding of the Holy Sprit is not accompanied by any sensational sign. He finds no rest in cries and discords, or in a heart which is cruel, malicious, wrathful or proud; or in a worldly man, or in a lover of earthly things; or in a man disposed to fleeting beauty; or in one aspiring to the glories of this world.

The Holy Spirit is a friend and partner of a poor but grateful man, as well as of a rich man who loves the poor. He is the comforter of persecuted subordinates and merciful bosses, a light to the wretched and a life to those who dedicate themselves to the service of the Gospel and to charity among the  poor. Therefore, to safeguard the power of the Holy Spirit that  sanctions prayer and lifts it to God, we should first  learn to satisfy Him by shunning all faults inconsistent with His meekness, holiness and love.

Moreover, he or she who prays before God should also have full trust aided by the Holy Spirit, who gave birth to us at the baptismal font. One should repeatedly cry our from the depths of one’s heart, calling upon Him to qualify him for prayer and grant us power to fulfill it in accordance with the wish of the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer concerns the Holy Spirit more than it concerns us. For through prayer the new man begotten by the Holy Sprit within us grows up till he attains enlightenment, accepts the will of God, and learns how to implement it by grace.

Fr Matta el-Meskeen (Fr Matthew the Poor), Guidelines on Prayer

Restoration in the Coptic Orthodox Baptismal Liturgy

Grant that the image of Christ be portrayed in those who receive the baptism of the new birth...

Truly those who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ forever! 

Beautifully the Orthodox Baptismal Liturgies (in this case those in the Coptic Orthodox Rite) speak about  restoration by grace to the image and likeness of God. If we look at the words prayed in funerals (in the Byzantine Rites) we see the same mention of restoration:

"You who did fashion me of old out of nothingness, and with Your Image Divine did honor me; but because of the transgressions of Your commandments, did return me again to the earth from whence I was taken; lead me back to be refashioned into that ancient beauty of Your likeness."

As you read the following excerpts from Coptic Orthodox Baptismal rites keep in mind the Byzantine rite hymns above. Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy.

A Prayer by Tamav Irini

(Thanks to Hoda for translating this prayer from Arabic.)

God help us praise You from our hearts ..... Let us worship You with the spirit and the truth.... Lord You are the God of mercy, love and emotion. You created the heavens and decorated it with Your great glory  and angels .... You are the foundation of the earth and everything in it.  God You are able to do anything.

My God, Jesus Christ don't treat us according to our evil doing, sins, weakness and don't treat us according to Your fairness but rather with Your everlasting mercies.... Your mercy are numerous. Your mercy is like a flowing river..... Your mercies purify us from our evil and sins. Yes God You are merciful and kind..... Yes God sympathetic, merciful and loving.

God we are weak and meek, but we believe in Your kindness that You will not treat us according to our sins but rather with Your mercies... God You are able to work with us and through us.... You are able to change us with Your everlasting humbleness and kindness.... God You are able to give us kindness from Yours.

God You were honest on the cross. So give us to love with Your love. Gives us to love You from all our hearts and all our thoughts. Don't leave us alone with our sorrows and weakness. Choose the life You want for us. God give us to enjoy You because Your will is the best for us.

Teach us God how to live with You... Because life with You is so beautiful and sweet.... Living with You is so sweet, peaceful and calming.   Please don't deprive us from Your glorious mercies.   God please look to Your church in these hard days..... This is Your church and You are her savior... Look at her with a merciful eye... You are able to save her.

You are the God of everybody. You are the king of kings and lord of lords. You created the earth and everything on it. Our pope Shenouda give him aid.  He is Your ambassador on earth fortify him and protect him. He has suffered a lot in Your name.

Guard Your church from Satan.  Protect her from the evil enemy.  Save her O Jesus Christ. It's Your church and You have saved it with Your holy blood   You are the creator of the verses and miracles .... And You will not forsake the church You spilled Your blood for. We hope that You will never leave Your church. We hope in spite of our ego and kebria2 that withholds us from You. Fill us O God with Your holy spirit. God our life is short on earth. Please let the rest be with You. In love with You and with others.

Listen O God to us for Your mother’s sake and for the sake of Your saints. You know that I am weak, who am I to stand and pray for You. Listen for Your saint prayers. I wish that You make me live with You the rest of my life because what if a person won the world but lost his soul?.... Make us live with You from all our hearts and all our thoughts and all our mind. Make us joyful with You Jesus Christ with the amazing life. Living with You is heaven itself.   Have Mercy on us with the concession of the holy virgin Mary Your gentle mother and the payers of all Your saint. And make us worthy to pray thankfully.....

Our Father...

Tamav Irini ( 4 oct 1982)

Fr Mark Aziz on "Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy"

Abouna Mark speaks about being restored to the image and likeness of God and on being Orthodox.

http://www.copticscotland.org/index.php/en/english-sermons/sermon/149-orthodoxy-and-ortho-praxis

"Salvation in the Orthodox Church is to have the life of Christ" + Abouna Mark Aziz

"For the Son dwells in us in a corporeal sense as Man, commingled and united with us by the mystery of the Eucharist; and also in a spiritual sense as God, by the effectual working and grace of His own Spirit, building up our spirit into newness of life, and making us partakers of His Divine Nature." +St. Cyril: Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Book 11, volume II, Chapter XII, 22,23,  p 554

An Offering

The Crucifixion of the Lord
Icon from St George Coptic Orthodox Parish in Toledo

"By dying, each person must leave something behind, must leave a trace of some kind. Be it a house built with his own hands or a tree he has planted, or a book he has written - but whatever it is it must have been not done for himself but for other people." + Fr Arseny

Being Christian in the World

Being Christian in the World

HE Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

(from talks given at Birmingham University in 1970)



Archbishop Iakovos with Martin Luther King Jr.

[an excerpt from Chapter 2 of "God and Man"]

[For more talks by Metropolitan Anthony you can visit the MAS Archive www.masarchive.org which also includes this series on Doubt and Questioning which was uploaded for easier access on YouTube @ http://tinyurl.com/doubtandquestioning ]

I should like to talk now of the situation of being a Christian in the world; and I should like to preface my remarks by saying that we have a tendency to exaggerate the meaning which we attach to the expression ‘the contemporary world’. The world is always contemporary to someone: at every moment it will be contemporary to a generation of people, and there are general rules that are human and historical which I believe can serve as a basis for our judgement and action. Another thing which I should like to underline is the fact that God is always contemporary. This we very often forget, trying by all sorts of theological efforts to make Him contemporary with us, when He is perfectly contemporary, needs no change to be Himself and to be up to date.

The Life and Mission of Church In the View of Paulos Mar Gregorios

A wonderful read for those interested in missiology....

The Life and Mission of Church

In the View of Paulos Mar Gregorios 

SOURCE: http://johnkunnathu.blogspot.ca/2010/12/life-and-mission-of-church-in-view-of.html


What is church, and what is its mission? This question can be answered from the view of an outsider or an insider. An outsider view, a sociological one, would describe church as an institution or as a voluntary organization of Christian believers. This approach will certainly yield valuable information about the churches today, but not very helpful in  defining the mission of the church. The question of the mission of the church can be meaningfully answered only from an insider view, which is theological. Paulos Mar Gregorios approaches this question extensively as an insider in a number of his published papers and books.1

When Quoting the Fathers

"We think we are being Patristic when we are being the most zealous and unbending, taking up, say, the great diatribes of St Cyril against Nestorius, but we neglect that current within the patristic legacy (found in the same St Cyril in his later years) which was peacemaking, open to reconsideration and reformulation, for the sake of the truth and for the unity of the Church."

+ Peter Bouteneff, “Chalcedonians and Non Chalcedonians: Realizing Unity,” St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 42 (1998): 168.

When we sometimes quote the fathers we can potentially use them out of context or in isolation. We risk falling into the same principles of 'sola-scriptura' and read anything we want into and out of the writings of the ancient and modern commentaries.

Another fallacy is to put one father as infallible or in a position of greater authority then the rest, or to only hearken to a particular patristic era in isolation from the living reality of the Church. Hopefully it's more important for readers to realize that the fathers are guided by the Holy Spirit and His work in the present day reader is just as active.

So it is not the work or word of a single father, but the Truth (ie. Christ Crucified and Resurrected and in our midst) speaking in symphony within all the fathers, within Scripture in Tradition, within our Liturgical life and the lived theology of the Church that must be understood and encountered when we as Christians participate in the Church's life according to the mind of the fathers, the mind of the Church, ultimately the mind and body of Christ.

Or as Fr Alexander Schmemann writes:

"The "patristic revival” of our time would miss completely its purpose if it were to result in a rigid “ patristic system” which in reality never existed. It is indeed the eternal merit of the Fathers that they showed the dynamic and not static nature of Christian theology, its power always to be "contemporary” without reduction to any "contemporaneousness,” open to all human aspirations without being determined by any of them. If the return to the Fathers were to mean a purely formal repetition of their terms and formulations, it would be as wrong and as useless as the discarding of the Fathers by "modern” theology because of their presumably "antiquated” world view."

+ Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For Life of the World (New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1963) 146.

Forgive me and pray for me if I ever misquote or misunderstand the fathers, the Church and the Holy Scripture in Tradition.

Glory to God for all things.

A Foretaste

"The blessings of the kingdom within us - which the world-loving eye has not seen, and the presumptuous ear has not heard, and which have not entered into a heart empty of the Holy Spirit (cf. I Cor. 2:9) - are a pledge and foretaste of the blessings to be given by God to the righteous in the kingdom that is to come. If we do not savor the first, which are the fruits of the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:22), we will not be able to enjoy the second."

Ilias the Presbyter.

Humility's Resilience

"humility will never fail for it is beneath everything" + St Paissi Velichkovsky