Coptic Monasticism in Question: Sources
2018-08-01
الخميس ٢ أغسطس ٢٠١٨ م .. ٢٦ أبيب ١٧٣٤ ش
قرارات لجنة الرهبنة وشئون الأديرة بالمجمع المقدس
عقدت لجنة الرهبنة وشئون الأديرة بالمجمع المقدس برئاسة قداسة البابا
تواضروس الثانى وحضور نيافة الحبر الجليل الأنبا دانيال السكرتير العام
للمجمع المقدس و 19 من الأباء المطارنة والأساقفة رؤساء الأديرة وأعضاء
اللجنة جلسة خاصة لمناقشة انضباط الحياة الرهبنية والديرية فى ضوء الحادث
الأليم واستشهاد نيافة الحبر الجليل الأنبا ابيفانيوس أسقف ورئيس دير
القديس أبو مقار بوادى النطرون وبعد الصلاة والمناقشات الواسعة تم إصدار هذه القرارات الأثنى عشر التالية :
1- وقف رهبنة أو قبول أخوة جدد فى جميع الأديرة القبطية الأرثوذكسية داخل مصر لمدة عام يبدأ من أغسطس 2018 م .
2- الأماكن التى لم توافق البطريركية على إنشائها كأديرة سيتم تجريد من قام بهذا العمل من الرهبنة والكهنوت والاعلان عن ذلك , مع عدم السماح بأى أديرة جديدة إلا التى تقوم على اعادة احياء أديرة قديمة , ويتم ذلك من خلال رعاية دير معترف به ( عامر ) .
3- تحديد عدد الرهبان فى كل دير بحسب ظروفه وإمكانياته وعدم تجاوز هذا العدد لضبط الحياة الرهبانية وتجويد العمل الرهبانى .
4- إيقاف سيامة الرهبان فى الدرجات الكهنوتية ( القسيسية والقمصية ) لمدة ثلاث سنوات .
5- الالتزام بعدم حضور علمانيين على الاطلاق فى الرسامات الرهبانية لحفظ الوقار والأصول الرهبانية الاصيلة .
6- تستقبل الأديرة الزيارات والرحلات طوال العام باستثناء فترة صوم الميلاد والصوم الكبير فتكون أيام ( الجمعة والسبت والأحد ) فقط من كل اسبوع والتحذير من زيارة الأماكن غير المعترف بها وهى مسئولية الايبارشيات والكنائس.
7- الاهتمام والتدقيق بحياة الراهب وإلتزامه الرهبانى داخل الدير واهتمامه بأبديته التى خرج من أجلها ودون الحياد عنها .
8- كل راهب يأتى بالأفعال التالية يعرض نفسه للمساءلة والتجريد من الرهبنة والكهنوت واعلان ذلك رسمياً :
أ- الظهور الاعلامى بأى صورة ولأى سبب وبأى وسيلة .
ب- التورط فى أى تعاملات مالية أو مشروعات لم يكلفه بها ديره .
ج التواجد خارج الدير بدون مبرر والخروج والزيارات بدون إذن مسبق من رئيس الدير.
9- لا يجوز حضور الاكاليل والجنازات للرهبان إلا بتكليف وإذن رئيس الدير بحد أقصى راهبين.
10- إعطاء الرهبان فرصة لمدة شهر لغلق أى صفحات أو حسابات على وسائل التواصل الاجتماعى والتخلى الطوعى عن هذه السلوكيات والتصرفات التى لاتليق بالحياة الرهبانية وقبل إتخاذ الاجراءات الكنسية معهم
11- مناشدة جموع الأقباط بعدم الدخول فى أى معاملات مادية أو مشروعات مع الرهبان أو الراهبات وعدم تقديم أى تبرعات عينية أو مادية إلا من خلال رئاسة الدير أو من ينوب عنهم.
12- تفعيل دليل الرهبنة وإدارة الحياة الديرية الذى صدر من المجمع المقدس فى يونيو 2013 وهى مسئولية رئيس الدير ومساعديه .
وقد صادق قداسة البابا على هذه القرارات باعتباره الرئيس الأعلى للأديرة القبطية الارثوذكسية
وعلى ابن الطاعة تحل البركه .
أول أغسطس 2018 م
1- وقف رهبنة أو قبول أخوة جدد فى جميع الأديرة القبطية الأرثوذكسية داخل مصر لمدة عام يبدأ من أغسطس 2018 م .
2- الأماكن التى لم توافق البطريركية على إنشائها كأديرة سيتم تجريد من قام بهذا العمل من الرهبنة والكهنوت والاعلان عن ذلك , مع عدم السماح بأى أديرة جديدة إلا التى تقوم على اعادة احياء أديرة قديمة , ويتم ذلك من خلال رعاية دير معترف به ( عامر ) .
3- تحديد عدد الرهبان فى كل دير بحسب ظروفه وإمكانياته وعدم تجاوز هذا العدد لضبط الحياة الرهبانية وتجويد العمل الرهبانى .
4- إيقاف سيامة الرهبان فى الدرجات الكهنوتية ( القسيسية والقمصية ) لمدة ثلاث سنوات .
5- الالتزام بعدم حضور علمانيين على الاطلاق فى الرسامات الرهبانية لحفظ الوقار والأصول الرهبانية الاصيلة .
6- تستقبل الأديرة الزيارات والرحلات طوال العام باستثناء فترة صوم الميلاد والصوم الكبير فتكون أيام ( الجمعة والسبت والأحد ) فقط من كل اسبوع والتحذير من زيارة الأماكن غير المعترف بها وهى مسئولية الايبارشيات والكنائس.
7- الاهتمام والتدقيق بحياة الراهب وإلتزامه الرهبانى داخل الدير واهتمامه بأبديته التى خرج من أجلها ودون الحياد عنها .
8- كل راهب يأتى بالأفعال التالية يعرض نفسه للمساءلة والتجريد من الرهبنة والكهنوت واعلان ذلك رسمياً :
أ- الظهور الاعلامى بأى صورة ولأى سبب وبأى وسيلة .
ب- التورط فى أى تعاملات مالية أو مشروعات لم يكلفه بها ديره .
ج التواجد خارج الدير بدون مبرر والخروج والزيارات بدون إذن مسبق من رئيس الدير.
9- لا يجوز حضور الاكاليل والجنازات للرهبان إلا بتكليف وإذن رئيس الدير بحد أقصى راهبين.
10- إعطاء الرهبان فرصة لمدة شهر لغلق أى صفحات أو حسابات على وسائل التواصل الاجتماعى والتخلى الطوعى عن هذه السلوكيات والتصرفات التى لاتليق بالحياة الرهبانية وقبل إتخاذ الاجراءات الكنسية معهم
11- مناشدة جموع الأقباط بعدم الدخول فى أى معاملات مادية أو مشروعات مع الرهبان أو الراهبات وعدم تقديم أى تبرعات عينية أو مادية إلا من خلال رئاسة الدير أو من ينوب عنهم.
12- تفعيل دليل الرهبنة وإدارة الحياة الديرية الذى صدر من المجمع المقدس فى يونيو 2013 وهى مسئولية رئيس الدير ومساعديه .
وقد صادق قداسة البابا على هذه القرارات باعتباره الرئيس الأعلى للأديرة القبطية الارثوذكسية
وعلى ابن الطاعة تحل البركه .
أول أغسطس 2018 م
2018-08-05
2018-08-08: Pope Tawadros sermon
Deutsche Zusammenfassung
S.H. Papst Tawadros II
Mönchtum
Predigt
Mittwochspredigt am 08. August 2018
Zusammenfassung:
1. Das Mönchtum ist eine alternative Form des Martyriums für jenes durch Blut.
2. Du Geliebter, schaue nicht auf die Schwachheiten von Personen, die Fehler eines, von zwei oder zehn Menschen sind keine Schande, denn das Wesen selbst ist rein und es
wurde durch die Jahrhunderte hinweg geprüft.
3. Das Leben eines Mönches lässt sich auf drei Abschnitte zusammenfassen:
a. Das Beten
b. Das Lesen
c. Das Arbeiten
So setzt sich der monastische Alltag zusammen.
4. Ich bitte euch, folgenden Versen viel Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen:
„Viele werden an jenem Tag zu mir sagen: Herr, Herr, haben wir nicht in deinem Namen Dämonen ausgetrieben und in deinem Namen viele Wundertaten vollbracht? Und dann werde ich ihnen bezeugen: Ich habe euch nie gekannt; weicht von mir, ihr Gesetzlosen!“
(Mt 7:22-23)
5. Es existieren jene, die im Inneren des monastischen Lebens Fehler begehen, es handelt sich hierbei um ein schwieriges Leben, das nicht für alle geeignet ist, eher für diejenigen, die eine besondere Psyche und spezielles spirituelles Leben haben.
6. Die Gelübde des Mönchtums basieren auf:
a. freiwillige Armut
b. Gehorsam, nicht auf dem eigenen Willen! Wer das Gesetz des Klosters bricht,
verbannt sich eigenständig aus dem Kloster.
c. Bei der Keuschheit ist es so, dass Christus zum Bräutigam der Seele des
Mönches wird. Alles, was den Mönch beschäftigen soll, ist jene Frage: „Wie werde ich Christus (im Jenseits) treffen?“
Bricht jemand eines dieser Gelübde, bedeutet dies Bruch des gesamten monastischen Gesetzes.
über das
,
7. Jede Person steht immer noch unter der menschlichen Schwachheit, darum fand sich auch unter den auserwählten Jüngern Christi einer (Judas Iskariot), der Verrat beging, obwohl er ein Zeuge aller Wunder, Worte und für das Leben Christi war. Es existierte ein Apostel, den Jesus liebte, aber es befand sich auch einer, der seinen Herren verkaufte. In diesen fuhr der Satan ein.
8. In jeder Gesellschaft wird ein Judas aufscheinen.
9. Unter allen zwölf wird ein Judas vorhanden sein, welcher den vollkommenen Verrat
symbolisiert.
Meine Brüder und Schwestern, wankt nicht, denn es existiert ein allmächtiger Gott.
10. Im Laufe der Geschichte hören wir von gefallenen Mönchen, wie jener Mönch, der das Kloster zu Lebzeiten des Heiligen Johannes Chrysostomus verließ (etwa 1000 n.Chr.). Er wusste, dass er aufgrund seiner Schwachheit gefallen und in Hoffnungslosigkeit verfallen war. So verfasste und veröffentlichte der Heilige eine Botschaft unter dem
Titel: „Du wirst mit stärkerer Kraft zurückkehren“
11. Die Anzahl der Kämpfe in der monastischen Historie ist eine hohe, ein Mönch entschied
sich zum Beispiel das Kloster zu verlassen aufgrund der Störungen durch andere Mönche. Der Abt des Klosters wies ihn hin und fragte: „Wenn du die Störungen der Brüder nicht erdulden kannst, wie willst du die der Dämonen ertragen?“
12. Es ist die Verantwortung eines jeden von uns, die Reinheit der Mönche zu bewahren, sowohl während der Telefonate, Besuche oder bei Geschenken.
13. Die Kirche trägt zu allen Zeiten jene Pflicht, das monastische Leben unter Kontrolle zu halten. Die Verabschiedung der aktuellen zwölf Beschlüsse bezüglich des Mönchtums und der Klöster ist kein Einzelfall. Es wurden ebenso in der Ära S.H. Papst Kyrillos VI und in jener S.H. Papst Schenouda III welche erlassen.
14. Das Ziel des monastischen Ausschuss der Heiligen Synode ist jenes, das Leben der Mönche und Nonnen zu erneuern, korrigieren und ihre Probleme auf verschiedenen Wegen zu lösen, die nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt sind.
15. Der Fall S.E. Bischof Anba Epiphanios ist eine kriminelle Tat, bei der es ein Opfer und einen Täter gibt, den wir bis jetzt nicht kennen. Dieses Verbrechen untersteht nicht den Emotionen, denn bei Kriminaltaten gibt es keine Emotionen, es liegt nicht im Interesse von irgendjemandem, einen Fehler, egal welchen, zu vertuschen.
16.Das Ziel der monastischen Beschlüsse ist es, die Leistung des Mönchtums zu kontrollieren und es werden demnächst noch weitere Gesetze folgen...
17. Es existieren wahrlich Schwachheiten innerhalb des Mönchtums und jeder Mönch entschied sich für diesen Weg aus eigenem Willen, nicht auf gezwungener Basis. Dies ist der Grund, warum für die nächsten zwölf Monate keine neuen Mönche aufgenommen und die Priesterweihen gestoppt werden.
18. Die Klöster wirkten während Zeiten der Hungersnöte, um Menschen zu sättigen, sei es das Kloster des Heiligen Anba Schenouda des Archimandriten oder in Konstantinopel.
19. Die Klöster vollbrachten viele Taten für die Menschheit, wie der Mönch Gregor
Mendel, der die Gene erstmals entdeckte, oder die Mönchsväter, die die Idee hatten, die Fläche Hollands für die Ernte zu erweitern. Es waren auch Mönche, die für das Gründen und Ausbauen von großen Universitäten verantwortlich waren. In Russland stehen mehr als 1000 Klöster, Deutschland etwa 200, Italien 1500, Frankreich 1500 und außerhalb Ägyptens wurden weltweit 20 koptische Klöster gegründet.
20. Vergisst die Theorie des in jeder Gesellschaft existierenden Judas nicht und wenn jemand versuchte, sich selbst das Leben zu nehmen, wundert euch nicht, denn Judas selbst beging Selbstmord.
Das Gewissen eines Menschen wird nie schweigen.
21. Wir alle in der Kirche, alle Mitglieder aller kirchlichen Hierarchien, besitzen ein Gewissen und tragen eine Verantwortung vor Gott, wir bewegen uns nicht mit dem Gedankenweg oder der Ideologie der Welt.
22. Gebt Acht vor „Fake News“, sowohl in gedruckter als auch elektronischer Form (vor allem in den sozialen Netzwerken), achtet in Genauigkeit auf alles, was veröffentlicht wird.
23. Wir haben gar nichts zu verheimlichen und der Glaube der Kirche wird vom Oberhaupt der Kirche bewahrt...von Christus selbst! Es gibt niemanden, der den Glauben beschützt. Der Glaube ist keine Ware, die verkauft und gekauft werden kann!
24. Die Vorwürfe der Glaubensbewahrer werden nicht enden.
25. Gebt Acht vor Gerüchten gegen den Staat, die Politik, Wirtschaft und Kirche.
26. Es gibt einen Kampf, der vom Feind des Guten (Satan) verursacht wird, in die Welt
wurde das Böse eingepflanzt.
27. Alle Accounts der Mönchsväter müssen innerhalb eines Monats deaktiviert werden,
geschieht dies nicht, werden die Betroffenen zur Rechenschaft gezogen. Und was dich angeht, sprich nicht mit einem Mönch, um seinen Rat einzuholen oder ihn zu fragen. Ein Mönch benötigt seine spirituelle Ruhe.
28. Gebt Acht vor falschen Quellen, Gerüchten und den deprimierenden Zügen, die sie stets in alle Aspekte einfließen lassen.
29. Die Koptisch-Orthodoxe Kirche ist weltweit stark, der Klerus arbeitet mit einem Herzen und vereinheitlichtem Dienst, höre nicht auf irgendwelche Gerüchte.
30. Ich möchte das Gesagte in folgenden Sätzen zusammenfassen: „Seid weise und vernünftig!“
„Betet für alle aktuellen Probleme, die Bitte eines Gerechten vermag es, viel zu bewirken.“
„Setzt euer Vertrauen auf Gott, den Allmächtigen, er ist es, der die Kirche führt!“
Mönchtum
Predigt
Mittwochspredigt am 08. August 2018
Zusammenfassung:
1. Das Mönchtum ist eine alternative Form des Martyriums für jenes durch Blut.
2. Du Geliebter, schaue nicht auf die Schwachheiten von Personen, die Fehler eines, von zwei oder zehn Menschen sind keine Schande, denn das Wesen selbst ist rein und es
wurde durch die Jahrhunderte hinweg geprüft.
3. Das Leben eines Mönches lässt sich auf drei Abschnitte zusammenfassen:
a. Das Beten
b. Das Lesen
c. Das Arbeiten
So setzt sich der monastische Alltag zusammen.
4. Ich bitte euch, folgenden Versen viel Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen:
„Viele werden an jenem Tag zu mir sagen: Herr, Herr, haben wir nicht in deinem Namen Dämonen ausgetrieben und in deinem Namen viele Wundertaten vollbracht? Und dann werde ich ihnen bezeugen: Ich habe euch nie gekannt; weicht von mir, ihr Gesetzlosen!“
(Mt 7:22-23)
5. Es existieren jene, die im Inneren des monastischen Lebens Fehler begehen, es handelt sich hierbei um ein schwieriges Leben, das nicht für alle geeignet ist, eher für diejenigen, die eine besondere Psyche und spezielles spirituelles Leben haben.
6. Die Gelübde des Mönchtums basieren auf:
a. freiwillige Armut
b. Gehorsam, nicht auf dem eigenen Willen! Wer das Gesetz des Klosters bricht,
verbannt sich eigenständig aus dem Kloster.
c. Bei der Keuschheit ist es so, dass Christus zum Bräutigam der Seele des
Mönches wird. Alles, was den Mönch beschäftigen soll, ist jene Frage: „Wie werde ich Christus (im Jenseits) treffen?“
Bricht jemand eines dieser Gelübde, bedeutet dies Bruch des gesamten monastischen Gesetzes.
über das
,
7. Jede Person steht immer noch unter der menschlichen Schwachheit, darum fand sich auch unter den auserwählten Jüngern Christi einer (Judas Iskariot), der Verrat beging, obwohl er ein Zeuge aller Wunder, Worte und für das Leben Christi war. Es existierte ein Apostel, den Jesus liebte, aber es befand sich auch einer, der seinen Herren verkaufte. In diesen fuhr der Satan ein.
8. In jeder Gesellschaft wird ein Judas aufscheinen.
9. Unter allen zwölf wird ein Judas vorhanden sein, welcher den vollkommenen Verrat
symbolisiert.
Meine Brüder und Schwestern, wankt nicht, denn es existiert ein allmächtiger Gott.
10. Im Laufe der Geschichte hören wir von gefallenen Mönchen, wie jener Mönch, der das Kloster zu Lebzeiten des Heiligen Johannes Chrysostomus verließ (etwa 1000 n.Chr.). Er wusste, dass er aufgrund seiner Schwachheit gefallen und in Hoffnungslosigkeit verfallen war. So verfasste und veröffentlichte der Heilige eine Botschaft unter dem
Titel: „Du wirst mit stärkerer Kraft zurückkehren“
11. Die Anzahl der Kämpfe in der monastischen Historie ist eine hohe, ein Mönch entschied
sich zum Beispiel das Kloster zu verlassen aufgrund der Störungen durch andere Mönche. Der Abt des Klosters wies ihn hin und fragte: „Wenn du die Störungen der Brüder nicht erdulden kannst, wie willst du die der Dämonen ertragen?“
12. Es ist die Verantwortung eines jeden von uns, die Reinheit der Mönche zu bewahren, sowohl während der Telefonate, Besuche oder bei Geschenken.
13. Die Kirche trägt zu allen Zeiten jene Pflicht, das monastische Leben unter Kontrolle zu halten. Die Verabschiedung der aktuellen zwölf Beschlüsse bezüglich des Mönchtums und der Klöster ist kein Einzelfall. Es wurden ebenso in der Ära S.H. Papst Kyrillos VI und in jener S.H. Papst Schenouda III welche erlassen.
14. Das Ziel des monastischen Ausschuss der Heiligen Synode ist jenes, das Leben der Mönche und Nonnen zu erneuern, korrigieren und ihre Probleme auf verschiedenen Wegen zu lösen, die nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt sind.
15. Der Fall S.E. Bischof Anba Epiphanios ist eine kriminelle Tat, bei der es ein Opfer und einen Täter gibt, den wir bis jetzt nicht kennen. Dieses Verbrechen untersteht nicht den Emotionen, denn bei Kriminaltaten gibt es keine Emotionen, es liegt nicht im Interesse von irgendjemandem, einen Fehler, egal welchen, zu vertuschen.
16.Das Ziel der monastischen Beschlüsse ist es, die Leistung des Mönchtums zu kontrollieren und es werden demnächst noch weitere Gesetze folgen...
17. Es existieren wahrlich Schwachheiten innerhalb des Mönchtums und jeder Mönch entschied sich für diesen Weg aus eigenem Willen, nicht auf gezwungener Basis. Dies ist der Grund, warum für die nächsten zwölf Monate keine neuen Mönche aufgenommen und die Priesterweihen gestoppt werden.
18. Die Klöster wirkten während Zeiten der Hungersnöte, um Menschen zu sättigen, sei es das Kloster des Heiligen Anba Schenouda des Archimandriten oder in Konstantinopel.
19. Die Klöster vollbrachten viele Taten für die Menschheit, wie der Mönch Gregor
Mendel, der die Gene erstmals entdeckte, oder die Mönchsväter, die die Idee hatten, die Fläche Hollands für die Ernte zu erweitern. Es waren auch Mönche, die für das Gründen und Ausbauen von großen Universitäten verantwortlich waren. In Russland stehen mehr als 1000 Klöster, Deutschland etwa 200, Italien 1500, Frankreich 1500 und außerhalb Ägyptens wurden weltweit 20 koptische Klöster gegründet.
20. Vergisst die Theorie des in jeder Gesellschaft existierenden Judas nicht und wenn jemand versuchte, sich selbst das Leben zu nehmen, wundert euch nicht, denn Judas selbst beging Selbstmord.
Das Gewissen eines Menschen wird nie schweigen.
21. Wir alle in der Kirche, alle Mitglieder aller kirchlichen Hierarchien, besitzen ein Gewissen und tragen eine Verantwortung vor Gott, wir bewegen uns nicht mit dem Gedankenweg oder der Ideologie der Welt.
22. Gebt Acht vor „Fake News“, sowohl in gedruckter als auch elektronischer Form (vor allem in den sozialen Netzwerken), achtet in Genauigkeit auf alles, was veröffentlicht wird.
23. Wir haben gar nichts zu verheimlichen und der Glaube der Kirche wird vom Oberhaupt der Kirche bewahrt...von Christus selbst! Es gibt niemanden, der den Glauben beschützt. Der Glaube ist keine Ware, die verkauft und gekauft werden kann!
24. Die Vorwürfe der Glaubensbewahrer werden nicht enden.
25. Gebt Acht vor Gerüchten gegen den Staat, die Politik, Wirtschaft und Kirche.
26. Es gibt einen Kampf, der vom Feind des Guten (Satan) verursacht wird, in die Welt
wurde das Böse eingepflanzt.
27. Alle Accounts der Mönchsväter müssen innerhalb eines Monats deaktiviert werden,
geschieht dies nicht, werden die Betroffenen zur Rechenschaft gezogen. Und was dich angeht, sprich nicht mit einem Mönch, um seinen Rat einzuholen oder ihn zu fragen. Ein Mönch benötigt seine spirituelle Ruhe.
28. Gebt Acht vor falschen Quellen, Gerüchten und den deprimierenden Zügen, die sie stets in alle Aspekte einfließen lassen.
29. Die Koptisch-Orthodoxe Kirche ist weltweit stark, der Klerus arbeitet mit einem Herzen und vereinheitlichtem Dienst, höre nicht auf irgendwelche Gerüchte.
30. Ich möchte das Gesagte in folgenden Sätzen zusammenfassen: „Seid weise und vernünftig!“
„Betet für alle aktuellen Probleme, die Bitte eines Gerechten vermag es, viel zu bewirken.“
„Setzt euer Vertrauen auf Gott, den Allmächtigen, er ist es, der die Kirche führt!“
English Translation
Saturday August 11, 2018
The Monastic Life
H.H. Pope Tawadros II – Weekly Wednesday Sermon
Wednesday August 8, 2018
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, amen. May His grace and mercy rest upon us, from now and unto eternity, amen.
By the grace of Christ, today I will read a portion of Scripture from the Gospel of our teacher St. Matthew Chapter 7, beginning with verse 22.
22 ““Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
24 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:
25 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”” (NKJV Matthew 7:22-25)
I will read this portion once more so you may pay attention to each word it says, and this is Jesus Christ speaking. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name (so they were speaking the prophecies), cast out demons in Your name (casting out demons – that’s miracles), and done many wonders (that is powers, miracles, amazing things) in Your name?’”
“And then I will declare to them” - what will you say them? “I never knew you.”
Can you imagine that? A person who continues to speak in the name of Christ, casting out demons, but in the end He declares to him, “I knew you not! Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” – the sayings of Christ.
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock”– and whenever we see the word ‘rock’ in the Bible it reminds us of Christ, because Christ is the Rock. So he “built his house on the rock” means that he built it on Christ; on the foundation of this faith.
“And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.” Storms blew against this house but it did not fall, why? Because its foundation was on the rock.
The grace of God the Father be with us all, amen.
...And as we celebrate the Fast of our Mother the Virgin Mary amidst the events going on in the Church today we remember that our Mother the Virgin is a mother for all those who are chaste. And we remember our Mother the Virgin’s image, her life, and her personality as being the curriculum upon which the monastic life was founded.
And when we review the pages of the history of Egyptian Copticism with its extensive history that has unfolded over centuries and centuries, we find that since the days of St. Mark the Apostle and his founding of the Alexandrian School of Divinity - which dominated the Christian world in knowledge of Divinity and in the exposition of the Holy Bible Scriptures - that throughout the history of our Church, heroes and giants have appeared - in Divinity, in writings, in patristics, and in the ecclesiastical life, and have handed us a rich inheritance.
But this [age of illumination] coincided with the civilizations of martyrdom- so the Church did not only have individuals of high faith statures, but it also had statures of martyrs.
Monasticism was at its peak during the days of Nero and the Emperors and Caesars who were before and after him, and the matter did not come to a halt until the arrival of Constantine the Great and his giving the Edict of Milan in the year 313 A.D., making Christianity a legal religion throughout the Roman Empire. And that is when the Church began to relax.
But in their zealousness over their spiritual life, the Copts feared that this relaxation would lose them the power of faith, and so after the first martyrdom - the martyrdom of blood, and that is why they call it the “red martyrdom” - they looked for another way of martyrdom and that is when the monasticism period began, and this way of life became an example of people who dedicate themselves to live the Christian life according to the precepts of the Bible.
And the world’s first monk appeared in Egypt. He was from Beni Suef, from the village of Karn El Aroos, and his name was Saint Anthony the Great. He is the father of all monks. And as Egyptians, we are proud that it was Saint Anthony who founded monasticism, which spread out from Egypt and throughout the whole world. And I want to tell you that throughout the world there are thousands and thousands of monasteries.
Monastic life, which originated in Egypt, did not only appear in one place in Egypt but since the 3rd and 4th Centuries, it appeared in many different places throughout Egypt. We hear of Saint Macarius the Great, and we hear of Saint Pachomius- father of Cenobiticism (monks living together), and we hear of Saint Pasantoas from the founding Wilderness of the south, near the towns of Qena and Naqada, and we hear of Saint Anba Paula- the first of the pilgrims, and we hear of their students, and students, and students, and of the spreading of the monastic life.
I want you to know that because of the proliferation of monasteries in the history of Egypt, they ran out of names to call them, so they used to name them by numbers; by the number of kilometers of their distance from the City of Alexandria. For example, they would say, the Ninth Monastery, which means it was 9 kilometers away from Alexandria, or the Twentieth Monastery, which meant it was 20 kilometers away. And if you were to look at the old maps of the Desert of Egypt, you would find tens and maybe hundreds of names of monasteries that had multiplied throughout Egypt.
It is sufficient for you to know my beloveds, that for Christianity and Egypt, the area of Wadi El Natrun was an area considered to be her university in spirituality, and that is why it was called the “Scetes,” because that word means “place of aestheticism.”
It is like when someone wants to specialize in an area of medicine and they ask, “What is the best university in the world that teaches this specialization?” They would tell him, “Such and such a place,” and he would then go to that place and feel very proud that he belongs to that university.
And so the area of Wadi El Natrun, as well as the area of the Qualalee (cells of the monks) and the area of Kilya, are all historical places which can still be found to this day and are places that became centers for aestheticism for the aesthetic life. And tens of thousands of saints have been born out of these places. Do not forget this history.
And so the Egyptian and Coptic monasteries became focal point for the world, for they became places of spiritual experience and universities for living the life of the Bible, and people would come from the furthermost parts in the world. And if you were to read in the history of monasticism you would see that people came from all over the world to observe the life of these first Fathers.
And back then there were no walls but rather, a monastery was just an area of dispersed cells. And of course back then there was no electricity, so every aesthetic and every monk would have a lit candle. So when St. John Chrysostom came to Egypt and visited these blessed wildernesses filled with monks and saw the beauty that was in this pitch black wilderness, and yet they live there – in the caves and in the most hidden places of the world - that is when he made his eternal statement: “The sky with all its stars is not as beautiful as the Wilderness of Egypt with all its ascetics.”
Do not dare to think that I am speaking of something that is old and gone, but it is something that is old and continues to be handed down from generation, to generation, to generation, until our current generation, and will also be handed down to future generations.
I want you to know that the monastic life is abundant has been abundant in Egypt since the 3rd and 4th Centuries A.D., and until today and until the coming of Christ, God willing.
In the beginning, monasticism was just individual cells, as it was with Saint Anthony, and then three or four students would gather around him and would learn from him, then some of those would go on and continue in the same way.
And so the monasticism of Palestine came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Syria came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Iraq came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Ireland - up there in the north - came from Egypt. And Coptic monks went to Germany, to North Africa, and to many other places, and so monasticism spread, and the spirit of monasticism was spread.
And generation handed it to generation, and when you read in monastic books they say, “A brother asked an elder,” meaning that a student was asking an older person and learning from him. And so monasticism became an understanding where fathers and elders lived and experienced holiness, and had students who were taught at their hands. And this ratio is important- that the monastery neither be full of old, elders and neither is it to be full of just young people, but this ratio must be kept in balance, or in relative balance, so that generation can hand it to generation.
And the life of monks came to have a certain kind of order, because some people may think, “What do monks even do?” So beloved one, do not look to the weaknesses of individuals. If one errs, if two err, if 10 err, this is not the issue, but the essence [of monasticism] itself is a pure essence, and the order itself is an order that has been tested across the centuries.
So what does a monk do? A third of his time is spent in prayer, a third of his time is for reading and studying, and a third of his time is for working- mostly handiwork; work done by hand. I will say it again: this is how we lived in the monastery: an hour of prayer, an hour of reading, an hour of work.
And in the monastery, when they say “one hour” they really mean three hours. Why three hours? Because this is in accordance with the prayers of the Book of Hours (the Agpeya). For example, The Prayer of the First Hour is prayed at 6 A.M., The Third is prayed at 9 A.M., The Sixth is prayed at noon, and so three hours, three hours, three hours - the day is thus divided into three-hour segments.
And so an hour means approximately three hours: three hours in which we pray the prayer of praises, then we are to have three hours of reading and studying - and a long time ago they would scribe because there were no printing presses. So one would sit and scribe from the Bible, and to scribe an entire Bible would take 30 years, or they would scribe one of the writings of the Fathers; a monk would spend years doing this.
And during the days of Pope Cyril VI, when he was a monk, also during the days of Pope Shenouda and during the days of many other Fathers, you would hear them say, “I completed Saint Isaiah.” What do you mean you completed Isaiah? It means, “I got the writings of the sayings of Saint Isaiah and scribed them with my own handwriting.” And until today we continue to do this in our monasteries, and many monks, despite printing presses and the progress in printing, scribe some of the writings or translate some of the writings - a habit.
And so life becomes prayer, reading, and work. And because a long time ago handiwork was limited, they would mostly weave palm branches into baskets and sell them, so they could make money and make a living.
But just as everything has progressed, so the works have also progressed, and different monasteries are given to different works and have different knowledge and experience. For example, a monk that was a doctor, well he can now run a clinic or he can be responsible for caring for the health of the fathers. Or a monk who is an engineer, he can help in matters of building. Or a monk that was in the field of agriculture, he can manage matters pertaining to land development. Or a monk who was in the field of law, he can be in charge of legal matters, and add to that many other examples and applications.
And so there developed a balance and a society, but life within the monastery was founded upon three vows: the first vow is that a monk in Egyptian monasticism - and we call it the “monasticism of the coffin” because he lays down on the floor and we cover him with a veil. This veil represents a coffin. He has died.
Please beloved ones, because these days there are a lot of all people and everyone is saying something different, and most of what is being said is not true and everybody is saying a different story, so I beg you, pay attention and I will repeat it to you again: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
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Yes, there are people who make mistakes, of course. And I want to tell you that this matter of wrongdoing is because the monastic life is not an easy life; not everyone can live the monastic life. And many times a young person, whether a young man or a young woman will come to me and say, “I want to become a monk or a nun,” and I will say to them, “Beloved one, monasticism does not suit you.” And this is an experience that all priests have had and have experienced with their children: “You, my daughter, being a nun is not suited for you.”
Monasticism is a very difficult life and not everybody is able to live it, and so it demands a certain psyche and a certain spiritual stature. I do not enter the monastery to begin; I enter the monastery to continue in a spiritual life that I have already begun.
I do not enter the monastery, leave everything, and then go back to searching for something, no. And so the first vow is the vow of poverty. They dress us in a galabia-cloak and give us a mers, which is a provision, and tell us that they will give us according to our needs, only we must just live our lives.
And where do the provisions for the needs inside the monastery come from? They come from your donations that you give to the monastery. And so the monastery buys cloth to outfit and bless the fathers, and in this way you contribute to the purity of the monastic life, and so you must preserve it. And since the first vow is poverty, you are not to do anything that would break the poverty a monk is supposed to live in.
The second thing is obedience, and obedience means the renunciation of one’s own personal will. In the monastery they call it one’s “personal inclinations;” you do not just do whatever you want to do, there are rules, there is an order, or else things would be out of control.
If you have accepted to enter the monastery then you have accepted to place yourself under the rules of the monastery, and if you break the rules of the monastery then you do not deserve to remain inside the monastery. It is a very obvious matter.
First is voluntary poverty, second is obedience, and third is chastity, and what is meant by chastity is to be completely free in order to live spiritual life with God. In the monastery we say, in the spiritual sense, “Christ is the bridegroom of my soul,” and morning, noon, and night, the life of a monk is only concerned with thinking of how he will meet Christ.
In the Coptic and Greek languages we say, “mono-KHOS,” meaning, “Him alone,” but in the Arabic language its meaning is even more beautiful, because the word ‘ra-heb’ (monk in Arabic) means ‘a person who desires the face of God,’ ‘a person who has placed the Lord continually before him.’ “I have set the Lord always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16:8).
Voluntary poverty, obedience, and chastity, and any breaking of any of these three vows is the breaking of [one’s] monasticism. And of course our monasteries have hundreds of monks living in peace and abiding by the rules and order, and me personally, when I go to a monastery, whether I am visiting a monastery or returning to the monastery I graduated from and I meet with some of the elder fathers, I am at the peak of joy, and I search for a word that the father may speak to me that I may learn something from it.
Beloved ones, please know the great value of Coptic monasteries to our Egyptian lives and their value for Egypt. Monasteries are prayer oases that pray for the entire world and for the land itself, and we can liken these continuous prayers of the monasteries as walls guarding the boundaries of Egypt.
And because these monasteries are located all over the place - you go to the Western desert you find some, you go to the Eastern desert you find them, you go to the Wadi in the South and you find them – so it is as if the pure and continuous prayers coming from these fathers [are as a boundary of protection].
A monk’s day begins at 4 A.M. A monk’s day starts with two or more hours of prayer, and some evenings this is increased, and then there are prayers of the Liturgy, and then there are his personal prayers. And one of the beautiful things is when you find a monk walking in the desert with his mouth moving and you ask, “Is this abouna talking to himself?” No, he is walking and reciting the Psalms; he is reciting all the Psalms he has memorized.
And even a father working in the kitchen, the whole time he is preparing the food he is reciting Psalms, and I think you have all had this experience when you have gone to the monastery and are eating a plate of beans, you feel like these beans are different. You may even ask, “Where do they get these beans from?” It is because they are prepared by prayer and in prayer, no matter how simple the food is.
I personally never used to eat bisara at all, it was just something I did not like, but the first thing they asked of me when I went to the monastery and was put in charge of the kitchen was to prepare bisara. And since of course if we are to do something we are to do it how? Ad so that is what happened, you see? This is the life of simplicity and monks have [always] lived and live this way, and our monasteries continue to abide in well-being
Do not dare that you be moved. “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them” - and this also applies to those who live in the wilderness, “I will liken him to a wise man” – and so he who does not do so them means he is not wise. It is very clear.
He “built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew” – storms; from every side somebody saying something different, and the newspapers putting out meaningless commentaries, “and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” – on Christ.
But as humans, we are still under human weakness. And we do not have to go far, we can go to Christ and ask Him, “Jesus, how many disciples did You choose?” He will say, “I chose Peter, and James, and John, and Mathew, and Bartholomew, and Judas, and Thaddeus,” [and so on].
“So twelve? And You selected them specifically?” And He says, “Yes, I specifically selected them.” And so what happened? Well, you know what happened, don’t you? Those twelve saw the miracles of Christ, they heard the parables and teachings of Christ, and they saw the personal interactions Christ had; they saw everything.
There is one who sees and stores the spiritual work within his heart and so he grows and gets stronger in faith, as we hear about a beautiful disciple of whom it was said, “The disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26), and we see it in the symbolic pictures and read it written that he “leaned on the Jesus’ bosom” (John 13:23). What is this? How beautiful this is!
But what is on the opposite side of that? One who complains and does not accept anything, and what was the end of that one? His end was that he considered selling his Master. “Judas, did you not see the miracles of Christ?” [Yes,] but they did not enter his heart. “Did you not see His teachings?” Judas would say, “Yes, but they did not enter into my heart.”
“Did you not see His personal interactions and the other good disciples that were with Him?” Judas would say, “I forgot all this.” So then what, Judas? It says, “Satan entered him” (John 13:27).
Listen: “Have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” Do you see this marvelousness!? But He says, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”
In every society a Judas will appear. I will even go as far as to say that among every twelve a Judas will appear. Judas represents betrayal in its entirety, at its peak, but there are some people who are 50% or 40% or 20% or 10% betrayers, and then there are some who are “in the likeness” of Judas. Do not be moved my brethren, do not be moved at all. There is a present God who is Ruler over all.
And this is not something that just happens in our current day and age, but across history there have been monks that fell. One time, during the time of St. John Chrysostom- the Golden Mouth, there was a monk who fell into sin and left the monastery on his own. But St. John Chrysostom knew that this person fell because of weakness and because of insecurity – and may God protect you all, but he fell into the pit of despair.
And so John of the Golden Mouth wrote him a letter which was translated in a small book called, You Will Return with Greater Strength, and truly it was so. He read the letter and he repented with tears, and he returned to his monastery and did not leave until the day he died. This book is available on the market, it was printed by Saint Girgis Church in Sporting (in Cairo). You Will Return with Greater Strength.
And in monastic history, the stories [of victory] are many but there are also many stories of monastic wars. A monk went to the Abbot of his monastery and said, “The brothers, the other monks, are frustrating and bothering me a lot,” so the Abbot asked him, “So then, what do you want?”
The monk said, “Permit me to go and build a cell outside the monastery.” The Abbot asked, “Why?” The monk answered, “So I can live in it by myself and nobody will disturb me.” The Abbot of the monastery answered him and said, “If you cannot withstand the disturbances of the brethren, how will you withstand the warfare of the demons? Amongst your brothers you are protected, but when you go outside he will have you to himself.”
And the attacks of the demons are many. A book can be found in the monastery for St. Theophan the Recluse called Spiritual Wars. It is composed of four sections, where he tells of how Satan deceives people. One time, Satan appeared to a monk and said, “I am Christ. Come and bow down to me.” But the monk was wise and well-aware and he said, “Christ? Christ would not do this. You must be Satan,” and he made the sign of the Cross on him and Satan dispersed.” And add to that an endless number of stories that if we did not have a limit on our time, we could tell of them all night.
The enemy of good is waging war and he makes some to fall. Do you think that for one who has left the world and entered the monastery that this is an easy matter? Not at all! And that is why it is each of your responsibilities to preserve the purity of the monks and nuns, in everything, even in telephone conversations that are needless, even in gift giving that is needless, even in visits that are needless.
I want to tell you that the Church must continuously regulate the monastic life and this does not only apply to our day and age or because we just issued some decisions. The Committee of the Abbots of the Monasteries convened, we sat together, there were 19 of us, and I was with them along with the Secretary of the Holy Synod. And over the course of three hours we had discussions and came up with these 12 decisions, and some are saying, “The Pope came up with these decisions on his own.” But in the Name of the Cross, then what are all the other fathers of the Church busy doing? The Metropolitans, the Bishops, the heads of monasteries, what are they all doing? N
Know this: during the days of Pope Cyril VI- so we are talking about 50 or 60 years ago – the following is written: “He issued a decree for the return of all monks back to their monasteries.” In those days, the monasteries were very few in number, and I will not hide it from you, but there were some very poor monasteries, they had no food. And so the monks would go out and search for food, to different people.
And I remember when I entered the Monastery in 1960, which seems like day before yesterday, and there was an older monk in the Monastery, and here I was, a young man curious to know the older monks. So I asked him, “Abouna, when did you become a monk?” He said he became a monk on such and such a year and it was the year I was born. So you see, this means he was a very old man.
So I asked him, “Describe the Monastery to me when you first became a monk. He gave me an amazing response. He said - and excuse me for putting it this way - he said, “We were a donkey and four monks in the Monastery.” And I thought he was referring to himself so I said, “So you mean you were five monks?”
“No,” he said, “We were a donkey and four monks.” So he was confirming it. “So why did you mention the donkey first?” I asked. He said, “Because he was our livelihood.” “How so,” I asked. He said, “Because he would be the one to go down with each of the four monks to Wadi El Natrun to bring us food so that we may live. And so if something would have happened to the donkey, the four would have died.”
And when did this happen? In the 50s and 60s. So I beg you, please know this: monasteries have lived by prayer.
We have a Committee from the Holy Synod that specializes in the affairs of the monks, monasticism, and the monasteries. This Committee has a prescribed course of action, and on a regular basis many problems come up and we resolve them, The problems that require investigation we investigate, and nobody is aware of any of this, not at all.
And we have a set of steps that we take for the purpose of improving the lives of a monk and nuns. Sometimes we give them a warning, sometimes we give them advice or a spiritual rule to practice within their cell. Sometimes, if the matter demands it, we may transfer him to another monastery and tell him to stay in that other monastery for year. We will then review their case and see if we will return them to their original monastery. And of course, when a monk is removed from his monastery he is being removed from his family, so when he goes somewhere else it is as if he is living there as a guest.
Sometimes a monk may be permanently transferred, depending on the error committed, and sometimes the matter may require a warning and divestiture, or in the case of a priest, being disrobed. And all these are steps, necessary steps to regulate the monastic life or else matters will become loose.
Listen to this, during the days of Pope Shenouda, he made a decision that a monk’s service in a church was to end every seven years. This meant that a monk would serve at a church for seven years and then return to his monastery, and this was applied to many monks.
Decisions, for the regulating of life.
The painful event that recently happened, you must see this event as being a crime. And this crime, as with any other crime in the world, has a victim and a perpetrator. This is something that resides entirely outside the Church. And whether the perpetrator is a single person or ten people, to this day we do not yet know; the investigations are not yet complete.
And the investigations undertaken by the police and the courts of law are criminal investigations, and this is very normal matter. It is true that the strange thing about this case is that the crime happened within a monastery and with an Abbot, but in the end it is a crime and it has a victim - the departed Anba Epiphanis, and it has a perpetrator whom we still do not know. Who will it be? We do not yet know, but they are hard at work in their police investigations.
A crime leads to an investigation, the investigation process produces a file containing all the documents detailing the crime and confessions. All of this is then presented to the courts and the courts hold a court case and pronounce a judgment. It is a crime. This has nothing to do with personal favors or favoritism. Crimes do not know personal favors and it is not to anyone’s advantage to cover up any wrongdoings.
When we issued the current decisions regarding monasticism, we issued them for the purpose of regulating the monastic duties and life, and we will go on to issue more decisions, of course! Because this is necessary. And you as a congregation must also help us in this very much.
Each one of you must know their responsibility, because when you offer something to a monk you may be corrupting the life of that monk, so pay attention. When you go visit a monastery you are going to visit it in order to receive its blessing and the blessing of the prayers there, for the walls of a monastery are saturated with prayers. You are going there to receive a blessing and to increase the depth to your spiritual life. You are not going to the monastery to have a picnic; monasteries or not for picnics. It is one of the blessings of God that monasteries are even open for visits, and that any Egyptian can visit a monastery and sometimes foreigners come to visit as well.
And most of the monasteries continue to be abide by the rules and are remain well regulated, and the decisions we made as well as future decisions that will be made are for the purpose of the complete regulation of the monastic life.
Are there weaknesses? Yes there are weaknesses; weaknesses have occurred. Have some behaved loosely? Yes, there has been looseness and so we must regulate these matters. And a monk lives in the monastery because it is he who chose this life. Please pay attention to this: we did not force anyone to enter into the monastery, this has never happened. And this is the reason why we have halted the acceptance of any new monks as well as the advancement of priestly ranks in the monastery.
Monasteries are oases of prayers. You go there because of the merry-go-round of the world that you live in and are lost in, you go to the monastery so that you can breathe in the scent of spirituality. Merely observing the fathers who live in holiness, this observation fills the soul with joy and blessing. Merely receiving a blessing from a holy father, I feel this deeply within myself. And what I am talking about now nobody can know except one who has experienced it.
Do not forget that in Egypt’s history it was the monasteries that protected the people during times of famine. We read this in the history of the monastery of Saint Anba Shenouda- Head of the Anchorites, how he used to open the doors of the monastery to the people during times of famine so that he could offer them beans. And we hear of Saint Basel the Great in Constantinople, how he opened the monastery, rather, he built cities for those refugees who could find anything to eat.
And do not forget that the laws of genetic inheritance – the “genetics” that the whole world now speaks about, began from within a monastery by Mendel, an Austrian monk. Those of you who know about the laws of inheritance and genes know that the first one to discover this was Mendel, and he was a monk. And add to that many other examples.
Holland. Holland, which they called the “Netherlands,” which means the low-land, in order to increase the surface area of the land they started to dig up areas of the ocean, and in these areas they now plant flowers which they export all over the world. The ones who came up with this idea were monks.
History is filled and joyous [with stories of monks and monasteries], and a person is to be proud that this seed began in Egypt. Russia has more than 1,000 monasteries, Germany has 1,200 monasteries, Italy has 1,500 monasteries, France has 1,500 monasteries, and add to that many other countries.
Outside of Egypt we have approximately 20 monasteries. There are some monasteries that we have acknowledged and others that are still in process. [We also have monasteries in] many other places: South Africa - we have a monastery there, Australia has more than one monastery, America has more than one monastery, in the European nations, Sudan, and Palestine; we have Coptic Egyptian monasteries [in all these countries].And this is why [I ask you], please, do not be moved.
We need to protect the monastic life and the life of monasteries. And do not forget the principle of a Judas in every society, in every society. And when we hear of someone who went to commit suicide or anything like that, all that is because the enemy of good is at work within him. And this is what Judas did, for did not Judas also go and commit suicide? When there is a crime in him because he handed over his master, sold him, and betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver, do you think the conscience will remain silent? No, no.
Know this beloved ones: that in the Church, beginning with the Patriarch, to the Bishops, to the Metropolitans, to the priests, to the servants, to the deacons, to the monks in their monasteries and the nuns in there monasteries, all of us have a conscience and a responsibility towards God, and we are not to be moved by the world’s thinking or politics.
So my dear brothers, and for all those who may be hearing or watching me, beware of adversarial media, whether on printed pages or on social media pages or websites. Beware! You are not to consider everything you read as news or fact and then send it on to others and make a “share;” not all things are to be dealt with this way.
We thank God, we have nothing to hide, and the faith of the Church is protected by the Owner of the Church - Christ. So when somebody comes and says to me, “I am protecting the faith” - is it a commodity that you can buy or stockpile? There is nothing of this sort at all, but the accusations never stop.
I remember that about two weeks ago at the Military Academy’s graduation ceremony, President El Sisi noted a frightful statistical survey result, that within a period of three months Egypt was exposed to 21,000 rumors. Twenty-one thousand rumors in three months! Notice that these rumors were against the country, against the economy, against politics, and against the Church. Be careful, there is a war, a war being waged by the enemy of good, and the Bible teaches us that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).
“The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one,” so beware, pay attention. And this is why we said that the websites of monks living in monasteries, we have given them a one-month period to shut these sites down. After that, any website’s owner will be obvious and this owner will be subject to Ecclesiastical consequences immediately.
And you, from your end, do not feed the rumors and speak to this father and to that mother, and inquire about this thing and want to know the other thing; all this is meaningless. Live your life in purity. Beware of adversarial media in all its forms. Beware of rumors. Beware of the doses of despair that continue to be injected in everything.
The Egyptian Church is one of the strongest Churches of the world and all the clergy in it, are united with one heart, one hand, and one service, and their heart is for the Church, and so do not dare listen to any rumors.
I want to summarize what I have to say in three points:
1. Number one: Be wise. Be wise. This day and age demands wise people, not people who are careless and repeat just any information. Be wise.
2. The second matter is that you be people of prayer. Thank God that we are now in the Fast of the Virgin, so convert all the problems that you hear about into prayers. Pray for this Abouna and for that person, pray for this church and for that service and for that monastery; pray, and “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). God is seeking the righteous.
So the first thing is, be wise, measure every word. Number two is being a person of prayer, and:
3. Number three is: Be confident in God, the Ruler of all. He is the One leading His church. Yes, He uses us, but He is the Owner of all things, He is the One that guides His Church. And do not pollute your mind or your thoughts, or your eyes or your ears, with meaningless words.
For the fifth time I will repeat this portion of Scripture:
““Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man.””
The church that does the words of Christ is a wise church. A monk that does according to the words of Christ is a wise Monk.
He “built his house on the rock” - it does not say, “He built his house on Facebook,” nor did he build his house on meaningless rumors. “The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock” -because its foundation was set on the Rock.
May Christ keep all of you and keep the Egyptian Church- one of Egypt’s foundations. And may He keep our monasteries and their continually raised prayers for Egypt and for all the world.
To God be all the glory and honor from now and unto eternity, amen.
The Monastic Life
H.H. Pope Tawadros II – Weekly Wednesday Sermon
Wednesday August 8, 2018
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, amen. May His grace and mercy rest upon us, from now and unto eternity, amen.
By the grace of Christ, today I will read a portion of Scripture from the Gospel of our teacher St. Matthew Chapter 7, beginning with verse 22.
22 ““Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
24 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:
25 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”” (NKJV Matthew 7:22-25)
I will read this portion once more so you may pay attention to each word it says, and this is Jesus Christ speaking. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name (so they were speaking the prophecies), cast out demons in Your name (casting out demons – that’s miracles), and done many wonders (that is powers, miracles, amazing things) in Your name?’”
“And then I will declare to them” - what will you say them? “I never knew you.”
Can you imagine that? A person who continues to speak in the name of Christ, casting out demons, but in the end He declares to him, “I knew you not! Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” – the sayings of Christ.
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock”– and whenever we see the word ‘rock’ in the Bible it reminds us of Christ, because Christ is the Rock. So he “built his house on the rock” means that he built it on Christ; on the foundation of this faith.
“And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.” Storms blew against this house but it did not fall, why? Because its foundation was on the rock.
The grace of God the Father be with us all, amen.
...And as we celebrate the Fast of our Mother the Virgin Mary amidst the events going on in the Church today we remember that our Mother the Virgin is a mother for all those who are chaste. And we remember our Mother the Virgin’s image, her life, and her personality as being the curriculum upon which the monastic life was founded.
And when we review the pages of the history of Egyptian Copticism with its extensive history that has unfolded over centuries and centuries, we find that since the days of St. Mark the Apostle and his founding of the Alexandrian School of Divinity - which dominated the Christian world in knowledge of Divinity and in the exposition of the Holy Bible Scriptures - that throughout the history of our Church, heroes and giants have appeared - in Divinity, in writings, in patristics, and in the ecclesiastical life, and have handed us a rich inheritance.
But this [age of illumination] coincided with the civilizations of martyrdom- so the Church did not only have individuals of high faith statures, but it also had statures of martyrs.
Monasticism was at its peak during the days of Nero and the Emperors and Caesars who were before and after him, and the matter did not come to a halt until the arrival of Constantine the Great and his giving the Edict of Milan in the year 313 A.D., making Christianity a legal religion throughout the Roman Empire. And that is when the Church began to relax.
But in their zealousness over their spiritual life, the Copts feared that this relaxation would lose them the power of faith, and so after the first martyrdom - the martyrdom of blood, and that is why they call it the “red martyrdom” - they looked for another way of martyrdom and that is when the monasticism period began, and this way of life became an example of people who dedicate themselves to live the Christian life according to the precepts of the Bible.
And the world’s first monk appeared in Egypt. He was from Beni Suef, from the village of Karn El Aroos, and his name was Saint Anthony the Great. He is the father of all monks. And as Egyptians, we are proud that it was Saint Anthony who founded monasticism, which spread out from Egypt and throughout the whole world. And I want to tell you that throughout the world there are thousands and thousands of monasteries.
Monastic life, which originated in Egypt, did not only appear in one place in Egypt but since the 3rd and 4th Centuries, it appeared in many different places throughout Egypt. We hear of Saint Macarius the Great, and we hear of Saint Pachomius- father of Cenobiticism (monks living together), and we hear of Saint Pasantoas from the founding Wilderness of the south, near the towns of Qena and Naqada, and we hear of Saint Anba Paula- the first of the pilgrims, and we hear of their students, and students, and students, and of the spreading of the monastic life.
I want you to know that because of the proliferation of monasteries in the history of Egypt, they ran out of names to call them, so they used to name them by numbers; by the number of kilometers of their distance from the City of Alexandria. For example, they would say, the Ninth Monastery, which means it was 9 kilometers away from Alexandria, or the Twentieth Monastery, which meant it was 20 kilometers away. And if you were to look at the old maps of the Desert of Egypt, you would find tens and maybe hundreds of names of monasteries that had multiplied throughout Egypt.
It is sufficient for you to know my beloveds, that for Christianity and Egypt, the area of Wadi El Natrun was an area considered to be her university in spirituality, and that is why it was called the “Scetes,” because that word means “place of aestheticism.”
It is like when someone wants to specialize in an area of medicine and they ask, “What is the best university in the world that teaches this specialization?” They would tell him, “Such and such a place,” and he would then go to that place and feel very proud that he belongs to that university.
And so the area of Wadi El Natrun, as well as the area of the Qualalee (cells of the monks) and the area of Kilya, are all historical places which can still be found to this day and are places that became centers for aestheticism for the aesthetic life. And tens of thousands of saints have been born out of these places. Do not forget this history.
And so the Egyptian and Coptic monasteries became focal point for the world, for they became places of spiritual experience and universities for living the life of the Bible, and people would come from the furthermost parts in the world. And if you were to read in the history of monasticism you would see that people came from all over the world to observe the life of these first Fathers.
And back then there were no walls but rather, a monastery was just an area of dispersed cells. And of course back then there was no electricity, so every aesthetic and every monk would have a lit candle. So when St. John Chrysostom came to Egypt and visited these blessed wildernesses filled with monks and saw the beauty that was in this pitch black wilderness, and yet they live there – in the caves and in the most hidden places of the world - that is when he made his eternal statement: “The sky with all its stars is not as beautiful as the Wilderness of Egypt with all its ascetics.”
Do not dare to think that I am speaking of something that is old and gone, but it is something that is old and continues to be handed down from generation, to generation, to generation, until our current generation, and will also be handed down to future generations.
I want you to know that the monastic life is abundant has been abundant in Egypt since the 3rd and 4th Centuries A.D., and until today and until the coming of Christ, God willing.
In the beginning, monasticism was just individual cells, as it was with Saint Anthony, and then three or four students would gather around him and would learn from him, then some of those would go on and continue in the same way.
And so the monasticism of Palestine came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Syria came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Iraq came from Egypt, and the monasticism of Ireland - up there in the north - came from Egypt. And Coptic monks went to Germany, to North Africa, and to many other places, and so monasticism spread, and the spirit of monasticism was spread.
And generation handed it to generation, and when you read in monastic books they say, “A brother asked an elder,” meaning that a student was asking an older person and learning from him. And so monasticism became an understanding where fathers and elders lived and experienced holiness, and had students who were taught at their hands. And this ratio is important- that the monastery neither be full of old, elders and neither is it to be full of just young people, but this ratio must be kept in balance, or in relative balance, so that generation can hand it to generation.
And the life of monks came to have a certain kind of order, because some people may think, “What do monks even do?” So beloved one, do not look to the weaknesses of individuals. If one errs, if two err, if 10 err, this is not the issue, but the essence [of monasticism] itself is a pure essence, and the order itself is an order that has been tested across the centuries.
So what does a monk do? A third of his time is spent in prayer, a third of his time is for reading and studying, and a third of his time is for working- mostly handiwork; work done by hand. I will say it again: this is how we lived in the monastery: an hour of prayer, an hour of reading, an hour of work.
And in the monastery, when they say “one hour” they really mean three hours. Why three hours? Because this is in accordance with the prayers of the Book of Hours (the Agpeya). For example, The Prayer of the First Hour is prayed at 6 A.M., The Third is prayed at 9 A.M., The Sixth is prayed at noon, and so three hours, three hours, three hours - the day is thus divided into three-hour segments.
And so an hour means approximately three hours: three hours in which we pray the prayer of praises, then we are to have three hours of reading and studying - and a long time ago they would scribe because there were no printing presses. So one would sit and scribe from the Bible, and to scribe an entire Bible would take 30 years, or they would scribe one of the writings of the Fathers; a monk would spend years doing this.
And during the days of Pope Cyril VI, when he was a monk, also during the days of Pope Shenouda and during the days of many other Fathers, you would hear them say, “I completed Saint Isaiah.” What do you mean you completed Isaiah? It means, “I got the writings of the sayings of Saint Isaiah and scribed them with my own handwriting.” And until today we continue to do this in our monasteries, and many monks, despite printing presses and the progress in printing, scribe some of the writings or translate some of the writings - a habit.
And so life becomes prayer, reading, and work. And because a long time ago handiwork was limited, they would mostly weave palm branches into baskets and sell them, so they could make money and make a living.
But just as everything has progressed, so the works have also progressed, and different monasteries are given to different works and have different knowledge and experience. For example, a monk that was a doctor, well he can now run a clinic or he can be responsible for caring for the health of the fathers. Or a monk who is an engineer, he can help in matters of building. Or a monk that was in the field of agriculture, he can manage matters pertaining to land development. Or a monk who was in the field of law, he can be in charge of legal matters, and add to that many other examples and applications.
And so there developed a balance and a society, but life within the monastery was founded upon three vows: the first vow is that a monk in Egyptian monasticism - and we call it the “monasticism of the coffin” because he lays down on the floor and we cover him with a veil. This veil represents a coffin. He has died.
Please beloved ones, because these days there are a lot of all people and everyone is saying something different, and most of what is being said is not true and everybody is saying a different story, so I beg you, pay attention and I will repeat it to you again: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
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Yes, there are people who make mistakes, of course. And I want to tell you that this matter of wrongdoing is because the monastic life is not an easy life; not everyone can live the monastic life. And many times a young person, whether a young man or a young woman will come to me and say, “I want to become a monk or a nun,” and I will say to them, “Beloved one, monasticism does not suit you.” And this is an experience that all priests have had and have experienced with their children: “You, my daughter, being a nun is not suited for you.”
Monasticism is a very difficult life and not everybody is able to live it, and so it demands a certain psyche and a certain spiritual stature. I do not enter the monastery to begin; I enter the monastery to continue in a spiritual life that I have already begun.
I do not enter the monastery, leave everything, and then go back to searching for something, no. And so the first vow is the vow of poverty. They dress us in a galabia-cloak and give us a mers, which is a provision, and tell us that they will give us according to our needs, only we must just live our lives.
And where do the provisions for the needs inside the monastery come from? They come from your donations that you give to the monastery. And so the monastery buys cloth to outfit and bless the fathers, and in this way you contribute to the purity of the monastic life, and so you must preserve it. And since the first vow is poverty, you are not to do anything that would break the poverty a monk is supposed to live in.
The second thing is obedience, and obedience means the renunciation of one’s own personal will. In the monastery they call it one’s “personal inclinations;” you do not just do whatever you want to do, there are rules, there is an order, or else things would be out of control.
If you have accepted to enter the monastery then you have accepted to place yourself under the rules of the monastery, and if you break the rules of the monastery then you do not deserve to remain inside the monastery. It is a very obvious matter.
First is voluntary poverty, second is obedience, and third is chastity, and what is meant by chastity is to be completely free in order to live spiritual life with God. In the monastery we say, in the spiritual sense, “Christ is the bridegroom of my soul,” and morning, noon, and night, the life of a monk is only concerned with thinking of how he will meet Christ.
In the Coptic and Greek languages we say, “mono-KHOS,” meaning, “Him alone,” but in the Arabic language its meaning is even more beautiful, because the word ‘ra-heb’ (monk in Arabic) means ‘a person who desires the face of God,’ ‘a person who has placed the Lord continually before him.’ “I have set the Lord always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16:8).
Voluntary poverty, obedience, and chastity, and any breaking of any of these three vows is the breaking of [one’s] monasticism. And of course our monasteries have hundreds of monks living in peace and abiding by the rules and order, and me personally, when I go to a monastery, whether I am visiting a monastery or returning to the monastery I graduated from and I meet with some of the elder fathers, I am at the peak of joy, and I search for a word that the father may speak to me that I may learn something from it.
Beloved ones, please know the great value of Coptic monasteries to our Egyptian lives and their value for Egypt. Monasteries are prayer oases that pray for the entire world and for the land itself, and we can liken these continuous prayers of the monasteries as walls guarding the boundaries of Egypt.
And because these monasteries are located all over the place - you go to the Western desert you find some, you go to the Eastern desert you find them, you go to the Wadi in the South and you find them – so it is as if the pure and continuous prayers coming from these fathers [are as a boundary of protection].
A monk’s day begins at 4 A.M. A monk’s day starts with two or more hours of prayer, and some evenings this is increased, and then there are prayers of the Liturgy, and then there are his personal prayers. And one of the beautiful things is when you find a monk walking in the desert with his mouth moving and you ask, “Is this abouna talking to himself?” No, he is walking and reciting the Psalms; he is reciting all the Psalms he has memorized.
And even a father working in the kitchen, the whole time he is preparing the food he is reciting Psalms, and I think you have all had this experience when you have gone to the monastery and are eating a plate of beans, you feel like these beans are different. You may even ask, “Where do they get these beans from?” It is because they are prepared by prayer and in prayer, no matter how simple the food is.
I personally never used to eat bisara at all, it was just something I did not like, but the first thing they asked of me when I went to the monastery and was put in charge of the kitchen was to prepare bisara. And since of course if we are to do something we are to do it how? Ad so that is what happened, you see? This is the life of simplicity and monks have [always] lived and live this way, and our monasteries continue to abide in well-being
Do not dare that you be moved. “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them” - and this also applies to those who live in the wilderness, “I will liken him to a wise man” – and so he who does not do so them means he is not wise. It is very clear.
He “built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew” – storms; from every side somebody saying something different, and the newspapers putting out meaningless commentaries, “and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” – on Christ.
But as humans, we are still under human weakness. And we do not have to go far, we can go to Christ and ask Him, “Jesus, how many disciples did You choose?” He will say, “I chose Peter, and James, and John, and Mathew, and Bartholomew, and Judas, and Thaddeus,” [and so on].
“So twelve? And You selected them specifically?” And He says, “Yes, I specifically selected them.” And so what happened? Well, you know what happened, don’t you? Those twelve saw the miracles of Christ, they heard the parables and teachings of Christ, and they saw the personal interactions Christ had; they saw everything.
There is one who sees and stores the spiritual work within his heart and so he grows and gets stronger in faith, as we hear about a beautiful disciple of whom it was said, “The disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26), and we see it in the symbolic pictures and read it written that he “leaned on the Jesus’ bosom” (John 13:23). What is this? How beautiful this is!
But what is on the opposite side of that? One who complains and does not accept anything, and what was the end of that one? His end was that he considered selling his Master. “Judas, did you not see the miracles of Christ?” [Yes,] but they did not enter his heart. “Did you not see His teachings?” Judas would say, “Yes, but they did not enter into my heart.”
“Did you not see His personal interactions and the other good disciples that were with Him?” Judas would say, “I forgot all this.” So then what, Judas? It says, “Satan entered him” (John 13:27).
Listen: “Have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” Do you see this marvelousness!? But He says, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”
In every society a Judas will appear. I will even go as far as to say that among every twelve a Judas will appear. Judas represents betrayal in its entirety, at its peak, but there are some people who are 50% or 40% or 20% or 10% betrayers, and then there are some who are “in the likeness” of Judas. Do not be moved my brethren, do not be moved at all. There is a present God who is Ruler over all.
And this is not something that just happens in our current day and age, but across history there have been monks that fell. One time, during the time of St. John Chrysostom- the Golden Mouth, there was a monk who fell into sin and left the monastery on his own. But St. John Chrysostom knew that this person fell because of weakness and because of insecurity – and may God protect you all, but he fell into the pit of despair.
And so John of the Golden Mouth wrote him a letter which was translated in a small book called, You Will Return with Greater Strength, and truly it was so. He read the letter and he repented with tears, and he returned to his monastery and did not leave until the day he died. This book is available on the market, it was printed by Saint Girgis Church in Sporting (in Cairo). You Will Return with Greater Strength.
And in monastic history, the stories [of victory] are many but there are also many stories of monastic wars. A monk went to the Abbot of his monastery and said, “The brothers, the other monks, are frustrating and bothering me a lot,” so the Abbot asked him, “So then, what do you want?”
The monk said, “Permit me to go and build a cell outside the monastery.” The Abbot asked, “Why?” The monk answered, “So I can live in it by myself and nobody will disturb me.” The Abbot of the monastery answered him and said, “If you cannot withstand the disturbances of the brethren, how will you withstand the warfare of the demons? Amongst your brothers you are protected, but when you go outside he will have you to himself.”
And the attacks of the demons are many. A book can be found in the monastery for St. Theophan the Recluse called Spiritual Wars. It is composed of four sections, where he tells of how Satan deceives people. One time, Satan appeared to a monk and said, “I am Christ. Come and bow down to me.” But the monk was wise and well-aware and he said, “Christ? Christ would not do this. You must be Satan,” and he made the sign of the Cross on him and Satan dispersed.” And add to that an endless number of stories that if we did not have a limit on our time, we could tell of them all night.
The enemy of good is waging war and he makes some to fall. Do you think that for one who has left the world and entered the monastery that this is an easy matter? Not at all! And that is why it is each of your responsibilities to preserve the purity of the monks and nuns, in everything, even in telephone conversations that are needless, even in gift giving that is needless, even in visits that are needless.
I want to tell you that the Church must continuously regulate the monastic life and this does not only apply to our day and age or because we just issued some decisions. The Committee of the Abbots of the Monasteries convened, we sat together, there were 19 of us, and I was with them along with the Secretary of the Holy Synod. And over the course of three hours we had discussions and came up with these 12 decisions, and some are saying, “The Pope came up with these decisions on his own.” But in the Name of the Cross, then what are all the other fathers of the Church busy doing? The Metropolitans, the Bishops, the heads of monasteries, what are they all doing? N
Know this: during the days of Pope Cyril VI- so we are talking about 50 or 60 years ago – the following is written: “He issued a decree for the return of all monks back to their monasteries.” In those days, the monasteries were very few in number, and I will not hide it from you, but there were some very poor monasteries, they had no food. And so the monks would go out and search for food, to different people.
And I remember when I entered the Monastery in 1960, which seems like day before yesterday, and there was an older monk in the Monastery, and here I was, a young man curious to know the older monks. So I asked him, “Abouna, when did you become a monk?” He said he became a monk on such and such a year and it was the year I was born. So you see, this means he was a very old man.
So I asked him, “Describe the Monastery to me when you first became a monk. He gave me an amazing response. He said - and excuse me for putting it this way - he said, “We were a donkey and four monks in the Monastery.” And I thought he was referring to himself so I said, “So you mean you were five monks?”
“No,” he said, “We were a donkey and four monks.” So he was confirming it. “So why did you mention the donkey first?” I asked. He said, “Because he was our livelihood.” “How so,” I asked. He said, “Because he would be the one to go down with each of the four monks to Wadi El Natrun to bring us food so that we may live. And so if something would have happened to the donkey, the four would have died.”
And when did this happen? In the 50s and 60s. So I beg you, please know this: monasteries have lived by prayer.
We have a Committee from the Holy Synod that specializes in the affairs of the monks, monasticism, and the monasteries. This Committee has a prescribed course of action, and on a regular basis many problems come up and we resolve them, The problems that require investigation we investigate, and nobody is aware of any of this, not at all.
And we have a set of steps that we take for the purpose of improving the lives of a monk and nuns. Sometimes we give them a warning, sometimes we give them advice or a spiritual rule to practice within their cell. Sometimes, if the matter demands it, we may transfer him to another monastery and tell him to stay in that other monastery for year. We will then review their case and see if we will return them to their original monastery. And of course, when a monk is removed from his monastery he is being removed from his family, so when he goes somewhere else it is as if he is living there as a guest.
Sometimes a monk may be permanently transferred, depending on the error committed, and sometimes the matter may require a warning and divestiture, or in the case of a priest, being disrobed. And all these are steps, necessary steps to regulate the monastic life or else matters will become loose.
Listen to this, during the days of Pope Shenouda, he made a decision that a monk’s service in a church was to end every seven years. This meant that a monk would serve at a church for seven years and then return to his monastery, and this was applied to many monks.
Decisions, for the regulating of life.
The painful event that recently happened, you must see this event as being a crime. And this crime, as with any other crime in the world, has a victim and a perpetrator. This is something that resides entirely outside the Church. And whether the perpetrator is a single person or ten people, to this day we do not yet know; the investigations are not yet complete.
And the investigations undertaken by the police and the courts of law are criminal investigations, and this is very normal matter. It is true that the strange thing about this case is that the crime happened within a monastery and with an Abbot, but in the end it is a crime and it has a victim - the departed Anba Epiphanis, and it has a perpetrator whom we still do not know. Who will it be? We do not yet know, but they are hard at work in their police investigations.
A crime leads to an investigation, the investigation process produces a file containing all the documents detailing the crime and confessions. All of this is then presented to the courts and the courts hold a court case and pronounce a judgment. It is a crime. This has nothing to do with personal favors or favoritism. Crimes do not know personal favors and it is not to anyone’s advantage to cover up any wrongdoings.
When we issued the current decisions regarding monasticism, we issued them for the purpose of regulating the monastic duties and life, and we will go on to issue more decisions, of course! Because this is necessary. And you as a congregation must also help us in this very much.
Each one of you must know their responsibility, because when you offer something to a monk you may be corrupting the life of that monk, so pay attention. When you go visit a monastery you are going to visit it in order to receive its blessing and the blessing of the prayers there, for the walls of a monastery are saturated with prayers. You are going there to receive a blessing and to increase the depth to your spiritual life. You are not going to the monastery to have a picnic; monasteries or not for picnics. It is one of the blessings of God that monasteries are even open for visits, and that any Egyptian can visit a monastery and sometimes foreigners come to visit as well.
And most of the monasteries continue to be abide by the rules and are remain well regulated, and the decisions we made as well as future decisions that will be made are for the purpose of the complete regulation of the monastic life.
Are there weaknesses? Yes there are weaknesses; weaknesses have occurred. Have some behaved loosely? Yes, there has been looseness and so we must regulate these matters. And a monk lives in the monastery because it is he who chose this life. Please pay attention to this: we did not force anyone to enter into the monastery, this has never happened. And this is the reason why we have halted the acceptance of any new monks as well as the advancement of priestly ranks in the monastery.
Monasteries are oases of prayers. You go there because of the merry-go-round of the world that you live in and are lost in, you go to the monastery so that you can breathe in the scent of spirituality. Merely observing the fathers who live in holiness, this observation fills the soul with joy and blessing. Merely receiving a blessing from a holy father, I feel this deeply within myself. And what I am talking about now nobody can know except one who has experienced it.
Do not forget that in Egypt’s history it was the monasteries that protected the people during times of famine. We read this in the history of the monastery of Saint Anba Shenouda- Head of the Anchorites, how he used to open the doors of the monastery to the people during times of famine so that he could offer them beans. And we hear of Saint Basel the Great in Constantinople, how he opened the monastery, rather, he built cities for those refugees who could find anything to eat.
And do not forget that the laws of genetic inheritance – the “genetics” that the whole world now speaks about, began from within a monastery by Mendel, an Austrian monk. Those of you who know about the laws of inheritance and genes know that the first one to discover this was Mendel, and he was a monk. And add to that many other examples.
Holland. Holland, which they called the “Netherlands,” which means the low-land, in order to increase the surface area of the land they started to dig up areas of the ocean, and in these areas they now plant flowers which they export all over the world. The ones who came up with this idea were monks.
History is filled and joyous [with stories of monks and monasteries], and a person is to be proud that this seed began in Egypt. Russia has more than 1,000 monasteries, Germany has 1,200 monasteries, Italy has 1,500 monasteries, France has 1,500 monasteries, and add to that many other countries.
Outside of Egypt we have approximately 20 monasteries. There are some monasteries that we have acknowledged and others that are still in process. [We also have monasteries in] many other places: South Africa - we have a monastery there, Australia has more than one monastery, America has more than one monastery, in the European nations, Sudan, and Palestine; we have Coptic Egyptian monasteries [in all these countries].And this is why [I ask you], please, do not be moved.
We need to protect the monastic life and the life of monasteries. And do not forget the principle of a Judas in every society, in every society. And when we hear of someone who went to commit suicide or anything like that, all that is because the enemy of good is at work within him. And this is what Judas did, for did not Judas also go and commit suicide? When there is a crime in him because he handed over his master, sold him, and betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver, do you think the conscience will remain silent? No, no.
Know this beloved ones: that in the Church, beginning with the Patriarch, to the Bishops, to the Metropolitans, to the priests, to the servants, to the deacons, to the monks in their monasteries and the nuns in there monasteries, all of us have a conscience and a responsibility towards God, and we are not to be moved by the world’s thinking or politics.
So my dear brothers, and for all those who may be hearing or watching me, beware of adversarial media, whether on printed pages or on social media pages or websites. Beware! You are not to consider everything you read as news or fact and then send it on to others and make a “share;” not all things are to be dealt with this way.
We thank God, we have nothing to hide, and the faith of the Church is protected by the Owner of the Church - Christ. So when somebody comes and says to me, “I am protecting the faith” - is it a commodity that you can buy or stockpile? There is nothing of this sort at all, but the accusations never stop.
I remember that about two weeks ago at the Military Academy’s graduation ceremony, President El Sisi noted a frightful statistical survey result, that within a period of three months Egypt was exposed to 21,000 rumors. Twenty-one thousand rumors in three months! Notice that these rumors were against the country, against the economy, against politics, and against the Church. Be careful, there is a war, a war being waged by the enemy of good, and the Bible teaches us that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).
“The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one,” so beware, pay attention. And this is why we said that the websites of monks living in monasteries, we have given them a one-month period to shut these sites down. After that, any website’s owner will be obvious and this owner will be subject to Ecclesiastical consequences immediately.
And you, from your end, do not feed the rumors and speak to this father and to that mother, and inquire about this thing and want to know the other thing; all this is meaningless. Live your life in purity. Beware of adversarial media in all its forms. Beware of rumors. Beware of the doses of despair that continue to be injected in everything.
The Egyptian Church is one of the strongest Churches of the world and all the clergy in it, are united with one heart, one hand, and one service, and their heart is for the Church, and so do not dare listen to any rumors.
I want to summarize what I have to say in three points:
1. Number one: Be wise. Be wise. This day and age demands wise people, not people who are careless and repeat just any information. Be wise.
2. The second matter is that you be people of prayer. Thank God that we are now in the Fast of the Virgin, so convert all the problems that you hear about into prayers. Pray for this Abouna and for that person, pray for this church and for that service and for that monastery; pray, and “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). God is seeking the righteous.
So the first thing is, be wise, measure every word. Number two is being a person of prayer, and:
3. Number three is: Be confident in God, the Ruler of all. He is the One leading His church. Yes, He uses us, but He is the Owner of all things, He is the One that guides His Church. And do not pollute your mind or your thoughts, or your eyes or your ears, with meaningless words.
For the fifth time I will repeat this portion of Scripture:
““Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man.””
The church that does the words of Christ is a wise church. A monk that does according to the words of Christ is a wise Monk.
He “built his house on the rock” - it does not say, “He built his house on Facebook,” nor did he build his house on meaningless rumors. “The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock” -because its foundation was set on the Rock.
May Christ keep all of you and keep the Egyptian Church- one of Egypt’s foundations. And may He keep our monasteries and their continually raised prayers for Egypt and for all the world.
To God be all the glory and honor from now and unto eternity, amen.
2018-08-09
2018-08-14
لثلاثاء ١٤ أغسطس ٢٠١٨ م .. ٨ مسرى ١٧٣٤ ش
أب وراع .. قداسة البابا يفتقد أسرة الراهب المجرد
أجرى قداسة البابا إتصالًا تليفونيًا بوالدة وائل سعد تاوضروس (الراهب
إشعياء المقاري سابقًا) حيث اطمأن عليها وأكد لها على حرصه واهتمامه بكل
احوالها.
ومن جانبها أعربت "الأم" عن امتنانها لقداسة البابا للفتة الأبوية الكريمة التي قدمها بإتصاله بها والاطمئنان عليها.
ومن جانبها أعربت "الأم" عن امتنانها لقداسة البابا للفتة الأبوية الكريمة التي قدمها بإتصاله بها والاطمئنان عليها.
وفي السياق ذاته التقى قداسة البابا بشقيق الراهب السابق وهو راهب بأحد أديرتنا بمنطقة الصعيد.
يذكر أن اللجنة المجمعية لشئون الرهبنة والأديرة قد أصدرت قرارًا صَدَّق
عليه قداسة البابا يوم ٥ أغسطس الجاري بتجريد الراهب إشعياء المقاري وعودته
الى اسمه العلماني وهو وائل سعد تاوضروس مع حَثِّه على التوبة وإصلاح
حياته من أجل خلاصه وأبديته.
2018-08-16
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| Source: "Coptic Orthodox Church Spokesperson", Facebook |
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