For all sad words of tongue and pen;
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been’.

Thus wrote John Greenleaf Whittier, to which Bret Harte replied:

If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, ‘It might have been’,
More sad are these we daily see;
‘It is but hadn’t ought to be!’

It is interesting to contemplate on what might have been. Often a person will day-dream of opportunities lost and paradise averted. Much useful time can frittered away in this manner, and there are cases of whole lives destroyed because of an obsession with ‘what might have been’.

We would be better served contemplating not on the good things we might have had, but on the bad things that might have come upon us. As the famous 19th century poet said upon seeing someone in a terrible state, “But for the grace of God, there goes Robert Barrett Browning.”

This principle applies on a larger scale as well. Consider for example, what the Christian Church today mught have been like had Arius and his heresy won the day back in the 4th century AD. Imagine us belonging today to the Coptic Arian Church, instead of the Coptic Orthodox Church. What might have happened?

To begin with, I don’t believe we would have had a Church by the 21st century. Arius, you will recall, denied the divinity of Christ, claiming Him to have been a mere man who was simply imbued with a larger dose than usual of the power of God. Thus, the One who died on the Cross was not God, but a man like us. What difference does it make?

Quite a lot! This mystery of God made man is one of the main engines that drives the faith of the Christian. That the Creator of all the cosmos should so humble Himself as to take vulnerable flesh is astonishing; astounding; mind-blowing! It sets Christianity apart from all mere ‘philosophies’ which tend to be theoretical and academic in nature, for this is a reality, Truth embodied and enacted. It sets Christianity apart from other religions, for none has the granduer and vision of this mystery.

What increases the distance between Christianity and other beliefs is the central role of love. For the Incarnation of Christ was not a party trick, it was no sign intended merely to astound and entertain, it was an act of unimaginable love. If love gives, then the Incarnation was the giving to end all givings. One cannot imagine any expression of love greater than this one. Yet, all of that falls by the wayside if Christ is not God.

It’s like the engine falling out of the car. Sure, sheer momentum will keep it rolling for some time, but sooner or later it must come to a stop, with no hope of moving again, until an engine is restored. The Christian faith, I think, would have dwindled gradually until it petered out altogether.

Can you imagine the glee of the Muslim who finds an ally in the Arian, for both belief systems deny the divinity of Christ and proclaim Him only to be a particularly good man. Can you imagine how easy it would have been for Arians to slip smoothly into Islam, with its denial of a Holy Trinity? An Arian Christianity would have been one without its main motivation to resist the innovations of Islam, and who knows what the history of the world might have been?

And if the Church had survived till now, can you imagine an Arian Church trying desperately to face the challenges of 21st century Western society, standing upon this weakened and empty base? Instead of a living, risen Saviour, a Saviour who united us with God and who dwells in us daily, we would have only a ‘very good man’ for our inspiriation. We would not have seen the face of God made flesh. We could not say that God had dwelt among us, so that by His sacrifice on the Cross, and His daily sacrifice on the altar, He dwells not only among us, but inside us, in our very bones and muscles.

The Christian Church had a very close shave back then, in the 4th century. There was a time when Pope Athanasius was warned that he stood alone against this whole world, to which he offered his own famous reply:

“One with God is the majority.”

We owe him a deep, deep debt of gratitude.

Fr Ant
www.stbishoy.org.au

“He just drives me crazy! When is he going to wake up to himself?!”

Unfortunately, priests hear words like these on an all too regular basis. There is a lovely little story His Holiness Pope Shenouda tells of a man who came to him to confess (before he was Pope). The man launches in to a lecture about So-and-so and all the horrible things he has done, how he is a very bad person, and how frustrated and angry he has made him. HH listens patiently, and at the end, the confessor asks HH to pray the absolution for him. “Sorry,” HH replies, “I can’t do that. You haven’t confessed any of your sins for me to absolve. But if you would like to bring So-and-so, I will happily pray the absolution for him, since you have confessed all his sins for him!”

I always wonder how it is that people maintain such an optimistic hope that they will be able to change other people. Why else would you waste your time or your breath complaining? Wives believe, day after day, that if only they continue to complain about the messy sink, one day, their husbands will suddenly stop in their tracks and say, “Gosh, you’re right! How thoughtless of me! I’ll just turn this dial here in my side to the NEAT setting, and from now on I will always immediately wash up after myself.” And the wife will reply, “Thank you dear. I knew that nagging for thirty-five years would do the job.”

It just doesn’t work that way.

Here’s the deal: there is only one person that can change an annoying, frustrating, difficult person for the better: Himself or herself.

I can’t say it with 100% certainty, but I am pretty sure on this point. I have seen hundreds of people try to change their loved ones, with a pretty solid failure rate. Just think about it from the other side of the equation - has anyone managed to change you simply by complaining about you? What’s your first reaction when someone points out your failings? Is it “Oh gee, I am so glad you pointed that out to me! What a silly duffer I’ve been.”? Or is it more like, “Oh yeah, well what about you, hey? You do this that and the other. How dare you criticise me?!”

No, for most of the human race, we do not react well to criticism. What is needed is insight, liberally sprinkled with good old fashioned humilityand topped with a hearty dose of grace.

The insight is the ability to honestly recognise when we have been a pain to others. Some people are over sensitive in this area. They will read even the slightest little facial expression as implying displeasure and respond with copious apologies and offers to make it up again. But then there are others who have hides like a rhinocerus - they don’t get it even if you shout it in their faces.

Having recognised and understood the problem, one finds it extremely difficult to actually do something about it. We behave the way we do often because that is how we are comfortable. To change one’s behaviour, to alter a habit, is no easy task. It requires oodles of humility just to admit that change is needed, and to put the needs of others before one’s own needs. Yes, my family’s need to live in their own home without wearing gas masks should come before my own need not to walk three meters to the washing basket to dispose of my smelly socks. It takes humility to think that way.

And having decided to make the change, one sometimes meets with an impenetrable barrier of inertia. It is so hard to change!

I feel like giving up.
I’ve tried everything without success.
His standards are just too high.
Why can’t she accept me the way I am?
I feel there is no hope.
I am getting so tired of this.

Sound familiar? These are the words of one who tries to change all on their own. It usually fails. This is where the grace of God comes in. He is able to do that which we cannot…

“My grace is sufficient for you,
For My strength is made perfect in weakness” - 2Corinthians 12:9

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” - Phillipians 4:13

“Do not rejoice over me, my enemy,
For when I fall, I shall surely rise,
When I sit in darkness,
The Lord shall be a light to me.” Micah 7:8

Change is never easy. In CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he has the detestable Edmund transform into a dragon because of his selfishness and greed. Eventually, the Christ figure, Aslan the Lion, meets him by a pool and asks him if he would like to be a human again. Of course, by this stage, Edmund is so lonely and miserable that he has finally understood what a monster he’d been to his friends, so he agrees. All he has to do, he is told, is to take off his dragon skin. Happily, he peels it off, much like a snake shedding an old skin, only to find another dragon skin underneath. This too he sheds, and another, and another of the seemingly endless layers of dragon that enfold him. Finally, Aslan asks if he would like some help, which he accepts. But much to his consternation, the Lion digs His claws deep, deep into Edmund’s flesh and rips… In agony, Edmund cries out, but it is soon over, and he looks down upon himself to find himself wonderfully human once more.

God is more than willing to help me with the difficult changes in myself that I need to carry out. But first, I have to recognise and humbly acknowledge the trouble I cause to others. It is only then, when I come before Him in genuine humility, seeking His grace, and willing to accept the consequences, that I can truly change.

The choice is mine … no one else’s.

Fr Ant

Who Is God?

Our lives as Christians are meant to be built upon a personal relationship with God. Our Lord Jesus came down to earth to reveal to us the nature and personality of God in a way we could accept, and to dwell among us without destroying us with His unbearable glory. Daily we pray to Him. We strive to run our lives according to His commands and we seek to do that which pleases Him. Ask anyone in church, even the naughtiest of kids, “Do you love God?” and with even hesitating, a confident “yes!” will be the response.

Yet, who is the God we love? St Augustine repeatedly asks this question in his Confessions, giving some beautiful answers, but I am trapped in the 21st century, in the age of logic and reason and the scientific method. Can these tell me anything about God?

I think so. Let’s see how far it can take us…

I mentioned in a comment following a recent post that the theory of a Big Bang forces the 21st century seeker for truth to admit there must have been a beginning to the universe. Some have begun to look for ways around this, but to my mind (and that of many others, including atheists) none of the attempts are worth taking seriously. If you must have a beginning, then you must have a beginner, a First Cause that is itself without a cause. Thus, cosmology plus a little basic logic leads to the conclusion that the uncaused First Cause, whom we call ‘God’, is actually essential, is necessary, if anything is to exist at all. And we think we exist, since we are here, asking the question (cogito ergo sum*).

But beyond that, it is surprisingly difficult to really know anything specific and with certainty about God. Without ’special revelation’, that is the Bible and the Church traditions we have recieved via the Apostles, ‘general revelation’, that is, what we can see in our universe, reveals only faint hints, glimpses, as it were, “in a mirror, dimly” (I Cor. 13).

We deduce that God is great from the hugeness of this universe that surrounds. We further deduce that we are but a tiny, tiny part of that creation, making the fact that God loves us little specks of dust even more incredible. But how big is God? The answer is, He isn’t. He is neither big, nor small. He is neither short or tall, wide or thin. The usual description we use is that God is unlimited in space, yet this is, strictly speaking, not true either. As far as we can understand, God cannot be measured using the three dimensions of space we are used to, for He created that three dimensional space, and He Himself existed when it was not, and exists now “outside” of space, whatever that may mean. If you try to characterise God using the language and concepts of three dimensional, or even n-dimensional space, you cannot succeed.

Neither is it possible to define God in terms of time. How old is God? We usually say that God is eternal, and clarify that by saying that He has no beginning and no end. But that inevitably implies that God exists ‘inside’ time, He is actually on the timeline, so to speak, and differs from everything else in that they have a beginning (and sometimes an end) whereas He does not. But this is wrong. God made time. He exists without time. He existed ‘before’ time began, whatever that may mean. Any description of God that involves time will therefore be inadequate and inaccurate. And we have no language that does not depend on the concept of time. Try it now. Try to make a sentence that describes God (or anything else) without using a time-dependent word or concept.

“God is love”?

‘is’ denotes the present, as opposed to the past or the future, and is thus a time-dependent concept.

What kind of being is God? We usually call God, “He”. In recent times, the feminists have taken great umbridge to this sexism and Bibles have been published referring to God as “She” … “Our Mother who art in heaven”, and so on. Traditionalists are outraged by this modern editing of a text over 3,500 years old in some places. Who is right? Strictly speaking, neither. Gender is a characteristic of physical living beings - animals and birds and reptiles and fish. Humans have gender because they need to reproduce, but angels have no gender. Thus did our Lord answer those who asked who in heaven would be the husband of the woman who had married five men during her life by saying, “They neither marry nor are they given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven”.

Sure, we use masculine words to express God’s superior strength, or feminine language to communicate His gentle nurturing love, but all these are human words applied to One who is far, far beyond humanity, infinitely far, in fact. ‘He’ and ‘She’ are thus woefully inadequate. ‘It’ sounds downright rude, lowering God to the level of a senseless stone or a coffee table. We have no other pronouns in our language! Perhaps we should invent one, to be reserved especially for God and for Him alone? ‘Thee’ perhaps, echoing the Greek root word for God, theo?

I could go on.

The disappointing fact is that God is just so far beyond our imagination, experience or comprehension that we simply cannot know Him. Everything we think about Him is bound to be inadequate, and thus, strictly speaking, wrong. The Ancient Fathers, especially in the east, recognised this, and some of them insisted that we cannot truthfully describe God using positive terms; saying what He is, but we can only use negative terms; we can only rule out what He is not. You might have noticed that St Gregory’s Anaphora lists a whole lot of negatives: “the ineffable; the unseen; the uncontainable; without beginning; the eternal ; the timeless; the limitless; the unsearchable; the unchanging.”

It is just as well, then, that God Himself chose to tell us about Himself. Of course, He must use limited language that we can understand, but when He does so, He highlights for us the things that are important, the things that matter. It’s a bit like your teacher highlighting the bits that will be in the upcoming exam for you so you don’t have to waste time studying the whole textbook!

And just what is it that God chooses to highlight? Is it e=mc^2? Is it the structure of the electron shells around the nucleaus of an atom? Is it how to accurately predict weather conditions? No, it is none of these. What He points out to us is…

“God is love”.

Our curiosity leads us to try to understand God with our brains, and by and large, we fail miserably. But perhaps that is not the important thing. Perhaps the important thing is to feel God’s love for us in our hearts, and to love Him from our hearts in return. Knowing about God is nowhere near as important as knowing God. The mind can tell us a little about the character of God, but it is in living with God daily, and minute by minute; in feeling that He surrounds us and dwells within us; in ‘touching Him’ when we live by His commandments and ‘meeting Him’ in every tiny act of kindness towards another; in these things do we come to know God.

Even if I knew nothing about God, just knowing Him would be enough.

“To the Unknown God” - the inscription on an altar, seized upon by St Paul to start preaching to the philosophical Greeks. A God Unknown, but Loving … and that is more than enough.

Fr Ant

Thankyou to those who have sent in such interesting and thought provoking comments to my last post. Here is my two-cents worth…

The Catholic Church and some varieties of Protestant Churches (non-evangelical ones) have moved officially towards accepting the Theory of Evolution as the process God used to create life on the Earth. I would note that even if this turned out to be true, it would still have no effect whatsoever on either the accuracy of the Bible or on our Christian faith, for as Tony points out, the Old Testament has been interpreted allegorically since the time of Origen in the 3rd century BC.

However, there remain some fatally serious problems with the Theory of Macro Evolution as an explanation for life on earth. Among these are:

1. How did life begin?

2. How can huge chunks of very organised information be spliced into an existing genome by mere chance?

3. How can incredibly complex systems, such as the mammalian eye or the clotting cascade in the blood, evolve gradually when in fact the absence of any one component of that system renders the whole system useless? (This is the basic premise of the “Intelligent Design” movement.)

And there are others. A recent court case in the USA ruled that Intelligent Design was not science. I believe that ruling was flawed, though, since the case was not really about whether ID is science or not, but about whether it should be allowed to be taught in Science classes in schools. Clearly, there is a much deeper political agenda involved in the second form of the question, since there is a strong backlash against the “Christian Right” raging in the US at the moment. Most people saw this as just one more way that the Christian Right was trying to impose its standards on the very government of the land, and fought bitterly because of that reason. I read the judgment (you can google it easily) and it seems to me quite biased, though framed in perfect legalese of course.

Atheists in the US have made quite a fuss over this judgement, which they see as some kind of proof that ID is fantasy. Personally, I would not go to a Judge to tell me whether God created the world. Why should he know anymore about it than anyone else? As someone pointed out to me recently, scientists have no more knowledge of philosophy or the laws of logic than anyone else, yet those like Dawkins present themselves as being authorities on questions of religion, which are not scientific question at all, but philosophical ones.

There are different forms of Creationism, and yes, our Church does not subscribe to the literal form that says the world was created in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago. I would firstly note that any dogmatic assertions about the creation are not to be trusted - none of us was there! And the only One who was there did not give us a modern scientific account of events, but an account intended to help us understand who we owe our existence to. Anything beyond the actual words of the Bible is interpretation, and you will find good interpretation and bad interpretation, but it is in the end, on this matter, nothing more than interpretation.

Personally, I have no trouble fitting any current scientific theory into what Genesis tells us. There are some discarded theories that I would have certainly had trouble with, such as the Steady State Theory of the universe, that said that the universe has no beginning and no end, but that it has simply existed forever. This would be in direct contradiction to what Genesis plainly tells us: “In the beginning, God created…” The fact that scientists were literally forced by the facts to accept that the universe did have a beginning (rather than existing forever) is to me one of the greatest vindications of the truth of Genesis and of the Bible as a whole.

All comments welcomed!

Fr Ant

I’ve been doing a little research recently into the question of Free Will. Are we really free to choose our own course in life? This has turned up a new line of reasoning (for me) that surprised me a little bit. In its simplest form, it runs like this:

How does the atheist explain free will?

To the atheist, not only does God not exist, but the only things that exist are those that are made of atoms and energy. Thus, there is nothing more to the human brain than the cells from which it is made and the electrical impulses and chemical transmitters that communicate between those cells, all of which we can see and study. Therefore, all human thought, all human emotions, all human intelligence, even human consciousness (knowing that I exist) are all nothing more than the result of the millions of connections in the physical human brain.

Looked at from another angle, this would mean that if we were clever enough, we could in theory build a supercomputer that is the exact counterpart of a human brain - same pattern of connections on its microchips as your brain has between its brain cells.

Would this computer thus be human? Would it have a mind? Would it be conscious? Would it be alive?

I don’t think so. I think that the fact that we have free will is very powerful proof against our mind being nothing more than connections between cells. Here’s why:

All matter and energy must follow the laws of nature. The charge of an electron is always the same, chemical reactions always run the same given the same circumstances and so on. Tossing a coin is not actually random: if you knew the exact starting position, the exact force applied, the exact effect of air friction etc, you could predict whether it was going to be heads or tails with 100% accuracy every time! Imagine what you could do with the Lotto numbers …

In the same way, if our brains are only cells following the laws of nature, then there simply is no free will. Our thoughts, feelings and emotions were all determined for us from the moment of our conception, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Just think about that - who will choose to change your decision? You can’t because all you can think with is your brain, and you have no choice in how your brain behaves - it has to obey the laws of nature. If that were true, then you actually had no choice wheter or not to read this blog.

Now this is a huge dilemma for the atheist. We all KNOW that we have free will. When provoked with the question of free will, the famous Samuel Johnson replied, “I know I have free will, and there’s an end to the matter!” But how can free will exist in a universe where the laws of nature cannot be fiddled with?

It seems to me that the only sane and rational answer is to suggest that there is an aspect to our ‘mind’ that is not made of matter or energy. Call this aspect what ever you like (Christians call it the spirit), but if free will exists, then the only thing that can drive it is something that is not bound by the laws of nature. Something that can be genuinely independent, and thus make genuinely independent choices.

Atheists don’t like this, since you can’t examine a spirit under a microscope. We may never be able to pin down what exactly a spirit is. But they will continue, no doubt to search for natural explanations for both consciousness and free will. My reading so far suggests this is not only a daunting task, but may well one day be proved to be a totally impossible task.

Deep stuff!

Fr Ant
stbishoy.org.au

KHRISTOS ANESTY!

I hope you all enjoyed a lovely Passion Week topped by a beautiful Resurrection Liturgy. It’s a lovely time for families too to get together in love and celebrate the Risen Lord , and the life He gave to each and every one of us.

This 50 Days after the Resurrection are sometimes misunderstood. Because the Church virtually bans fasting in this period, it is a natural reaction to take from that the message that this is a time for relaxing spiritually and taking things a bit easy. After the effort and ascetism of nearly two months of Lent, this is the time make up for it by enjoying the delights of various foods and … anything else you gave up in Lent? Surely I’ve given God enough to tide me over for a while now. He won’t mind if I take a bit of a break from Him…

But it really is about so much more than that, just as Lent is about so much more than just a change in your diet and eating patterns. This 50 Days is about living in the joy of Christ, the comforting, glorious presence of Christ.
He is not dead, He is risen!
He has not left us, He has returned to us!
He is not defeated, He is irreversibly victorious!

If you were blessed with grace from God through Lent, you might have been able to feel that what you ate really didn’t matter. After all, whatever you eat will still keep you going and reasonably healthy (junk food aside). And it didn’t matter because there are bigger fish to fry - imagine if your only goal in life was to make sure you ate the best foods. Pretty shallow?

It is, when you consider the other issues facing us in life. Issues such as justice and mercy, poverty and bereavement and death. Is food really all that important in the grand scale of things? Well, what changed on Saturday night? Did any of those really important things suddenly become less important? Just because steak and drumsticks, fattah and ice cream re-entered your life?

Of course not! In Lent, we gave up food so as not to distract ourselves with its attractions. In this 50 Days, we eat without restrictions so as not to distract ourselves by having to pay too much attention to what we eat. Both practices bestow their own unique benefits, and the person who is genuinely focused on the things that matter in life will, I think, appreciate those benefits and get the very most out of them both. And, with a smile of equal width in both seasons.

This is not a time to sit back and relax, but a time to use whatever resources God gives you at the moment to seek Him and to seek to do His will. That never changes, no matter what the season may be. The life with God, if it is that sort of life, is not one we need a holiday from. Sure, our physical bodies may only be able to cope with so much, but our spirits, if they truly love Him, cannot help but be constantly attracted towards Him without interruption.

That’s part of the beauty and truth of our blessed Orthodox Christian faith - it teaches us to see through the curtains of our earthly and physical limitations into the clear pure world of the spirit, where the light of God is always shining, beckoning, inviting us to come closer and enjoy its light and warmth.

Would you really postpone that for a few squares of chocolate?

Fr Ant

As Passion Week approaches we find ourselves looking forward eagerly to this one very special week in our annual cycle. Those who can take a week off work. Uni students use it as an excellent excuse to skip classes (is there a better one?!). And of course, off the shelf comes the dusty Passion Week Book for a bit of early revision of the chief hymns and readings.

It’s a very special week.

With a lot of very long Psalms. So today, I just thought I’d share a few ideas with you on how to get the most from your time in Church during all those very long Psalms.

1. Contemplate the Psalm
Delve deeply into the meanings of the words. Why was this particular verse chosen for this particular time? What light does it shed on the prophecies that came before it and the gospel that follows it? If you are good at Coptic, look for the slight differences in meaning between the two languages that often reveal some unexpectedly beautiful thoughts. Let the tune of the Psalm take you away on a flight of profound reverie and insight…

2. Contemplate the Gospel
What would it have been like to have lived through these events with Jesus? What do the gospels tell me about Jesus, His personality, His thoughts, His ideals and His manner with people? Get to know Jesus as a real person through this biography of His last days.

3. Contemplate on the events of the day
The Passion Week Book has some concise summaries for each day as well as for the week as a whole. They run to many pages and reading them on the appropriate day can help bring the service to life. And then there other books full of contemplations on the events of this week, such as HH Pope Shenouda’s classic on the Seven Words of Christ on the Cross.

4. Contemplate an icon
Special icons of Christ are placed at the front of the Church during the services. They help focus our attention on Jesus Himself. Take the time to look at the ocon closely, to think about those thorns piercing the soft flesh, or to see the love in those eyes. I love looking into His face as we sing “Emmanuel our God, is among us now…” at the end of the service - it helps make it real.

5. Read a good book
Is there a particular virtue you would love to learn? Read a book about it through this week. Or what about that great book you’ve been meaning to get around to for ages but never had the time? This is your chance for some serious reading. Scribble your thoughts in the margins. Stop every now and then to digest what you have just read and consider how to put it into practice.

6. Read THE Good Book
Tradition dictates that we read the Four Gospels, The Book of Psalms and the Book of Revelation through Passion Week:

Tuesday = Matthew
Wednesday = Mark
Thursday = Luke
Friday = Psalms
Apocalypse Vigil = Revelation
Evening before the Resurrection Liturgy = John

Bring your Bible with you and read, read read! You’ll be amazed how differently you see a Gospel when you read it straight through, from beginning to end, like a novel. All sorts of patterns and lessons show up that you never notice reading it one chapter a day.

7. Lay a major problem before God
This is your chance to have a nice long uninterrupted talk with God. Don’t keep carrying that burden around for ever! This is a good time to unload and let Him share the burden, as He has always wanted to. Let His comfort and His peace flood through you as you realise that He is in control, whatever happens…

8. Keep a journal
Often you will come upon some lovely and inspiring thoughts or contemplations as you pray in Church. Keep a little notebook handy, and when you sit down for the Psalm, jot down those thoughts, perhaps with the time and ‘Hour’ of the Psacha when they came to you. This little journal can be a great support and motivator in later times when you are feeling down or lost. Just pick it up and read it, and you will be transported back to that lovely time in Passion Week!

9. Have a chat with Jesus
How well do you really know Him? How often have you really just stopped to chat? You don’t have to ask for anything, and you don’t have to complain. What about just sharing your life with Him - He’s all ears! Or better still, what about sharing HIS life with Him? Tell Him how you feel about all that happened to Him. Let Him know that you care.

10. Play a DVD in your head
Some people’s brains are very visual. Close your eyes and play a little movie in your imagination of the events of that hour and day. Try it from different perspectives, different people’s points of view. Movie makers often develop a much better grasp of events they are reconstructing than anyone else.

11. Pray for someone in need
Perhaps your heart is bleeding for someone who is going through a very, very difficult time. This is a great time to pray for them. I mean, really pray for them. With focus, with passion, with faith, with confidence in the love of God. but don’t forget to say, as Christ did in Gethsemane, “Let Thy will be done”.

12. Help a bored child (or a harrassed mother - same thing)
Passion Week can be torture if you have to keep a little child quiet for hours on end. Some mothers (not all!) would love the chance to have a few minutes of peace and wuiet to enjoy the prayers. Bring some colouring pages or activities for a mother you know might need them or even offer to keep the child busy (quietly please!) to help her out.

So much to do, so little time!!!

No wonder in times past when life was less hectic people would spend the whole week at Church! But at least we aren’t living in the most ancient of Christian times, when Passion Week was observed only once every 33 years…

Fr Ant

Last Sunday’s Gospel, the Paralytic at the Pool who was healed by Jesus after 38 years of patient and fruitless waiting, contained a reference to one of the accusations brought against Jesus by His enemies. He was accused of breaking the Law of God by breaking the Sabbath rest and encouraging others to do so.

In this case, it was His command to the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk. Not long ago, ultra-orthodox Jews in the Sydney suburb of Bondi successfully campaigned for traffic lights that responded to pedestrians wanting to cross the road without them having to push that button. They consider pushing a button to be ‘work’ and thus prohibited on the Sabbath Day. Clearly, not much has changed in 2,000 years:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20938465-5001021,00.html

This brings up the whole issue of how literally to take God’s commandments. Jesus’ approach to Sabbath rest question cut right to the heart of the subject: “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Another time He reminded the Jews of the Old Testament quote, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

One way to interpret this might be a sort of hierarchy, a ‘pyramid’ of moral principles. Those principles that are higher in the pyramid overrule the lower principles. If you were asked to create such a pyramid, what would you have at the top? I wonder if your pyramid would agree with mine…

As a general rule in my pyramid, I would always put people higher than things. “People are more important than things” is a great motto that has saved me from awful mistakes many times, and I have always regretted it every time I ignored this concept. Should I go off my head about the valuable vase that my friend’s child accidentally broke? People are more important than things. That makes the decision relatively simple, doesn’t it?

At the top of my pyramid, I would have one single word: Aghape. Not just ‘love’, mind you, for the word can be twisted and misused too easily. By Aghape Love I mean the pure, unselfish, giving, and self-sacrificial love that comes from God; the love so poetically described in I Corinthians chapter 13.

In the lower levels of the pyramid, I would put the more ‘exterior’ virtues; observance of very specific rites such as how exactly one should stand when praying, knowing the tunes of all the hymns of the Church, and so on. All these are no more than tools we use to help us reach God, and it is dangerous to mistake them for goals in themselves, rather than just a means to a goal. This of course was the very mistake of the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time; their pyramid was upside down, and not carrying a bed was considered more important than celebrating the miraculous healing power of God. No wonder they didn’t recognise Jesus as the Messiah. He would have probably pushed the button at the traffic lights, just to cross the road and save a soul!!! Humph!

In between would be all the other principles and virtues such as mercy, repentance, practical acts of charity, spiritual exercises and methods, social service and so on. I would try to arrange them such that those that relate to my personal relationship with God were higher, those that relate to the welfare of those I interact with beneath them, and those that relate to the welfare of those I have never met below them.

Isn’t that a bit selfish, putting myself at a higher priority than others? Not if the priority is my own spirituality, my own relationship with God. If you are not a good swimmer, and you see someone drowning in a deep river, you are not really going to do them a lot of good by jumping in to save them and ending up drowning with them! In the same way, I am unlikely to do anyone any good if I am not well connected to God. It is not my own powers and abilities that bring goodness into the lives of others, it is the grace of the Holy Spirit working through me. The best way for me to facilitate that grace is to be as well connected to Him as I can, and then let Him do His work as He sees fit.

As a newly ordained priest, I recall one wise bishop telling me that the best service I could possibly offer to my congregation was to personally be a genuine Christian. The years have shown me the wisdom of those words. It is one of the devil’s favourite tricks to engulf the servant in doing things, keep him or her so busy that they lose their focus, forget their real goals, and lose their connection with Christ. That is the road that ends with becoming a ‘whitewashed tomb’, looking smooth and clean on the outside, but being filled with death and decay on the inside.

I have also put the welfare of those I come into direct contact with above those who are distant since genuine love must seek to serve at every opportunity presented to it, and most of those opportunities are with those closest to us. There is no need to go looking for someone to help among strangers when my own family is in desperate need. You don’t think so? Is your wife falling apart over those unfinished bits of housework? Are your parents freaking out because they think they are losing you? Would a kind word and a little smile from the heart have made any difference to the bloke who sits at the desk opposite you and looked so down this morning? If these or any similar situations apply to your life (and they almost certainly do) then you have more than enough material around you to share God’s love.

That’s not to say it is wrong for us to go further afield to serve. As a community, it makes a lot of sense to delegate some servants or some portion of time to serving those who are far away from us but are in great need. It is quite possible to do the one without neglecting the other. Harder, I grant you, but still quite possible. But to travel hundreds of kilometers to comfort the suffering while there is unresolved suffering in my own home is a bit hypocritical.

So, there’s my Pyramid of Principles. How does it compare to yours?

Fr Ant

I’d like to turn now from the future to the past. How do we deal with our history as a Church and as a community?

Here’s a quick quiz:

1. Who was the Pope before Pope Kyrollos VI? What was his name and when was his patriarchate?

3. Why doesn’t he appear very much in our histories, Sunday School Curricula, Youth Group Programmes etc?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, read on. You will find them in the text that follows (and there will be a compulsory one hour test next Tuesday ).

We all know quite a bit about our current Pope, Pope Shenouda III who was yanked out of his desert cave and made Bishop for Education (a general bishop without a diocese) against his will, and later elected as Pope against his will. He has guided the Coptic Church through what many consider to be a modern Golden Age of revival, depth and strength (1971 - present). His achievements are all the more amazing, given the history I want to discuss today.

We also all know about the late Pope Kyrollos VI, the solitary living in an abandoned windmill and jarred out of this meditative life to lead the Church from 1959-1971. It surprised me to hear from older members of our Church that during his lifetime and service as Pope, Pope Kyrollos was not a very popular man in some circles of the Church. He wouldn’t play politics. When major crises faced the Church, he would quietly withdraw to his monastery to pray and seek God’s guidance. “Where is our Pope?” people would demand. “Why does he run away every time there is trouble?” I couldn’t imagine thinking that way about someone so obviously saintly as Pope Kyrollos VI, yet people in those days did think that way. Which tells you a lot about the people in those days:

Before Pope Kyrollos VI, there was a three year period in which the Church could not come to a decision as to who should become the new Pope. And the reason they could not decide was that the papacy of the previous Pope had been an unmitigated disaster. Pope Yusab II (1946-1956) had been Metropolitan of Girga before becoming Pope. A vocal section of the Church opposed his consecration because there is an ancient law in our Church that says that no bishop with a diocese may be ordained as Pope. Amazingly, Anba Yusab and his followers actually campaigned to have him elected! He was actually ambitious for the papacy. That in itself should have rung the alarm bells!

It didn’t take long after his enthronment as Pope for things to start going wrong. The chief problem of his papacy was his valet, or disciple, an extremely unscrupulous man who always carried a loaded gun with him, as well as a pack of cigarettes. This man seems to have had incredible influence over the Pope, and he knew how to use it! He became rich by selling ordinations to the bishopric and the priesthood. He threw his weight around and ordered people about according to his own wishes. The kindest analyses of Pope Yusab’s papacy describe his main failing as being his inability to control or to dismiss this dishonest man.

Things got so bad that at one stage, the Pope had to flee Egypt because his life was threatened. A group of over-zealous Coptic youth even went to the extent of kidnapping the Pope and threatening him with harm if he did not resign immediately. When the whole Church finally put an ultimatum to Pope Yusab to reform or to suffer exile, he chose the latter, and spent the remaining years of his life and papacy exiled in a monastery in Upper Egypt. He was relieved of all his papal responsibilities and a committee of three senior bishops was appointed to govern the Church in his absence. He died in exile in 1956.

You will now understand why the appointment of a new Coptic Pope took so long. Having been through this disasterous period, no one wanted to rush in and make a wrong decision! After three years of careful consideration, discussion and prayer, a man who was the diametric opposite of Anba Yusab was elected to take over, Pope Kyrollos VI: not a bishop, but a humble monk; not ambitious for the post, but terrified by its heavy responsibility before God. Pope Kyrollos proceeded to doggedly rebuild the spirituality of the Coptic Church, to return its focus to its ancient roots in the Bible, Church Tradition and the desert Fathers. By God’s grace, his successor is an educator in an age of information. Pope Shenouda has successfully steered the Church towards faith based on understanding and has fused the mind and the spirit together in a unified whole to worship God in a holistic way.

But what of poor Anba Yusab? Why is he forgotten? Most likely, Coptic historians do not like to mention him because it is seen as bringing our skeletons out of the closet. They do not wish to air our dirty laundry in public, which is why most objective information about Anba Yusab can only be found in history books written by non-Copts. I don’t think this is healthy.

I believe that we can learn just as much from the mistakes of the past as we can from the successes. I think the Bible backs up this point of view. Take any hero of the Bible. Take Moses or David or St Peter. In the Bible you will find a balanced portrayal that reveals strengths and weaknesses, victories and failures, sins and virtues. The Bible gives us a real picture of these giants of God and of the true historical events of the people of God. Why do we fear to do the same in our own times? Would it not benefit us?

From learning about the period of Anba Yusab II I have learned many valuable lessons. I have learned that God does not leave His people alone, even in the darkest times. In the midst of all this hulabaloo going on with the Pope, St Mary appeared to a Primary School class in a Coptic school, and the miracle encouraged all those who heard about it. Throughout those years the Sunday School Movement was growing and becoming more and more effective. Dedicated servants refused to be discouraged by the goings on at higher levels and turned instead to their own personal relationship with God and to spreading the Gospel of Christ to as many simple hearts as they could find. These were the years when the young Nazir Gayed (later to become Pope Shenouda III) was at his peak of service and eventually entered the monastery, as did a number of his luminous contemporaries who were to play such a prominent role in the revival that was to come later.

The Church is too big to be spoiled by any one individual, no matter how elevated his position may be. When it seemed that the Church had fallen into the hands of one who was going to destroy it from the inside, there were many faithful Copts who kept their eyes focussed on what the Church is really all about. They were not fooled or sidetracked by all the games being played. They understood that the real work of the Church is not in the politics and the wranglings of humans. It is in the work of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts.

Problems, within or without the Church, should never be allowed to discourage us from personally following God faithfully and striving to do His will. Those who do so remain firmly embedded in the real Church, in the company of God and following in His footsteps. Those who get caught up in the politics soon lose their place in the true Church, for they cannot find Christ in politics. May our Lord preserve always the purity of the mission of His Church…

Fr Ant

I can’t believe it! It has finally happened. A dream has come true: the ancient and venerable Coptic Orthodox Tradition has at last met another of my loves, Science Fiction! I’m talking of course, about the brilliantly produced and exquisitely acted Back to The Future: Coptic Version currently showing on Youtube and produced by our own band of merry men.

I loved the remote controlled Church. No more straining to reach those wall-clingers with the Holy Water at the end of the liturgy! But I did miss the interactive screen embedded in the mangaleya - we’re endlessly searching for missing Katameros Books (Readings for the liturgy) and Synaxarium Books.

But seriously, what IS likely to face our Church in the decades to come? There is an old saying that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, or in other words, if we can guess what we’re in for, we can prepare for it. Well, here are three of what I see as the major challenges we as a Church in Sydney are likely to face between now and 2038 AD…

THE ATHEIST MINDSET

The trend towards atheism is nothing new in Western society; it has been slowly growing ever since the rebellious days of the Renaissance when everything was called into question. What is new is that atheism has now reached a stage where it is set to become the majority view in Western society. Already, in many universities and TAFEs Christians are marginalised and made fun of because of their faith. But authors such as Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith) have brought their ‘gospel’ right into the mainstream media.
What I fear is that the God-free mindset is becoming more and more embedded in popular culture. It is becoming the ‘default’ foundation upon which to build the stories that influence our lives in movies, TV, books and so on. For example, I recently heard a Professor of Philosophy discussing the philosophy behind the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He pointed out that the creator of the series is an avowed atheist. Not surprisingly, it is human beings who defeat the powers of darkness by their own efforts, while any religious characters in the plot are portrayed as weak and irrelevant. In fact, contrary to the long tradition of vampire stories, the vampires in this series do not care about crucifixes or holy water! These are subtle points, but they are all the more dangerous for their subtlety.

UNINTERESTED YOUTH

The first generation of Copts to come to Australia were highly motivated and fiercly driven to succeed. If they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t have had the initiative to leave their homeland for a new and strange country.
The second generation of Copts in Australia have grown up guided by this strong motivation from their parents to work hard and do well in life, whether spiritual or material. They have seen how hard their parents had to struggle to carve out a life for themselves, but they have had it a lot easier than their parents. They have grown up with English as their first language. have gone to school in Australia, and have had the benefit of a wider social network to help them through life.
We are beginning only now to see the third generation of Australian Copts as they grow up and approach maturity. Of the three generations, perhaps they will have life easiest of all. They will have the benefit of parents who are already reasonably comfortable in life, who will provide them with many comforts they will take for granted. What effect will this have on their personalities? How will it affect their spirituality? Will they be willing to put in the effort to stand for a two hour liturgy to enter into the depths of the presence of God, or will they demand an abbreviated 15 minute version because that’s all their media-shrunken attention spans can cope with?
It is well known that material wealth makes it harder to be spiritually strong. Our Lord Jesus Himself warned us that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to enter through the eye of the needle. How will this privileged generation fare? And what can we do to build their personalities strong so that they do not miss out spiritually?

MIXED UP MORALITY

Western society has been through the sexual revolution of the sixties, when the pill separated sexual activity from having children. Over the ensuing decades, a new morality seems to have become accepted, one in which pre-marital sex, adultery, pornography and divorce are all pretty standard and acceptable. So far, active members of Christian Churches have been fairly insulated from these changes, but many of them are now cracking and giving in. Not long ago, an Anglican bishop was heavily criticised for daring to suggest that couples should not live together before getting married.
Fortunately, the Coptic Church will not be alone on this one, as the other Orthodox denominations and the Catholic Church are still holding on to their Bible principles pretty strongly too. But what will happen as society becomes less and less Christian, and we find our congregation becoming increasingly isolated in their morality? How can we keep our future generations strongly devoted to living true Biblical Christianity, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks?

What do you think? You may or may not agree with my guesses. Perhaps you see something else as being a major issue? Please share your thoughts (write a comment, below) so we can all get thinking about it, praying about it and prepared!

By the way, if you would like a glimpse into the future of our Church, take a peek at:

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1etQoH4hOM

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejaEXrEw9FY

Judging by these fine examples of Coptic youth, our Church is in good hands … I think …

Fr Ant