Pimonakhos Vol 6 Issue 7

Vol: 6 Issue: 7

Abib 1728 / July 2012

Fasting & Prayer By: St Shenouda the Archimandrite In the name of the living, holy God, Creator of the bodies and the souls, who made thanksgiving due upon us forever. And made us praise and glorify Him for his great mercy and favor for us. For as we fell down, He raises us up, and as we sinned and repented, He forgave us. Behold now He congratulates you O the Christian people, gathered in this holy church, for acceptance of this fast. And makes you from among those who pleased God with their good deeds so God will have compassion and pity upon you.

As it is written in the book of Exodus which is the second book of the Holy Torah, "I have mercy upon whom I want to have mercy on, and have pity upon whom I want to have pity on, and have compassion upon whom I want to have compassion upon." And Asking and entreating God so as He gives life up to 100 years while you are abiding in the commandments, taking care and forgiven from the sins, and being away from doing the abominable, inappropriate matters.

Know you O the blessed brothers that this fast became an obligation and a commitment for us and for all the baptized ones.

And the evidence for that is our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is glory, fasted forty days and forty nights without needing that. Because fasting and prayer were made for forgiveness of the sin, and our Lord Jesus Christ did not commit a sin that necessitate that. For He, being blessed and exalted, resembled us in everything except the sin only. He also said in His holy Gospel, "I did not come to abolish what is written but to complete it." So when Moses the prophet and Elijah fasted forty days and forty nights, He himself fasted the fast for the sake of completing the Law. And He obliged us Christians, to follow that.

And Our Master, to whom is glory, increased the fast to hide His divinity from the devil, lest He makes it known to him about the great plan that He planned for our salvation. As the apostle Paul said that if through the cross of Christ is salvation, then they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Let us be diligent now, O my blessed brothers, and purify our souls, and do what pleases Him from the fasting and the prayer. So that it be acceptable before Him. And we should pray and not be wearied of incessant prayer. And He gave us the parable of the unjust judge, not fearing God. So a woman came to him in order that he takes revenge for her upon her adversary. And he did not give her attention. And when she repeated the request, he took revenge for her upon that one. For the prayer is one of the lawful requirements along with the fasting. Because our Lord Jesus Christ said that it casts out the demons. As for him who say that he has no knowledge of prayer, let him hear His saying, "Carry my yoke for it is light." And He, His name be glorified, when His disciples asked Him saying, "Teach us to pray", He said to them, "Say our Father who is in the heavens, hollowed be Your name..." and what follows. He thanked the tax-collector and praised him with one word for he was praying saying, "O God forgive me for I am a sinner". And God accepted his prayer because of this word for the prayer is not lots of talking but by honesty and sincerity. For our Lord, to whom is glory, say in the Gospel of Luke, "Do not increase your talk like the pagans who thinks that they will be heard by the abundance of their talk, and do not resemble them in that. But if you pray then say Our Father who art in the heavens..."

And Master Paul, tongue of the fragrance and teacher of the church, says, "Five words with understanding are better than multitudes of talk." And he also said, "He who talks with tongue, he does not know, resembles talking to the air." So now, no one argue and say, "I do not know how to pray." For the Law of God commanded that prayers is not by the abundance of talk� ......................................................................

This is a text translation, by Ashraf Hanna, from a second Arabic sermon of St. Shenouda read on the Ist Sunday during Lent in the Coptic Church. The text was transcribed from a microfilm copy of Paris Arabe 4761 (CML 1592). (From St Shenouda Society Quarterly Vol 3 No.1. Oct 1996)

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St Shenouda and giving alms From: Life of Shenoute, By Besa It happened once that a man came to our father the prophet.

He was a man from Pemje and he had with him a hundred and twenty pieces of gold. Someone else, a friend of his, came with him, and the man said to his friend: ‘I want to give a small gift to the sanctuary of abba Shenoute to be given as alms for my salvation. However, I am not going to hand them over until I know first whether the great man will give them as alms or not’. So he gave the gold pieces to the other brother who had come with him, dressed himself in clothes beneath his station, and entered the monastery. He went to my father the prophet abba Shenoute and spoke to him like this: ‘I beg you, my holy father, have mercy upon me and give me a small gift of just twenty pieces of gold so that I can give them to the money-lender. Otherwise, he will throw me out of my house and take it from me’. My father said to him: ‘This is no place to joke, my son! Perhaps you would like another twenty piece’s of gold to add to the hundred and twenty which you brought when you came because you would like to accumulate a great number?’ Then my father called a brother monk and said to him: ‘Go along a certain road to the field. You will find a man sitting on the ground combing his hair and having a pitcher of water in his hand. Say to him: “Your friend says, ‘Just as I said to you “Sit here until I find out whether the great man will give them as charity or not”, I say now, “Arise and come to me”.’ And when the brother monk had gone off to the field as my father had commanded him, he found the man and said to him the words which my father had told him. The man who had c o m e t o m y f a t h e r w a s s t a n d i n g b e f o r e h i m i n g r e a t astonishment. Then he exclaimed: ‘Truly, I know today that there is a prophet in this monastery, just as I have seen it with my own eyes’. After this, he gave the gold to my father the prophet abba Shenoute, and after they had prayed, the two of them departed from him in peace, glorifying God and his saints.

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Abba Shenouda Taught Me By: one of the youth St. Shenouda the Archimandrite (348-466 A.D.) was the abbot of the White Monastery of Atribe in the desert of Thebes, Egypt, for more than 65 years. He was the abbot of over 2200 monks and 1800 nuns. He is called Archimandrite (the head of anchorites) because he used to practice the solitary life from time to time, and he also used to encourage some of his monks to withdraw to the desert after a few years of coenobetic life (living together in monastic community). In 431 A.D. he accompanied Pope St. Cyril the Great of Alexandria to the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. Saint Wissa, his disciple, recorded his autobiography on his feast day highlighting the many virtues and miracles that the Lord accomplished in his life.

A virtuous life is embarked upon, maintained and perfected by prayer. Simply put, to have Christ dwelling within, one needs to be as zealous for communion with Him as was the case in St Shenoud’s life. He prayed twelve times a day and as a result was said to have ‘bore Christ’ in his heart and mind. In our case life’s duties gets the best of our time but ‘where there is a will there is a way’. If from a young age St. Shenouda, who also worked, pursued his prayer life immediately after his daily affairs, so like St Shenouda we need to be inclined to this urgent mindset of prayer as an essential part of our daily life.

Journeying home from work, the young boy Shenouda would hide himself inside a cistern of water in order to find seclusion in prayer. It is true that if you want to know the state of your soul then observe your thoughts, feelings and actions, when you are in solitude. Like St Shenouda, we needs to fulfil the rule of prayer by going into ‘the room’ of one’s heart in silence, followed by ‘closing of the door’ of distractions by the recitation of the Agpia Psalms in order come to speak freely and intimately with boldness to speak with God our Father. Prayer of this kind was seen in this Saint’s life that saw him consistently bearing Christ in the heart and revealed its outwards expression with tears of joy that continuously overflowed like living water from a fresh spring.

Yet when one becomes a beacon of God’s light, one cannot help but cannot help but radiate and imitate his master, Christ who is ‘the brightness of [God’s] glory’ (Heb. 1:3).

St Shenouda was once followed home by his boss, his father’s shepherd, only to be found hid in the cistern with hands lifted up in prayer and fingers lit like ten flamed candles. We may not become inflame yet, in our communion with God, but we will naturally ‘shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven’ (Mat 5:16).

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Irrespective of your age, due to God’s dwelling within you, many will find you a source of blessing. A reflection of this is found in St Shenouda’s story as from a young age he was greeted by Abba Pigol, his aged uncle and the abbot of the monastery, bowed his head under the young Saint’s hands to be blessed by him. Here one sees that Holiness is not measured by the number of grey hairs but by the constant dwelling of God within. In like manner, status too is levelled when people experience God through you. People will be enlightened with a God-given favour towards you to view you as a source of guidance. St Shenouda found grace in the eyes of both the young and old and even the King of his time sought his wisdom. Hence coupling prayer with scripture one speaks God’s words with sweetness. One becomes like this Saint, whose words become ‘like honey to those who seek eternal life’. St Shenouda’s words too ‘brought fear and comfort’ in order reveal the God who afflicts the comforted and comforts the afflicted, both to lead to their salvation.

St Mark’s Boys at the monastery

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Calling Shenoute a Pr ophet By: Prof David Brakke I am not sure that Shenoute ever explicitly called himself a prophet, but others have used the label for him frequently. What have they meant in doing so? Already in antiquity Shenoute's first biographers called him a prophet. To be sure, disciples and admirers of other monks called their heroes prophets or compared them to the biblical prophets," but this fact does not obviate an analysis of what followers of Shenoute in particular meant by this title.

The Bohairic Life repeatedly refers to Shenoute simply as 'the prophet'. The boy Shenoute's relationship to Pcol, the founder of the White Monastery, recalls that of the young Samuel to Eli, and Pcol receives miraculously Elijah's mantle to place upon his young charge. Shenoute, we are told, performed 'signs' just as the prophets and apostles did. Like the prophets of ancient Israel, Shenoute advocates in behalf of the poor and the captive, destroys idols and confronts their worshipers, and even helps military leaders defeat barbarians by lending them a leather belt.

These implicit and explicit strategies of biblical typology conforms Shenoute's world to that of the Bible and confirm that Shenoute was a prophet," But the heart of Shenoute's prophetic identity in the Life is his visionary gift: Shenoute sees and knows more than ordinary people. Divine and heroic beings appear regularly to give messages to Shenoute or simply to talk to him, including the Virgin Mary, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, David ('the prophet'), and Jesus himself. When people doubt that Shenoute is a prophet, it is his clairvoyant knowledge that persuades them. For example, a man leaves some gold with a friend and goes to test the character of Shenoute, who promptly reveals his knowledge of the plot, including the very words that the man said to his friend. The man proclaims, "Truly, I know today that there is a prophet in this monastery, just as I have seen it with my own eyes". A young monk named John, scoffs when his master calls Shenoute a prophet, saying, "In truth, he does not even know what he ate this evening!" Shenoute later seizes the doubting monk and warns, "Truly, John, Shenoute does not know what he ate this evening, but on the Day of Judgment, this miserable body which is now talking to you will sit down with the apostles to judge with them."

John throws himself down before Shenoute and begs for forgiveness.

It is not merely that Shenoute knows what people are thinking or have said when he was not present, but Shenoute knows the sins that they have committed. And so on a visit to Constantinople, Shenoute knows when the monks who are accompanying him complain of thirst, but more importantly he refuses to bless a prominent senator in the presence of the emperor, asking, "Do you want me to give my hand to a man who defiles the temple of God with his abominable works?" The emperor "glorified God and his holy prophet apa Shenoute". Ironically in light of the incident with which I began, Shenoute reveals the identity of the thieves who ransacked the house of a wealthy businessman.

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Despite the historical Shenoute's protest to the contrary, the Life clearly thinks that he was in fact 'that kind of person'. The Life is not shy about its claims for Shenoute's knowledge: "When he was in his monastery, he would see a multitude of sins being committed throughout the whole world, and of those who came to him, he used to know all that they had thought and done. He would therefore pray for them all, so that they might be saved and find mercy at the tribunal of Christ".

Shenoute preaches repentance on earth and intercedes for sinners at the divine court?

Exposing sins, pronouncing judgment, interceding with Christ, as well as helping people with practical problems - these are the tasks of the prophet Shenoute, made possible by his clairvoyance, according. to the Life of Shenoute.

(Excerpts from: Shenoute, Weher, and the monastic prophet: ancient and modem articulations of ascetic authority)

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Vision of Theophilus The Book of the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt This is an apocryphal story dealing with the flight of the holy family into Egypt and the life which they led in that country. The story is cast in the mould of a vision and entitled The Vision of Theophilus.

This does not imply that every historical detail in the story was invented by the author, whose only task seems indeed to take the material for his narrative from local tradition and to put it in the form in which we find it before us. He made use also of some apocryphal books and of some works on ecclesiastical history with which the Egyptian scholars of his time were familiar.

St Shenouda Feast Timetable

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