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Τετάρτη 12 Απριλίου 2017
A MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO KILL US FR. BOULOS GEORGE COPTIC PRIEST ST. MARK, CLEOPATRA, CAIRO, EGYPT
A
MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO KILL US
FR.
BOULOS GEORGE COPTIC PRIEST
ST.
MARK, CLEOPATRA, CAIRO, EGYPT
THE
CRUCIFIED CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Today,
Palm Sunday 2017, two bombs exploded in Egypt, one inside St. George’s Church
in Tanta, and one just outside St. Mark’s in Alexandria when Pope Tawardros II
was praying. On the eve of the Monday
Paschal service, Fr. Boulos George gave a most powerful and compelling
sermon. Because we English people are
deprived of 90% of the beautiful things that come out of the Church, I tried to
translate as much of this clip as I could in my weak understanding. It gave me so much comfort and so much
strength, and I felt it would be wrong not to pass it on. Tamer Mina did what I could not—he created a
subtitled video of the clip which originally inspired me. My translation is a shadow of the force of
Fr. Boulos George and the Holy Spirit that fills it. I am confident that Coptic priests across the
globe gave similar messages.
THE
MESSAGE IS ENTITLED
THANK
YOU
The
first thing we will say is thank you very, very much, and you won’t believe us
when we say it. You know why we thank
you? I’ll tell you. You won’t get it,
but please believe us. You gave us to
die the same death as Christ and this is the biggest honor we could have. Christ was crucified and this is our faith. He died and was slaughtered and this is our
faith. You gave us, and you gave us them
to die.
We
thank you because you shortened for us the journey. When someone is headed home to a particular
city, he keeps looking at the time.
“When will I get home? Are we there yet?” Can you imagine if in an instant he finds
himself on a rocket ship headed straight to his destination? You shortened the journey! Thank you for shortening the journey.
We
thank you because you gave us to fulfill what Christ said to us: “Behold, I
send you out as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). We were lambs; our only weapons: our faith
and the Church we pray in. I carry no
weapon in my hand. We are so grateful
that you helped us fulfill this saying of Christ.
Thank
you for helping us achieve our goal. You’re helping us and you don’t even know
it. I know you don’t understand, but I’m
trying to explain it to you. There are
people we visited at home to encourage them to come to Church, three, four,
five times. Still they don’t come. What you’re doing here you’re bringing to
Church the people who never come.
Believe me—it’s bringing to Church the people who never come.
People
who were living in sin and away from God, after the bombing of St. Peter’s
Chapel in the Cathedral, they were saying, “You never know when your number is
up. Better take more care of our
spiritual lives.” All these visitations
we do—you’re so much more effective.
You’re filling up our Churches.
You’re filling our Churches.
Let’s
speak plainly here. Usually attendance at the Eve of Monday Paschal Service is
very small. People are usually so tired
after a long Palm Sunday Liturgy they don’t come to the Monday night
service. When I came in tonight, there
were people on chairs outside the sanctuary.
There were people in the balcony.
The Church is completely full.
There isn’t even one empty seat.
Thank you. We are so grateful that you’re helping us fill up our
Churches.
When
you do this, you irritate the soul of the person who was lazy before. You make up his conscience and the love of
God within him prods him to come to Church.
Can you see why we thank you?
We’re not being deceptive. A
priest holding a microphone can’t lie to you.
I say to you, thank you. Thank
you for all you have done for us without knowing it.
WE
LOVE YOU
The
second part of the message we want to send to you is that we love you. And this, unfortunately, you won’t understand
at all. Maybe you won’t believe us when
we say we’re grateful. But this you
won’t even understand. Why won’t you
understand it? This too is also a
teaching of our Christ. I want to
explain to you about our Christ. I want
to tell you about how wonderful He is.
See
what Christ said: “If you love those who love you, you have no profit or reward
with me. Even thugs and thieves love
those who love them. Any gang loves its
members. Even the drug dealers love each
other and take care of each other.
Right? But I want to tell you
that “if you love those who love you, what reward have you? But I say to you, love your enemies.”
(Matthew 5:46).
We
Christians don’t have enemies. We don’t
have enemies, others make enemies of us.
The Christian doesn’t make enemies because we are commanded to love
everyone. And so, we love you because
this is the teaching of our God that I’m to love you no matter what you do to
me.
I
love you very much. And I want to say
one last thing to you: we’re praying for you.
Because the One who told us to love you told us to “bless those who
curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44). So my instructions from my loving God make it
my duty to pray for you.
In
one of our dioceses there is a man who gets on the microphone every week to say
terrible things about Christians, he says unheard of things. So the servants of this diocese are hearing
this man and get upset. We didn’t do
anything to this man. He’s just taken a
vow to curse us. Every Friday he comes
out and curses the Christians.
So
the Bishop is sitting with his faithful, and he asks them, “Are you upset by
what this man says?’ And they say, “Of
course we are upset. What is he doing to
us?” The Bishop gets quiet and his face
darkens with sorrow. The faithful say to
him, “You have a right to be upset from what he says, your Grace. You have a right.”
“I
am not upset with him,” the Bishops says.
“I’m upset with you. You are faithful
of the Church. How many of you pray for
him every day? Because if he tasted of
the love of God, if he knew who our Lord is, he could never hate again because
God is love.”
“How
many of you are praying for him? Aren’t
you servants of God? Aren’t you
Christians? So you are faithful teaching
in the Sunday School here, and you’ve broken the commandment of Christ to pray
for this person.”
“So
what do you think? How about we make a commandment to pray for them? Pray that they know the God of love. Pray that they experience the love of God. Because if they knew that God is love and
experienced His love, they could not do these things, never, never, ever.
They
are a wretched lot. And because they are a wretched lot, we must pray for
them. But when someone loves God, he
won’t know anything but love. We need to
pray for them so they can sleep at night.
A person who has all this hate inside himself, how can be sleep
comfortably? Can you imagine? We are
being slaughtered and the King of Peace gives us peace to sleep. And the one, who slaughters us, cannot sleep
all night.
You
know where this happens in the Bible with Daniel and the King. Daniel is put in the lion’s den and he stays
up all night praising God and praying for the King. And the King is up all night, tossing and
turning, unable to sleep.
Pray
for them. Take it as a command. Take it
as a duty. Take it as the application of
Christ’s instructions. We must all pray
for them today that God opens their eyes and opens their hearts to His love because
if they knew Him, they could never do this.
I
don’t want to take too long. God comfort
us. God give us understanding. God give us joy because Christ’s promise is
truth. He said: “I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy
no one will take from you.” (John 16:22)
I am embarrassed to say at the beginning of
Holy Week that the Church, though she is in pain, rejoices because today, I
don’t know what the final count is. They
said 40 something and of course there are many people in the hospital and we
will visit them. All of these are
crowns. The victims are rejoicing with
God and they will attend the Resurrection of Jesus up there. And they are praying for us. The rest is up to us. O, you lucky, lucky
ones until it is our turn.
GLORIFIED
IS THE NAME OF GOD IN THE LIVES OF HIS HOLY MARTYRS
ΔΟΞΑ ΤΩ ΘΕΩ ΕΝ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΓΙΟΙΣ ΑΥΤΟΥ
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