Hello everyone!
So in our church, our priest wants less Coptic to be chanted during the mass or any other liturgical service like the Tasbeha. His reason, because it's an old language and no one understands it, so we must say it in English.
I don't mind saying hymns in English but if really think about it, the Liturgy of the Faithful is long and all of it is done in English with not one word of Coptic (upsetting but, oh well!) I believe we should have a balance between both languages, I don't want to abandon the language of my fathers.
Most churches have an Arabic Church and they do have a balance in between Arabic and Coptic. But my priest believes that most people who are in Egypt or came from Egypt to the US, do Coptic so can differentiate themselves from the Islamic people in Egypt or something like that (which I find it as a very funny and stupid excuse).
As well, at our church, I believe he priotises Soccer lessons on Fridays for the kids over Hymns Lessons. We are not passing the heritage of our church to our future generation. There is hardly any lessons anymore for the kids to learn the hymns in COPTIC!
What I wanted to ask is, what should I tell him? I don't want to lose the Coptic Language, I'm so sick of just trying to tell him how important it is to our church. I feel he doesn't understand it's importance.
Thanks
Distressed Deacon
Comments
Oujai khan ebshois
Thank you very much. Very well said.
Oujai khan ebshois
I had the below to say but I feel but it could be unwise and I should not drive people away who as st Jude says on some have compassion because God may be very patient for some who maybe were unloved in life or whatever or He may be patient but I do not know. He will count as many as deserve it as those of the 11th hour or who He wants but I don’t know.
I had to say this:
Because the devil before the sin says God is merciful and afterward God is harsh.
Sin is not safe proverbs warns the harm of adultery. Some people commit the sin and die in it. If one has opportunity to repent he should not delay.
I Must speak truth in love
I can’t try to please all but must speak the truth for everyone to have the chance for salvation
God’s word will offend some but they are not without hope if they take the opportunity now. One should not sin and then hope to be saved. As Jesus said to the adulterer sin no more. Because she still had chance to repent but if one delays he may lose chance like the foolish virgins
See Galatians 5:16-26 and Ephesians 5:1-7. It would be harsh to terrorise people with Sirach 23:16-27.
Even King David sinned and in the New Testament we may have the sure mercies of David. It means if one is not practicing sin without regret. If one happens to fall in sin God can be merciful but it still has consequences on earth. The bible says those who rejoice in the fall of the godly will be punished we must assure the sinner lest they are swallowed with too much sorrow upon their sign of sorrow but people shouldn’t plan to sin or they are practicing sinners even if there may be a chance for them to repent
we need to also remember to learn obedience. run from pride, it is the worst sin!
https://christianpost.createaforum.com/general-discussion/sirach-2316-does-not-contradict-the-teaching-of-everlasting-punishment/msg27
Forgive me for being so thick but I thought overall you echoed what I wanted to say, or have I misunderstood your point? The main thing is I hope I have not offended you..
Oujai khan ebshois
No you did not misunderstand me. I am glad I did not misunderstand you. Of course you did not offend me. My posts could be pretty annoying to read because of my weakness of writing ability and style and lack of discernment of thoughts. I try to be better. I hope it can be endured though I am ashamed that I have probably been too much for some before but I hope I can avoid more excessive disturbances. I was worried and agreed that we could myself especially could passively be allowing the world to numb our spiritual conscience but I think we need to be wise because the wisdom of God is first peaceable though we may need to distinguish if that is being used as an excuse to seek to never take a stand. Jesus said the way to life is difficult and we know Jesus was interested in not turning people away unless He knows it is God’s commandment to speak but also not compromising the truth at all. I know that may seem to be against my initial message a bit it is true God said we should not be cowardly which I would not be if I had an upright heart which trembles before His law
so I think the solution is to purify our hearts from love of the world
Thank you very much for your reply. All your posts make sense to me and they are well written. I was just confused by the latest link and I had already missed the post before @mabsoota's reply, so it is my fault. Just to make sure your posts are more perfect, you can use more commas and punctuation marks. God bless you and please keep me and my wife in your prayers always..
Oujai khan ebshois
Very well said. I guess you hit the nail right on the head, as being Orthodox by definition is to follow the forefathers and the apostles from whom we received the faith, the way it was handed to us. There is no harm in having had many modifications, some major and some minor, but as long as they followed Christ's teaching, that is to pray longer, then those were welcome over the ages. The issue now is that we want to do the opposite..
Oujai khan ebshois
Originally the liturgy was written in Greek mainly and later it was converted into Coptic with the preservation of Greek parts. The Greek was the language of the Bible initially and it was the spoken language of the empire ruling the world, where the majority of the people communicated through it, pretty much like English now. Therefore when the Bible became available in Coptic, with the decline in the Greek empire and consequently the need to communicate through it, and with the distinction in the respect for Egyptian Orthodox teaching, the forefathers thought to translate the liturgy into Coptic leaving some of the deacon responses Greek to convey the universality of the prayers being made clear and repeated to the congregation. I don't know what sort of English this is, I do hope you will be able to understand me anyway..
Oujai khan ebshois
There is a young Ethiopian deacon, no more than 10 years old, at a local church I used to pray at. He came and had to learn by experience as none of us were able to teach him. He started learning Arabic from the responses and translations and sermons, but he also learned a bit of Coptic. I was reading some hymn to the other deacons and he randomly translated etfe into the heaven. I asked him who taught him that, as I was sure it wasn't his servant, and he said he taught himself. I asked him later what else he knew and was able to translate a lot of things, even figuring out the a <subject, infinitive> construction for the past tense by himself! At 10 years old!!
This kid is my defense to anyone saying that we need to phase Coptic out of the Church services, or lessen it. If anything, we need to normalize it and teach it. We can't just start saying entire liturgies in Coptic, but we need to get accustomed to it, and then teach it so we know what we're saying. If it's normal to teach kids who don't speak Arabic efra7y ya Mariam and understand at least a little bit of it, why not do the same with Coptic?
In an ideal world, it would be great to teach children Coptic competently, so that they can understand as they grow, the historical value of Coptic without feeling that this is part of Christianity. It has to do with the Culture of Coptic Church, not Christianity.
Practically, this is not happening, whether the church would abandon its history or not, this is yet to be determined, however, what is happening now, is a slow shift towards minimisation of the role of Coptic in the church in favour of indegenous languages.
Hymns seem to be taking longer time, or at least the changes are not as visible and tangible as the language.