Restoration of The Son

The father initiates the restoration of the son by running to the son, falling on his neck, and giving him the kiss of reconciliation.

Jesus' description of the father's actions is a portrait of complete and total grace, of unconditional love that comes to us in the Father sending his Son in the incarnation. Christ chooses those who stand. Here is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

He who hears you pondering in the secret places of the mind runs to you. When you are still far away, He sees you and runs to you. He sees in your heart. He runs, perhaps someone may hinder, and He embraces you.

His foreknowledge is in the running, His mercy in the embrace and the disposition of fatherly love. He falls on your neck to raise one prostrate and burdened with sins and bring back one turned aside to the earthly toward heaven.

Christ falls on your neck to free your neck from the yoke of slavery and hang his sweet yoke upon your shoulders.

St. Ambrose 

Fathers Sayings

"Rest assured and do not think 

too much about any matter. 

Leave it to God who is in control... 

Have you known anyone who has trusted 

in God and was let down? 

Heaven forbid."

Pope Kyrillos VI of Alexandria

GOD - The Unity of God

The Father of all is far removed from the emotions and passions which are common to men. He is simple, uncompounded, without diversity of parts; wholly identical and consistent; since he is all understanding, all spirit, all thought, all hearing, all seeing, all light, and the whole source of all that is good. 

It is best for us to begin with the first and greatest principle, that is with God the Creator … and to show that there is nothing above him or beyond him. It was of his own decision and free act that he made all things, not moved by anything; since he is the only God, the only Lord, the Only Creator, the only Father, the only Sovereign, and it is he who bestows existence on all things.

How could there be any other Totality beyond him: or another Principle or Power or another God? For God who is the totality of all these must needs include all things in his infinite being, while he himself cannot be included by any other thing. If there is anything outside him he is then not the totality of all things, nor does he contain all things.  

 ~ St. Irenaeus of Lyons  

3 - HUMILITY IN THE LIFE OF JESUS

"I am among you as he that serveth."  

Luke 22: 27

In the Gospel of John we have the inner life of our Lord laid open to us. Jesus speaks frequently of His relationship to the Father, of the motives by which He is guided, of His consciousness of the power and spirit in which He acts. Though the word humble does not occur, we shall nowhere in Scripture see so clearly wherein His humility consisted. 

We have already said that this grace is in truth nothing but that simple consent of the creature to let God be all, to surrenders himself to God's working alone. In Jesus we shall see how both as the Son of God in heaven, and as man upon earth, He took the place of entire subordination, and gave God the honor and the glory which is due to Him- And what He taught so often was made true to Himself: "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." (Luke 18:14) As it is written, "He humbled himself …. therefore God also hath highly exalted him."   (Phil. 2:8-9)

Read the words from John's gospel, in which our Lord spoke of His relationship to the Father, and see how unceasingly He uses the words not, and nothing, of Himself.  The "not I" (Gal.2:20), in which Paul expressed his relationship to Christ, is the very spirit of what Christ said of His relationship to the Father.

"The Son can do nothing of Himself"  (John 5: 19) 

"I can of mine own self do nothing….. My judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will"  (John 5: 30)

"I receive not honour from men" (John 5: 41) 

"For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will" (John 6:38) 

"My doctrine is not Mine" (John 7:16)

"I am not come of Myself" (John 7:28)

"I do nothing of Myself" (John 8:28)

"Neither came I of myself, but He sent Me" (John 8: 42) 

"I seek not mine own glory" (John 8:50)

"The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself {on My own authority}" (John 14: 10) 

"The word which ye hear is not mine" (John 14: 24)

In His teaching, Christ said, "I am nothing; the Father is all." 

These words open to us the deepest roots of Christ's life and work. They tell us how it was that the Almighty God was able to work His mighty redemptive work through Him. They show what Christ counted the state of heart which became Him as the Son of the Father. They teach us what the essential nature and life is of that redemption which Christ accomplished and now communicates. 

Christ was nothing, that God might be all. He resigned Himself with His will and His powers entirely for the Father to work in Him. Of His own power, His own will, and His own glory, of His whole mission with all His works and His teaching, He said, It is not I; I am nothing; I have given Myself to the Father to work; I am nothing, the Father is all.

Christ found this life of entire self-renunciation, of absolute submission and dependence upon the Father's will, Christ found to be one of perfect peace and joy. He lost nothing by giving all to God. God honored His trust, and did all for Him, and then exalted Him to His own right hand in glory. And because Christ had thus humbled Himself before God, and God was ever before Him, He found it possible to humble Himself before men too, and to be the Servant of all. His humility was simply the surrender of Himself to God, to allow the Father to do in Him what He pleased, no matter what men around might say of Him, or do to Him.

It is in this state of mind, in this spirit and disposition, that the redemption of Christ has its virtue and effectiveness. It is to bring us to this disposition that we are made partakers of Christ. This is the true self-denial to which our Saviour calls us, the acknowledgment that self has nothing good in it, except as an empty vessel which God must fill, and that its claim to be or do anything may not for a moment be allowed. It is in this, above and before everything, in which the conformity to Jesus consists. It is the being and doing nothing of ourselves, that God may be all.

Here we have the root and nature of true humility. It is because this is not understood or sought after, that our humility is so superficial and so feeble. We must learn of Jesus, how He is "meek and lowly of heart." (Matt. 11;29)  He teaches us where true humility takes its rise and finds its strength-in the knowledge that it is God "which worketh all in all" (1Cor. 12:6),  that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves. This is the life Christ came to reveal and to impart -a life in God that comes through death to sin and self. 

If we feel that this life is too high for us and beyond our reach must, even more urge us to seek it in Him; it is the indwelling Christ who will live in us this life, meek and lowly. If we long for this, let us, meantime, above everything, seek the holy secret of the knowledge of the nature of God, as He every moment works all in all; the secret, of which all nature and every creature, and above all, every child of God, is to be the witness,-that it is nothing but a vessel, a channel, through which the living God can manifest the riches of His wisdom, power, and goodness. The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.

Jesus considered Himself the servant for the men God loves. 

It was because this humility was not only a temporary sentiment, awakened and brought into exercise whenever He thought of God, but the very spirit of His whole life, Jesus was just as humble in His fellowship with men as with the Father. He considered Himself to be the Servant of God for the men whom God made and loved; as a natural consequence, He considered Himself the Servant of men, that through Him God might do His work of love. He never for a moment thought of seeking His own honor, or asserting His power to vindicate Himself. His whole spirit was that of a life yielded to God to work in. It is not until Christians study the humility of Jesus as the very essence of His redemption, as the very blessedness of the life of the Son of God, as the only true relationship to the Father, and therefore as that which Jesus must give us if we are to have any part with Him, that the terrible lack of actual, heavenly, manifest humility will become a burden and a sorrow. Our ordinary religion be set aside to secure this, the first and the chief of the marks of the Christ within us.

Brother, are you clothed with humility?  Look closely at your daily life. Ask Jesus. Ask your friends. Ask the world. And begin to praise God that there is opened up to you in Jesus a heavenly humility of which you have hardly known, and through which a heavenly blessedness you possibly have never yet tasted can come in to you.
Humility - Andrew Murray

The Departure of St. Macarius the Great

Egyptian Synaxarium Baramhat 27
THE SEVENTH MONTH
The Departure of St. Macarius the Great
Baramhat (Paramhat, Parmhat, Paremhat) 27 Martyr – Coptic Calendar – Martyr Calendar
April 5


On this day also, of the year 392 A.D. the blessed father, the lamp of the wilderness and the father of all the monks the great saint Anba Macarius, departed. This Saint was born in the village of Shabsheer - Menuf, from good and righteous parents. His father's name was Abraham and his mother's name was Sarah and they had no son. In a vision at night he saw the angel of the Lord and told him that God was about to give him a son, and his name will be known all over the earth, and he will have a multitude of spiritual sons.

Shortly after, this holy man had a son and called him Macarius which means "Blessed." He was obedient to his parents, and the grace of God was upon him since his young age. When he grew up his father forced him to get married against his will, so he pretended that he was sick for several days. Then he asked his father if he might go to the wilderness to relax and that may make him recover from his illness speedily. He went to the wilderness and prayed to the Lord Christ to direct him to do what is pleasing to Him. While he was in the wilderness he saw a vision, and it seemed that one of the Cherubim, with wings, took his hands, and ascended up to the top of the mountain, and showed him all the desert, east and west, and north and south. The Cherub told him: "God has given this desert to you and your sons for an inheritance." When he returned from the wilderness he found that his wife, who was still virgin, had died, and Macarius thanked the Lord Christ. Shortly after, his parents departed, and he gave all what they had left to the poor and the needy. When the people of Shabsheer saw his chastity and purity, they took him to the bishop of Ashmoun who ordained him a priest for them. They built a place for him outside the city, and they went to him to confess and to partake from the Holy Mysteries. They appointed a servant to take care of his needs and to sell for him the work of his hands.

When Satan saw St. Macarius growth in virtues, he brought on him a severe temptation. He inspired a girl that had defiled herself with a man to claim that St. Macarius is the one who had defiled her. When her family heard that, they went to him, insulted and beat him severely, inflicting much pain on him, which he endured silently. Macarius reproached himself saying "O Macarius now you have a wife and a child, and it is meet for you to work day and night for your own food and for that of your child and your wife." He worked continually at weaving mats and baskets, and he gave them to the man who ministered unto him; and he sold them and gave the money to the woman. When the day of her delivery drew near her labor was exceedingly difficult, she continued to suffer for four days and did not deliver until she confessed her false accusation against the Saint and named the man that defiled her.

When the family of the girl heard that, they decided to go to ask for his forgiveness for what happened from them. When St. Macarius heard that, he fled away from them running from the vain glory of this world.

At that time he was 30 years old, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him and walked with him for two days until they came to Wadi El-Natroun and the Saint asked the angel: "Appoint for me O master a place to live in." The angel replied: "I have not marked out a place for you to live, lest you leave it in the future and transgress the commandment of God. Behold all the wilderness is yours, so wheresoever you wish, live there." St. Macarius dwelt in the Inner Desert, in the place of the monastery of Sts. Maximus and Domadius which is known now by the monastery of El-Baramous. He went to visit St. Antonios, who said about St. Macarius when he saw him: "This is an Israelite in whom there is no guile." St. Antonios put on him the Holy Eskeem, then St. Macarius returned to his place. When the number of monks increased around him he built a church for them. His fame was known all over the country and many kings and Emperors heard about the miracles that God performed on his hands. He healed the daughter of the king of Antioch that was possessed by an unclean spirit. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and took him to a place and told him to make this place his abode, for many people will come to him in that place. He built a cell for himself and a church.

He thought one day that the world had no more righteous people, so a voice came to him from heaven saying: "In the city of Alexandria there are two women who feared God." He took his staff, his provisions, and went to Alexandria and he asked around until he reached their house. When he entered, they welcomed him, washed his feet with warm water, and when he asked them about their life, one of them told him: "There is no kinship between us and when we married these two brothers we asked them to leave us to be nuns but they refused. So we committed ourself to spent our life fasting till evening with often prayers. When each of us had a son, whenever one of them cry, any one of us would carry and nurse him even if he was not her own son. We are in one living arrangement, the unity in opinion is our model, and our husbands work is shepherding sheep, we are poor and only have our daily bread and what is left over we give it to the poor and the needy." When the Saint heard these words he cried saying: "Indeed God looks to the readiness of the heart and grant the grace of His Holy Spirit for all those who wish to worship him." He bade them farewell and left returning to the wilderness.

There was an erring monk who strayed many by his saying that there was no resurrection of the dead. The bishop of the city of Osseem went to St. Macarius and told him about that monk. Abba Macarius went to that monk and stayed with him until the monk believed and returned from his error.

On the day of his departure, he saw Sts. Antonios and Pachomius, and a company of the saints, and he delivered up his soul. He was ninety-seven years old.

St. Macarius had commanded his disciples to hid his body, but some of the natives of the city of Shabsheer came and stole his body, built a church for him and placed the body in it for around one hundred and sixty years until the Arab conquest and the rebuilding of his monastery, they returned the body to it.

In a manuscript in Shebeen El-Koum, was mentioned that St. Babnuda, his disciple, saw the soul of St. Macarius ascending to heaven, and he heard the devils crying out and calling after him, "You have conquered us O Macarius." The Saint replied "I have not conquered you yet." When they came to the gates of heaven they cried again saying "You have conquered us", and he replied as the first time. When he entered the gate of heaven they cried "You have overcome us O Macarius." He replied "Blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ who has delivered me from your hands."

May his blessing be with us. Amen.



Baramhat (Paramhat, Parmhat, Paremhat) = Megabit (Magabit)


Baramhat 27 Martyr – Coptic Calendar – Egyptian Calendar = Megabit 27 – Geez (Ge'ez) Calendar – Ethiopian Calendar