Transcript for:
Father Lazarus' Journey to Faith and Monasticism

foreign [Music] anything I came to regard religion as hypocrisy I found that I must take the answers from those who were who have gone before me [Music] without the Lazarus I live in the mountain of Saint Anthony in the Red Sea area I have been here since 1996. I was one year in the monastery or nearly one year and then I came to the mountain I welcome all the viewers on cyc on Christian Coptic youth Channel and I want to explain why and how our our generous Lord God brought me to this place because this is the inheritance of the Coptic mysticism from amban Antonio's the father of the monks I was born of protestant parents my father especially was a strong Protestant Methodist methodists were dissenting Protestants not belonging to the mainstream my mother was much more sympathetic to Roman Catholic Church but myself and my brothers and sisters we we grew up in that family as I grew up I I found that some people were good people and some people most people were not good people so I understood that religion doesn't make a lot of difference many people went to judge and they were bad people they cheated on each other they did wrong things they spoke badly this war they lived wild lives but they went to church they said they were believers I saw other people who never went to church who were kind and generous and gave of love so I had no way in my experience to connect faith in a in a religion with personal Behavior and this to me made it seem Hollow if I want to go to a church for for the sake of the name okay but for the sake of love for the sake of truth I didn't find it in my experience so this is why I came to regard religion as a hypocrisy then my reading reinforced this the two great influences on my early thought were Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx and both of them rejected religion as a fantasy as something which people used to fill up the holes when they haven't any personal power so they say Okay God is powerful having any love in their hearts they say Okay God is love so what they haven't got in themselves they say we can get it from God and Marx and Freud said that this is a failure of humanity this is the failure of people to rise up to their full potential and I believe that so I grew I grew up believing that religion was just like a medicine when you are sick of yourself I heard about miracles of course but uh I regarded the laws of nature as invaluable the laws of nature have to be respected you cannot explain something which is against the laws of nature so I reasoned that perhaps people uh by their mind which is a very powerful organ the mind can do many things people can make influences around on the on the laws of nature by the power of their mind and perhaps there are parts of the natural law that we don't yet understand for example in space there are many things like black holes and quarks and things which we don't really understand after Einstein we understand more but we still don't understand everything even Stephen Hawking he doesn't understand everything so I used to explain it by saying that our partial knowledge of the laws of nature leave some room for doubt and our minds themselves can work very great influences on our perception so that we see things in a different way [Music] when I was in the world I was always searching and I think this is a condition of most people either people are searching for material wealth because they think it will bring peace or they start searching for directly for inner peace through any any means any method even Eastern religions far away from the Western inheritance through meditations which they have learned from somewhere anywhere through all kinds of intoxicants through drug-related drug-assisted States of ovulation so in a piece you searched for but it's not usually found perhaps if you have love human love which is perfect it will give you the gift of Peace but how do you find the perfect love I certainly didn't so I searched for in a piece but I didn't find it by any of the Avenues which usually are taken to to arrive at it and I was still believing in it and still searching for it and this I think is a condition of most western people they have an idea like a mirage of inner peace in front of them and they search for it and they move toward it but every time they move toward it it seems further away and I was in that state yes I did like most of my contemporaries I did ask all these questions I found that I must take the answers from those who were who have gone before me so I started to read and I came to what I thought was a reasonable position I took my history from Marx I took my psychology from Freud and I took my poetry from their English Romantics from Byron and Shelley and keeds so I made a complete philosophy of Life which explained the natural origin of man in a material sense which explained the purpose of his life as his fulfillment and I believed that death was the end of everything I was a materialist in that sense that the life of the body is material and when the body dies the life is extinguished as when you extinguish a candle the flame is gone after death I didn't believe in anything I thought that it is the end death ends it all and when the body is in the in the coffin I used to work in hospitals during my my summer vacations from the University and many times it was my job to carry the patients who had died during the night down to the morgue and I remember one night a girl died of she had enlarged head elephantitis I don't know the name exactly and her head was almost as large as her whole body her whole body was so small and this girl died and when she died I just I didn't put her in the usual trolley I just picked her up in my arms and just carried her down to the Mok and she was so cold and I felt that the little girl that I had seen suffering for a few weeks in the hospital was gone and that was my first taste of my first experience of the flatness of death that the body is in inert it's extinct and the personality is extinct with it so my ideas on on life on Origin its origin its purpose and its end were all materialistically based but with a kind of romantic flavor in the middle [Music] I believed that there was a purpose and An Origin In Love from life but I did not contribute it to God I did not accept the thesis that the starting of life was God The Big Bang Theory for example which believes which says that life began in a series of massive exponential explosions which produced all the matter of the universe I uh I rejected the idea of a creator I modeled at the creation and everyone thinks this is a sufficient reason to believe in God but for me it was not a sufficient reason yes the Earth is marvelous the laws of nature are beautiful the complicated even the the single structure of the DNA the double helix a very beautiful thing but it did not make me think that it had to be created by somebody the the sophistication of the natural process seemed to me sufficient to explain even the complicated and Beautiful World of Nature so no I did not arrive at a Creator in my own thinking I did not see the necessity for a creator and I did not certainly see any evidence of someone overlooking his creation and following it through so I never had any idea that God who who started it was then looking after it and bringing it to an end no I had none of this I saw no need for this hypothesis when I was young of course I went to the Protestant church with my parents but after I stopped going with them I used often to go to Catholic churches for the art I used to enter many Cathedrals and examine the the architectural structure of the building the the sculptures the carvings any interior paintings I liked the church architecture it seemed to me to have a a calm and a Grace and then an authority which was arresting so I like to visit when they're empty I like to visit empty churches I never went to church when it was full but uh yes I did enter many churches but for artistic reasons for reasons of uh the history of that particular church or for some artistic reason [Music] oh historically Christianity was a very bad thing that it uh it was responsible for many wars which otherwise would never have occurred there was a religion our religion they exist from the beginning of time till now for example when I was growing up the Irish hunger Strikers and the Irish peace Marchers were set amid pitch battles between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland when I saw the American flag and the American Protestant Pride set alongside the war in Vietnam I would have disgusted so I saw Christianity as a tool used by ruling powers to cover up their War like if imperialist aims against other peoples and cultures when you look at the English record in India how the greater English church supported the the wholesale Slaughter of indigenous Hindu and Sikh populations and decimated their their religious tradition when you look at any any country you look at even here in Egypt you look at the effect of the Byzantine post-roman Byzantine Church persecution of the Coptic Court Jacobite Church everywhere you look I thought I saw Christianity as an oppressive War like dress put on by Western principally Western European powers to cover up their greed that was my view now I see the church as still being responsible for all the blood the crochet but the church is not Christianity now I make a difference between Jesus and his disciples and those of us who follow in their steps in the footsteps of the master this is Christianity the church is something else one of the reasons I'm happy to be in the Coptic church is that the Coptic church has very very little blood on its hands if any mostly the Coptic change has been persecuted rather than persecuting anybody else but very few churches can say the same so as churches go the Catholic Church is quite respectable because it is historically a victim rather than a an oppressor but I still see no reason to change my opinion that uh the effect of the hierarchical and ecclesial Church of the West has been a good thing now I don't think it has been a good thing I think it has been a disastrous thing Christianity itself is the most beautiful and most elevating and most heart heart saving thought system that has ever been produced and God's message through his son to save mankind is a completely different message than the hierarchical Christian church so I would very insist on this difference between what you say around you as Church and what you feel in your heart when you know Christ having said that we can come the full circle and when you when you know Jesus When You Believe In Christ when you believe in God's plan for mankind then you can find in the Liturgy of the church you can find in the sacraments of the church an expression of spiritual truth in material things which helps and and lifts people and gives people hope so when you go to a a big Cathedral and you see an orthodox Bishop praying the Liturgy you feel that that matter is glorious you feel that material things can serve God so I I love and respect the church in its sacramental presence but historically there's a lot of reservations still in my life I suffered at the hands of other people and I suffered from my own doubts and fears and my own weaknesses and Follies so I suffered both externally and internally and I never felt that I could go somewhere into the sky and find somebody who will help me God was not a presence in my life he was not near and close beside me I never saw him standing to protect me when boys hit me I never saw him come and and hold my hand when I was when I was bleeding in my heart I never felt this I suffered for years for from from 10 11 12 till early twenties and I never found any consolation offered me in in God or his or his so-called presence so my atheism was was not just intellectual but it was also emotional I felt myself utterly alone and I felt no hand extended only the Hands Extended to push me down not to lift me up so God was nowhere in my in my estimation I did visit India for some some time in my youth and I did read a lot about Buddhism so these two Eastern religions I did search to see if they could provide some answer like many of my generation I followed the Beatles into their their exploration of Hinduism and then the the very favorable reception that Buddhism received in the West not only from the Dalai Lama's visits but also from from General writing by by Western people but it was a taste only I didn't arrive at any personal uh deep personal commitment to either of these two religions and I continued atheists the continued romantic in my own dreams until my mother died when my mother died it left a hole in my life not because of her so much not because of her personality so much although she was a good woman but what hit me was that I had no mother I had no Source you asked me about did I understand the the idea of God as the source of life as the creator of life what I felt after my mother died that I had no origin my my source my the reason for my being was it disappeared the one who gave me birth this had been cut away taken away with my mother's death I lost my my firm balance on them like no way to walk on the Earth and I became disoriented I became lost even more lost than before and for 12 months after my mother died I continued to to be angry at her death to be angry at the supposed consolation of religion that her family have the rest of the family and her friends offered and after the full year of grieving I was no no closer to any peace no closer to any balance then finally I went back to the hospital where she died she died of cancer in a Roman Catholic Hospital I went back to the hospital when she died and I remember those days of her suffering and I wanted to go to the room in which he died where I had slept on the floor next to her for the last 10 days of her life and I wanted to recapture that that moment to see if I could start again from there to find some way out of that mystery of death that was like a like a Blackness like a Darkness surrounding me I had no way to understand it and I had no way to to balance my life again without a mother the nurses at the hospital told me they were nursing sisters of course they told me that no the room is being used we cannot give you access at the moment but come after some time and we will show you so they sent me to the library because it was a hospital attached to a convent they sent me to the library to to wait that for them there I found a book about the life of Aroma of an American monk called Thomas Merton it's called the seven story Mountain his biography is quite his autobiography is quite famous and I read it the nurses forgot me and I forgot to go down the book was so engrossing it was an exact copy of my own life he was a philosopher he was left-wing in his politics and his mother died and he was uh a fan of films and the books that he read were the books that I read it was a mirror image of my own life but he in America and to me in Australia so after his mother died he he worked his way to peace in a Roman Catholic monastery so I thought on reading this book well someone who is so like me a philosopher someone who is who was atheistic for so many years someone who was intelligent uh critic and judge of his own life and of of Western life and he arrives at peace in a monastery well maybe I can do the same so I ignored those parts of the book which discussed his his growing faith in God he had a friend in the University who who converted him if you like to a real faith in God so I just took the idea the simple idea from the book that exchanged he exchanged his university for a monastery and in the monastery he found a piece so I thought let me do the same let me exchange my university for a monastery so I telephoned to our enormous Catholic Monastery the next day and I asked if I might go and be a monk the person who answered the phone asked me well which church do you come from I told him no I don't go to church he asked me uh which which priest your spiritual father did he recommend you to us I said no I don't know any priests I don't have any spiritual father he said to me oh you don't go to church and you don't know any priests and yet you want to be a monk I'm sorry and he closed the phone so he thought I was crazy for sure I had some weird idea of mythicism and he he wasn't going to buy into that then I looked in the phone book and I found another Monastery it was called a Serbian Orthodox monastery okay I tried it I rang and I said can I come for a visit then it was the bishop I found out later he answered he said come and see now he used these exact words for a reason I understood at the time I didn't connect it but afterward I understood very well that rather than ask me questions as the Catholic priest did he didn't want to prejudge the issue so he just said come and see now where did he find that formula of words from the Bible when Jesus appeared after John Baptist's arrest the Disciples of John Baptist start to change over to Jesus and when Philip attached himself to Jesus he discovered that this is the teacher which we which we want and he went to his friend Nathaniel and he said to him come and see Nathaniel said nothing good can come from Nazareth and Philip insisted to come and see which is an unknown committed you don't commit yourself to anything just come and see and this this company this serving Bishop said to me come and see well I was pleased with it and I said yes I'll come the day I arrived it was a Saturday and on Saturdays in the Catholic church in the in the Orthodox Church Greek Orthodox Church in the Coptic Church in all of these Sacramento churches there is a commemoration of the Dead on Saturday and they came from the Liturgy just at the time that I entered the monastery we went to the cemetery where the Serbian people remembered they're dead I was attempting to go in the car with the bishop because he had shaken my hand and welcomed me he said to me no I prefer you to go with this this lady and gentleman I got in the car with them and I found that they were a couple whose daughter had paid a visit to the monastery and had been killed in a car crash she was riding this joyriding with some boys up and down the The Long Highway which was dead straight and dead flat outside the monastery and the car overturned and she alone was killed and this couple would be there and they said God has stolen our daughter killed our daughter we sent her to his house and he has killed her they were very bitter and I was also very bitter I was saying yes my mother has died and I God didn't help there was any God he didn't help me so we were complaining to each other about God being the cause of our misery so it was whether the bishop realized it or not he was giving us their comfort by putting the two most miserable groups together after the cemetery the Serbian people went to the church to make a prayer they make a prayer on that occasion to Saint Mary when we entered the church there is a big icon of Saint Mary on the wall now I I had seen icons from time to time as a part of art art history art journals and books but I knew very little about them and I certainly had no personal experience of icons at that time Saint Mary I had heard of of course all the world has heard of her but I knew nothing personally about her because my parents were Protestant didn't believe that she was anything other than just a an ordinary girl who happened to give birth to Jesus but so I had no intimate acquaintance with her as as theotalko so Mother of God I had no no understanding of her rolling the Orthodox Church I knew that Catholics called her Virgin Mary but that was all I knew and I'd seen some pictures of her in newspapers or magazines as everybody has seen but she didn't mean much I went into this church and I found all the people making a matanya that is bowing down to the to the icon of Saint Mary and I was astonished because Australian men don't bow down to anybody I mean the usual greeting in Australia is is a handshake and that's it even if a taxi driver meets the Prime Minister he will not uh bow down to him he will not uh kiss his hand he will not uh even bent his head unless he wants to even just shake his hand and that would be it so informal and equal greetings between people of very different standing it's just the Australian Norm so I had no preparation for physically for bending down to make it to make an embarrassment to a figure of abstract power so I didn't feel easy but I wanted to be polite and I saw all the Serbian people make their maternions to this icon of sentimentary and after they finished their three metanyas they went to the side of the church where the priest was praying and the people start to sing hymns to Saint Mary with the priest I thought okay let me do what they do so I tried to make the first matanya and I I stood from standing let me show you from standing I am should be erect I should be homo homo erectus you know I should be a strong man then I have to make myself weak I have to put myself down on the ground so I tried bending my knees and bowing down okay so this was the first part of the effort the first part of the struggle of the matanya if I can call it that finally I got down on my knees now remember that the icons areas in front of me on the wall a big big icon it was very famous in Australian religious circles because it had made some miraculous cures there was a wife of a Greek priest who had cancer and she was healed by this by intercession through this icon and it was well known in Australia people who are not from that particular church still they came to visit to see that icon so I okay I wasn't much concerned about the icon I was more concerned about making my metania smoothly and joining their people then I had to put my forehead on the floor okay now this was a big difficulty for me but I never did this in my whole entire life so I tried I didn't put my fingers correctly but it doesn't matter I bowed my head down so I finally got down to the ground and when I was in that position if I might ask you to consider when you make a matano what is the position of your body how does it shape itself maybe you don't see yourself from outside but think about how the shape of your body appears to someone watching you you are in a half circle like you are bent over in much the same position as a fetus in the womb okay you look at any picture of a fetus in the womb of its mother not exactly like a seahorse but it's kind of folded around on itself right so I was feeling like that I was feeling that I am in a kind of fetal position and I'm becoming small and I'm becoming weak and helpless so all of these emotions started to overtake me as I made them at Tanya I'm Italian is a physical action but it's a fixed it's very devastating on the psychology on the emotions because it says you are weak you are small you are nothing you are destinations you know it's a statement that I am not worthy to lift up my eyes to you the matanya is a very eloquent statement of Christian humility so I was bending down and all my sadness at my mother's death started to overflow started to come out from me and I started to to cry I started to let the tears come and I started to vocalize my my sadness as I was telling myself I thought actually I was praying I was confessing I didn't know at the time how God had planned it but I was outpouring my feelings I said I don't have a mother I lost my mother and I want a mother and I'm sad and I need him why have I not got a mother why is there no one with me so I was pouring out my feelings at being motherless as I was bending down I thought well I must stand up so I stood up and I thought that was the end of it I thought the next one will be much easier because you had to make three matanus three were necessary to complete the right I made the second matanya and this time I repeated the same words that I'd said before and this time when I came to to complain of being motherless when I said my mother has died and I feel I feel sad and alone I was bending my head down on the ground and I heard a voice behind my head from from somewhere behind my head I Heard a Voice say I will be your mother I didn't know who was speaking I heard the voice clearly it was a beautiful voice it was soft but it was clear it was it was sweet but it was strong it was a very affecting female voice and she said I will be your mother in English I said I will be your mother and I didn't know who is speaking so I thought perhaps one of the Serbian women had heard me crying or heard my voice and came to support me so I looked to the left and to the right to see if any woman had come to offer her help but no one was there I was alone then I repeated the words and again the voice came I will be your mother so this time I was determined to to find out I lifted up my eyes and the icon was in front of me on the wall and as I lifted up my eyes said Mary moved out of the icon and stood in front of it not her whole body but it was an icon of her her top her to the waist and she was in the icon holding Jesus she herself alone she just moved out she put her head out of the icon like the icon remained on the wall completely understood but she she appeared as a presence in front of it and she bent her head toward me and she looked at me eye to eye and she smiled and she said I wouldn't be your mother for the third time and when she smiled she was so lovely and she was so loving and her words just took all the pain out of my out of my heart and gave me hope and gave me Faith and gave me a belief in myself again all of this happened in an instant of time when she said I would be your mother and in that moment I was I was made new I was reborn If I Was Made new I made into a new man by her love by her eyes her smile her voice her presence it was something electric which just filled me with with a presence and then she started to give off light her whole body started to to shine and I had to lower my eyes and bend my head down so I made the third metanya and I finished then as I looked up as I stood up for the third for the third time she passed back into the icon as if she as if she melted back into it and the icon the light disappeared and she became she was gone the icon became still and it was only a picture but her presence had been real and the presence had been life-changing I saw her I heard her and I felt her love and that moment made me depended on her for all my life from that moment when I stood up I knew that my life was now dedicated only to her that her love for me was so great and sufficient that it it would keep me alive so all my pain all my doubts all my fears all my lostness all my emptiness or my need of love everything was filled by her in an instant of time and I left that church convinced that I was now I had a mother I had a loving mother I had I had a mother who was not only beautiful and sweet but she was kind and she was she was generous and she was so many full things as well all of this knowledge of her I got by her love through her love it didn't he didn't need a long time of living with her to know her I knew her immediately and she showed herself fully in that moment of time in her Smile in the way that she passed her love to me and every time I've seen her since it's been the same I've seen her several times since then and that's why I I couldn't leave that church I couldn't go away from that monastery I had to stay with her not to stay near her and so I stayed in that survey Monastery I told the bishop I don't want to leave and I stayed from that day in the in the Orthodox Monastery I will tell you shortly about how I changed to the Coptic church but from that day I was finished with the world I never went back I didn't go back to the university I didn't continue teaching I didn't continue to live in my house I I abandoned everything for her so it was as if my full monasticism fell on me with Saint Mary's love and that's how come I became a Christian of course I I stayed in the Christian church because where else would I find this loving mother who has given me my new life [Music] foreign that the first time that I believed how I came at first to believe that the Lord Jesus was my was my savior this happened to me in in two stages the first time was in Serbia after I had seen Saint Mary and after I had joined the Serbian monastery the bishop quickly came to understand that I was not really Orthodox as I did not really know anything about Christian behavior and Orthodox Behavior so he suggested to me that I go to Serbia to in Greece to learn about Orthodoxy for him it was he presumed that I was already Christian I didn't tell him immediately that I was not Christian that I was an atheist I didn't want to be put out of the monastery because I wanted to stay with Saint Mary so after watching me for a few months couple of months he decided that he could see that I didn't know what I was doing there really so he suggested this trip as a way of of my learning and I agreed I asked him would I will I see Saint Mary in in these other monasteries and he said yes she is in all the monasteries so this answer seemed to me to satisfy me that I would not lose contact with my mother if I went to other monasteries and I went to to several monasteries in Serbia and some spent some time in Greece now in my Monastery in Serbia the first the big Monastery which I entered there as you enter the monastery there are two frescoes painted either side of the of the main gate a picture of Jesus and a picture of Saint Mary and underneath each one there is a scroll of writing and there is a dialogue between them recorded in this writing now the monk who was explaining to me who is my guide he was talking to me in Serbian and this is the first example of something which I want to tell you about just briefly about the Pentecostal gift in my life several times the Lord has opened to me a language which I did not know how much I still don't know all my life in Orthodoxy I have not been praying in English at first I prayed with serps then I prayed with Greeks and now I pray with Egyptians in Coptic or Arabic so I have never spent any amount of time praying to God in English privately of course I can in myself but in my church life in my masses and in my participation in public prayer and morning prayer and evening prayer I have never had this experience of praying in English so God several times has opened to me languages which I didn't know as on the day of Pentecost and this is the first occasion I was in Serbia and this monk was explaining to me in Serbian the meaning of the writing which was on these two Scrolls underneath the picture of Jesus and the picture of Saint Mary and I will tell you what it said how it was presented to me it was presented in Serbian but I was hearing it in English all the meaning that was conveyed to me I I knew it intuitively in English even though I I didn't know serving very well I knew a little bit but not very well certainly not enough to understand the sophistication now the first thing that Samira said was it's recorded on the scroll my son forgive them so she asks she intercedes with Jesus for forgiveness for the people I didn't hear them I heard him I heard her say when when the monk was reading it I heard him say my son forgive him what's written is my son forgive them the Lord made it personal to me Jesus answer is no I will not forgive him it's written them but I heard him a second time Saint Mary asks my son forgive him and Jesus repeats no his heart is hard I will not forgive him what's written there is their hearts are hard as in Psalm 94 they hardened their hearts in the day of tribulation in the Psalms the hardness of the hearts of the Israel people LED God to many times punish them to reject them from his Covenant and then when they confessed he renewed The Covenant with them so this Hardness of Heart he said it a pharaoh he said Pharaoh his heart will harden his heart so this words is recorded there a third time after he and I heard it that Jesus said his heart is hard and I took it personally and I was meant to they're not meant for me to take this personally so I saw the great icon of Jesus Christ on the Fresco on the wall and the beauty of the Syrian pictures are so beautiful the icons are so beautiful and he was saying to Saint Mary I will not forgive him because his heart is hard and I knew at this moment that there's something wrong with me I knew I had love for Saint Mary but that's all I loved I didn't love anything else in the world so I thought maybe my heart is hurt that's true then the third time Saint Mary speaks and she says my son for my sake forgive him and then Jesus answers yes for your sake I will forgive him and this one said personally to me it's written I will forgive them it's a it's a dialogue which is used to support the general Orthodox understanding of Saint Mary as an intercessor for mankind there's a someone who asks God to forgive us and why we repeat in many of our prayers and Mary pray for us but all of this was was passed to me as personal my son forgive him and Jesus says for your sake I will forgive him so at that moment I knew I realized something I realized that my mother this new mother whom I've who I recently one who has recently come to me was recently given me her love she is asking her son Jesus to save me to forgive me to to heal me so first of all I understood that she could not do it herself I thought she could but she seemed to ask him for something else and secondly that he agreed to save me for one reason only because she asked it so I I knew at that moment that through her prayers I I received something from the Lord so I came to accept to believe that he had something to give and that she asked him for it because I believed in her because I saw her because I knew her because I loved her because she loved me there was some point to her question of the of Jesus otherwise I would not have accepted it I had no knowledge of Jesus I had no belief in Jesus I had no personal operation with him at all but because Saint Mary interceded with him for me it brought me closer to Jesus now this was the first time that I ever came to know Jesus as my savior since I've become orthodox because I became Orthodox and Christian at the same time since I've become an Orthodox Christian I have come to accept that I don't know everything before when I was in the University I thought I knew everything I thought that the world was getting part of my knowledge that I was able by my mind and by my heart to to Encompass the whole universe the intellectual Pride of the West is is without limit and I was sharing in this Pride so much so now I've come to see myself as I have become more humble in my intellectual pretensions I know that I don't know everything I know that that the Lord is uh is my my teacher he is my master and this has been the biggest personal change in me I think also I have become more uh ready to accept the weaknesses of others which is a great thing that Jesus teaches I never accepted the weakness of others before I encourage them to overcome their weaknesses but I would not feel pity for them or understanding for their weaknesses I would condemn the weaknesses themselves now I have a lot of pity for a lot of compassion for people and I see how they suffer and I see how they live confused lives how they fall into many many mistakes and this this loving compassion this is something which the Lord has by his example I've approached a little bit towards it not very much but it's a gift from God so these are the two things which the increase in in humility that I adore I no longer think that I am the source of all truth I believe that he is and secondly that I have a much greater love for others than I have about why I chose the Orthodox Church rather than the Catholic of protestant given that the West is predominantly Catholic and Protestant as I said to you it was because of Saint Mary it was in the Orthodox Serbian Orthodox Church that she came to me and she gave herself to me and presented me to her son so it was not I who chose Orthodoxy but God who chose it for me because he felt that this would be the best home for me so when I came back from my trip from Serbia in Greece I went back to the monastery in Australia and when I after I lived there a few months I realized that it was not so perfect a place for me because it was a very busy place the serving families came there all the time and it was not suitable for my business for my peace and quiet one Saturday three Coptic Christians three young people came to this Monastery to visit to see the icon of Saint Mary two girls and one boy uh one of the girls and the boy were engaged for marriage and the other girl was accompanying them after I showed them the church the the monastery was empty that day because all the Serbian people had gone for a picnic and I have been left in charge to just to show any visitors around the church and this this girl came the the other couple of her friends went for a walk after the after seeing the church and I sat with this Captain girl and I asked her and they were are you are you orthodox she said yes I said where are you from she said from Egypt so I said well Egypt is Muslim she said no Egypt has a population of Coptic Christians and I didn't know like most Australians I was completely ignorant of the existence of Coptic Christianity I thought that it was a totally Muslim country so after this initial false touch you again began to explain to me that Egypt had a 10 Christian population then we quickly got over that and I she said to me would you like to read the Holy Bible with me and I I didn't read the Bible it was not something that I did since I had entered the monastery I had been only concerned with Saint Mary and I had not been concerned with much else I started to to respond to Jesus but as I said to you only through that one experience then she asked me well go and get your Bible father we'll read together I went to get in my Bible I had a brand new one shop board uncut clean white perfectly new never just I brought it it was sitting in the cell it was like a gift like a brand new thing so I took it and put it on the table and she looked at it very suspiciously and she said father this is not your Bible which you read I said no I didn't elaborate then she took her Bible out of her bag her Bible was completely broken all the pages were were completely underlined in red and with red writing almost covering the black she had recorded every teaching she had received in Sunday school and in church meetings and it was like like a lived thing it was something which he had used up almost to the extinction The Binding was broken and it was it was a living object in her eyes and she started to read and she started to tell me stories from the Bible about how God called Abraham and brought him out of his home and took him to a new place how God told Moses go and take the people out of Egypt and go to a new place how God sent Isaiah and Ezekiel to to live new lives all of those people whose lives had been changed by God from a past to a new to a new future she started to tell me and we arrived at John the Baptist and we arrived at the New Testament so she was teaching me in a in a in a very straightforward tour of the Bible how God had a habit of picking people up and taking them out of their past and putting them into a new future and she was exactly expressing my case she was it was if she was reading from the Bible an autobiography a biography for me an autobiography that I could speak and I started to be amazed I wanted to know about this experience of being lifted up out of the past and taken to the Future and I sat with her many times and she told me many things she would read me uh passages which which even now resonate in my mind I understood that I was it was necessary for me to walk out of my past and to know that God had a plan for me to know that God had a destiny of his own for me which was not a human Destiny it was a God God plan it's a providential so this is the second stage of my coming close to the Lord and it is the first stage of my coming to Coptic Church I believe now that this girl was used by Saint Mary she was a vehicle that say Mary used to teach me many things which I needed to know before I would be ready for monasticism Coptic monasticism I was already a monk by this stage in the in the Serbian Church so after I met her after several times I went to her house to her parents house I ate with them and prayed with them and it was the wedding of the others and I attended the wedding in the church and she she taught me the sanicarium of the Coptic Church she taught me pristine she taught me the the life of Saint Anthony and the life of the of the Saints of the monastery she had a picture book of Saint Anthony Monastery she showed me the cave of Saint Anthony the picture of it he showed me a picture of the spring it was as if she opened my eyes to the desert life and as if she made it possible for me to dream about the desert life so in a few short months from the time that I met her until Bob Schneider's visit to Australia to to bless the altar in them in the monastery in Melbourne the Serbian the Coptic Monastery in Melbourne in these few short months I learned from her how to be or what it meant to be a desert Christian that the Coptic church had one great heritage which up until that time I thought was just a Greek imagination that is the desert life I thought it was just written down in the Greek books that Anthony was a desert Monk and so on but she showed me that it was a living Coptic tradition and this the second life-changing thing that happened to me the first was of course Saint Mary and the second was this opening of my eyes to to the masticism of the desert so this is how I became acquainted with the Coptic church and with Coptic monasticism through this uh Norman girls love for for the desert Saints and since I've come to Egypt since I started to live in Egypt I have understood that many people who never can live in the desert many Coptic people families who can never live in the desert they love it they love their sense of the desert they love St Anthony Paul they love all the desert Saints they respect them and they pray to them to intercede for them with the Lord so I came to see the desert as a living a living Christian place a living Christian habitat and this was a thing which started to to attract me from that time it was never inevitable foreign came to Australia I met him and I asked him if I could come to live in Saint Anthony monastery he agreed for me to come to Egypt and I came to Egypt from that time he the the project the the the growth of my Coptic education was very interesting it was very monistic about why I how I felt when I entered the Coptic Church Catholic strategy for the first time and why I didn't just stay as a as a university teacher and change to Christianity and continue to live that old life but but being Coptic being Christian being Orthodox well for me the two things that I said went together I became orthodox and monastic at the same time and then I became Coptic and monastic at the same time so I have never lived as a town Christian I have never lived as a member of an orthodox community in in a church in a in a city since I became Orthodox after the long years of atheism I from you know from 11 age 11 to age age 40 I was atheist so since I became Orthodox and became Coptic it was immediately and at once monastic when I came to Egypt and I went to Saint Bichon Monastery where the pope has his his uh his house and I used to go from the Pope's house to the to the Monastery Church sandwich Church in the monastery to attend the Liturgy sometimes you would attend the Liturgy in the in the Hess in the castle in the Fortress I was immediately struck by the informality and the formality at the same time the Liturgy has a shape it has an articulation it has a it has a process black people are relaxed people move around freely in the church people can come and go even in the altar the priests are free to move about there was something so lived so so easy about the being in the church as if people were at home in the church this was the feeling about what I felt when I first took Holy Communion this is a this was a long process because I was six weeks in Saint Bishop Monastery before ever I was allowed to take Holy Communion my I will tell you the story perhaps you know in a few minutes but uh my first holy My First Holy Communion was in the in the castle in sembishoy in the in the tower in Saint Mary's Church and uh I can best explain to you what I felt as a non-coptic non-egyptian person coming into the Coptic church and having just been allowed to take all the communion from my first liturgy as a Coptic person I read in the exam the story of new matter George Muse who was Muslim as you will know I suppose his mother was Christian but his father was Muslim and his mother used to take him to the church but he would not be allowed to take all the communion she would take Holy Communion but he would not take it he would be given some iflogier at the end of the liturgy but he became always fascinated by the Holy Communion he said to himself it's written in this class in in the cynics area if the if the piece of bread which I take at the end of the mess tastes so nice how much more nice will taste that one which is inside so the Holy Communion seemed to him to be like a fascinating and beautiful treat which was cut off from him he couldn't take it he could only take the second hand one and his mother told him you cannot take it because you are not Christian and after some time he asked her I want to be Christian I want to take that bread I want to take that that taste that bread inside there so she had him educated and he became a Coptic he became Christian and he took Holy Communion when he became Christian and took the Holy Communion his father who was Muslim denounced him and he was arrested and he was touched and he was executed so he became a martyr for me now when I read that story it reminds me of my First Holy Communion how I felt for so long that something so beautiful like that it must be in reserve for me and I went to take it from the hand of Bishop Anthony who is Bishop in in England he gave it to me and I I felt that I had a new like a new part of me something extra inside me which I didn't have before the pla the goodness of it the richness of it it was completely different from this bread which you get at the end this little bit of Hummel which is passed out at the end so I often pray that the judgment will will remember me in heaven because I remember him very much you ask about father Lazarus the Monk and the priest what is the difference well I think there is a difference I think it's a good question I was among for some years before I became a priest and in those years I remember all the effort all the concentration of my life was on my cell i in it I inherited this idea from my early reading from my early teaching both in the Greek church and in the Coptic Church that and from from what my little friend in Australia taught me that the Monk Is someone who lives in his cell and he prays in his cell and he he is hidden away he is he's closed up in his life of Prayer and I learned this and I tried to follow this and I spent the first four or five years of Mystic life Coptic monastic life in this place alone living here and praying here and and focusing on what is the solitary nature of the Monk and how does the Solitude in the silence how does it open the door and how does it speak to us of of Heaven so as a monk I I started to have a present perception of the future of my heavenly future by the vehicle of prayer through the through the way of Prayer through the Psalms and through the Jesus prayer and through my daily prayers to saint Mary her love for me continued even as I started to grow in monastic solitude then when I became a priest and they started to offer the Liturgy to offer the sacrifice so many things which had before been words the main one being sacrificed that may offer my hands my prayers as evening sacrifice my body as an evening sacrifice I pray them the mass mostly very rarely do I create in the monastery but nightly I pray the mass at midnight in the tale of Saint Anthony about 40 minutes from here I continue up to the top of the mountain and go across through the path made by deer to reach the cave of Saint Anthony and there I pray the the Liturgy with boys deacons who come from from The Retreat House from Bethel so I pray them as there now you remember in the egg beer it says that we should be awake at midnight for the coming of the bridegroom we are all the virgins we are all preparing ourselves if we have oil in our lamps they will burn brightly and the Lord will admit us to the feast to the wedding so I pray the mess at midnight in the chaos Anthony who is my father who is the supporter and the base of my monasticism he's the one who welcomed me here he's the one he's the one who gave me his blessing and I will tell you the story again he gave me his Blessing to be a monk here in this place so I go to the cave nightly where he lived where he lived for 35 years in in full holiness his struggle was in Venezuela but his full Holiness was here he was already master of himself when he came here and he lived like Moses his spiritual force was not abated he was still in power only 35 years that he lived here so when I go there in the cave to pray the cave is small the cave is is like a around like a circle and we go inside the entrance is long and narrow and you have to squeeze your way in when you get into the cave there you have a place like a like a like a like a a womb or or a tomb a place completely separate and you pray in them in the Rock You Stand in the center of the rocky place and you pray and there is an icon of Christ the Sinai a copy of the Sinai Christ above the altar and when I pray I am conscious every minute of the mess especially during the the words of institution and when I actually give the Holy Communion I am conscious of the desire that Jesus has to be with us Jesus said in in the Thursday night with desire I have desired to eat this supper with you this is the words of the in the words of institution when Jesus talked on Thursday night he said to his disciples he's 12. I have desired with a full desire in my heart to eat this with you to share this with you I feel this as a priest I know that the presence of Christ is a power the presence of Christ is an immediate and and of a feeling an enriching presence when I was a monk only I attended the Liturgy there was a slight Veil okay since I became a priest I am the one who when I take the body of Jesus Christ in my hands and the Holy Spirit descends and it becomes not bread any longer I believe in the in the real presence I believe that when when I have said these prayers not through my power through the holy spirit's descending I am the witness in my own hands of the of the Incarnation of Christ so this has filled me with a sense of awe and mystery in the presence of the mass that makes it like I'm an addict on the Holy Communion I go to the mess I must go I must pray the mess in the chaos Anthony if I don't go there was a period of two or three months in the winter time when I was suffering from the cold and from the hardship of this long walk that I stopped praying them as and I suffered in those days much more from not praying the mess then from the cold and the trip and the and the physical difficulties the spiritual dryness the spiritual Exile that I felt when I was cut off from my Lord by not being able to pray them as was terrible I never wish to suffer that alienation again so as a as a monk I I was simple I was praying that prayers in the cave and I was living a simple life now as a priest I have this dimension of of personal desire from the Lord feelings about how to control their thoughts during the Liturgy this is a very important issue I know that the Christian the early Christian Church divided the letter g into two the the Liturgy of the catechumens was from the beginning till the end of the Gospel and then the Liturgy of the Believers the literature of the baptized was the second half from the Creed to to the Holy Communion now I think that the youth should be aware of this difference and should pay attention to it for example if you find that your thoughts are wondering if you are finding that you are more concerned with your friends around you and you are not able to concentrate on what's Happening in this first half be easy on yourself can you go outside and shake your head or wash your face and come back because you can always read the the polling gospel the Catholic on the Praxis even the gospel you can read all of this katamaras on your computer many programs have it from the end of the Creed you should tell yourself now it's now is the time now it's happened now it's going to fall on top of me now I have to be awake so you should be aware that there is an increased in tension there is an increase in pressure there is an increase in holiness from the from the word the literature of the word to the Liturgy of the sacrifice so if you are aware of this it will help you to to pass more fully into the Liturgy of the sacrifice once you get inside it once the priest starts to pray the the prayer of reconciliation try to focus on big words if you if you try to follow every word and you blame yourself when your mind is wandering somewhere you would give up you'll become hoopers don't do that repentance reconciliation forgiveness sacrifice absolution focus on these big words like you like in LeapFrog you know suppose you are crossing a stream and the stream is running fast and someone puts four or five big stones to cross the Stream and you jump from one stone to the next one and you get across to the other side you didn't go down into the water and swim desperately across the river no you you jumped across on the five Stones okay the Liturgy can be like that don't try to blame yourself because you are not following every moment if someone is blessed with a concentration a pair of concentration that spans the whole period of the second section of the mass very good this is the best but if you find that you are not able to do this you must concentrate on the big sections how you confess your sins how you receive forgiveness from the Lord when forgiven how you approach his table is Holy table and you take his body in blood just these big movements and God will bless you you will find yourself much happier in the Holy Communion because you have you have just thought about these big issues so I think that for for the the youth particularly to to move in big steps and to come to the Holy Communion quickly it will be a blessing for them [Music] thank you [Music] you ask about lukewarm lukewarm Christians those who Who start off with with a relationship with Jesus and then it it becomes separated from their daily life and with us away and their daily life takes over and they become Christians merely by by name this is something which I have often noticed myself even in mysticism you find young monks become brothers become a monk become full monks and then after some time they start to fit into the grind the groove the daily groove of the monastery their work or their their routine overtakes them and they lose that first fire of monasticism so it's not only Town Christians people who are who are living in parishes and still working in this in their jobs who feel it but also some monks succumb to this pressure of daily life to to let their fire their first fire go down and when I'm asked sometimes by Boys tell me a kilometer tell me a word of life the only thing I usually say and I repeat it many times is that try to keep your fire burning and you try to keep your first fire alive this is a human condition I must say you look at marriage I mean how many marriages start off passionately the engagement the falling in love and the first first months and then the marriage itself happens and they start to live together the first few years of sexual relations and having the first children and everything is going well then the struggle for money they struggle for house the struggle to keep their daily life going and the romance dies and the marriage becomes a thing of of Heaven so I think it's a human condition even even in a job the first job that you take after school yeah you're so good to have money in your pocket and you even if you have a career a profession not just a job but suppose you have a provision at first you become wanting to know everything and then you advance and you get to a certain level and then you start to take it easy and to just repeat the same things which you have done to get when you were getting where you were so I think the the failure of an initial fire in the face of of a long period of daily life is a human part of the human condition and it covers everything work marriage religion prayer life spiritual life it covers all of this it takes a great effort I think on the part of every individual to to recreate himself every morning and in the bus stand there's one little one little word one little line which says Abba pior he used to say every day I made a new beginning to my life and uh I've often well not just often but I always do this I every day when I wake up after after I pray the mess at midnight I go back at two o'clock to my cave 2 30. and I sleep from three to six I never pray morning prayer without saying Lord this is a new day this is the first day of the rest of my life you you you made me you give me yourself you give me life I I recreate my my life every day with the sunrise I pray at Sunrise and I I see the new day being born and I I accept this as a sign to me of my new life so it's a struggle I think it's an effort in every sphere of life but if you if you're conscious are conscious of it and you are you are making every effort you can to use signs and any symbols and any little experiences which can renew you then you'll survive for example in in professional life or in married life the institution of holidays is a very good thing you take holidays to recharge your batteries to get yourself going again in spiritual life it should be prayer it should it should be a self-starting thing any prayer should should restart your your your your machine every day and you should get yourself out of your your rut if you fall into one by by renewing your prayer by by pushing it don't pray your prayers and don't let your prayer become routine if you find that stop it if you find that you have you have got so used to your egg bear or you got so used to some form of prayer that you you have taken as your rule stop it for a for a week and start something else and come back to it so that you you'll give yourself a new push a new lease of life here it's a difficult problem but it's something which we must fight against It's A War I think the war against the loudest scene you remember the churches in the in the Book of Revelation the photo of the Church of allowed to see it was and it was lukewarm that it was on sitting on the fence it was neither yes or no in Jesus was very angry of this I spit you out of my mouth because you are neither yes or no no what no code so it's a fault it's a it's a very great spiritual fault to be without fire so I think better to be aware of it and to to give yourself a break at some point and to to go away from your usual situation to get out of your usual situation and have a new experience and which will then give you a greater affection for you about confession and spiritual guidance yes I like all all Orthodox I have a spiritual father I have a confession father I know they're not always the same thing I know that some people confess for example some monks confess to the head of the monastery if it's a bishop or but they have a spiritual guide someone who is wise someone who is they've known for a long time and they take advice from them some people in the town also do this I think they have a confession father to whom they confess them from whom they take up solution but they take also advice from another person I think it's better that they'd be combined that those two functions being one person and I Thanks to God I have a good conventional father he's my my spiritual guide how I chose him is interesting I I asked publisher after publisher made me a Coptic Monk I said to him Holiness what shall I do about confession he said you choose somebody so I made a list of all the fathers in Saint Bishop who spoke English and I went to the Liturgy of them all those priests who spoke English I attended the Liturgy by each one of them some of them were performing and their voice was beautiful and they were singing a great liturgy but I this is not my cup of tea then some of them were very difficult and they they didn't seem open they've closed the mess on themselves okay I they needed to be like that and they are monk Prince they don't need to be open to people so it was okay but I didn't find it useful I came to one and I thought okay let me attend his his little mess his own he's good many years behind him and he is a son of I think from abomar from Parliament scheme and he came to Simply sure and he's lived now many years in simply showing I attended his liturgy he had a nice voice but not great boys but he prayed honestly and simply with the with an openness of heart then he came to the magma he and he started to pray the the names of all the saints which are written in the colleague he prayed it as if he was talking to them by name as if when he was saying the name of the saint he he know the saint he's telling to his friend something and I and then he continued and he added more I know now that it's it's permitted for the priest to add some sense of his choice but usually from the second part of the magma which is not prayed in its entirety it's prayed up to a certain point and then a part of it a section of it is usually cut and we jump to the last section but this monk he prayed for many to many Saints the names of many Saints which are not usually prayed and I felt that he was talking to them one by one and I said to myself this is the father I want someone who knows the Saints by name one by one I want this father and he gave the Holy Communion in a very dignified and quiet way and a simple way he sent altogether a Coptic monk simple believing genuine and and not not presuming not not putting himself forward so after that energy I asked Him Father Can You Hear My Confession he said oh this is very difficult for me he didn't want to to take the responsibility I said father please I don't have anybody he said okay come and see me from there we continued and to this day I am still confessing to him it's true that I did study the Coptic alphabet and the Coptic a little bit of company grammar some vocabulary at the beginning enough to pray the Liturgy enough to to follow the prayers in the church then I came to consider that sufficient but sometimes I felt that I would like to know it much better and I would take up a book and I would start to to learn some more words and to to look at the grammatical structure and things even I tried for a while to pray my agbia in Coptic but I felt that the Coptic is sufficient for the church when I go to the church and the monks are all together and everyone is singing the Coptic as a liturgical language it works very well but I thought no I don't need it as a personal prayer language so I let it go I now pray my prayers not in in Coptic I pray in English I don't know Arabic language I know some a little bit five words or six words but there is an interesting story behind this again you remember I told you about the Pentecostal gift which I find that that God sometimes gives the Pentecost but speaking out of many languages how God sometimes opens languages for me so that I can get the meaning without having to know the whole language when I first came here to London 20 years I knew nothing just I were in love but this wasn't all I knew so then I wanted to pray the mess in the cave with one of the monks from the monastery here and he is Saidi he is completely said he type really his head is fully said so I used to walk with him from the monastery to the cave of Anthony every night to pray the mass and he didn't know a word of English he's very simple and he just lives he is quite poor he lives a very simple physical life and his spiritual life is completely coptics 100 down the line straight so we started to go from the monastery to the cave and every night he would tell me the life of the saint of the day from the Phoenix area so he's speaking Society Arabic and I don't know anything over a few months of the period of a few months I started to understand a little bit here and there about the life of the Saints so long before I knew any even now I don't know Arabic language but I know all of the lives of the Saints from which he used to tell me in Arabic he used to talk to me in Arabic and this father when I'm with him he speaks in Arabic of course but there's no other language anxiety it did but I always understand him when I whatever I need to know he he tells me if someone else speaks in Arabic I don't understand so I look at him and he repeats it in his Arabic and I understand it so it's a gift which God gives God says okay you need to know certain things I will give it to you through this mouth of this father so to this day other monks see me talking with him for 20 minutes and they say father how can you talk with him you don't know Arabic I say I know I don't know but I I understand so this is like a gift from God to a Grace you know something that I can I can get what I need to to feed me like we never talk about politics we never talk about history we never talk about Society we never talk about families we only talk about that the mess and the monastery what we need to know about the monastery so I haven't complicated my existence with Egyptian Arabic language and culture I have lived the last 10 12 13 years internally in my own language but in obedience I have lived in the Coptic and Arabic milieu so I tend I have never understood anything in the church the gospel of the readings from the I never understand them but I go and I stand and I pray Jesus pray inside my mind while they pass so it's not for me a question of is it difficult to live with Egyptians because of the cultural barrier for me there is no cultural barrier there is only the mess there is only the church there is only the prayer I know that they are praying I know that mischievousness is praying well and God understands Arabic so I know it's okay I just stay in my corner that I say my Jesus prayer and enough if I'm there present I take the blessing I get the blessing of the of the Liturgy I get the blessing of the Shea I get the blessing of the the note the the the Sharia I get all sorts of blessings even without knowing the language sometimes because I know only this priest and I only speak with him people think that I am speaking sadly with him but really I don't know Arabic of any kind yeah so it's uh it's a matter of a need to know basis what I need to know God gives me and what I don't need to know remains closed remains a close book to me so when I go to Saint Michelle Monastery to make my confession on the way through if I pass in the street if I go in the bus to Varina tune I don't understand a word of what's working around me so I'm protected from all of the bad influences by language because I don't know them I just sit quietly and I'm as if I'm the only person in the world so my ignorance is a blessing it protects me from a lot of knowing bad things but Egyptian people are very kind Egyptian people love foreigners and they are very open to them and I have never found any difficulty in the monastery the monks have always treated me as elantoni of course that I have one in the west is completely different from living in Egypt or in any Orthodox country why because when you live in an orthodox country in Egypt or in Greece or in Russia or Syria or wherever you are living in a in a in a world in a milieu in a social social setting that accepts the truth of God that God's truth the truth of the Bible the truth of the Liturgy the truth of all all the Orthodox tradition when you live in the west you live in a in a society which does not accept that truth the greater number of the people around you don't believe all the things that you believe and they actually think that you are foolish for believing them so not only do you have the internal Warfare which everyone has every Christian is under a sentence of of war from Satan but when you live in a Christian Community you know in our case in Orthodox Christian Community you have help you have the help of all the world around you the Cradle you are living in the in the Cradle of Christianity it's it's protecting you you can't fall out of the trade you might cry you might wake up and cry but you you are still in the Cradle but when you live in the West in a western country in America or England or in Australia or France or generally Italy whenever you live in any of these countries you are living in a world where that cradle has been long since broken and the baby is falling down so you are living where people do not know do not believe do not want to know do not want to believe in all the things that you know and believe and they think you are foolish they attack you The Temptations are so great in these Western countries in the name of freedom okay in the west you are free to have sex without marriage you are free to uh take stimulants to take alcohol to take tobacco to take hallucinate with drugs you are free to to do anything you like you are free even to be without God you are afraid to live for yourself you can worship money you can worship success you can worship whatever you like no one will blame you it's natural it's considered normal so I understand the struggle that you have a huge difference between that there is a huge difference between living in the Cradle of Christianity Coptic Christianity in our case or living thrown out of the trade completely thrown on the floor and rolling around on your own it's hard to regard as a Temptation and a sin what is regarded by others and by your close friends as completely normal behavior so why should you refuse premarital sex when everybody is having it why should you refuse to smoke marijuana when it's considered perfectly normal why should you refuse to eat a hamburger on Wednesday and Friday I want to suggest that there is only one way to to succeed it's only exceptional people who can stand in a fire and not feel being that they are burnt okay this is many times I have seen spiritual writers say well you don't need to be a monk in a monster you can be a monk in the world people who say they have never tried it you can't you can you cannot replicate the protection of the of the womb the protection of the the mother's womb after birth you are outside alas why do we have a process of weaning because the human being must be taken away from this Mother's breast to live by itself you cannot live in the same condition when you are an adult in a western country as when you are a child in Sunday School in Egypt I know it's not possible so I suggest my advice to the youth to the Coptic youth is it you must isolate yourself strenuously now Saint Paul says be separate all through the Old Testament one of the one of the lessons we can take from the Old Testament is that God set his people apart why was Israel so annoyed why was he so angry with the people of course they took foreign wives in this case a farm means not believing right if you want to be if you want with all your heart to remain in your Coptic Orthodox world if you want to remain close to God if you want to be hand in hand to walk hand in hand with Jesus you must isolate yourself you must protect yourself do not be ashamed of it do not be weak about it you must say to yourself for a higher good I will suffer this loss freedom and you do it every day for example you want to pass your exams to be a doctor or to be a lawyer or to be an accountant or to be of it or to be a teacher or to be a mechanic right whatever you want to do you have to finish your apprenticeship so pass your exams serve your your probationary period and become professional and you give up many things for that don't say it's a sign of weakness it's not it's a sign of strength that you are applying your mind to your situation no animal will put himself in another enemy territory If he if he can get food in his own territory this is a natural wisdom so why do you put yourself in the fire when you know that you will get burned if you stay with your family with your Coptic friends with your father your priest and you are satisfied when you are happy if you do that you will keep your innocence if you don't you will lose it yeah what do you want you want to lose it you want a taste that you want to be like Eve you want to taste the bitter fruit okay tasty but you will die so you look at even Mary you know that the difference between Eve and Mary right now you have to decide you have a free choice God never said I will force you he never will force you you can choose to be Eve or you can choose to be Mary but you have to serve somebody it might be God or it might be the devil but you have to serve someone so my advice is olation is protection keep your world simple keep your words small and you do not pretend that you can address sexually and not be regarded with but with lust do not pretend that you can smoke intoxicants and not be addicted do not pretend that you can shoplift and not be caught do not pretend that you can um indulge in any of the so-called vices of the western world and not become damaged by them you will be there I don't think that I could ever live in the world again because what I've come to know what I've come to taste in the desert is the sweetness of Jesus Solitude you remember in the Bible how he went apart he went into the mountain to pray and he he used to speak to the father directly father I know you'll always hear me so if I am in the world I will be hearing so many voices I can't hear the father for me the isolation of this desert is a way of hearing the Silence of the desert is a way of hearing the voice of God here in the in the desert where not even any flowers grow no grass there is no green thing at all there's only rocks and sand this desert is is a very hard one even after Heavy Rain nothing grows there is no softening of life it's just sun and rock and sand forever but in this place when the lizards and the Scorpions and the snakes they thrive and the demons are really happy to catch me I am free I am loved by God here why because I have given him the only place not just first place but all the places in my life and what have I got back from that I have got a sweetness I have got a love I have got a Holiness I have got a protection I've got an assurance God has given me all the interior blessings in a place of exterior difficulty and emptiness and barrenness so no I do not want to go back to my my old life but with my Orthodox Christianity and techno I feel strong enough for this life but not for that so that's why I say to the youth that you are fighting a higher harder fight than me I am living here where I have only to pray you are living there where you have so many things you have all your worldly things to fight against about over to conquer to win and you have also your spiritual battles to fight and you have your families to to deal with you have so many sides you are open on so many sides I am open only on one side the heaven side so I think that the the isolation of of desert spirituality is a protection it's a blessing it's a freedom it's a goodness it's not a difficulty or hardness about Warfare inner Warfare and external Warfare I know that some people say that if you can fight the window in a battle then you can control any exterior battle but the inner battle is never finished I mean I have won the exterior battle I have removed myself from the arena I do not fight in the world I fight here and here there is nothing to fight about there is only the heart Saint Anthony said if you if you live in solitude you do not suffer the battles of the eye or the ear or the mouth because I don't speak to anyone I don't see anything difficult and I don't talk or hear anything difficult so I have no battle on those three fronts only with the heart for many monks for many solitaries the battle is memory in the bus stand in the paradise of the Holy fathers there are many monks who remember in their solitude things from the world and they want to go back and taste them I can honestly say to you that one of The Graces that God has given me the greatest blessings God has given me in my life here in the desert he said I love it and I never want anything other than this since I came here since I found this place and made this cave and took this life I have never looked back my past was so miserable I was so unhappy in the world and so unfulfilled so uncompleted so always yearning so always wanting something more so always seeing how far was what I got from what I dreamed it would be like the get between desire and fulfillment was so great I don't want to go back to that here there is no Gap at all what I desire I have what have I on Earth but the what do I desire in heaven but thee yeah I love Jesus and Saint Mary and my My Father Anthony and that's it and I don't need anything else and I'm happy with it because I've narrowed my expectations I've narrowed my desires too the whole of heaven and I have got it so it's uh it's not that you can win you have external battles and internal battles it's all one battle but it's a battle from the heart if you can control your heart sufficiently to keep on the road you will win by when I mean you'll survive only exceptional people like those who live in the forest Christian Perfection are called Saints right so my exceptional people find their joy in their complete annihilation for Christ's sake if you say to me we cannot do that okay I agree you cannot do that you cannot say to be broken down to be beaten to be defeated to be continually threatened and thwarted is my best Joy it's so hot I know that but if you can say in my being thwarted in my being broken in my falling down I am at least going forward because I am always returning to God that's enough when you are falling you are falling forward when you fall down you get up but you get up facing God so don't blame yourself for falling you will fall and you will always fall the battle will never be you and never be the victor now you might be if you are God planted you for a saint but most of us we just fall down if we get up facing forward we are doing all we can and by the end of your life your judgment will be the greater blessing because you have Fallen forward so I I advise you to to fight you in a fight and to know that as Jesus said all the evil comes from within not from without it's not the external fights that are going to make you evil and you might they might make you fall The temptations that you see around you might make you fall but they will not destroy you you can only destroy yourself by separating yourself from God if you don't do that you will not be destroyed you might fall and you will fall but you will not be destroyed so I I advise you to fight and to believe that even when you fall and you get up when you're facing in the Lord you are forgiven and loved you don't know what you think about this word that I'm going to say now but I know abortion is a big issue I know that when I was in the world I I supported abortion on demand because I was persuaded by the arguments of Simone via the French the French campaigner for free abortion she used to argue that girls and women will have abortions anyway whether it's legal or not whether it's free or not whether it's open or not so why not Legalize It and protect them from backyard practitioners what if you if you if you make abortions illegal and make them so hedged about with medical and legal and police restraints you're going to push the girls into backyard dealers who will damage them and even make them so bad that they die they will hunt out girls and women will hunt out places for abortion whatever you do because the sin is there the desire is there the the pregnancies arrive so I used to accept that for the protection of the girls and the women who are teenage girls and the older women who need abortions food to protect them you must make abortion widely available and feel available and simply and no Stigma no taboo and I still see a lot of force in that argument because if a teenage girl falls pregnant it was because she loved him yeah okay she was naive and okay he was he was just following his desire and it happened and so what what to save the girl to make her life open and free again she needs abortion now since I've become orthodox and since I've come to to know how much God loves every single life it's not so easy for me to believe like that I still have compassion for the for the situation the human situation which makes the most natural desires [Music] even in love even in a full Rich human love between a man and a woman there can be an accident of some kind which makes the pregnancy unsuitable but I know that God sees even the baby in the womb has a as a living cause you remember the the monk Who The Mad Monk who but it wasn't banded originally I think and then he he went to the desert and he wanted to see how the baby laying the woman's woman he killed a woman and ripped open her womb to see and of course then he overcome with the horror of his actions he repent spent a life of repentance he went to the priest the priest said oh God has forgiven you for the death of the woman but for the baby you need to pray some more years so there is a there is an eye of God on every fetus the question for example of selling body parts is much easier to answer Saint Paul says we die in incorruption and we raise in we die in corruption we raise an incorruption anyway we die in in in our bodies rotten and we are raised up with glorious spiritual bodies so I don't think there's anything difficulty about selling your kidney or your liver or whatever especially after death after death what does it matter you you do not need your your actual physical kidney to live in heaven you don't need it and God can make your body a spiritual body I mean the one you will have in heaven so don't worry about that uh it's not a I think a a fairly question where we must protect our bodies and our positions in the Tomb in order that we can take them into the Afterlife we are not pharonic we are we are in the hand of God and God can create us a new spiritually in in his kingdom that one I don't think is so difficult but I pray with all my heart for those girls who are troubled about emotions it's one of the long long long waxing problems of the West and it's one of the great signs that divides those who see spiritual truth is not negotiable and those who want to regard it as negotiable and I I accept the wisdom of the church that it's not an emotion about the Holy Bible about living living the Bible I have learned a lot about this over the years over the last 10 15 years when I first came to Orthodoxy as I told you my little friend in Australia she she impressed me so much with her love of the whole Bible or the New Testament she regarded it all as a living world in which we could move and see things and know people and learn things learn truth and I keep that fight that faith that she gave me since then I've read about marcian who thought that the Old Testament was a Jewish book and not useful for Christians and he cut it out and he just published a slim Bible with one or one and a half maybe two gospels and a few polling letters and that was it and I have seen many discussions of the difference between the the canons of the church that the the personal Bible is containing only so many books but the Catholic Bible the Roman Cathy Bible has so many more books the Orthodox Bible has other even other books Prince is one of my favorite books second is dress or is just four is Israel four it's not in most Bibles it's not in any other Bibles that the copticate uses because they are all Protestant by was published by from Lebanon or something and cops have to get even the topic which you read in the Holy Week in the holy land this uh these apocryphal books which Pokemon has often commented on uh sirach and these we have to get them from the Apocrypha they are not in our in the physical Arab Bibles that you have because they're Protestant so there's a lot of things to be said about the Bible what what Bible what is the Bible you are reading are you reading a Protestant Bible are you reading a Roman Catholic Bible are you reading an orthodox Bible but let's say that we're discussing the the common parts okay from Genesis to Book of Revelation there is another difference to being well understood the difference between Alexandria and Antioch right it seems that from what I've read that the alexandrian method and the antiochian method of reading the Bible were very different the antiochian church church of Antioch tended to a more historical and and realistic if you like reading that the Bible meant what it said that The Exodus was a physical Exodus and it had this geographical configuration and so on the alexandrian method was to read the Bible as a metaphor to take from it many many many symbolic and and highly decorated meanings which have taught us spiritual truth and that's confessed to being very fascinated by the alexandrian method and the antiochian method I find it very difficult to to see the usefulness of it because it treats everything in such a rational and historical way so I like to read the Bible with my the eyes of my imagination wide open and to to see those fathers who who use small incidents in the in the Old Testament as signs and indications of a spiritual truth so I think the richness of the Bible is only limited by the richness of your imagination it's Limitless if you can imagine Limitless possibilities it's better to read the Holy Bible under the influence of the fathers I think this is very true but if you start with a with the Orthodox fathers with the fathers of the early centuries you'll get enough material from them to see to learn the alexandrian method how they take a section from the Bible and make it into a wonderful the famous example just to tell what I'm talking about the way St Paul reads uh Sarah and heger how Hagar is the wife of the promise Sarah is the wife of the promise and Hagar is the wife of the Lord so this this double relation of Law and promise and the two wives this is a common example so I I advise you Coptic youth I advise you to to love your Bibles and to read them with with your hearts flying and with your mind wide open and your dreams all fall upon you don't be don't be frightened off of coming to it with all all your earnest desires fully fully alert because you will find the leadings from the Holy Spirit the holy spirit will lead you to to see the the answer that you need for your enjoyment of the Bible you read the stories read any of the stories uh that are so familiar to us and take from their new meanings and apply them to your life see them as metaphors and you take a you don't have to see a town as a town and a man as a man and the war is a war you can see them all as symbols for for things inside you so I think the richness of the Bible is not a literal prison it's not something a straight jacket that you have to pull on and lace up and then you can't move the Bible is is a scene which you can go for a swim so I believe that we should live by the Bible but we should live by its its spirit and not by its letter we should live by the richness of its possibilities and not by the record of its past as you can see this is the the door of my cave there are two doors here this this narrow small one and this wider one this this area this little building is the kitchen this was I got some Builders from the monastery to help me to build this one because it's it's fairly small but inside I I eat and I make colon sauce this place for my working in there it's uh not um not very big but it's okay for for the drinking coffee and eat tuna and biscuits and things which I have this door is very narrow and very very like small door because in here is only for prayer so I want to show you the place of Prayer to tell you a Coptic youth how the prayer is it can become a full life for us so this small door is the narrow gate remember Jesus said you can enter to Heaven by the narrow gate so I always every time I go in and out of this door I remember these words it's become automatic with me now to remember that only by the prayer prayer and fasting I will go to heaven [Music] this is the outer area is a the wars are natural the walls were here already there was no roof so I put this wooden and cement roof just to make this place this place the entrance to the cave we go in here through this curtain of Saint Anthony who is protector of my life of my spiritual life in here is the natural cave where I spend my time of prayer and I want to show you the place of Prayer [Music] as you can see this is a small cave but it's a natural cave it was here when I came one young monk brought me up here to see this cave I told him that I wanted a place where I could be near to Anthony because there are many caves for fathers to live in in the world near to the monastery but because they're all down in the body they are very far from amban Tunis so I I told all the monks please find me a cave up in the mountain and one young monk brought me here he told me that an Ethiopian monk lived here before one year before I came and he prayed in here for the 40 days of 50 days of the Holy Holy fast he he didn't make a solid roof or he didn't make a solid door but he he stayed in this natural place and he just covered the door with some sticks and stones since I came here I made the The Firm door and the firm roof on the front part but this natural cave is the same as it was and I want to show you that the shape of it is like the womb of Saint Mary you know this this the icon which I love most because this shows Jesus inside Saint Mary and for me as I told you my life my spiritual life I came to Jesus through Saint Mary so for me to live in this cave I I remember her room and I feel that I am sitting inside her womb and I will know Jesus in this way this this natural cave it finishes here and I put Saint Mary in the in the end I put her in the end spot so that she can bless me and Lead me in my prayer and you see how she fits so perfectly as if she was made to be in this spot only when I sit in here I usually sit facing the east this direction is East and I usually sit with my with my legs against my chest thank you and then I start to pray that Jesus prayed I start to pray Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner and by sitting in here which is a which is like a like a wound ship like like a like that I'm inside Saint Mary I feel that I am start to know Jesus when I say his name because his holy mother has blessed me to be by her love She's blessed me to come to know her son so I don't need any longer to tell her please intercede for me because now I start to pray in his name and this prayer this Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me this is called the Jesus prayer it's very powerful comforter because when you when you sit still I sit very still like this for some hours two hours three hours and I say the name I say Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner I repeat it many times and this way I start to taste the name of the Lord in my mouth on my lips in my heart and when I close the curtain the cave is completely dark no no even pencil of light comes in and this way because my eyes is negated and I don't hear anything the only senses I have open is my sense of my heart and I feel my heart beating In and Out In and Out in and of my breath in my heart pumping so I feel that my body is is closed and my heart is open my spirit is open and I start to pray Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner this this prayer is is a Arrow prayer they call it it like an arrow you shoot it straight to heaven the arrow flies from your bow and go straight to the heaven so I advise all the Coptic youth you can't all have a small cave like this I know but you can pray Jesus prayer you can sit in your room you can sit in a quiet place and you can close your eyes and close your ears and you can say Lord Open My Heart in the early days when I first came here I used to sit in here to try to pray pray may Jesus prayer and I would start I would start Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me and suddenly I would hear a voice calling me outside and sometimes father father so I would get up and I would quickly go out to see who is calling me and there was never anybody there it was even night time it was late at night 11 12 o'clock at night so I I thought what is this and then I come back inside and try to pray again and the voices come again clear quite loud voice I can hear them calling and this the the small Devils they come and they call me many times to come out of my cave to stop praying when I go out I don't see anything but I hear the voice so clearly so the voices of the Demons which calling me out to stop me to pray this is the first Temptation which I suffered in this cave for some months until I learned that any voice which I hear is not to be listened to not to be accepted and since I close my ears to this voice I am free of it it stopped because he knew that I already saw through this trick this is in my prayer rope I have another longer one but this is the one which I use mostly small one you can find these in any church shop in any many places you just keep it in your hand when you are praying Lord Jesus Christ so you sit you sit in your place in your prayer place and you keep your your prayer up in your hand and you just count the the the beads you count the knots and each one you say Lord Jesus Christ and of God have mercy on me a sinner you don't need it you can pray without it but traditionally it's a help it's a help to have something to move with your fingers to keep your your body participating in your prayer so with a prayer up or without a prayer rope but you can pray Lord Jesus Christ many many times and be sure that he will answer by his presence he will come and sit beside you so I think that the way to the way to overcome most of the difficulties of the spiritual life look Warmness and disbelief doubts lack of faith remorse resentfulness Sadness the way to overcome most of these problems is to is to taste the presence of Christ to taste him beside you whether you are in difficulties whether you feel your difficulties are never to be solved whether they have a long long life ahead of you if you are in debt or if you are in in court in some contract which is difficult for you or if you are in obligations which you can't escape if you have a sick relative or a sick family member who you have to care for if you are caught up in any long-term problem which will not be easily removed still you can call the presence of Christ to your life whether you are Orthodox whether you are President whether you're a Roman Catholic it's not a question the question is are you Christian do you love the Lord is he in your life is he beside you is he with you and if the answer is yes you are you are sure to taste him by your Prayer by The Prayer of his name and this is something which I which I wish to give to all the complete gifts about the happiness that in the midst of your sorrows in the midst of your difficulties in the midst of your sins in the midst of your Temptations in the midst of your doubts in the midst of your disbelief you can taste his presence [Music] foreign foreign