وجبـــــــة روحيـــــ(†)ــــــــــة يوميـــــــــة

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

Good to him is wonderfully connected with God's love.

Good leads him to God's love and the opposite. Each of them will be a cause and a consequence to the other. Who loves good will see God's commandment easy, not heavy as the Apostle says (1 Jn 5: 3), because he loves it.

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

Who loves the Lord and loves righteousness has actually risen above the requirements of the law, having attained love.

He will do good by his own good nature, without need for a commandment. He is no more in need for a commandment calling him to do good. He has returned to the image of God, and good has become part of his nature. He does not need to exert any effort to do good, for it has become like a breath to his life. He will not feel that he is doing something excessive or amazing, nor will boast of it as something extraordinary.

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

He loves God, and loves the good which he longs for, and God becomes his whole desire and pleasure.

He finds in God the ideals lacking in the world. He forsakes the world and holds to the Lord, as David the Prophet says, "It is good for me to draw near to God." (Ps 73: 28) He feels happy because he has found God, has experienced Him and life with Him, and has experienced the pleasure of the spiritual life. Therefore he says with the Bride of the Song, "I held him and would not let him go." (Song 3: 4) Who loves good will love people and like to do good to them. People's love in turn will lead him to God's love, for the Apostle says, "If someone says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, he is a liar.".

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? (1 Jn 4: 20)

If you want to love God, start with love for people and serve them, respect them, and give yourself for them. Then you will find God's love has entered your heart automatically. Give love from all your heart to whoever needs love: to the children, the disabled, the elderly, the orphans, the needy, the poor, the handicapped, and those who have no one to remember them. Serve them all, and you will find that God's love has entered your heart strongly. You will lift your heart unto God that He may help you to serve them. Then you will give thanks to Him that He has given you what they need that you may give them.

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

You love them because they are His children and because He loves them and He helps you to love them. God's love in your heart will be connected with the love for people. If you love Him you will love them, and if you love them you will love Him.

The Lord Christ says that the first commandment is to love God, and the second is
Like it, to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22: 39).

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

Ministry leads to God's love.

Ministry leads to God's love, and God's love sends you to minister to Him, provided that your ministry will not be a routine ministry or a mere activity, but rather ministry mixed with love. Its cause and its results should be love. You serve people because you love them, because God loves them, because you love His kingdom, and because you want them to enter this kingdom and to love God whom you love and who loves you. See what the Lord said about His disciples to the Father: "I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me be in them, and I in them." (Jn 17: 26)

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

What connects you further to God's love is the means of Grace.

God has provided us with various means that can help us love Him, such as prayer, reading of the Holy Scripture, church meetings, hymns, rituals, and holy sacraments, especially confession and communion, in addition to spiritual reading, meditations, visiting the holy sites, and spiritual guidance.

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

In order to attain God's love, you have to benefit from such means; otherwise you will fall in tepidity and your mind no more will be occupied with God. [See our book on "Spiritual Means"]

Among the means that may lead you to God's love is to think of your eternal life.

If man is aware of the vanity of the present world, and that it is passing away and the lust of it (1 Jn 2: 17), that all is vanity and grasping for the wind (Eccl 2: 17), and that man shall stand one day for judgment before the throne of the Just God who will reward each according to his works (Mt 16: 27), according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5: 10), then man's conscience will awaken. Man will get prepared for the meeting with God, will try to have a relationship with Him, will ask forgiveness for his sins, and will have such love for God that he may not be ashamed of meeting with Him in eternity.

[Mary Naeem]

By H.H. Pope Shenouda III

That is why the holy church reminds us of the Judgment and the Second Coming in the Prayers of the Vespers, the Compline, and the Midnight.

To get ready for the meeting with God through repentance and regretting our sins and through God's fear that may lead us to His love, we ought to pray these Prayers of the Hours with the absolution of each Hour. They will certainly work within the heart.

So many are the saints who the remembrance of death and judgment made them more attached to God!

[Mary Naeem]

أبنى الغالى .. بنتي الغالية
أنا هبعتلكم كل سنده وطبطبة وأنتم في أشد الحاجة إليها
أنا مش هسبكم تواجهه الصعاب لوحدكم
أنا شايف وسامع حتى صمتكم أطمنوا