Words and Prayers from the Ecumenical Day of Prayer and

Solidarity. Word by H.G. Bishop Serapion, Bishop of Los Angeles

(Transcribed on Friday, December 17, 2010)
..
Brothers and sisters in Egypt we pray to the Lord to keep the peace of the
Church and we pray for our beloved father His Holiness the Pope
Shenouda the 3rd that God will help him in this difficult time and give him
the wisdom to guide the Church in these times.

Today when we remember the suffering of our brothers and sisters in

Egypt we also remember the suffering of Christians in various places, we
remember also the suffering of the Armenians who suffered a genocide,
the Christians in Iraq, the Christians in different places in the world and
we see all these manifestations and events of injustice as a manifestation
of evil and I want to reflect on that evil and how we overcome evil. As we
see in all these events the work of evil is manifested in injustice,
marginalization, elimination and inequality and all this kinds which we
hear about and we experience. We believe that our God is beneficent and
merciful and the source of evil is the devil but God permits with His
wisdom evil to happen but we are sure that God can turn evil into good; as
St Paul wrote: "we know that all things work together for good for those
who love God." And we remember Joseph when he faced the evilness
from his brothers and he said to them: "you meant evil against me but God
meant it for good." And we are sure that this God meant and will turn all
this evil things into good for His people, but the question is for us how we
as Christians to face evil? And I will mention briefly five points to guide
us in our struggle against evil whenever it is manifested in any country, in
any place and in any way.

The first point we have a responsibility to expose the evil we should not
cover up, we should not use a diplomatic language to try to compromise
but we have to be very clear to say: this is an evil thing, this is injustice.
Again I quote the book of Isaiah where it is mentioned: "Woe to those who
call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for
darkness and put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." Facts are speaking,
we should reveal facts not in emotional language but real facts and
through facts we can win many people, and many people of good will.

Secondly, we have to challenge the leaders, the officials, about what is

going on. We have to ask them: why are you allowing these evil things to
happen to us? And we follow the example of Lord Jesus Christ when one
of the officers struck the Lord Jesus with one of his hands He challenged
him, He said to him.. the Lord Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken evil,
bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?” [John 18:23].
And we ask our leaders, our officials: what evil have the Copts done to be
treated this way in their own country? The Copts have history of being
patriotic. The Coptic Church is a very patriotic Church, we love our
country, and we are people who respect the law. Why today the media
shows the Copts as people who like to break the law? If we have any
statistics how many among Christians who are criminals in prison? Are the
Copts when they want to do business or build houses breaking the law? So
when they try to build a church, they do what they can to have a church
because they have no way to do it and all these difficulties are put in front
of them. I want to remember with all the people of Egypt that the most
famous sentence mentioned about the love of the country is mentioned by
the Pope of the Copts:
"‫"مصش نيست َطىا وحيا فيً تم َطىا يحيا فيىا‬
‫أِ مصشِ انىٍاسدي نما يحة يختاس عثاسج يعثش تيٍا عه حة مصش تيختاس ٌزي‬
‫ يكفّ نُطىيح األقثاط َمحثتٍم نثهذٌم ان‬.‫انعثاسج انهي قانٍا قذاسح انثاتا شىُدج انثانث‬
‫ نمارا يعامم‬:‫ نزنك وحه وقُل‬،‫أصثحت عثاسج قذاسح انثاتا ٌّ انمقياس نحة مصش‬
‫األقثاط تٍزا األسهُب ٌَم يحثُن تهذٌم َيحافظُن عهّ قاوُن انثهذ َدايما تكم‬
‫استمشاس ان األقثاط فّ مقذمح انىاس انمهتزميه؟‬
The first point I mentioned that we have to expose evil and not to cover
up, the second point we have to challenge our leaders about what is going
on.

The third point is we should defend our rights. There is no contradiction

between we accept suffering for Christ and we defending our rights, and
we have a just cause. We call for equality, we call for justice. We call to
be treated as full citizens of our country. We are happy to carry the cross,
we rejoice to suffer for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, we know there is
no Christianity without cross; on the other hand we don't see contradiction
between the two and I will mention two examples to support what I am
saying, two examples done by St Paul: St Paul who spoke about the gift of
suffering for Christ and he himself suffered for Christ but in two occasions
he demanded his right. The first one in Philippi when he was in prison and
he was released from prison miraculously and the keeper of the prison
believed in Christ and he took him to his house and he baptized his family,
nevertheless when next day the magistrates send to let them go, St Paul
refused to go secretly and he said to them, “They have beaten us openly,
uncondemned Romans, and have thrown us into prison. And now do they
put us out secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and get us out.”
He asked for apology, even he was released from prison miraculously but
still as a Roman that St Paul to be examined and under scourging St Paul
said to the centurion: it is lawful to you to scourge a man who is Roman
and uncondemned? And St Paul was released and the commander was
afraid because he hurt them. So when we defend our rights we are not
against our Christian faith but we really fulfill the example which we had
and we follow the example of ST Paul.

Number four, we have to overcome evil with good. We should not use in
our struggle for our rights the weapons of darkness. We have our own
weapons: our weapons are love, and the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching us
the power of love. He told us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse
us, and to pray for those who persecute us. The power of objectivity, when
we use objectivity then we can overcome the evil thing and the power of
resilience and endurance. Sometimes we stand for our rights and
something temporarily to happen and we stop our struggle: we have to
continue until we have our rights in full; don't accept partial solution for
our struggle for justice and equality.

Lastly we should have confidence and joy and hope, confidence and joy
and hope. Confidence in our Lord Jesus Christ, as we read in the book of
prayer today that is: the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. This is
the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ for the Church, "I am with you
always even to the end of age." We struggle with pain for those who
suffer, but also with joy: we rejoice that they suffer for the sake of Christ.
And I remind you what St Peter said: "but rejoice to the extent that you
partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may
also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of
Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you."
Also with hope, we should not lose hope and even in the darkest case we
should have hope in the light to come. "In the world you will have
tribulations but be of good cheer I have overcome the world." We should
keep our dreams alive that is the one way we will enjoy our equality and
we will enjoy justice. We have to be sure that is: the sun of justice will
shine to Egypt and to every place; that is everyone to feel that he is equal
with the other.

May our Lord Jesus Christ help us to be a witness to the good and to
continue our fight for the justice and peace until the truth ..

(Please forgive me for any transcription errors, Nabil Iskander)