Every new Priest straight after his ordination he seeks a Monastery (a very remote and quiet place) to go to and spend “ 40 days” there, for many benefits such as:
To be away from every one; his family, relatives and his friends and be only with God, to know more about Him through meditations and concentrated Bible studies.
To learn more about the Rituals of the Church Sacraments especially the Sacrament of the Holy Communion in knowing how to pray the Holy Liturgy, how to touch the Holy Body/Blood and how to give/serve the Holy Communion.
To learn the Coptic Hymns and the different Tunes of the different Holy Liturgies.
To learn the Coptic Language as much as possible.
To practice praying lots of Holy Liturgies by himself as much as possible.
To practice praying lots of Vespers and lots of Midnight Tasbiha/Praises.
To read lots of Books about: Church’s History, Tradition, Rituals and Counselling etc.
To spend more time very quiet away from everybody.
For these to happen, he needs:
To go to a very remote Monastery, where he can be alone with God.
To have one of the Monks there, to train and guide him with all what I mentioned above.
To get Opportunities to pray more Vespers and Holy Liturgies by himself.
To have one of the Monks to teach him the Coptic Hymns and the Language.
Unfortunately, in our humble Monastery here in Sydney, we are running short of that, since we have only one or two Monks who can train the New Priests, although they are very busy doing lots of work and having many responsibilities. We don’t have a Monk who can and have the time to teach the Hymns and the Language. We have only one Church at a time for all the Monks and the new Priests. May be that is why few new Priests lately preferred to go to Monasteries in Egypt, while it is quite right to do so and it is up to them and we have no problem with that.
These are happening due to our limited number of Monks who are running all the jobs in the Monastery as well as their Monastic lives and lack of more Churches.
Having said that, The Monastery is yours and always open to all, as well as to the new Priests and we are more than happy to receive/welcome them and do our best to train, help and give them all the support we can. Thank you and God bless you All.
Bishop Anba Daniel.
Wednesday 1/7/2015.
