Father Matta El-Meskeen

Father Matta El-Meskeen ‘LIFE’ WITH CHRIST Articles of Comfort and Blessings Offered to the Reader

Again we here present new chapters of this book by Father Matta. Note: All quotations are taken from the New International Version, if not otherwise mentioned. Volume Two Chapter 52 “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37-38

HEN SOMEONE TRULY THIRSTS FOR CHRIST, Christ truly quenches that W thirst. Christ’s purpose here is not simply to provide drinkable water like the water of the world, rather, he provides a mysterious element of life which Christ clothed in the garment of regular water in order to achieve his purpose of delivering the greatest truth of the spiritual realm. As water on the earth is a critical element the lack of which produces bodily thirst, so the living water of which Christ speaks is a fundamental element of spiritual life, and when there is a shortage of it in the life of a man his spirit dries up and is closed off from God and the things of God. If in his spirit a man truly drinks from the water of life Christ gives, when he then opens his mouth rivers of life-giving words flow from it that exhort, bring joy and quench the one who is thirsty for the truth, because the water of eternal life is ‘truth.’ The fact that a man does not drink of the truth indicates his decision to keep a distance from the source of salvation. His spirit dries up and no longer finds joy from conversations about Christ and his works. This is why Christ says, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.’ Let the reader realize that drinking here is an expression of having reached true faith. The sign of true faith in Christ is the testimony and true joy that springs from the soul and attracts people. Christ says the man who quenches his

1 thirst in faith never stops testifying of Christ, for gushing from him are rivers of living water that inspire others. Christ spoke these words at the moment the high priest struck the silver jar containing water on the occasion of remembrance of when Moses struck the rock. As they walked through the wilderness, Moses would strike the rock and from it would flow water in great abundance, enough for all the people. The rock would follow the people as they walked through the wilderness, and according to Scripture this rock is Christ.1 The silver jar filled with water would be placed on the alter, and the moment it was struck the water would flow from it. It was an ingenious ritual to remember Christ’s care for the people as they sojourned in the barren wilderness and his quenching of their thirst. So it was at this moment Christ raised his voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.’ It was a declaration of the arrival of the new covenant in which Christ, not Moses, leads the people. Christ also declares here the ‘mystery’ of the rock that followed the people to quench their thirst all the years of their wandering. By the living water, Christ means the coming saving faith that will fill the life of the people and satisfy their thirst for the truth. We do not want to miss here the precious observation made by the Apostle John that when the soldier pierced Christ’s side with the spear, blood and water flowed out,2 which was an expression of the source of eternal life revealed by the cross of Christ. The water is a holy demonstration of the life in the blood, and this is why to fulfill what was inspired by the Spirit the Church mixes the wine of Communion with a small amount of water. Finally, I will not hide from the reader that the greatest secret I have experienced in Christ is to taste faith in the Lord. No other taste in my life has matched it. Neither water when I am thirsty nor the best wine matches the taste of my Lord Jesus Christ: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.”3 September 30, 2005

1 1 Cor 10:4. 2 John 19:34. 3 Psalm 34:8. Chapter 53 “You are my friends if you do what I command.” John 15:14

N THE PSALMS David said, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my I path.”4 My Lord, your word brings us light in the darkness of this age. Your word is a center of light that guides our steps, and without your word leading us we cannot walk through the darkness of this world.

4 Psalm 119:105.

2 How can we go on if your light ceases to guide us? Where can we go? Your light leads us to you, and how can we come to you if your light does not take us by the hand? Your word is living, effective and shines brightly. It goes before us, and if it came to an end, then we too would be finished. Your love is the one power that can bring us to you, so how could we come to you if your love did not push us? Of those who love, you are the axis that draws us to you, so how could we come to you if the rays of your love did not guide us? The sources of power in the world are many and varied in their function and effectiveness, but it is the secret of the power of your love that is the one thing in the universe that draws us to you. So if it ceased to draw us to you, how could we proceed and how could we come to you? The treasure of your love’s essence is stored up in your word, and we have hidden your word in our deepest depths so that the world cannot corrupt it and cause us to stray from your axis that draws those who love your word. O my master, the true light that shines in our dark world, you are not the only one who loves those who obey your word, because we also, if we did not keep your word, would not be able to come to you from the darkened paths of the world. We are your beloved because of your word which we have stored up within our hearts, for you alone know that your word which gazed into the windows of our hearts is our only treasure in our dark world. Satan covets this, our one treasure, and he lies in wait for us to snatch it from within our hearts. So we cry to you to firmly plant your word within our flesh and blood, far from the enemy’s desires and deception so he cannot take it from us. O my master, your words are sweet, “sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.”5 We chose it as an exclusive treasure, apart from all the delicacies of the world. If we keep your word it is not as a gift from us, but it is the result of an attraction, like the attraction of iron to a magnet. What gift is it of the iron if it clings to the magnet? Who can separate your word from us, because to the degree you love us, we love you, and your love is strong in our hearts, so by it we overcome the world. To the degree you attract us, my master, to that degree we are drawn to you, so the credit for our love for you goes to your love for us. It is well said in the Song of Solomon, “I am my lover’s and my lover is mine!”6 We are your to the degree you are ours. Our love for you is a consequence, for you initiated and we followed. My master, I plead with you to love us, for we love you, and we cannot live apart from your love, not for a single moment or the blink of an eye. Death and the enemy lie in wait for us, for the moment your love does not draw us! We love you, my master, two loves: we love you because you first loved us, and we love you because you are worthy of our love! October 1, 2005

5 Psalm 19:10. 6 Song of Songs 6:3.

3 Chapter 54 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” John 6:51

HE FIRST MAN ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree, so Adam and his wife T died. All their descendants inherited this death, for death ruled over them from Adam onward. Thus it was until Jesus Christ the Son of God came from heaven to give man the bread of life so he could live and not die. The fruit of the forbidden tree was poisoned bread which man ate and died, while Christ brought bread from heaven, made by his Father, his living divine body. It was a profoundly mysterious body, in appearance flesh and blood, its essence eternal life. In order for it to be evenly distributed between all people, he crucified it by the will of his Father, carrying all the sins of the world. By it he died and was buried, so in him all the sins of the world died. He rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so in him all people rose through the glory of his Father. In this way, the fellowship of the new man who rises by the resurrection of Christ is true fellowship in the risen body. Just before going to his cross, Christ introduced the mystery of the Last Supper with bread and wine saying, ‘This is my body and this is my blood,’ and he broke it and gave it to his disciples to eat from his body and drink from his blood in a divine mystery, awesome and unspeakable. This means eating the bread of God that comes down out of heaven and the blood of the only Son poured out on the cross. To have faith in the body and blood of Christ, eaten and drunk, is to attain eternal life in him. Christ’s work was long and excruciatingly hard. It cost him his life by death on the cross, carrying the sins of the whole world. It led to his death, burial and resurrection after three days, to life and glory. In this context came the divine and illuminating verse, ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.’7 He will not taste the old death but will have life eternal. So Christ completed the salvation of the whole world by his death and resurrection, offering his body as the bread of eternal life, which when a man eats of it he is saved from death. By his death on the cross, carrying the sins of the whole world, he put sin, the bite of Leviathan the ancient serpent, to death, which had overwhelmed man throughout all past ages. On the cross, Christ also defeated all the forces of darkness, Satan and all his helpers.8 He freed man from his most dangerous enemy who had made him taste death, sin and torture, throughout all ages until the coming of Christ.

7 See John 6:54. 8 See Col 2:15.

4 Now, brethren, I plead with you not to make light of what Christ did to make our salvation complete, nor to make light of eating the bread of life that comes down out of heaven and that gives life to the whole world. It cost the Father the death of his Son on the cross, and it cost the only Son the price of accepting death for the sake of the resurrection which he completed in himself for the resurrection and life of every man. The ancient symbol for the body of Christ, the true bread that came down out of heaven, was the heavenly manna which the Father sent in a wonderfully miraculous way from heaven, so the people wandering in the barren wilderness could eat it until he brought them to the banks of the Jordan. Then the manna ceased, when the people coming from Egypt entered the promised land where there was wheat for bread, the bread of rest. The manna by which God nourished his people so they could live all those forty years in the deadly, terrifying wilderness was a miniature model for eating the body of Christ the bread of life. God sent the manna from heaven as food for his people to strengthen them in their suffering. As for the bread of life, it is the bread of eternal rest. October 1, 2005

Chapter 55 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever.” John 14:16

E ARE STRANGERS and will remain strangers until the Father takes us to his W eternal home. Then we will become “members of God’s household,”9 where there will be fullness of inexpressible joy and happiness. For now we mourn because we still must choose between good and evil, and the will is still inclined to move away from God. We do now have Christ who is the fullness of our lives, and he is able to keep us from the hand of the enemy. Yet man is man who by his will leans toward sin, and he needs one who draws him toward the truth. Christ knows man is weak, clothed in a body of dust, and the body tends toward its origin. Even if the spirit is willing, the body is weak, a toy in the hand of the enemy. This was what concerned Christ on our behalf. Since it is Christ who is the guarantor to save man, wipe away sin and to raise him from the dead, upon whom could man depend when Christ departed, for he was soon to ascend and be with the Father? So there was no option except for Christ to plead with the Father to send another counselor, the guardian who would support man until he entrusted him into the hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of the Father, so when the Father sends his Holy Spirit, we are kept by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So Christ initiated the preparation for the presence of the Holy Spirit by clothing man with his resurrection in the glory of the Father. The Son

9 Eph 2:19.

5 likewise lowered himself and gave man his glory which is from the Father, “I have given them the glory that you gave me.”10 By this man became qualified to enter the sphere of the Holy Trinity, not because he deserved it but because of the Son’s plea and the Father’s pleasure, for the Father had planned before time began that man would “become like one of us.”11 The credit, all of it, goes to Christ who became a man12 to prepare us to be in him first of all, so that after that we would be made ready to be in the Father. Before the cross, he cried out to the Father, with complete confidence that he had successfully betrothed us to the Father as a new heavenly creation, “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity.”13 It is unspeakable, that man, after putting off his old self polluted by sins, should become one with the Father and the Son. By way of the Father, Christ sent the other Counselor who took on the role of shaping man’s spirit to that of the Father and Son. This was Christ’s final touch in fitting out man to enter inside the circle of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one granted to be a partner. The instant the Holy Spirit, the other Counselor, descended, on the fiftieth day after the glorious resurrection of the Lord, he went to work shaping the new man, with a spirit so active and effective that the disciples and all the people were astonished. Man began to speak in a new tongue as a confirmation that he had received the new spirit that raised him from being a worn-out creation to a new creation that is like its maker in glory.14 Miraculous healings took place as an expression that man had acquired a new spirit. So Christ achieved his desire that his brothers on earth receive heavenly comfort and be transferred from the hand of the Son to that of the Holy Spirit and the Father in heaven. The Son’s work was complete, he rejoiced in the work of his hands, and he gave his promise to his disciples that he would be with them “always, to the very end of the age.”15 October 2, 2005

10 John 17:22. 11 See Gen 3:22. 12 See John 1:14. 13 John 17:23. 14 See Col 3:10. 15 Matt 28:20. ************************************************************************************** Father Matta El-Meskeen Christ, the “Son of God” As an intimate Son, Christ is aware of all that will happen to him; he accepts it and welcomes it before it takes place. He dedicates a feast to commemorate his crucifixion before being crucified. He offers his blood willingly, consigns it to the Eucharistic cup, and gives it to his disciples to drink. His flesh as well he surrenders willingly, consigns it to holy bread, and with it feeds his beloved. And so man has become a partner in the new covenant by the shedding of blood and the sacrifice of flesh, thus sharing with Christ the exaltation he has received. He has also been seated with him as a

6 Son at the right hand of the Father. Were it not for the actual existence of the Son-of-God- relationship which Christ lives out with the Father, he would never have been able to obey or make out of the cross a love feast in which to present the sacrifice of his body to the Father on behalf of the world according to his Father’s will. Moreover, had it not been that he who is crucified is really the “Son of God”, no man’s sin would ever have been taken away, neither would a kingdom ever have been opened for anyone. Therefore the Father purposely intended to say twice in his hearing: “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.” This he did to support him in the dreadful journey of death, that he might be conscious of victory as he tramples death and him who has the power of death underfoot. So those in heaven and on earth may know with certainty that he is the Son of God. It is with the flesh of man whom Satan enticed one day in Paradise to disobey God and transgress his commandment, that the Son of God has bruised the head of the serpent on the tree, and thus man has won a happy and everlasting return to God’s bosom. [Excerpt from: St Mark, Monthly Review, Nov 2000, p 7-8]. **************************************************************************************