One Generation Passes Away, and Another Generation Comes (The Nayrouz Feast)

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home › resources › literature › One Generation Passes Away, and Another Generation Comes (The Nayrouz Feast)

Keraza Magazine issue 35-36 September 4, 2015

As we are celebrating the Coptic New Year, I remember the saying of the Sage: "One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever" (Ecclesiastes 1:4). Truly it is a feast that passes and a feast that comes, one year passes and another comes, and the earth–not heaven–abides in us as if forever. Does Solomon the wisest of sages not know that the earth will pass away and not last forever? Yes, he does know this very well, yet he meant its abiding inside us, instead of heaven, as long as we are subject to eras and times.

Change is the condition of humans and the earth after the Fall: "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease" (Genesis 8:22), but with God "there is no variation or shadow of turning" (James 1:17). The condition of many is that their spiritual lives are subject to seasons: cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night. What wonder when repentance becomes a "whim" to which our spiritual appetite turns on occasions, such as the Coptic New Year and the Gregorian New Year! Wonder that we label the fast, a "season" for repentance! Wonder that we speak of "spiritual revival"! Wonder that we maintain our spirits in a winter house, as in a grave, subject to times and eras, feasts, moons, and Sabbaths, to arise and live as if in "rebound" and then return to status quo at the end of those occasions!

The earth is ruled by time, but in heaven there is no time (Revelation 10:6). One of the forms of corruption that came to humanity through the Fall is coming into submission to this time, being subjected to times and eras; life was divided and dispersed between a past, present, and future. As long as there is a past, then there is memory, yet this memory became corrupted with the ailment of forgetfulness. It is forgetting God’s goodness and mercy, forgetting God’s healing commandments, forgetting the frailty of the human form and nature, forgetting the craftiness of the devil and his deception. Since God is the true physician who knows the corruptibility of our nature, He wanted, through His compassionate care, to heal us of this illness of forgetfulness, so He placed feasts which the church labels "commemorations". The therapeutic goal of these commemorations is healing the human memory through coalescence of parts of time together, by turning the past and future into the present.

There is a great difference between the event and the condition. An event is subject to time, ending with time and turning into the past, while a condition is an unchanging state that exists at all times. The greatest blow thrown at us by the enemy is submitting our spiritualities to time, such that we live on the level of the event instead of living on the level of the condition. Love is a condition; resurrection is a condition; living is a condition; truth is a condition; light is a condition; repentance is a condition; humility is a condition...Pity that we reduce this living and existence into simply an event that occurs at a point of time, by which it does not rise above the level of cordial behavior which perishes when time ends. This is the milk, not the food of the strong reserved for the mature. This is the straw and hay which is burned when it is tested by fire, not the gold, silver, and precious stones which last forever (1 Corinthians 3:12).

Now my brethren, seek for the feast to turn into a condition, not an occasion; our Christ is a being who exists above time. When we unite with Him, we no longer need commemorations, since we will be freed of all shifts and changes, and He will become the breath of our nostrils by Whom we live, move, and exist.

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States