What are the minor feasts of the Lord?

Five of these feasts have set dates in the Coptic calendar while the other two have moveable dates that change each year.

• a. Circumcision (6[th] Tobe / 14[th] January). In submission to the Law, the young Jesus was circumcised, and He prayed, fasted, and was devout. In so doing, He endowed the virtue of obedience itself with divine honor, for it became an attribute of the incarnate Creator. Victory in the contest on the field of obedience is now rewarded with participation in one of the virtues of the Lord Christ. That is why the apostle urges children to obey their parents “in the Lord” (Eph. 6:1). The Lord Christ did not need to be circumcised, but He transformed the circumcision of the body into a spiritual circumcision, where the old man in us is crucified in the waters of baptism and we put off his works, and He grants the new resurrected man who can share in His resurrected, glorious, and joyful life. In receiving the ability to be obedient in Christ Jesus, we are enlivened to new life in Him.

b. Wedding at Cana of Galilee (13[th] Tobe / 21[st] January).

621 Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah 8.2.4 (FOTC 97:78).

622 Cf. Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Holy Sunday of the Pentecost, trans., Thomas Kollamparampil (Gorgias Press, 2010).

St. Jacob of Sarug says,

“It was fitting for [the Lord Christ] to begin His miracles at a wedding, and in the abode of marriage, to extend a hand to holiness,

He hastened and stood at the door through which the [human] race enters, that He might spread instruction to all who come into the world,

He came to betroth the bride of the Light with His crucifixion, so He went first to the abode of temporal bride.

He knew well that He would bring about a triumph at the wedding, that He might make disciples of all who rested [at the table] through this miracle.

Christ also was the Bridegroom of past generations, and He came to betroth the Church of the nations with His sacrifice.

And since His own wedding was still far in the future, He took the gift and went to present it like a relative,

He observed the tradition of the bridegroom who invited Him, so that when His wedding is held, they would come to Him.

He accepted their invitation so that when He invites them, they also would accept, and He sat with them so that they would sit at His table,

Here He showed that the path of marriage is pure, and marriage is excellent and good before God.”

• c. Presentation at the Temple (8[th] Meshir / 15[th] February). When St. Mary entered the temple carrying the baby Jesus (Luke 2:22–35), it seems that the inner vision of Simeon the Elder was activated, and he saw the angel of the temple rejoicing and praising the Lord, saying, “With Your divinity You fill this temple, and now you enter it incarnated! I rejoice to receive you!” Perhaps Simeon the Elder was overcome by three emotions that shook him to his depths and made his heart cry out:

I welcome You, who fills heaven and earth, to Your temple. Behold, the angel of the temple with the heavenly hosts and the believers of the Old Testament, are come in procession to celebrate Your entry into Your temple.

I welcome You to my heart, Your new home, sanctified by Your Holy Spirit.

When I go to your heavenly home, may I find that everyone there welcomes me.

That is why “he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: ‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, A light

to bring revelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of Your people Israel’” (Luke 2:28– 32).

• d. Covenant Thursday. Upon the arrival of Covenant Thursday, the soul of the believer is struck with awe, and he yearns to accompany the Savior on this day’s grave journey. It is a journey that bears the appearance of bitterness but is in fact the sweetness of God’s transcendent love. Humanity turned its attention to eliminating Him who, in their view, had robbed the whole world of Jewish leadership and taken it for Himself. What did our Savior offer to us on this day?

First: He came to us asking for us to give Him our defiled feet so that He may wash and purify them. In great shame, we give them, and we also give our hearts to Him; for He is the Forgiver of sins and the Washer of souls. Grant us, O our Savior, to partake of the glory of Your exalted works, so that we may humble ourselves with You, eager to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters; that we may no longer condemn anyone and are no longer troubled even by their opposition to us. Let us desire to bear with their weaknesses and to pray for their salvation and glory.

Second: He came to us to offer His body and blood, so that we may abide in Him and He in us. Exalted love of which we have never before heard, nor ever again shall hear! No one else has died to offer his body and blood to those he loves to bind them to him and make them one with him.

When the Savior proclaimed His practical love for the whole world, He also revealed a betrayal against Him from one of His disciples.

St. Jacob of Sarug says:

“He said to His apostles ‘one of you will betray Me,’ the meek feared this news from the truthful One.

They were disturbed, distraught, and anxious, looking to each other, they trembled and were perplexed, like wretched ones.

Misery rose like smoke from their hearts, and the color of their beloved faces changed.

Misery came and encircled them from all sides, and they spent the anxiety-filled evening filled in distress.

Yes, in truth, that feast was bitter, and hardships piled up one after the other on the disciples.

They heard that their teacher was about to be killed by the Jews and were disturbed, they heard that one would betray Him and were troubled.”⁶²³

Third: Starting on the eve of Good Friday, the Church chants every hour, saying: “My strength and my praise is the Lord, who has become my holy salvation” (see Isa. 12:2). In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church beholds her Savior in great grief, yet giving strength, praise, and salvation to the faithful. Our Christ speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, and speaks with the Father in His farewell prayer. Here He declares His longing to grant us His Spirit of comfort who will bring us into the bosom of the Father.

He carries us, with Him, into the Garden of Gethsemane, where we confess to Him that we often fall into deep sleep with His disciples, because it is very difficult for us to comprehend the mystery of the love that He declared in His conversation with the Father. Perhaps less than an hour before, He bowed before humanity, longing to wash the feet of their hearts. Here, He is bowing with love before the Father, saying, “not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). His will and that of His Father are one. In becoming human, He declared His submission and obedience to the Father on behalf of us all.

What is His Father’s will or His will, but that He bow down and bear all the weight of the sins of the whole world? Isaiah the prophet saw Him in the garden more than seven centuries before He physically entered it, and said, “Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this One who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength? … Why is Your apparel red, and Your garments like one who treads in the winepress? ‘I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me’” (Isa. 63:1–3).

We come back in shame and say, “We were not able to stay awake with You for one hour during the time of temptation but have mercy on our weak souls and strengthen us, so that through Your Holy Spirit we may share in Your sufferings and in Your crucifixion, so that we may taste the joy of Your resurrection.”

Fourth: May our poor souls awaken as You awakened Your disciples in the Garden. We have no desire to flee when the crowds arrest You, but to walk with You even to the cross, and there shall we stand with St. Mary Your mother and St. John the Beloved. We receive Your mother as our mother and are counted as members of the heavenly family.

Fifth: We see Him in the midst of the crowd’s uproar caring for the ear of a slave and healing it. Grant us this spirit, O You who are loving!

623 St. Jacob od Sarug, Memre 53B On the Crucifixion, Part B: The Eve of Tuesday; Memre 52 On the Passion of our Savior, His Crucifixion, Burial, and Resurrection (Coptic) .

Finally: Allow us to accompany You during Your extraordinary trial. Although You are the Judge of all, You do not desire to judge anyone, but to save. Behold, the laypeople and clergy (the Jewish Sanhedrin) dare to bring You to trial as a blasphemer and an evil doer! Yet You remain silent and do not defend yourself (Matt. 26:63), teaching us also to remain silent, even if the whole world stands against us. Let the world judge us, for it is a great honor that we do not deserve, to share in His longsuffering.

Let the crowds cry out: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” (Luke 23:21). We deserve to be crucified, but He, through His love, allowed them to do so. Truly it is appropriate for us to admit that we are worthy of crucifixion. With every sin we commit we deserve these bitter cries.

Sixth: His Holy Spirit carries us to the events of Good Friday , revealing them as the divine plan prepared for the Savior to bear our sins, pour out His precious blood, and grant us His righteousness forever. Thus, the events of the cross — witnessed and rejoiced over by the prophets — are the reason for our praise, not only during our struggle here on earth, but also in eternity.

Now, as our souls depart with Him on Good Friday, we stand perplexed before these events. Every hour and even every minute of this day has its own value and presents a wondrous and amazing spectacle.

We see the heavenly ones bewildered by the things that will happen to their fearful Creator at the hands of human beings. They were ready to destroy humanity in moments, but they marveled at His joyful submission to suffering. Nature stopped and watched what was happening and expressed its wrath at the cruelty of human hearts towards You, O our Savior. As for the devil and all his soldiers, they were bewildered. If they left You on earth serving, souls would be drawn to You; and if they crucified You, they would crucify their own authority and power, and destroy themselves. Indeed, You are wonderful in the eyes of heaven, earth, and that which is under the earth!

• e. Thomas Sunday (The New Sunday). If the apostle Thomas had indeed held serious doubts, he would have left the disciples altogether and returned to his work from before his discipleship to Christ, and he would not have met them again. According to St. Jacob of Sarug , Thomas did not doubt in his heart, but rather thought that it was his right for him, as a disciple of Christ, to witness the risen Lord with the rest of his colleagues, for he would later preach among the nations and say that he had seen for himself the Lord, risen from the dead.

• i. This encounter is an invitation for every person to enjoy a conversation with the risen Christ.

• ii. Thomas did not leave the disciples but joined himself to them in the spirit of love and unity.

• iii. The apostle Thomas was the first of the disciples to witness to the lordship and divinity of Christ (John 20:28).

• iv. The gospel nowhere mentions that Thomas actually touched the wounds, but rather that he declared his faith when he was invited to touch them.

• v. This encounter is unique in revealing the reality of the Lord’s wounds after His resurrection. The Lord’s wounds are wounds of glory, not of weakness; thus, the wounds persisted in the resurrected body.

• vi. The wounds of the Lord are glorious; and our wounds for Him are glorious, showering us with splendor in eternity.

• vii. His wounds are filled with splendor, that we may be aware that through the fifty days after the Resurrection, we abstain from fasting and prostrations, and we employ the joyful tune in all our prayers, even funerals. Thus, by grace, we ought to share our lives with the Lord; suffering with those who suffer, and for the sake of the salvation of the world in the spirit of hope.

• viii. The goal of the fast of Lent is to see the Lord. In the fifty days after the Resurrection, the world sees the glory of the Lord, the Savior of the world.

• f. Entry into the Land of Egypt (24[th] Pashons / 1[st] June). The souls of the children of Bethlehem departed and the angels carried them in a glorious procession. They are the friends of this wondrous Child, “the desire of all nations” (Hag. 2:7), who sent one of His angels to ask Joseph the Carpenter to take Him with His mother and flee to Egypt (Matt. 2:13). Why?

• i. He fled to Egypt to avoid dying as an unknown infant under Herod, for it must be that He die in public and call all humanity to enjoy the power of His cross, that they may crush the head of the serpent under their feet. He came to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the whole world (John 3:16).

• ii. He chose arrogant Egypt that had humiliated His people in the past, and went there, carried in the arms of the Virgin, as a swift cloud. The idols of Egypt tottered at His presence and the heart of Egypt melted in its midst, so that He might build His altar in the midst of the land of Egypt and so that Egypt may know Him and hear His voice saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people” (Isa. 19:24). All nations are filled with hope, and rejoice, saying, “If the Savior of the world declared His love for Egypt in this way, how can any person despair of his own salvation?”

• iii. Egypt was a refuge for Abraham and Joseph the righteous, and the land where God’s people arose in ages past.

• iv. He did not come forward to wreak revenge on Herod the treacherous king, but rather, He fled from evil so that the faithful might emulate him.

• v. By His flight to Egypt, He opened the hearts of many to love Him, so that all those who are suffering or persecuted might resort to Him and find rest in Him.

• vi. He was not incarnate to show off His miracles, but to show by weakness what is greater than power.

• g. Transfiguration (13[th] Mesore / 19[th] August). In the Old Testament, the Lord called Moses to ascend Mount Sinai, to give him the Law. In the New Testament, the Lord called three of His disciples — Peter (representing faith), James the righteous (works), and John the beloved (love) to ascend mount Tabor with Him. This same invitation is addressed to every believer who puts love into action and comes to know the heavenly Bridegroom and His precious dowry.

After Moses had met the Lord and come down from the mountain, the people implored him to cover his face with a veil, for the skin of his face shone brightly (Ex. 34:33). So also did the face of Jesus shine like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light (Matt. 17:2). The hearts of the disciples were aflame with yearning to be in His eternal presence. He revealed to them the truth about Himself, as far as they could bear.