Remember, O Lord, our meetings; bless them
Remember, O Lord, Our Meetings, Bless Them [1]
There is a prayer we say in every Divine Liturgy called the Litany of the Meetings.
And because of its importance, if the chief priest is present, he is the one who prays it and no one else…
In it he says: Remember, O Lord, our meetings, bless them. Grant that they may be for us without hindrance or obstruction, that we may perform them according to Your good and blessed will. Houses of prayer, houses of purity, houses of blessing, grant them to us and to Your servants who will come after us forever.
The priest also prays it as he goes around the altar with the incense.
Remembering that the meetings of believers are like a circle around the whole earth. And that they are meetings around the sacrifice and the altar. And that they ascend to God as a fragrance of incense… therefore we pray it while we lift the incense.
And when we say “our meetings,” we do not mean our meetings alone, but our meetings with the Lord.
For we do not go to church merely to gather with one another, but to gather all together with God. We gather in His house, with Him… There is an appointment between us and the Lord in which we meet Him. Our love for Him draws us to Him, and we hasten to His house to meet Him, and in meeting Him, we meet one another.
This picture is called: God in the midst of His people.
It was represented by the Tabernacle of Meeting. It was in the midst of the tents of the people. And rightly they called it the Tabernacle of Meeting, for in it God met with the people. He revealed His presence among them, and they heard His voice. Or He revealed His will to them through His servant Moses, for example…
What was important was not the place, but the meeting.
Thus we can say that the first church was in the Garden of Eden.
Where the Lord met Adam and Eve, who were the first assembly of believers. And so when we consecrate a new church, we begin with the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, in which God created the first assembly of believers, and in which “God said: ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good” (Gen. 1:3, 4).
And the paradise in which God met Adam and Eve pointed to the church, which is the paradise of God on earth.
Then there was another church, the Ark of Noah.
Concerning which the Apostle Peter said: “In which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism” (1 Pet. 3:20, 21). The eight souls were Noah and his wife, their three sons, and the wives of the three sons. Yet some say that the ark contained nine, and the ninth was the Lord, who guided the rudder of the ark safely, while the ark was lifted upon the water above the mountains, and above the death that was on the earth. Water falling upon it from above and water beneath it, and it was a symbol of baptism by immersion.
Then God was in the midst of His people, in the tabernacle and in the temple of Solomon.
And after that in every church and in every house of God wherever it may be: whether in people’s homes, or in cemeteries, or in caves, or in the clefts of the mountains. What matters is that they gather and God be in their midst. And there is a beautiful image presented to us in the Book of Revelation in the first and second chapters, which is:
The Lord in the midst of the seven lampstands, and in His right hand the seven stars.
The seven lampstands were the seven churches, representing all the churches of the world, and the Lord in their midst. And in His right hand the seven stars, meaning the angels of the churches or their shepherds…
And God does not consider a meeting to be merely a large, crowded gathering, as when He was among the multitudes on the mount of the sermon, or among the crowds that pressed upon Him, but rather He said:
“Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).
Any number, no matter how small, gathered in the name of the Lord—God is in their midst. And perhaps one of the most beautiful examples is the meeting of St. Mary the Virgin with St. Elizabeth. Look at what the Gospel says: “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41). And in that moment the babe (John) was filled with the Holy Spirit, as the announcing angel had foretold concerning him (Luke 1:15).
In that small meeting there was fullness of the Holy Spirit, divine revelation, and praise.
By divine revelation—resulting from the fullness of the Spirit—Elizabeth knew that the Virgin Mary was the Mother of the Lord, and that she believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled (Luke 1:43, 45). She also perceived the joy of the babe in her womb. And the Virgin praised the Lord with her known hymn: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” (Luke 1:46, 47).
There were other meetings blessed by the Lord: pairs or threes.
Such as the meeting of St. Anthony with St. Paul the First Hermit. The Lord was in their midst according to His promise. As He was in the midst of Mary and Martha in their house (Luke 10:38, 39). And He was also in the midst of the two disciples of Emmaus after the resurrection (Luke 24:13–16): “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).
Among the most beautiful examples also is what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration.
A wondrous and beautiful meeting: Moses and Elijah, and the Lord Christ in their midst (Mark 9:4). And also among the miraculous and unique meetings: the three young men in the furnace of fire because of their faith, and the Lord Christ in their midst preventing the fire from harming them (Dan. 3:25).
The examples are countless—whether in the Scripture or in history—of the Lord’s blessing upon the meetings of those gathered in His name. And here we ask:
What about individuals and their relation to the Lord’s promise in Matthew 18:20?
Here one of the saints answered: If the mind, the heart, and the body gather in the name of the Lord, then His holy promise applies: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).
An example of this is Moses the prophet with the Lord on the mountain, and his coming out of that meeting with his face shining with light, so that the Israelites were afraid to approach him, and he placed a veil over his face when he spoke to them (Exod. 34:29–35). His face shone with light because he had met with God, who is the true light, the light unapproachable.
And as the Lord met with Moses, He met with John the Revelator on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1). And He met with our father Abraham many times (Gen. 12). And He met with many prophets and apostles. And He met with the man born blind after he had been cast out of the synagogue… and drew him into faith (John 9:35–38).
God loves to meet with His people, and He meets with them in the church and in any place…
The Lord met with them on the mount (Matt. 5). And in a deserted place, during the miracle of the five loaves and the two fish (Luke 9). And He met with the people in a house, as in the story of healing the paralytic (Mark 2). And many times He met with the people at the shore of the lake, or in the fields. And He met with His disciples in the upper room (John 20), and with some of them in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26). And He met with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). And He met with the two disciples of Emmaus on the road… all this before the establishment of the church as a building.
Then God chose the church as the place of His meeting with His people.
And the church was called the house of God and the gate of heaven since ancient times (Gen. 28:17). And it is a holy place, consecrated with the myron. And the meetings in it are holy meetings. And in it is the sanctuary and the altar, the Holy of Holies, another place of meeting between God and His saints. And in all this we cry to the Lord saying: “Remember, O Lord, our meetings. Bless them.” What does this phrase mean?
Remember, O Lord, our meetings, bless them.
Remember them: meaning let them be in Your remembrance continually. Do not forget them nor overlook them. And here I recall what King Solomon said to the Lord on the day of the dedication of the temple: “Let Your eyes be open toward this house day and night, toward the place of which You said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that You may hear the prayer which Your servant makes toward this place… Hear in heaven Your dwelling place; and when You hear, forgive” (1 Kings 8:29, 30). Remember our meetings, and also:
Bless them: bless them with Your presence in them, and bless with the work of Your Holy Spirit, both the speaker and the listener.
Bless them in regard to number, that they may grow and increase, as was said in the first chapter of the establishment of the church in the days of the apostles: “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). And as was said after the ordination of the seven deacons: “Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem…” (Acts 6:8). And it was said after the Lord chose Paul the Apostle: “Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied” (Acts 9:31).
Bless them also in their spiritual work and in their fruit.
Let their prayers be blessed and answered by You. And let the words spoken in them be fruitful—thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And let visitation be fruitful, so that no one is absent from the meetings, and whoever attends is affected and pricked in his heart, and his life is changed for the better…
We say in the Litany of the Meetings: Grant that they may be for us without hindrance or obstruction.
We ask that these meetings be a gift to us from God, and that He prevent hindrances and obstacles. And the obstacle may come from an external force, or it may be from within ourselves, or from circumstances particular to us. In both cases we ask God’s help so that our meetings may continue and bring their spiritual benefit. And how is that? We say:
That we may perform them according to Your good and blessed will.
Yes, the meetings we ask God to bless are the ones we conduct according to His good and blessed will. But meetings that are not according to God’s will, that arise from personal motives, or that are filled with division and noise—we cannot say of them: Remember, O Lord, our meetings. Bless them…
It is a lesson the church teaches us: to pray for our meetings.
We pray for the liturgies and the vespers, and the youth meetings, the meetings of young women, and the general meetings. Spiritual meetings and activity meetings, and even administrative meetings… that God may bless them all… If we all prayed for all these meetings, what benefit would come upon the whole church! Why then do we say afterward:
Houses of prayer, houses of purity, houses of blessing.
First: because the church at the beginning used to meet in the homes of believers: such as the house of Mary, the mother of St. Mark (Acts 12:12), and the house of Aquila and Priscilla (Rom. 16:3, 5). And the house of Lydia the seller of purple (Acts 16:15), and the house of Nymphas (Col. 4:15)… So the church prays for the houses that became churches.
Second: we pray for those who attend the meetings and are influenced by their spirituality, that their homes—because of this influence—may become homes of prayer, homes of purity, and homes of blessing.
Finally there are other meetings afterward, all of them blessed—
When the Lord comes on the clouds in His second coming with myriads of His saints: “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17)… and we all dwell together in the heavenly Jerusalem of which it was said: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men” (Rev. 21:3).
How beautiful are those meetings in which we gather with the angels and the apostles and the prophets and the fathers and all the saints… meetings that remain forever, without hindrance or obstruction, houses of prayer, houses of purity, houses of blessing…
[1] An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III: “Remember, O Lord, Our Meetings, Bless Them,” in Al-Keraza Magazine, July 22, 1994.For better translation support, please contact the center.
