Coptic Stories
Confession:

These short stories have a story of their own. In the summer of 1960, I was serving in the Zagazig area and the surrounding villages. In one of these villages, I met a blind cantor who told me that he was from Esna and that he wandered about collecting alms from everywhere. He went to Jerusalem three times, walking on his own feet. He even went to Sudan and lived there for a year, wandering among places where Copts gather, and he lived in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. That blind man saw many times more than I have seen.

We served together in those villages, and I heard much from him and began to write. It was living history for him. As for me, it was an attempt to record the wisdom of our people and their spiritual experience, which he had stored in his wondrous memory that never forgets. This is the first attempt of its kind in our modern era, and I hope that others after me will do what I have done.

However, I wrote only what I felt to be authentic and touching the Christian life. So here is a greeting to the Coptic cantor Ratib, about whose news I know nothing. If you have met him or heard him, I hope you have heard the good stories that I heard. And greetings to everyone who narrated a story.

1- A Letter from a Monk

The monk wrote several letters and left them all open. He instructed one of his disciples to send them all by mail, and not to disturb him until the sun set that day. When the disciple carried the letters, he found that they were all of one kind, even the letter addressed to him. All the letters bore these lines:

“I will depart today. This is the last of my news that will reach you. If you walk in the path of my fathers, you will be able to know the rest of my news.”
Signed: “A Monk.”

2- What Your Hand Touches, Do Not Let It Enter Your Heart

They were living together a life of communion: they prayed together, worked in the field together, and shared everything, even a cup of water. One day they were together in the field when they both saw a peasant woman crossing the river. As she was about to jump from the boat, she fell, and the basket she was carrying fell as well. The first hurried and ran toward her, carried her in his arms until he seated her on the ground, and gathered what had fallen from her.

In the evening, the second said to him before the sunset prayer: “You know that women are a danger to us. We must not touch them, nor even come near them. And here you have dared to carry that woman and touch her body—why?”

The first bowed his head and said calmly, “I carried her in the morning, but you are still carrying her until this moment. Not everything we touch with our hands enters our hearts, and not everything that enters our hearts lives there.”

An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Fifth Year – Issue One – 5 October 1974.

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