Memorization Trainings for Church Education and for All Believers
Memorization Trainings for Church Education and for All Believers
What should be memorized?
Memorization training is very beneficial, whether within the sphere of Church Education for servants, students, and children, or equally beneficial for all believers.
By this we mean memorizing the Psalms, memorizing prayers, memorizing hymns and tunes, and memorizing verses or passages from the Holy Bible.
The memorization program may also include: memorizing some well-known sayings of the Fathers, and memorizing some words in the Coptic language and their meanings.
1. Concerning verses:
- Verses can be memorized according to the alphabetical letters and used in competitions. We have prepared a book to help you with that.
- Verses can also be memorized that pertain to all the Church’s sacraments and doctrines, and all the necessary theological information, including verses suitable for theological dialogue and for responding to doubts, sects, and heresies.
- Also included is memorizing verses related to virtues and the spiritual life, and on the negative side, verses that respond to specific sins.
- Verses about daily life and what we use in it can be memorized, as well as verses specific to the Church and what is within it.
- For children and the young in general, short-worded verses can be memorized, such as: “God is love,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the good shepherd,” “He who believes and is baptized will be saved”… and the verses gradually increase in length according to the child’s growth in age.
- Likewise, a child can memorize prayers from the Bible, such as the Lord’s Prayer, and also: “Remember me, O Lord, when You come into Your kingdom,” “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy,” and “Teach me, O Lord, Your ways,” etc.
- As for adults, in addition to individual verses, they can memorize certain chapters, such as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), love in (1 Corinthians 13), certain virtues as in (Romans 12), (1 Thessalonians 5:12–28), (Philippians 3:7–14), and the Gospel readings of the hours of the Agpeya.
- What adults memorize can also become a field for meditation.
2. Memorizing Psalms and prayers:
One can begin with short Psalms such as:
In the Morning Prayer: the Psalm “Blessed is the man,” “O Lord, why have those who trouble me increased?” and the Psalm “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?”
In the Third Hour Prayer: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
In the Sixth Hour Prayer: “May God have mercy upon us,” “O God, come to my assistance,” and “The Lord reigns.”
In the Ninth Hour Prayer: “The Lord said to my Lord,” and “Praise the Lord, you servants.”
In the Sunset Prayer: “I lifted up my eyes to the hills,” “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,” and “Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth.”
In the Prayer before Sleep: “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord,” “Behold, how good and how pleasant,” and “Bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord.”
Gradually, more and longer Psalms can be memorized.
- Memorization training also includes memorizing the Gospel readings of the Agpeya and their absolutions.
- Also memorizing sections of each of the seven prayers.
- Likewise, memorizing the common prayers in all the hours, such as the Thanksgiving Prayer, Psalm 50, “Holy God, Holy Mighty,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “Have mercy upon us, O God, then have mercy upon us” (at the end of every prayer), and the Creed with its introduction.
- Young children can memorize from the Agpeya prayers and the Psalms according to their level.
3. Other memorized materials:
Children can be taught some composed hymns, such as:
“Ring, O bells, and call all people to attend the liturgy, ring, O bells, ring,”
and “I was sick and weak, and we made a vigil lamp,” which is a hymn that includes a rite,
and “O believers, will you not accompany us, with building and promises, to Bethlehem,”
along with some simple, short tunes, or parts of them.
Many churches form choirs of deacons from young children who are able to memorize some of the responses of Vespers and the Divine Liturgy. A child has a great ability to memorize hymns and tunes.
As for adults, their memorization progresses from ordinary tunes to great tunes, and tunes of occasions and feasts, along with memorizing some hymns, some praises, and sections of the Psalmody.
Benefits of memorization:
- Undoubtedly, memorization has many benefits. The very act of memorizing occupies a person with spiritual time, placing him in a state of meditation and understanding of the words he memorizes, and making him feel them within a spiritual atmosphere.
- Through memorization, he can complete his prayers at any time, in any situation, and in any place, even among people, without needing to open a book that would expose his prayers to others.
- Through memorization, he can pray while walking on the road, while in transportation, or while present among a group of people speaking about matters that do not concern him. He sits silently, and they think he is listening to them, while in reality he is praying in his heart without anyone noticing.
- Through memorization, he can pray in the dark, and he can keep his mind sanctified by prayer during a trip, a journey, or a long walk. Memorization benefits him in his prayers if he is staying with someone else, or if he faces criticism.
- We have often said and repeated this phrase because of its great benefit:
Memorize the Psalms, and the Psalms will preserve you. Memorize the Gospel, and the Gospel will preserve you. - Through memorization, you plant in your subconscious mind and memory spiritual thoughts that will benefit you later when your memory recalls them.
- Through memorization and repeating what you have memorized, you occupy yourself away from the stumbling blocks you encounter in society, and you keep your mind continually in purity and in spiritual work. You gain two benefits: a positive one and a negative one.
- By memorizing Scripture verses, you can respond to every thought that wars against you; memorize for it the verses by which you respond.
- Through memorization, you receive illumination of the heart in divine matters and in religious studies as well, and the word of God becomes within you, in your heart and mind.
- Through memorization, you can also respond to doctrinal doubts and in theological dialogue, if you have memorized the verses related to that.
- Through memorization, you make use of your free time in what benefits you, and you save yourself from boredom that afflicts those who do not know how to use time for their own good. Your time becomes a cause of spiritual enjoyment for you.
- Memorization is beneficial as a spiritual program during the summer vacation, during trips, and in the church club.
Important note:
- Memorization must be an essential part of the Sunday School program, such that the lesson given to the Sunday School student includes a story and includes a verse, which is repeated for him to memorize, and which the servant reviews with him.
- Do not waste for children the age of memorization, meaning early childhood, in which they have a memory not yet filled, ready to receive and memorize everything it hears. Know that if you do not charge their memory with what is beneficial, society will take upon itself to charge it with what it has.
- Memorization is not a training for children only, but for servants as well. They are not merely a source of spiritual material. For the Scripture says: “Take heed to yourself and to the teaching.” The Church Education servant, in addition to what he makes children memorize and what he memorizes with them, has another memorization program at a higher level than theirs.
- Likewise, the memorization program is a training for priestly fathers in their pastoral visitation of families, as they also make them memorize verses and well-known sayings of the Fathers. They cannot do this unless they themselves are also memorizing.
- The duty of making children memorize is also the responsibility of parents. For the Lord said: “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
- Teaching children to memorize comes through repetition, encouragement, praise, and distributing rewards to those who memorize. Competitions for memorization can also be held in churches.
- Memorization also benefits the uneducated and the illiterate who do not know how to read and write, and it also benefits the blind who cannot see.
- Memorizing verses is also connected with using them and training on them.
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