It starts off with the priest asking for a blessing of grace and a gift of help for the Abune (Archbishop), it then proceeds as follows:

Deacon: Lift up your hearts unto heaven.
Congregation: Yes, our hearts are in heaven. For thy name’s sake strengthen us, and make us worthy, Jesus Christ our Lord and our God.

Deacon: If there is anyone quarrelling with his neighbour, let him forgive him.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is doubt in the heart of anyone let him believe.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is blemish in the heart of anyone let him not approach.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is anyone who has fallen into sin, let him not forget it because it must not be forgotten.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is anyone who has a diseased conscience let him not approach.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is anyone who is an adulterer and impure, let him be sent out.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is anyone who is alienated from the commandments of Jesus, he shall be forbidden to come.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: If there is anyone who disdains the prophets, let him deliver himself from the wrath of the Only-Begotten and save his soul. Let him not oppose the cross, but flee from the wrath of the Lord, because there are those who look upon us, namely the Father of Light with his Son and his holy angels who visit the church. Examine yourselves and cleanse yourselves and do not mention your neighbour’s sin. Be careful that no one should maintain any hatred against his neighbour.
Congregation: According to thy mercy, our God, and not according to our sins (thrice repeated)

Deacon: God is looking. Lift up your hearts. Let us come near to the medicine of Life. Let us receive the holiness that is granted unto us by grace through the wisdom of the Lord.

After this exchange between the deacon and the congregation, the Priest then himself calls for the people to “Lift up your hearts”, after “The Lord be with you…etc”

To which the congregation responds: “We have lifted them up unto the Lord our God”

I think the deacon-congregation exchange which precedes beautifully allows the congregation to contemplate and finally declare that they HAVE lifted up their hearts to the Lord.

I’ve just one comment…

There was one thing I liked, where he says “Just because you call someone blind, it doesn’t automatically give you vision”.

True and fair statement!

But the hypocrite he describes himself to once have been; the one that was “acting like a church kid”, is obviously still alive because he’s doing the exact opposite of this statement which is the header of his argument. He is calling religion (even if he is just referring to the institution, which I think he is) blind, thinking that he solely is the one who is seeing straight.

Recall John 9:39-41
And Jesus said to them, “For judgement I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind”.
Then some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words, and said to him, “Are we blind also?”
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say, ‘We see’, therefore your sin remains”.

I needn’t say anymore that says it all…

No, I lie, one more thing further… His argument is just stupid! He calls it, “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus”. It should be called, “Why I hate Christianity, but love Jesus”, because his whole argument is attacking the Christian institution. Apart from where he says, “Religion is man searching for God, Christianity is God searching for man”, which threw me out when I read it because it makes no sense in the scheme of the rest of his argument, and just renders his whole argument invalid.

That is all…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwetTNAGC44

I’m kind of going on a tangent with this post, but bare with me…
This may or may not fall in the sphere of ‘religious practice’, and it’s a question I’ve pondered for many, many years.

Every year in my family on the eve of Epiphany we carve lanterns out of oranges. The oranges are hollowed out and three crosses are craved through the peel/skin. They are then attached to a piece of string, and a candle is placed inside, forming a small lantern.

All the lights in the house are then switched off and the whole family goes around the house singing a hymn/song in Arabic while shining the crosses (illuminating through the orange by the candle) on all the walls of the house. The whole of the house is subsequently filled with the frangrance of the burning citrus. The flesh of the orange is then eaten and the lanterns are hung to dry and kept for a year until Epiphany comes around again.

The hymn/song recounts how on the night of Epiphany a mother gave birth to a lantern, she gave it the name ‘light’, and it enlightens the dark alleyway (excuse the very poor translation, the hymn is made up of some words I do not understand).

No one has ever been able to tell me why we do this, where it originated from or what it exactly means, and yet we do it every year. I have spoken to some Coptic friends about this practice, but none had any idea what I was talking about, and I have never seen it done in church before.
I can only assume that it is a practice common to those of Upper Egypt, out of which my family is from.

I don’t know why we do it and yet it is something we have always looked forward to every year since we were children, similar to how we always look forward to the eve of Palm Sunday when we take home the palm branches and make little crafts out of them.

I guess before Epiphany comes around at the end of this week I’m hoping for some kind of answer before I go out and buy the oranges.

Does anybody else practice this or something similar, or know what it means?