A host-run review game for Coptic Orthodox Sunday school, Grade 8, Building Block 8, Know Your Church. The road runs from St. Mark's torn sandal in Alexandria to the fasts of the year. Each station below names where it happens and what it asks a pupil to carry into an ordinary day.
Alexandria · AD 61
St. Mark walks into the city from the west and his sandal strap gives out. Everything the Coptic Church is began in the next ten minutes.
Follow the example of the martyrs and keep the faith, whatever the obstacles in an ordinary day.
Nicaea · AD 325
A soldier carries the flag at the head of the army. He falls, and the next man raises it. The Creed is what the Church raised over the body of that fight.
Next time the Creed is prayed in church or the Agpeya, contemplate the words instead of reciting them from memory.
Alexandria · from c. AD 50
The oldest Christian school in the world had no building for most of its life and often met underground. It still out-taught the empire.
Seek to learn spiritual matters educationally, the way the school did. Ask about the theological programs open to you.
Nicaea · Constantinople · Ephesus
Oikoumene: the inhabited world, the whole household. When the whole household has to settle something, it meets.
If someone asked you to define your faith as a Christian, the Creed is the full and adequate answer. Take it apart line by line.
Nitria · Scetis · the Red Sea
By the end of the fifth century there were hundreds of monasteries and thousands of caves scattered through the Egyptian desert. It started with one eighteen-year-old who heard a verse in church.
Understand the importance of monastic life, and apply some of its concepts to your own.
Inside any Coptic church
Three shapes, one message, one Church. Everything in the building means something; nothing here was done without a reason.
Walk into church this week and look around. See what is different and what is the same, and understand why things are the way they are.
The whole Coptic year
The Church of the Martyrs, whose feasts never stop. Seven major, seven minor, one every month, one every week, and very nearly one every day.
Follow the spirit and life of the Church through her year. Be joyful and charitable on feast days, and remember those who do not have enough.
Over 210 days of every year
No other Christian community fasts like this. The interesting question is not how much. It is why.
Fast regularly with the guidance of a father of confession. Do not show off, and do not be lazy. Do what you can, and do it for God alone.