Hi All,
I know that most of us are living outside egypt, but I have a concern that really worries me. What happened to our coptic hymns???? Nowadays every single liturgy is prayed mostly in english, even our beautiful coptic hymns are now chanted in english. Also, due to time constraints, we don't get the chance to chant even 30% of the coptic hymns that our fathers used to chant. What happend to us????? Is it really that simple to give up our beautiful heritage & hymns??? our fathers spent years learning these hymns to pass them to us, & we easily don't even look after these hymns???? This really annoys me & bothers me, I don't know if you feel the same, but I don't see why we have to stop learning coptic & pray fully in english!!!
Comments
Do you mean Coptic the language or Coptic the tradition? Coptic the language is just that - a language. If it is eventually extinct, it is a sad loss, but does not affect our spirituality or religion. Coptic the tradition is more alive than ever hymn-wise, due to the reasons Mina outlined above. However, I do agree with your observation we skip a lot of hymns today, and I wish we could say hymns like Apetjeek Evol and the proper reading introductions more often, as well as the Aspasmos Watos and Adam for every occasion (and annually).
Sorry but I have to disagree with this. Coptic the language was used as a primary media of communication from the 3rd-17th centuries (about 1500 years). The vast majority of our hymns today cannot be traced prior to the 18th century (200 years). The majority of hymns recorded in St Shenoute's don't exist. So hymns come and go much more frequently than language. We should make every effort to preserve the language as we make to preserve the hymnological and musicological tradition.
Secondly, nearly every anthropologist, linguist and social scientist will tell you language partly defines a culture or a tradition. Coptic the tradition (which I will define as customs, history, education, mannerism, music, social events and food of the Coptic people) is directly related in part by the language. And neither the loss of the language or the loss of musicological tradition is directly proportional to spirituality or religion. Spirituality, at least in the Orthodox church, is measured by faith received from Jesus Christ through the Apostles and the salvific works and mysteries we do as a result of that faith. This is the one constant that remains. The language, the politics, the rites, the tradition, the music constantly change - whether they develop and flourish or constrict and die.
Spiritual discipline is measured by priorities. Priorities follow peer pressure. Liturgical services decrease when more and more people complain about language, hymns, time and other external factors. For these people, external factors have more priority than internal factors. The only way to reverse it - to internally feel the power of the Orthodox life - is to increase spiritual discipline through physical discipline. If you want to experience the transcendent power of hymns, discipline yourself to learn more hymns. If you want to experience the hidden nuances of the liturgical texts and increase your knowledge of these texts, discipline yourself to learn Coptic language. In doing these things, your spiritual discipline increases and hymns and languages are contextualized and internalized.
The problem we face now is that more and more people want to be more like the foreigners and introduce foreign hymns or foreign languages to replace our traditional ones. (Actually this is the same problem we have faced from the beginning of Christianity). I believe this is what the original poster alluded to.