Today I am excited to being a new guest blog series on the seven practices I write about in my new book, Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church, published by Paraclete Press and released on April 16, 2019. This time, you don’t have to take it from me – each guest shares his or her own stories about how each practice helps him or her experience joy.

Today’s inaugural guest post comes from my dear friend Jessica Ryder-Khalil, who has guest posted on Being in Community before. Here, she shares her and her family’s experience with the first practice, Praying the Hours.

By Jessica Ryder-Khalil

We often open the meetings of our church’s mom ministry with a time of prayer with the Agpeya, or the Coptic Orthodox Book of Hours. For many of us who are moms of young children, that idealized, hard-to-obtain space of quiet and reverential prayer is refreshing like a summer rain shower. The heat of having a mind constantly divided into the daily care taking tasks is momentarily cooled and nourished by the words of a psalm and the company of fellow mothers, all of us lifting our hearts to the Lord together. The air is cleared. The stress we might have been feeling is put into perspective.

When the moms meet in the evening, we pray the Sunset Prayer or the Eleventh Hour of the Coptic Orthodox Agpeya, or Liturgy of the Hours. It is an overwhelming comfort that we pray together in the litanies, “Because of my human weakness I cannot bear the burden and heat of the day. But, You the merciful God, count me as those of the eleventh hour.” Isn’t that a typical worry of most parents?  I am not sufficient; I cannot carry the responsibility, but our loving God answers our deepest groaning in the Gospel reading of that same Sunset prayer. At that hour, we read Luke 4:38-41 when the Lord Jesus healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. She was restored and empowered to rise and serve. When the Lord heals, the sickness is removed and replaced by soundness of body, mind and soul. Our anxiety is removed and replaced by joy.  

My experience of joy praying the Agpeya resonates with so much of what Phoebe wrote in Putting Joy into Practice. Praying the hours opens the door to the communion of saints past and present who have prayed the psalms whether you are closed in your room or in a setting of corporate worship. Phoebe shares how the Agpeya lifted her spirit when she was nursing her first son, and she found being connected to community through prayer is a joy. The Agpeya not only plugs us into the unceasing worship of the angels and saints, but structures our life around the life of Christ. If we plant ourselves around that source of living water, it only follows that His life should both feed and flow through ours.  Phoebe writes, “God is the source of our joy, and union with Him is our goal” (Page 20).

My husband Ayman recently shared with me a sermon from Abouna Dawood Lamey about Lazarus. Ayman often translates interesting tidbits of sermons he’s heard in Arabic so we can chat about it. This concept from Abouna Dawood intrigued me. “The Resurrection is not an event. It is a person.” We find these words from our Lord Jesus himself when He tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).  Still there was a dissonance for me- surely the Resurrection was an event, something that happened once long ago. 

However, the very sweetness, the very joy of worship in the Coptic Orthodox Church through the sacraments and the Agpeya is that the Lord Jesus is the Resurrection. What our eternal God lived once is always and for all so when we mark our hours by His Incarnation, His Passion, His Resurrection, He breathes His life into us. Where once I struggled to find life in these little prayer books that seemed dense and full of repetition, I see something entirely different now.  

At home, the Agpeya is a companion for our whole family. While Ayman and I will pray the hours individually, the children of the house have grown accustomed to their morning and evening prayer times. Taking the advice of our family priests, we started with short prayer sessions and gradually added on according to what the children could handle. Now the two eldest boys can read independently, while the younger two will gladly sing the responses and Kirie elesion (Lord have mercy). The best lesson I have taken from these family gatherings is not to expect, or even shoot for, perfection. The long term habit is infinitely more valuable than the momentary chaos that arises from trying to get four children to do the same thing at the same time. Our day starts with joy when we send the children to school with a psalm on their lips and their hands outstretched in a holy kiss.

To help the children become familiar with the different hours of the Agpeya, we let the liturgical season determine which hour they pray in the morning. During the Holy Lent, we prayed the Sixth Hour corresponding to the Crucifixion and repentance. Now in the Holy Fifty Days, you will find us praying the First Hour related to the joy of the Resurrection. In a few weeks, we’ll switch to the Third hour to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the Apostles Fast.   With the support of the Sunday School teachers, the children are encouraged to memorize psalms and the Gospel passages so that they can carry the Agpeya in their hearts wherever they go. It is fun to challenge each other to see what we’ve learned.  

Praying the Agpeya has not always come easily to us. Our best efforts have sometimes turned into a mess of brawling children on the living room floor, leaving me wondering if the struggle against life’s distractions and busyness is worthwhile. Ayman has often encouraged me in moments of doubt, saying, “Think about how happy you are when your children started talking.  Any babble or noise made you so happy. If God is your Father, imagine how happy He is when you start to talk to Him.”

It seems logical to me that our experience as parents illuminates a window into the heart of God. If He rejoices at our birth through baptism, then He shall continue to find joy in us as we grow in grace. We hear from St. James in his Epistle, “Let perseverance finish its work so you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything” (James 1:4). This maturity is what enlightens the eyes of the Christian to see “pure joy” in the face of difficulty. As every parent desires to teach their children how to live a good life, Christ invites us to Himself, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

One of my favorite aspects of Phoebe’s book is her invitation to prayer and reflection throughout each chapter of Putting Joy into Practice. I read most of her book as a meditation during our recently celebrated Holy Week services. Phoebe challenged me to consider how the Lord Jesus habitually prayed and practiced other aspects of joy. From His example and His life-giving Spirit, the early church grew in the virtue of practicing joy, giving freely to each other in the fullness of faith. 

I too extend the invitation to pray together from the First Absolution of the Morning Prayer, “Make us children of light, children of daytime.” These few words always fill me as I know the Heavenly Father desires nothing less than to bestow sonship on us all and the Agpeya guided my prayer to ask for something I have already received. No one can ask for greater joy than this!

Jessica Ryder-Khalil is a mom of four children- three boys and a girl. A member of the St. Antonious and St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church in East Rutherford, NJ, she also participates in the church’s ministry for mothers of young children called Fellowship of St. Monica. Jessica was baptized into the church 13 years ago and is a continual learner along the path to Orthodoxy. Before family life took the lead role, Jessica taught English as a Second Language both abroad and in the USA.

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