How to Benefit from the Holy Liturgy - Pope Kirillos Scientific Family

away Your anger from us. Visit us with Your salvation.
And forgive us our sins."
Also chant with the congregation the joyful tune of, "Lord
have mercy," while beating your chest in persistence and
humility like the tax collector. Do you feel you return to your
house justified like the tax collector
The Gospel
After granting peace to the congregation, the priest prays for
hearing the holy gospel. It is a powerful prayer which
intensifies in power and spirit. The priest mentions the
blessing of the Lord to His disciples for they saw and heard
what prophets and righteous men had desired to see and had
not seen. We must, therefore, thank our Lord Jesus Christ
because He made us worthy to hear the words of grace
coming from His Divine mouth and recorded in His Holy
Gospel. We ask Him with the priest to make us worthy to
hear the holy gospel and act according to His word. In this
way, we gain the blessing promised in Revelation saying,
"Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of
this prophecy... for the time is near" (Revelation 1:3). In
this way, we thus become a dynamic fifth gospel, "You are
our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all
men; you are manifestly an epistle of Christ, ministered by
us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the
heart" (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
The priest then prays, "Those who have already fallen
asleep, repose them. Those who are sick, heal them...'' We
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