Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

Colossians 1: 12-14

Father Matta El-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor)

“THE INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS IN THE LIGHT” is the highest reward the saints obtained, as the price of their faith in Christ, and a recompense for the pain and sufferings they underwent in the world due to their faith without bending to the power of this age’s darkness. We were qualified for this fellowship because we followed their way of life and took them as an example to follow in our lives of this world. The saints are witnesses of Christ’s cross and of His suffering. The pain of the cross was the highest heavenly reward they strived towards in order to gain this glorified share. We are now going through the world’s darkness which Christ traversed victoriously, drawing behind Him the saints who were detached from the world despising all its false glitter, choosing Christ to be their share. Christ rewarded them by taking them to His eternal Kingdom making them rest from the darkness and suffering of this age. We find too that our share is the Lord, even though we suffer a lot from the testing of our intentions and purity of conscience, because he who undergoes the Lord’s suffering1 ceases to sin, joining in the share of the saints awaiting the day of revelation. It is the day when the Lord will reveal the extent we underwent for the love of Christ and of the Father, giving up all the desires and passions of the world so as to be reckoned as the share of the Lord, and to be qualified for the joyful transfer we go through holding on to eternal life for God to take us to enter the Kingdom of the Son of His love. Because if we are fellows in death then we are fellows in glory, and if we have shared in the suffering of Christ we have become beloved of God His Father, as the Lord glorified be His name said: “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.”2

We are thus assured that the Father transported us from the darkness of this age to the Kingdom of the Son of His love because He loved us as He loved His Son. We are partakers of the love of the Father and the Son, God’s love having elevated us to Him and made us close to Him esteemed and saints without blame. It is the choice that was concluded by God before the world and since the beginning.

We are proud we are not of the world because the Father planned our future since the beginning, having previously prepared for us the good works to follow,3 so that our election is a right gained through the Being of the Beloved Son Jesus Christ from the beginning.

This living hope is the essence of our faith in Christ and the Father in which we stand resolute with the steadfastness of the Word of God that qualified us freely for that glorious inheritance. Christ continuously encourages us to hold on to Him to cross the chasm of the world with us, asking us to be steadfast in that hope, as it is our gained right and chosen fate. All these blessings emanate from the blood of Christ shed on the cross in order to anoint the sinner; so that instead of sin we would gain Christ’s righteousness in God.

We are sinners, yea sinners but justified freely through the blood of Jesus Christ. Who can thus deride us? Thank God who crossed over with us the chasm of death and its horrors. We consequently never look back us when we were indebted to the devil and the companions of the old serpent. Our shame has gone and our sins removed, and have become among the saints, the sons of light and eternal joy. The choirs of angels await us in heaven with acclamations bearing the crowns of righteousness for us, and the salvation given to the faithful since the beginning of ages.

25 June, 2005

1 1Pet 4:1.

2 John 16:27.

3 Eph 2:10.