The Communion of Love

Rating:
Summary: Deep yet a practical Spiritual Insight
Review: Fr Matthew the Poor is certainly a hidden treasure. His depth, spiritual insight and understanding in his writings can be benefitted from by anyone. There are very few Coptic Orthodox writers who's works are this readily available.

He does not write about topics for monks, but topics that will touch the heart of every beliver. I recommend this book to anyone who is searching for the depths of Orthodox spirituality.

Rating:
Summary: The Communion of Love
Review: Matthew the Poor is a monk in saint macarius and is one of the holy monks and the father of this monestery,

Rating:
Summary: Insight into the heart of the Trinity by a spiritual master.
Review: Matthew the Poor is a professional pharmacist who left a life of worldly success to seek the face of God in silence in the desert. That he was called to this vocation by a strong and authentic yearning is clear from his concise, but riveting theological explanations. There is no waste in this book. Every sentence is packed with insight into scripture and wisdom not easily matched in today's theological bookstores. No fluff, no self-aggrandizement, just humble and pure exposition of his learnings from his personal communion with Love Himself. Among countless spiritual and theological treatises available today, this one stands with the great masters. The final chapter on unity in the Church through ecumenism is alone worth the cost.

Rating:
Summary: Insight into the heart of the Trinity by a spiritual master.
Review: Matthew the Poor is a professional pharmacist who left a life of worldly success to seek the face of God in silence in the desert. That he was called to this vocation by a strong and authentic yearning is clear from his concise, but riveting theological explanations. There is no waste in this book. Every sentence is packed with insight into scripture and wisdom not easily matched in today's theological bookstores. No fluff, no self-aggrandizement, just humble and pure exposition of his learnings from his personal communion with Love Himself. Among countless spiritual and theological treatises available today, this one stands with the great masters. The final chapter on unity in the Church through ecumenism is alone worth the cost.

Rating:
Summary: Koinonia of Love; Introduction to Makarian Piety
Review: The Book's Title:
Koinonia in both Coptic and Greek means fellowship or communion of the Christians with each other and with The Father through His only begotten IC XC: Jesus Christ in His Holy Spirit;"God is Love, who abides in love abides in God, and God in him". 1John 5:16. accordingly, the abbot of St. Macarius narrates in his tightly packed confession of Orthodox christianity the tradition of 16 centuries on salvation and it's history through the narrow way, always tried for those who recieved the monastic habit: sometimes missed, achieved, and few times mastered by the ascetic desert dwellers.

Henri Nouwen's Foreward:
The late Fr. Nouwen was a friend and admirer of the monastery of Saint Macarius in the West Wadi Natroun (Nitria) and of its spiritual father, Abouna Matta El-Maskeen. Fr. Nouwen once observed that the "Western world must listen to this penetrating message coming to us from the Egyptian Desert" In the same essay he said" Fr. Matta 's radical God-centeredness stands in contradiction to our pervasive human-centeredness. All that Father Matta says is guided by the question: 'How do I make God the center of my life?' The Rev. Dr. John Watson: Coptic Ch. Rev., vol 21,no 4,(2000), p 139
An introduction of the Macarian Abbotand Coptic monastic revival is efficiently condensed in a fellow monastic Julian the Alien.

Book Preface:
In 1969, at the request of Abba Kyrillos VI, the solitary Patriarch of the See of St. Mark (1959-71), and former Abbot of the ancient monastery of Samuel the Confessor, Fr.Matta and his disciples left the caves around the monastery moving to the then deserted monastery (6 monks)to rebuild the present community of the most serious monastic vocation in Nitria and Kellia (Scete) last millenium.

Book 20 Thematic essays:
The book starts from its logical beginning: "How to read the Bible", and takes you in twenty steps: chapters of 10 pages each to the Escatological Unity of John 17 in its last two chapters. This book whose 20 concise but instructive chapters focus on the Living Christ of history and faith, reveals goal and essense of Christian living. Fr. Matthew uses simple, yet profound imagery of the typical ascetic tradition of Coenobetic Scete and Kellia of the Nitrian desert. The subjects of the essays contain some typical Orthodox issues:Humility, Ascetism, Repentence, fasting, Suffering. It reflects on jesus human experience in Gethsemne, His passion, Reserrection, and Ascention. Last chapters on Pentacost, and Holy Spirit in Ascetic theology vs Dogmatics.

Coptic Piety in Ascetic Monasticism:
In his small libretto ;"The Power of the Name",Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia put on the front page of his book on Jesus prayer, a Contemporary Coptic Monk is quoted to represent Coptic traditian of unceasing prayer. I asked proff. G.Bebawi of the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge), if this monk is Fr. Matta, and he confirmed.

Rating:
Summary: Patristics for Modern Humanity
Review: What are Patristics? The study of the Early Church Fathers? The continual tradition or theology of the Church Fathers? If the last definition is right, then Matthew the Poor's "The Communion of Love" will give a clear refreshing read. Most ancient Patristics dealt with defending against that days heresy or refining the dogmas or mystery of the Church. Some did write about how to read the Bible, the meaning behind certain verses, & how to live your Life with spiritual power, but most lacked a vision of modern problems, or how modern thinking (Rationality or Subjectivity) could cloud spiritual reality.

Matthew the Poor is a modern Coptic monk, part of the Oriental Orthodox Christian Church. He was a rich pharmacist living in Egypt, who just after World War II gave up everything & went to the desert to start a monastery. In 1971 he was one of 3 men to be nominated to become the Coptic Pope (not like the Roman Catholic Pope, but the highest Bishop in Egypt). Before his death he could heal people & feed the animals by his hands (like St. Francis of the Roman Catholic or St. Seraphim of the Russian Orthodox). Therefore in this book Matthew the Poor as a converted modern man writes to modern man revealing issues & topics with such spiritual wisdom that few can do today. Read didaskalex's great review below & the others for a listing of the topics.