A Closer Look at the Coptic Lenten Doxologies

The blessed Great Lent is a beautiful time of solitude, and it is the pinnacle season of repentance and supplication during the liturgical year. In reverence for this season, Coptic Christians pray a variety of hymns with their main themes being repentance and the restoration of our corrupt nature to its higher calling. During Lent, the orthodox church calls out to God in the most humble form, in a way of saying that we have strayed so far away from God that we aren’t even worthy to be called His sons and daughters. It is only through His mercy that we are able to have that title. During this blessed season, we cry out to God in many chants asking him to not judge us according to our works, but according to his mercy. This is the reason the words “Lord have mercy” are always on the mouths of every Orthodox Christian. To make this article not a hundred pages long, we will only examine the first doxology of this beautiful season rather than the entirety of the hymns. 

The Lenten Doxologies

During lent we have five main doxologies, with differing tunes depending on the day of the week and the regional tradition that you are following. The Cairo tradition consists of one doxology tune attributed to Saturday and Sunday and one to the weekdays. Regardless of tune, the five doxologies are to be prayed in the vespers raising of incense, prime raising of incense, and the midnight psalmody. For the sake of conciseness, we will only discuss the first doxology, but I highly encourage everyone to really focus while chanting these doxologies and try to say them slowly. 

As discussed before, during the lent season, our main concern as Orthodox Christians is the call for repentance. In the first doxology (Ⲛⲉⲕⲛⲁⲓ ⲱ Ⲡⲁϭⲟⲓⲥ), we call out to God in the most humbling way possible in the first few verses, saying: 

• Your mercies O my Lord, I will praise, forever and ever, and from generation to generation, I will declare Your truth out of my mouth.

• My iniquities have covered my head, and have overburdened me, O God hear my sighs, and cast them away from me.

The first verse is just a simple praise for God’s mercy and truth. We establish this as first and foremost because we will build off of the fact that God has abundant mercy and He is the God of truth later. 

The second verse above is a call for repentance telling God how numerous our sins have become before us. The last part of the verse expresses our desires to “be made well” (John 5:6). We are asking God to lift our sins away from us. Whenever we pray this verse, we should make sure that we truly are asking for God’s forgiveness, and not just saying the words and secretly saying ‘but not just yet’ as C.S.Lewis discusses is the main reason we never fully repent of our sins in his Mere Christianity.

• Make me like the publican, who has sinned against You, You had compassion upon him, and forgave him his sins.

• Make me like the adulteress, whom You have redeemed, You have saved and rescued her, for she pleased You.

• Make me like the thief, who was crucified upon Your right-hand, he confessed to You, and likewise said…

In the next few verses, we ask and entreat God to make us like a lot of the sinners of the New Testament that God granted forgiveness. We might ask, why would we want to be like a thief or a harlot or a tax collector? It is because we are sinners just like them and have become even worse than all of them. O Lord, as we say in the hymn of Ⲧⲱⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩ (psalm 119), I have gone astray like a lost sheep, seek (me) your servant. At least these people were granted forgiveness after they repented. But me O Lord, grant me repentance also so that I may leave my dark sin and join them in paradise. For I know that you are good, compassionate, and merciful. Remember (my weakness) in your mercy to the end of times (The lent watos Aspasmos). O Lord, make me to be like those sinners and grant me forgiveness according to your abundant mercy and not according to my ugly sin (Saint Gregory and Saint Basil Anaphora). 

• Remember me O my Lord, remember me O my God, remember me O my King, when You come into Your kingdom.

This verse by itself needs its own book. As a matter of fact, there are good sources of meditation on this verse by H.H. Pope Shenouda. I will just comment and say that the church has recognized the importance of this quote by the right hand thief and made it a two hour hymn on Good Friday, put it in every funeral service, put it in the lenten doxologies, and recently was added to the Acts response. 

• I ask You O my Lord Jesus, do not destroy me in Your anger, and likewise also in Your wrath, do not chasten me for my ignorance.

• For You do not desire the death of a sinner, rather he returns and lives, have pity upon my weakness, and do not look at me in anger.

• I have sinned O Jesus my Lord, I have sinned O Jesus my God, O King do not count the sins, which I have committed.

In these three verses, we continue advocating for ourselves telling God “Do not chasten me for my ignorance”, and “Do not look at me in anger”. We call out to God in the uttermost humility basically telling him that we are undeserving of his compassion, but because He is a good lover of mankind, we have a chance of being saved from the enemy.

The Lenten doxologies convey the general theme of lent in an easily understood way. We call out to God asking for repentance and forgiveness even though we aren’t deserving of acquiring them. However, because of God’s abundant mercy, compassion, and patience, we still ask God to save us from the hands of the enemy and not to destroy us like he did Sodom and Gomorrah. During this beautiful season, I encourage everyone to really focus during the special hymns for the season, namely, the doxologies, the aspasmoses, Ⲙⲉⲅⲁⲗⲟⲩ, and the midnight psalmody psalis.