Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/285

Rh said about them when we come to the rites (pp. 278-286). The faith of the Copts in the Real Presence leaves nothing to be desired. Just before his Communion the Coptic celebrant says: "The body and blood of Emmanuel our God this is in truth. Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe, and I confess unto the last breath that this is the quickening flesh which thine only-begotten Son our Lord and our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ took of the Lady of us all, the holy Mother of God St. Mary." It may indeed be noticed that no liturgy in Christendom contains such categorical statements of the real, objective, essential change of bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord as does that of the Copts. Two unpardonable errors are constantly made about the Copts: namely, that they do not pray for the dead, or do not offer the holy Sacrifice for them; and that they do not pray to saints. They pray for the dead explicitly and at length in every liturgy; as soon as the diptychs of the dead are read the deacon says: "Pray for our fathers and our brethren who have fallen asleep and gone to their rest in the faith of Christ." The celebrant prays: "Vouchsafe to grant rest to all their souls in the bosom of our holy fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob," etc. Their funeral service is full of prayers for the dead. But they share a certain vagueness, common in the East, about purgatory. Anyhow, all we could demand on this point is, at least implicitly, contained in their prayers. The official catechism published by Abūna Filutha'uṣ (ḳummuṣ of the Patriarchal Church at Cairo) contains exactly what a Catholic would say: "(Q) Are (faithful) souls (of the dead) profited by prayers and good works? (A) Yes. The prayers of the Church and the offering of the holy Sacrifice and works of mercy profit those souls which have passed away with some imperfections and faults of weakness (but not those which were sunk in vice and hardness of heart and have not done penance nor asked pardon). This truth has been held by the universal Church of Christ from the first ages, and the Church of Israel bears witness in the Book of Maccabees that Judas Maccabæus offered sacrifices