A New Heart And A New Spirit: How To Start A New Year by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III

Booklet: Everyone experiences new years in life - whether on their birthday or at the beginning of a calendar year.  

In this booklet, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III (1923-2012), 117th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark, gives advice and encouragement on effective ways to start anew.  

A New Heart and a New Spirit is the title of one of the four homilies contained within - the others being "Giving Account of Oneself", "Time", and "Tidings of Joy".  

These homilies by His Holiness Pope Shenouda were delivered in the 1970s on New Year occasions and are full of the exemplary prayers of this ascetic father who, in the depth of love, consecrated the majority of his years to God and to His service.

A New Heart and a New Spirit (2022) is translated from the Coptic Arabic by Mary and Amani Bassilli.

About the author: Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria (1923-2012), who died aged 88 after suffering from prostate cancer, was for four decades the spiritual leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the largest Christian community in the Middle East. He was born Nazir Gayed, the youngest of eight children in Asyut, southern Egypt, moved to Cairo at 16 and served as a novice at St Anthony's church school. In 1947, he gained a BA in history from Cairo University, fought as an officer in the Arab-Israeli war the following year and then taught English in a high school. In 1949, he graduated from the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. Four years later, he began teaching at the Monastic School in Helwan and became professor of Old Testament studies. All the while he dabbled in classics and archaeology; he wrote poetry and penned newspaper opinion pieces, many on Coptic history. Gayed entered the El Suryan (St Mary) monastery in Egypt's remote western desert in July 1954. From 1956 to 1962, he lived in a cave and experienced "complete freedom and clarification". His teacher was the charismatic Father Matta el-Meskin (Matthew the Poor), later to become an opponent. Recalled from the hermit's life, Gayed became dean of the Coptic Seminary and bishop for religious education with the saintly name of Shenouda. Within seven years, enrolment of part-time students had grown tenfold. 

In his native Egypt, he was patriarch to 7 to 11 million Copts and another 4 million worldwide. Ten years into his papacy, Shenouda had famously fallen out with President Anwar Sadat; in September 1981 he was summarily dethroned and banished to an ancient desert monastery. Reinstated by Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, in January 1985, the Coptic pope, 117th in a line of leaders that began with St Mark, achieved considerable successes. The ordination of deaconesses was resumed after an interval of several centuries, and he brought women into theological colleges and communal councils, though he was against them becoming priests. From 1965 and throughout his papacy he edited the Coptic journal El Keraza. Shenouda's hundred books and countless sermons untangled abstruse dogma in a straightforward way. (Source: The Guardian)