Father Lazarus

We consider the Eucharist truly one of those mysteries that we can't explain but truly becomes his body and blood and it's necessary for our salvation.

Yeah, it's a blessing for me.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was born and raised in the Coptic Orthodox Church and had loving parents.

And they did all they could to kind of show me who Jesus is.

Actually, what's interesting is my dad would sometimes go to the evangelical church, even though he was a baptized Coptic.

And once in a while, we'd go to the evangelical church, but mostly in the Coptic Orthodox Church.

And they put me in Christian school.

So they did all they could.

I would say in my late teenage, early college years, I kind of strayed away and, you know, wasn't the worst guy in the world, wasn't doing the worst things, but definitely wasn't having a relationship with our Lord.

And I remember one day that I looked and I sat and I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, if you die today, you know where you're going.

Because I wasn't really living with Christ, even though I knew of Christ.

And I would say I loved Christ, but I wasn't living with Christ.

And so I didn't know what to do at that point.

And at the time, there was our patriarch.

His name was Pope Shenouda III, a very amazing, amazing teacher and blessed father.

So we have our own pope, but we don't consider the pope as the Catholics consider the pope.

We don't consider him infallible.

We don't have those kind of doctrines with the pope.

And even though we're part of the Oriental Orthodox tradition, so there's the Eastern Orthodox, we're the Oriental Orthodox, the patriarch of Alexandria was historically, throughout the first centuries, was revered as one of the highest patriarchs.