Anafora - January 1, 2010

The first day of the new year! I spent the day visiting two Egyptian sites with very different histories: the shiny, modern Carrefour mall (I had to get some money from the ATM) and the 4th century Coptic monastary of St. Bishoi in Wadi Natrun. I won't waste time writing about the mall since it looked like any mall in the U.S. (including chain stores like the Body Shop and Accessorize) except to say that there must be some people making money to Egypt to sustain a mall like that!

Wadi Natrun (which means 'salt valley' in Arabic), and its monastaries, is considered to be the cradle of all Christian monastic life. Sometime in the 4th century, Egyptian holy people (both men and women) began to wander out into the desert to be able to fully experience God. Some of them became stationary hermits, some wandered around the desert in solitude for their whole lives, and others began to live together in communities. At the height of the monastic period in Egypt, there were said to be 100,000 monks and nuns living in 1,000 monastaries. Today there are 4 left in Wadi Natrun (and a few more scattered around Egypt). The founder of monastic life is considered to be St Anthony but other big names are Macarius (see icon with his image, painted at Anafora) and Bishoi.

St Bishoi Monastary is the oldest and largest surviving monastary, and it is where the Coptic pope (H.G. Shenouda) comes to stay and celebrate mass every weekend. It is also where a Benedectine friend of the family, Father Mark Gruber, spent a year in the late 80's carrying out his doctoral research in anthropology. He later wrote a book about his experiences, called Journey Back to Eden. My Life and Times among the Desert Fathers (Orbis Books, 2002). A quote from that book shows why the desert was responsible for this monastic life: "The desert teaches us how helpless we are, how much we depend on one another for survival. It is with a complete sense of dependence, a complete sense of helplessness that we must approach God, and that we mush approach one another in terms of possessiveness or control." I think this idea might also explain why Anafora is the way it is.

We (a French retreatant and myself) got to St. Bishoi rather late in the day when all the tourists were gone and there was noone around to give us a tour. So we wandered kind of aimlessly around, appreciating the full relics of St. Bishoi himself and the architecture of the old part of the monastary (there is a huge new church - see picture at right below - and living quarters built in the 80's that is less interesting). As we were about to leave we were approached by a couple of laymen who asked if we would like to meet the Bishop of St. Bishoi. Of course, we jumped at the chance

and were ushered into a reception room where we met him, received his blessing, and also a blessed pen with the virgin Mary (made in China)! After this a very talkative monk (named Father Cedrac) gave us a personal tour of all of the interesting bits of the monastary that we had not seen because they were locked. So we were glad that we didn't just rush away, but were open to whatever would happen!