Fr Mina Nematalla and his family as a layman, not long before his ordination, together with his uncle, Pope Kyrollos VI.

Tomorrow, July 1st, marks the the tenth anniversary of the passing of Fr Mina Nematalla, the pioneering Coptic Orthodox priest of Australia. In 1969 he became the first Coptic priest to settle in Australia and established the Coptic Orthodox Church on this continent. Today I would like to share a few personal thoughts to mark this occasion.

Upon my ordination back in 1991 I was assigned by HH Pope Shenouda III to serve at Archangel Michael and St Bishoy Church as an assistant to Fr Mina. At that time, Fr Mina was alone in the parish, and very, very sick. In fact, it was during my ordination and stay in Egypt that Fr Mina finally underwent a complex kidney transplant that saved his life and released him at last from the tyranny of constant renal dialysis.

I arrived at the parish not quite knowing what to expect. My family had had some contact with Fr Mina back in the 70’s but that was very limited. I would go on to serve with Fr Mina until his passing in 2000, and during that time, I got to see him at his best, and at his worst. I came to respect the man as I have few other people on this earth. He had his faults – there is no denying that – we all have. But this is a day for remembering and celebrating the positives. Perhaps his legacy can then live on in our own lives, thereby enriching and encouraging our own journey to the God he loved so much.

The chief characteristic of Fr Mina that dominates his picture in my mind was his absolute straightforwardness. He was the kind of person who never left you guessing what he was thinking. With Fr Mina, what you saw was what you got, without fail. Some people found this confronting, others found it perhaps even discourteous. But I revelled in it. How much simpler and easier life becomes when people are honest with each other! This also meant that it was so easy to trust him. He was a man of his word, the kind of person who kept his word, even to his own disadvantage.

I fondly remember the times when I, as a young inexperienced priest, messed up. He would call me over for a private chat in which he would simply and clearly point out what I had done wrong. Following a genuinely two way discussion, he would give me my admonition, and then tell me that that was the end of the matter. And it was. It never came up again and it never changed his attitude towards me.

This straightforwardness was also an important part of his spiritual life and practices. No doubt, anyone who grew up serving with Fr Mina the Hermit (later to become Pope Kyrollos VI) should have a good grounding in the spiritual life, but what impressed me deeply was just how ‘organic’ his spiritual life was. His prayers were not for show – they were from the heart. There are many who still remember his deeply emotional liturgy, the wide inflections of tone, the profound expression in his voice and upon his face, the tears that sometimes leaked out. All of this came from the heart. To behold Fr Mina at the altar felt like beholding Moses at the Ark of the Covenant – that same sense of man bare before God is evoked. And the same may be said of his love for the praises of the Church, praises he refused to miss even in his illness. The obvious childlike delight he took in praising God served as an inspiration for many, yet it was a genuine delight in God, first and foremost. Even the smallest discussion with him on the topic revealed just how deeply that delight in God ran.

Another fond memory involves children. Fr Mina loved children, whether they were his own offspring or anyone else’s. People sometimes complained that the sanctuary had been turned into a nursery during the liturgy. He would love to have up to a dozen young deacons around him, teaching them how to chant the responses, when to bring the censer, how to behave in the sanctuary. This was a reflection of his generosity – he saw service in the sanctuary as a great honour, and he wanted to bestow that honour upon as many children as he could. We are still enjoying the benefits of this policy today in our parish, for it produced generations of deacons who genuinely love and respect the service of the liturgy, and particularly that sacred service of the sanctuary. We can only pray that we pass this tradition on to coming generations.

I was blessed to serve with a sensible man. In the tug and pull of parish service, with so much respect heaped upon the clergy by the congregation and so much pressure to follow the faith to the letter, it is not uncommon to find clergymen who lose their common sense. But Fr Mina was not one to fall into the this trap too easily. Deep down inside him was a heart of genuine humility, a humility that was not for general display, but guided his every action nonetheless. This humility, this sense of his own weakness and fallibility was, I think, what kept his feet so firmly on the ground. Many times did I see him wisely rejecting more fanatical directions suggested by others in favour of things that made sense, and worked in the real world in which we live.

These things may not seem to be major virtues to some readers, but they made our a parish a pleasure to be a part of. The faith that was both encouraged and practiced was (and is) a real faith, a living faith, rather than a “pie in the sky” faith. People in general felt comfortable to be themselves around Fr Mina, and felt freed to express their love for God through the rites of the Church. Being themselves of course meant that again that one saw both the best and the worst of people; but isn’t that a better way of being Christian?

Fr Mina, you are fondly remembered. Pray for us.

Fr Ant

In all our Churches we keep a "Bible" in a metal cover on the altar. But in fact, the tradition is to keep just the four Gospels in that casing, not the whole Bible, or even the whole New Testament. Why only the Gospels? Most likely, this tradition began when manufacturing a whole Bible was simply impractical and people generally used "part-Bibles"; books with only one Gospel, or only the Letters of St Paul, or, as in this case, only the Four Gospels.

Santa Claus has a lot to answer for!

Now, I’m talking about the pudgy fellow with the flowing white beard and the red and white suit. I would not be surprised if this jolly old chap were responsible for more people losing their Christian faith over the years than anyone else in history.

It’s not really his fault, poor old fellow. It’s what people do with him. See, grownups will insist on pretending that this preposterous anachronism is real to their little children. The children gobble him up (sometimes literally, if he’s made of chocolate). They eagerly await his advent, full of delicious anticipation at the bounty he will bring them. They live their days in righteousness in fear of his wrath, lest he smite them with an onion in their stocking in the last days. They may even offer to him a sacrifice of milk and cookies. And then on the fateful day of his coming, they rise early to find the bounty he has graced upon them, and which has miraculously appeared over night beneath his twiggy altar. Grownups glow with fuzzy warmth at the sight and continue to feed the lie to their children.

Until one day … it all comes crashing down. 

No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

There are even whole websites devoted to how best to break this terrible news to a child (just Google it and see). What worries me is the betrayal of trust this entails. The child has believed the grownups when they told her this wonderful story. In her little world, it is hard enough to separate the real from the imaginary; that’s why kids hate the dark and fear monsters in their wardrobes. And now, the people she trusted, the people on which she depended for stability and security turn out to have been lying all along. That lovely, warm, safe old man dissolves away in whoosh of icy pain.

How can she trust grownups in anything they say? How can she ever take them at their word again? Who knows what else they may have been lying about all these years. Sure, they do it from love, but a lie is a lie all the same. A huge, noisy, restless, frightening new world opens before the little child. And now, more than ever, she feels alone, for the guides she trusted implicitly have played her false.

My reading of the stories of atheists turns up some such scenario with surprising regularity. By the way, for the romantics among you, my suggestion is to tell children the truth from the very beginning, including the story of the real Santa, St Nicolas of Mora, whom I feel to be far more inspiring for a child than the red-coated cartoon character.

And yet, this whole Santa Crisis closely parallels a process that seems to be essential in the life of any sincere and thoughtful Christian. The very nature of a child’s mind means that they must necessarily adopt a very simplified faith in their childhood. They simply cannot cope with profound theology or tangled ethics at the age of five. Thus do we feed them on simple concepts (God loves you), simple guidelines for life (be good and you will be rewarded, be bad and you will be punished), and equally simple concepts of our faith and practices.

But of course, as in most things, the truth is far, far more complicated. For example, I have been dipping my toe lately into the murky pool of Biblical history and criticism. Among the shocking things I have learned are that the Bible, as we know it, was not really put together until the fourth century, and that until the advent of the printing press, a complete Bible, Old and New Testaments together, was a rarity. Even then, having a Bible at home was almost unheard of (unless you were quite rich) and to have your own personal Bible? Forget it! Not until the twentieth century! But perhaps it didn’t matter that much since until the industrial revolution, chances are you never learnt to read anyway.

In the year 100AD, the writings we now know as the New Testament were still a scattered set of individual letters and scrolls. Certainly, they were highly valued by those early Christian communities, and thus were they kept safe and read out to the mostly illiterate congregation every Sunday. Then they would pore over them, and discuss them and reflect upon them before carefully replacing them in the barrel of fragile papyrus scrolls once again. In some places, they even copied them, laboriously by hand, and sent them out so that other communities could share their message. No one had a Bible at home.

In fact, the grouping of the 66 books of the Bible we are so familiar with did not really happen until probably the fourth century. And it makes sense when you think about it. Firstly, the young Christian community had to decide which books are truly inspired by God and which are not. And there was no shortage of imitations of the real thing. Gospels like those of Thomas and Barnabas and Judas, Infancy accounts of our Lord, letters purporting to have been written by various apostles or their disciples, scary apocalyptic tales, and books of wisdom like the Shepherd of Hermas, which some early Christian communities seem to have valued as much as the Gospels and the canonical letters. Consensus takes time, and the first complete canon of the New Testament we know of is in a Paschal letter of St Athanasius of Alexandria in the year 367AD. That’s more than three hundred years down the story of Christianity.

And then there was the problem of how to make a Bible. In the era of scrolls, up to the early fourth century AD, it was quite a task. Just think of how long a scroll you would need! How fat that scroll would be, how fragile and easy to damage. And if you made a mistake on it while you were copying it out by hand, there wasn’t any liquid paper or backspace key to help you out. Given the reverence these scrolls commanded, a blemished one was unacceptable, so bad luck if the mistake you made was in the last chapter of Revelation. Toss it out and start again! Aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh…..

When the parchment revolution came about, in the early fourth century AD, it brought its own set of problems. Binding the leaves into codices or what we consider today, a book, was a brilliant stroke of genius. Now a copying mistake only meant you had to throw out the page, not the whole book. But the leaves were thick and difficult to sew together or to fold. And parchment comes from animal skins. One estimate is that when the Emperor Constantine ordered 50 complete Bibles for the great cathedral in Constantinople, it required the skins of roughly 15,000 sheep and goats! So it was far more convenient to keep the books of the Bible in smaller volumes; perhaps the Gospels together in a volume, the letters of St Paul in a volume, and so on. I had always wondered why it was that St Augustine in the fifth century was inspired by picking up and reading a book containing only the letters of St Paul, and not a whole Bible. Now it all makes sense!

Mass priduction of Bibles only really became practical with the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The Gutenberg Bible was the beginning of the revolution that made the Bible accessible to the common man in the comfort of his own home. And yet, we had to wait until literacy rates improved before even this could really be true for most people. And that didn’t really happen until but a few generations ago. So the reality is that for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians only had access to the Bible through hearing it being read out at Church, or perhaps through parents and instructors at Church helping people to memorise important passages.

Now this news is shocking for those who have grown up with a subconscious image of Jesus Himself giving out signed NKJV study Bibles to His Twelve Disciples as a graduation present just before He sent them out to preach, with the stern command to read a chapter every day. For some, to imagine a Church with no settled Bible that was universally accepted, or even just a valid Christian life with no Bible at home, is to threaten to break down the comfortable, safe, system we have built around our faith in recent generations. But the fact remains that regardless of how we might want things to be, this is how things actually are. Growing up involves learning to cope with reality.

Not that reality means we have to lose the heart of our faith. OK, so the Bible wasn’t just handed down from Heaven as the Quran or the Book of Mormon are alleged to have been. Does that really change anything? Does it really surprise us, when we already saw the stamp of the human individuality of its authors in its pages? Is God unable to give us His message through the fallible vessels of the authors and copyists who are responsible for the nice neat Bible we have today? And is the fact that it wasn’t always so neat in any way a hindrance to me, today, reading it and using it to guide my life? I do not see that the knowledge of the Bible’s history in any way takes away either its authority or its effectiveness. If anything, a more thorough understanding of the background and development of the Bible gives me a better understanding of its message, just as learning to read the New Testament in the original Koine Greek reveals layers of meaning that got filtered out in translation.

This age of instant access to knowledge ought to be a boon for anyone who truly desires to find the Truth. Sure, you have to be a bit wary of your sources, for there is indeed a lot of rubbish floating around out there in the internet ether, and even in the printed word, but the fact remains that we have unprecedented access to knowledge that just a few generations ago would have been forever beyond our grasp. This should not threaten us! If God is who we think He is, then more Truth can only lead to Him, not away from Him.

Personally, I find this opening of the mind to be exciting, although that’s probably just the reckless streak in me. I do not criticise those who prefer the security of their childhood world. God is clever enough to make sure that they find Him there just as easily (sometimes more easily) than on the dark and dangerous road of harsh reality. In many ways, I wish I could have that simplicity in my own inner world, but God just didn’t make me that way, so I have to say with St Paul: “I am who I am”.

Interestingly, I have found out that I’m not alone. Which is why I write this particularly subversive blog. I have found that there are many other Copts who are thinking and pondering, who are asking tough questions, and who cannot resist the allure of Truth, however uncomfortable it may be. When I was young, the standard Sunday School answer to probing questions was often along the lines of “It is wrong to even ask such a question. Go away and repent.” But of course, Jesus never said that to anyone, nor did His Disciples. For a Church that values ancient apostolic Christianity so highly, it surprises me sometimes how far our present culture can be from the spirit of the first Christians.

There may not be a Santa Claus, Virginia, but there is a God. And He is a God of Truth.

There have been a number of reports in the international media recently about the increasingly numerous allegations of paedophile Catholic priests that are surfacing. These allegations are threatening to implicate even Pope Benedict in cover ups from the 1980s.

The sin of sexual abuse is horrible enough as it is. Suffice to say that our Lord’s words seal the fate of those who perpetrated these atrocities:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6.

I was deeply disturbed on recently reading Dirty Work by former Detective Glen McNamara. In it he outlines the corruption that was endemic in the police force in the Sydney Kings Cross area in the 1980s and 90s. One of the more disturbing revelations he makes in the book is that of a network of police, judges, lawyers and prominent businessmen who form a powerful paedophile ring that systematically abuses children and protects its member from the law and from exposure with a ruthless efficiency. The chilling thing was that this was not a fictional novel, but a chronicle of real life that apparently is still happening today. No wonder parents are over-protective of their children!

To learn that such things happen in the world is bad enough. To learn that they happen within a Christian Church, which should be protecting little children, is nothing short of devastating.

We shouldn’t go overboard here – it is, after all a very emotional subject. No doubt, the paedophile is in one sense a sinner as all of us are sinners, and as such, deserves compassion and pity. But this particular sin is one with awful consequences for the innocent and vulnerable victims who cannot protect themselves. I have, sadly, had to counsel victims of child abuse a number of times (yes, it does happen in our community) and have been shocked at the far-reaching effects these victims have experienced, well into their adult life.

In Christianity, mercy is reserved for those who repent. Sadly, many paedophiles seem to have accepted their sin and show little sign of repentance. Would not a repentant Catholic priest have voluntarily removed himself from contact with children, perhaps even left the priesthood altogether? Perhaps this did indeed happen with some, and of course we hear nothing about that person now because he stopped anything from happening in the first place. But the ones we hear about are those who insisted on continuing in their service, dealing with children, knowing full well the temptation that represented for them. Often they consciously plotted with the greatest of care and created situations that allowed them to abuse children. Their actions are unforgiveable, for they prove that there is no repentance in their hearts.

But even more shocking to me is the silence of Catholic Church authorities when they learned of these paedophile priests. Rather than defrocking the perpetrators or at least confining them away from the public, they were simply shuffled from parish to parish, in the vain hope, perhaps, that a transfer would be enough to stop them offending again? Where is the logic in that? The more I hear of the details about how these horrible crimes were hushed up and left unresolved, the more angry and frustrated do I become. It is dangerous to prejudge things, but there seem to have been enough cases that have been tested in the courts to show an unmistakeable pattern of the Catholic Church putting its reputation above its values.

This got me thinking: how could this happen? What was so wrong in the whole Roman Catholic Church system that could have led not just one or two Church leaders to cover up for paedophile priests, but apparently to have become the system-wide policy? I find this frightening. And saddening, for there is a great deal to respect in the Roman Catholic Church, such as its apostolicity, its sacraments, its tradition and its strong commitment to practical Christianity and charity through arms like the St Vincent de Paul Society. All the Catholics I have met personally have been wonderful ambassadors for Christ. How utterly unfair it is to have a small section of the Church so terribly tarnish what is otherwise a beautiful expression of Christianity!

I do not wish to judge another Church here. But for the grace of God, there go I. But certainly, we are so blessed in our Church to have two major factors that prevent these kinds of crimes among the priesthood.

The first is that our priests, with a few notable exceptions, are married and have families of their own. This allows the priest to live the natural family life and to have personal experience of parenthood. I cannot imagine any sane parent, who has seen how innocent and vulnerable childhood is, not being enraged by paedophilia.

The second is the fact that no one chooses the priesthood for himself in our Church. This is in obedience to Hebrews 5:4: “And no man takes this honour to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was”. His Holiness Pope Shenouda often summarises this policy by remarking upon his dilemma in finding suitable parish priests: “those who are fit for the priesthood do not want to be priests, and those who want to be priests are not fit for the priesthood”.

There is little doubt that some of the Catholic paedophile priests chose the path of priesthood because of their predilection for paedophilia, because it offered an ideal setup for them to satisfy their lusts. The priest is trusted and respected in the community; he is trusted to take people’s children on trips; and if ever he is found out (so they would think) the whole authority of the Church will protect him because it has a vested interest in protecting its own reputation.

In the Coptic Church, such a person would never even be considered for the priesthood. The nomination comes usually from the people, people who have lived with the person and his family, who have seen him in a wide variety of situations and gotten to know his character very well. The same is true of the monks who are sent out to serve in parishes, although in this case, their character is stringently tested in their monastery by the whole monastic community, and by an experienced spiritual Father. The least hint of a man manoeuvring to be ordained usually starts the alarm bells ringing and disqualifies that man from ordination.

That said, I believe that one of the lessons we the Coptic Church need to learn from this whole horrible matter is that our Christian values and principles MUST always come before the good of the Church as a mere institution. What good is a Church with an excellent reputation but that is filled with dark evil corruption inside? Where has the Church’s commitment to Truth gone? Will people really respect a Church that covers up its faults more than a Church that is up front and open about its faults? And which is more likely to result in people getting to be close to God and entering the kingdom of heaven; covering up our faults and pretending they don’t exist, or honestly acknowledging them and working together to repent from them?

And we need to be diligent in praying for our Church and for its leaders. The devil prowls around us like a roaring lion, seeking whom to devour…

Fr Ant

 Here’s a little exercise you might like to try to see a little of what I mean:

 Imagine what it might have been like to have been an Alexandrian Christian in the First Century AD. Most likely, you would not have attended the liturgy in a purpose built church building. It would have been at someone’s house, or in a cave or underground tomb in times of severe persecution. No electricity or microphones – only candles and lamps and the human voices emanating from human hearts and minds; sharing together with their voices he experience of the presence of God among them…

 Before the liturgy, the gathered people would ask someone to read out the beautiful message in the copy of one of the apostolic letters that had reached Alexandria. One of the deacons respectfully pulls out a parchment and excitedly announces that he has gotten hold of a copy of a new letter from Saul of Tarsus, now known as Paul. The gathering murmurs with anticipation – he has quite a reputation, this Paul!

 After absorbing the exhortations of the apostle, the call is made to bring out the group’s chief treasure: a complete parchment of the Gospel left behind by the Apostle Mark, so recently and horribly martyred. A hush falls upon the little gathering as the elder slowly reads out words uttered only a few decades ago from the mouth of God incarnate. At the end of the reading, someone asks a question, and the elder takes a little time to explain, drawing upon all that he eagerly absorbed as he sat at the feet of Mark … in happier times. Then the Eucharist begins.

 Those who have offerings bring them out now, mostly offerings of money or clothing for the poor, or food for the Aghape feast that will follow the Eucharist. The designated deacons collect everything and carefully store it away, but two offerings they place on a special table: bread and wine. The elder prays, blessing the offerings and entreating God to accept them from the humble group. Then he turns to the people and exhorts them to lift up their hearts now to God, in prayer and contemplation. He re-enacts that fateful Supper, uttering the very words spoken by the Lamb of God on His way to being sacrificed for the sins of the world, repeating His very actions in blessing the bread and wine and breaking the bread. He winces as the fibres of bread split apart, thinking of how the fibres of Christ’s muscles tore apart as He was brutally stretched out upon that cross. Mark had been there…

 And now, the re-enactment is finished. They pray for their daily needs from God who gives all good things, and they remember not only the needs of the living, but also the souls of the dead who have departed in the hope of the resurrection. Finally, the elder turns to the people and invite them to come forward one by one to receive this most precious gift of God. They sing a hymn of joy, a hymn of victory, even though they are but a small and persecuted sector of Egyptian society. But they leave behind their worldly troubles and cares as for a few hours they are transported, first back to Palestine in the last hours of the life of the Christ, and then to heaven itself as the Kings of Kings comes to unite with them and to dwell within their bodies and souls.

 This joy they keep within them as they share the Love meal when the prayers are over. It is a joy that sustains them through the harsh reality of their lives, and brings them together as one community, one family, one body. With this joy in their hearts, they say their goodbyes to each other and disperse in little groups and knots to return to their daily lives.

 Can you recognise our liturgy in that little story above? That is exactly what the liturgy is, with a few embellishments and additions. How beautiful the experience becomes when one looks at it through the eyes of the first Church…

 Fr Ant

You see, for me, it is not the more obvious achievements that inspire my love and affection for this man whom I have only met on a handful of occasions in my life. It is not the number of Churches he has established, nor ordinations he has carried out. It is not what he has done that impresses me, it is who he is; his character and personality.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Pope Shenouda has played a vital role in my being Coptic Orthodox Christian and in serving as a priest. Through his character and his leadership, he has created a Church where the Truth of Christianity is first and foremost, above all else. This may sound obvious, but it must not be taken for granted. There are sadly many Christian communities in this world where the Truth of Christianity takes a secondary role to material wealth, or politics, or power, or personal rivalries.

His Holiness also made the Church into a more open institution. He warmly welcomed people who do not fit the usual image of a Coptic Christian into the Church with open arms. His personal support for missionary work in Africa and elsewhere is a case in point. His concerted efforts to make the French and British Orthodox a part of the Coptic Church without losing their individual identity is another example.

My own service is yet another example. Who ever heard of a man being ordained a Coptic priest when he could not even say “Abana Allazee” (“Our Father”) in Arabic, but only in barbarous English?! In my early years, some people left our parish in disgust that this new-fangled priest was praying in English in the Sunday liturgy. Without the sense of support and confidence from His Holiness, neither I nor the many other Fathers and layservants who have grown up in Australia and other western lands could have continued in our service. His Holiness made us feel that we belonged in the Coptic Church, where many others in times past would have excluded anyone who didn’t fit the Arabic mould.

Even more influential has been His Holiness’ personal modelling of integrity and character. His courage and strength are now legendary, being displayed in the difficult Sadat years. His wisdom has been extraordinary and his theological and spiritual knowledge and ability as a teacher have had influence far beyond the limits of Coptic Orthodoxy.

But it is his meticulous and constant application of Christian morals that has inspired me the most. His Holiness is the kind of person who insists on the truth in all he does, big and small. He refuses to take shortcuts that are not in keeping with Christian morals and ethics, no matter how hard that might make things.

Added to this honesty is a compassion and selflessness that is astounding for one in a position of authority such as his. Patriarchs are bowed to and served hand and foot. How easy it would be to just take this for granted; he is certainly busy enough to just accept this and turn his mind to weightier matters. And yet…

It was very dark, and four new young priests were standing outside the Papal Cell in St Bishoy’s Monastery at 2am, waiting to welcome His Holiness back from Cairo where he had just delivered his weekly Wednesday Sermon to 10,000 listeners. They scratched sleepily at the itchy fuzz in their newborn beards. The car swept up the driveway, and the small figure of His Holiness emerged from the back door. With a smile beneath manifestly tired eyes he patiently greeted the small group, and after a little good natured banter, he began to climb the steps to his cell. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around. He called his secretary and sent him into the cell to get something for him. A moment later, he called up the four startled new priests and gave them each a little torch. “Here,” he said, “take these. I was told that the monastery generators have been breaking down lately, and you might find that your electricity cuts out every now and then. You might want to keep reading in the dark, so use these.”

I still keep my torch as a treasured memory of a love that cares for each and every soul individually. Even at 2am after an exhausting Patriarchal day.

That is but one example of many of the courtesy, the thoughtfulness and the genuine love that His Holiness lives in our midst every day. Most of our youth have never known the Church without Pope Shenouda. May they continue to be led by his example for many years to come. Fr Ant

Perhaps the main factor was economic. By the late 1960’s, the socialist reforms of President Gamal Abdel Nasser had squeezed the life out of many a middle class businessman and made it impossible for them to maintain their standard of living. Another factor was the opening up of the world that came with the advance of technology. Television and movies brought new cultures into the field of vision of the average Egyptian, particularly western culture with its motorcars and soft drinks and apparently unlimited potential for personal development. The advent of affordable and safe air travel also removed the obstacle of the three month ocean voyage that had until then been the only feasible way to emigrate.

It is little wonder that the countries that received the largest numbers of Coptic immigrants – USA, Canada and Australia – were the countries that seemed to offer the most of what they yearned for: freedom of religion, economic and educational opportunities, and social sophistication.

It is a fact of history that most immigrant Copts came from the upwardly mobile middle classes. The upper classes had no reason to emigrate and the lower classes did not have enough money to emigrate. Until today, in these diasporic lands, the Coptic population has a disproportionately high number of professionals, even if the more recent immigrants have been unable to find work within their own profession. This is usually seen as a very good thing, something to boast of, but it also has its downside.

For example, the pressure that Coptic parents exert on their children to succeed in their studies is legendary. I wrote some weeks ago about the Coptic community’s view that if you don’t become one of the “Big Four”: a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist or engineer, then you have pretty much failed in life. That was slightly tongue in cheek; but only slightly. Now it is true that this kind of pressure often does lead to our kids working very hard at their studies and achieving quite highly, but it is also true that many of them suffer badly, whether emotionally, psychologically or spiritually from the experience. And what of all those people who ‘fail’ this unrealistically high standard? What of the fact that there are far more gifts and talents than this limited bunch, and far more to life than making money?

Another drawback is the danger of elitism. Any community within a society that sees itself as somehow better than the rest of society is in grave danger of falling into a superiority complex. And to be frank, this just is not Christian! Feelings of superiority are used all the time in our community for the noble task of producing successful future generations. How many times in their life does the young Copt hear this: “Don’t copy what those people are doing. They’re bad people. We’re not like them!”

I like the first part of that advice. The Bible tells us not to conform to the ways of the world, but to be different (Romans 12:2). But the reason the Bible gives us is certainly not that we are better than those who live in the world! If anything, we are warned to remember that we are all just as weak and susceptible to sin deep down as anyone else! (Romans 11:30, Ephesians 2:11-13). No, our reason for not copying others is because we have met Christ, and you cannot remain unchanged once that happens. He changes us, not because we are better than others, but because we have understood that we are worse. There is no room here for any feelings of superiority.

Herein lies the danger. “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” said Jesus (Mark 10:23). As immigrants or the children of immigrants, we have come to our new homelands to strive for a better life for ourselves and for our children. Yet if we succeed in this very striving, we run the grave risk of losing our place in the Kingdom of Heaven!

Perhaps the solution lies in not being drawn into the ‘game’ of modern western society. I am always stunned (and a little repulsed, frankly) by the underlying premise in virtually every single American movie or TV show I have ever seen: that to be valuable, you must achieve something, and make something of yourself. These stories are usually about someone who has failed to make something of themselves; their family is ashamed of them, and they are ashamed of themselves, but by the end, they come through and prove themselves by scoring the winning touchdown or getting that promotion. Sound familiar?

If you had a view of life that was firmly founded in the Bible, it should sound anything but familiar! It should in fact trouble you. Since when has getting a promotion been a priority for Christ? When did Jesus ever tell His followers that they had to make something of themselves in order to be valuable? His message was the exact opposite of this: we are valuable not because of anything we can take credit for, but only because God loves us. He loves us not because we are lovable, but because He is Love. THIS is where the Christian draws their sense of self-worth and value.

That doesn’t stop the Christian from using the talents God has given them to achieve things. Nor does it stop the Christian from rejoicing in this success. But the big issue here is what is the priority? Is my priority to achieve above all else? Or is it to live with God above all else? If I strive for the first, I lose the second. But if I strive for the second, I will often also win the first. And even if I don’t, it matters little: I will still be content with my life.

Australian society is a lot less success-driven than American society (and so say everyone I’ve met who lives in America and visits Australia). But we are moving slowly in that direction over the years. I am probably betraying my Australian bias here, when I say that Australian society is far more relaxed about life. The average Australian is proud of what they can achieve, but they also take great pride in achieving it with as little effort and as little fuss as possible. And if they fail, it is no big deal – for that is not the source of their sense of self-worth. Life is too short to waste stressing about stuff like that.

Further, Australia is (supposedly) a classless society. In theory at least, the Prime Minister may hobnob with a bricklayer on absolutely equal terms. This too provides some protection for the successful Christian from the temptation to feel superior to others.

So we are left with a number of questions:

Where do you derive your sense of self-worth?
What is it in your life that makes you feel good about yourself?
Must your feeling good about yourself come from putting others down?
Does your happiness come from things that are eternal, or temporary?
And is it in line with the Gospel?

Fr Ant

In July, we commemorated the ninth anniversary of the passing of Fr Mina Nematalla. For those who weren’t born nine years ago, Fr Mina was the pioneering Coptic priest who was commissioned by his maternal uncle, the late Pope Kyrollos VI to travel to far-away Australia in 1968 and establish the first Coptic Church on this continent. He arrived, with his family and a tonne of Church equipment by boat in Sydney on 26th January 1969 and proceeded to serve this flourishing congregation faithfully for the next 31 years, until his departure on July 1st 2000. Today, his remains repose in a specially built crypt behind the sanctuary of our parish Church.

Some have questioned the wisdom of this crypt, wondering whether this meant that we are attributing sainthood to Fr Mina. It is important to make this point crystal clear: no one is attributing sainthood to Fr Mina. That is something that only the Holy Synod can do, and they have, I think, some fairly stringent criteria on which they make their decision, including a waiting period of at least 50 years from the date of departure.

No, the presence of the remains of Fr Mina in the crypt is for a very different reason. He played a unique role in the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Australia. No one else will ever be the founder of our Church on this continent. I cannot see anyone else taking it upon himself to personally greet every Coptic immigrant who arrives in Sydney at the airport, to take them to stay in his own home until he had helped them to find their own accommodation, Help them find a job and to go with them to school to enrol their children. That was how Fr Mina spent a lot of his time in those early years, and there remain in Sydney many who still remember his kindness with deep, deep gratitude. This was the true spirit of Christian love in action.

And this is a very important piece in the story of our Church; one that should be preserved for all future generations. In a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years, almost everything about the founding of the Church in Australia may well have been forgotten. But hopefully, the crypt will remain as a monument, not only to Fr Mina, but to all of those who served with him and gave so much of themselves in order to lay the foundations for the beautiful service and community we enjoy today.

Having the crypt makes no judgement of Fr Mina’s character, good or bad. Like any pioneer, Fr Mina lived through ‘interesting times’. He did all he could to guide the infant Church through periods of division, conflict and tribulation as well as periods of great grace and fruitfulness. This is to be expected. The role of the clergy in a diasporic Church was unclear at the beginning, for no one had done this sort of thing in our Church for at least 15 centuries! So Fr Mina and the early congregation were forced to work it out for themselves, far from the Mother Church in Egypt, and it is not to be wondered that there were often conflicting opinions.

One approach to our history is to gloss over these problems, to ignore them and hope they go away. I suppose they are seen as a sort of ‘dirty laundry’ that should not be aired in public. But perhaps it is possible for a mature community to take a different approach, one that is more in keeping with the honesty and humility enjoined upon us by the Gospels. Just because a Church community experiences a testing time, this doesn’t mean that the community is a failure. What matters is what is how they react to these difficult times – do they respond in a manner that is consistent with the message of Christ?

Our Church in Sydney has been through some very difficult times over the years. In fact, most would agree that we are going through one right now. But that is not what matters. It is our reaction to these testing times that matters. There are a variety of possible responses, and none of them are new. All possible attitudes have been tried before at some time in our long history as a Coptic Church. Troubles have been occurring both from within the Church and from without for nearly two millennia. Some would say this is the sign that the devil is not happy with us (thank God), and thus he does not cease to attack us with every weapon available to him!

With apologies to Henry Ford, it actually makes a great deal of sense to look back and see how people handled problems in the past; to learn from their successes and their failures.

Approaches that have failed include the following:

1. Taking sides or forming parties
2. Legalism, insisting upon the letter of the law and neglecting its spirit
3. Any type of self-seeking, trying to use the problems to gain personal advantage such as power or popularity or fame
4. Allowing anger and emotion to rule one’s thoughts and actions
5. Loyalty to any human person above loyalty to God
6. Gossip mongering

Approaches that have succeeded include the following:

1. Sincere, personal repentance
2. Patience and confidence in the power of God over all human weaknesses
3. Prayer in faith
4. Making the effort to build bridges and seek reconciliation between people
5. Honesty, integrity and transparency (these require a liberal dose of courage). No hidden agendas, no sneaky tactics
6. Willingness to genuinely listen to others, to see their point of view, rather than sticking doggedly to one’s own point of view, whatever the evidence
7. Dedication to Truth, to justice, and to mercy
8. Focusing on the basics of Christian life

This last strategy is to me the most important. At the end of the day, Church is NOT about politics and personalities. It is not about buildings and structures and finances. Church is the place where we all come to meet with God and find our peace with Him. Hopefully, it also the place where we learn to love one another from a sincere heart, for “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now” (1 John 2:9).

Church goes on. Individual personalities come and go. Even if they flare brilliantly for a time, then they pass into obscurity; this is the fate we all shall experience. All that is asked of us is that we do our best; that we trade faithfully with the talents the Master has given us; and that we do all that is within our power and our understanding to follow in His footsteps.

That is why it is important to have Fr Mina in the crypt in Church. He was a fixed point of faith, worship and Orthodoxy in a churning primal sea of change for the Church in Australia. May God grant us all even a tenth of his diligence and his integrity. An ounce of his common sense wouldn’t go astray either!

Fr Ant
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* http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/182100.html