The cross is shared. The evil of ISIS terror reminds like no other.
Peace. It’s the first thing you notice as you approach the “Coptic cathedral” in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. St. Mary and St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church is a former Roman Catholic parish by the name of “Our Lady of Peace,” as a sign reminds you. It was almost stunning to see the word “Peace” one day after almost 50 Coptic Christians were killed in Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt. Also, consoling. Hopeful. Even if temptations to believe such a thing — peace — unbelievable creep in.
The second thing you notice are the open doors. Again, a surprise. Given what had happened the day before, I expected police and barricades and possibly locked doors. But that wouldn’t be true to who they are. It was Monday of Holy Week, about to approach noon, and there were about a dozen people praying. And I wasn’t the only person who had made a pilgrimage of prayer and solidarity. We visitors couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome — people offering me a book, showing me what page they were on in weeklong prayers. “Brothers and sisters in Christ” can really mean something even in the big city if we’re open to hospitality. Other people came by, wanting to offer a donation for the churches in Egypt. Others, some tourists exploring, do what open church doors allow: a quick stop in to acknowledge there’s more to the world than we always recognize and prioritize.
The Coptic Christians are not all that well known in the West, and yet here they were — a spiritual shot in the arm to a city and a church in transition. It is no secret that the Roman Catholics in New York City are closing schools and churches and trying to be good stewards while meeting people’s needs. A beautiful new life appeared in this church, now leased to the Coptic Christians, just weeks ago. During some of the holiest days of the Christian church year, there seemed to be a healing happening, one beyond what headlines or even words and photos can capture. Divisions — and foreignness — feel lessened in both a practical and a mystical way as people pray together. On Good Friday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan headed over to offer his own act of prayerful solidarity: what fitting unity at the foot of the Cross, both of Christ and of the persecuted Church in Egypt, whose experience is a closer encounter to Good Friday than many will ever have to live.
One under-reported item in the news is that on Palm Sunday, ISIS tried to kill the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, patriarch of a branch of the Church that dates back to Saint Mark. The so-called Islamic State has targeted everyone from Pope Francis to Libyan laborers who refuse to renounce their belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. ISIS wishes to rid the world of Christians. This would be a big deal to us, it would rock us, if we weren’t so distracted by just about everything else. We would renew our insistence on religious liberty and real tolerance — where brothers who don’t really know or understand one another would stand side by side to acknowledge their common humanity. In this case, Christians from West and East are a family in faith.
ISIS wishes to rid the world of Christians. This would be a big deal to us, it would rock us, if we weren’t so distracted by just about everything else.
There were a few of us in the Upper East Side Orthodox church, but I expected more. I expected those makeshift shrines like those that sprang up at the French embassy when Paris was attacked, something that strives to express a closeness, a solicitude, grief over a shared trauma. People live today not knowing whom to trust or whether there’s anything like security or any reason to hope, to move forward. We wonder, sometimes, if it’s even possible to.
Preaching shortly after the attacks, His Grace Anba Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, talked about the power we do have. “People invade our spaces, our lives, and our churches, but they must never invade our hearts.” With the attacks in Egypt in mind, he urged that this not be just another Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter. He urged that Christians open their hearts to a Lord who knows betrayal and who forgives in the face of it. That doesn’t always happen, needless to say. Christians can be some of the worst Christians — imperfect examples of God in the world.
“I must love even if I do not trust,” Bishop Angaelos said. “I must be prepared to forgive.” Don’t let it be just a cliché, he said. “Don’t dismiss this as your annual Palm Sunday sermon.”
And while it may be easy to dismiss words, it’s harder to dismiss people who died while they were simply gathering to pray. Or at least it should be.
“Welcome the infinite, the uncontainable, as much [of Jesus] as we can into the very limited space in our hearts,” he said. “When anger, greed takes up our hearts, there’s less space for Christ.”
And less space for one another. And isn’t that how we get into the mode of perpetual outrage and anger and fatigue and distraction? Could welcoming the infinite even give us peaceful hearts, conversations, social-media interaction, . . . and maybe even a more peaceful world?
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and an editor-at-large of National Review. Sign up for her weekly NRI newsletter here. This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.
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