By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Fr. Youhanna speaking on the celebration of his 40th ordination anniversary. Photo courtesy of St. Mary & St. Antonioius Coptic Orthodox Church, Ridgewood, Queens

Today marks the passing of the Very Reverend Fr. Youhanna Guirgis, a spiritual giant and a pillar of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United States of America. To explain his larger than life influence on so many people would be impossible. There are too many stories to count, so many individuals who can attest to his love and fatherhood. All I can do is share my own.

We all knew him as Abouna Hanna, the community of Copts whose parents immigrated to the U.S., and specifically to Queens, New York in the 1970s and 80s when we were babies or toddlers. We congregated at St. Mary & St. Antonious Church, one of the earlier Coptic Churches to be established in the U.S., in 1973. In our childhoods, his stern face and reprimands to keep quiet in the church struck fear in our hearts, yet somehow comfort at the same time. As immigrants, many of us grew up without the steady presence of our grandparents, who were left behind in Egypt in the era before email, smart phones and Skype. We knew them only by distant voice on the telephone, cherished photographs, and the occasional visit to Egypt. And so here in the U.S., Abouna Hanna became our grandfather, and his wife, Tasoni Samia, our grandmother.

He loved God with an intensity and fervor he couldn’t keep to himself. He is as well known for his strictness and zeal for the House of God, and also for his mighty bear hugs that communicated his intense love for us as well. His sternness at times was only matched by his smiles at most times. He served with everything in him, and this year was his 45th year serving as a priest. If we couldn’t find him in church we could knock on his door in the parsonage next door, which was often a place of refuge for newly arrived immigrants until they could find their way.

Abouna Hanna always exhorted us to pray with our Agpeyas, to pray the hours. He practiced what he preached, praying all seven hours in the Coptic Book of the Canonical Hours every day. Those of us who heeded his advice discovered a great treasure in having the Psalms in our hearts and a daily rhythm of prayer ordering our lives.

I was twelve years old when my family left Queens and moved to New Jersey, where my father was ordained to serve two years before. Despite our distance, whenever we saw him on a visit to church again in Queens, Abouna Hanna greeted me and all my siblings with the same tight bear hug of our childhood, smiling with joy at our presence and often with tears in his eyes. I think this joy came from seeing the fruit of his service, children now adults in the church, trying to love God and serve Him with a fraction of the intensity and fervor of Abouna Hanna. “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth,” St. John wrote (3 John 4). I could tell Abouna Hanna felt the same.

Abouna Hanna has now gone to his Heavenly Father, the One he loved so intensely and served so fervently here on earth. He has left behind for us a model of love and selfless service that my peers and I seek to emulate.  I will not be the only one to miss him sorely. But when I pray a Psalm out of my Agpeya I’ll remember his exhortations, and wonder if perhaps he’s praising those exact same words where he is now.

 

Read my guest post about surviving Holy Week at Traces of Faith here.

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