By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

When I was a teenager, I participated in the yearly Coptic Orthodox Youth conventions along with hundreds of other youth. The main speakers were Bishop Moussa, the Bishop of Youth, Bishop Thomas, Bishop of the Diocese of Qosia, and Bishop Antonious Markos, the bishop responsible for the Coptic mission in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I vividly recall those sessions when he would regale us with the stories of his work, first in Ethiopia, where he supported the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, then in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda, where he established many churches and ordained many local clergy. I could not get enough of his stories.

One of my favorite stories was one when he arrived to Kenya as a monk, dressed in the traditional black Coptic robes. He described how a man approached him on the street, asking him why he was dressed all in black. “Because I love Blacks” he replied. I was enthralled by the idea of an African Church preaching to the African people, and I wanted badly to be a part of this.

When I finally went to Kenya and Tanzania with Abouna Michael‘s wife Mora, George Mikhail, Nadia Kist, Paul Kist, Marianne Hanna Wahba, Laurice Salib-Fanikos, Mary Soliman and Samy Sidhom, I remember arriving to Nairobi and entering the courtyard of the church complex to greet Bishop Antonious Markos. He saw me and said, “You are here! You have been waiting to come!” I was surprised he had remembered me. Indeed I was waiting to come.

Everyone who knows me knows how that trip changed my life. It altered the trajectory of my career plans and built new friendships with the Kenyans and Egyptians I met there – like Grace Attwa, Junte Junae, and Wuon HJs, Abouna Moussa and Aida Samir. When I met them I soon realized how much I had to learn and how much they could teach me.

I have not been back (yet). but many of our group has. Nadia Kist returned so many times she decided to stay, establishing the nonprofit Seeds For Hope while also working in development. Other friends have gone on different trips and also decided to stay, like Fr. Abraham and Dalia Fam, who are now serving full time in Zambia.

This is a fascinating interview with Bishop Antonious Markos by the The Media Project. Two aspects of this interview intrigued me: first, his relationship with St. Mark the Evangelist (in the Orthodox Church, many people develop friendships with the saints, who might have departed this earth but who have inherited eternal life). I could tell that he had a deep friendship with him and that St. Mark’s spirit truly resided in him through the way he did missions. I love what he says here about St. Mark:

“When Mark came to Egypt in 42 A.D., for the nine years after the Lord Jesus was alive, Mark found the Egyptians have symbols on the temples of Egypt, the carvings of ancient Egyptians all over the walls [in the shape of] the Ankh, which is [in the shape of] the cross, and in Coptic language means “life!” And the Egyptians started to believe that this is the key to life! It’s the key of life! So it was very easy for Mark to put Christianity on the table to say, “this is it!””

Second, his friendship with the renowned scholar of African Christianity, the late Thomas C. Oden, well known for editing the extremely popular Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, published by IVP Academic. He also wrote The African Memory of Mark  and The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy. Bishop Antonious Markos’ description of Oden’s visit to St. Anthony’s Monastery in Egypt is intriguing:

He went to the Monastery of Saint Anthony and he spent the night there. You know, Saint Anthony is the first monk in the world to establish monastic life. And, it spread to Europe after that through Saint Benedict. Now, for Thomas Oden, there was a cave in which Anthony lived, which took about two hours climbing on the mountain to reach. And when he arrived there — I went to that place — and you cannot go facing front, you have to go by sliding sideways… So Thomas Oden, he was still young, he was about 60 something. So he went up. And when he went up, he did go through the crack in the mountain. It’s a crack, not a hole. In Hebrews there is a verse about those who live in cracks in the mountains because they loved Christ.  

So, Thomas said, “This is amazing! How can this man live here?” Then he stayed there — Oden lived there, he slept there, he sat there and prayed there, and when he came out, he told me, “When I came out of this cave my life had changed totally! I really felt something which is totally holy, one of the holiest spots in the world!”

The interview brought back so many good memories. Someday I might go back for a visit, or perhaps visit the Bishop in South Africa and learn about the mission there. Read the entire interview with Bishop Antonious Markos here.

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