Philly 2025 "A Silent Patriarch" Chapter 5 1/2 2nd

How was the St Menas Monastery in Old Cairo concieved?

Several years passed, and still Fr Mina was without a permanent cell, a solitary without a monastery, a wandering recluse. For the most part, he continued to occupy a small room at the Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Old Cairo. There his life of urban solitude would captivate the hearts and minds of the nearby towns—and, we might add, provoke the intrigue (and resentment) of not a few hierarchs.

ON one memorable occasion in early 1947, between his prayers, Fr Mina took an engineer, Youssef Soryal, up to the roof of the monastery. “St Menas wants this land to build a church,” he declared looking out at a neighboring property, “the owner is traveling and wants to sell it for three pounds a metre…expensive” Youseff recalls that he quietly mumbled to himself that Fr Mina did not have the funds to purchase even a single meter, let alone the whole 150-square meter property. A week later Youseef came to visit again. “Once he realized it was for St Menas, the owner said he would sell it for two pounds a meter,” casually noted Fr Mina, and , without blinking an eye, added, “…one lady was there who had the money, and she paid it on the spot.” and so was conceived St Menas Monastery in Old Cairo.

A year later an adjoining piece of land was purchased, increasing the property to some six hundred square meters. Those who had been healed over the years had not forgotten the kindness of the quiet recluse. Generous donations were promptly secured, and an old friend, Hanna Nessim began construction. The monastery was a two story building twenty by eight meters and housed a large church on the ground level that had three sanctuaries along with a few rooms for baking the qurban and for a caretaker to live. A cell was built for Fr Mina on the top floor directly over the central sanctuary, with four other rooms on the southern side. Shortly afterwards, on the additional land, an annexed residence was built in the courtyard for boarding university students. In late 1947, St Menas Monastery was consecrated at the hands of Metropolitans Athanasius of Beni Suef and Abraam of Giza.

What would Father Mina do each night in St Menas’ Monastery?

Each midnight, Fr Raphael Ava Mina recalls of the period, the recluse would prepare the qorban, chant the psalmody, celebrate Matins and the Liturgy until the early hours of morning, and then attend to the needs of the many students gathered around him, eventually breaking his fast at two thirty in the afternoon ,before working and cleaning until Vespers in the evening. Remarkably—-and this certainly must be reiterated—each and every recollection of his daily “spiritual” canon” by numerous disciples, beginning from his time at the cave in the Baramous monastery until his death, is precisely the same. Though he lived at the center of bustling Cairo, it was as though he were alone in the desert.

In fact, only once in over a decade is he said to have ventured outside the gates of St Menas’ in Old Ciro. “I cannot remember,” noted a disciple (Pope Shenouda III), "that he ever left that place at all, except to have surgery.” The reference was to an evening in which, during the psalmody, Fr Mina had fallen violently ill. Recovering from the anesthetic, having just had his appendix removed, several accounts recall the shock of the medical staff at Herman Hospital—though in and out of consciousness, the recluse was chanting the Liturgy. His canon seemingly continued uninterrupted, whether in desert or city, in church or hospital, indeed whether he was conscious or not. 

What was the purpose of St. Menas Monastery? How did it create a safe harbor amid the turbulence of Cairo?

The purpose of the monastery was fourfold: a primary level coptic school; theological education; studies by correspondence; and a reference library. Each evening he gathered the local children for Vespers, teaching them church chant and the Coptic language, promising—with some success—a full qorban to those who attended liturgy from the beginning of the service.

Many who prayed with him reported their delight in seeing the recluse—who, we should note, was a renowned miracle worker by this time—put a “cassock,” tuck his beard into his clothes, and roll up his sleeves so that he could properly knead the qorban. Lectures were also held for young adults (one series being compiled into a biblical commentary), an en entire wing of the residence adjoining the monastery was devoted to vocational training—once more rousing the concerned eyes of the patriarchate.

Why did students go to the small boarding house Fr Mina established for them and what were their duties?

Students had begun to flock from the provinces to Cairo (Fouad) University in the late 1940s. Fr Mina, seeing this mass exodus, established a small boarding house in the annexed residence at a nearby pittance. He had, one disciple claims, a single intention: to create “a shelter for their faith and chastity.” “As much as he was merciful and loving,” notes Hanna in his memoirs, “he was firm.” Three conditions were placed on those students wishing to live at the monastery: a reference from their parish priest, adherence to the monastery’s rules, and regular attendance at the Divine Liturgy. Words spread and soon the small “monastery” was overrun. “But Fr Mina was never angry,” recalls Abdelmessih Bishara,

At St Menas’, the students lived as quasi-monks, sharing in the duties of the monastery, studying, receiving guidance, and witnessing, according to their accounts, almost daily supernatural occurrences. Miracles were allegedly commonplace, and exorcisms, peculiarly frequent. Fr Mina lived day and night at the bidding of these students, happily being interrupted by them, relieving their burdens, and becoming to them a father. “Although one of them was responsible for the kitchen duties,” recalled a relative of the recluse, “Fr Mina took charge of watching out for everyone, especially that they were all fed” 

Who was Waheeb Zaky and Zareef Abdullah?

A distant relative of Fr Mina’s was a young man from Giza by the name of Waheeb Zaky. Since 1936, he had sought the advice of the recluse at the windmill. World War II brought about an “intensification of their relationship” when Fr Mina was forced to move to Old Cairo. There, with the proximity to Giza, Waheeb could regularly visit, unknowingly setting in motion one of the most significant movements of reform the Church would ever know. Waheeb graduated as a lawyer from Cairo University, and with the arrival of Zareef Abdullah in the late 1930s, he became one of the founders of the Sunday School Movement in Giza. Through Waheeb, the Sunday School leaders of Giza were introduced to Fr Mina, many of them eventually taking him as their confessor.

In 1948, one of Fr Mina’s earliest disciples, Zareef Abdullah, became the first of the movement to be nominated a priest. The only issue was that he was unmarried. A suitable bride was eventually found; they were engaged on a Wednesday, married on a Thursday, and three days later, On March 7th, 1948, Zareef was ordained a priest (Fr Boulous Boulous) For St. George's Church in Damanhur. It was a momentous moment in the history of the movement—reform, in a sense, became "clericized."

The bishop of Giza had initially hoped to make of it a “double"-ordination” with Waheeb, but out of respect to his fiancée, delayed his ordination until May 20, 1948. Her family did not take the ordination well; Waheeb’s father in law refused to speak to him well into the 1980s. Priesthood, it would appear, was very much frowned upon. But this meant little to Waheeb for the movement was now part of the Church, and it was this that mattered. This did not necessarily mean, however, that the hierarchy was in complete support. Fr Salib was required before ordination to sign a contract that strictly denied him any financial aid or salary from the diocese. These consecrations of reform entailed nothing less than radical renunciation; and uncertainly—that is other than certain poverty. 

What was the story of Fr Salib and the “possessed” young boy?

In mid-July 1948, immediately after Fr Salib’s “forty days” (a time of preparation after priesthood), a “possessed” young boy was brought to him. The episode is recounted by Salib himself and given, his standing as one of the most respected priests of the twentieth century, it has a certain enduring credibility. “I tried to pray for him,” recalls Fr Salib, aware that he was a new priests without the gift of exorcism. “I prayed over some water in a clay pot…but he broke it…I tried a number of other things.” “You think you’re a priest,” said the demon-possessed boy, “you, a priest who were only ordained yesterday—you’re useless—you’re trying to take me out and send me away, shush be quiet and mind your own business!” Shocked, the new priest called a taxi, hoping to take the boy to Fr Mina in Old Cairo. As they were driving, the possessed boy shrieked, “You are going to take me to that man who will kill me…[taab he] take this!” And with that final word, claims Fr Salib, all four tires blew at the same moment. The taxi driver could only manage to say—translted roughly—burn your houses! Four tires! Not one, two, three, but four!” “We gave him money and caught another taxi,” continues Salib, “and I said to the possessed boy: " if you make another move”—showing him a cross— “I’ll burn you with this.” arriving at St Menas’ in Old Cairo, the exhausted and very much terrified Salib relayed to Fr Mina the day’s events. “Don’t worry, my son,” Fr Mina said. At which point he began to pray for some thirty minutes. Quietly, and very naturally, the boy’s voice changed, and he returned to himself. Salib recalls he was petrified and began walking the boy in laps around the monastery, fearful of leaving Fr Mina in case the boy was still possessed. Don't worry,” calmly reassured Fr Mina, perhaps with the beginning of a smile, “Go home..nothing else will happen.”

Who was Saad Aziz and how did he become a monk? What were “Sunday School” monks?

A close friend of Salib, whom he also introduced to Fr Mina, was Saad Aziz. Joining the Giza movement in the late 1930s while completing his law degree at Cairo University, Saad became the father of the “rural diakonia” initiative, in which he saw “Key to the revival of the Church.” A selfless man, he was remembered as always seeking out the most difficult villages for his rural service. After his graduation in 1941, he was denied a license to practice law (as he was younger than twenty-one), and so began a degree in social work while working at a bank. Later that year he shocked his family and friends by declaring he would become a “full-time servant”—the first of what would later be known as the “takrees [consecrated] movement”—and began studying theology with Waheeb (Fr Salib) under Habib Girgis.

One night in early 1948, Saad told his friends—the movement in Giza would often gather at his house—that he was intent on becoming a monk. His friends, shocked, decided to take him to Fr Mina, certain that he would counsel against monastic tonsure. At that time, Waheeb recalls “Most of the Sunday School movement in Giza were confessing with Fr Mina.” They arrived at Old Cairo at five in the morning and caught Mina just before the Liturgy. “You know Saad wants to become a monk,” bluntly started Waheeb, “and you know well how difficult this path is for an educated man.” Fr Mina suddenly left them, Waheeb claims, and went into the sanctuary, kneeling before the altar. An hour later he emerged from the iconostasis: “We will tonsure him as God wills.” “we will to tonsure him?” replied a perplexed Waheeb. “Tonsure him where?” “Here,my son,” replied the recluse, laughing “Don’t you know that I am an abbot of a monastery and can tonsure monks?” And indeed, on April 14, 1948, Saad was tonsured Monk Makary by Fr Mina. Makary, the first of the “Sunday School monks,” would go on to become bishop Samuel of Ecumenical and social services.

Waheeb’s concern was, however, well placed. At that time Fr Mina was being hounded by the patriarchate as his "St Menas' Monastery,” though not an officially recognized monastery, had become increasingly popular, much to the displeasure of some hierarchs.

Who was Youssef Iskander and how did he become a monk?

Youssef iskander had become connected to the Giza movement while studying pharmacy at Cairo University in the early 1940s, and there, like most of those in the movement, he came under the guidance of Fr mina. Upon graduation, he returned to Damajur, where he operated successful pharmacies and played an instrumental role in the ordination of Zareef abudullah.

Against most scholarly claims, however, he was not properly speaking, “part” of the Sunday School movement. “In my youth, I did not serve at Sunday School,” Iskander wrote in his autobiography, :in spite of my friendship with all those who served there, because I felt that it was sterile and article to teach religion in the same manner as that of civil education. This I refuse up to this day.” But though he may have disagreed with the movement’s methods, there can be no doubt that he shared in tits sense of reform and revival—and we might add, certainly opened his cash registers to their cause.

In mid-1948 Iskander arrived from Damanhur at St Menas; in Old Cairo. He had not come for a retreat. He relayed that he had just sold his pharmacies and brought the proceeds as a donation to aid Fr Mina in his projects. “If you want to follow Christ,” Fr Mina replied, "leave everything and come and follow him. Distribute your money as you want. Come poor; owe nothing. Taste the sweetness of voluntary poverty so you can feel the richness of Christ.” Iskander obeyed “he returned poor having nothing.” Fr Mina’s concerned was not to built, nor even to accomplish scholarly work, but rather spiritual formation.

For three months he kept asking the recluse when he would send him off to the desert. Eventually, Fr Mina gave in, and Iskander was tonsured Monk Mattta el-Samuely—eventually known as the famed Fr Matta el-Meskeen. Matta would defy Fr Mina time and time again over the next three decades. It appears, however, from this and other accounts that Fr Mina held genuine concerns for the young man among the illiterate monks of St Samuel. 

Describe the revolution of St Menas Monastery and what is the black habit?

What happens in the desert does not stay in the desert. The revolution quietly taking hold in Old Cairo first began as a life of ascesis in a cave of the Baramous Monastery two decades earlier. But can such ascesis, solitude, and monasticism be lived authentically outside the desert?

It appears so. “Do not be in a hurry to multiply monks,” wrote St Tikhon of Zadonsk to the Russian ecclesial authorities. “The black habit does not save. The one who wears a white habit, the clothing of an ordinary person, and has the spirit of obedience, humility and piety, that one is an untonsured monk, one of interiorized monasticism." “Let us seek after the desert," urges John Chrysosom, “not only that of the place but also that of the disposition.” For Clement of Alexandria the true seeker of knowledge “lives in the city as in a desert”.

Solitude, in other words, necessitates withdrawal from soceity—the cultivation of the desert as a state of mind.

Though classically this has meant physical withdrawal into a desolate place, it may also take the shape of “social withdrawal" for instance, in feigning madness or more commonly in an “interior withdrawal,” an inner solitude whereby one is physically and socially present, and yet is interiorly alone. It is the latter that makes sense of Fr Mina. As an urban monastic, he revealed to the young men that gathered around him a “pattern”: that of interiorized monasticism, inhabiting the desert as a state of mind. And these young men in “white habits” to adopt the words of St Tikhon once more—would one day become the black habits of ecclesial reform. 

Who was Abdelmessih Bishara?

What difficulties does Fr Mina face?