Editor's Letter - 1st issue
My hand pressed to my cheeks, I lay on the couch listening to the Gregorian Liturgy, celebrated by FR. ABDEL-MESSEIH EL-LUXORY. The listening session was in lieu of not attending church, my father reasoned. I didn't object to this although I wouldn't have suggested it either.
The liturgy struck deep and bolted through my manicured commentary to my father. It was not, as before, because of the aesthetic power: the priest's distinct drone, the prayerful ache of his voice. This recording of the liturgy is pregnant with my memories, the mother of a precious chapter of my life.
The mother's hand reached out particularly at the beginning of the Anaphora, where the priest recites the Pauline benediction's climactic end: “... is with you all!” (cf. II Cor. 13:14). That one phrase, like a lost key found and lodged into the lock, revealed glimpses into a young man's heart, mine, full of his doubts and fears that drove his relentless pursuit of God.
That period of my life was watered every day by reading, studying, questioning and serving. And it passed soon after, followed by phases my upbringing never prepared me for. Familiar?
In this inaugural issue of Efmevi, I welcome you to this new publication that celebrates and documents, with care and honesty, the pursuit fraught with difficulty for God's truth and permanence. Efmevi is about enlightenment found in God's truth explained, not obscured.
The purpose of this magazine is to quench the thirst for those who can't quench it anywhere else, to give them answers, to rewire their compasses. It is also to impress in those who have kept way from God and church, for whatever reason, an insatiable hunger for God. One like I had, want again, and wish for anyone who's still on the path.
The issue comes on the celebration of the Incarnation of Christ, the prototype for our struggles towards salvation and pursuit of illumination. We're looking at the Incarnation applied to all spheres of Christian life in the Coptic Orthodox Church. On first glance, it may seem impossible to look for traces of this profound theological and chronological event in everyday, messy human life. But that is the goal of this issue.
Blessed Feast of Nativity to you all! Come with us on this journey to seek salvation through a continual, penetrative enlightenment that will sear into us the endless love of God.
That is our hope.
Midiane
Editor, Efmevi.
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