Is your name smeagle by chance?
Posted on 10/19/01 6:53 PM Pacific by father_elijah
Egypt stands overlooking the abyss of internal strife and external warfare. President Mubarak is moving swiftly against Islamist extremists within Egypt to preserve his power and position. It may be too late to quell the tide of anti-American, anti-secular, pro-Osama feeling in the Muslim masses. They are fed up with Mubarak's tap-dance with America, Israel, and the Arab world.
After the 1967 war Nasser faced the unraveling of Egypt, an Islamic revival among ordinary people, and the rise of extremists and the militant Islamist movement. These Muslims required their women to wear the veil again. They preached the need for Sharia law and an Islamic state. Nasser clamped down on their leaders with ferocity. Sadat less so. Yet regardless of governmental opposition, the Islamists have continued to grow in numbers and influence.
After 1967 the Islamist movement was decidedly anti-Christian. They preached that if the Copts were eliminated (or converted) then Egypt could defeat Israel. Egypt could not win, they reasoned, without being a pure Islamic state. Nasser could not stop this way of thinking and preaching. But according to the Copts, the Islamist anti-Christian tide was deflected because of a supernatural intervention.
When Americans think of Egypt they usually think of the pyramids, the Pharoahs, or the ancient gods and goddesses like Osiris and Isis. Americans miss the long, deep and continuing presence of Christians in Egypt. It is among the Christian churches that this supernatural intervention began.
Beginning in Zeitoun - a place where the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were supposed to have stopped on their flight into Egypt -- in Zeitoun, apparitions of St. Mary the Mother of Jesus began. The first people to see the apparition were Muslims. The first people to receive healings were Muslims. The first to be delivered from evil spirits were Muslims. And yet the apparitions took place at the Coptic Christian Church of St. Mary.
The apparitions took place over several years, and even Nasser came to see Mary. Unlike other apparitions, the Blessed Mother said nothing. Coptic clergy would later say that had she not appeared, the Muslims were going to tear down the church in Zeitoun. Some say that the appearances of St. Mary in Zeitoun, Edfu and Assiut were a sign of mercy showing Muslims that the Blessed Mother loved them as her own children and wanted them back in the Body of Christ. Ordinary Coptic Christians are very clear that the Blessed Mother saved them and thwarted the tide of bloodthirsty anti-Christian sentiment in the Islamist movement.
Expecting the Blessed Mother of Jesus to enter into this conflict is the last thing on any secular person's mind. But it made perfect sense to Coptic Christians. They celebrate 32 feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary each year, and her first modern apparition in Egypt began on April 2nd the Coptic Feast of Our Lady of Light.
It is interesting to note that Muslims, Jews and most Christians saw Mary. Some saw her at night with doves flying into the sky (doves do not fly at night). Some saw only a bright beautiful light. Police, soldiers, and beaurocrats searched everwhere in the poor neighborhood of Zeitoun looking for some sort of projection device, but could find nothing. Some fundamentalist Protestants said they saw nothing.
None of this suprised the Coptic Christians. Governments don't expect a messenger from God, and Protestants refuse to accept that God would send Mary as His messenger.
Fast forward to today: secular Egyptians are talking alot about anthrax, how it or smallpox could contaminate paper money, how the United States does not have the resolve to win, how another war with Israel is inevitable. But a very gentle Egyptian Catholic priest I know sees all of these concerns as distractions before the final coming war.
Reading to me from Revelation (the Apocaplypse of St. John), he intones in beautiful French the vision of the Woman whom Orthodox and Catholic Christians know is Mary. "Some day," he says, "The nations will all be engaged in warfare and then they will see Our Lady in the heavens. They will tremble and for a minute a mercy will be given." I listen to his prophecies, some chilling, some horrifying, and then he smiles, "But in the end what worries should we have? We will see Jesus at the end of it all. And that means regardless of warfare and plagues, our Jesus wins. And because He wins, we win."
OK, I welcomed you, but now I'm wondering if you are here to contribute or to disrupt.