First in a series
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St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church
Judging by the faultlessly constructed gloaming inside the golden sanctuary of one of the magnificent historic treasures of Los Angeles life – St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church, Pico-Robertson – the time of day, based on the shaft of lighting, remained a mystery.
Midnight or 12 noon? They were equal possibilities.
Drawn to the mid-town church by events in Egypt where the worst tragedies in 16 centuries are being wreaked on tiny Coptic Christian communities, a curious visitor sat down in the front row beside Father Cyril Gorgy.
A holy man, unmistakably.
Tall, slender, graying, kindly, soft-spoken, wise – precisely the image one would expect of a representative of one of the world’s great, oldest and smallest religions.
Questions of how the members of St. Mark are affected, how they are responding to the massive coup that is killing their relatives and wiping out centuries-old landmarks, would have to wait.
The scene would be set first by Father Gorgy, born 46 years ago in the birthplace of Coptic Christianity. When he was 9, his family, fleeing persecution, found refuge in the American cradle of religious diversity, the City of the Angels.
St. Mark is one of 31 Coptic Christian churches in Southern California for the spiritual nourishment of between 12,000 and 15,000 families.
In the traditionally modest church lighting, surrounded by beautiful iconography that is endemic to Coptic Christianity, Father Gorgy began to relate the historic narrative of his under-appreciated religion.
Only in the last several years, almost miraculously, has his religion thoroughly, seamlessly and comfortingly, enveloped his life and his family’s.
Details of that story, too, would need to wait until the proper moment.
(To be continued)
