Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

186 JUNEno place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). This homelessness of Jesus,by which he was thrown outside the walls of the city, sacrificed outsidethe camp in the traditional biblical sense, has become a vocationaltype for this special class of monks. They comprise a verysmall number, to be sure, but they have a monastic identity forwhich I know of no Western counterpart. These are the sowha or“pilgrim monks” I discussed with Abuna Tadros earlier in January.The young monk told me that we would take a walk later inthe week while I am here and perhaps at night we might hear theirchants. Sometimes these monks can be heard singing theirpsalmody in the canyons of the desert mountains around themonastery. The monk said that some people believe that if youshould actually see a sowha, or speak with one, it would be a signthat God was about to call you home.Ordinarily, people have no contact whatever with the sowha.These monks make their life from what they can glean from thedesert floor. No food is provided for them; there is no special provisioningof water and certainly no other attentions medically or socially.They are at one with the environment—not just in some spiritualway, but actually, through the sheer vigor of faith and gracewithin their bodies and souls. The desert has become their paradise!The young monk told me that these men are closer to heaventhan to earth. If they should die in the desert, their passage out ofthis world to heaven would be a short one, since they had alreadymade the greatest journey in their bodies before they died. Bygrace, they might be permitted to return along the way they hadcome. That is, if God should want to send them on a mission, or ifhe should want to hear his praises rise up again from the desertfloor, he might send them back. So, every now and again, the monksaid, it happens that the departed sowha may come into themonastery church at night and conduct religious services beforethe time of morning prayer. Even those who are long gone fromthis earth, the monk told me, are sometimes allowed to return tooffer their prayers and praise to God for his glory.I have no idea how to regard the historicity of such claims asthese. But it is a powerful incentive to consider that there are thoseso blessed and so close to God in this world that their passage fromit is a short one. For the rest of us, however, it is the greatest possiblepassage, well beyond our imagining.