This evening, the Papal Residence in Alexandria hosted the cultural meeting witnessed by His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, with the presence of the bishops of the districts of Alexandria and Fr Abraam Emile, the Patriarchal Vicar of Alexandria.
Representative Dr. Ayat Al-Haddad, a member of the House of Representatives representing Alexandria, and a number of those interested in culture in Alexandria participated in the meeting.
The meeting began with a speech by Father Abraam Emile, who welcomed the attendees, during which he presented a historical overview of the founding of the Church of Alexandria by St. Mark the Apostle, who founded the Alexandria Theological School.
He also spoke about the cultural role of the Church throughout the ages, from the first century until the present time, during the reign of H.H. Pope Tawadros II, who was called “the Pope of Love”.
Representative Ayat Al-Haddad delivered a speech in which she spoke about the most important characteristics of H.H.Pope Tawadros, which is “love”, referring to the most important sayings of His Holiness about love and acceptance of the other, stressing that most of the problems of people and society result from a lack of love.
H.H. then began his speech, saying: “He who knows love understands life,” referring to the relationship between life and love in terms of pronunciation and letters. H.H. also referred to the saying: “Take off your shoes when you talk about love, because when you talk about love, you are talking about God.” H.H. mentioned that God created man because He loves him, and therefore man’s message in life is love.
H.H. added: “The value of life is determined by the level of love in a person, and that the inner feelings are known only to the person himself and God only, as the heart is the organ that is exposed to God only.”
His Holiness referred to the wilderness of Wadi El-Natrun, which is the most famous monastic wilderness in the world and is known in the Coptic language as the wilderness of “Shehit” which means “the balance of hearts”, as the word “shi” translates as “balance” and “heet” translates as hearts.
H.H. then discussed the issue of how to plant and preserve love within society, as well as its value and benefits
His Holiness presented five images of love, which are:
1- God’s love: Who created me, distinguished me, and created everything for me, referring to Psalm 18 “I will love You, O Lord, my strength”, confirming that love is expressed in various forms of worship.
2- Human love: Love of humanity in its various forms and types. In the sense that I love you because you are God’s creation without regard to your sect, religion, colour, or affiliation. Each of us is God’s message to the other.
3- Love of the earth: love of nature, air, animals and plants. Man’s assault on nature made the earth complain. H.H. added, “Plant in your children the principle of concern for nature, its beauty, and its love.” H.H. added, “They say that God created the countryside and man made the city.”
4- Loving the homeland: It is the area of land on which people lived thousands of years ago. Egypt is one of the oldest countries in the world, and they say, “Egypt came first, and then history came after it.”
Dr. Gamal Hamdan said about Egypt: “This homeland is a unique in nature, its father is history and its mother is geography.” He emphasized: “God preserved Egypt and gave it many unique blessings.” The colours of the Egyptian flag include all the governorates of Egypt:
-The white colour represents the governorates of the White Sea coast.
Red: represents the Canal governorates.
Black: It represents all the governorates of the Nile.
Yellow (the colour of the eagle): it represents the desert governorates.
5- “Eternal” love of eternity: love of heaven and eternal life, and among the expressions of the opening prayers of the Church is “Our Father who art in heaven.” We build our churches towards the east, which expresses the light and the sky, the righteous and the saints, where there are no worries, grudges, pain, but rather joy, peace, love, and fellowship with God.
After the speech of H.H., a dialogue took place between the attendees and His Holiness, during which H.H. answered the questions they asked about love.
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