From April 11-14, 2005 Abuna Elias Chacour, founder of Mar Elias Educational Institutions located in the Galilee area of Israel and open to people of all faiths – Muslim, Jewish, Druze, and Christian – visited the Middle East Studies Program in Cairo. Author of such works as Blood Brothers and We Belong to the Land, and known for his powerful teachings on peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land, Abuna spent three long sessions dealing with student questions related to how we live out our faith lives amidst personal and collective conflicts of interest. Many students realized the difficulty he faces trying to live out the Gospel in a multi-religious society laden with tension.

 

One student asked, “How do you have a Christian school when so many students [the majority] are not Christian?” Abuna responded, “How can we have any other kind of Christian school than this—if we cannot welcome our brothers and sisters of other faiths, all of them God’s creation, how can we call ourselves Christian?”

These and so many other responses reminded students that Christianity may look and sound different in different cultures, even if the Gospel is one. In the case of Abuna Chacour, a Melkite Priest, students benefited from hearing him interpret the Sermon on the Mount in the richness of its Byzantine-Palestinian context. As an encouragement to his brethren here in Cairo, Abuna was invited by the Melkite Bishop of Cairo to speak to many of his regional superiors and colleagues for the first time, inspiring them as he does so many of us here and in North America. Abuna Chacour invited the Bishop to visit Garbage City, a place the Bishop had never been previously even though a resident of Cairo much of his life. In this place of great poverty, Abuna wanted to show his Bishop how rich in faith its thousands of people are who worship at the Monastery of St. Simaan.

 

“Like every other local speaker at MESP, we are so grateful for the dynamic interaction of faith and learning that occurs when he visits,” said David Holt, MESP Director.  “He is clearly not the Master, but in my humble opinion he has learned to paint with the Master’s brush.”