Our Need for Human Energies for Service
Our Need for Human Energies for Service
The establishment of a Clerical College in Alexandria, which provided 14 priests for Alexandria and priests for Beheira, Gharbia, and Damietta.
The establishment of the Clerical College of El-Muharraq Monastery to prepare priests for the countryside, and the training of seminarians for village service.
The establishment of the African Institute to prepare servants for Africa, and the establishment of the Pastoral Institute as a higher study for service.
Providing pastoral care for every member of the Church in Egypt and abroad—in Sudan and Jerusalem, and in the lands of the diaspora—and in all the new fields that have opened before the Church, and all the new churches that it has established, placed before us an urgent necessity to find and prepare worthy servants.
You have read on the cover of the previous issue of El-Keraza about the forty servants whom His Holiness the Pope sent for service abroad. It was not easy to prepare such a large number of servants, of a special type suited for service overseas.
Nor was it easy to find a number of servants willing to leave their homeland and travel across the seas, or whose families would accept their living abroad, or whose churches would consent to their departure despite the urgent need for them in Egypt.
But the grace of the Lord intervened and arranged everything.
The need for service was not limited to abroad; it also included within the country, in Cairo and Alexandria for example.
There were churches in urgent need of priests, and there still are. The harvest remains plentiful, but the laborers are few.
There was a time when the day section of the Clerical College would graduate students, the majority of whom went to perform military service, and only a very small number remained whom the dioceses needed. It was not possible to deprive the dioceses of their service; otherwise, the metropolitan and episcopal fathers would be justified in ordaining priests from outside the seminarians.
In addition to this, service in the dioceses also expanded.
They too required a large number of servants who had to be prepared to carry out their work in the Kingdom of God.
His Holiness the Pope established a branch of the Clerical College in Alexandria, a university-level evening section, most of whose students had completed their military service.
All the students of that section were spiritual servants with prior experience in ministry extending over many years. They also possessed maturity of age, university education, knowledge of languages, and heartfelt readiness, which helped them serve in fields that required, alongside theology and spirituality, also culture, language, and maturity.
From this section, fourteen priests were ordained for Alexandria. From it also priests were ordained for the dioceses of Beheira, Gharbia, and Damietta.
In order to strengthen this new branch of the Clerical College and give it momentum at the beginning of its formation, His Holiness personally taught there. He even resided for a full month in Alexandria at the beginning of the establishment of its Clerical College, delivering four lectures daily.
Likewise, he encouraged the evening section of the Clerical College in Cairo and taught there.
His Holiness was able to ordain fifty-five priests for Cairo and Alexandria. The mere ordination of priests is a great vital work with deep pastoral results.
For each new priest offers spiritual energy for service, revives a district of the city, energizes the service of one of its churches, guides large numbers of confessors, performs visitation, resolves problems, and brings back to the Church those of her scattered children who had strayed.
His Holiness also gave attention to rural service and thus established the Clerical College of El-Muharraq Monastery.
It was not easy for the graduates of the Clerical College at Anba Rois, who had spent five or six years in Cairo, to return to rural service after becoming accustomed to the large city and its ministry. Therefore, a Clerical College was established at El-Muharraq Monastery to graduate servants for the countryside. Its students grow accustomed to living in a rural atmosphere and serving in a rural environment. They study curricula suitable for rural service, far from the academic character that does not suit the villages. Likewise, students of the day section in Cairo were trained for village service.
His Holiness also cared for the service of Africa and established a special institute for Africans in the Anba Rois building, with curricula appropriate for this ministry.
A group of Ethiopian and Kenyan students joined this institute. Among its fruits was the monk-priest Mark the Ascetic (the Kenyan), who is currently studying in England and will complete his studies in America, to return to Kenya.
For the preparation of servants, His Holiness established the Institute of Pastoral Care and Education.
It is a specialized clerical institute for deeper study in pastoral sciences, preparing worthy servants.
Since the Church also needs ascetic and devoted spiritual energies, His Holiness gave attention to establishing new monastic communities, which alongside their deepening in the Spirit and in the life of prayer and contemplation, could also, when needed, offer servants to the Church.
Thus, during the past three years, twenty-four new monks were tonsured at the Monastery of Anba Bishoy. Four monks were also added to the Monastery of El-Baramous.
The monasteries are also one of the vital institutions of the Church; they require energies to serve them, renew their spiritual youth, restore their ideal image, and make them themselves a strength for the Church from which she looks toward heaven.
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