After a few days, a year will pass with all its successes and failures, and areto welcome a new year in which we will have hopes and dreams to achieve new successes. Between the two years, I would like to pause for a while to reflect on the past, so that we may have an example and a lesson for what we will pass through in the coming days. Despite the different personality each person has, as well as the different circumstances and situations, there are general lines upon which we can agree in order to welcome the New Year.
In the New Year, we must give thanks to God for giving us a new year to live in this world, a year that is a new opportunity which has been missed by some of our loved ones, relatives, friends or acquaintances who passed away. We give thanks to God because we are still alive, because there is still a chance for every person to offer sincere repentance for his weaknesses, sins, and shortcomings, as the Bible says: “But repent, O my soul, so long as you dwell on this earth.” A new year is always a new gift from God to us for renewed repentance; we must realize the value of what God grants to us, as we may not obtain such chance once more!
The New Yearcarries to us a message entitled “Life is short”. Yes, life is a short journey, no matter how long it might be! It is a kind of TRANSIT until we reach our permanent home: the eternity. With the end of life, a new one begins, the quality of which is determined according to what a person has done in terms of good or evil deeds. However, we have to be careful not to be deceived by the claims of some: that there is no life after death, as death marks the end of life and a person then perishes, and there is no reward or punishment for a person for what he did in life! It is a trick, my dear, to steal your life as others’ lives were stolen before! One of them said, being on death bed: “I am about to jump into the darkness, had I had the world at this moment, I would have paid it to buy one day of life.” Therefore, each of us must realize the message for which he was found in this life, and fulfill it with sincerity and honesty, realizing that a day would come to give account on every moment granted to him in his life. Here I remember the words of the reposed Pope Shenouda III: “Every deed you do, whether good or bad, is written in a book before God.”All the books will be opened on the last day, and every person will get what he deserves, whether it is good or bad. Let us have a message of goodness in the New Year, for God is the maker and giver of good, and His commandment to us always is to do good to everyone: “He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.” And “to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
The New Year’s folds are carrying new beginnings and renewed dreams to fulfill what you aspire to, if last year bore traces of stumbles and failures, then have the will and determination to work hard in order to achieve success. The essence of the problem lies in the depths of man who succumbs to disappointments, considering failure a major scourge in life, but as Nelson Mandela says: “The peak of glory does not lie in not failing, but rather in rising after every stumble.” May we have patience, determination, and hard work in the New Year.
I wish to all of you a happy new year 2023, wishing you all the best and peace, and for our country Egypt every blessing, prosperity, security and peace, we pray for the peace of the world, and for God to save it from wars, high prices, epidemics, annihilation, and … Stories about beautiful Egypt never end!
The General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
