Twenty-five years… still a young age
Not simply years that went by, nor a number we mark for its own sake, but twenty-five years of stories, of moments, of faces that left a mark, and of hearts that learned that giving is not an act but a way of living.
Twenty-five years lived by the scout movement at St. Catherine’s, generation after generation, carrying a message deeper than meetings and trips and camps. A message that set out — and still sets out — to make a good person and a useful citizen: someone who knows what responsibility is worth, who respects the other, who serves his community, who leaves a place better than he found it, and, most of all, who is in a full state of self-denial. When I joined the group in 2005 I had no idea the years would run on as they did, that I would make friendships this deep, or that those experiences would be what formed me. Abou El Hole took me in, gave to me, taught me, and shared with me.
Since 2001 the generations have handed one another the same journey of strength and wisdom. One place, several generations, gathered around a love of two colours — strength and wisdom.
Across twenty-five years the road was not always easy and the way was not always smooth. We went through many changes, and problems that nearly cost the group its life, and we carried on by a particular grace of God. The generations grew up, the faces changed, life around us changed — and scouting stayed, at the heart of St. Catherine’s, a space where we learn how to be better: how to be ourselves, and how to learn from someone else once I have left him the room to be himself; how to work together, how to carry responsibility, how to face what is hard, and how to put the good of those around us before our own comfort.
On this road, we were not alone
There were parents and children and friends and leaders with us, who shared the tents and the roads and the trips and the meetings and the prayers and the laughter — leaders who gave up their time and their effort to serve us, who loved us and waited patiently for the fruit, and who made with us memories that will stay however the years change.
And as we mark this occasion today, we cannot forget those who went ahead of us to heaven.
Some left marks on this road that cannot be erased. Some have gone in body, but left their souls hanging in every corner of the movement: our group’s chaplain, the thrice-blessed Sayedna Youssef Hanoush; Abouna Michel Elias; the beavers George Mahfouz and Mabella Maged; our church’s guardian Adel Mounir; and our beloved rover Youssef Hany (Geeko) — in every story told about one of our camps, in every tradition we still hold to, and in every beaver we watch today take his first steps into scouting. We will be telling of one large family, bound together, whose existence today is the product of an unbroken chain twenty-five years long.
However different their ages, I learned that a person may go but his mark does not. Real giving does not end when the giver does; it goes on in whoever learned from him, in whoever loved him, and in whoever carried his message afterwards. Love remains the fiercest force on the face of this earth.
And so, when we look at twenty-five years of Abou El Hole’s history, we do not see only a number of years. We see a long chain of hands that clasped, of hearts that loved, of minds that worked and thought. I remember what the general leader said at one of the leaders’ camps: “Scout leaders are the only ones who serve, who give, who pay out of their effort and their time and even their pockets — and what they collect in return is pure love.”
My happiness was beyond describing as I watched a leader who had once been a beaver stand in front of a new troop to teach it what he had been taught; as I watch a small beaver who came shyly to his first meeting become a young man everyone relies on. And we see a mother and a father who trusted the movement, because they believed their children learn in it not only how to pitch a tent or light a fire, but how to become better human beings.
And this is what scouting is really worth
Scouting’s aim is not to produce the best camp, or the strongest troop, or the most skilled people on trips and adventures. All of that matters, but it is not the end — and the proof is that artificial intelligence now does all of it perfectly well.
The real end is the person
That we come out of scouting good citizens, useful to ourselves and to our families and our church and our community and our country. People who know what commitment means, who believe in working together, who respect difference, who stand beside whoever needs them, and who know that real success is not measured by what someone gathered for himself but by the good he left in other people’s lives — a person of the rank of knight, who sees God every day, in himself and in others.
The movement was never a dazzling show. Scouting is a way of living, and in it we learned that the long road begins with a step, that leadership begins with service, that strength without wisdom can turn into recklessness, and that wisdom without courage can turn into hesitation.
That is why Abou El Hole remains a fitting symbol for us: towering, steady, strong and wise. It reminds us every day that what we build today may leave its mark for decades, and that what we plant in a child today may turn tomorrow into a character that makes a difference to a family, a church, a community, or a whole country.
Twenty-five years have passed in the Syriac Catholic parish
But for us, this is not a place of arrival.
It is a stop where we pause a little to look back with pride, and look forward with faith, and wait patiently for the fruit with love.
We thank everyone who came before, everyone who gave, everyone who taught, everyone who served, everyone who left a mark, and everyone who went ahead of us to heaven and left us an inheritance of love and work.
And we promise the generations to come that Abou El Hole will stay as it began: a movement that makes the person, standing on the values of being human, teaching service, building the good citizen.
In the next twenty-five years the faces and the tools and the people may change — but St. Catherine’s will go on putting the person first, opening its arms to everyone, and raising sons and daughters able, in all their difference, to change the world.
Twenty-five years of strength and wisdom… and twenty-five years of giving.
Abou El Hole… twenty-five years, and we are still at the beginning of the story.
