To Salwa Hanna

It is not the years that rush by, not the years, but it is the love of the Word that grants the eye to work hard! Once, Metropolitan George Khodr said, in a fiery speech, to the brethren in the Orthodox Youth Movement (MJO): “wear out your eyes and guts in reading the Word”! The fiery word deserves our diligence in obeying it. Mrs. Salwa Hanna told me on one of the evenings in September, on the balcony of her house: “the love of reading is of the love of the Truth”. I would like to tell you that, before this afflicted time, I used to stay for two or three weeks at the end of every summer, at the house of a friend who lived in an area that is close to the house of my friends, William and Salwa Hanna. I consider this a vacation that I do not interrupt other than at the end of every week for the sake of the communal prayer. To this vacation, I take with me everything I need except books. It is the lady who decides for me, from what is presently new in her library, what I should read. May you always be well, my lady.