03/07/2026
EGYPT, A TOUR By Fr. Patrick Hickey
Recently we went on a wonderful tour of Egypt for ten days. Our group leader was Micheál De Barra and our spiritual director was John Newman, co P.P., Bandon. I suppose for most of us the first time we ever heard of that country was when Mary and Joseph fled to it in order to save their baby Jesus from being killed by Herod. In the stained glass window by Harry Clarke in Timoleague Parish Church there is a clear sketch of a pyramid. We must be in awe of the skills of the men who built these great and beautiful monuments. They were to be the homes of the pharaohs in their afterlives and thus expressions of their faith. As we know, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt under the power of the great king or pharaoh. Moses tried to free them but he would not let them go. So Yahweh sent plagues to force him to change his mind. The worst plague of all was that of the destroying angel who would kill the eldest son of all the families in the land. However, the people of Israel were to put some blood of a lamb on the doorposts of their houses so that the destroying angel would pass over them. The unfortunate Egyptian children were indeed slaughtered, alas, but the children of Israel escaped. At Mass we pray to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world but at times we do not fully realize how great is the part of Egypt in the story of our faith.
As we, travellers, sailed down the Nile I thought of how the kind daughter of the Pharaoh saved the baby Moses from being drowned in its wide waters. We had a warm swim in the Red Sea looking out at the Sinai Peninsula on whose mountain Yahweh gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. With all the wars in the Middle East these days the commandment most often broken of them all must be 'Thou shalt not kill'.
The beauty, size and design of the pyramids is of course fascinating but I find that their great temples are just as striking. Their tall rows of pillars are magnificent. I thought first that they were mostly Corinthian or Greek in style. But they are of course originally Egyptian. The Greeks only copied them. I was very impressed by all the artwork on the walls of these temples and their bright colours in spite of some thousands of years. These Egyptians had, of course, many gods; one of the most famous was Isis, a female. In the years after the Resurrection of the Lord the faith reached the great city of Alexandria, north on the Mediterranean. Sometimes the Christians did not take these pagan temples as models for churches. For pagans it was the priests and the gods who were of greatest importance. The ordinary people had to fend for themselves very often. However, the Christians rather took as models for churches their 'basilicas' or town halls where they, Christians, would have far more room to assemble in greater numbers. Hence, one of the words for a big church is still 'basilica'.
These Egyptians Christans or 'Cops' are still going strong, thank God. In spite of later Moslem conquests, I found the culture and the religion of these Egyptians very beautiful. It had its virtues and no doubt its faults too. There were indeed many pharaohs, gods and goddesses, priests and priestesses. We respect and appreciate them all. However, we will freely stick with the god who became man in Jesus Christ and was born of Mary, the Mother of God.
Fr Patrick Hickey, Newcestown
