None Greater Than This

"I was asked, in my student days in the West, 'Who is the greatest woman in your country today?' I answered at once, without the least hesitation: Emily Sursock... And today I still feel, with truth and sincerity, that Emily Sursock was the greatest woman Lebanon has known."

Among the most beautiful meanings of dedication ceremonies are the living influences they carry within them, which lift us from our limited world to the abodes of the immortal spirit.

I was asked in my student days in the West who the greatest woman in my country was today. I answered at once and without the least hesitation, "Emily Sursock." I was asked why. I said: because she was rich, and did not live for herself as the rich do; because she was beautiful, and did not live for herself as beautiful women do; because she possessed influence, and never once used her influence for her own private personal ends. And today, after the test of my own experience over a number of years, I still feel, with truth and sincerity, that Emily Sursock was the greatest woman Lebanon has known.

Does not each of us imagine, as he contemplates this silent marble statue that has stood for thirty-six years in the courtyard of this noble institute, that here was a woman whose life overflowed with the radiance of a love embracing all who were weaker than she?

Did not Emily consecrate her youth, her heart, her mind, her money, and her health to the cause of charity and good works?

Did she not scorn influence, prestige, and power, feeling that life had a claim upon her to rebel against a milieu whose possibilities were plundered by the bonds of destructive selfishness, whose talents were strangled by the demands of brute matter—a quarrelsome, idle milieu whose strength is sacrificed on the altar of sloth and stagnation?

Was she not the only rich woman of her age who felt that life had a claim upon her to use her wealth for the relief of those less fortunate than she and weaker in faith than her own faith? She would send a flood of hope to hearts that had despaired of life, grant resolve to breasts whose steadfastness had betrayed them, and light the path of suffering, bewildered souls.

Emily lived in an age whose faith in the education of girls was as weak as its faith in the principles of mercy and charity—an individualistic age, shrunken in upon itself. She had nothing but the faith that shone upon Daniel in the lions' den; so she rose to muster all her spiritual forces until she attained her purpose, with the help of that venerable woman who supported her most mightily—I mean Sister Mariam Jahshan.

Here is the school to which she consecrated every minute of her life; here is the orphanage for whose founding she labored night and day; here is the religious order for which she secured the field of continuous service; here are the churches she built in her life and after her death—living tongues proclaiming the merit of this woman of rare example.

We all know how Emily sacrificed the comfort and security of the palace to go down in the early morning of her day, gathering remnants of assorted cloth from the shops and carrying them to her palace, where she joined her servants in weaving them into rugs or blankets for the orphans—while other daughters of palaces joined night to day in an atmosphere of laxity and idleness.

We all know how she knocked at the doors of the well-to-do among our friends, not only in Lebanon but in Syria and Egypt, appealing to them to donate to her charitable projects, then returning to donate herself many times over what they had gathered—while other daughters of palaces sat around the green table, squandering their strength and their money, and finding ample time to sneer at her works.

The days have forgotten all those who assailed her with biting criticism, but the generations do not and will not forget what that rare woman did in the cause of suffering humanity and universal good.

How splendid she was—working by day for the needy, and sitting in the evening to entertain princes of influence.

How beautiful she was—riding out in her carriage to meet the governor and pleading with him to reconsider the execution or imprisonment of an innocent man; and he would grant her request, until she was called the woman who looses men from the gallows.

How great she was—receiving a letter from the admiral of the British fleet asking her to intercede with the high naval command of his country to permit him to bring the Mediterranean fleet to the shores of Lebanon and make the acquaintance of her noble person.

How beautiful she was—telling the Russian Tsar of her projects, and he sending her subsidies to buy land and build schools.

How lofty she was—levying a tax upon the card-players in her palace to spend upon her humanitarian projects, then turning about and forbidding play altogether, shattering a destructive social custom which our gambling rich practice to this very day.

Return to us, O pure spirit, today and every day—not only to the blessed institute that keeps for you a memory the days cannot efface, but to every corner of this city which, however far it may stray, will forever hallow your immortal memory.

And remind us that love never fails, because it suffers long and is kind; because it envies not, vaunts not itself, is not puffed up. Remind us that love seeks not its own, and thinks no evil; because it bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.

And there is no love greater than that a man should lay down his life for those he loves.