Pope is inspired by spirit of Mt Sinai

At what was probably the most intimate public gathering he has addressed for some time, Pope John Paul II said in Egypt at the weekend that "Sinai stands at the very heart of the truth about man and his destiny".

A service he conducted in a monastery garden at the foot of Mount Sinai was attended by only a few hundred people, and accompanied by the wails of children and loud conversations from the back throughout, such as would accompany a similar event in any parish church.

During the service at St Catherine's monastery, sited where by tradition God is said to have spoken to Moses from a burning bush, the Pope told the congregation of his "great joy and deep emotion" at being there, where God had "revealed his name" and where he "gave his law".

Earlier he had prayed in a monastery chapel and was welcomed by Greek Orthodox Archbishop Damianos, who is head of St Catherine's, and His Beatitude Makari, the Coptic (Orthodox) Bishop of All Sinai. Gifts were exchanged which included a specially commissioned icon of Moses and the burning bush, as well as copies of the monastery's renowned icon of Christ and a specially commissioned copy of a picture of Our Lady of Cracow.

In return, the Pope donated to the monastery a reproduction of the fourth century Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest extant Bible indices and a prized possession of the Vatican library since the 15th century.

The announcement of this gift was followed by applause and cries of "Thank you, Papa" from the congregation. A chant of "`John Paul Two/We love you" which followed prompted the Pope to reply "John Paul Two/also loves you."

Delivering one of his most sublime homilies, as petals from a blossoming tree showered down on him, he referred to Mount Sinai as "a soaring monument to what God revealed here. God shows himself in mysterious ways - as the fire that does not consume - according to a logic which defies all that we know and expect.

"He is the God who is at once close at hand and far away; he is in the world but not of it. He is the God who comes to meet us, but who will not be possessed. He is `I AM WHO AM' the name which is no name. `I AM WHO AM': the divine abyss in which essence and existence are one. The God who is being itself," he said. He described the encounter between Moses and God on Mount Sinai as enshrining "at the heart of our religion the mystery of liberating obedience".

The 10 commandments were "not the arbitrary imposition of a tyrannical Lord. They were written in stone; but before that, they were written on the human heart as the universal moral law, valid in every time and place," he said.

And, as a breeze blew, he said: "the wind which still blows from Sinai reminds us that God wants to be honoured in and through the growth of his creatures. "