Lent is a time of prayer! I ask all to spend time each day for the rest of Lent to pray for peace and an end of all wars. (On a much more minor note, I ask prayers especially this week and through next weekend for a safe and successful build of a house by forty of our fellow parishioners and friends via the Corazon organization.)
Pope Leo and our bishops have strong words about the war against Iran. I almost copied them here, but you can find them on the Vatican news website and the USCCB.org website. I encourage you to read and study them as you commit to the prayer time I am asking from all of us. Instead, I put in some reflections about living in Jerusalem at this time.:
Fr. Ibrahim Faltas, Head of Schools of the Custody of the Holy Land, laments the outbreak of further violence in the Middle East, saying children cannot understand the inhuman reasons we give for war.
By Fr. Ibrahim Faltas*
“In Jerusalem, fear is palpable and almost tangible. Empty streets, inaccessible places of worship, and closed shops of the Old City, and the wounded and destruction in so many cities of the Holy Land have once again become the images of the suffering of this martyred land. They are tangible scars and invisible wounds that reveal the pain and trauma of what has happened with the new and repeated outbreak of an endless war.
Breaking the silence of a deserted city is the sound of sirens, which causes anguish while waiting for missiles that will bring yet more death and destruction. Fear returned with force, or perhaps it had never really disappeared, on Saturday morning—it was a Saturday like that tragic October 7, 2023.
Together with teachers and school staff, we managed to maintain the calm needed to reassure the children while waiting for their parents, who had only just left their children at the school entrance.
It was not easy for the teachers to hold back their tears as they reassured the children, who had just recited together the simple prayer of Saint Francis before entering the classroom.
I looked at the children, the hidden trauma in their sad eyes; I felt the awareness and responsibility of the adults, their suffering because the return of violence would bring a renewed distancing from the welcoming serenity of the school: these thoughts and these worries crowd my mind and heart.
Near the Holy Places, we live an apparent normality because we believe, pray, and hope, but the deafening noise of war always brings us back to painful reality.
Children do not understand violence; they do not know the inhuman reasons for violence, and they continue to be the innocent victims of the absurdity of evil.
Children understand and recognize only goodness. In these moments they tremble, and it is evil that makes them tremble; it is the fear of something they do not know that extinguishes their smiles—the smiles of all the children who suffer and die in countries that are scenes of war. They die and suffer in Gaza, in Tehran, in Kyiv, in Tel Aviv.
They are frightened, they are sad, they suffer from hunger and from the cold, they are afraid under the shelter of wet tents, they are isolated in the darkness of shelters and bunkers, they are buried under the rubble of schools and homes, they do not play, and they do not use pens and colored pencils.
This is the inhuman result of war.
My lived experience in the Holy Land still leads me to believe in and hope in the hearts of human beings who love their neighbor without preconceptions and without limits, who offer a friendly hand, attentive listening, an embrace that warms the soul.
This is the humanity in which every human being should recognize himself; this is the humanity that the international community must represent.
Rights and duties, responsibility and respect are essential elements to remain human, to believe, to have trust and hope in humanity, and to eliminate the din of war and give voice to the sound of peace.”
*Head of Schools of the Custody of the Holy Land
I look forward to sharing Corazon stories with you at the Irene Crosetti Ravioli dinner in two weeks, March 21st.