LATIN
PATRIARCATE – JERUSALEM
Christmas Message 2002
To
our faithful and to all men and women of good will
Brothers and Sisters
1.
Our Christmas message for
this year is first of all an imploration to God and an act of worship before
the unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God : «The
Word became flesh, he lived among us » (Jn 1:14).
The
message of Christmas is one of justice, peace and love. Yet our land is full of
hatred and bloodshed. Not for this God wanted us in this Holy Land. It is not
for making the Holy Places a field for our struggles. They should be rather a
meeting point where together we encounter God, where we build together our
dwelling and His dwelling. We must also realize with God, that in this
dwelling, more holy than the places themselves is the human being whom we see
today humiliated, deprived from his freedom and often from his life too.
Therefore
our message is also an appeal to all persons of good will, to the international
community, and to all our Churches over the world, to wake up and to come and
help both peoples of this land to make peace, based on justice, equality and
dignity. To all we say: Do not forget this land and do not abandon us to our
fate.
Some
might perhaps say: it is impossible today to live together. But we say: living
and having peace together is still possible. What is impossible is to ask for
security on one side, while the other is being oppressed, to have one people
occupying when the other is under occupation. This is really impossible. But
with equal justice for both sides, when the Israeli lives on his land and
state, and the Palestinian also has his land and state, then living together
will be possible.
2.
Many people ask us: how shall we celebrate Christmas this year? What is the
meaning of the interdiction to President Arafat to attend Midnight mass?
Our
difficulties did not begin this year. Since generations we live in a bloody
struggle. However we tell everybody: Christmas is first of all a feast for
prayer and an act of faith. Our faith invites us to meditate on the mystery of
God, the mystery of the Incarnation of His Eternal Word, and of His presence
among us, as light and life for all: “What has come into being in him was
life, life that was the light” (Jn 1,4). Therefore this year also, and
despite all the difficulties, we will meditate this truth of our faith and we
will raise our prayer to God, and we will celebrate the feast as usual.
As
for the prohibition to President Arafat to attend Midnight mass we say that it is
a useless measure; if the Israeli Authorities were on the real path towards
peace they would have spared themselves issuing such inappropriate measure.
As
for the siege and the humiliation imposed on the Palestinians of Bethlehem
itself and on all the Palestinian towns and villages, and the demolition of
houses and the killing of people, all these measures push us rather to
renew our courage, our hope and
our love even to those who make hard our life. Therefore we have to pray, may
God put an end to all that and give us instead justice, dignity and love. The
present difficulties will not compel us to cancel our feasts. Besides the
sufferings already imposed upon us, it is not necessary to dispossess ourselves
from the joy of the feast and from our duty to worship God and present Him
ourselves with all our sufferings.
We
address an appeal to the Israeli Authorities to take away once and for all the
check-points around the Palestinian towns and villages. If they have to remain
we say to our faithful: transform them in places of prayer. From places of
humiliation, hatred and death, as they are now, transform them in places for
worship. Call for prayer gatherings there, may God inspire intentions of
justice and peace to those who ordered to establish them.
4. Our
Christmas message for these days – as the siege is still imposed on the towns
and villages, and as we face with death there as well as in the Israeli towns
and streets – is an appeal to put an end to the siege and then to the
occupation and an appeal to stop bloodshed on both sides, in the Palestinian
towns and villages and in the Israeli towns and streets. If the present leaders
do not succeed in making peace, there is only one solution: open the way to
other leaders, perhaps they will succeed better where the present ones have
failed. Our appeal is to make peace, to stop injustice, to reach the so much
invoked security for the Israelis, to put an end to Israeli occupation of
Palestinian land, which is the source of all evils and all obstacles accumulated
in the hearts of the leaders and the peoples in front of peace.
Christmas
is faith and prayer, Christmas is light in the darkness and the oppressions we
live. The angels have sung in the sky of Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the
highest and peace on earth to people of good will”. We hope that this
people will grow more and more so that the message of the angels given to
humankind from our land will be also a message to us and transform us in
peacemakers. We hope and we pray so that the feast which will come back next
year will bring us better times with justice, peace and holiness for all of us
in this “Holy Land”.
Amidst all trials, I wish you all, brothers and
sisters, and you especially inhabitants of Bethlehem, Christians and
Moslems, I wish you a holy
Christmas.
+Michel
Sabbah, Patriarch