The only chance for peace

Nativity by Caravaggio

From where it all began, the Midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity brought together people from the all over the world, to celebrate Christmas and pray for peace.  

Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal said in an address during the late-night service that true security comes from God.

“War does not produce peace, prisons do not guarantee stability. The highest of walls do not assure security,” said Twal, the Catholic Church’s top cleric in the Holy Land. “Peace is a gift of God, and only God can give that peace.”

The reference was to the wall separating Palestine from Israel, a grim concrete barrier that gives Israelis a sense of security and Palestinians a sense of restriction.

Bethlehem has suffered from the Israeli-Palestinian fighting of recent years, and is now surrounded on three sides by concrete slabs and fences — part of a barrier Israel has built against Palestinian suicide attackers, some of whom came from Bethlehem. The Palestinians see the barrier as a land grab and say it has strangled the town’s economy.

Emigration has cut the town’s Christian population to an estimated 35 to 50 percent of its 40,000 people, compared with 90 percent in the 1950s.

Israel has held peace talks over the past year with the moderate West Bank government of President Mahmoud Abbas, and the spirit of cooperation has allowed Palestinian forces a limited measure of independence in places like Bethlehem, under Israel’s overall security control.

Pope Benedict talked about the Holy Land in his Christmas homily.

And let us pray that peace will be established there, that hatred and violence will cease. Let us pray for mutual understanding, that hearts will be opened, so that borders can be opened. Let us pray that peace will descend there, the peace of which the angels sang that night.

If we can focus on the possible for a day of prayer and goodwill, then extend it for another day….this seems possible.