Pope Francis in the Holy Land, horizons beyond

The arrival in May 2014 of Pope Francis on a three-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which took in three countries — Jordan, Palestine and Israel — raised levels of anxiety in the region.

Jun 13, 2014

By Fr David M. Neuhaus SJ
The arrival in May 2014 of Pope Francis on a three-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which took in three countries — Jordan, Palestine and Israel — raised levels of anxiety in the region. He was already known to be someone who does not always respect established walls and their concomitant status quo. There were many questions as to if and how his voice would be heard during this pilgrimage: would his authentic witness and his prophetic imagination be stifled by a whirlwind itinerary that left no time for his well-known (and feared) spontaneity? Would his refusal of suffocating security measures mean that the realities of life in the Holy Land world would be kept at a distance from him?

With determination and courage, Pope Francis accomplished during his three-day pilgrimage a spiritual assault on the walls behind which the residents of the Holy Land are imprisoned. He did not come to impose but rather to propose a way of seeing, experiencing, listening, speaking and acting that would release the imaginations that had been enclosed by these walls.

Pope Francis followed the example of his predecessors, St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, in visiting both the Muslim and Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem. Like them, he also paid his respects at the Dome of the Rock and at the Western Wall. Those he encountered spoke to him in strong tones about who they are, as Jews and as Muslims, and about how much they have suffered. In words that residents of the Holy Land recognise all too well, each speaker told of how God lives on his side of the wall and shares his vision of those on the other side.

The Pope listened intently and he seemed pained by the suffering of those addressing him, Muslim or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli. His own words, though, were not an answer in kind but rather an attempt to open up the possibilities for encounter. Like them, he brought God into the picture — not a God who is chained to a cause but a God who loves all God’s children and is in pain that they seem to ignore the possibilities God seeks to show them.

Nowhere was this message clearer than in the Pope’s words at Yad VaShem, the memorial to the six million Jews who perished during the Shoah. This was not a discourse to his Jewish brothers and sisters but rather, standing alongside them, he addressed his words to God. He reminded one and all that in that place, it is not God who is absent but rather the humanity of persons. With urgency, the Pope shared with his brothers and sisters the response that God made to his anguished prayer, giving God a voice in the silence:

“Adam, who are you? I no longer recognize you. Who are you, o man? What have you become? Of what horror have you been capable? What made you fall to such depths? Certainly it is not the dust of the earth from which you were made. The dust of the earth is something good, the work of my hands. Certainly it is not the breath of life which I breathed into you. That breath comes from me, and it is something good (cf. Gen 2:7). No, this abyss is not merely the work of your own hands, your own heart… Who corrupted you? Who disfigured you? Who led you to presume that you are the master of good and evil? Who convinced you that you were god? Not only did you torture and kill your brothers and sisters, but you sacrificed them to yourself, because you made yourself a god.”

His colloquy ended with a cry for mercy. The Pope had insisted that this was a pilgrimage, a religious and spiritual journey, and indeed at this place, commemorating the horror that humans are capable of generating, the Pope directed the attention of all those who heard him to God. Just before speaking these words, the Pope met six Holocaust survivors: he kissed their hands, hands anointed by suffering, hands that pointed to what humans are capable of doing when idols take God’s place.

Rabbi David Rosen, noted authority on the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, lamented that the Pope had missed the chance to bring Jews and Muslims together with Christians. Was this really a missed opportunity? Both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI had indeed participated in such interreligious meetings in the Holy Land, but these meetings had either been upset by explosions of rage or had been orchestrated to create a false impression of interreligious dialogue; they had done little to promote real interreligious encounter on the ground. This time, the Pope’s focus was on the ecumenical encounter with Patriarch Bartholomew rather than on the meetings with Jews and Muslims, yet Pope Francis still had an interreligious surprise up his sleeve.

The Pope announced after the Mass in Bethlehem that he was inviting President Mahmoud Abbas and President Shimon Peres to an ‘encounter of prayer’ in the Vatican. This invitation would be repeated in Israel. The encounter would not take place in a land too divided to make space for it, but rather, ‘in my home in the Vatican’. In the Pope’s words, ‘All of us — especially those placed at the service of their respective peoples — have the duty to become instruments and artisans of peace, especially by our prayers.’ This was not an attempt to upstage the political leaders and their diplomatic initiatives but rather an attempt to bring God into the story, so that God might be able to reveal possibilities of encounter. In Middle Eastern discourse, the word ‘God’ is too often employed in support of the cause of the one who speaks the word and as a potent weapon against his enemies. However, can those who invoke God instead come before God as Creator in thanksgiving, beg God’s forgiveness in a sincere confession and intercede for all of creation? Can they do this with a heightened awareness that all are God’s children? Can the ‘God’ used as an instrument to batter one’s foe be revealed as the one Father of all God’s children?

Pope Francis also came to the Holy Land as pastor of his flock. The four homilies addressed to the Christian faithful (at the Masses in Amman, Bethlehem [Manger Square] and Jerusalem [Cenacle], and the meeting with the religious men and woman at Gethsemane) were exhortations to the Christians to be ‘salt and light’ in their societies, witnesses to the possibilities on the horizon, builders of bridges to replace the walls.

He called on the Christians to take up the yoke of discipleship and go out as witnesses to the Risen Lord. Intimately and painfully aware of the constraints on Christian life in the Holy Land and throughout the region, the Pope insisted that the Christians carry out their mission with courage and joy.

Two brief extracts from Pope Francis’ homilies summarise the prophetic imagination that characterised his pilgrimage, and which he wants to pass on to the Church in the Holy Land and the world. We are to go out towards the horizon, bringing down walls and pointing to the possibilities opened up by God.

Let us ask the Spirit to prepare our hearts to encounter our brothers and sisters, so that we may overcome our differences rooted in political thinking, language, culture and religion. Let us ask him to anoint our whole being with the oil of his mercy, which heals the injuries caused by mistakes, misunderstandings and disputes. And let us ask him to send us forth, in humility and meekness, along the demanding but enriching path of seeking peace.-- Thinking Faith

-- Fr David M. Neuhaus SJ serves as Latin Patriarchal Vicar within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He is responsible for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel as well as the Catholic migrant populations. He teaches Holy Scripture at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary and at the Salesian Theological Institute in Jerusalem and also lectures at Yad Ben Zvi.

--Continued next week: Political possibilities

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