By Father Casey

Like most of you, Israel and Palestine have been much on my mind this week. The tragedy unfolding there is heart-sickeningly awful, and as great as the catastrophe already is, it is just beginning. The cold-blooded murder of hundreds of Israelis as they peacefully went about their lives defies moral comprehension. There is no word to describe the gleeful killing of children and the elderly than evil. And whatever the militants may have hoped, their attack ensures the death of thousands more, for Israel will retaliate with brutal force. Before this conflict is over, tens of thousands may be dead, a whole region turned to rubble, and the possibility of peaceful coexistence between long-divided peoples set back decades.

Although we were forced to cancel the pilgrimage to the region, which was to begin next week, in recent days I've been remembering past journeys in the Holy Land, and in particular two places in Jerusalem that have centered my prayers. I hope they may help center yours, too, for pray we must.

On the side of the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem sits a lovely church called Dominus Flevit. The name comes from the Latin for the event that the church commemorates: when Jesus gazed over the city and wept for its future.

"As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, 'If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace (Luke 19:41)!'"

Many times in recent days I have gone in heart and mind to Dominus Flevit to stand with Jesus as he weeps. His heart breaks at our unwillingness to stop turning the great wheel of vengeance in order to pursue the things that make for peace. He weeps at the region's long history of cruelty and injustice, which has resulted in too much bloodshed through the generations. He weeps at the festering hatred that could cause someone to believe that murdering innocent people could ever be justified. And he weeps at the cycle of retribution that will soon vastly multiply the casualties. Peace will not come at the end of this exchange of violence, but only more of the same.

So, whether you've been to Dominus Flevit or not, go there in spirit to stand with Jesus as he weeps, and then ask him for the grace to recognize the things that make for peace, and the courage to do them.

The second sacred site in Jerusalem I've been thinking about this week is a place called St. Peter in Gallicantu. Tradition holds that this is where Jesus was tried before Caiaphas, and where Peter denied knowing Jesus three times (Gallicantu is Latin for "cock's crow"). Deep beneath the church are a series of chambers, which are thought to be the place where Jesus was jailed before being taken to Pontius Pilate. The place exudes a powerful sense of forsakenness, and it is not hard to imagine Jesus there: injured, abandoned, and anxious.

The chamber is entirely bare, save for one little notebook. Inside has been pasted the text of Psalm 88 in dozens and dozens of languages. We don't know what Jesus prayed that fateful night, but if the rest of the story of his Passion is any indication, the psalms were on his lips and in his heart.

O Lord, God of my salvation,
 at night, when I cry out before you,
let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep.

As I pray for the Israeli hostages living in constant fear, and for the Gazan people who have nowhere to flee in order to escape the nightmare of war, and for all the other people in Israel and Palestine who are injured, abandoned, and anxious, I remember Jesus in the depths of that pit, praying this psalm. He was not content to observe the worst of human suffering from the safety of heaven but climbed down into the deepest depths of existence to be with every last victimized person.

He is with the hostages.
He is with the Gazan people.
He is with the terrified and terrorized.
He is with the sick and the suffering.
He is with the bombed and bruised.
He is with the Israelis and Palestinians.
He is in the pit with them, knowing their forsakenness, sharing their troubles, enduring it all with them in perfect love.

So pray, my dear friends.

Hold on to our weeping Lord as he stands in the depths of the pit, and pray for all of them.

But keep holding on to him as he shows us the way out by the way of true and perfect peace.

Father Casey +