Pizzaballa urges Holy Land
Church to be space for dialogue, encounter
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| Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa at Mas on New Year's Day |
At Mass on New Year’s Day, Archbishop Pierbattista
Pizzaballa, the Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem,
delivered a homily on the need for dialogue for peace.
By Robin Gomes
Recognizing the reality, vocation and prophecy, prayer,
charity, ecumenical dialogue and freedom of expression are some of the concrete
ways in which the Church in the Holy Land can “announce dialogue and peace
seriously and credibly”, without empty words.
Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Apostolic
Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, made the exhortation
during Mass on New Year’s Day in the Holy City.
Marking the Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace on January
1, he reflected on dialogue, one of the themes of Pope Francis' Message for
World Day of Peace.
Speaking about the ecclesial community and Church in the
Holy Land, he said that adhering to the Christian faith “does not automatically
make us capable of dialogue and experts of peace”. All the faithful
are called to “make this personal and communal journey, this spiritual
struggle, which leads us to encounter the other,” the Italian archbishop said
in his homily.
“We are not called to witness our desire for dialogue only
as individual believers,” he pointed out. “It must primarily be a
testimony of the entire Church understood as a community and not as an
institution”. “This,” he stressed, “is the primary vocation of our Church
in the Holy Land.”
Accepting reality and witnessing
Archbishop Pizzaballa called on the ecclesial community to
accept the reality of the region, with its struggles and conflicts.
Fleeing conflicts or trying to resolve them with non-Gospel methods, he noted,
would perhaps preserve the Church’s structures, but warned, “it would not
nourish the faith and hope of the Christians”.
Hence, the first step for a meaningful community witness,
the Franciscan archbishop pointed out, is to recognize the difficult reality of
life, by making sure that people are listened to in their pain. They need
to continue to “affirm the way of the Gospel as the only possible way leading
to peace in a social and political context where oppression, closure, and
violence seem the only possible ways.”
Prayer and charity
Building peace, the 54-year-old archbishop said, also
demands persevering in faith and intercession. Praying, he said, “is to give
back space to God amid violence and despair.”
A service similar to prayer, he further explained, is
charity. This means actively sharing the “struggles and sufferings
of the victims, the weak and the poor, with a lively and intelligent charity
that testifies to a different possibility of being in the world”.
Ecumenical dialogue
Christians of the Holy Land, Archbishop Pizzaballa said, may
have little opportunities to intervene in political conflicts or sit at
international tables, but they can certainly make the Church a place and an
experience of a possible peace through ecumenical dialogue.
It is the duty of Christians, he said, to construct
reconciled and hospitable communities that are open and available to
encounter. They can help create authentic spaces of shared fraternity and
sincere dialogue.
Speaking out
Finally, Christians of the Holy Land also have the duty to
make its judgement on the world and its dynamics. Archbishop Pizzaballa
said the faithful expect from their leaders not just words of hope and
consolation but also of truth. Hence the Church cannot be silent in the
face of injustice or invite Christians to quiet living and
disengagement.
“The preferential option for the poor and weak,” he pointed
out, “does not make the Church a political party.” The Church always
needs to raise her voice to defend the rights of God and man without entering
into the dynamics of competition and division.
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