Latin Patriarchate - Easter Message 2007
Brothers and Sisters,
Christ is risen. Indeed, he is truly risen.
1. We contemplate today the glory of heaven which came down to earth, renewing
life there. Jesus said: “I am the Resurrection. Whoever is alive and believes
in me will never die” (Jn 11, 25). The feast of Easter is a time when believers
renew their appreciation of life and their happiness to be alive. They place
themselves in God’s presence and recall his many blessings. On this feast
of Easter, we relive the memory of the resurrected Christ, conqueror of death
and sin, and we recall that he died for our sins, as foretold by the Prophet
Isaiah: “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. For our peace
he was punished” (Is 53, 5). He died because of our sins and for our peace.
He died, rose, and gave to us, as well as to all human beings, the power
to overcome the death which is present in the depth of our being, namely
sin.
2. By his Resurrection, the Lord gives us new life and new courage so that
we can conquer sin in ourselves and in our society: “Whoever is in Christ
is a new creation” (2 Cor 5, 17), says Saint Paul. In all our relations with
our society, the Resurrection of Christ gives us new strength to live and
to love, and it teaches us and helps us at the same time to forgive and to
restore justice. To love is to see in every human being the face of the Most
High God. It therefore means to love God himself in his creatures, to forgive
as he forgives each of us, and to learn from God himself how to practice
justice in our relations with one another. To love as God loves is to enter
into the depths of the mystery of his divine Providence, and, with him, the
Lord of history, to become capable of contributing to the creation of our
history and of transforming our land of death and sin into a land of new
life.
3. Jesus said: “I am the Resurrection. Whoever is alive and believes in me
will never die” (Jn 11, 25). That is what our faith tells us as we face throughout
the Holy Land an ongoing reality of death, with its various aspects of hate,
fear, and dysfunction in the relations between individuals and at the level
of governments. Our land is at the same time a land of resurrection and of
death, but its vocation and fundamental mission is to be a land of love and
life, a land of abundant life for all its inhabitants of all religions. This
supposes that all believers of all religions accept the consequences of their
faith in God: that we are all creatures of God and the product of his hands,
and that to believe in God means to accept all of God’s children. It therefore
supposes that everyone accepts everyone, that everyone respects everyone,
and that no one uses violence against the other. It also supposes that there
is neither a strong party nor a weak one, and that there is no longer an
occupation, or walls, or military barriers, or fear, or violence.
4. This year we commemorate forty years of extensive
dysfunction in our Holy Land, a situation which has had repercussions in
the region and in the world. Will our leaders and the international community
ever be able to put an end to this dysfunction? In itself the issue is simple:
two peoples are at war with each other, and one of them occupies the house
of the other. To put it simply: the solution would be for each one to occupy
his own house, the Israelis their house and the Palestinians theirs. To be
sure, fear has complicated matters and wants to see the Palestinians as terrorists
or as incapable of assuring security. Moreover, several worldwide phenomena
have arisen in the world as a direct or indirect consequence of this dysfunction
in the Holy Land and have given rise to great fear, which has further complicated
things that were simple enough in themselves. Given that reality, we believe
that the dysfunction will continue as long as someone occupies the house
of someone else. And as long as this dysfunction continues in the Holy Land,
the region and the world will suffer from it. We must take the risk of making
peace and put an end to the occupation (each one in his own house), in order
to begin the healing process in our land, in the region, and in the world.
5. Our land is at the same time a land of resurrection and of death, but
its vocation and its fundamental mission is to be a land of love and life,
of abundant life for all its inhabitants of all religions and of all nationalities.
We ask God to grant that this becomes a reality and to give us all, by the
grace of the Resurrection, abundant life, tranquility, and his blessing.
Christ is risen. Indeed, he is truly risen.
Happy Easter
† Michel Sabbah, Patriarch
Jerusalem, April 3, 2007
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