The Desert is Bleeding

Photo Credit: Mary Ann Flannery, SC

It was one year ago that I was part of a group of tourists privileged to walk on the streets and pathways that Jesus walked while on earth. The trip was a thrill of a lifetime and I have written about it before in my blog posts. I have also given talks in various places to groups interested in the Holy Land including a large group of Jewish residents in a nearby senior campus. Most people are interested in the Christian history related to Israel and I always sense, even with non-Christian groups, a commonality of our shared historical religious roots.

So, this past week I found myself in tears as I tried to watch coverage of the acts of terrorism which have invaded Israel and the Gaza Strip, and I could not grasp the immeasurable evil befalling that land. While there, the group I traveled with visited the West Bank occasionally because of sites we hoped to see. For instance, Bethlehem is in the West Bank so to visit the possible cave where the Nativity took place, now protected by a huge basilica, one goes to the West Bank. Because our trip started in the north at Tiberius we traveled south, stopping along the way at major religious sites like Cana, Magdala, the Mount of Beatitudes, the Jordon River, and other places until we reached Jerusalem, the Holy City to three major faiths of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Along the way we saw the barbed wire fence dividing Israel and Palestine. But here are unforgettable points I hold onto from that journey:

1. There were never visible soldiers armed and ready to defend or attack as we traveled. We often commented that we felt very safe and that the Israelis wanted us to be there. We only saw armed soldiers at the Temple of Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
2. But the moment that is riveted in my mind and soul is an experience I had at the Monastery of Mount Carmel just south of Haifa very near the Mediterranean Sea. It is a Roman Catholic monastery of Carmelite Nuns who live on top of a majestic and breathtaking view of the land below. We participated in an outdoor Mass in the monastery garden way above the undulating hills and desert somewhat proximate to Nazareth. 
3. Palestinians were employed everywhere in Jewish establishments. They got along very well with their Israeli employers. Even our guide was a mixed Arabic ancestry but proud to be an Israeli citizen.
4. In Old Jerusalem, the main sections for Christians, Muslims, Jews, Armenians, was a cheerful blend of cafes and shops where all faiths and cultures worked and socialized together like any busy metropolis in any country. 

After the Mass, I walked to the edge of the garden and leaned on an iron fence and Father Wally, our co-guide on the trip, came over. We were stunned to see that below and probably a few miles away there was a compound that was seemingly military. On the compound were missiles and rockets aimed in one direction: Palestine. It took our breath away.

Out of this beautiful day, this community of learning and appreciating one’s faith and the faiths of others, we were confounded with the reality that we need to understand so much more. This truth became more apparent to me as the horrible events of this past week unfolded in Israel.

Reflection

In his book, Jesus, A Pilgrimage, Jesuit James Martin describes the problem of evil from the Gospel of Mark where early in the first chapter a man possessed by an evil spirit is cured by Jesus’s courageous confrontation with the force of evil personified as a demon. Martin describes evil as “a real and coherent force opposed to God and one that can overtake people but not in the popular conception of the devil.” He continues that we can be overcome by the “chaotic forces of nature, Satan, sickness, and death.” When evil is supported by a machinery of evil such as weapons and destruction or the unbridled hatred of a perceived enemy, and the will to annihilate rather than dialogue, we have “the coherent force” of evil possession. It becomes a demon. Nothing short of an exorcism, a replacement of this coherent force with reliance on and belief in the mercy and love of God, will prevail.

Some scholars maintain that is why the story of the man cured of possession appears as one of the first miracles in Mark’s Gospel. Mark’s message was that the hearts of the listeners had to rid themselves of their sinful past, their selfish clinging to personal pride and especially religious imperialism and elitism before they could be open to the message of Jesus. In his story, Mark has the demon ask Jesus, “What is between us and you?” (Mk 1:23-29 This translation is one of several of the popular line, “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth?”) Either translation works. ‘What do you want? What is between us?’

If the leaders of countries now embroiled in the carnage of innocent people ask this question today of our God, we might stop in our tracks and see possibilities of unity rather than the divisiveness of evil. We might then look at our own weak powers and seek peace through God’s will, not our own. “Who is God to us?” asks Martin. “One answer is compassion, forgiveness, mercy, even when we feel we deserve them least.” 

What can you do to staunch the blood flowing on desert lands? Ask what might be between God and yourself. Ask for the grace to face it and overcome it, to see “what is between us and God.” Then ask the same for world leaders who are pressured by power and self-aggrandizement. Start prayer groups for this intention. Organize assistance for the victims in both Israel and Gaza. Take part in peaceful marches or awareness programs that will accurately teach the political causes of this unbearable volume of evil. Unite yourself with the suffering of innocent people, especially the children, through fasting and prayer. All human problems are our human problems. May our love and compassion blend with the blood on the desert sands of this Holy Land. And may we discover what is “between us and” God.

God love you all and God, please gather the innocent into your arms. Quotes taken from Jesus: A Pilgrimage by James Martin, pp. 150-153.