by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
As we reflect and pray together in these Advent days preparing for His once and future Coming, there is a horrendous reality facing humanity: the ferocious and unremitting scorched earth attacks by Israel’s Netanyahu regime against Palestinian Gaza. Those who joined our Pax Christi USA online prayer service this past Monday experienced something of the difficulties in celebrating Advent and consequently Christmas this year. Our executive director, Johnny Zokovitch, announced that the weekly prayers would honor the suggestion of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, and “refrain from the usual festivities of this season.” Our order of worship omitted any music. The result was a devout but somber half-hour of reflective prayer against the background of what is happening in the city and country of Christ’s birth.
Further, the news this week reported that, incredibly and appropriately, Bethlehem will cancel its annual glorious Christmas festivities this year as an act of solidarity with the people of Gaza. The Cardinal-Patriarch’s plea and Bethlehem’s actions are a measure of the evil that is being visited on that population.
Excerpts from a diary being written by a Muslim citizen of in Gaza and somehow made public put the situation in starkly specific and heartbreaking terms:
- “Muslims in Gaza love Christmas… But this year many children in Gaza are dead… their only fault was where they were born…
- “Our souls are aching…
- “In the past days we had a ceasefire… but now it is over, and the situation is very difficult, nobody is safe…
- “Death is everywhere around us; we don’t have the ability to cry over our loved ones, to hug them one last time, to grieve over them.”
- “Santa if you come to Gaza this year… don’t bring dolls and bicycles to the children. Bring some blankets because they are cold. Please look for the schools where thousands are displaced, for the tents, the children are in there…”
Equally disturbing for us in the United States, the Biden government has supported this crime against humanity since the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas and its unconscionable toll on the Palestinian people. Right away on October 10 Biden declared that Israel will receive “whatever it needs” to support a counteroffensive against Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. On November 2, Congress approved for $14.5 billion in military assistance – but not humanitarian aid – which the president had requested. Since the war began, the United States has sent Israel 10,000 tons of military equipment.
Once more our country is on “the wrong side of history,” a euphemism for tragic loss of life, including U.S. American lives, in places for example like Cambodia Chile, Bangladesh, Biafra, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Compare the current U.S. policy and actions with the report that “as the bombs fell and tanks penetrated deep into Gaza in late October, Israeli President Herzog held a fraught phone call with Pope Francis… describing his nation’s horror over the Hamas attack on October 7. The pope issued a blunt rejoinder: ‘It is forbidden to respond to terror with terror.’ And in his November 22 general audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Pontiff said the conflict had gone beyond war. ‘This is terrorism,’ he said.” (Washington Post, December 1)
In the face of all this how can we observe this Season of Hope?
Some thoughts; no answers:
- In Gospel terms what we anticipate is the memory of an infant, born in obscurity and in a country occupied by Imperial Rome.
- We glimpse flickers of light in this darkness: brave people cancelling Christmas celebrations in the tortured city where Jesus was born.
- Heroes and heroines in Gaza and the West Bank like Doctors Without Borders, ambulance drivers, and a thousand acts of humanness as the bombs continue falling all around them.
We cannot look away from Israel/Gaza. We must make John the Baptist’s call our own – this time to United States leadership: “REPENT.”
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.
Repent means think again, an inward action bringing us closer to God the spirit. It would not surprise me if God told the person at prayer to give to a charity, since the US congress frobids humanitarian aid through our government. This is why we still have charities, because historically our government prefers spending much more on potential war than on immediate
(and long-standing) grievous human needs. (Pray for us sinners!)