THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM Though the flock dwindles, the commitment remains The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the first Palestnian to hold the office in modern times, reflects on the church and the Holy Land
Sabbah, Michel
THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM Living with conflict, working for peace Michel Sabbah The Church of Jerusalem is a small church. It is, and it always was, a church of the Cross and Calvary. Other...
...In the Middle East there is a context of conflict and of oppression in which the Palestinians find themselves the oppressed...
...The Jewish people in Israel and Palestine are involved with a human ecclesial reality, which is the local church of Jerusalem...
...Our vocation as Christians does not consist in escaping from the milieu where God wants us to be...
...We hope it will succeed...
...In Israel and Palestine, due to a variety of daily contacts, both positive and negative, this dialogue has already started...
...This same spiritual education should be given to both Christians and Muslims...
...All Christians in the Middle East are facing the same kind of problems: they are a small minority...
...We have to see the image of God in all our Muslim brothers and sisters...
...Most of society ignores him...
...In Judaism, we know, are the roots of Christianity and Christianity is the outgrowth of Judaism...
...This article is excerpted from an address he presented in Chicago, May 24,1995, on the occasion of his receipt of the Catholic Theological Union's Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his work toward peace in the Holy Land...
...He remains identified, as he was with his disciples, with a small group...
...But in the biblical history there are also other moments of prophetic criticism and reprimand-from the time of Moses and through the successive periods of the kings and the prophets...
...Today, churches are trying to pursue such dialogue all over the world...
...All those who want to build the Church of Jerusalem, to live with it and to serve it, should keep this fact in mind...
...a presence before God, an action with God and Jesus...
...Muslim, love your Christian brothers and sisters...
...Both Christians and Jews who are in dialogue should address this present history so filled with disputes and sufferings and yet one in which a new element of reconciliation is now present...
...In these territories the total population is around 12 million...
...Are Christians in the Holy Land truly caught in the middle, pressured between Jews and Muslims...
...When we come before God, we have to carry in our spirit and heart our Muslim brothers and sisters, their petitions and preoccupations...
...Other churches, all born in Jerusalem, have grown and become important churches...
...For example, in 1948 Christians in Nazareth totaled 6,000 out of a population of 8,000...
...Others came originally as pilgrims from surrounding countries and churches and settled in Jerusalem in order to remain near the holy places: the Copts from Egypt, the Marohites from Lebanon, the Armenians and the Ethiopians...
...In reality, as is the case with any Christian in the world, the Christians of the Holy Land belong to their own people...
...Some go so far as to consider the church to have the status of an NGO, or just another nonprofit organization...
...Our vocation is to live the Cross and to realize that it is our way to salvation...
...By the term Holy Land, I mean Israel, Palestine, and Jordan: all these countries constitute one diocese and a single ecclesiastical jurisdiction for Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholics...
...On Christmas 1994, the seven Catholic Patriarchs of the East published their third common letter on relations between Christians and Muslims...
...But even so, Christians will not disappear...
...The second structure is the Middle East Council of Churches, composed of four families of churches: the Greek Orthodox (Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), the Eastern Orthodox (Copts of Alexandria, Syrians of Antioch, and Armenians of Cilicia), the Catholics, and the Protestants...
...Ramallah, another Christian city, had around 6,000 inhabitants, all of them Christians, in 1948...
...From churches and mosques the same exhortation should be proclaimed: Christian, love your Muslim brother and sisters...
...they must coexist with Islam, and in Israel /Palestine, coexist with both Islam and Judaism...
...We have to face the same challenges and share in the same resources as the Muslims...
...The essence of the church as the mystical body of Jesus Christ will no doubt remain for all outsiders a mystery, undiscovered and impossible to understand...
...today, it has approximately 10,000 Christians out of 40,000...
...When Jesus was holy and perfect as God His Beatitude Michel Sabbah is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem...
...Bethlehem in 1948 had the same figure, 6,000 Christians out of 8,000...
...Jesus himself interacted strongly with the leaders of his own people and reprimanded some of the cities of his own land...
...The Church of Jerusalem, because it is the mother church, must be committed to ecumenism...
...Today they number 25,000 out of 50,000...
...Our vocation does not consist in being Christians anywhere in the world, but in being Christians in our Arab and Muslim countries...
...so that they may be one like us" 0ohn 17:11...
...Today it has 12,000 out of a total city population of 50,000...
...This vision of belonging to a people changes the entire perspective...
...The first of these is the Council of the Catholic Patriarchs of the East, which involves seven Patriarchs (Alexandria for the Copts, Antioch for the Syrians, the Maronites and the Melkites, Jerusalem for the Latins, Babylon for the Chaldeans, and Cilicia for the Armenians...
...On the contrary, a situation of conflict is an even more urgent reason to start a dialogue, because religion and true religious sharing should be a factor in helping two peoples in conflict work toward a common vision of coexistence and peace...
...We are called to live a difficult life and we have to accept the call...
...The conflict that exists in the Middle East in general, and between Palestinians and Israelis in particular, should not be an obstacle to start the dialogue...
...Therefore, when the question is asked: What is the situation of Christians in the Holy Land...
...In 1948, Jerusalem had the largest number, 30,000 out of 200,000...
...But this numerical growth, while true in absolute terms, has been in fact very limited...
...Indeed, it is classified this way in the computers of the tax department in Israel...
...Our answer is that their situation is the same as that of all of the rest of the Palestinian people...
...There are also various groups of dialogue at many other levels, some formal, others less formal-all of them trying to build bridges between two peoples in silence and humility...
...It should be an action taken with reverence for the word of God revealed to us, both Jews and Christians, in our common land...
...We have indeed Hebrew-speaking communities of Christians who belong to the Jewish world as part of a people, nation, and culture...
...The church today is seen as an establishment like any other in the society...
...In the Middle East, contemporary history presents a reversal of the relationship that has been experienced in the West...
...just as Christian Israelis belong to the Jewish people...
...Political instability causes difficulties for the entire people, Christians and Muslims alike...
...It is asserted that the number of Christians has increased in Israel...
...The ultimate model for our mutual relationship as human beings and for our dialogue as Jews and Christians should be God himself, who spoke with us, who undertook a dialogue with his chosen people that ultimately was addressed to all humankind...
...Their minority situation will require more effort on the part of the church...
...Catholics are almost half this figure with the Orthodox a little more numerous...
...Formal Christian dialogue with Judaism entered a decisive and positive phase with the Second Vatican Council...
...Here also, despite conflict and religious diversity, the same Christian vision must endure: all of us, Christians and Jews, are children of God...
...Therefore they belong to one people who happen to interface with another people...
...They are Palestinians just as Muslims are Palestinians...
...In the past our relationship had both difficult and easy days...
...The total number of all Christians is 300,000...
...But it is important to know that there are many souls among Muslims and Christians who are receptive to such a vision and able to build upon it the fraternal world of the future...
...In the Middle East and in Israel and Palestine, this dialogue has its own specific nature and distinctive char-acteristics that contrast to the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the Western world...
...Christians are not a closed and isolated community living in the diaspora...
...This has shaped the attitudes of the laity concerning the church: the church is expected to build both church and society together...
...Today it has only 10,000 Christians out of a total population of 600,000...
...God's Covenant with his chosen Jewish people is permanent, and permanent, too, is God's expectation that his people believe in all that God has revealed and strive to remain faithful to God in all of his revelation...
...The peace process has at last begun and is now striving to put an end to this situation...
...The Christians of the Holy Land not only sustain the permanent physical presence of the first community of Jerusalem, but also through their faith in Jesus Christ, they continue to undergo the mystery of rejection and refusal experienced by Jesus himself, human and divine, when he lived in his own land...
...Here is where God wants us to be...
...Emigration has intensified in the past fifty years as a result of the eruption of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, leading to continuing political and social instability...
...They live in their own country and within their own people...
...Today, he is rejected as a church, manifested in a human institution and in human attitudes...
...We have to educate ourselves to a spiritual solidarity with them...
...Accordingly, the universal church, to which the local church belongs, should also take this local experience into consideration...
...they face political instability and the resulting lure of emigration...
...Palestinian Christians are not "in the middle...
...hove a special In Israel, through the existence of small Latin Catholic, Hebrew-speaking communities, there exists a living Christian presence within Jewish society, hence an occasion for dialogue within the realities of everyday life...
...The "other," whether Muslim or anyone else, whatever may be his behavior or attitude, continues to be a child of God, loved by God just like me...
...Today, the reasons are still the same: economic, social, and the difficulty of living as a minority...
...With their Christian faith, they belong to their Jewish people, to its sufferings and aspirations, though obviously different in creed and religious practice from their Jewish brothers and sisters...
...Authentic ecumenism is an action within the heart, a conversion to love the brothers and sisters whom God has placed within the sphere of my life, whether they are in my own community or in any other community...
...The reality of course is not that simple or easy...
...In these divine dealings with humanity, we find moments of tenderness and of careful attentiveness on the part of God toward the people he had chosen...
...No doubt the future will be the same...
...The smallness of the Church of Jerusalem is no excuse for people to overlook the living human context of its situation...
...Any common action in the context of this dialogue should start with prayer...
...On the one hand, as laity they want to exercise their own proper role as Christians in the world...
...Is there really a danger that the holy places will become museums or churches serving only pilgrims...
...We do not endeavor to get rid of the Cross as it is manifested to us through many difficult human circumstances...
...it is here that God wants us to be the witnesses of his Son and Eternal Word, our Lord Jesus Christ...
...Now they are all in Jerusalem, and despite so many historical changes and shifts in population, they maintain today the permanent uninterrupted presence of the church which started with the first Judeo-Christian community of Jerusalem, born on Pentecost day...
...I am speaking of Hebrew-speaking Catholics...
...Christians of the Holy Land are of many different origins: Jews, Syrians or Arameans (whose Aramaic language was spoken by Jesus and still survives today in the Syriac church), Romans, Greeks, and Arabs...
...Jesus remains until today a sign of contradiction in his own land...
...It also helps explain what seems at times to be a contradiction in the attitudes of lay people regarding the church in the Middle East...
...In the other parts of the Arab Middle East or Arab countries, due to the abiding images coming from the still unsettled conflict, this dialogue will take time to start...
...I must remain true to myself and to the grace which God has given me, but at the same time I must remain open, attentive, and loving toward the brother and sister of another community...
...It will take time before we hear this same proclamation coming in harmony from churches and mosques...
...Today existing through the church, perceived from the outside mostly through its human limitations and weaknesses, he is also rejected...
...During his lifetime he had often experienced rejection in contact with his own people and with its religious leaders...
...Therefore, we believe that each local dialogue will have its own specific character relating to its unique local experience...
...The Christians will become even more dependent on the church as a supporting institution and this, in turn, will mean a continuing role for church leadership regarding religious and civil questions...
...They will, however, remain few in number...
...Through the centuries there has been an endless stream of immigrants, conquerors, and newcomers...
...is holy and perfect, he was not accepted...
...Emigration started during the last century...
...This numerical growth is due not only to the birthrate, but to the influx of people from villages whose populations were forced to leave and who subsequently settled in Nazareth...
...Christian Palestinians belong to the Palestinian people...
...The dominant point of reference in the Western world is the past history in which the relationship between Christians and Jews was one of persecutors to the persecuted...
...They stated: With Muslims we live in one country, and together we have a common homeland...
...They are not a self-contained and rootless community...
...Before taking the form of human structures and initiatives, ecumenism should start with the prayer of Jesus: "Father, keep those you have given me true to your name...
...Is this small number diminishing due to the emigration...
...At its heart, ecumenism is a prayer...
...Formal dialogue between Jews and Christians should be supported by a spiritual solidarity which brings us together before God, presenting God with our adoration, our sufferings and aspirations, and those of our brothers and sisters, Jews and Christians...
...This local church is a part of the universal church, but still a unique part, with distinct features and with a distinct historical experience and its own contemporary reali-ties...
...The Church of Jerusalem will remain small, always living the Cross in its own body and soul...
...As long as there is political instability, emigration will continue...
...During the Ottoman Empire up until the nineteenth century, the Patriarch was both the religious and civil leader of his community...
...but on the other, they also expect church leaders to assume responsibilities in economic, social, and political life...
...But even if Muslims should differ in their understanding of how Christians and Muslims are to relate, Christians are not excused from acting according to the vision of the gospel, which is a vision of love...
...These common realities are the subject of reflection for the two regional church structures in the Middle East...
...Born in Nazareth and former president of Bethlehem University, Patriarch Sabbah is the first Palestinian to hold the office of Latin Patriarch in modern times...
...That means when we pray, we cannot come before God in isolation, absorbed only with our own adoration or petitions and preoccupations...
...People often ask if the Christians in the Holy Land are divided and impossible to reconcile...
...All of us are created in God's image, equally loved by God, and equally called to know God and to be saved by him...
...In this very land Jesus said to his disciples: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria...
...Today, as well, we have good days and difficult days...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 1
