A THRUST TOWARDS PEACE IN ISRAEL

by Paulette Curran

This article was put together from several documents sent to Madonna House from Haifa, Israel.

—————-

Another suicide bombing, another killing of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, another breakdown in the peace process.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land has been going on for so long and seems to be getting worse and worse. The situation is so complex; the division seems so deep. Is peace even possible?

No, this article is not going to make an impossible attempt to answer this question. All it will do is tell about something else that is going on in Israel—something which, given the conditions in that land, is incredibly beautiful and hopeful.

It started with a school, a very unusual one, Al Mutran, or "St. Joseph’s," a secondary school in Nazareth. In the words of Fr. Émile Shoufani, who has been its director since 1976, "It is not a Christian school that accepts Muslims, but a school where Christians (Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic) and Muslims live together."

Except for the fact that the language used is Arabic, the school would include Jewish students as well.

For the passion of Fr. Shoufani’s life is not only an end of war in his homeland, but a vision that the suffering the peoples there have endured can be healed, and that they can move into a new reality, a future of peace and love among them. "We will never forget," he says, "but through forgiveness, the memory can be transformed into reconciliation.

"To change the thought and heart of man is a most difficult thing, but there are many humble people—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—who are doing little things to try to bring this about. So we are in the process of an inner evolution."

Fifteen years ago Fr. Shoufani formed a connection with Lyada, a Jewish secondary school next to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The teachers and students from both schools have seminars in which they attempt to understand one another.

The students have exchange visits to each other’s homes and throughout the good and bad periods between their peoples have gradually developed a deep human bond.

Then in December 2001 at one of these seminars, something happened which plunged Fr. Shoufani and those working with him into a whole new depth. One of the teachers from Lyada said, "I see for the first time that I am a Jew."

Fr. Shoufani asked him what he meant.

"To feel myself to be a Jew," said the teacher, "is to feel the personal and unique fear that is a part of being a Jew."

Then he explained that this awareness awakened in him "a mighty inner opposition." He had seen himself as a liberated person, "one who chooses his way through freedom, democracy, and equality. However for the first time I feel in my heart a deep fear that I did not know before."

Fr. Shoufani went back to his school, gathered his staff together, and said to them, "I now understand that we do not understand."

At the same time others in Israel also concerned over the deterioration of the relations between both peoples were looking for ways to bring peace.

A group of Israeli Arab intellectuals and businessmen was formed and had been meeting and discussing the subject for months.

A group of Israeli Jews were doing the same, and in July 2002 this group made a decision to not just talk but do something.

They decided to create an Arab-Israeli lobby, that would speak in a new way to the Jews and that would fight against the extremists on both sides, and try to reach a dialogue between the two peoples. For help in putting this idea into practice, they turned to Fr. Shoufani.

Also in July 2002 a book written by Fr. Shoufani came out in France. In this book he analyzed the reasons for the deep hostilities and segregation between the Israeli Jews and the Arab Palestinians and between the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. He especially pointed out the mistrust on both sides.

Fr. Shoufani decided to initiate an unprecedented process. As a way of stopping the cycles of death, the accusations, the judgments and victimization, he called on the Arab citizens of Israel to begin a process of learning about the pain of the Jews throughout the past 2000 years, and especially about the biggest pain of all—the Holocaust.

At a press conference in Paris in December 2002, Fr. Shoufani announced an "Appeal" to all men and women of good will to join him in this initiative. A significant number of religious leaders, intellectuals, Arabs, Jews, and Christians in France told him that they wanted to join the process that was being initiated in Israel.

In Israel tens of outstanding Arabs responded to the call—writers, lawyers, judges, businessmen, thinkers, journalists, doctors, religious people and other intellectuals.

This Arab group turned to the Jewish population. An inspector in the Ministry of Education, Hyam Tannous, an Israeli Arab, joined the process and brought together Fr. Shoufani and Mrs. Ruthy Bar-Shalev, a Jew who has been dealing in the transformation process for many years.

This encounter turned into a fruitful collaboration, and a group of about 150 Jews accepted the invitation of the Israeli Arabs to enable them to learn through them, through their mouths and hearts, about Jewish history, particularly the Holocaust, and to get to know the effects of this on the personal and collective life of Israel today.

The Jewish members praised the Arab initiative, and this strengthened the Arab members’ convictions.

An association was founded, "Memory for Peace," (N.A.S.) to carry out the project of studying the Holocaust and visiting Auschwitz together.

On February 3, 2003, "Memory for Peace," was publicly launched at a press conference in Jerusalem.

During the next three months there were many meetings between the initiators and the Arab and Jewish core groups as well as a series of seminars for a bigger group.

In these seminars the Holocaust was studied in depth from a historical, sociological, and human viewpoint. These seminars included personal testimonies of Holocaust survivors and their children, the second generation, who also were deeply influenced by the parents’ experience.

The aim of the participants was to pass through a personal transformation, to prepare for a journey to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

In May 2003, a group of 500 personsI300 Israelis (Jews and Arabs), and 200 French (Christians, Muslims, and Jews), made an unprecedented pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

COMBERMERE DIARY

A Quiet Time

by Paulette Curran

In January life here slows down, at least relatively speaking. Liturgically, for example, after we have celebrated Epiphany and the Baptism of Christ and taken down the Christmas decorations, we settle into Ordinary Time.

In January numbers of guests are usually down (though this year the number of men guests is higher than usual) and most are here long-term. It’s cold—this month temperatures mostly hovered around minus 30 and minus 40 Celsius—and we tend to stay inside more. When Catherine was director of the house, most of us took our holidays in January.

But life being what it is, we are never without things happening, even in January.

The main happening this month was the death of Kathleen O’Herin, our oldest member. She was 98 years old.

Though she had been failing, up until a few months ago she was quite alert and even more recently she was still doing some things for herself.

She’d been at the hospital for just a short time, and when they could do no more for her, we took her home. Then, though she was expected to die at any moment, she lived on for more than two weeks. Kathleen was one strong woman!

It was a long, slow dying and a hard one. (Our director general, Jean Fox, said, "My goodness! Dying is harder work than birth!")

There was always someone assigned to be with Kathleen, and the rest of us would drop in to pray, to tell her of our love for her (you could tell she could hear until almost the end) and to say good-bye. The room was filled with peace and to spend time with Kathleen was to absorb that peace.

Then on Saturday evening, January 28th, all knew that the end was very near. Several people had come to be with Kathleen, and at the main house, the schola was having a music practice.

In Kathleen’s room, Fr. Pat McNulty was saying Mass. At communion time, he put a drop of the Precious Blood on Kathleen’s tongue. Almost immediately after that, she died. At that very moment the schola was singing a hymn called, "Rejoice! Rejoice!" Could anyone ask for a better way to die?

Her wake and funeral were quiet and gentle, as befits a woman who’d lived such a long, good, and full life.

Another event was the coming of Christopher West to give two consecutive evenings of lectures on the Theology of the Body. This was part of our winter lecture series which, though we attend them, too, are primarily for the local people.

This time so many came that the staff had to listen in another room where the lecture was "piped in."

The Theology of the Body, a development of the Church’s teaching on sexuality written by Pope John Paul II, is difficult to read. Christopher West, a married man, whose heart is fired by it, spends his life making it accessible in his lectures.

So much sexual sin and disorder comes from the modern secular misunderstanding of sexuality. But what an incredible vision the pope has given us of the gift of masculinity and femininity and of both the sexual act and celibacy!

The local people who attended these lectures were so moved that they have formed a study group among themselves to study more about it, and a number of staff have chosen it as their field of study for our winter staff study time.

There were, of course, other events as well this month. For Lunar (or Chinese) New Year Catherine Ching, a staff worker from Singapore who happens to be the cook at St. Mary’s, cooked Chinese food for both lunch and supper, and, at the request of Archbishop Raya, sang and danced to a recording of Mandarin music.

And here’s some more news in brief: Salt and Light, a Toronto-based radio station (a fruit of World Youth Day) came to interview staff worker Margarita Guerrero for a program called "Six Minute Magazine," which focuses on personal witness talks.

Bread baker Pat Probst announced that in 2003 she and others had baked 9,071 loaves of bread. Scott Eagan, Fr. Louis Labrecque and a couple men guests cut down 25 dying and dead trees on the island. Korean friends living in Peterborough (about an hour and a half away) invited all the Koreans at MH for Lunar New Year.

As part of the applicants’ education in the work of our apostolate, Tom White of the HELP department (heating, electrical, landscaping, and plumbing) gave them a talk and tour of the workshop, boiler room, and even the elevator shaft at St. Mary’s!

Such are some of the events of the past month. And, of course, as always, we continue to live the rhythm of our daily lives—our lives with God, with one another, and with each person God brings to us.

A blessed, grace-filled Lent to each of you.

Israel

UNPRECEDENTED PILGRIMAGE

by Soad Haddad

The author, an Eastern Rite Catholic and an Israeli Arab citizen, frequently visits MH Combermere. The friendship dates from the 1970s when Archbishop Raya was bishop of Haifa and Madonna House had a house there. Soad has been working with Fr. Shoufani for the past 26 years.

————-

My head and heart get overwhelmed at the thought of trying to write about our trip to Auschwitz, but I will try.

I’ll begin at our wait at the airport where a special check-in section had been reserved for our group. The spirit among us was a little restrained. Both Arabs and Jews were suddenly confronted with the reality of the difficult decision we had made to make this trip.

Though the airport security had been aware of our trip and had promised to facilitate the procedure, they marked the Arab suitcases with blue labels and the Jewish ones with pink. Those of us with blue labels were questioned further and our luggage inspected while those with pink passed through immediately.

Then when a very Arab-looking woman tried to tell the security man that we’re on the same delegation, she was brushed aside with a sharp remark.

On the other hand, Mr. Shevah Weiss, former president of the Knesset (a man who has always called for a Palestinian state), and current Israeli ambassador to Poland, himself a Holocaust survivor, arrived in a special convoy and came on our plane to see us off. For fifteen minutes he spoke to us heart-to heart emphasizing the elevated human perspective of our effort.

Taken together these two incidents will give you a glimpse of the complexity of our life in this land called "Holy."

Then the plane took off, and by noon we had arrived in Krakow, Poland and joined with the delegation from France, a delegation which was composed of French Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Together we filled eleven buses.

We were given an intensive tour of the ghetto, the Jewish neighborhood which had once included eleven synagogues, some historical cemeteries, and a number of important Hasidic scholarsWa world which was, and is no more.

I felt all of us beginning to be moved and to listen at a new depth. For the Arabs, all was new. Some of the Jews, too, had never seen this before, and for all the Jews, it was their first exposure of their intimate world to strangers.

At 5 p.m. the official inauguration ceremony of the trip took place at the temple, the new synagogue. On the platform surrounded by Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams, an Orthodox abbot from Paris and others, Fr. Émile Shoufani, wearing a kippa (Jewish skull cap) began to give the inauguration speech.

He began but, choked by tears, could not continue. Soon everyone was crying. Words of thanks and love struggled their way out through sobs as various persons tried to ease the moment for him.

The second day we headed to Auschwitz, an hour’s drive from Krakow. On the way an excellent guide told us some of the history of the death camps where 12 million, including an estimated 6 million Jews, were killed. Intense emotions started to surface.

On our bus was a rabbi, Rabbi Gissner, from a Jewish settlement in the Palestinian West Bank. He is a second-generation survivor (someone whose parents survived the Holocaust).

A Jewish woman got on the microphone and with trembling voice said that she was feeling contradictory emotions—caused by "what we are going to see and what the Israeli army is doing back home."

Rabbi Gissner said, "If I’m here to be made to feel guilty, I consider that making use of me." A heated discussion between them followed.

When we arrived in Auschwitz, two Arab men and myself calmed them and reminded them that they were here at our request to allow us to know their pain without our asking anything in return.

This delayed us a bit but also was the occasion of the five of us being a little apart from the rest for the rest of the day, and we became a close group.

We passed a railroad station and walked "the yoden ramp," the path along which the Jews had walked on their way to the camp. It is now a lovely walk in what is now green pastoral scenery, but it leads to the first burning area and the ash pond, the place where the ashes of the dead were thrown. Next we saw the first gas chambers and the children’s ash pond.

By now we were getting immersed into a level of pain new to each of us. In front of the children’s pond, Rabbi Gissner (the one who had spoken in the bus) stopped to pray Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

When he got to the last phrase which says, "and let there be peace on your people Israel," he added, "on the whole world." "And let there be peace on the whole world and on your people Israel." This was a breakthrough for Jewish prayers. Through sobs and tears, all in one voice said, "Amen."

Around midday the delegation went to the main memorial where we put flowers and listened to a witness talk by a survivor who had been used as a sonderkommando. (A sonderkommando was a Jewish prisoner who was drafted to untangle the corpses in the gas chamber and strip them of their valuables and to stoke the crematoria.)

Then after lunch we visited the museum and there several persons broke down and cried. We gave them pills and water and held them, allowing them to cry as long and as loudly as they needed to.

The tour that day ended at the death wall. Our bus was the first to arrive there and, as I looked around, it seemed as if we were going to be there a while. So leaning on the wall I pulled out my prayer book and since it was what we of the Eastern Rite call "the Farewell of the Paschal Season," I started reading the Paschal Canon silently.

Suddenly someone joined me. It was Daoud, a good friend whom I had not seen since we left the plane.

As we were silently finishing the last Troparion of the Resurrection, Fr. Shoufani asked him together with Tahbet Abou Rass, a Bedouin geographer from an Israeli university, to place a crown of flowers at the wall. He did so as Rabbi Gissner prayed several psalms.

Then it was back to the hotel and an evening meal at which we all shared with one another. No one was the same person he was two days ago, either in relation to himself or to the other.

On the third day we returned to Auschwitz to visit more places, including the barracks where the prisoners stayed. Among us was a Jewish woman born in Holland and currently living in Tel-Aviv. She had lost both parents and every single relative in the camps. She herself had survived because she was taken as a baby and raised by a Christian Dutch family.

She brought with her on this trip a birthday letter and a drawing she had written to her father when she was seven, thinking that he was traveling. Later she learned that he died in Auschwitz, and she eventually even found out which barracks he had been in. It was the one in which we were standing.

She told us that she had chosen to join our delegation in order to come and personally deliver her letter to her father.

She read the letter aloud and then added, "I still miss you, Daddy, but I know that today I am closing one circle to begin a new one."

When she finished, there was a long pause as our tears flowed silently. Then we spontaneously joined hands. A Muslim chanted the al-Fatiha. When he finished, Jews started singing songs for peace, and we all joined in. An hour and a half passed and no one wanted to leave.

But we finally did, and as we went along, seven Holocaust survivors each gave their witness, each doing so in the location where they had been in the camp.

Our visit to Auschwitz ended with a silent ceremonial march from the main gate along the ramp. While the whole delegation marched behind Fr. Shoufani, the imams, the rabbis, and others, a few of us, Arabs, read over loudspeakers lists of family members of participants in the trip, family members who had been devoured by the Holocaust.

One Jewish woman, a general in the Israeli army and a teacher of ethics, had given a list of 91 names on her mother’s side.

We finished the walk on "the spot of selection" (the place where those who could not work were selected out to be put to death), at around 5 p.m.. For Catholics it was the feast of the Ascension and the time of vespers.

As I watched Fr. Shoufani’s face as he marched toward us readers, I could see that he was quietly praying vespers: "all that is his… offering it on behalf or every human being and for every human being."

That we were at the death wall at the close of the Paschal Season and had the reading of the names of the dead at the vespers of the Ascension could not be by chance.

Thursday, the last day, was a free day in Krakow. Five of us, including myself, joined Fr. Shoufani for the Divine Liturgy at the cathedral, where he had been invited by the cardinal.

Two weeks after our trip to Auschwitz, we had our closing seminar. There were embraces, tears, smiles, and hours and hours of sharing. The need to be together was so overwhelming.

Over and over we heard, "I feel like a stranger in my old frame of life." For something has definitely changed in our beings, and we find it difficult to explain to those who did not live it with usOeven wives and husbands.

Our trip to Auschwitz together, has been a turning point in the life of everyone who experienced it.

Israel

BEYOND POLITICAL SOLUTIONS

Interview by Jeanette Blom

Fr. Émile Shoufani is an Israeli Arab citizen and an archimandrite (a spiritual father of priests or monks) of the Melkite Rite of the Catholic Church. Because of his work in St. Joseph’s School and Memory for Peace, he has received and is continuing to receive numerous awardsiamong them the 2003 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education.

Fr. Shoufani’s non-violent philosophy was deeply influenced by Archbishop Joseph Raya, a member of Madonna House and former bishop of Haifa, Israel.

—————————

The journey to Auschwitz was above all a symbolic gesture. What purpose did it serve in practical terms?

Memory for Peace was not just the trip to Auschwitz, which in itself was both important and symbolic. It also included all the preparations and the listening that preceded the journey and helped us learn the history directly from Holocaust survivors and Jewish lecturers and particularly to learn together—Jews and Arabs together. Through this process there came about a great change in the way people listened and in the way they were with one another.

And then you were not the same person when you came back from Auschwitz. The feeling of unity, of communion, of solidarity which was apparent during the visit, and the emotions and expressions of humanity one experienced in that place of inhumanity changed people. They realized it was about human life being at the center of any conflict.

What was special about the journey for the Jewish participants?

The most frequent reaction I hear is that the fact of going to Auschwitz with Muslim Arabs and Christians was something else. There was a feeling of new solidarity. And the discovery that the potential enemy is a figment of the imagination was a liberation for all of us.

Do you think the journey will have an impact?

Yes, it already does. Reactions among the general public and in the media are very positive both on the Israeli and the international planes. There is a will to continue this experience and change mentalities in order to arrive at a new way of looking at the whole society instead of merely seeking political solutions to the conflict.

Last year you launched an Appeal in which you said that dialogue must be "disengaged from all accumulated suspicion" over recent generations between Jews and Arabs. What do you mean by that?

We live today in total ignorance of each other. What is emphasized is the conflict with its pain and suffering. Relationships and language have been severed: we no longer understand one another.

The idea that the other will kill me if I don’t kill him is the greatest suspicion existing today. It is because we don’t know about each other and because there has never been dialogue beyond weapons that this idea keeps feeding the conflict.

In your opinion, can the Holocaust be put on the same level as the suffering of the Palestinian people?

I don’t know where this idea came from, this always wanting to compare suffering. The idea of saying, "I am far more of a victim than you are" makes no sense. Suffering is something the whole of humanity has in common.

The Holocaust is something different insofar as it was based on an ideology and a method of extermination of a whole people wherever they were living. It is the ideology behind the extermination of the Jewish peopleanot simply the methods usednthat made the Holocaust so inhuman.

How cam the participation of people from other countries contribute to peace in Israel and the Palestinian territories?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict concerns the whole world because this country is a geographical and historical area that spiritually affects all peoples. We want a beginning of dialogue among the different religious, ethnic, and cultural communities the world over.

Participants of other nationalities have an important role to play in the relations of the different communities in their countries. They have to make it clear that in this field one cannot be for or against. We must be for everybody.

It is a matter of guaranteeing the dignity of all peoples, their right to life and security. The human being must be considered the essential element in every conflict, and therefore our position must be defined by the human being.

In conflicts we always try to make people take sides. But taking sides with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never accomplished anything.

You have also said that this conflict is not a religious conflict.

It is not a religious conflict between Islam and Judaism. It is a conflict which takes up religious references, and that is where the danger lies.

In fact, it is a question of rights: the right of the Palestinian people, the right of the Jewish people, the right to dignity and the right to live together.

Your philosophy is based on the idea that religious and cultural diversity is a source of dialogue rather than conflict.

This diversity is a fount of richness that will help humanity develop if we consider it, not in nationalistic terms, but more in terms of belonging. We belong to several worlds, so there can be a place of sharing. Identities create a place of belonging.

For me, belonging means the place of my being and the place of my future. That is why I launched the Appealato encourage people to put the present-day to one side. To avoid talking about politics for a month or two does not mean denying the situation exists.

It only means that we also belong to other worlds. By doing this, I don’t neglect my suffering or the suffering of the other. I am merely trying to grasp from within the deep reality of the other.

Intercultural and inter-religious dialogue is the future of humanity. Going towards the other and accepting and sharing his or her suffering is a way of knowing one another better. And knowing the other is knowing oneself.

For ten years now there has been much talk about the "clash of civilizations." What do you think about that notion?

I reject that term. I prefer to believe in the joy of encounters of civilizations. It is a joy to be able to meet others, to see the difference in their thinking, their cooking, their clothing or their religion and to be able to share their culture.

During the journey to Auschwitz, Muslims, Christians, and Jews shared their prayers. There is a divine particle in man which can be shared through the different religions and thus make communion possible.

Instead of being prisoners of one and the same idea, we can be pulled out of that monotony through encounters which can bring us the wealth of diversity.

The challenge humanity faces today is: do we want to accept the difference and diversity of people’s lives or do we all want to be the same? Being the same is hell.

What are the important elements in your personal life that inspired your philosophy?

As a Palestinian I experienced the drama of being expelled with my family in 1948. My grandfather and uncle were killed by the Israeli army. I lived through that period, that drama, with the help of my grandmother’s extraordinary spirit of forgiveness. She was a very strong woman, guided by her faith and by the idea of not bringing hatred into the family.

Contrary to the generally accepted view, forgiveness is not a service one renders to others: it lets us live not in vengeance but in peace with ourselves.

It is with that frame of mind that I was brought up by my grandmother.

When I went to France at the age of 17 to study philosophy and theology, I experienced the encounter between East and West, and I gained a better understanding of my own Eastern roots and discovered the great richness in them.

How do your students react in those moments when the crisis worsens?

You always have to be prepared for very active, very violent reactions. We stop classes to give pupils the opportunity talk to their teachers. That way they can express the hurt and the fear they are experiencing and try to transform that expression into thinking and responsibility instead of staying in the violence.

Education for peace is directed towards responsibility. It doesn’t mean just singing about peace but rather developing a way of thinking and a responsibility in relation to the conflict in which we are actors.

Do you think peace is possible in the Holy Land in the near future?

There have been moments when we have held the dove of peace in our hands. We want peace. But peace is the agreement between two parties. And in this conflict the two parties do not know each other. It is impossible to make peace without this knowledge of the other which lets you understand the elements needed for establishing a dialogue and finally reaching a solution.

And there aren’t umpteen solutions. The solution lies in the recognition of both peoples and two states, one alongside the other in a spirit of cooperation and peace and the recognition of the rights of each to security and dignity. On this plot of land, there are no other solutions.

Are you saying, in fact, that peace does not depend on will and international initiatives, so much as on changing mentalities?

Exactly. And anyway, it is easy to see. No external pressure has ever succeeded in bringing about peace. The populations have to meet. That is where there is tremendous work to be done.

Excerpted with permission from SHS UNESCO Newsletter, July – Sept. 2003.

INCIDENT ON A JEWISH TRAIN

by a Jewish Christian

I was in a dining car on a train in Germany. All at once a young officer ordered the just-arrived diners to leave. Soldiers were to be fed first.

This was the early 1960s, but the language and the color of the uniform took me back to the 1940s, to another German train taking me and what was left of my family to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.

I could never forgive or forget the Holocaust; and the bitter memories came rushing in. I felt an immense anger and hatred. I refused to move.

I had at that time a diplomatic passport; and when the young officer approached me, the last person in the car, I had it on the table.

In my best German, I said to him, "Are you going to have me move?"

He reddened and did not know what to do. I stayed.

The car filled up with recruits, and the officer sat at my table. As we ate, we made brief conversation.

Suddenly the young officer asked, "Where did you learn German?"

"In Bergen-Belsen," I retorted. "I was one of the few you did not murder."

His face became deathly white, and his blue eyes enlarged. Large tears formed and ran down his cheeks.

Then he reached over and held both my hands. "I am a German," he stammered. "I love my country very much, but I am ashamed of it. I don’t know how you can ever forgive us."

He wept openly and without shame. And with this gesture it was as though he took from me the heavy burden of bitter memories and deep hate.

His simple but profound action was for me a turning point.

This German soldier came to me with compassion and love, with understanding and humility. He became a healer and a guide to peace.

What does it mean to forgive? Perhaps it is to "give away" anger, to give away hatred, to give away frustration and bitterness.

Before the incident on the train, I often felt very strong, for I had learned to conceal my feelings.

But because so much of what I had trusted and love had been destroyed, I could never trust fully.

I had learned to depend on myself alone. I could never speak of the past; and I could rarely even think about it. The past was hideous, and it was entombed within me. I could only react with anger and with hatred.

And now love, tears, and a reaching-out had opened the tomb of the past and started to escape.

This all took time. I had to first look at and feel what had happened. Then I had to talk about it, mourn for it, and weep for those I loved.

Lastly I had to bury itLnot in myself, but in the compassion and love of God.

Then I simply had to leave it.

Can I forget what happened in that concentration camp? No, never. But I remember it now in a different way.

It is a measuring stick to see with realism the scope and extent of today’s problems.

Whereas before I needed to be closed in on myself, now I can be open. Because of this liberation of forgiveness, I am now free and fully alive.

Knowing how close we all were to death, my grandfather often spoke to me, a child, about many profound things.

I remember one evening just before he was killed, he said, "Because of these terrible times, you will see a beggar on the street and you will know he is your brother. You will see someone lonely, afraid and hungry, and you will act, for that person is you.

"And if you see this way, and if you act this way, you may be in an alien land among alien people. But you will look around and discover that you are home among your own people."

When I look back on that incident on the train, I see the young German officer as my brother. For he opened for me the door of forgiveness, and to forgive is to love.

Whoever loves is at home among his people wherever he is. For all people are his people.

Reprinted from Restoration, September 1992.

Word Made Flesh

A LADY OF THE NIGHT

by Fr. Pat McNulty

The following is a reflection on John 8:1-11, the story of the woman taken in adultery, the Gospel for March 28th, the 5th Sunday of Lent. The other readings for that Sunday are Isaiah 43:16-21 and Philippians 3:8-14.

———————-

Once upon a time I had a "vision" and the strangest part about it was I didn’t even know I had one until it was all over.

One of my first assignments as a young, hopeful, know-it-all priest was to our diocesan cathedral parish. Of course all young priests thought of that particular assignment as a kind of feather-in-your-cap. I mean, after all, the cathedral!

(Only later did some of us find out we were probably sent to the cathedral so the bishop could keep a closer eye on us, as well he should have! So much for clerical prestige!)

Anyhow, in those days all the priests helped with Communion at every Sunday Mass, and at the cathedral many, many people received Communion on Sundays.

One of the first things the good pastor did as I was preparing to help for the first time was to point out a lady sitting in the front row. "Mary will come to the railing but do not give her Communion," Monsignor said to me. When I asked why he said, "She is ‘a lady of the night’." In the 1960s that was the "politically correct" way of saying that she was a prostitute.

I learned soon enough that everyone at the cathedral knew that lady who always sat alone in the front row. But none of us knew her name so we called her "Mary."

She was well-known in all the bars in the neighborhood, too; and she was also quite disturbed.

Yet she came to the Communion railing every Sunday and with folded hands she would open her mouth and put out her tongue just like everyone else going to Communion. If you hadn’t seen the priest pass her by, you would think she had actually received.

She would close her mouth, make the Sign of the Cross, get up, reverently genuflect, go back to her pew and do what everyone else did in those days after Communion. (I was so "clerical" in 1962 I didn’t even think to give the poor lady a simple blessing as I passed her by.) I did however try talking to her a number of times, but we were never able to really communicate.

And so year after year Mary, our own "lady of the night," came and went from the Communion railing with nothing to show for it but her humble coming and going.

Then one Sunday while I was helping with Communion, a small dog, which had made its way into the church, came right up next to where Mary was kneeling at the railing. I was so distracted by the commotion made by the ushers as they tried to round up the dog and take it back outside that I unwittingly put the sacred host on Mary’s tongue!

At first her eyes registered shock. But as she began to realize what had happened, it was immediately obvious to me that all this time, all these years, she knew exactly what she was doing every Sunday. And she knew exactly why she was unable to take Communion.

And somewhere in the depths of her simple, wounded heart she knew exactly what had just happened.

She was not an attractive person and her lipstick and mascara were usually all over her face, but I will never forget the look of her face that day. She smiled the most beautiful smile.

She didn’t return to her pew. She was out the door and gone in a flash.

In any other situation I would probably have feared that the person was planning something sacrilegious, and I would have sent someone after them immediately. But not with Mary.

It may have taken me a few years at the communion railing to "get the message" but, when it came, I knew. It was Jesus himself who had given her communion!

All she did was to listen to him tell her Sunday after Sunday to come there to the cathedral even though she must have felt like everyone was "stoning her" for her sins.

After that Sunday, we didn’t see "hide nor hair" of Mary. One day as I was having lunch at a pub across from the cathedral, a pub where many of the people in the downtown area went for lunch, I asked if anybody had seen or heard of Mary recently.

Someone told me she had been struck down by a city bus not too far from the entrance to the cathedral some time ago. Later I did some hospital checking and learned that she never recovered from the accident, and that she had died shortly thereafter in a local nursing home.

Reckoning the time according to the story told in the pub, I discovered that the accident had happened just after Mary had received Communion.

Then I suddenly realized that I had had "a vision" and I didn’t even know I had it. A vision? Yes! I believe I saw, with my own eyes, the Lord himself do for a "lady of the night" what he had done for the adulterous women in the Gospel of St. John.

Because for Christians I think vision means, "to really see as God sees." Christians should be having that kind of vision all the time!

And as we meditate on them and contemplate them, our whole vision of the world with all its cruelty and darkness should begin to change. We should begin to see things as God sees them—whether we are "ladies or gentlemen of the night" or just arrogant scribes and Pharisees.

In any case my "vision" has grown into many a homily and article such as this one.

Once in that same cathedral I preached about all the parallels of this gospel event right there at our Communion railing with its public sinners, scribes and Pharisees, and Jesus writing on our terrazzo floor and forgiving the woman.

At another time I preached about the men who had sinned with the woman. And in that vision I wondered if perhaps the same men who exposed her had not themselves also sinned with her at one time or another, and that Jesus was writing the specifics of all that hypocrisy in the sand so that they would know that he knew that they knew that he knew.

But today I have yet another vision, one I have never had before: I envision thousands of "public sinners" coming to the Communion place Sunday after Sunday in their own parishes throughout the world.

They come knowing that they will be refused, and should be refused, but they come anyway, out of great reverence for the Eucharist and to receive at least a blessing. I envision them humbly bowing, making the Sign of the Cross, and moving back to their pews to do what everyone else who receives Communion does.

And in this vision what happened to Mary at the cathedral never happens to them. They just come back over and over, humbly and quietly. Everyone knows who they are. Everyone sees them come to the Communion place and sees them refused. And everyone sees them come back again and again and again until one day their name appears in the parish obituary.

Imagine what would happen to us "non-public sinners" in a parish where we saw known public sinners at our Communion place Sunday after Sunday, expecting nothing, demanding nothing, just there out of love and reverence for the Blessed Sacrament!

I experienced something of what that might feel like one day when I was traveling and chose to attend Mass rather than concelebrate.

By some strange instinct, when I came to the place for Communion, I did not take the sacred host. Instead I asked the priest if I could just have a blessing, and he did so.

At that moment I suddenly saw my true state of soul in a way I had never seen it before. It was not shame or guilt or fear that I felt. And it wasn’t sin that I saw. What I saw was eucharistic arrogance.

I was being given a lesson on how to see the real state of my own soul at Communion time, and I realized it had been a public sinner who had been my greatest teacher!

Now whenever it is time for Communion I have this "vision" where I see Jesus writing in the sand and asking me over and over, "Patrick, do you hold yourself as responsible for your sins against the Gospel as you demand of "public sinners?"

So far I have never had the courage to allow that vision its ultimate effect in my life, but I think I have a very good friend who is asking God for that grace for me. (Don’t give up on me, Mary.)

My Dear Family

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

by Catherine Doherty

I was rejected by my homeland, Russia, when revolution broke out. Only those who have experienced this kind of rejection can fully understand its immense power and its infinite tragedy.

The revolution rejected the so-called aristocracy, the establishment, and hunted down the opposition. Today when I read about nations where people are being killed by the thousands, I think of Russia. The number of people killed before and after Stalin took power ran into the tens of millions.

I think I can comprehend something of what Our Lady felt when her Son was killed. I had to witness the killing of many Russian sons, brothers, fathers and mothers. The sword Simeon spoke of penetrated Russia.

One leaves his country. If not, he dies. He flees the fatherland, the one he loves, that means so much to him. He was born there. He absorbed everything about its customs and ways. All of a sudden, he is compelled to enter a strange and foreign world. He becomes a refugee.

Ten million refugees left Russia. The country we went to may have been wonderful to us, but it was not our own. We were strangers in a strange land.

Our rejection shook us. It permeated our nights, filled our dreams and our conversations. Often we gathered some place where Russian was spoken and recalled the days of old.

At such moments, one remembers that Jesus was a refugee. So were his mother and foster father. In faith, one plunges into the exile of Jesus from his land into the land of Egypt. Our exile from our land then becomes more understandable. We refugees are making up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ (Col 1:24). These words of St. Paul are a mystery that refugees probe.

Then there are the Jews, rejected by everyone; a strange nation rejected for centuries through the ignorance of mankind. When you consider them, something deep and profound comes from your heart. To be rejected by the majority of mankind must be terrible.

I recall my father talking about this. He often opened his doors to Jews who were victims of this rejection. He used to say to me and to our family, "Always be kind to the Jews because they are the rejected ones. Don’t ever forget that out of their bosom came Jesus Christ, Mary the Mother of God, and the Apostles."

When you think about Auschwitz, words fail. The Nazis not only rejected the Jews but they made martyrs out of them. Their martyrdom earned them the land of their forefathers.

Now the Jewish people in turn are rejecting the Arabs. A pain comes into your heart when two Semitic people feud with one another. There should be room for both in that ancient land.

If you have strength to open your eyes and look across the world, what do you see? In almost every nation, you see rejection in one form or another.

Much rejection is motivated by anger. It becomes impossible to open your eyes because there are few countries where this ultimate, cataclysmic rejection is not operative. This incomprehensible rejection overwhelms you.

After witnessing such rejection, we have to stand before Christ and say, "Lord, have mercy on us. We have sinned."

Adapted from On the Cross of Rejection, pp. 71-75, available from MH Publications.

Lent

UNRAVELING A BALL OF YARN

by Fr. Bob Wild

There are many obstacles to conversion. One of them is the fact that we may have been sinning or doing something stupid for a long, long time. This is a hard pill to swallow, and so we put up tremendous defenses against seeing it.

When I was living in poustinia on the island in Combermere, I used to spin wool. To make two-ply yarn, you spin two balls of yarn and then you ply them together.

Well, one day I was happily plying away, but things weren’t going too smoothly. No matter. Perhaps the wheel needed oiling or something. I barged ahead.

But the spinning kept getting more and more difficult. When I had almost completed the whole ball, I suddenly realized that I had plied it in reverse. Then I had an experience, the kind that I’m trying to convey.

I had done it all wrong! And that’s not all! Now I had to do it right. And to do that, I had to go through a whole long, messy process. I had to unravel the whole ball. I felt so discouraged that I could hardly get up the energy to begin.

But once I accepted the truth of my stupidity, and began to unravel the ball, it got easier. Though there was spun wool all over the poustinia—all over the rafters and the floor—when I finally approached the final rewinding, I felt a great sense of relief and joy.

In the case of our sins and stupidities, fortunately we have not been perpetrating all of them for many years only some of them. Still we need a great deal of humility to face the fact that we have been involved in some wrong-doing or stupidity for a long time. And perhaps the older we get, the harder it is.

We have gotten glimmers that something is wrong, but all too often we quickly push them out of our awareness. It’s just too hard to look at.

If, on the other hand, we allow this awareness into our hearts, a process begins. Our first reaction will likely be pain, frustration, and a sense of hopelessness.

It will be a cry, Oh no! You mean I’ve been wrong all these years? Yes, you have been doing it wrong all these years.

The tendency at this point might be to deny it, to make believe that it’s not as bad as we think it is. But the fact is, it probably is that bad! Don’t rationalize your way out of it. Accept it.

Then we might think: Why didn’t God reveal this to me sooner? Why did he let me waste so many years of my life?

It won’t help at all to think like that. Probably God tried to reveal this sin to us many times in the past, but we didn’t have the courage to face it.

And discouragement can set in: If I’ve been wrong in this area, maybe my whole life is one big mistake. And sadness: All my efforts have been wasted. There’s no sense in trying any more. And self-pity: I’ll never be able to live right.

This is an important moment of decision. Either we’re going to admit our blindness and seek change, or we’re going to cover it up and continue on as if nothing has been revealed to us.

Yes, it was very, very difficult to start unraveling that dumb yarn. But if we break something, we have to pick up the pieces. If we make a mistake, we have to admit it and fix it. And, if we discover that we’ve been sinful or immature or childish in some area of our lives for a long, long time, the mature and life-giving thing to do is admit it and unravel it as best we can.

Repentance, after all, is admitting that we have been traveling down the wrong road. (Like when we’re driving and we discover that we’ve gone 200 miles in the wrong direction!)

It takes a big heart to repent. Facing long-standing faults is a great grace, the kind that makes saints. And if we accept that grace, we will know not only the pain of having wasted many years and but also the joy of finally living in the light. Lent is a good time to start unraveling the yarn.

The Pope’s Corner

THE ONLY WAY TO PEACE

by Pope John Paul II

Lent represents a providential gift of the Lord and a precious opportunity to draw closer to him, turning inward and listening to his voice within us.

Some Christians think that they are able to do without this constant spiritual effort because they do not heed the urgency of the call to confront themselves with the truth of the Gospel. So as not to disturb their way of living, they attempt to empty and make innocuous words such as: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you (Lk 6:27).

For such persons such words sound so difficult to accept and to translate into a coherent conduct of life. In fact, they are words that, if taken seriously, demand a radical conversion.

When one is offended or hurt, one is tempted to give in to the psychological mechanisms of self-pity and revenge, ignoring the invitation of Jesus to love one’s enemy.

Nevertheless, daily human events give undeniable evidence to how much we need forgiveness and reconciliation to bring about a real personal and social renewal. This is true not only in interpersonal relations but also in the relations among communities and nations.

The numerous and tragic conflicts which tear at humanity (sometimes arising from misunderstood religious motives) have left marks of hatred and violence among peoples. Occasionally this also occurs among groups and factions within a nation itself.

In fact, with a sad sense of helplessness, we see or experience, at times, the return of skirmishes which were believed definitely settled. This gives the impression that some people are involved in a spiral of unstoppable violence that will continue to heap victims upon victims, without a concrete solution envisioned.

The desires for peace that arise from every part of the world are thus ineffective: The necessary commitment to moving toward the desired agreement does not appear to take root.

In the face of this alarming scenario, Christians cannot remain indifferent. It is for this reason that, in the Jubilee Year, I spoke out asking God’s pardon for the Church and for the sins of her children.

We are well aware that the guilt of Christians somewhat darkened the spotless face. However, trusting in God’s merciful love, we are also able to continually return with confidence to the path.

The love of God finds its highest expressions precisely when man, sinful and thankless, is brought back to full communion with him.

In this perspective, the "purification of the memory" is above all the renewed confession of divine mercy, a confession that the Church, at the various levels, is called each time to acknowledge as her own with renewed conviction.

The only way to peace is forgiveness. To accept and give forgiveness makes possible a new quality of rapport between men, interrupting the spiral of hatred and revenge, and breaking the chains of evil which bind the heart of rivals.

For nations in search of reconciliation and for those hoping for peaceful coexistence among individuals and peoples, there is no other way than that of forgiveness received and offered.

How rich are the beneficial teachings which resonate in the words of the Lord: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends down rain on the just and on the unjust (Mt 5:44-45).

To love the one who offends you is to disarm your adversary, and this love has the power to transform a battlefield into a place of supportive co-operation.

This is a challenge that concerns individuals, but also communities, peoples and all humanity. It concerns families in a special way. It is not easy to convert one’s self to forgiveness and reconciliation.

To reconcile can already seem problematic when we ourselves are guilty. If on the other hand, the other is guilty, to reconcile one’s self can even be seen even as an unreasonable humiliation. To take this path of forgiveness and reconciliation, it is necessary to experience interior conversion.

And for this the courage of humble obedience to the command of Jesus is necessary. His word leaves no doubt. It is not only the one who provokes the estranged, but also the one who suffers who must seek conciliation (cf. Mt 5:23-24).

The Christian must make peace even when he feels himself to be the victim of one who has unjustly offended and struck. The Lord himself acted in this manner, and he waits for the disciple to follow him, to co-operate in this way in the redemption of his brother.

In our times, forgiveness appears more and more to be a necessary dimension for an authentic social renewal and for the strengthening of peace in the world.

The Church, announcing forgiveness and love of enemies, is conscious of inspiring in the spiritual patrimony of all humanity, a new way or relating to one anotherTa somewhat difficult way, but one that is rich in hope.

In this, the Church knows that it must rely on the help of the Lord, who never abandons one who turns to him in difficulty.

Love is not resentful (1 Cor 13:5). Here the apostle Paul recalls that forgiveness is one of the highest forms of charity. Lent represents a propitious time to further deepen the practice of this virtue.

Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Father gives to us his forgiveness in Christ, and this encourages us to live in love, considering the other not as an enemy but as a brother.

May this time of penance and reconciliation encourage believers to think and act in the sign of authentic charity. This inner attitude will lead them to possess the fruits of the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:22) and to offer with a new heart material help to those who are in need. A heart reconciled with God and with neighbor is a generous heart….

In this Lenten season, I want to invite all believers to an ardent and confident prayer to the Lord, because this allows each person to experience anew God’s mercy.

Only this mercy will help us to welcome and live the love of Christ in an ever more joyful and generous way, a love which does not insist on its own way. It is not resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right (1 Cor 13:5-6)

Excerpted from the pope’s message for Lent 2001.

PRAYER OF ST FRANCIS

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, let me bring pardon.

Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.

Where there is despair, let me bring hope.

Where there is darkness, let me bring light.

Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.