This year in Jerusalem

Last night while I slept
I dreamed that I was standing in front of the temple
in the old city of Jerusalem
There I heard the voices of children
who seemed to me like angels from heaven singing
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing
Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna to your King.

Music from Stephen Adams; Lyrics from Frederick E. Weatherly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85WZUMDk8E8

Just as Christmas ceased to be, for many, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, to be the feast of Santa Claus and the physical and affective warmth of family intimacy that contrasts with the cold and snow outside the house; In the same way, Easter has ceased to be the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, but the feast of the egg and the bunny, which symbolize the rebirth of nature in spring after the long lethargy of winter.

We do not know for sure when Jesus of Nazareth was born or when he died. The placement of his birth on the winter solstice and his death and resurrection on the spring equinox was intentional; But the intention was not, as many think, to Christianize the pagan celebrations of these astronomical events and climate change.

The intention was clearly theological: Jesus was born as the days begin to grow, at the end and beginning of a new solar year, for He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all that exists. Just as our planet derives its life by revolving around the sun, so Jesus is for us the sun around which we revolve in order to obtain life.

On the other hand, Jesus died and rose again when the earth is reborn from the apparent death of winter; If autumn reminds us of old age and winter of death, spring, which, as the song says, always comes and goes, reminds us of the eternity we have conquered with the rebirth of Christ.

The prehistory of our Easter
The Passover Supper is a ritual meal, which every Jewish family celebrates, to commemorate the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. As the Book of Exodus (23:8) commands, during the meal the story of the people's departure from captivity must be recounted. At the end of this supper the diners declare in a joyful tone, "Next year in Jerusalem."  

Jerusalem has always been the object of the longing of the Jews of the Diaspora, expelled from their own homeland; their lament in the Babylonian captivity is well known: if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be withered! Let my tongue be caught in my taste, if I do not remember you, if I do not make Jerusalem my supreme joy! (Psalm 137:5-6)

This phrase with which the Passover meal ends is seen by many as anachronistic; Israel being a modern state today, occupying more or less the same land it occupied in the time of King David; living today comfortably both the Jews of Israel and those of the Diaspora, it makes no sense to repeat this phrase.  and much less for the Jews who live in Jerusalem permanently, unless the phrase has a more eschatological meaning.

In this sense, for traditional Jews, it refers to the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the temple; For liberal Jews who do not accept the idea of the Messiah, nor of a temple-based Judaism, the phrase can have numerous interpretations that have more to do with an ideal, utopian and even heavenly Jerusalem that is to come than with the Jerusalem where I now find myself.

Christ's Last Supper
Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and handed it to them. They all drank from it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for all. Assuredly, I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the day I drink it new in the kingdom of God." After the singing of the psalms, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Mark 14:24-25

Some say that Christ's Last Supper was modeled on the traditional Passover meal of the Jews, others opine that it is something new. As the Passover meal of the Jews commemorates the deliverance from slavery in Egypt, while that of Christ marks the moment of a greater deliverance, that of the whole human race, whatever the conclusion of the discussion may serve, serves our purpose.

Just as the Jews of all times say at the end of the Passover supper, "next year in Jerusalem" meaning the hope of a better world, as well as in the continuation of life in the heavenly Jerusalem, Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples says:  "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the day I drink it."  In the Kingdom of God, he affirms that this future is about to come and is fulfilled in himself.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem...
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How many times have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Now your house will be desolate. I tell you, you will not see me until the day comes when you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' Luke 13:34-35

Until that utopian future arrives, the old city continues to be the scene of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. At this moment, as I write these, lines in the monastery of St. Anne where I am staying doing a Bible course for three months, near the lions' gate about 400 meters from here a Palestinian woman tries to stab an Israeli soldier, who seeing her life in danger shot her killing her.

A few hours later, near the Damascus gate, a Palestinian shot another soldier, wounding him; his colleagues chased the Palestinian, so he shot again and wounded another; Finally, the soldiers shot him, killing him. Also on the same day, two Palestinian youths fired on an Israeli bus; As they fled, they were stopped by traffic and even there in public, the soldiers fired at the car with bursts of machine gun fire, killing its occupants and injuring some people who happened to be there.

Heavily armed with machine guns, wearing a bulletproof vest, carrying backpacks full of ammunition, Israeli soldiers do not wear handcuffs as they never take prisoners; They always shoot and kill every Palestinian who makes an attempt on the life of a Jew, then they destroy his house and deport the whole family.

Jerusalem is divided into 4 blocks: the Muslim, the Jewish, the Armenian Christian and the Arab or Palestinian Christian, because the three religions of the book have it as a holy city. For Judaism it is holy because it is built around the Temple, the center of the Jewish faith. For Christians, because Jesus visited her many times as the good Jew that he was, he died in her and rose again.

For Muslims, it is holy because they claim that the Prophet Mohammed travelled from Mecca to Medina and from Medina to Jerusalem in one night, from where he ascended to heaven, more precisely in the Temple in the Holy of Holies, where the Mosque of the Rock stands today; consequently, for Muslims Jerusalem is the third holy city after Mecca and Medina, for this reason it was invaded shortly after the death of the prophet.

Against the ascension to heaven of Mohammed in the image and likeness of Jesus, the historical fact of Muhammad's death, probably by poisoning, and his tomb in the green mosque of Medina speaks. To give more strength to the legend of the prophet's ascension to heaven, Saudi Arabia, against the advice of many Muslims, currently wants to destroy the mosque and the tomb, exhuming the body of the prophet, burying it in an anonymous grave.

Unfortunately, for those who today demand total control over Jerusalem, this visit can only have been a dream, as much as it pains them to admit that there is no evidence or proof that Muhammad traveled in the flesh to Jerusalem, as there were no supersonic planes at that time.

What the Muslims claim as historical fact, the prophet himself claims to have been a dream whose historical context was to convince the most skeptical that he belonged to the lineage of the prophets of Judaism, Abraham, Moses, Jesus. Still in relation to this visit to Jerusalem, Aicha Mahammad, Muhammad's favorite wife, later insisted that it was never a real trip, but a spiritual experience.

The connection of the Muslim faith to the city of Jerusalem is extremely tenuous when compared to that of Judaism and Christianity. The real reason why Muslims claim Jerusalem as a holy city for them is because Judaism and Christianity, which they have always wanted to supplant at all costs, declare it holy before.

Throughout the year in the streets of Jerusalem we observe Jewish and Christian pilgrims from all over the world; the only Muslims we see are those who live here; In fact, the city is formatted for this type of pilgrims, everywhere you can see Jewish and Christian souvenir shops and none for Muslims; the lack of Muslim pilgrims alone is overwhelming proof that this city is not important to them, and many of them do not even believe that Muhammad was ever here.

Since the Muslim religion is a mixture of Judaism and Christianity, adapted to the Bedouin culture, from Mohammed to the present day they look at these religions with a certain envy and grow up with the mentality of "us too", if the others are we are too, if the others have we also have it. The invasion of Jerusalem is no different from the invasion and extermination of Christianity throughout North Africa and Turkey; and in Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to Posters, in France, where it was stopped.

Already possessing two holy cities, by declaring Jerusalem the third, settling on the hill of the temple, the heart of the Jewish faith, they left the Jews without a holy place, with only the western wall of the temple, in front of which they still pray and lament wounded in their faith and nationalism as one who has a thorn buried in the flesh.

Today a forbidden place for Jews, the Temple Esplanade, is occupied by two mosques: the Al Aksa Mosque or the Silver Dome Mosque, and the Rock Mosque or the Golden Dome Mosque, built on the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple, the rock being the place where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac. The golden dome can be seen from any angle of the city and its surroundings for what is today, anachronistically, the ex libris of Jerusalem.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is fundamentally a political rather than a religious conflict; religion, however, is invoked and instrumentalized by both parties as an excuse to avoid making concessions, because what is sent by God is not discussed or questioned or abdicated.

A bridge is not built in the middle, but by the banks it intends to join. On Israel's side, it is essential that they recognize the right of Palestine to a homeland, as they had and the world gave them. On the Muslim side, it is important that you recognize that much of your behavior is governed by myths, legends, and beliefs that defy reason, so it is important that you purify your faith of everything that is in direct collision with science and even common sense.

This year in Jerusalem
On this mountain, (referring to Mount Zion Jerusalem) the Lord of the worlds will prepare for all peoples a banquet of succulent delicacies, a banquet of delicious wines. (…) he will take away the veil that covered all peoples, the cloth that shrouded all nations; He will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and will wipe out the reproach that weighs on his people from the whole earth. Isaiah 25:6-8

As a missionary, over 30 years of ministry, I have celebrated Easter in different countries and locations. Inspired by the traditional phrase of rejoicing, which the Jews exclaim at the end of every Passover meal, I feel like saying with equal joy and with the same hope: This year in Jerusalem! This is the fourth time that I have come here, and I hope that it will not be the last time that I will set foot on the land that the Redeemer trod, but it is the first time that I celebrate the Lord's Passover where it took place 2000 years ago.

Jerusalem means a city of peace, and yet, anachronistically, today divided into four antagonistic peoples who continually fight each other, it is difficult to find a place that has been the scene of so many wars. Let us pray that one day Jerusalem will live up to its name and fulfill Isaiah's prophecy of a banquet of delicious delicacies and rich wines. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC