A clear, operative judgment
The recommendations of Archbishop Twal and Fr. Pizzaballa translate into a clear, operative judgment addressed to all visitors. And we forty-five priests of the Madrid Diocese who were on pilgrimage in the Holy Land during Easter Week welcomed them as such.
One accumulates many impressions in the course of those few days, to the extent of feeling “overdosed.” In each of these places, there is something agonizing and at the same time irresistible. On the first evening, when you reach the check-point in the wall at the entrance to Bethlehem, you tremble to think you are entering the city where the Savior of the World was born! All you can do is struggle to get your breath back, look attentively, and ask about everything, in order to understand what is happening in this enigmatic and afflicted land. If there is a place in the world in which it takes courage to “broaden reason,” it is surely here. How can you find your way through this labyrinth of complex arguments, often very plausible, in favor of one side or the other? You look at once for some explanation. Your reason wants to understand, but the task is completely beyond your powers. There is only one way to solve the enigma: trust in the witnesses, today’s witnesses and those who, down the centuries, have cared for the living tradition of the Church in the East. We had the great fortune of living this pilgrimage as an on-going testimony. We saw and heard how it is possible to live here, taking up responsibility for your own life without playing the part of the victim and without feeling rancor.

Marta, Piero, Tomaso, Ettore…
Marta, a Christian Palestinian university student, told us–with a determination and serenity uncommon at her age–of the conditions in which she is studying, and of her relationships with her companions, Jewish and Muslim, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Piero, Tomaso and Ettore live in the house of the Memores Domini, and work in the service of the Custody of the Holy Land with the passion of taking care of the people they have met, whom Christ has entrusted to them, betting everything on the growth of this friendship. We welcomed the silent but no less eloquent witness of the history, the architecture, and the archaeology. Fr. José Miguel Garcia’s presentation made each of the Holy Places speak for themselves, in a spectacle both of reason (historical, literary and archeological documentation), and at the same time of faith (readings from the Gospel accounts and comments on passages from Fr. Giussani). As we traveled in the buses, Sobhy Makhoul gave us an untiring account of the present and past of Christianity, Judaism and Islam in Israel, including the various political, social and economical conditions.

Grace and Reason
You ask yourself the meaning of certain archeological remains, cared for devotedly in basilicas filled with faithful or else abandoned under the desert sands. The most reasonable answers have always been transmitted by a living chain of trust in others–the Franciscans carry out studies in the places where the Crusaders had been, in their turn seeking out places venerated by the Byzantines, who had carefully researched the work of the Empress Helena, who gathered the testimony of the primitive Christian communities. Travelers and pilgrims over the course of twenty centuries confirm this History within history in their own accounts. The phenomenon is infinitely richer and more detailed than what we have briefly outlined here, and there were many more people involved, but there is no doubt of the validity of the method of trust in witnesses, which is the natural way to use reason, perfected in the light of supernatural faith. I have rarely found it easier to verify how the Catholic faith achieves a surprising synthesis between the gift of Grace and the fullness of reason.

The Holy Sepulcher
Of the many magnificent memories, limiting myself only to Jerusalem, what accompanies me most is the Holy Sepulcher. There is something strident and restless in this unique city, as if it were unable to be reconciled with itself. Peace and unity are the two aspirations most deeply rooted in every human heart. Jerusalem cries out her need for peace and unity, almost to the point of exhaustion. She still doesn’t possess them, despite the peaceful and violent–at times terribly violent–efforts going on to bring them about. There is, in the heart of this city, a wound that has never been healed, a crack in the rock, apparently innocuous, but crucial for our destiny. From this crucial wound in the stone, peace and unity entered once into this world, never more to leave it. What a paradox! The origin of unity almost crushed by violent clashes, the like of which are unknown in any other place on the planet! But the Sepulcher is obstinately empty, and peace and unity go on spreading discretely in Jerusalem and in the whole universe thanks to the witnesses, as a sign of a Presence that unites, and therefore answers our need to live together as human beings and to understand. It is not just a neat phrase. All of us 45 priests went back to Spain more united and more at peace than when we arrived in Tel Aviv one week earlier.
When Jesus comes back at the Parousia, peace and unity will reign even in the Holy City for ever. In the meantime, we shall commit ourselves according to “the doctrine of the four Ps.”

To the participants of the Assembly of the “Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches” [ROACO], June 21, 2007