Holy Week 2024 - Reflection from Pax Christi

The Cross in the Rubble - Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem

'We cannot live a day without saying yes or no to death or to life, to war or to peace. The choice is ours. There is no compromise in this matter. To postpone or evade decision is to decide, to hide is to decide, to compromise is to decide. There is no escape; this is our challenge.'

Jean Zaru, Palestinian Quaker Theologian

As we journey through Holy Week this year, we can more than ever relate the final journey of Jesus through Jerusalem to all that we have been hearing and seeing over the last six months in Palestine, in Gaza, the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. We watch the haunting images and the news reports and for most of us there are no words left to describe the endless pain, suffering, violence, humiliation and death. We see the occupied and the occupier; the military might and the helpless; the appeals for the return of the captives; the appeals for water, the mocking by the soldiers, the wailing of the bereaved, mothers holding their dead children, the burials and those left in the rubble. We don't know what to say any more to our friends there, except that we pray and stand with them. We want it all to stop.

In all of it, we know that we have to keep on listening and watching, accompanying them in any ways that we can, by keeping in touch with them and by assuring them of our prayers and our actions for justice. No matter how small these may seem, we cling on to the steadfast hope that, together, we will make a difference and after suffering and death, after the emptiness and pain, there will be new life.

Thank you to all of you, members and friends, who are on this very long journey with us. Please continue to do whatever is possible for you, pray, hold vigils, tell the stories raise your voices, sign petitions, write letters and walk together on the streets demanding a ceasefire and the restoration of humanity.

We accept the challenge that Jean Zaru mentions above and we remember that today, as we see in the powerful images from the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, Christ is in the Rubble, the Cross Rises from the Rubble.

Wishing you the courage, peace and blessings of Easter .

Ann Farr

Chair, Pax Christi England and Wales