Why We Must Aid the ‘Seeds of Peace’

Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on the papal prayer intention

Intention: Let us pray that Christians living in areas of war or conflict, especially in the Middle East, might be seeds of peace, reconciliation and hope.

In October, a ceasefire was announced in Gaza, along with a roadmap to a more permanent peace. Unfortunately, this was organised over the heads of the Palestinians, but if it results in preventing Gaza’s final eradication and enables the surviving residents to return and rebuild, it will have achieved something, even if a Palestinian state remains a chimaera.

The Catholic Church in Gaza has been frequently attacked by the Israeli Defence Force. Both the community and the actual church building have suffered. Some Christians, as well as their Muslim neighbours sheltering in the church, have been killed and/or injured by these attacks.

That tens of thousands of civilian people, many of them children, had to die before a ceasefire agreement was reached is a monstrous moral failure, not just of Israel and Hamas but also of the international community, which uses the region as a theatre of proxy war.

Worthy of admiration

We should have nothing but admiration for the Christians in Gaza, the West Bank and other parts of the Middle East. Choosing to remain and continuing to be a vulnerable minority in the midst of such politicised violence is an act of faith and courage. To continue to believe that peace is even possible between Israelis and Palestinians, after what has happened, is another act of faith.

The international community is also failing morally in not taking seriously the situations of other conflicts in the world: Sudan, Eastern Congo, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, the Uighur region of China. The mystery of why certain conflicts —the struggle against apartheid in South Africa is a good example — catch the eye of the international press and the world while others remain unnoticed, requires an examination of conscience among journalists and those of us who watch, read and listen to the news.

For Christians, our lack of attention means that we are not hearing the cries of our fellow Christians in those troubled regions. This papal intention is a call to redress this.

Those of us who recall the violent path that led to the end of apartheid will also remember how helpful the words and gestures of support from our co-religionists abroad were. Now, as then, it is important for Christians who are bearing witness to their faith in the middle of a war or a genocide to know that they are not alone.

This support is essential if they are to become, in the intention’s words, “seeds of future peace, reconciliation and hope”.