As violence continues unabated in Palestine and Israel, the Custos of the Holy Land stresses that “true strength lies in the gift of oneself, in the capacity to love until the end”.
By Joseph Tulloch The Custos of the Holy Land, Fr Francesco Ielpo, has said that “renouncing violence is not weakness, forgiving is not a defeat, and death is not the end”. In an Easter message published on April 1, Fr Ielpo - who oversees pilgrimage sites in Palestine, Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East - said the region is currently suffering under “the weight of war, of violence, of fear, and of uncertainty”. In this fraught context, he stressed, Christ’s Resurrection is not distant but rather “a concrete fact” that obliges believers to “learn to read history with the eyes of God”. True strength is self-giving Jesus’ Resurrection, Fr Ielpo explained, “overturns” our habitual ways of interpreting the world. While the world judges that what matters is “to be strong, powerful, and victorious”, God shows us that true strength lies “in the gift of oneself, in the capacity to love until the end”. While we are naturally tempted to see Jesus’ cross as “a defeat, a loss, a humiliation, a folly”, Fr Ielpo said, Easter teaches us that it is precisely in the Cross that “true wisdom” and “true victory” manifest themselves, through ”the victory of the love that gives itself without reserve.” The centurion's epiphany In a meditation released a few days prior, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, had made a similar appeal. In his Palm Sunday message, released on March 29, the Cardinal reflected on the figure of the Roman centurion who, according to Matthew’s Gospel, was so moved by Jesus’ crucifixion that he exclaimed “Truly this was the son of God”. The centurion, Pizzaballa said, is “a soldier, a man shaped by the logic of force”, who “measures success by domination, by victory, by control”. Yet, standing before the crucified Christ, and witness to “a love that does not defend itself, a fidelity that does not retreat even in death”, the centurion’s worldview collapses. What he discovers, Cardinal Pizzaballa said, is that “true power lies not in violence or in the sword that kills, but in a life freely given.”