Tuesday, March 2

Reflection – Ralph Nazareth

Palestinian men, fatigue and anxiety in their faces, waited at the checkpoint to return to their families in Bethlehem. I couldn’t help but squirm with discomfort at the ease with which the magic of my American passport had helped me sail through. Weighed down by this experience of terrible disparity, I struck up a conversation with a Franciscan monk on the bus back to Jerusalem.

He and his two young companions had spent the day in the trauma wing of the Catholic Relief Services Hospital in Bethlehem with children who, terrorized by constant violence and war, had become deaf and mute. I asked them about the “situation” in the occupied territories, my obsessive concern. Their sensitive faces reflected deep pain and understanding. They were at a loss for words. It seemed as if they’d rather be silent.

“But is there no political solution?” I asked again. “That cannot be our main concern,” the monk said to me gently but with conviction. “All we’re called to do is to be with these people, just be with them.”

My Jewish hosts were getting ready for Sabbath. The spirit of quiet descending on the house and on the whole neighborhood was palpable. Everywhere the ordinary was being surrendered, as it were, into the hands of God. The parting words of the young monk were still with me. “Just be with them, just be.”

My ceaselessly agitated political self was being invited to become still, to enter the silence of the children in the trauma wing, to open myself to the silence of God.

To ponder and pray:

¨ What activities do you often not “get to” during the week that you’d like to?

¨ What kind of preparation might enable you to have room for them on your Sabbath?

¨ How does it feel to buck the tide of our society?

¨ What does your perfect Sabbath look like?

Write a Sabbath plan in your prayer journal.