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ISRAEL: BUT “WHICH” PEACE ?
If one considers on the whole the history and the present vicissitudes of Israel, the impression that stands out is that of a people never living in peace. From the slavery in the old Egypt to the Babylonian captivity, up to the Jerusalem destruction on the year 70 a.D. Then, the Diaspora of this people among all the nations; the ghettos in which the Hebrews were restricted. And more recently, the Holocaust during the Second World War, and after the reconstitution of Israel as a State, the recurring wars against Egypt, Lebanon, the Palestinians…Is there a reason for this?
A few decades before the tragic siege and destruction of Jerusalem from the Roman troops, a prophet coming from Galilee "as he came near and saw trhe city, he wept over it, saying: If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side…" (Gospel of Saint Luke 19,41-42).
On every side, just as it’s happening again today, with the Palestinians on the south, Lebanon to the north, and then Syria…The international diplomacy bustles about searching a way out of this situation, so critical for all the middle Eastern area and not only.But the “way out”- the way of peace - is just and only in that Nazarene who said of himself: “I am the way” and “peace I leave to you”; he who came to bring the peace of God to his people, but was rejected and ultimately put to death on the side of the political and religious authorities of Jerusalem, who in that time - as nowadays - didn’t want to recognize in Jesus the Messiah, the only true Saviour of Israel.
That’s “why” Israel, after so many centuries, has not yet and can’t yet have peace; just as after all none of us can have it, unless we surrender to the loving and saving sovereignty of Christ, the Risen Son of God.
And still, according to the unfathomable and benevolent plans of God, it is Jerusalem - not Rome, not even the Vatican - the true “eternal city”, destined to be the future capital of the whole world. A “new” Jerusalem, indeed; not any more slave of its past and of its fears, but enlightened by its Messiah, the Christ, ant therefore “light” and consolation for all the peoples.
Years after the ruin of Jerusalem and of the whole Hebrew nation, the Risen Christ gave a comforting , astonishing vision to John, the last of his apostles still alive. He showed him which would be, in the final times of history, the glory of the “new Jerusalem”, worldly capital city of an earth “new” as well. A Hebrew “metropolis” as reguarding its origin and foundations, but multiethnical for what concerns the inhabitants, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages” (Revelation 7,9): happy cohabitation of all those who, in all the times and places, have searched God and received Jesus as Saviour.
“See, the home of God is among mortals,
He will dwell with them as their God,
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away!”(Revelation 21,3-4).