The Latin Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, has urged Christians to acknowledge the little town of Bethlehem as it actually is this Christmas, not as it is depicted in song and tradition.
“Amid the nostalgia and ancient memories of the first Christmas in Bethlehem, there is today a long sustained religious romanticism,” he said. He called that Christmas-time romanticism “understandable…but not realistic.”
“When you celebrate Christmas, remember that in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, life is not a Christmas life. It is not the blessed life of the new redeemed humanity. The song of the Angels is far away.
“Christmas, every year reminds us that there is no peace on the earth, especially in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and that we have to make [peace] again,” he said in a greeting to a Pax Romana group based in New York.
He said that in the occupied territories, “everywhere justice is lacking.”
“We know the pain. We taste the daily trauma. Sadly, we know that darkness yet hovers over the Holy Night. We must be the light of Christ,” Patriarch Sabbah said.
“With the focus on the Child Jesus, we must ask anew: What about the Children of Bethlehem, of Palestine? What about the required protection and human security for all God’s children?
“In the face of the [Israeli] occupation and insecurity, children suffer,” he said. “Natural innocence is stolen. Random violence and vulnerability robs mothers of peace for their children in Bethlehem and throughout the Holy Land.”
In an apparent reference to U.N. resolutions and the terms of the Oslo accords that once seemed to offer a two-state solution to the conflict in Israel-Palestine, Patriarch Sabbah said that all the hard decisions have already been made, and only the courage to see them through remain lacking.
He called on political leaders in the United States and Israel to find that courage and urged the members of Pax Romana to press them to do so.
Patriarch Sabbah led the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem from 1987 until 2008, the first Palestinian-born patriarch in five centuries.
In 2009, Patriach Sabbah, with other prominent Palestinian Christian leaders, authored the Kairos Palestine Document that described the Israeli occupation of the West Bank territories as a “sin against God and humanity.”
