Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, presided at Midnight Mass (video) amid deeply subdued Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem.
“My thoughts go to Gaza and its two million inhabitants,” he preached. “Truly the words ‘there was no room for them’ describe their situation, which is now known to all. Their suffering ceaselessly cries out to the whole world. No place or home is safe for anyone.”
“Thousands of people have been deprived of their basic needs; they are hungry, and they are even more exposed to incomprehensible violence,” he continued. “There seems to be no place for them, not only physically, but also in the minds of those who decide the fate of nations. This is the situation in which the Palestinian people has been living in for too long.”
“Even for us, here, today, despite everything, even in these dramatic circumstances, we believe so: God can make room even in the hardest of hearts,” he added. “In the present circumstances, if we want to find the true joy of Christmas and if we want to meet the Savior, we, the whole Church, must return to God and to His love.”