Let Your Kingdom Come

We began the Day on the Mount of Olives, and stopped at the Pater Noster Church, where we remember Jesus giving us the Lord's prayer. Hearing the Lord's prayer on the very mountain that our Lord gave it was very moving. Our Chaldean seminarians, Perrin and Rodney, were able to pray the prayer in Aramaic, the same language in which Jesus spoke and prayed, afterwards the rest of us sang it in Latin.

We then moved to the spot of the Ascension. What really struck me was the awkward unspoken tension between the various religious groups. While we were venerating the spot of our Lord's Ascension, interestingly enough a group of Muslims was waiting outside for their turn to pay their respects. (Muslims also believe that Jesus ascended into heaven.) When we were finished we were asked to move along so that the group of Muslims could have their turn. This experience manifested to me the necessity for religious unity.

We were then priviliged to celebrate Mass from the place where Jesus wept for Jerusalem, as explained in Luke. As the Gospel was being proclaimed, we were able to look out over Jerusalem, seeing roughly what Jesus saw when he wept.

"And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes" (Luke 19:41-43). This verse seemed especially poignant knowing of the various tensions that exist between the different religious groups in Jerusalem as well as the varying geo-political strategies of people from Israel and from Palestine. What or who is it that makes for peace but the Prince of Peace, Himself? He who taught us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to serve and love one another as He loved us. Part of our prayer during that Mass was for peace upon Jerusalem, and we know that that can only happen when we sincerely pray and live out the words of the Our Father, to let God's kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven and to forgive those who trespass against us.