Hostage Exchange

 

This is the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa, offering to take the place of Hamas' hostages.  This morning I was reading a letter St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote around 100 AD.  This hostage exchange was in my mind as I read Ignatius telling the early Christians not to rescue him, but rather pray for him.

I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way.  I plead with you: show me me no untimely kindness.  Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God....  

Mark Your Calendar

 A day of prayer is asked for the people involved in this war between Israel and Hamas.  I love this man's name--Pizzaballa--Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa. He was just made a cardinal. He is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. It would be so good for us to join the Catholics and Christians of the Holy Land in this prayer wherever we are . . .

"The newly created cardinal who is also the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is calling on Christians to pray and fast for peace in the Holy Land.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa has asked that on Tuesday, October 17, “everyone hold a day of fasting, abstinence, and prayer.”

The cardinal, who just returned to Jerusalem after spending some time in Italy, issued a letter Wednesday on behalf of himself and other bishops of the Holy Land, in response to the escalating war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic political organization that runs the Palestinian territory of Gaza."

Snip.

"But, the patriarch said, in order not to “remain helpless,” it is important to pray, “to turn our hearts to God the Father.”

“Only in this way we can draw the strength and serenity needed to endure these hard times, by turning to Him, in prayer and intercession, to implore and cry out to God amidst this anguish,” Cardinal Pizzaballa said.

As president of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, he issued an invitation to “all parishes and religious communities to a day of fasting and prayer for peace and reconciliation.”

“We ask that on Tuesday, October 17, everyone hold a day of fasting, abstinence, and prayer,” he wrote. “Let us organize prayer times with Eucharistic Adoration and with the recitation of the Rosary to Our Blessed Virgin Mary.