The doors were locked. They were petrified that someone would crucify them too.
When on the evening of that first day of the week, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you.” And he breathed on them with the Holy Spirit. The Breath of God brought Peace.
Nine hundred and ninety-six years ago, the thirty-seven year old father of a well-established reform of religious life and of the Church as a whole, walked to Damietta, Egypt to see the Sultan of that land at the very moment that the great King was engaged in mortal combat with the Fifth Christian Crusade.
Now it probably took about a year to walk from Assisi to Damietta and Saint Francis and his companions would have had to pass through modern day Syria along the way, perhaps traversing the very soil over which men fight today.
Arriving in Egypt, he witnessed a ferocity of war no less evident than in our own time, as the Sultan of Egypt, Malik-al-Kamil, the nephew of Saladin the Great had decreed that anyone who brought him the detached head of a Christian should be rewarded with a single golden coin.
St. Bonaventure, in his Major Life of St. Francis, tells us how the Saint and his companion just walked right into the enemy camp, where they were predictably placed in chains, beaten and dragged before the Sultan.
And then it began. Like Pilate before the Lord, the great Sultan had no idea who was before him.
Who sent you? the Sultan asked.
God. Francis replied.
And why did he send you?
To save you and to teach you the truth, he answered.
“When the Sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage,” Bonaventure tells us, “he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.”
Here you have this medieval Goliath of a Sultan with an army so powerful he and his brother had conquered the whole Middle East, but he was conquered by the simplicity of the poverello, saying pace e bene...God sent me to save your soul.
It was an unfair imbalance for a diplomatic negotiation. The Sultan probably saw Francis as a delegate of Cardinal Pelagius and his troops who would seek to negotiate a cease fire or even the return of the Holy sites or the surrender of Egypt.
Nine hundred and ninety-six years ago, the thirty-seven year old father of a well-established reform of religious life and of the Church as a whole, walked to Damietta, Egypt to see the Sultan of that land at the very moment that the great King was engaged in mortal combat with the Fifth Christian Crusade.
Now it probably took about a year to walk from Assisi to Damietta and Saint Francis and his companions would have had to pass through modern day Syria along the way, perhaps traversing the very soil over which men fight today.
Arriving in Egypt, he witnessed a ferocity of war no less evident than in our own time, as the Sultan of Egypt, Malik-al-Kamil, the nephew of Saladin the Great had decreed that anyone who brought him the detached head of a Christian should be rewarded with a single golden coin.
St. Bonaventure, in his Major Life of St. Francis, tells us how the Saint and his companion just walked right into the enemy camp, where they were predictably placed in chains, beaten and dragged before the Sultan.
And then it began. Like Pilate before the Lord, the great Sultan had no idea who was before him.
Who sent you? the Sultan asked.
God. Francis replied.
And why did he send you?
To save you and to teach you the truth, he answered.
“When the Sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage,” Bonaventure tells us, “he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.”
Here you have this medieval Goliath of a Sultan with an army so powerful he and his brother had conquered the whole Middle East, but he was conquered by the simplicity of the poverello, saying pace e bene...God sent me to save your soul.
It was an unfair imbalance for a diplomatic negotiation. The Sultan probably saw Francis as a delegate of Cardinal Pelagius and his troops who would seek to negotiate a cease fire or even the return of the Holy sites or the surrender of Egypt.
But Francis did not arrive as a diplomat seeking an audience with the Great Ayyubid Sultan Malik al-Kamel Naser al-Din Abu al-Ma'ali Muhammed seeking political advantage. No. Francis arrived as a man who so loved Malik that he sought to obtain his soul for God.
In other words, Francis saw Peace not as the prize at the conclusion of an effective political negotiation, but as the opportunity to love the one who had been cast as his enemy, to humanize him and recognize him as his brother.
Which is why his example is so good for me. I am no diplomat. My entire knowledge of international diplomacy comes from observing Jed Bartlett and Leo Magarry in the Situation room of the West Wing. I, frankly, have no idea how to solve the geopolitical intricacies of the war in Syria.
I am not a diplomat. I am a Priest. But as a Priest I know the road to true peace is to love and to pray.
Mother Teresa used to say: “Smile five times a day at someone you don't really want to smile at; do it for peace. Let us radiate the peace of God and so light His light and extinguish in the world and in the hearts of all men all hatred and love for power.”
Or, as Dorothy Day used to say, “My prayer from day to day is that God will so enlarge my heart that I will see you all, and love with you all, in God’s love.”
So pray for peace. Even when you are afraid. Even when you are angry. Pray for peace. And listen for that knock on all the doors you have locked. It is the Lord, who breathes his Spirit upon you and gives you the peace the world cannot give.
What is the purpose of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. We support the Church in the Holy Land by our contributions. And that’s a lot! We make possible more than forty Catholic Schools in the Holy Land, five in Israel, thirteen in the Palestinian Territories and twenty-two in Jordan. More than 20,000 students attend these schools, most in Christian parishes, where we support local Catholic pastors and where our schools are a major source of priestly and religious vocations. That’s a lot of good.
But is it our most important work?
In other words, Francis saw Peace not as the prize at the conclusion of an effective political negotiation, but as the opportunity to love the one who had been cast as his enemy, to humanize him and recognize him as his brother.
Which is why his example is so good for me. I am no diplomat. My entire knowledge of international diplomacy comes from observing Jed Bartlett and Leo Magarry in the Situation room of the West Wing. I, frankly, have no idea how to solve the geopolitical intricacies of the war in Syria.
I am not a diplomat. I am a Priest. But as a Priest I know the road to true peace is to love and to pray.
Mother Teresa used to say: “Smile five times a day at someone you don't really want to smile at; do it for peace. Let us radiate the peace of God and so light His light and extinguish in the world and in the hearts of all men all hatred and love for power.”
Or, as Dorothy Day used to say, “My prayer from day to day is that God will so enlarge my heart that I will see you all, and love with you all, in God’s love.”
So pray for peace. Even when you are afraid. Even when you are angry. Pray for peace. And listen for that knock on all the doors you have locked. It is the Lord, who breathes his Spirit upon you and gives you the peace the world cannot give.
_____
The Knights of the Holy Sepulchre
and a New Pentecost
What is the purpose of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. We support the Church in the Holy Land by our contributions. And that’s a lot! We make possible more than forty Catholic Schools in the Holy Land, five in Israel, thirteen in the Palestinian Territories and twenty-two in Jordan. More than 20,000 students attend these schools, most in Christian parishes, where we support local Catholic pastors and where our schools are a major source of priestly and religious vocations. That’s a lot of good.
But is it our most important work?
We, the sons and daughters of Godfrey di Bouillion and the many saints and martyrs of the crusades. Crusades that lasted for at least a hundred years. A hundred years of wars, some heroic and some not-so-much. But wars nonetheless.
The struggle for command of the meaning of the Crusades is a topic as fascinating for what it says about historians as it does about history. And this speaker is neither so ambitious nor naïve as to think he could untie that knot in this brief presentation.
Nevertheless, allow me to be so bold as to venture an undeniable observation about those Crusades in whose shadows we find the origins of our holy order. While there were Saints, martyrs, holy courage, purity and sacrifice galore…. as in any war there was chaos aplenty as well. And while contemporaneous accounts abound with exaggeration, there was clearly enough atrocity to go around throughout the hundred years of the Crusades. With all sides of the crusades, the brutality and chaos of war was certainly in evidence, as at Antioch, where Christian soldiers slaughtered two hundred muslim civilians, displaying their heads on spikes along the wall of their fortification in order to taunt the Muslim invaders. At which the attacking soldiers catapulting an equal number of Christians and used their heads as canon fodder, catapulting them over the parapets in a grotesque crossfire.
Pope Saint John Paul II understood the chaos of war, even the Crusades, when he wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople of “especially painful memories…which have left deep wounds in the minds and hearts of people to this day.” Those memories included what he called “the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople, which was for so long the bastion of Christianity in the East,” where Crusaders even fought against Byzantine Christians. Such horrors, the Pope said, “fills Catholics with deep regret.”
Chaos. War, conflict and the fog of war create chaos. Just like the Chaos in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. You remember the way the Bible begins:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.(Genesis 1:1-2)
Now I know, as Knights and Dames, you are all fluent in Hebrew, so you will recognize two very interesting Hebrew words here. Over the Chaos there hovered the ruach elohim. Ruach is a curious Hebrew word which means "wind, spirit, breath or fire.” You can imagine how one word can men all four things. The wind that blows across your cheek on a warm day, the spirit the comes from nowhere and then returns, the breath and the fire, flickering on a candle.
But its not just the ruach, it’s the ruach elohim, the breath of God, his spirit. It’s the same wind which returns in the story of the Flood once the deadly waters have receded.
And then we hear what the Spirit, the breath of God does. The translation says it “rachaph,,” it “swept over the face of the waters.” A pretty straightforward description: the breath of God, his Spirit, sweeps across the chaos. But there is something curious here, for the word “rachaph” is only used one other time, in Deuteronomy 32:11, which describes how God cares for his people like an eagle “hovering over its young.”
“One of the earliest Jewish commentaries on this text, dating from New Testament times, interpreted it this way: ‘A spirit of love before the Lord was hovering over the face of the waters.’ This holy wind is not a part of the chaos, it is God’s motherly love conveying the promise of life, order, and beauty to what was of itself a mess. Because God’s spirit was hovering over it, chaos became promise.”
So the Spirit of God, hovering over the waters broods over and cherishes the creation he is about to love into being. The Spirit of God creates through tender love. The breath of God moves over the chaos and and we were made.
Unity out of chaos, love out of chaos, light from darkness, life from death.
It’s like when in the next chapter, God created man. God picks up a handful of dirt (the Hebrew word for dirt is adamah), and into it he breathes the ruah…the spirit, breath, fire, driving wind. And the adamah is changed by the breath of God into Adam, man.
The struggle for command of the meaning of the Crusades is a topic as fascinating for what it says about historians as it does about history. And this speaker is neither so ambitious nor naïve as to think he could untie that knot in this brief presentation.
Nevertheless, allow me to be so bold as to venture an undeniable observation about those Crusades in whose shadows we find the origins of our holy order. While there were Saints, martyrs, holy courage, purity and sacrifice galore…. as in any war there was chaos aplenty as well. And while contemporaneous accounts abound with exaggeration, there was clearly enough atrocity to go around throughout the hundred years of the Crusades. With all sides of the crusades, the brutality and chaos of war was certainly in evidence, as at Antioch, where Christian soldiers slaughtered two hundred muslim civilians, displaying their heads on spikes along the wall of their fortification in order to taunt the Muslim invaders. At which the attacking soldiers catapulting an equal number of Christians and used their heads as canon fodder, catapulting them over the parapets in a grotesque crossfire.
Pope Saint John Paul II understood the chaos of war, even the Crusades, when he wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople of “especially painful memories…which have left deep wounds in the minds and hearts of people to this day.” Those memories included what he called “the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople, which was for so long the bastion of Christianity in the East,” where Crusaders even fought against Byzantine Christians. Such horrors, the Pope said, “fills Catholics with deep regret.”
Chaos. War, conflict and the fog of war create chaos. Just like the Chaos in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. You remember the way the Bible begins:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.(Genesis 1:1-2)
Now I know, as Knights and Dames, you are all fluent in Hebrew, so you will recognize two very interesting Hebrew words here. Over the Chaos there hovered the ruach elohim. Ruach is a curious Hebrew word which means "wind, spirit, breath or fire.” You can imagine how one word can men all four things. The wind that blows across your cheek on a warm day, the spirit the comes from nowhere and then returns, the breath and the fire, flickering on a candle.
But its not just the ruach, it’s the ruach elohim, the breath of God, his spirit. It’s the same wind which returns in the story of the Flood once the deadly waters have receded.
And then we hear what the Spirit, the breath of God does. The translation says it “rachaph,,” it “swept over the face of the waters.” A pretty straightforward description: the breath of God, his Spirit, sweeps across the chaos. But there is something curious here, for the word “rachaph” is only used one other time, in Deuteronomy 32:11, which describes how God cares for his people like an eagle “hovering over its young.”
“One of the earliest Jewish commentaries on this text, dating from New Testament times, interpreted it this way: ‘A spirit of love before the Lord was hovering over the face of the waters.’ This holy wind is not a part of the chaos, it is God’s motherly love conveying the promise of life, order, and beauty to what was of itself a mess. Because God’s spirit was hovering over it, chaos became promise.”
So the Spirit of God, hovering over the waters broods over and cherishes the creation he is about to love into being. The Spirit of God creates through tender love. The breath of God moves over the chaos and and we were made.
Unity out of chaos, love out of chaos, light from darkness, life from death.
It’s like when in the next chapter, God created man. God picks up a handful of dirt (the Hebrew word for dirt is adamah), and into it he breathes the ruah…the spirit, breath, fire, driving wind. And the adamah is changed by the breath of God into Adam, man.
And it’s like the Christ, who is born of the Virgin. You see it in El Greco's depiction of the Annunciation, as the Angel appears to Mary and just behind her is a long drape covering an open window, blowing in the wind. It’s as if the spirit, the breath of God, the ruah is overpowering her, incarnating life in her virginal womb, bringing forth Emmanual, the Christ to set us free.
And it’s like Pentecost, where “…they were all in one place together, and suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.
Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”
For it is only the Spirit of God which “creates purpose, order, and meaning out of chaos…fills the empty void with beauty and goodness…darkness into light, night into day, the evening into a new morning, and calls into existence those things” that never existed before.
It’s like the poem by the twelfth century mystic, Saint Hildegard of Bingen:
O sacred breath, O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues.
O most pure fountain through whom it is known
that God has united strangers and sought the lost.
O breastplate of life and hope of uniting all members as One,
…
Care for those who are imprisoned by the enemy
and dissolve the bonds of those whom Divinity wishes to save.
O mightiest path which penetrates
All, from the height to every Earthly abyss,
you compose All, you unite All.
…
Through you clouds stream, ether flies, stones gain moisture,
waters become streams,
and the earth exudes Life.
You always draw out knowledge,
bringing joy through Wisdom’s inspiration.
Therefore, praise be to you
who are the sound of praise
and the greatest prize of Life,
who are hope and richest honor bequeathing the reward of Light.
Which brings us back to the Holy Land, where the Spirit descended upon the Apostles in that upper room. And where just about an hour away by car some of the most violent confrontations took place this past week. Horrendous violence with live ammunition, fire bombs, rocks and scores dead.
Which is why we pray every day, and why Pope Benedict XVI asked the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre to be "convinced and sincere ambassadors of peace and love among your brethren”…fruitful, with the power of his love [by your] “constant work to support the ardent desire for peace in those communities weighed down by a climate of uncertainty and danger in the last years.”
The Pope, when meeting with the Knights, went on: “To that dear Christian population, who continue to suffer due to the political, economic and social crisis in the Middle East, made even worse with the escalating world situation, I address an affectionate thought, bearing a special testimony of my spiritual closeness to so many of our brothers in the faith who are forced to emigrate. How can one fail to share the sorrow of that sorely tried community? How can one not thank, at the same time, you who have worked so generously to come to their aid?” (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. 5 December 2008)
But how do we come to their aid? By our financial support, certainly. But more important than that we are called to pray. Pray like Pope Benedict did when he visited the Holy Sepulchre from which we take our name.
“Many of you have been there, to an empty tomb. A tomb which, in the words of Pope Benedict “bears mute witness both to the burden of our past, with its failings, misunderstandings and conflicts, and to the glorious promise which continues to radiate from Christ’s empty tomb. This holy place,” the Pope. continues, “where God’s power was revealed in weakness, and human sufferings were transfigured by divine glory, invites us to look once again with the eyes of faith upon the face of the crucified and risen Lord.
“May our contemplation of this mystery spur our efforts, both as individuals and as members of the ecclesial community, to grow in the life of the Spirit through conversion, penance and prayer. May it help us to overcome, by the power of that same Spirit, every conflict and tension born of the flesh, and to remove every obstacle, both within and without, standing in the way of our common witness to Christ and the reconciling power of his love.” (Pope Benedict XVI at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 15 May 2009)
For therein lies the secret of our Knighthood, we Crusaders of prayer. Not on horseback and not with a sword, but on our knees and with folded hands, we can heal a troubled land…for it is only the Holy Spirit which can descend upon that Chaos and bring forth peace.
And it’s like Pentecost, where “…they were all in one place together, and suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.
Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”
For it is only the Spirit of God which “creates purpose, order, and meaning out of chaos…fills the empty void with beauty and goodness…darkness into light, night into day, the evening into a new morning, and calls into existence those things” that never existed before.
It’s like the poem by the twelfth century mystic, Saint Hildegard of Bingen:
O sacred breath, O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues.
O most pure fountain through whom it is known
that God has united strangers and sought the lost.
O breastplate of life and hope of uniting all members as One,
…
Care for those who are imprisoned by the enemy
and dissolve the bonds of those whom Divinity wishes to save.
O mightiest path which penetrates
All, from the height to every Earthly abyss,
you compose All, you unite All.
…
Through you clouds stream, ether flies, stones gain moisture,
waters become streams,
and the earth exudes Life.
You always draw out knowledge,
bringing joy through Wisdom’s inspiration.
Therefore, praise be to you
who are the sound of praise
and the greatest prize of Life,
who are hope and richest honor bequeathing the reward of Light.
Which brings us back to the Holy Land, where the Spirit descended upon the Apostles in that upper room. And where just about an hour away by car some of the most violent confrontations took place this past week. Horrendous violence with live ammunition, fire bombs, rocks and scores dead.
Which is why we pray every day, and why Pope Benedict XVI asked the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre to be "convinced and sincere ambassadors of peace and love among your brethren”…fruitful, with the power of his love [by your] “constant work to support the ardent desire for peace in those communities weighed down by a climate of uncertainty and danger in the last years.”
The Pope, when meeting with the Knights, went on: “To that dear Christian population, who continue to suffer due to the political, economic and social crisis in the Middle East, made even worse with the escalating world situation, I address an affectionate thought, bearing a special testimony of my spiritual closeness to so many of our brothers in the faith who are forced to emigrate. How can one fail to share the sorrow of that sorely tried community? How can one not thank, at the same time, you who have worked so generously to come to their aid?” (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. 5 December 2008)
But how do we come to their aid? By our financial support, certainly. But more important than that we are called to pray. Pray like Pope Benedict did when he visited the Holy Sepulchre from which we take our name.
“Many of you have been there, to an empty tomb. A tomb which, in the words of Pope Benedict “bears mute witness both to the burden of our past, with its failings, misunderstandings and conflicts, and to the glorious promise which continues to radiate from Christ’s empty tomb. This holy place,” the Pope. continues, “where God’s power was revealed in weakness, and human sufferings were transfigured by divine glory, invites us to look once again with the eyes of faith upon the face of the crucified and risen Lord.
“May our contemplation of this mystery spur our efforts, both as individuals and as members of the ecclesial community, to grow in the life of the Spirit through conversion, penance and prayer. May it help us to overcome, by the power of that same Spirit, every conflict and tension born of the flesh, and to remove every obstacle, both within and without, standing in the way of our common witness to Christ and the reconciling power of his love.” (Pope Benedict XVI at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 15 May 2009)
For therein lies the secret of our Knighthood, we Crusaders of prayer. Not on horseback and not with a sword, but on our knees and with folded hands, we can heal a troubled land…for it is only the Holy Spirit which can descend upon that Chaos and bring forth peace.
“As Christians,” Pope Benedict told us “we know that the peace for which this strife-torn land yearns has a name: Jesus Christ. “He is our peace”, who reconciled us to God in one body through the Cross, bringing an end to hostility (cf. Eph 2:14). Into his hands, then, let us entrust all our hope for the future, just as in the hour of darkness he entrusted his spirit into the Father’s hands.”
And ask Christ uttered his final words upon the Cross: “into your hands I commend my Spirit,” So may that spirit bring peace to the land where that Sepulchre stands, so we pray, good Knights and Dames.
And ask Christ uttered his final words upon the Cross: “into your hands I commend my Spirit,” So may that spirit bring peace to the land where that Sepulchre stands, so we pray, good Knights and Dames.
