Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: Solemnity Queen of Palestine 2024

This Meditation is shared from the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the Solemnity Queen of Palestine 2024, Saturday 26 October 2024 in Deir Rafat.

Dear Excellencies, 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,  

May the Lord give you peace! 

As we do every year, we have returned here, at the feet of the Patroness of our diocese, the Queen of Palestine, to pray first and foremost for our Church, for our Holy Land and for all the peoples who inhabit it. And as so often, we must bring our pain and weariness to the feet of the Virgin. Once again, we are forced to express all our tiredness with this war, which has worn us all down, as never before. I will not repeat what I have said far too often about the war. Never in the last few decades have we seen so much violence and hatred. It is becoming difficult to see a light in this long night of suffering. 

But at the same time, we do not want to and cannot capitulate to the arrogance, the power of violence, the cycle of retaliation and revenge, and remain helpless in the face of the human rubble that all this causes. That is why we are still here to ask for the intercession of the Blessed Mother, to ask for the strength and courage to continue to believe in the power of God’s love, to ask for the strength to continue to be here in the Holy Land, communities of men and women who want to build relationships of life, love, dignity and justice. 

The reading from the book of Revelation we have heard now, expresses well, in a way, what we are experiencing. 

It speaks of a “great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth” (Rev. 12, 3-4). This is an effective description of the power of evil in the world, the power of Satan. The numbers seven and ten are numbers that stand for the totality, they stand for power, just like the diadems. They show how powerful and dominant evil is, which is also capable of causing great destruction. 

But as powerful as he is, this ruler is not able to subdue to his power the “woman clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12,1) and the child she will bring into the world. 

And this reminds us of a great truth: in life we will always have to deal with the evil that rages in the world. But evil, Satan, despite its greatness, is powerless against the power of the strength of a woman who gives birth to a child, i.e. against the power of love that generates life. There evil, Satan, finds no ground to take root; he cannot deceive with his lies. No Dragon can win in the face of self-giving love; there are no effective weapons against those who give life out of love…

This news was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.