The Feast of the Communities

It has been a tradition of St. James Vicariate to celebrate Easter together. This year the members of all communities met in Jerusalem. Thank to the generous hospitality of St. Joseph Sisters we could meet in their monastery (French School).

In his homily, during the Eucharist fr. Piotr mentioned the theological idea of "darkness against light" that was present in the liturgy of Triduum. He underlined the main elements of these three holy days of which the high point is the Resurrection.

There was a moment during the Mass when everyone who handed out the filled questionnaire of the Synod received a T-shirt with the logo of the Synod.

After the Mass the Blessing of food started the picnic. The participants were invited to gather together all that they brought at one big table. Everyone was invited to share the common meal. Joe and his team prepared the barbecue and fr. Apolinary brought wine and soft drinks. Earlier, while entering everyone received a name badge lanyard in one of six colors. The meal was an occasion to sit with the people form various communities according to the color pf the badge. The lunch time was prolonged in order to move from the eating time to the talks. The Synod team (Rivka, Anna and Habib) prepared some questions to encourage all participants to exchange opinions and to get to know each other.

After lunch each one could choose the activity. There was a group who walked to the Holy Sepulcher, another one visited the Latin Patriarchate Co-Cathedral Church and another one stayed at HaRav Kook Vicariate House to pray in silence.

The group of the youth from Tel Aviv served as staff in order to help to keep the place clean.

Final prayer guided by the members of John the Baptist Koinonia and the Easter Blessing were the last actions of that beautiful day.

Many thanks to all who helped to prepare it. May God allow us to meet soon again!

Here is the resume of the homily of fr. Piotr:

Happy Easter to all of you. I hope many of us had the occasion to participate in the liturgy during the last days. What have we celebrated in such a beautiful way? We started on Holy Thursday and saw Jesus that stand before His disciples as the Lord and the First One that shows the example of how to serve the others. He seems to say: "This is the way you should be". After that He took bread and wine and gave the promise: Every time that you do it in my name I am with you. Since then the Church continues to participate in this mystery and we all are invited to the daily meeting with the Lord in the Eucharist. The next day, on Holy Friday we perceived the silence. The loss of Jesus as it was seen by the Apostles provoked the lack of words. This silence in front the crucified, killed Lord is sometimes our silence. Especially in the days when the situation in the world seems to escape any explanations. We are sometimes speechless in front of what is happening and just like the Apostles feel like everything is lost since the Lord left us. Our helplessness was visible in the liturgy during which we could only pray for Mercy and adore the cross that gathers together our hopes crucified with Jesus.

In the darkness we continued the next day our Paschal Vigil. Starting form the Creation and the message saying that all that God wanted to be created was good. the simple fact of being created as a part of divine plan should provoke us to a great thanksgiving for the existing world. everything that exists is conditioned by His love. God wanted each and everyone of us to exist because of Love. The only reason we are alive is that God's Will to was an expression of His Love. Since that very moment when we come to the world He is constantly searching for our presence and trying to make us hear His voice saying: "I am with you. My love is hugging you. I will never stop loving you." This may and should be a source of our sureness that even in the world full of events that we do not understand our hope may survive. All the global and personal problems seem to be less important than the fact that God loves us. Our future seems to be less scary every time when we start our days being conscient of the fact that God created us out of Love.

The next stage was the reading about our father Abraham. The one called "the father of faith" was an icon of what faith is. Called by God himself Abraham moved forward into the journey of which he did not know the destination. Trusting in God's Will he went out into the unknown and became a symbol of faith. Being often today confronted with many questions on which we cannot find answers we need to trust just like Abraham. Sometimes, especially in today's world the only answer may be: "just keep going."

At the end the liturgy brought us the message: "Christ is alive!" The darkness was defeated by the light just like our lack of hope can be defeated by the One who defeated death. The silence of helplessness is defeated by the triumphal hymn in which few times resounds the phrase: "This is the night!"

This invitation to the new hope is for all of us. The future might seem unsure, the problems may look scary but the Presence of the Lord who is alive changes everything.

Today, when we celebrate the greatest Feast in the entire year we cannot be sure of what our future will be. Neither me nor anybody else may not guarantee that we will meet together in a year to celebrate. In the light of the last events in the world today we have all the right to feel unsureness. But the fact that the Lord is alive, that He is with us changes everything. There is no problem big enough to take away our joy. There is no fear scary enough to put us back into the darkness. We are walking in His light and with Him everything looks different. Even the final and ultimate dread which is the death can be defeated because He is the winner. The victory of Christ over the world of darkness and death needs to become the reality of our personal daily life: at home and at work, in our families in our daily activities in the way we approach the reality, and most of all, in our hope.

I wish myself and all of you that the meeting with the resurrected Lord will be the source of this unfailing hope in our daily life. Happy Easter! Christ is risen!