{"id":292048,"date":"2011-02-17T09:42:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T08:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/with-representatives-from-various-christian-churches-in-the-holy-land\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:41:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:41:19","slug":"with-representatives-from-various-christian-churches-in-the-holy-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/with-representatives-from-various-christian-churches-in-the-holy-land\/","title":{"rendered":"With representatives from various Christian Churches in the Holy Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Patriarch Mons. Foud Twal set the tone of the appointments that Maria Voce had in her diary for her visit to Jerusalem <\/span>which began on 11th<\/sup> February: He expresses his view, \u201cThe concerns of the people are our concerns<\/strong>. It\u2019s as if the ascent to Calvary has never ended here in the Holy Land\u201d. We must not become discouraged. \u201cHope never dies. For example, I notice recently that there are 100 or more associations that bring together Jews, Christians and Muslims in this region. People want dialogue. I also see that little by little, perhaps because of the many sufferings, we begin to speak of \u2018neighbours\u2019 rather than \u2018enemies\u2019\u201d. Maria Voce joined in: \u201cIf a drop of love enters within instinctive self-defence, another step can be taken, and one can go ahead\u201d, without falling into despair. The Patriarch concluded; \u201cThis is the speciality we Christians have, to sow love and go ahead\u201d. \"\"This same background of suffering and came through in the conversation that the president had with Bishop Munib Younan, President of the World Lutheran Federation: \u201cI see in people a strong temptation to be concerned only with material goods. But no, here we have need of God.\u201d And he explained further: \u201cWe need a deep spirituality, for our children and for ourselves, a spirituality that is deeply evangelical\u201d. Maria Voce understood the spirituality the Bishop hopes for would naturally be ecumenical. At the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate, Maria Voce spent time with Bishop Aris Shirvanian. \u201cWe must be united so as to defend the Christian Church \u2013 he said -, but we cannot say that there specific problems foe we Armenians, we continue to live to keep up our faith, our heritage\u201d. Maria Voce underlined the greatness of this vocation. \u201cYes \u2013 continued the Bishop \u2013 we need to defend ourselves, but even more we need to build \u2018bridges\u2019 between the Churches, bridges between religions, bridges between peoples.\u201d \"\" There was a very warm Lebanese welcome at the Holy Land residence of the Marionite Archbishopric, a community of about ten thousand faithful, above all in Galilee, with Bishop Mons. Paul Nabil Sayah. This Marionite Bishop underlined the importance of the pastoral aspect and actions of the Christian churches in the Holy Land, especially with and for families: \u201cThere is never enough space for education, which is a real priority for us. With good education you can hope to reach peace\u201d. The desire to co-operate was also confirmed by Maria Voce. Finally, an important meeting with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem: His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III, who received Maria Voce and her collaborators. The historical difficulties between the Christian churches in the Holy Land are well known. The climate has certainly improved, and now one can speak of a \u2018real ecumenism\u2019 even though there are still difficulties. In the conversation between the Patriarch and the president of the Focolare there was a common desire to \u2018raise the tone of the discussions\u2019, anchoring, Theophilos III emphasised, into \u2018the unity of Christians \u201cin Christ\u201d, in His love\u2019. Maria Voce explained what \u2018unity\u2019 means for the focolarini, \u201cthe unity Jesus asked of His Church\u201d. From Michele Zanzucchi The full Italian version of this report can be found on Citta Nuova site: http:\/\/www.cittanuova.it\/contenuto.php?TipoContenuto=web&idContenuto=31501<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The date February 14th, as part of Maria Voce\u2019s visit to Jerusalem, will be remembered because of a richness of relationships which began among Christians<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}