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October 29, 2016Mass for the Feast of
THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, QUEEN OF PALESTINE
Dear Brothers and sisters,- As Knights and Dames of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem we gather dutifully for this this annual celebration of Holy Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Palestine and in prayer for the peace of the Holy Land of Our Lord’s birth and work of Redemption.
- This Feast, as you know, dates back to 1927 when the Latin Patriarch founded the sanctuary of Our Lady Queen of Palestine and designated a Feast to be celebrated on 31st October. From then until now it has been a popular celebration among local Arab Christians who will, as we speak, be rallying from all parts of the Holy Land, and we unite ourselves in prayer and faith with them.
- In 1927 Christians were much more numerous in Palestine but since that time wars, oppression and persecution have decimated the last survivors of a heritage that traces unbroken continuity to the community of the Lord and Our Blessed Mother. Now they constitute only 1.6 per cent of the population of the Homeland of Jesus and Mary. So, while that remnant continues to gather to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they do so aware of how, in their own generation, the Lord’s Providence marks out the path of His Cross for them to follow and the vocation to be companions of the Crucified One. Still, they recite faithfully their prayer to Our Lady, Queen of Palestine and they celebrate the Feast as a kind of Transfiguration experience that helps them keep in mind their precious identity as the Mother of all Churches.
- Today we gather keenly conscious of the particular responsibility each of us took on as we donned the uniform of knights and dames, and of the oath we swore as we made our inaugural promises. That responsibility is summed up in the self-admonition of the psalmist: If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to my mouth!” (Ps.137 (136); 56:6). Today we gather in prayer for the rescue of Christianity in the Holy Land so that our Mother Church will not die on the soil of its birth.
- Sometimes it is not easy to know how to pray, as Saint Paul was aware when he noted how the Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Sometimes we do not know what to do, as Saint Thomas complained when he pleaded with Jesus, Lord how can we know the way! Even after the experience of the Resurrection and the clear command of Jesus to Peter and the Apostles to go into the whole world and preach the Good News to all Creation as He ascended in glory to the Father, some still hesitated and returned, by way of the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem and the security of the Upper Room. What saved the day in that instance was not so much that they went to the Upper Room as that they gathered with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. We may not know exactly how to pray for the Holy Land of Palestine today, or what to do in these times so that it can be preserved from adversity, but we are sure that, so long as we humbly beseech our all-powerful God, through the intercession of the Blessed Queen of Palestine, to dispose things according to His good Providence then He, Whose Son brought to completion there the holy mysteries of our Redemption, will consecrate again His beloved Palestine so that it can witness afresh to His divine majesty.
- So we turn to Our Blessed Mother, the Queen of Palestine, with the same confidence with which Saint Paul commended Her to the Galatians. Certainly we are well aware of how our Christian brethren in the Holy Land in these times are born subject to laws and systems dominated by the elemental forces of hatred, discrimination and prejudice and are held captive by the false gods of dominion, conquest and power. Yet it was to just such little ones that, when the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, to redeem them from their oppression and enable them to be adopted as sons, the Spirit of Whose Son in their hearts cries out, 'Abba, Father'.
- That woman is Mary and it was Her blessed belief, when all was darkness in Palestine -that the promise made to the Holy Land by the Lord would be fulfilled – that brought the Father to remember His mercy and help His servant Israel. It was Her belief, against what seemed impossible, that God could still raise up the lowly who feared Him, that roused God to show the strength of His arm and do great things in the Holiness of His name, such that His mercy would reach from age to age, even to our own. And it is her same blessed belief today as she visits Her faithful kinsmen weighed down by shame, that can raise up out of their frail, old frames new children for a new genration, filled with the Holy Spirit and destined to leap for joy in the fruit of Her womb.
- So, brothers and sisters, we come to this gracious Queen of Heaven and Earth full of confidence in Her goodness and power and ask Her to turn Her pitying glance upon Palestine, which more than any other country belongs to Her, graced as it was by Her birth, Her virtues and Her sorrows, and from where She gave us the Redeemer of the world. Praying to Her thus we are sure She will watch over, with special protection, the land of Her birth and from where, even today, the Sun of Eternal Justice shines.
- Deus Lo Vult! God wills it was the cry of the Christian faithful at the turn of the second millennium when the Byzantine Empire requested help against the Seljuk invasion and Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade. At the beginning of the third millennium God wills for us today the speedy fulfilment of the promise of the Son of Mary that, as knights and dames of the Holy Sepulchre, we serve Him in holiness and justice all our days and that, lives devoted to the peace of Jerusalem on earth, we, pilgrim crusaders might, at the last, lay down our spiritual arms and armour and merit to pass to the splendours of heaven.
