Hello, Father. Welcome to Jerusalem.
A Walk Through the Holy Land (II)
Hello, we are at the New Gate,
one of the gates of Jerusalem.
And this is the main entrance to the Christian quarter,
where I am from.
And now we are going to enter [the Old City of] Jerusalem.
which consists of four parts: the Christian Quarter,
the Armenian, the Jewish and the Muslim. Let's go inside.
Sure, I'm proud to live here. I’m lucky.
I'm part of the Christian minority living in Jerusalem; it's something beautiful.
Many pilgrims come here and would like to live here,
and they tell me how lucky I am to be here.
- Father, this is what you call a typical supernumerary.
How can show our children
that Christian formation is something important,
so they see that formation is a good thing and not something negative?
- What is fundamental is for there to be true friendship between parents and children.
That they don't see parents simply as people who transmit
orders, rules, commandments...
but something they transmit as friends,
from personal experience.
Bethlehem. Church of the Nativity.
Bethlehem. Manger Altar.
- A Child is born for us. "Puer natus est nobis."
Here, in this place where we commemorate the birth of the Lord,
we must remember that he was born "for us;"
and not only "for us" as a whole (also as a whole),
but for each one of us.
- Hello, hello, God bless you. Welcome to Bethlehem.
This is my father's workshop, in Bethlehem.
We are very close to the grotto of the Nativity.
Walking one minute brings you to the church built where Jesus was born.
Hello, Father, how are you? It's a pleasure to have you here in Bethlehem.
I wanted to give something to the Father,
so I gave him, with affection, a picture of the Infant Jesus,
originally made in Bethlehem by a Christian artist.
It is hand painted.
My question, Father, is about suffering. What is the meaning of suffering?
What can we do? How can we accept the will of God,
especially when we do not understand it?
- We must look to the cross of Jesus Christ.
The cross of the Lord is a great, great mystery.
We can understand a little bit.
In the sense that the Lord himself explained to us:
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Looking at the cross of Jesus Christ, we can understand
the immense, boundless love of Christ, God and Man,
for us.
But, at the same time, looking at the cross, we can hear
and see that the Lord himself, in his humanity,
came to a time when… (it is a mystery: Jesus Christ,
at once God and Man, in the unity of his person)
but, as man, there came a time when he did not understand.
He did not understand the cross, and he prayed:
"Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"
We cannot expect to understand everything,
but we can understand that by uniting ourselves in suffering,
in what, humanly, we do not understand —because we cannot understand it—
we can act like the Lord, saying:
"Into your hands I commend my Spirit."
You have allowed it, you have willed it... I will it too.
We will find in the cross, in apparent and human paradox,
we will find happiness.
Calvary
Holy Sepulchre
Over the years many people from this Holy Land have emigrated,
looking for a better life outside.
Two of my children are away...
one in Italy and one in Switzerland.
I got a little emotional asking the question because
it was from the heart, and, ultimately, I'm a mother.
I always pray for them and when we get together, I try to please them.
As a mother, it is natural for me to want
to have them always near me
living in our country.
- Mom! You still have me by your side...
- My darling daughter!
The third daughter is here...
- I saw my father on one side and my mother's friend on the other, reassuring her, and I thought:
"I'm a few feet away from her." So I said:
"Mom, I'm here!
We are your children and we are by your side."
It was very beautiful and emotional. I didn't expect to do anything like that.
What gave me courage was the atmosphere there; it wasn't a conference.
- How can I convince them to come here to build Christian families,
and also to build their country?
- Well, that depends on your eloquence.
Ask the Lord for lights to enlighten you on how to explain to them
the good they can do here,
and how happy they can be here too.
- The idea [of the Polis Institute] is to go back to the origin of Western culture,
because most of the texts of antiquity
have not yet been translated into any modern language.
Polis teaches languages in a particular way:
Here you learn a language in the same way a child learns it.
When you are in Polis you always feel at home. Why?
In Polis you see people from all religions and all cultures,
it's something you don't expect.
- For example, we recently received
the visit of the Prelate of Opus Dei to Polis.
He is a great scholar, and as such,
has shown a lot of interest in all of our projects.
And now we go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre by Saint Francis Street.
It was one of the streets that the Prelate walked along
during his pilgrimage in this city.
Your visit has been a great joy for those of us who live in Jerusalem.
We have walked through the same streets where Jesus Christ walked and
that is something that makes this city unique.
Jerusalem. Holy Sepulchre.
- In this holy place we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord,
which we know to be, as St. Paul says,
"the foundation of our faith."
It's a good time —it always is, but in a special way here—
for us to ask the Lord for a great increase of faith,
that he may give us great faith.
Faith, fundamentally, in this: Christ lives! Christ lives.
St. Josemaría, our Father, said it: he is not a figure who has passed by;
rather, Christ really lives.
And this is the source of our joy also,
knowing that he is with us.
The resurrection and ascension were not to separate him from us,
but for him to be nearer still,
to each of us, each one.