Intervention of Prof. Sobhy MAKHOUL, General Secretary, Catholic Maronite Exarchate of Jerusalem, the Territories of the Palestinian Authority and Jordan (ISRAEL), auditor

I discovered that Christianity is first of all a religion but rather the historical coming, singular and unrepeatable, of the Incarnation of the Word of God: Jesus Christ.
Recognizing this event is easy: it is like recognizing the face of a friend among the crowd. Because every man is created for this meeting: like John and Andrew, the Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus and the centurion.

Today, as in every corner of the world, in this world “after Christ and without Christ” as C. Pèguy wrote, we too, Christians of the Holy Land in the Middle East need to encounter here and now the expression of Christ to start over from Him. Everything else will be given to us later, we need to be reborn, like Nicodemus, to find happiness and the taste for life and to be able to demonstrate this to everyone we meet.
Let us remember that in fact we are already the light of the world and salt of the earth and that all of man and all men are awaiting Christ, as John Paul II reminded us in his first encyclical “Redemptor Hominis”.
The Christian is called in the world to recognize the presence of Christ and to start from Him when dealing with any situations. Otherwise, problems will always appear to be inexorable and without solution. Our point of departure and of judgment is original: the Lord is present in His Church here and now. Only then can we become truly useful to the world.
The lack of peace is an obvious consequence of the absence of justice in the Middle East. The world powers that boast of being the defenders of freedom and human rights are the first to sacrifice the weak and minorities at the negotiating table for their political or economic interests.
In the current global political situation, the only guarantor of the Christian presence is the Holy See, so we ask for more incision and dynamism from that front.

[00123-02.03] [UD007] [Original text: Italian]