Is there Room?

As I opened the news this morning my heart sank as I saw the news from Bethlehem… the attacks on October 7th by Hamas were absolutely horrific… yet so too is the response by the Netanyahu government and the IDF. The following quotes from Pope Francis and Thomas Merton speak to the anguish that I feel as we remember the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world. — Pope Francis

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. — Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable, pages 51-52

This verse from the Creation story in Genesis 1 came to my heart as I reflected on these quotes: So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Even though this world doesn’t seem to want to make room for God’s Peace / Shalom / Salam, may it still break into the world… I have to believe that there is always hope.