10. The Promised Land
“Emmanuel,” meaning God with us, happened at the time of year 1 C.E. and the place is present-day Israel, Palestine.
The land “flows with milk and honey”, where money is easily earned.
In terms of spirituality, this promised land has a cultural imprint that, for many generations, is the desire and hope for a salvific solution, freeing people from their miserable lives.
You will put your hand to touch the unique heritage of the world, walking in the middle of “The old way of the horse-drawn carriage; the old background of castle in shadow ” (Poet Huyen Thanh Quan) to contemplate the confusing reality and the determinism of life.
Here we will see the interference of nowhere else.
- Between space and time:
As the crossroads from the West to the East, this land was once bustling with camel caravans laden with cargo to cross the desert. On the water, boats and ships full of gold and silver, precious wood and spices, was carrying on trade like in a festival.
A historic past, with massive architectural works, where people have lived for many thousands of years. And there is 10,000-year-old Jericho, the oldest in the world.
- Conquest and survival:
This is the heroic land of the Babylonian, Roman, Ottoman empires… We only see overlapping stratiform layers. To study the 2,000-year-old relics in Jesus’ time under the Roman rule, we have to dig a few yards into the ground. Because when an empire successfully invades, it enslaves people, collects taxes, destroys enemy buildings and builds new ones on them.
Until now, you still see deer-eyed girls, with menacing guns in their hands, next to soaring walls.
We will understand the aspirations of the people who followed the Lord hurriedly, when listening to him preach: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18).
The Jews were not satisfied because Jesus did not do politics.
- Truth and paradoxes.
The Middle East, the land of Israel and Palestine, the cradle of spiritual life, is the birthplace of three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The land of philosophical reflection, almost guiding the evolutionary path of mankind through many generations.
This place clearly shows the contradictions between the ordinary and the sacred, the dramatic confrontations between the cruel and the human, the good and the evil, the finite and the infinite, the paradox and the truth.
We thought to ourselves, living in the time of Jesus, you and I must have joined that crowd of Jews, raising our fists to demand his crucifixion. Who in the world, a mortal, son of the carpenter Joseph, living in the poor village of Nazareth, blasphemously claimed to be the son of the great God. How absurd such a thing to hear!
If only we didn’t know that this universe and your whole life is the masterpiece of God’s love.
If only we did not feel Poet Lamartine’s sentiment in an only finite love: “Only one being is missing, and everything is depopulated” (un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé). Or so was Napoleon Bonaparte, who fought south and north, conquered countries, and dominated large territories. All, to him, was meaningless without a love of Joséphine.
Without immersion in the universal love, we will not be able to explain the phenomenon of Jesus the Savior and will not understand salvation and its history through God’s plan, in the Jewish people: “Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance” (Phil 2, 6-8), “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16).
And we do not feel the rationality in the paradoxes of the sermon on the mountain:
- “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God…
- Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:3-12).
The Holy Land, where paradoxes of life are revealed, is the compendium of all history and the true meaning of existence.
Mountains are high, rivers are flowing, seas and lakes are immense, but then they too will perish, just as it is said, “Heaven and earth will pass away…” (Lk 21:33) because in nature a birth will lead to a death.
And one day will come…
To live is to choose, in no other way, to be “sheep” or “goat” (symbolizing good and evil), to be blessed or cursed.