Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa leads Holy Thursday Mass in Jerusalem, calling for peace and humility amid war and fear.
Newsroom (03/04/2026 Gaudium Press ) Behind closed doors in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, within walls scarred by centuries and shadows of present conflict, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa presided over the Holy Thursday In Coena Domini Mass — a sacred moment of stillness in a city trembling with tension. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem stood, he said, “in the place where a stone once sealed death,” and yet declared that this was a day to “celebrate life.”
As the Holy Land endures the weight of war and uncertainty, the Patriarch’s words carried both sorrow and defiance. “There is a tension we cannot ignore,” he observed. The great doors of the Holy Sepulchre — usually open to pilgrims from around the world — remained closed, symbols of a world divided. “We are here,” he said, “as within a womb of peace, while the world around us is being torn apart, and we wish we could change all of this.”
The Gesture That Defines Love
Within the quiet sanctuary, Cardinal Pizzaballa centered his homily on one profound act — Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. In that gesture, he said, lies the essence of Christian faith. “Jesus transforms the gesture of one who sets out into the gesture of one who serves. In God’s logic, the Exodus is not a flight away from the world, but a descent into it.”
The act, he emphasized, is not mere symbolism. “The washing of the feet is not a moral lesson, nor simply an edifying example, nor a tender scene,” he explained. “It is the concrete form of Jesus’ Passover — the way love chooses to enter the world.”
Referring to the Gospel dialogue between Jesus and Peter — “Unless I wash you, you will have no part with me” — Pizzaballa drew attention to the radical nature of divine love. To belong to Christ, he reminded the faithful, requires more than admiration; it demands communion. “You may admire me, you may follow me… but if you do not accept this way of loving, you will not enter into my passage.”
Faith in a Time of Trial
The Cardinal recognized that Christians in the Holy Land live under extraordinary strain — “often a weary Church, a Church put to the test.” Yet, he said, amid fear and fatigue lies the very heart of faith. The calling is not to power, but to presence; not to control, but to compassion.
“The Lord does not ask us to be powerful, but to share in his life,” he said. “He does not ask us to resolve everything, but not to reject his way of loving.” For the Church, communion with Christ does not come through security, but through surrender — “when it accepts to share in his self-lowering.”
A New Exodus of the Heart
Pizzaballa ended his homily with a challenge and an invitation: “Do we want to have a part with Him? Do we want a salvation that comes through service?” To choose this path, he said, is to embark on a new exodus — “a passage from self-defence to self-giving, from fear to trust, from pride to communion.”
In a Holy Land wounded by war, Easter, he reminded, does not begin with triumph but with tenderness — with a willingness “to be loved without conditions” and to learn, again, “the language of bending down.”
“As we celebrate the Eucharist,” the Patriarch concluded, “let us ask for an essential grace: to allow ourselves to be washed, to allow ourselves to be served, to allow ourselves to be loved.”
In a Jerusalem sealed by silence, Cardinal Pizzaballa’s words carved a space for hope — a womb of peace within a world longing for resurrection.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican News
Related Images:
