User:Kingsindian/jencoTranslation

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Question: "I dream of the day when there will be peace between Israel and the Arabs. Jewish children sing songs of love and peace yet Arab children are taught songs about the bus to Tel Aviv that was pushed off the ravine and Israelis were killed. What concerns me is that with the hatred taught to future Arab generations, how can peace be promoted and attained?"

Father Jenco: Well, so often I find that what we do is that we kind of point "out there" and blame people "out there" and I think we have to kinda not point the finger at anybody but look into our own hearts to see what's happening. And when you look into your own hearts, I begin to sense -- at least I do -- I have (inaudible:to look an anyone's sinful lesson?) thoughts about what are my bigotries and what are my prejudices and what are my hates. And I ask for a lovely gift of metanoia, a change of heart. So that's what I try to do. So you mention about the "Israeli children and the Palestinian children singing songs", I don't know if that's true or not.

All I know was that one night I was celebrating midnight mass in East Beirut and at the kiss of peace I said, "Shalom - peace be with you". And it's the birthday of the servant of peace -- Jesus! And at the end of the mass, a woman came up to me and she said "We're American. Do you get the right to use a Jewish word in my home?" I was stunned by that! Here I am, celebrating the birth of Jesus, and I'm sure he would have said Shalom.

And I was sitting on the floor there, and there are little children sitting around, and I was wondering, "Did we pass on that hate, that bigotry, with recent events as recent as Cain killing Abel. And so I asked children, I said "What's your world all about?" And these little ones, they started speaking to me about this world of peace. It was so marvellous! And I said "Oh we didn't pass this sin on".

There were adults listening. The old people said "Father, would you hear our confession". And there was that middle age group, that just didn't hear. And I was saying to them "Do you ever listen to children?"

And I think sometimes in our own lives we have to, as we look on children. When I speak about turning your instruments of wars into ploughshares, and I get people who want to promote sales of arms throughout the world -- I wish those arms dealers would hear what I heard constantly. After the violence was done, and I was near the Sabra-Shatila camps -- and the violence was done by Muslims during the violence to Muslims. When there was total quiet, when the violence is all over -- the first sound you hear, is the cry of a child.

I wish that all of us would listen to the cry of children today. That's what I was saying, we have to have a new vision. Look at the past, I live in the present, but I want to make sure the future is going to be different.

(Some people advise me to forgive and forget. They do not realize that this is almost impossible. Jesus, the wounded healer, asks us to forgive, but he does not ask us to forget. That would be amnesia. He does demand we heal our memories. I don’t believe that forgetting is one of the signs of forgiveness. I forgive, but I remember. I do not forget the pain, the loneliness, the ache, the terrible injustice. But I do not remember it to inflict guilt or some future retribution. Having forgiven, I am liberated. I need no longer be determined by the past.'Lawrence Martin Jenco, O.S.M-,Lebanon Bound To Forgive: The Pilgrimage to Reconciliation of a Beirut Hostage,Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, 1995 (Epilogue p.135)