Silence on Palm Sunday

I often welcome the silence. My audio-processing disorder makes it hard for me to understand speech in loud environments, so I seek the setting of low mass in order to fall into prayer. God communicates to me through silence. Not through word or anything audible but through His gesture and the space that the silence makes. I love eucharistic adoration for this reason. I float in a silent embrace with Christ while I rest with His tenderness. If Christ spoke to me, I don’t think I could handle it. I am content with being held like this. Like the statue of the penitent man in the southwest corner of Cantius. There, I frequently cry in silence after mass. I like to use my tears to wash the wooden foot and wipe it with my veil. 

Only on Holy Days of obligation or festive Sundays like today, Palm Sunday, will I join the loud processionals filled with excited voices and wailing of babies, the sound of palm leaves being torn, the clinking of votives being replaced, the trot of little altar boys… all under a cloud of incense and bright light. Sometimes, the sensory overload melts together and wraps me like a blanket, but it often makes me disassociate, and I am lost in my thoughts. I try to focus on the gospel readings from Luke but get caught thinking about the silence of Christ when seized on the day of His crucifixion. I adore our reverent silence and kneeling after Christ in the passion narrative finally succumbs to his wounds and dies. Then, it is very still. I realize I’m holding my breath.

But the most striking silence isn’t one I expected. It was one of omission. We sit comfortably in our pews in arguably the most protected Christian nation in the world while our brothers and sisters in Gaza and the West Bank, the Holy Land, the land of Christ, proclaim the word of the Lord through bombs and rubble. Today, we had the audacity to pray for an end to the war in Ukraine and Russia, but not a single utterance to the violence and desecration of Christianity in Jerusalem in 2025. On Palm Sunday, all I hear is silence. 

Our venerable and sweet Pope Francis is the only Catholic I know to speak out about this injustice. This genocide. Every night, he calls the Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza to make sure they are all still standing. That they are still alive. But from all other Catholics, all I hear is silence. Americans, in particular, are swayed by their complicity in the industrial war complex. Engineers build sophisticated AI-controlled drones and surveilance through Google and Lockheed Martin, which the U.S. and Israel then use on civilians as target practice– their experimental control group. Our tax dollars used to bankroll the death of 51,000 (a highly conservative estimate). We are two of the most sophisticated, funded, and violent military presences in the entire world. We are supposed to believe that militia presences are a threat to democracy and stand a chance against the Iron Dome. That the American government cares about the lives and safety of Jewish people. This is a lie. 

The United States has a long history of antisemitism. Anne Frank’s family applied for asylum in our country multiple times. Each time they were denied. Nazi scientists of high rank and many accolades were sheltered by the state due to their ‘value’ in operation Paperclip. The KKK is allowed to roam free and demonize and manufacture falsehoods about the character and standing of Jewish communities. The American government was fine with letting massive amounts of Jewish people be killed in the Holocaust due to racism and only intervened due to economic stressors and fear of falling victim to Hitler's Germany. Not altruism. Not justice. Not love. We are no saviors. 

Even in Catholic, European history, we find startling relationships between rumors of host desecration and the scapegoating of Jewish people. The book ‘Wonderful Blood’ traces this history quite well. There is no doubt that the Jewish community has suffered greatly. Seemingly bound to their diasporic history, many find place within God’s word. The trauma and fear I see from my Jewish friends is very real. I wish I could help carry their burdens and heal their wounds. However, as my Hebrew professor once pointed out to me, no history of violence excuses the brutal expulsion, apartheid, and death seen today in Palestine. No Zionist dream or intention can excuse what is happening today.

Two days ago, a video emerged from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was stormed by Israelis. They beat a Christian Palestinian in the church and smashed a statue of Christ the bridegroom. As the man cries out, Jesus lies on the floor, hands bound, in silence. Today, on Palm Sunday, Netanyahu ordered an airstrike on a Christian hospital. I think of the children’s ward. I think of the most recent numbers of children killed by indiscriminate carpet bombing published by the British journal, the Lancet. I think of the list of names of children under the age of one killed since October 7th of 2023. In 12 pt font, a list of names goes on for fourteen pages. This list is just children killed under the age of ten.

Where are the cries from the Catholic pro-life community? All I hear is silence.

I have been irrevocably altered from the graphic, uncensored war imagery seen on social media. This is why young people are so mobilized at this moment. Similar to Vietnam and the Civil War, this is the first time new technology, smartphones, has played a major role in documenting war. The advent of the tin type and various photographic techniques captured battlefields carpeted with bodies during the Civil War. It was the proliferation of these images that helped end the war after four years. During the 60s, the emergence of color television gave life to the vibrant orange and yellows of explosions juxtaposed with the lush greens of the Vietnamese forests. The bombs were no longer black-and-white puffs of smoke paired with patriotic marches. 

And now, we witness the use of technology to livestream violence from a civilian view. Last week, I saw an image of a child torn in two in 5k. It took me a while to understand what I was seeing because her little body hung like a flag from a piece of rebar. I’ve seen tanks spray painted with the Star of David crush lines of bodies on the ground. I tried to tell myself that the popping of their heads wasn’t real so I wouldn’t throw up. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to tell whether the children I see are dead or not. They look like they are sleeping when lined up on the ground. It’s only the guttural, soul-tearing sobs from their families begging God for mercy that tell me otherwise. I watch a little boy stroke the hair of his dead brother, telling him, ‘It’s okay.’ I can’t stop staring at his blue lips and lidless stare. 

Today, on Palm Sunday, Christ is in the rubble. And all I hear is silence.

I pray for peace. I pray for courage in our community to stand up for what is right. And I pray for a free Palestine.

Lord, forgive us.

Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025