Is today's world ready for the Messiah?

Five years ago, my wife and I joined a religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and we did celebrate Christmas right there in the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, which is currently under the control of the Palestinians, and no longer by the Israelis. It was the first time that I contemplated on the jugular question: Is the world ready to welcome the Messiah into the hearts of sinful humanity?

As of today, the Basilica of the Nativity is located in the West Bank, which is considered a part of Palestine, not Israel, the Promised Land. There is a grotto inside and every religious pilgrim can actually touch the very spot where the manger was located, the exact place where Jesus was born. Every one of us had to kneel and stretch out our arms and our hands could touch the exact spot where the Messiah was actually born. The young armed combatants who guarded the whole vicinity were Palestinian soldiers in their teens, both men and women and they were heavily armed with high-powered guns inside and around a globally-revered religious site.

Which thus confronts us with the ultimate question of man's inability to set aside political, ideological, and other boundaries that divide Israelis, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in a fragmented world of sinners and imperfect humanity. When we were eating our lunch inside the walled city of Jerusalem later that day, we were discussing our experiences two days earlier in Tel Aviv when we could hear bombs and the rapid fire of machine guns not far away from where we partook our meals. And yet, our tour guides were coming from both sides, one was Palestinian from the West Bank and the other was an Israeli from Haifa.

And these two tour guides were cordial and even constantly bantering with each other. Khaled, the Palestinian, was a very jolly and humorous guy while Asher, the Israeli, was more serious and reserved. But they put aside whatever differences they had, as they were both serving us, the tourists who provide both Israel and Palestine a large chunk of their respective economy's revenues. They were always with us from the time we crossed the border from Jordan in Al-Maghtas (where the prophet Elijah crossed the Jordan River to the Promised Land). Khaled and Asher were with us until we left southern Israel and entered Egypt through the territories where the mountain of Sinai is located.

Nearby was what is now the beleaguered and largely-devastated Gaza fronting the Mediterranean Sea. The Gaza Strip is a small territory where about two million Palestinians live. They were marginalized and separated from their comrades in the far-away West Bank when the State of Israel was founded after a diaspora of Jewish people came back from Europe to reclaim what they consider as their own promised land. Gaza is the site of heavy fighting when Israel under Netanyahu decided to avenge the October attack made by Hamas against the people of Israel.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas fired no less than 5,000 rockets from Gaza after attacking innocent Jewish people in southern Israel, killing and kidnapping young civilians who were celebrating the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret on Shabbat. The rest is history. What is happening to Gaza is almost parallel to what is still raging in Ukraine, as well as to what happened in Lebanon and just a few weeks ago in Syria. The world is in chaos and turmoil. This is the kind of world that awaits the coming of the Messiah.

Here in the Philippines, internally, the people are divided between the followers of the vice president and those loyal to the administration coalition. Externally, the whole country is still being besieged by the constant intrusions by China into our maritime territorial domains as well as our exclusive economic zones.

This is the kind of world that awaits with much expectations and hopes the celebration of the birth of our Savior and Lord who is the only one who can bring peace, joy, and love to a world beset with the gloom and doom of war and conflicts. May the Messiah save his people from all the pains and sadness brought by sins. May we all have a truly peaceful and joyful Christmas.