Due to the coronavirus which continues to limit public celebration of mass in many countries throughout the world, the Good Friday Holy Land collection will be moved to Sunday September 13th this year, because it is close to the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
Leonardo Cardinal Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental churches, remembers Pope Francis’s prayer at the end of the Way of the Cross in the Colosseum in 2019, when the Holy Father associated Jesus’ suffering on the cross with those who hunger for bread and for love, with those who are alone and abandoned, with those who thirst for justice and peace, with migrants and little ones, and with a humanity that wanders in darkness and uncertainty.
Cardinal Sandri reminds us in his February 26th statement that: “The Holy Land is the physical place where Jesus lived this agony and this suffering, transforming it into redemptive action thanks to an infinite love.” He points out that along the Via Dolorosa “we can still … see him as he walks the road carrying the cross”.
He continues: “You know well what severe trials the Church in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East has endured over the centuries. Those trials are not yet finished: the tragedy of the progressive reduction of the number of local faithful continues, … Long and exhausting wars … produce millions of refugees and strongly influence the future of entire generations … deprived of the most basic goods such as the right to a peaceful childhood, … education, a job and a family, an industrious and dignified adult life, and a peaceful old age.”
Associating the collection, usually taken on Good Friday, with the Exaltation of the Cross, brings to mind Christ’s suffering Church. The collection becomes a sign of our solidarity with those who continue to live the Gospel in the land where Jesus brought life to all people.
The Holy Land collection was established on Good Friday in 1974 when St. Pope Paul VI asked parishes and bishops around the world to show their solidarity with and their support of the church and people of the Holy Land. Through the generous help of Catholics, the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land and other ecclesial communities are able to continue their presence, operate schools and welfare systems, care for youth and the poor, and strive to assure a peaceful coexistence of all peoples in the Holy Land.