The Wounds of Our Children

Beloved

I am kneeling with you in sorrow, beside shattered pews and broken dreams.

My heart bears what yours is breaking under.

Because when children become headlines, the very body of Christ bleeds.

The latest tragedy: Mar Elias Church was bombed.

But I say

Someone bombed worship.

Not by accident.

But by design.

To erase faith the way one erases chalk off a sidewalk.

Young students.

A third grader’s hands still holding crayons.

Young adults planning futures.

All gone in a shudder of hatred.

Let me speak plainly:

Our grief is not distant.

It bleeds through streets and homes.

It sits in classrooms we taught,

in parents’ arms that once clung to us in blessing.

This is not a tragedy I can quote

It is a wound I feel in my own ribs

Because when one child dies praying,

the whole world’s prayers are diminished.

And yet, they came back.

Not with banners of defiance.

But with candles.

They filled the street with hymns.

They prayed in that very sanctuary, rubble and all.

That act

That holy return

Breaks my heart even further.

Because they are saying:

The flame died, but not here.

The light flickered but refuses to go.

This is not a resignation.

This is resurrection in protest.

To the faithful in Syria

I kneel with admiration.

You did not run from fear.

You ran toward hope.

You picked up stones and made altars.

You sang beneath cracked ceilings and reminded the world: love survives terror.

Beyond Syria, I must address Gaza too.

My heart still weeps for Gaza.

I ask, as David once echoed.

How long, O Lord?

How long must we bury the young while the powerful remain unshaken?

How long will prayers echo in bombed-out sanctuaries, while silence hangs from heaven like fog?

And yet

Even in this silence,

there is One still breathing.

Mothers, mothers, mothers

bearing every unspeakable loss.

Holding stones where children lay.

Weeping for neighbors, students, and faiths intertwined.

We weep with them.

Their tears are our tears.

Their silence, our silence.

Their cry: "How long?" —It is ours, too.

How long, Father?

How long will the blood of the innocent cry from the ground?

How long must the Church weep from empty pews?

How long must children die in places meant for learning, for hope, for love?

And still, I say:

Do not respond with vengeance.

That way has already been paved by evil.

The true revolution is found in unarmed grace

a power discovered in protecting a child rather than punishing a perpetrator.

Do not respond with mere words.

Prayer must become action.

Schools rebuilt, homes restored, hospitals staffed.

Children educated, protected, given dignity, not piety.

Our strength must come from a tenderness that refuses to harden.

Let that tenderness rise.

Not as a weapon of weakness,

but as a fortress of mercy.

To the survivors:

Your pain is a prophecy.

Not because it brings comfort, but because it calls the broken home.

Your loss is a lamentation.

Not because it ends story, but because it refuses the silence.

Your tears are testimonies:

That evil can break bones but not hope.

That hatred can break homes, but not the promised family.

Let us build again, together, across faiths:

Christians, Muslims, Druze, Yazidis, every heart enraged by loss.

We gather at tables that refuse division.

We bury the dead without shame.

We clothe children without conditions.

We speak and seek peace in streets where bombs once roared.

Healing is not forgetting.

Healing is remembering, together

and building in solidarity.

My hand will not grab a weapon.

It will reach out

to hold the hand of a Muslim mother who carries the same cross that was once carried in Jerusalem.

These are not mere acts of faith.

They are acts of resistance.

They are acts of love that say:

Your pain matters.

Your children mattered.

Your grief cannot remain buried.

And if any ask you to forget

Then answer gently:

I cannot forget because love is its own altar.

I will remember, for the Breath doesn’t forget.

God does not forget.

So rise, not in disbelief,

but in dread of despair.

Rise not to cancel,

but to commune.

Rise not to avenge,

but to anchor the hope that heaven is near.

Peace to the empty seats.

Bread to the broken ones.

Fire for the faithful who stand again.

And the Savior who wept the tears He now wipes.

Until soon.