c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph, published by St. Martin Press.)

UNDATED _ The Christian faiths long ago divided the holy city of Jerusalem and other sacred sites in the Holy Land into spiritual protectorates on the model of the military zones into which post- World War II Berlin was apportioned among the American, British, French and Soviet victors.

These faiths presumably hold more in common than the old allies as, from differing angles, they supervise the spiritual geography of what for centuries have been recognized as the holy places of Christendom.

Now, the foundations for a mosque will soon be poured in the shadow cast by these faiths across sites sacred to them. They vigorously protested the Israeli government’s approval of the choice, by Muslim militants, of a site for their mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

On Nov. 23, the Muslims, who say the site is connected to their leader Saladin, laid the cornerstone for the mosque but will not start construction until after Pope John Paul II visits, expected in March 2000.

To dramatize their outrage, Christian leaders closed their holy places on this day and the day before. Geography and structures were enlisted, as they have been in countless wars called holy, against geography and structures.

The results of this two-day shrine strike were predictable. As pilgrims Josef and Riny Witsiers are reported to have said,”We walked 4,000 kilometers and took two boats to get here … We were expecting a little city with peace and harmony. I guess we were dreaming.” The Christian response did not block the militants but it did deny entry to the believers whose rights to be there they were allegedly protecting. How unremarked, if even noticed, by the Christian patriarchs was the spiritual result of this blockade.

In effect, they re-enacted the oldest of Christian stories, turning the weary travelers, Josef and Riny Witsiers, into modern counterparts for Joseph and Mary as they found no room at these inns of spiritual refreshment. This was true for thousands of other pilgrims as well.

This does not exactly strike an ecumenical note on millennial eve in this land, soaked red with the blood of claimants throughout its history of carnage, exclusion and exile in the name of religion. Nothing is more bitter to memory’s taste than Holy Wars and Crusades to conquer and/or maintain pieces of geography whose real meaning has nothing to do with land or buildings of any kind.

This kind of clash is made inevitable when spirituality is defined by places and things, when, in other words, its natural language, is mistranslated and so leads to misunderstandings deep and unrelieved even by the slaughters they inspire, always”in God’s name.” The language of the spirit is that of myth and poetry, that primary gift of tongues that insulates truth from its being outdated by the passing of time or being reduced to places and objects by translating it literally and distorting and limiting its meaning.”The end of the world,”for example, about which we will hear more as we count down to 2000, is a metaphor that has nothing to do with the earth’s being consumed in flame. The world ends for each of us when we are able to view it spiritually instead of geographically.

The wonder rather than the doom of God’s creation is revealed to us _ the old world comes to an end _ when we see it spiritually rather than materially.

So, too, the”promised land”is a metaphor of religious language rather than a tract of land. One must enter this promised land spiritually through gates ever open to us in our hearts and souls rather than in possessions or pastures, however green.

We make pilgrimages to Jerusalem not to find the land of promise there as a piece of property but to deepen our possession of it within ourselves.

If the promised land is of the spirit, will another endless legal, political and perhaps violent fight over a section of Jerusalem safeguard it or turn it into a prize, like the spoils of war that always contain the seeds of another conflict?

Will Christians lose much of their spiritual riches if they allow a purely material structure to rise next to a basilica? What will compromise the sacredness of the basilica more _ a new building near it or a new war to defend it”in the name of God?”DEA END KENNEDY