All Hallowed feast

Eucharistic adora-
tion at St. Peter's

It's November .... and we begin the month with the feast of All Saints. I went to join our Jaffa community for the solemn Mass. And I left very early ... at 4.30am because I wanted to arrive by 6am when they start Eucharistic Adoration. Mass followed at 7am with Gloria and Creed. After that we went to the refectory for breakfast. I brought arab bagels for the community which they really like. It was good to meet them all again ... a very international community. Superior is Mexican, Vicar is Polish, one Ukrainian chaplain for Byzantine catholics, one Indian chaplain for the Syro-Malabar rite, one eritrean chaplain for the ethiopic rite catholics. We bantered and laughed ... then they all went for a swim at the beach below the church. I stayed back to clean the aquarium and Marco our filipino seminarian was in charge of the sacristy. Both of us had a good chat and then the rest came home for lunch. Although its a solemnity, we're still pretty strict here so no meat but fish only. It's Friday today. But it was salmon ... so it's festive. No lentil soup ... thank goodness.

Lone beggar at Damascus Gate

On my way out this morning at 4.30am ... it was still very dark but lots of muslims were entering the City for Friday prayers. There was a slight mist and it was cold ... about 11 degrees. A couple of bedouin women were carrying their veggies to sell while at Damascus Gate there was a lone beggar loudly crying out for alms. The ground was all wet with dew. It was a typical early winter sight. Once in Jaffa, the temp difference was obvious. People wear shorts and T-shirts ... it was at least 10 degrees higher than Jerusalem. Then once I got back home by bus ... the hoodie jackets were out again. And the worst thing was I was seated in a very crowded minibus next to an arab who was coughing his head off. Obviously he has the virus .... I hope I have enough immunity not to catch it. People here never learn to cover their mouths when coughing and never ever were masks. It's a hygienic stone age. I'm going to need the prayers of All Saints to protect me from getting sick again.

There's rising tension between Israel and Jordan when Israel arrested 2 jordanians ... and Jordan arrest an israeli. Looks like a tit-for-tat diplomacy. It's not very assuring when this happens while we're watching our northern borders with Lebanon dissolving in social disorder and a collapsing govt ... and our southern border where Gaza is picking up its missile strikes.