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Today the Catholic Church as well as other Christian Churches celebrate All Saints Day. The number of saints had increased along the years, that it seemed more appropriate to allocate one day for all of them together.
As I watched the Sunday service on TV this morning, and which has become the norm ever since the Corona Pandemic, there was a special prayer for all those saints. However I could not help but think of the many saints who are living amongst us and we hardly recognize them, let alone say a special prayer for them.
Did we ever think of the many anonymous angels of mercy whom we do not recognize because we do not see them when they lend a hand to an elderly or a handicapped person, or when they knock at the door of a lonely person to give him or her some solace. I can think of some teachers with special compassion who have made a whole difference in the life of school children particularly those with special needs. And during this pandemic I cannot but think of all those nurses and medical teams who have been on the go continuously to save lives. What they have been doing is beyond their duty.
And of course under this oppressive occupation, there are those who check on families whose children have been in prison for years and years with no hope of having them released in their life time. But then could we not consider some of those prisoners themselves as saints, like Maher El- Akhras who has been detained without charge or trial and is in his 97th day of a hunger strike and is willing to sacrifice his life, so that the brutal and illegal Administrative detention is completely abolished. A detention Israel inherited from the British mandate gives Israel the right to hold anybody under administrative detention for a certain period without charge or trial, and which could be renewed continuously.
So on this All Saints day, please pray for Maher, and maybe a prayer for some compassion on the part of the Israeli military will help release Maher.
