A Palestinian boy was pulled from the rubble with one shoe still on, while an Israeli mother wept over her son’s empty bed—his life ended by a rocket he never saw coming. These images burn through screens and into our conscience, reminding us that the ancient quarrel between the children of Abraham has never ended, only evolved. And though it is their fight, its shockwaves unsettle the whole world, making peace not just their duty, but everyone’s urgent need.

The story of Isaac and Ishmael wasn’t meant to be a curse. It was never written to justify missiles or checkpoints, but to explain how nations could spring from brothers. And yet, what was once a matter of lineage has become a matter of pride, politics, and pain. The descendants of these two sons, Israel and selected Arab nations, now speak not in parables but in retaliation. And while they may argue about borders and histories, what lies at the core is something far older than modern statehood—a fractured family bond left untreated for millennia. It is as if the wound of Abraham’s house was never allowed to scab over.

Even the story of Jacob and Esau carries in it the blueprint of reconciliation. Two brothers, betrayed and wounded, but reunited after years of silence, each weeping on the other’s shoulder. That narrative exists for a reason. It whispers, perhaps stubbornly, that peace is possible. That one day, former rivals might see the futility of inherited rage. But history, in this region, seems to repeat not as tragedy or farce, but as a stubborn refusal to grow up. Leaders on both sides play the same games year after year, as if the old scripts will someday write a different ending.

There is, of course, no shortage of blame to go around. Israel, often buoyed by American support, acts with the confidence of someone who knows no real punishment is coming. Arab nations, some of which remain hostile and others cautiously neutral, leverage Palestinian suffering as political capital while failing to offer viable peace frameworks themselves. And those truly caught in the middle—innocent civilians, children, workers, dreamers—get ground down like wheat between two ancient millstones. It’s exhausting. It’s infuriating. And it’s deeply human in the most tragic sense.

What’s lost in the gunfire is not just life but imagination—the capacity to see a world beyond revenge. Generations of Israelis and Palestinians have now been born into hatred, raised on stories that valorize vengeance and mistrust. It’s not just the land that’s occupied; it’s the collective future. When the idea of peace becomes laughable, a myth, a naive fantasy told only by outsiders, then you know that something profound has been broken—not just treaties, but trust itself. And without trust, no border wall or ceasefire can hold.

One cannot help but ask, what if the courage needed now isn’t the kind found on a battlefield? What if it’s the courage to forgive, to admit wrongdoing, to compromise? That, I believe, is the most radical idea in the region right now. Not dominance. Not retaliation. But humility. The kind of humility Abraham himself might’ve asked for had he seen how far his children would fall. It’s tragic that those who once wandered the desert in search of promise now anchor themselves in stubbornness, as if soil were more sacred than soul.

Let us not romanticize war or the so-called righteousness of either side. Human dignity, not territorial maps, should be the sacred ground. The olive tree doesn’t care who claims the land beneath it. It just grows—roots deep, branches wide, always reaching for peace it will never taste. And perhaps that is the greatest insult to this conflict: that nature, in all its simplicity, fosters coexistence better than the humans who claim to have a divine right to the soil.

Peace will not come from treaties signed in haste nor from military victories paraded like trophies. It will come, if it comes at all, from the children of Isaac and Ishmael finally realizing that inheritance should not mean enmity. It will come when they stop waiting for the other to blink first and start acting as though the world, the very air, the very earth, is tired of their feud. For it is. And so are we.

GIVEN the way we are in this world, marked as it is with frequent inconsistencies and infidelities, we need to see to it that this business of making daily renewals of our commitments to God and to everybody else should be taken up seriously.

For this, we have to be clear about what the real purpose of our life is, how we can relate everything in our day to this ultimate purpose of ours. But first of all, we should know what making these daily renewals is all about.

In the gospel, we can hear Christ saying: “My sheep hear my voice; and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand.” (Jn 10,27-28)

That, in a nutshell, is the ideal condition for us to be in. It’s when we can abidingly hear Christ’s voice and follow him. We should be wary of our strong tendency to hear and be guided only by ourselves and by some worldly standards. We really need to humble ourselves so that we can let Christ’s voice to be heard and followed by us.

Right at the beginning of the day, we should already direct and set our mind and heart on Christ, promising to offer everything to him, to do things with and for him, and to know him more and more by going through certain practices of prayer, spiritual reading and theological study, and other acts of piety.

Besides those, we should make it an organic part of our lifestyle to always begin and begin again in our struggle to hear Christ’s voice. That’s because we cannot deny that we often fail to be consistent and faithful to our original intention to always listen to him and to follow his ways.

We just have to begin and begin again, never getting tired, since Christ never tires of us. This seems to be the law of our earthly life. We should not remain down all the time. We can and should always get up.

That we always sin is already quite known. St. John in his first letter said so. “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him (God) a liar, and His word is not in us.” (1,10) So, let’s just acknowledge our sinfulness and ask for forgiveness. Let’s avoid playing the hypocrite.

Besides, St. Paul vividly describes the constant inner struggle we all have between good and evil. From his Letter to the Romans, we read: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (7,15ff.)

And again, we are told that we are actually ranged against powerful enemies. Not only do we have to contend with our wounded flesh, and the sinful allurements of the world. We also have to do battle with powerful spiritual enemies.

As St. Paul put it in his Letter to the Ephesians, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (6,12)

Let’s remember this fact of life, and not waste too much time lamenting and feeling bad because of our weakness and sinfulness. All we have to do is to be quick to say sorry, saying it from the heart no matter how repeatedly we have to do it. And from there, let’s continue the process of conversion and transformation, going to confession often, cultivating the virtues, sanctifying our work and ordinary duties, etc.