Last Friday, the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, I woke at 5:30 a.m. At 6:15 a.m. I got out of bed. For about 20 minutes, I prayed. I knelt on a wooden prayer bench I made with a Jesuit brother named Bill Foster at Red Cloud Indian school 15 years ago. I prayed four traditional prayers: ”God, I offer myself…” and “Take Lord, receive…” and  “God, grant me…” The final prayer intoned the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I prayed about a couple of other things on my mind. I went to the gym, a cavernous old converted armory just a five-minute walk from my Jesuit residence in Brooklyn. I did gym things. Earlier in the week, the gym was used as a holding space for dozens of extras in a movie about high fashion whose code name was “Cerulean.” The extras walked around the basketball courts in smashing tuxedos and ball gowns; they walked with flair, with a charming arrogance I think they wouldn’t have had if they were just in jeans and Stussy t-shirts.

I returned to my community and went to Mass. It was 7:30 a.m. Ken, who used to work at Jesuit Refugee Service, celebrated the Mass. The readings included the Annunciation, which never gets old for me. The Holy Spirit coming upon Mary and the Most High overshadowing her and her child being the Son of God.

At the petitions, I mentioned Pope Leo’s call for prayer and fasting on behalf of Gaza and Ukraine. Two days earlier, the pope asked the faithful to undertake these ancient practices for peace on the feast of the Queenship of Mary. Mary, he said, “is also invoked as Queen of Peace, while our earth continues to be wounded by wars in the Holy Land, in Ukraine and in many other regions of the world.”

We would be, said Leo, “imploring the Lord to grant us peace and justice, and to dry the tears of those who suffer as a result of the ongoing armed conflicts.” I decided to pray and fast for Gaza.

In a report issued in mid-July, the Catholic aid group Caritas International described what is happening in Gaza as a “horrific situation.”

Caritas pointed out that Hamas still holds hostages. They wrote that the entirety of the Gaza Strip “is being bombed and razed to the ground to clear the strip and make it uninhabitable; Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being slaughtered.” It reported that Gazans ”are being starved to the point of famine” and that “children are bombed while waiting for therapeutic nutrition and vaccines.”  

“People are shot by the dozens daily while queuing for water and food,” said the report. “Food, water and other basic necessities are systematically blocked and withheld at anything other than tokenistic levels.” The list goes on.

The bishops of the United States asked that a special collection be taken up this past weekend in parishes across the country and sent to provide famine relief in Gaza.

I had pitched to the America staff the day before that someone undertake the fast and then write about it. At Mass, I decided to be the one to write about fasting, what it was like. I can’t will myself into a spiritual experience, into a sense of solidarity or meaning or nobility or deep and somber union with God and man. I can will myself into doing regular daily things and recording them and seeing what comes of it all.

In the midst of abundant sorrow

At Mass, I remembered I would not be eating breakfast—or any meals—afterward. It instantly made things simpler; it streamlined the day, it made the day more somehow.

On July 20, after three people were killed and several others injured in a bombing at the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, Pope Leo condemned Israel’s actions in unvarnished fashion. “Sadly, this act adds to the continuous military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza,” Leo said. “I again call for an immediate halt to the barbarism of the war and a peaceful resolution to this conflict.” 

I got ready to leave for work. I had planned to put on a summery white shirt with little anchors on it. Maybe anchors. Spears? I decided to wear my clerics. It seemed fitting. I am not a cleric; I am a brother, but brothers wear clerics. Odd. The collar is a separate, wraparound thing you hook awkwardly to the shirt, with a thin white strip above the black collar. It is a bit tight because if it is tight, it doesn’t sag. It sits up a little more; it looks better. 

I got on the subway to go to America’s office in Manhattan. I prayed on a rosary ring, one I have had for 15 years, the cross part broken off and hanging by a separate ring attached to the rosary. It was given to me by someone at Red Cloud Indian School, the circumstances of which were complicated. Red Cloud is now called Mahpiya Luta.

The Jerome Biblical Commentary says that fasting among the Israelites was “invoked for times of bereavement and national sorrow. Fasting days naturally multiplied as sorrow abounded.” 

Anthony Soohoo, S.J., an Old Testament scholar who stays with us in Brooklyn every summer, says that fasting is also penitential. “We are asking God’s forgiveness for the sins of the world that allows this suffering to happen.”

No matter how humble you are, no matter how prayerful and penitential you’re being, when you fast for a cause, you feel more righteous than all other non-fasters around you. There is no getting around it. Maybe then the fasting becomes geared not only to a particular global cause but a reparation for the pride the very act of fasting stirs up in you.

To risk peace

Isn’t Hamas to blame for perpetrating the war? They drew first blood; they began it all with the monstrous Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They have not stopped fighting; they have not released the hostages. They use “human shields” (regardless of the debated nature of their use) to fend off the I.D.F. This is on Hamas, no? And all the attacks over all the years that have tried to destroy the state of Israel ever since its founding. And every horrible thing that has gone down in Jewish history. Can we really blame this beleaguered nation and people for the war it is waging to defend its very existence?

Father Soohoo suggested that “once you start comparing victimizations, the matching game, whose suffering is worse, who started what,” you have gone down a dead-end road. In Israel’s case, he said, the Scripture narrative of God’s leading the people to the promised land, despite countless trials and betrayals of the covenant, God forgiving their sins over and over, should make the heirs to the ancient Israelites more empathetic to others. “And that includes the Palestinian people,” Father Soohoo said. “While Israel is challenged to take the risk of peace, it also needs to provide for the security of its own people. Nonetheless, if it continues on this road, there will be nothing but endless war ahead.” 

Certainly, it is on their neighboring countries to take the risk of peace as well. But, as far as cleaning up “their side of the street,” as a headline in The Economist put it, “The continuation of the war in Gaza disgraces Israel.”

The spiritual book of Isaiah is filled with shriving political declarations. In Chapter 58, the Lord calls the Israelites to a different kind of fasting:

“Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose?
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking off every yoke?
Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry,
bringing the afflicted and the homeless into
your house;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
And not turning your back on your own
flesh?”

“Peace be with you” were the first words out of Leo’s mouth when he came out on the balcony as pope. “God loves us,” he said. “God loves you all, and evil will not prevail.” 

That last part, evil will not prevail, I mostly believe it, and I mostly don’t believe it. 

I’m on the B train, wearing clerics with the tight, sharp-looking collar, clipping along a bridge over the New York harbor into Manhattan with the water sparkling below. The Brooklyn Bridge just to the west, the Statue of Liberty further off in the distance, freighters coursing on the river, the lush parks, the towering buildings, the gray city looming on the other shore. I prayed the ring rosary from Red Cloud, the Hail Mary’s, the Gothic prayer about being saved from the fires of hell. 

Years ago, a Jesuit told a group of us novices that prayer is like polishing the hood of the car, while God is down below working on the engine.

On the train, the fast spilling over into other areas, I thought about my fellow Jesuit James Martin, who receives death threats for trying to help people be Catholic, and about the people he ministers to, condemned and censured and controlled because of their sexuality.

I thought about my goodhearted colleague Zac, whose wife Amanda just gave birth to a girl. Zac who lives in Brooklyn and has a zeitgeisty life; a Liverpool fan, does things with wine, has a podcast and knows Sister Jean, can interpret the modern-day hieroglyphics known as “Google Analytics.” The fast about war in the Middle East had spilled over to a zeitgeisty newborn in Park Slope. 

So God bless you, infant girl. The Queenship of you. The power of the most High overshadowing you. And overshadowing everything, no matter how far gone, no matter how wretched and horrific. The most High overshadows it all and envelops it all, and that matters somehow, matters deeply. Regardless of my unbelief, the evil of war will not prevail. 

I went over the bridge. It was only 10:40 a.m. If the fast ended then and there, it seemed it would be enough.

Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”