While Holy Week has traditionally commemorated the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ on the holiest week of the Christian calendar, never has its intrinsic call for peace been more urgent and more salient.

On this Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter (Resurrection) Sunday, Jamaicans will join hands and hearts with Christians across the globe to pray for that peace from God that passeth all understanding with the war in Iran and the Middle East naturally upper most in mind.

We in this space have always supported the notion of our region being recognised as a zone of peace, and we fret as we see creeping geopolitical events that threaten that notion, notably that involving Venezuela, Cuba, and the United States, all traditional allies of this country.

Our reflection has deepened this Holy Week by the words of Pope Leo XIV, head of the Roman Catholic Church, who has given voice to what many peace lovers feel and believe in respect of the death, mayhem, destruction, and economic deprivation that war brings.

“The wars that stain the present moment with blood are the fruit of the idolatry of power and money. Let us not grow accustomed to the clamour of weapons and images of war. Peace is not merely a balance of power. It is the work of purified hearts, of those who see others as brothers and sisters to be protected, not enemies to be defeated,” the pope said as part of his Easter Week messages.

Of course, the Easter events have not been meant to be for the mere expression of words. As it has been said, there will be no peace without justice, and those who pray for peace and justice must do more and move for sustained action to achieve it.

Christ himself set the ultimate example of the kind of sacrifice it takes to show love for one another and to build peace by dying on a cross — the symbol of what the Bible says is suffering and shame, but also of what is best about humanity.

No doubt, for Jamaicans the war in Iran could not end soon enough as the current events have demonstrated the extent of our small island’s vulnerability. The surge in oil prices has not restricted itself to the theatre of battle. The prices of all imported goods and services are gradually rising in a situation already exacerbated by Hurricane Melissa.

There is uncertainty about how soon normality will return to the Strait of Hormuz, the 21-mile stretch of sea lanes through which 20 per cent of the world’s traded oil passes but which has been virtually closed off to oil tankers.

It is well known to us that rising oil prices have always carried a sting in the tail, in that almost every price spirals in response, including the cost of money.

If Jamaicans feel a sense of economic frustration it can be argued that it is warranted. After decades of little or no growth in domestic product, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel in 2013 when things started to bubble.

That took a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but our resilience showed itself and the picture brightened significantly before Hurricane Beryl in 2024 and then Melissa in October 2025 struck. The war in Iran is the last thing we would have wanted to see.

If during this Eastern season Jamaicans get down on their knees to pray for divine intervention, no one should be surprised or critical. We have borne enough. But let us not lose resolve. Let the true spirit of Jamaica shine through.

There is no better time to mount the cross of courage, for peace and justice.