The Last Week

In these last days of our pilgrimage it is easy for us to prematurely begin the process of transitioning back to “normal” life.  The number of class sessions which we have in these final days increase, we must begin our preparations for final examinations and we have begun to get emails regarding the commitments and obligations that will be awaiting us when we arrive home.  While this is the easiest time for us to lose the spirit of a pilgrim, it is also the most important time to remain on this journey.

You see, right now each one of us has to make a choice.  This decision will affect the way that this experience forms and shapes our life and our ministry.  If we exit the pilgrimage now, if we leave that attitude that we have prayerfully fostered over the last two months, we run the risk of weakening how this experience shapes our relationship with Christ.  If, however, we continue with the spirit of a pilgrim, our return home will not mean the end of our experiences.  Rather, we will continue to enter into the graces that we received here more deeply and we will continue to journey towards Christ within our heart.  In short, we will no longer be on a pilgrimage, but we will remain pilgrims.

As we said in some of our first blog entries, the pilgrimage is an outward journey to foster an inward journey – the journey of the heart to Christ.  With the grace of God, this experience can be an important step in that life-long journey.

A Night to Remember

                Five members of our class took advantage of one of the unique opportunities Jerusalem has to offer: being locked in the Holy Sepulchre for the night.  After being greeting by a Franciscan Friar who told us the three rules (no sleeping, no singing, and no lighting candles) he said the entire Church would be ours for the following nine hours.  The doors were locked, both from the exterior and interior sides, the monks went their way, and we went to pray.  We found ourselves able to pray, unobstructed, at the most important sites in all of Christendom: Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre (the actual tomb of Christ).  Aside from near-freezing temperatures and a few random cats wandering around, we had ample time to enter into the mysteries of Christ’s death and Resurrection.

                After about four hours the doors were opened and the other Christian Churches (Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Coptics, and Armenians) which have a claim to the building entered to pray their liturgies.  In the middle of the night the holy sites were filled with bells, incense, chanting, and unexpectedly large crowds of people.  In the Old City of Jerusalem, the streets were deserted and quiet, yet the Holy Sepulchre was thriving with actions all praising the Lord!  While it was nice to have the last few hours of the night back in relative solitude, the movements of the entire evening were joyful.  There was a profound joy throughout the night.

                Last night we went to an empty church to pray at an empty tomb.  We did not expect to find the tomb occupied, as Mary Magdalene did on that first Easter Sunday morning (Lk 24:1-9).  So what were we expecting as we ventured into the tomb or as we climbed up Calvary?  I think we received exactly what we had set out for: a time to pray with Christ and rejoice because the tomb was empty.  He is Risen!  We encounter Him each and every day, whether here in the Holy Land, back home in the States, or anywhere else we may travel.  Let us be reminded of that each and every day, every time we make the cross.  Let us make the saying of John Paul II ring true in our hearts: “We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song.”   Let us be joyful.

A Deeper Look

Today we had a guest speaker come in and talk to us about Judaism. Judaism is a wide umbrella of practice including groups such as Secular Jews, Traditional Jews, Orthodox Jews and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, just to name a few. With such a wide range our speaker knew she couldn’t present all the intricacies of Judaism to us in one short day. She decided therefore to focus her talks on some of the commonalities amongst most Jews. One of those topics was Midrash.

            Midrash is kind of like a collection of stories or sayings that have built up around the Bible. They often attempt to clear up confusion or answer questions that come up during the reading of the Bible. As examples we looked at three Midrashim connected to the story of Cain and Abel. In Genesis it says that Cain invited Abel out to the field. The Midrashim attempt to give possible conversations that they might have had on their way to the field. The conversations presented are attempts to explain why Cain killed Abel. Without giving the entire stories I will summarize the three Midrashim to say that the first said it was a conversation over money, the second over power, and the third over sex. The Rabbis were basically saying that these are some of the reasons that we as humans fight and kill each other. We fight over money (or possessions), over power, and over sex. That held true then and it holds true today.

            The Midrashim gave insight into human thought and human life. One of our classmates compared this to our Catholic Lectio Divina. In Lectio we use our own imagination to place ourselves into events and explore the setting, much like the Midrash does. By doing so we can also come to know ourselves better and come to a deeper appreciation of our human condition. The Midrashim and Lectio Divina stand as examples for us as to how we can further engage the Bible stories that we know so well in order have a second and deeper look. Sometimes when we think we already know something we miss another lesson that is waiting to be discovered. 

The Prayer of Christ

We are entering the final moments of our pilgrimage. This evening we did a holy hour in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was an incredible experience to spend time with the Lord at the same spot where He experienced His agony.  As a man having both a divine nature and a human nature, Jesus knew that He was going to die an extremely painful death for the salvation of humanity. But it was at the moment in Gethsemane when He seemed to come face to face to what He was going to undergo. He knew that his trial was upon Him, and He knew that He could not face this trial alone.  So He went to the garden to pray.

As I reflected on the Jesus’ agony in the Garden today, I realized that this gospel passage teaches us the importance of prayer. We are reminded not only of the importance to take time out each day to be alone with God, but we are reminded that we should pray with a sense of urgency, of desperation. We live in a world that is filled with urgency for many things. We are desperate for instant gratification. We want instant e-mail. We want instant communication through cell phones. We seek fast food. Our prayer today at Gethsemane asks us to ponder whether we have the same urgency for God as we do for the things of the world.  This place reminds us how necessary it is to put God first in our lives, to depend completely on him.

In his urgent plea to the Father, Christ reminds us of the intense battle between the flesh and the spirit.  If we don’t pay attention to how God is working in our lives at every moment, we can easily become complacent. We can slip into the notion that we can do things on our own and, like the disciples at the Garden, we can get caught off guard and fall asleep. Therefore, now is the time for us to stay awake. Now is the time to cry out to God and seek his help. May we follow the example of Christ in his urgent plea to the Father so that we might constantly be aware of our own spiritual needs and the needs of others.   

Assumptions

            Today we had a lecture from a local expert on the topic of Catholic-Jewish relationships in the Holy Land. He spoke extensively about the particular challenges which face these relations in this part of the world as the result of two factors. The first is the unique situation of Israel as a land with a majority Jewish and minority Catholic population. In the situation of Jewish-Catholic dialogue with which we are accustomed in the United States, Judaism is a minority and Catholicism, while not a majority, is a large percentage of the community. The second is the peculiarities of Israel as a nation founded precisely as a Jewish State and the history of this land. It was an elegant reminder to me that attempts at dialogue and relationships can never be discussed in the abstract. Rather, relationships and dialogue take place between people; people who live in a particular context and carry a particular history. Without understanding and respecting the various unique factors which accompany people in a particular time and place, it is impossible to forge any kind of relationship.

            Jerusalem, indeed the whole of the Holy Land, is a place which has seen far too little peace and has a history of poor relationships among its residents. It was difficult, yet necessary, to see that some of my more naïve assumptions about the possibilities of dialogue were not accurate. It reminded me that it is easy to make assumptions about people in all manner of circumstances. It is only by actually meeting with people and engaging them as they are that our assumptions can give way to a genuine understanding of the other. It is not only in the course of inter-religious dialogue that we make erroneous assumptions, nor do those assumptions concern only people thousands of miles from home or from a much different culture. Rather, we also tend to make assumptions about those people closest to us. I hope and pray that we all might learn to engage in genuine dialogue with other people, rather than simply make assumptions about them. Then and only then will we advance in genuine understanding and build a solid relationship. 

God's Grace

Today we were blessed to have mass at the Church of St Anne, built by the Crusaders in AD 1138. There is a tradition that the crypt enshrines the home of the Virgin Mary and her parents, Saints Joachim and Anne. In the crypt, we had an opportunity to visit and pray in what is said to be the birthplace of Mary, the virgin mother of God. It was in this Church that we had today’s Eucharistic celebration. Next to it are the ruins of the miraculous healing pool called Bethesda, around which many sick people gathered in hope of healing once water stirred up. In the gospel of John we read about Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath, a man who had been ill for 38 years and who Jesus found lying next to the pool but had no one to put him in the pool once the water stirred (Jn 5:1-13).

Reflecting on these two important sites in the life of our Lord Jesus, one comes to appreciate and to clearly understand the salvation history of humanity. Having Mass at the site where the Blessed Virgin was said to have been born, lived, and grown up as a normal child bring us to understand the humility of God. The humility of God is visible as He uses normal and ordinary things in our lives to bring about extraordinary things. Anne and Joachim lived a simple but upright life and raised Mary in a life of holiness as they cooperated with the grace of God. Born for a special mission and thus being conceived without original sin, Mary became the mother of the incarnate Word, bringing forth through God’s grace the Savior. Anne and Joachim cooperated with the grace of God to raise Mary, who fulfilled the divinely ordained mission given to her. We too are called on to pray and imitate the humility of Saints Anne and Joachim so as to let God’s will be done in our lives and to fulfill the mission to which we are called. Gazing on the Pool of Bethesda, we realize Jesus’ concern, love, and compassion for those who are suffering. Jesus initiates the healing process; He gives the grace and we are to cooperate with His grace to attain the healing we need in our lives. This healing can be physical or psychological, but above all it is spiritual. Like the lame man who believed and was cured, we too are challenged to cooperate with God’s grace. 

Friendship with Christ

            We had the opportunity to visit the Mount of Olives, where Christ ascended into heaven, as well as Bethany where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, the friends of Jesus, lived.  We saw the tomb where tradition tells us Lazarus was raised by Jesus Christ.  We have also been at the place where Jesus Christ taught his disciples how to pray.  At this place, called Pater Noster, the prayer that Christ taught them, the ‘Our Father’, is translated into more than 150 languages from different parts of the world and placed on the walls of the church and courtyard.

            By visiting, seeing, and entering the tomb where Lazarus laid, then coming out of the tomb, we were reminded of our hope of being raised by Jesus from our own tomb of sins through the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation.  This was a way of connecting to our Lord by walking in His steps.  It was a moment to continue cultivating an abiding friendship with Christ just as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus had done during Christ’s earthly ministry.  To be with Christ is our first and most important priority, which brings us to fulfill His mission.  He calls us first to be with Him, them He sends us out as long as we stay connected to Him (Mark 3:14).  We can only have power and authority to do Christ’s work if we are united with Jesus.  Thus visiting these sties allows us to follow Jesus’ steps and renew our friendship with Him that He may send us to carry out His mission according to His will.  May the Lord bless all who made this journey possible and continue to bless us and give us the zeal and desire to serve Him and His people in love.