2018 Holy Land - Reflections on the Pilgrimage

It is hard to believe that it is nearing three weeks since I departed on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land and well more than a week since I returned. As usual, the time immediately before departure seemed both incredibly long and incredibly short (especially in the last days in the midst of my pre-departure misadventure); the time on the pilgrimage likewise both long and short; but the time afterward has flown by. It is one reason I have been working like a Trojan to get my blog record of the trip fleshed out with as much detail as I could as well as get as many pictures as possible posted to their correct places, before all the little details start receding into the mists of time. Not only have I been reliving the experience by so doing, I have been ensuring I can go back and do so in the future, but most importantly, I think, I have been processing it all. Now, having finished the blog series on “2018 Holy Land,” I feel ready to reflect on it with the benefit not only of my own ruminations but also of discussions with friends who have been eager to hear all about it and who have posed a number of questions that have forced me to think about the experience as a whole and try to figure out how to convey to them just how wonderful it was.

I’ll begin with a couple of the most frequent questions I've gotten: Did you feel safe? and What did you like best?

As to the first of those questions, the answer is a resounding Yes – at no time during the six days we were on the ground in Israel – and in the Palestinian Territory – did I feel unsafe. With the given, of course, that I was part of a group and therefore not “on my own,” I still say with all sincerity that even more so than Mexico when we were there in 2016, the reality on the ground is very different than the impression given by the news media. I was perhaps a bit more expectant of what turned out to be the reality since I did watch through the entirety of a couple of Steve Ray’s videoblogged pilgrimages from earlier in the year – one before and one after the uptick in tensions and reported violence in May – and perceived pretty much no effect on a pilgrimage group much like our own; I also started pulling in feeds from Israeli news media on the private news aggregator I set up just for myself, and although there was of late a good bit of frank discussion of the ongoing tensions and larger issues to do with them, as well as the specific unrest currently churning down on the Gaza Strip, by and large the impression I got was of a peaceful country in which the people went about their daily lives with a feeling of security, not in constant fear for their lives that western media reports would seem to indicate must be the situation. And that security does not seem to exist at the cost of some kind of visibly omnipresent police/military presence. Contrary to what people I talked to who have travelled to Israel, whether on pilgrimage or not, seemed to indicate, we did not see an armed security presence everywhere. To be sure there probably was more of a presence than I perceived – I imagine they would not want to be seen, that they would want to be discreet however vigilant and ready to act quickly and decisively – but the fact is whatever security presence there was in Israel was considerably less visible than it was in Mexico. With the exception of the checkpoint agents at the Security Wall going into and out of Bethlehem, I noticed armed security on just three occasions. Most notably, there was a small security station on the Via Dolorosa right where it passed out of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City into the Christian Quarter. I don’t specifically remember where the others were, but they did not seem to be in any specifically memorable position other than that – which I imagine is an intersection that violence might be expected when tensions inevitably flare up.

But to make a long answer short – Yes, I felt absolutely safe the entire time. Even in Bethlehem – although I must also say that our guide made it crystal clear that Bethlehem and the West Bank – the Palestinian Territory – is not Israel, and is a different situation entirely with regard to safety. As I wrote in the blog, as we approached Bethlehem for the first time after several days in northern Israel, preparing to pass through the Wall and make our way to our hotel, he cautioned us very seriously to be vigilant if we leave the group or the hotel, and not to do so after dark. It was never an issue. The only times we left the hotel were as a group, as far as I know. In other circumstances it may have been different, but frankly our schedule was such that we rolled out right after breakfast and only returned in time to unwind in the hotel bar for a little while before supper, the with prospect of an early morning start to send us to our rooms rather than be tempted to go “out on the town” (if anyone from our group would have been so tempted). The only exception to what I just said was that, I found out afterward, late one afternoon the couple I rode to and from Houston with did walk down to an ATM that our guide suggested – and had no problem other than that the ATM “ate” his card. They didn’t report any unease in making that daytime excursion.

But that is way too much space given to an issue that was no issue. Yes, I felt safe.

As to what I liked best on the whole trip, it’s really a conundrum – how to decide? It also depends on exactly what you mean by that question. I’m taking it as, what specific holy place or sight in general did you find the most moving? … Yeah, it’s still a conundrum – how to decide? There was so much – but hit with that question at, I think, the first real get-together I had with any friends after arriving back home, my mind immediately went to one thing, and I’m sticking with it – the Noon Angelus Procession by the Franciscans at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. I heard them come out chanting Ave Maris Stella (I believe) and for the next ten minutes or so I was in hog heaven. I really did turn to one of my fellow pilgrims at the end and say, “Tell me it’s not better in Latin!”

Of course, that is not to denigrate in any way all the other holy places we saw, holy spots I touched – each of which had its own profoundly wondrous appeal just from the knowledge that I was seeing – touching – places where heaven had in one way or another come down to touch the earth. As Fr. Emilio refrained, again and again, in his homilies – It was here, in this place.

[Side note: Another of my post-travels exercises, in order to distill a thousand or more photographs down into a manageable subset easy to show – believe me, people do not want to be bored with the full set, most of which are duplicates, of things that have meaning only to yourself, or just not that good as snapshots taken on the fly – and have them printed in a nice photobook. I’ve done for one each of the other pilgrimages I’ve made and the result is, in my opinion, nicer than printing out photographs and putting them into a photo album. This time, I anticipate two volumes, most likely – one for Galilee and one for Jerusalem and its environs – and I’m going to name them respectively, It Was Here and In This Place.]

The importance of place is something I truly realized only during and after my first real – and belated – excursion to England and Scotland in 2008, after well over a decade as a historian specializing in those areas during the early Middle Ages. Walking the battlefield at Hastings or on Hadrian’s Wall (and I could multiply examples) gave me a sense of connection to events that hitherto had been, I realized, little more than stories. I suddenly felt a connection with events and persons 1000 or 1500 years gone. That was true for the events of English and Scotland I’d long studied – but it was nothing compared, I found in 2014 on the pilgrimage to Italy or that to Mexico in 2016, to walking in or touching the places important in the history of my Faith. And those paled beside the experiences I had in the Holy Land. The closest previous was being in the presence of the tilma bearing the miraculous image of Our Lady from almost five hundred years ago. But now I touched the place were, at least according to tradition, she was born – where John the Baptist was born – where Our Lord Himself was born; was within feet of the place where the angel announced to Our Lady that she would conceive and bear a son who would be God Himself; walked – if not in the very footsteps of Our Lord on his way to Calvary, at least very closely to them; I touched the very peak of Calvary, where He suffered and died – then touched … well, at least the marble slab covering … the shelf in the Tomb where His Body was lain, and from which He rose again.

There is no way to describe how moving those moments were, so I don’t ever try. But I do recommend them. Take it from me, there is no place like place.

Of course, important in any activity – even a pilgrimage – which is done in a group, is the individuals who make up that group. The way I have been putting it is, There was not a single pebble-in-the-shoe among this group! I could not have asked for better travel companions – especially in my suddenly debilitated state that arose only days before we departed. From Kathie and Robert who had already, a couple months before, offered me to ride with them to and from Houston, to Mary the nurse who found herself professionally consulted when my pacemaker-pocket incision seemed inflamed to me; from Ingrid who kept me on my toes with questions about everything we were seeing once she found out I’m a history professor and has shared with me a thousand or more wonderful pictures taken with a real camera (and reported back to her son, one of our seminarians, who reported back to our diocesan Director of Vocations, who reported back to his parents, dear friends of ours, who reported back to my wife that they were all looking out for me and that I was doing just fine), to Angela who somehow found my lame sense of humor funny and offered to carry some of my acquisitions in her voluminous bag when I was trying to juggle a hat (on and off and we went in and out of churches) and two phones with only one working hand, and Maria with whom I found I could make comic-book movie allusions and have somebody on this pilgrimage get it (I did not expect that!); from Jennifer with whom I chanted the Gloria in the chapel at Shepherds' Fields, to Ann and Donna; from my wife’s sister-in-law Kristal, a late addition to the pilgrimage, a Baptist who fit in perfectly with this group of Catholics and mother-henned me more than any of them, to my infinite gratitude – to Brother Miguel whom I don’t think anybody ended up calling “Mike,” who was funnier than I’d imagined any “religious brother” would be, especially when he procured the keffiyeh and robes and mounted up on the camel like Lawrence of Arabia! And especially Padre Emilio, who put this pilgrimage together, put up with a number of liturgical chant faux pas on my part ("The Mass of the Double Sanctus"), and kept us in mind throughout that it was here, in this place….

I miss you all. 

(Especially singing the theme from Rawhide ... how did that get started?)

A good guide can also make-or-break any tour, religious or otherwise. We had the best. While not being a specialist in Biblical history, I consider myself fairly well read in the subject – and I found my knowledge paled beside his own as a Biblical archaeologist actually working there in that place. I was able to “talk shop” with Tony, to a degree, but most importantly I just listened to him and learned so much! He was congenial, funny, easy to get along with – and a fount of knowledge not just about all the places we went to but, with great passion, about the conditions of his fellow Christians in the Middle East, which I will return to in a moment.

Finally, the oft-forgotten wheels that keep things moving, literally. One of the regrets I have, after putting out the call to my fellow pilgrims seeking a picture of him and coming up nada, is that our driver is at this point just a name to me – Wael. I’ve had good drivers in all my excursions, but I think he was the best. He maneuvered that bus in ways I don’t think is humanly possible. As I told him at one point after shouting approval to Tony for something I don’t remember specifically, “Tony, you are The Man!” – “Wael, Tony might be The Man, but the way you drive this bus, you’re The Other Man!”

As I intimated just a moment ago, I learned at lot on this pilgrimage. Perhaps the most important thing was how blind we Christians are in the west to the tragic state of our brethren in the east. Yes, we’ve heard about the persecutions of Christians by the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria – and been outraged by our own governments’ preferential treatment of Islamic “refugees” over the many, many Christians who are being systematically eradicated from Islamic lands – but we never hear about the lamentable conditions being endured by dwindling numbers of Christians in the very birthplace of our Faith – in Bethlehem itself. I wrote about this in a couple places in the blog proper, and won’t repeat the details again, but I summed it up pretty succinctly – They are not even given the dignity of being correctly identified as “Aramaean Christians,” what they have long called themselves as natives of the land from which Christianity sprang, but rather have been lumped in with their Muslim Arabic neighbors under a new “national identification” based solely on geography, as “Palestinians” – and being caught in the middle, with the Israelis considering them “Palestinians” and the Muslims considering them Israeli collaborators. Trapped in enemy territory, behind the "West Bank Security Wall," their straits are desperate. Given what Tony said about the implosion of Christianity in Bethlehem since 2000, I fear we are just one Intifada away from losing Bethlehem altogether, a tragedy for those poor people far and away beyond the tragedy it would be for the Church as a whole.

Which brings me at last to our travel broker, Nativity Pilgrimage. Tony is passionate about this – of all the many Catholic pilgrimage companies there are out there, Nativity Pilgrimage is the best. In his case, he’s talking about its legitimacy. For Nativity, the pilgrimage business is not just a business, it is an apostolate, a mission, whose purpose is beyond anything else to enlighten the world about the true state of Christianity in Bethlehem and the Middle East and to do what it can to help the brave Christians who have refused to give up and leave, who are determined to keep at least a toe-hold in their – our, as brother Christians – homeland, not to let Bethlehem become another Nain. It does so by providing top-notch service. I have been on pilgrimages brokered by Magnificat (to Italy) and by 206 Tours (to Mexico City), and I say absolutely this was the best overall experience of the three. They were all good, mind you – but this was the best. Everything went off flawlessly – even with a bit of a hiccough there at the beginning of the summer when it looked like low numbers might scuttle the whole deal. And this great service was provided at a price that neither of those others could touch – without sacrificing on quality. We stayed in the very same beachfront hotel in Tiberias that Steve Ray’s pilgrims are treated to – and having checked out his prices they are a lot higher than what we paid for almost exactly the same package. I’m told that Nativity Pilgrimage cut Radio Maria a special rate on this pilgrimage because Jacob, the owner, is a supporter of Radio Maria and its mission, but looking on the Nativity Pilgrimage website reveals that their regular prices are still fantastic. From what I can see, Nativity Pilgrimage talks the talk and walks the walk, and I will plug them whenever and wherever I can.

I just have one more thing to say about this pilgrimage. Hopefully I’ve conveyed how wonderful an experience it was. I would just like to end with the first words I said to a friend whom I urged to come with my on this journey, but who passed, when I saw him upon my return – “If you ever get a chance to go to the Holy Land again, don’t pass it up!”

I certainly won't.

+ + +

Finally, just for kicks, since I don’t think we did anything on this trip on the day that was scheduled (except fly in and out), here is a comparison of our initial Itinerary vs. the Reality….

Day	Itinerary	Reality
1	Fly out of Houston	Fly out of Houston
2	Land in Israel Drive to Tiberias	Land in Israel Drive to Tiberias
3	Mt. Tabor Cana Nazareth	Capernaum Tabgha Peter’s Primacy Galilee boat trip
4	Capernaum Tabgha Peter’s Primacy Galilee boat trip	Cana Nazareth Mt. Tabor
5	Bethlehem Ein Karim	Depart Tiberias Haifa-Carmel Jaffa-Tel Aviv Arrive Bethlehem
6	Mount of Olives Mount Zion	Bethlehem Mount Zion
7	Jerusalem Old City Via Dolorosa Holy Sepulchre Western Wall Free time	Ein Karim Jericho (Qumran) Dead Sea
8	Jordan River Jericho Qumran Dead Sea	Mount of Olives Via Dolorosa Holy Sepulchre
9	Flight home	Flight home

Well, I was wrong … we went to Mount Zion on the right day!

Mind you, I have no complaints. We gained Mount Carmel at the price of Qumran (which we did see from the bus, hence the parentheses), a muddy dip in the Jordan trickle, and the Western Wall. I can certainly live with that.

I do regret somewhat losing Day 7-afternoon's free time in the Old City of Jerusalem, however.

As I discussed in the blog itself, moreover, there were two sights I would have liked to see but were never on the itinerary – Banias in the north, and Masada in the south. Considering geography alone, those two together would have added at least a full day to our stay and required a bit of reshuffling of the schedule. Not that reshuffling was a problem....

Maybe next time….