Two Radio Maria interviews about the 2018 Holy Land pilgrimage

Radio Maria (US) [LINK]

Here are two episodes of Sacred Treasures with Kathie Duggan on Radio Maria [archive page LINK] discussing the August 2018 Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The first features myself; the second features our Israeli Christian tour guide Tony Azraq ... and myself (I'll explain below):

Monday 01 October 2018: Kent Hare [LINK]

Monday 19 November 2018: Tony Azraq [LINK]

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Here's the backstory, including why these are being posted so long after the fact....

A few weeks after we returned from the Holy Land in late August, Kathie invited me to join her on her weekly radio show to talk about the pilgrimage. Since it turned out the date she proposed, Monday 01 October, was the first day of my university's two-day fall break, I was able to drive down to Alexandria and join her in the studio rather than Skyping or just calling in on my cell phone. So I got to have lunch and visit with her and the staff at Radio Maria, including Fr. Emilio who was in the station for the periodic "Mariathon" fund raising campaign. It was an all around good afternoon.

I always intended to post a link to the audio ... but weeks passed and it never appeared. I contacted the station and found out they had suffered a major data breach or virus (I don't remember which at this point) that had corrupted a lot of their files and their station engineer was working through reconstructing what he could salvage. Over time, my check-ins became less and less frequent, although I think I did check within the past few weeks.

In the meantime, in mid November Kathie put out the word that she had arranged for our tour guide Tony to appear, and invited pilgrims to call in during that show. I jumped at the chance and did so ... and inadvertently ended up basically being her guest for the back half of the show when Tony's Skype connection from Israel apparently failed. It was problematic during the time he was with us, then went out completely. And that's the story of the Monday 19 November episode, which provided another good chance to reminisce about the pilgrimage.

Anyway, why now? A few days ago my wife saw in the Radio Maria newsletter that Fr. Emilio is stepping down as Priest Director [LINK -- page 2]. I decided to go in and see if there was an announcement on their web page and, on a whim, checked into the archives for the long-missing episodes -- and voila, there they were. So here they are.

Regarding the departure of Fr. Emilio, I take this opportunity to wish him farewell, although it makes the chance our paths will ever cross again vanishingly small, I know. I always hoped maybe on one of his trips to the station in Alexandria we could somehow get together a reunion meal of as many pilgrims as are in driving distance, and once again reminisce about some good times. He will be missed by Radio Maria, I know, and he will be missed by me. Vaya con Dios, Padre!

Sunday 19 August -- 2018 Holy Land Day 7: Ein Karem, Jericho, the Dead Sea

Bethlehem in the morning

It was a pretty normal morning -- up, dressed, breakfast, then heading out for another full day. One perceived difference was that it was pleasantly cool when we boarded the bus to head out, and remained so for most of the morning. The afternoon would make up for that, though!

We left out of Bethlehem, passing through the Wall checkpoint again without incident, driving up around the west of Jerusalem toward Ein Karem, the birthplace of John the Baptist. Along the way, Tony expanded on his own deep Christilean roots in the Holy Land. Among his ancestors he claims Maltese Crusaders as well as a direct line of descent from the native Christians of the Holy Land as far as records will carry him -- which is 1400 years, all the way back to the devastating Persian conquest in the early 7th century when a lot of records were lost.

We also passed the large Israeli Holocaust Memorial complex, Yad Vashem, on the forested western slope of Mount Herzl, "the Mount of Remembrance." It is  more than just a museum -- it includes a school, as well as archives and a library. There is also a section of train track and one of the cattle cars in which victims were transported to the death camps. 

Our first stop in Ein Karem was the Church of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. We saw the very site, which is marked by what I believe Tony said is the oldest Jerusalem Cross ever found. 

Photo from Ingrid

Outside the church, we recited the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zechariah, proclaimed when he regained his voice after the birth of his son, which is posted on a series of plaques around the courtyard in many different languages.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
he has come to his people and set them free.

He has raised up for us a mighty savior,
born of the house of his servant David.

Through his holy prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

(Note: This is not the translation that was posted. It is instead the one that I am most familiar with as printed in the Liturgy of the Hours. I will follow the same practice for the Magnificat and any other such prayers we come to.)

Then we took a long half-mile walk, uphill all the way ("many steps"!), to the Church of the Visitation. Along the way we recited the Rosary. I led the last decade right at the gate into the courtyard right outside the church; instead of concluding in English, I continued without pause directly into chanting the Salve Regina in Latin. Almost everyone joined in, I believe. 


 It was right at 10:00, time for Mass in the main Church of the Visitation, commemorating Mary, newly pregnant with the Son of God, came to her aged cousin Elizabeth, six or more months along in her own miraculous pregnancy:

     And the angel said to [Mary] ... "And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
     In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1: 35-45)

Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant explains why the preborn John the Baptist leapt in his mother’s womb. In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant was the dwelling-place of God Himself, before which King David danced as it was brought into Jerusalem. Mary, in conceiving Jesus, became the dwelling-place of God Himself. When the Ark of the Covenant was brought into Jerusalem, David danced before his God. When Mary approached Elizabeth, John danced before his God.

 In his homily, Padre's theme was: Mary came here in haste, from Nazareth, on foot, a journey comparable to our own of a couple days ago which took us a couple hours driving all told, in air-conditioned comfort. Hers was much longer, much less difficult, much less comfortable. (An amusing story. I had offered after the first day to start chanting the Responsorial Psalms, which I then did at every Mass. Just the day before I had proposed to Padre that we chant the simple Latin Mass Parts at least for Sunday, which he had okayed as well. And then I proceeded to mess it up. For whatever reason, I zoned out after the Creed if we said it this particular day; I may even have dozed off for a moment sitting up -- by this point in the pilgrimage I was dragging a bit. Whatever the reason, I suddenly zoned back in, heard Padre say something about "and we say...." -- and thought it was time for the Sanctus, which I launched off into. Others joined in after a moment, but since I often sing with my eyes closed if I know the piece fairly well, I didn't see what others reported to be an amused grin on Padre's face -- because he had actually been introducing the Intercessions! I only realized it when Br. Miguel took up with the Intercessions immediately upon us finishing the Sanctus. All I could do was a quiet face-palm. So, in my mind at least, our Mass at the Church of the Visitation became the "Mass of the Double Sanctus." And, of course, I was wide awake from that point; sudden humiliation with a side of adrenaline kind of does that....)

The Church of the Visitation contains magnificent paintings of scenes both from the Bible and from Christian history – Mary and Jesus at Cana; the 431 Council of Ephesus where the question of Mary’s status as Mother of God was definitively decided; Duns Scotus, the great Franciscan philosopher who advocated for the understanding that Mary was not just born and lived without sin, but was indeed conceived without sin through the prevenient grace of God (the Church of the Visitation is under the authority of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land); the 1571 Battle of Lepanto – 07 October (now commemorated as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary) – … and of course, the Visitation itself.

High on the back wall of the church is one of the most beautiful paintings of the Virgin and Child I've ever seen, modernistic though it be:

 Not in the church itself, but in a room adjacent can also been seen a huge rock set into the wall -- the "Rock of the Hiding," behind which an angel is said to have hidden the baby John the Baptist when Herod’s soldiers came to kill all the babies under two years old. Ein Karem was fairly close to Jerusalem (it's part of the city now) and would have been part of that jurisdiction. A painting above depicts the scene.

In the courtyard outside, like in the church at the bottom of the hill, there are many plaques displaying Mary's song which followed immediately from the Visitation quoted above -- The Magnificat (again quoted in a more familiar English translation):

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

Padre, Angela, and Maria
(Photo from Ann via WhatsApp)

Donna, Kristal, Ann, Jennifer, myself, I
ngrid, Br. Miguel, Kathie,
(Photo from Ann via WhatsApp)

We walked back down. Halfway, we stopped at another religious articles store vouched-for by Tony. I think it may have been connected with the Sisters of the Rosary, who also run a guest house for pilgrims. At the bottom of the walk -- a gelato shop!

Then we took a long bus ride into the Judaean Wilderness to the east, to Jericho, descending from Jerusalem's altitude of about 2500 feet above sea level to about 850 feet below sea level. The thicker air plus temperatures pushing 100F were not nearly so pleasant as the morning had been, even though the humidity was pretty low. Along the way the stark contrast with the western approaches to Jerusalem was impressive. There is pretty much nothing here but rocks. And yet we did see some ramshackle Bedouin camps as well as the goats they herd. Amazing.

Sycamore Tree
Photo from Kristal

Photo from Kristal

Jericho - Tony's house near center
Photo from Ingrid

 Jericho is, however, an oasis -- literally -- with gardens and orchards, by comparison with the surrounding landscape downright lush and green. Looming over it all -- the Mount of Temptation, where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting immediately after his Baptism in the nearby Jordan River. (By the way, we did not go there; Tony gave us the option, but said that this time of year we would only see a bare trickle of water 
through a narrow ribbon of mud in a mostly dry river bed. We opted out.) Tony pointed out that, given the proximity, during his long fast, culminating in the Temptations for which the mountain is named, Jesus could have seen immediate relief from the torments of hunger and thirst looming below him.

As we pulled in to an open-air bazaar facing the Mount of Temptation, Tony pointed out his own vacation home some distance away in Jericho itself. 

Some of our group rode a camel there. We went into a couple of shops as well -- including the main (I believe) Dead Sea Company store, where I was able to get Anne some of the cosmetics and soap products that I had seen but passed up at the Nativity Souvenir Co-op yesterday (and which I will always associate with our breakfast companion in Shrewsbury, England, ten years ago now -- my repeatedly hearing the young lady saying she worked for the "Detsi Company" until she said it very slowly for me! [LINK, Tuesday 25 March]).

Photo from Ingrid

Leaving Jericho, we drove past Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. Tony told us the story of the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century: A young Bedouin goatherd, seeking a stray, cast a stone into one of the many caves dotting these cliffs. He was startled to hear the sound of clay pottery shattering. Hoping to find treasure, he did -- just not the kind he expected or even recognized as such. Some of the many clay jars contained old scrolls, most in fragments. As it turned out, some were copies of Hebrew scriptures a thousand years older any any existing Biblical manuscript. The result was a revolution in Biblical studies that is still ongoing.

But we did not stop there -- Tony said it really was not worth it and just showed us the caves in which the scrolls were discovered, visible from the road, as he told us the story of the Qumran community of Jewish "monks" called Essenes -- and we continued on.

We reached the Dead Sea. Some of our number did go "bathing" or "floating"; knowing of my recent pacemaker implantation, Tony flatly forbade me -- and indeed I saw a sign warning against heart patients and those "owning" high blood pressure entering the highly salinated and mineralized water. I did walk down to the water's edge, take some pictures, then trudged back up a ways to "The Lowest Bar in the World" and had a really good Goldstar Dark Lager at about 1300 feet below sea level. It was quite pleasant, especially since I'd snagged a table by an evaporation air cooler. tAfter a while, most of our "floaters" having gone back up, I trudged the long walk back up to the entrance mall where I found most of our number in a cantina around another evaporation air cooler.

"DEAD SEA BATHING DANGEROUS [TO]

HEART PATIENTS AND OWNERS

OF HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE"

VIDEO

About 16:00 we rode back toward the hotel, back through the Judaean wilderness, arriving a bit after 17:00. We had some free/rest time until 19:00.

I mentioned above, upon leaving Galilee, that there were two things that I would dhave liked to have seen that were not on our itinerary, both doubtless in consideration of time and cost (time is money), in part because both would have required fairly long drives out of our way. In the north there was Banias; in the south there was Masada – Herod the Great’s fortress atop a great rock which served as the last bastion of Jewish resistance against the Romans after Jerusalem fell and the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, at the end of the Jewish War. It was ultimately less Roman military force than Roman military engineering that brought the fall of Masada – the remains of a great ramp built by the Tenth Legion under General Flavius Silva stand even today in remembrance of how the Romans ultimately moved their siege engines into place 1300 feet above the desert floor, against the walls of the fortress, and breached them … to find that a thousand Jewish rebels had committed mass suicide rather than be slaughtered or taken. That happened in either AD 73 or 74 – amazingly, we are not absolutely certain which, but then Josephus could be amazingly careless with his chronology. Masada looms over the Jewish psyche even today, a rallying cry more powerful by far even than Texans’ “Remember the Alamo!” or the Greatest Generation’s “Remember Pearl Harbor!”

Inside the St. Gabriel Hotel:
(Bottom to top, left to right)
Kathie, Robert, Donna, Ann,
Kristal, Kent, Jennifer, Mary,
Ingrid, and Br. Emilio
(Photo from Kathie)

For dinner tonight we went out of the hotel back across to Shepherd's Fields, to the Grotto Restaurant across from the one we had lunch at yesterday. There we had, a night early, our semi-formal "farewell dinner." It was virtually the same menu as lunch yesterday, but maybe even better. Hatem, the local head of Nativity Pilgrimages, was there and joined us, as did Tony. There were thank yous and testimonies all around -- as to the value of Nativity Pilgrimages and the work it does as not just another tour company, not even just another pilgrimage company, but indeed a ministry or apostolate to, among other things, support the native Christians of the Holy Land especially those identified as "Palestinians." That is one of the most important things I think I have learned and experienced on this trip, that there is a whole group of essentially original Christians whose story is not told, or even worse, misrepresented. The other topic was the role and value of Radio Maria, and almost everyone there's important role in that apostolate.

It would have been a good way to end the pilgrimage ... but we have one more day. Tomorrow -- Jerusalem.

Tuesday 14 August – Holy Land 2018 Day 2: Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Tiberias

I managed to nap for a short time a couple of times along the way, maybe an hour or two each, but really I never sleep well on a plane. We landed in Istanbul, Ataturk Airport, at about 09:00, almost on schedule despite our late departure. My phone international plan kicked in almost immediately after coming off "Airplane Mode," but with no Internet, which was frustrating. But it did mean my time shifted almost immediately to the local time of about 17:00 (the same time zone as Israel, so I'm going to report that from now on). Flying eastward as the sun progressed westward meant that we had a very short “night.” [By my calculations: We crossed the dawn terminator in the mid north Atlantic at about 50-55 degrees North latitude at bit before 03:00 CDT.] I let Anne know I was on the ground.

Just a note: Ataturk (“Father of the Turks,” recte Mustafa Kemal) was the first president of modern Turkey after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I. A secular nationalist, his anti-Islamist philosophy dominated the country for most of the 20th c., only recently giving way to increasing Islamization and increasing friction with the western world. 

The airport itself was, as I heard a rather irate woman describe it, "crowded worse than a Mumbai train station." It was also very hot in there. And we had a 2h50m layover. Ugh. Although we had been supposed to meet up with two other members of our party who flew directly from New York – Maria and Angela -- they never showed. I later found that there were medical emergency issues on their plane as well which set them back; we would not meet up until Tel Aviv.

We were scheduled to depart at 19:45 local time on Turkish Airlines Flight 864 for a 2h10m flight to Tel Aviv. We did not leave for almost an hour after that, for reasons I do not know. But we were finally off for the second and last leg of our trip.

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     Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." ... and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, … the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. (Gen. 12: 1-3, 5b, 7) 

So did the Father of the three Faiths calling this land “holy” first come to it. As pilgrims we too are answering the call of God, although our journey has not been so far nor will our presence here, at least physically, last so long. (Well, at this point our journey seems to have been pretty long!)

Photo from Kristal

We arrived in Tel Aviv at Ben-Gurion International Airport, Terminal 3, at 22:30 Israel time.  It’s now 14:30 CDT, approximately eighteen hours after leaving Houston … and about 31 hours since I left Natchitoches, I think…. A kind young man in the passports line helped several of us get on the airport wifi, and immediately Internet and data kicked in. 

This airport was named after David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), the wild-haired first prime minister of Israel. An ardent Zionist, David Ben-Gurion was for all intents and purposes the founder of the modern state of Israel. In May 1948 he personally proclaimed the new State of Israel even as the British withdrew from the Palestinian Mandate which they had hitherto overseen and the armies of the surrounding Arab powers invaded. He united the various Jewish militias into the new Israeli Defense Forces and oversaw their successful defense of the fledgling nation. He is rightfully called “Israel’s Founding Father.”

We met up with the last members of our party, Brother Miguel (“Mike”) from Costa Rica as well as Maria and Angela from New York. Maria is the president of Radio Maria (Fr. Emilio is the national director of Radio Maria USA).

As an aside, I must say that these are all incredibly nice people. Not that I doubted they would be, but I am really touched by how solicitous they are of my semi-handicapped state at this point, unable to use my left arm for much of anything for fear of "unplugging" myself -- pulling the leads from the pacemaker out of my heart before they have had a chance to "scar" into place. I could not ask for better companions!

As late as it was, we still had miles to go … well, maybe not before we sleep. About midnight we boarded our Nativity Pilgrimages bus north to Tiberias on the western coast of the Sea of Galilee – 150 km, about 1hr45min. Part of the way, Padre gave us an overview of the history, peoples, and cultures of Israel and Palestine, which he considers two separate countries. Tiberias itself was a Roman city, built and named in honor of the Emperor Tiberius by Herod the Great, about the time of Jesus. But it wasn't too long before the bus settled down to quiet and I'm sure others, like me, dozed a bit despite the excitement of being in a new land -- even at night when we really could not see much.

We got to the Ron Beach Hotel – right on the beach – about 01:45, I think. This is, of course, the same hotel Steve Ray’s pilgrims frequent, which (because of his video blogs I’ve watched) imparted a somewhat disorienting sense of familiarity – even deja vu – when we pulled up and entered the lobby! 

By the time I hit the sack it was after 03:00, having unpacked what I needed, set up for tomorrow, and showered ... and eaten a very light snack left for us since we were arriving so late. It was much appreciated! We had arranged to meet for breakfast at 08:00, to head out for our first day's adventures at 09:00, so it was going to be a short sleep!

But I was in the Holy Land -- and even at night the view out across the Sea of Galilee from my balcony was impressive.

Pilgrims’ Mass and Meet & Greet

Fr. Emilio, National Director of Radio Maria USA

This evening the Radio Maria/Holy Land 2018 pilgrims from the local area got together for the first time, at the Radio Maria station and national headquarters in Alexandria. Fr. Emilio said Mass for us at 17:00, then presided over a long meeting. There were a total of eight of our thirteen pilgrims present – the two from New York; one from New Iberia, Louisiana; one from Kansas (my wife’s sister-in-law); and a religious brother from Costa Rica – were not.