God was the first to go on pilgrimage. Before time began God planned to come on a pilgrimage of love to this earth to visit his people (cf. Lk 1:68). God commanded Abraham (our father in faith [see Rom 4:16]) to go on pilgrimage to a land which was to become the Holy Land. And in Moses, God ordained three pilgrimage feasts to be celebrated. Psalm 122 enshrines the joy of the pilgrim in making the mandatory pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The pious Jew is ecstatic when someone suggests this pilgrimage: “I rejoiced when they said to me, / ‘Let us go up to the house of the LORD” (v. 1).

And when the pilgrim actually enters the Holy City, the pilgrim is stunned in disbelief and with shortness of breath by the reality: “And now our feet are standing / within your gates, Jerusalem!” (v. 2). The pilgrim’s soul “yearns and pines / for the courts of the Lord” (Ps 84:3), where one single day in this dwelling place of God is “better … than a thousand elsewhere” (v. 11). Jerusalem is the “city of our God, / His holy mountain, fairest of heights, / the joy of all the earth” (Ps 48:2-3). To it, all the tribes go up.

Sacred Journey

A pilgrimage, especially for a priest, is a unique and special form of spiritual retreat, a unique religious experience wherein the words, miracles and actions of Jesus, proclaimed at the sites of their first utterance, take on a powerful significant meaning for one who is open to the Holy Spirit. A pilgrimage, unlike a study tour, a vacation destination or a sightseeing trip, is a measured sacred journey that has faith as its motive and goal, the contemplative reading of the Gospel as the belt around the pilgrim’s waist, daily Mass at the shrines as the pilgrim’s staff and prayer as the pilgrim’s shell, reflecting the pilgrimage of the priest’s life toward God and the heavenly Jerusalem.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land for a priest is a sacred moment to embody what he proclaims Sunday after Sunday and celebrates in the Eucharist, to become the Gospel in action for his people. On this pilgrimage, the priest has to open his mouth and eat the scroll of the Gospels so that its sweetness may permeate his entire being to speak the Lord’s words to his people (cf. Ez 2:1-10).

The pilgrim priest, in particular, who visits the Holy Land comes back to his ministry filled with a renewed sense of prayer and deeper insight into the Scriptures that can even enhance his homilies. There is also a deep sense of gratitude to God and even puzzlement at the mysterious workings of God for having made the choice of this particular small plot of land, contested religiously and politically for centuries and even today, the place for the divine initiative to express transcendent love (cf. Jn 3:16).

The Holy Land, particularly the Holy Sepulcher with its mixture of awe and scandalous behavior, becomes a microcosm of the priest’s life, the Church and the world in general with their beauty and blemishes. The priest’s faith goes beyond these contradictions to bring home the truth of the mystery celebrated there: death and new life. He then cannot proclaim or hear the Gospels without visualizing the places where the narrated events took place and recalling his own feelings at those moments.

The Holy Land has aptly been called the “fifth Gospel,” simply because the land, the people, its history and archaeology, its truths and misunderstandings, illuminate the canonical four Gospels.

My reflections at the various sacred shrines explain not only the social and cultural background of the site or miraculous happening in the Gospel passage but also open up the mysterious meaning of the event in perhaps a new way to spark a deeper attitude of prayer and praise. My commentaries are driven by my 69 years as a Franciscan and scriptural studies.

Bethlehem

At Bethlehem, for instance, after listening attentively to the narrative of the birth of Jesus, the pilgrim priest is confronted with a new answer to St. Anselm’s famous question, “Why did God become human?” The traditional answer to this question is atonement and reparation. God became human as a response to human sin, to make infinite satisfaction to an infinite God. The Son of God came into this world as a ransom for human sin is the expression often used in the Gospels and St. Paul.

But the priest is surprised to hear a different motive for the Incarnation, one based on the Franciscan theology of that great “subtle doctor,” Blessed John Duns Scotus, who argued for the absolute predestination and primacy of Jesus Christ regardless of any merit or demerit on the part of Adam and Eve. Scotus maintained that the Incarnate Word of God would have become human in the person of Jesus Christ even if Adam and Eve had never sinned. This is to say that the first thought in the mind of God when projecting creation was God’s own Son becoming one of us.

The priest’s prayer life and ministerial comportment toward his parishioners, it seems to me, become renewed in this positive Christological vision and in the incredible realization that human nature, because of the Incarnation, is now seated in the very midst of the Holy Trinity! There is enough awe here to last a lifetime of meditation.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

‘Whom Are You Looking For?’

With these meditations, times of prayer, celebrations of the liturgy at the sacred shrines in the Holy Land, the priest’s prayer life and his homilies become so enriched by his pilgrimage that the question of the angel to Mary Magdalene, “Whom are you looking for?” (Jn 20:15), becomes a lifelong multilayered challenge to live his priestly spiritual life like Jesus in the Gospels: faithful, prayerful, trusting, courageous, sacrificial, in the plenitude of the Holy Spirit and with a sharp eye on the dependable promises of God.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Mount of the Transfiguration

The Mass on the Mount of Transfiguration inside a magnificent basilica presents the priest with another meditation, this time on the marvelous psychology of the Church in presenting to the catechumens a vision of what their lives will assume in unreservedly following Christ. The question is proposed: Why is the mystery of the Transfiguration invariably presented to the catechumens, as well as to the fully baptized, on the Second Sunday of Lent no matter what the cycle of readings? Why this glorious scene in the midst of a penitential season, since this event has its own feast on Aug. 6?

To answer this, one has to recall the Gospel of the First Sunday of Lent. There the catechumens hear about the threefold temptation of Christ, how Christ was tempted to swerve from his allegiance to God and how he curtly dismissed Satan with a peremptory “Begone!” (cf. Mt. 4:1-11) This unswerving loyalty of Christ to God is a pivotal lesson for the catechumens,l letting them know that when they come to this way of life as Christians, they can expect obstacles and pitfalls, temptations to veer from allegiance to Christ. The catechumens must echo this emphatic “Begone” of Christ to the tempter and declare, as Jesus did, that they will follow God alone. They go through the entire week reflecting on this struggle.

Then, so as not to discourage them, on the Second Sunday of Lent, the catechumens see Christ in glory and realize that they, too, will share the same destiny, if they hold out to the end. And if there is any doubt about whom they are committing themselves to, the voice thunders from heaven: “Listen to him” (Mt 17:5). Listen to no other voice, since Christ has the words of eternal life. To embed this message the four mosaic panels in the lower crypt of the basilica display how Jesus himself was paradoxically transfigured in the crib, on the cross, at the Resurrection and in the Eucharist.

After this meditation the priest comes away with a renewed sense of this mystery and his own need for perseverance in the Church as he leads his people by example to the heights of their own transformation, those challenging words at his ordination echoing in his ear: “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”

Primacy of St. Peter

One poignant day in the Holy Land begins with an outdoor Mass at the Primacy of St. Peter by the shores of the Sea of Galilee. There the Gospel of John is proclaimed where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loved him. Peter is distressed that he has to say “I love you” three times.

That same day we journey up to Caesarea Philippi where Jesus, in the shadow of a cave devoted to the worship of the god Pan, asks his apostles to declare who he is. St. Peter replies with divine insight, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).

This is dramatic irony at its best since the pilgrim knows from the Gospel of the morning’s Mass and from one’s visit to the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu (the cock crow), built over the home of Annas and Caiphas, that St. Peter, in a moment of weakness, had categorically declared to a serving girl, “Woman, I do not know him” (Lk 22:57).

“I don’t know him.”: Such an impersonal address is a typical human dodge to distance, disown and disassociate in the face of fear. Peter knows full well the name of “him.” The contrast shocks and also rebukes the pilgrim: On the one hand, “You are the Son of God” and on the other, “I do not know what you are talking about!” (Mt 26:70). Peter had to live with the shame of this denial as long as he was alive since it was recorded in all four Gospels.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Suffering in Faith

I was once invited to bless a plot of land devoted to “stressed grapes” in a vineyard in Napa Valley. I found out that these vines are denied the usual allotment of water, are left on their own, as it were, so that they have to “stress”; in other words, they have to stretch their roots to reach the water table below the yield, which is not as plentiful, so I am told, but the quality is superb. Suffering, if accepted with the right attitude of faith, has a way of forcing us to stretch to seek unused and even unknown potentialities deep inside of our being for more powerful miracles of healing.

— Father Mario DiCicco, OFM

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

In praying over these clashing assertions of Peter, we priests realize, in going to and administering the Sacrament of Reconciliation, that we are “wounded healers” who are humanly flawed, but who have received mercy and therefore can understand the sinner in front of us asking for absolution: no judgment, no threats, no extended catechesis, no presumed self-righteousness, only complete compassion, only go in peace.

This particular Petrine day in the Holy Land is almost done in silence as we leave the shrines in a somber, reflective mood, absorbing this lesson in failure and restoration, but also in healing and hope: “The Lord turned and looked at Peter … [Peter] went out and began to weep bitterly” (Lk 22:61-62).

Gethsemane

Mass at the Basilica of Gethsemane, in the beautiful mausoleum-like church designed by Antonio Barluzzi (1884-1960), the famous architect of Holy Land churches, is celebrated in front of the Rock of the Agony. The Gospel proclaims the unspeakable suffering of Christ and his total acquiescence to the will of his Father, an affectionate word always on the lips of Jesus. How does the priest explain individual suffering and world suffering, annihilating tragedies that the priest often faces in pastoral ministry?

Job, in a moment of pique, demands a court hearing from God about his unjust suffering. After God ironically barrages “critic” Job with relentless questions revealing Job’s ignorant status in the creation and care of the universe, Job humbly has to admit, “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand” (Jb 42:3). Suffering is too big for anyone to explain. And so, to paraphrase, Job concludes, “From now on I will keep my big mouth shut!”

Even Jesus himself had no answer for suffering, but he willingly acquiesced, faithfully endured the Passion, died upon the cross and, by a mighty act of God, was raised up in glory. Such is the paradoxical nature of suffering: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). And so, “Where, O death, is your victory?” (1 Cor 15:55). At Gethsemane, the priest experiences the “stress” of Jesus, his stretch to rely on God alone. That basically is the answer to suffering.

Calvary and the Empty Tomb

The climax of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land comes at the moments when we celebrate Mass on Calvary and inside the Empty Tomb.

But before we reach the Holy Sepulcher and Calvary, we make the Way of the Cross. At the first station, situated outside a Muslim school and close to the Chapel of the Flagellation and in the shadow of the praetorium, we read the extended trial of Jesus before Pilate from the Gospel of John, where the frenetic actions of Pilate, going inside the praetorium to talk with Jesus and coming outside to talk to the Jews because of their kosher prohibition of entering the home of a non-Jew, especially since it was the time of the Passover, adumbrates in an artistic literary fashion the ambivalence of the Roman procurator toward Jesus. The climax comes, of course, when Pilate give the crowd a choice between Jesus or Barabbas, whose name is linguistically rendered as “son of the father” (bar abba). The irony is extremely rich here, not to mention shocking to the listener, when one realizes that this “murderous” Bar Abba is contrasted with Jesus, the real and innocent Son of the Father.

The crowd predictably chooses the wrong “son of the father,” when they choose Barabbas, the pseudo-son! And the people dig their own grave deeper when they uncharacteristically shout, “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:15), an astonishing admission so contrary to their political beliefs, but more in line with the “revolutionary” Barabbas. It is a tribute to the rhetorical power of St. John’s text that the listener to these contradictory choices reflects inwardly on one’s own wrong moral decisions.

We literally trudge up to Calvary and celebrate Mass where Jesus was nailed to the cross, forgiving unconditionally the very ones who were excruciatingly marking his hands and feet with nails. Like everything else on this pilgrimage, it is symbolic of the need to forgive unsparingly, something which takes a lifetime to perfect, if only approximately.

There is no other feeling in the world than for the priest to celebrate the Holy Mass inside the Empty Tomb, the centuries-old traditional spot where the Lord of Life lay in death awaiting the outstretched hand and powerful arm of God to raise his Son from death, the reward for the faithful one. The angelic message read inside that tomb, “He is not here, for he has been raised” (Mt 28:6), resonates in the soul of the priest as he lifts the body and blood of Christ in memory of the Raised One.

The pilgrimage is complete. One has crossed air, ocean and land, like the Anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux and Egeria, the peripatetic nun and millions of others, to see the tomb where Jesus slipped the clutches of death, Satan’s envious doing. The rest is silence … and grace.

FATHER MARIO DiCICCO, OFM, is a Franciscan priest stationed at St. Peter’s Church in the Loop in Chicago. He has been a Franciscan for 70 years and a priest for 63 years.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

A Sacred Obligation

Where does this pilgrimage devotion come from? What is the source of this burning desire to visit a physical place, a city, a temple, a stone?

Pilgrimage has always been a sacred obligation for the law-abiding Jew. Mary and Joseph, pious Jews, “went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover … according to festival custom” (Lk 2:41-42), and they even brought their son, Jesus, to worship at the Temple.

Even for a pious Muslim, the Hajj, the pilgrimage made to the Kaaba in the sacred city of Mecca, was a life’s duty and desire. When the Muslim pilgrim returned, he would proudly inscribe this fact over the lintel of his home and even, though rarely, blind himself since everything else paled in comparison to his vision of the dwelling place of God. Such is the sacredness of pilgrimage.

The end of every pilgrimage is to encounter God in a holy place. For the Christian pilgrim, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, called by the psalmist the Great King’s City, retraces the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth in a land already rich in salvation history, now richer still in God’s marvelous deeds, where the Lord of heaven and earth chose to enter into human history.

Now more than ever, Jerusalem is truly the city of God, for it was there that the Son of God preached, ministered and healed, where he died for love of us, only to be raised up, in that same city, by God in a mighty act of power, where within those same city walls the Church of Jesus Christ came to birth in the stupendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….