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Starting to talk
Social communications is the term the Catholic Church uses to describe its means of speaking to the faithful and the world. Read more…
Dangers in transformation
In the dark days of apartheid, the Catholic bishops shone a light of hope in the fight against institutionalised racism. Read more…
Behind Israel’s wall
A series in this newspaper on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land has raised the hackles of some readers who perceived anti-Semitic sentiments in its criticism of Israel’s government. Read more…
1: Welcome in the Holy Land
In bygone eras, pilgrims to the Holy Land would arrive at the bustling, colourful port of Jaffa (at least if they were travelling from the West), often arriving in November to stay until after the Easter celebrations. The modern pilgrim is likely to land at the modern, airconditioned airport of Tel Aviv and stay for a week or maybe two. The only similarity is Tel Aviv’s proximity to Jaffa, and the shared impulse to walk in the footsteps of Our Lord. Our group of 45, from throughout South Africa, arrived in Tel Aviv and would stay in the Holy Land for just over a week.
2: Where Jesus and Mary stood
When the author Mark Twain made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1869, he found Nazareth “wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about it of being precisely as Jesus left it.” The lithography of the Scottish artist David Roberts of 30 years earlier bears out Twain’s impression of quaintness: a hill, a few houses, and not much else (apart from the mosque which would have been foreign to Jesus). But after Jesus’ time and before Twain’s, Nazareth had experienced growth and became a provincial town of some size, until it was destroyed by the Saracens.
3: On Jesus’ stage
The advent of Jesus’ public ministry arguably was his baptism by his relative John, the itinerant preacher of a new spiritual order, the man who set the scene for the emergence of the Christ. So it was apt that our second day, after our rushed arrival in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, would begin with a visit to the Jordan River – and that our first full day on Jesus’ trail would end in Cana, the site of his first recorded miracle.
4: Galilean boatride
Tabgha, at the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes, is one of those sites that reminds us that Jesus’ concerns were rooted not only in the eternal life, but also in the here and now: it is at Tabgha that he fed the multitudes by way of multiplying five loaves of bread and two paltry fish.
5: Transfiguration of the pilgrim
A Holy Land pilgrimage is a transforming experience. This is not necessarily evident externally, but few pilgrims come home without having their perspective on life and faith altered. The transfiguration of Christ provides a suitable metaphor for this, and the splendid Barluzzi-designed chapel atop Mount Tabor, which overlooks the Jezreel (or Esdraelon) plains, serves as a reminder of the pilgrim’s own spiritual recalibration.
6: Bethlehem – Joy and Pain
One makes many new friends on a pilgrimage. As one shares a profound spiritual journey with others, one becomes close to fellow pilgrims. One might also become good friends with the tourguide or driver, or with the spiritual director. The graces of a pilgrimage may even help one become a better friend to one’s self. Indeed, anyone who can help deepen the benefits of a pilgrimage is a likely friend. And so I have made a new friend in a man whom I’ve never met, and who, in fact, died three years ago.
7: Pagan signposting
When Queen Helena, mother of the newly converted emperor Constantine, came to the Holy Land in the first half of the 4th century to build churches, she appointed the locations of Jesus’ birth and death for the most grandiose structures in her building programme.
