Pilgramage

Pilgrimage

Having returned home from eight days in the Holy Land, I am trying to make sense of the experience, to analyse my responses and to assess what impact, if any, it had.

First of all, I must state what it most definitely is NOT. It is not an emotional roller coaster, designed to bring tears to the eyes and a sentimental surge to the heart. Nor is it a slow walk through a few sights and a lot of sermonising. At least, it wasn’t for us.

We were a group of fifteen, including a friar, a deacon and a retired professor of Eastern history who had forgotten more about the Crusades than anybody else on the planet knows. The deacon, it transpired, was also a history professor. Oh, and they all came from Cambridge, so they really did know their stuff.

The trip had been designed with two aims: a typical pilgrimage (i.e. the traditional holy sites) and a trip through Crusader history. For me, it was an unmissable combination. The group gelled very quickly and there was much laughter and camaraderie.

So, what are my general impressions? Well, first of all, a Pilgrimage is no holiday! Forgive me if that sounds trite, but it is true. I have never been so exhausted. We stayed first in Jerusalem, starting far earlier every morning than I ever get up for work. We were cold, wet and tired for the first three days, and I never want to see another staircase or very steep hill again as long as I live. I was actually frightened going down some of those hills; I am more than grateful for the others who literally took my hand.

I had heard, of course, about the dirt and the noise and the crowds and the queues and all the other adverse things. They are all true. Yet, within our little group, cocooned in some way by the information we were being given and the impressive organisation that produced such security, it did not matter. We were all impressed, amazed, to some extent moved at being so close to the actual places. Bethlehem was calm and relatively quiet. Jerusalem was madness, especially the Holy Sepulchre. We queued for hours, were unimpressed by the bad tempered guardians of the holy places, yet could not be immune to what we were seeing.

However, when I return it will not be to Jerusalem, but to Galilee. There, the crowds were smaller, and you could imagine that the little band of Christ and the Apostles had only just moved away. As we sailed on the Sea of Galilee, we did not need any formal words – the atmosphere was all around us. And as we celebrated our last Mass, on the shore where Jesus awaited his disciples after his Resurrection, with the birds singing their dawn chorus and the light playing on the fishermen on the lake, there was a peace and tranquillity that I have rarely known. That is what pilgrimage is about.