Wednesday was our last full day of touring in Jerusalem and Fr. Scott was feeling bad with a cold that was going to his chest and so stayed at the Hotel. We started by entering the Lion's gate and walking to the Church of St. Ann. This crusader church has beautiful accoustics and so another group was singing amazing grace when we entered - and we then sang How great though art, and some of the others joined in with harmony. It was electrifying.
We then walked the stations of the cross - the Via Delarosa. It makes it hard - praying as you walk through streets full of markets with merchants calling you to stop and shop. On top of that I was without Fr. Scott to keep people together - and my own voice was beginning to suffer from the effects of my cold!
The new thing for me - was that the 3rd and 4th station chapels were open for the first time in 7 trips to the holy Land!
The end of the Stations of the Cross is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was here that we had our group Photo taken and celebrated Mass. Often you celebrate the Mass of the site when you are in the holy Land - but since it was Lent we decided to celebrate the daily Mass. During the Eucharistic Prayer I invited people to name those who had died that they wanted to pray for - that they would experience the Resurrection fully! This was our final Mass and so the sign of peace took the longest! Peace can be quite noisy Fr. Scott is known to say - for it is when we are silent - and when we are not talking to each other that we are not at peace!
The line for the Tomb was quite long when we came out of Mass - so Jacob, our Guide, offered to walk over from the hotel the next morning at 5:00 am with any who wanted to see inside the tomb. (I understand many did - I did not - The tomb is empty - "I am not here").
After Lunch we made our way through the Jewish Quarter of the old city - seeing the Cardo - the former "Heart" of the city. Then we slowly made our way to the Western Wall. This is the wall of the 2nd Temple and dates from before the time of Jesus. It is one of the holiest sites for Jewish people, and when you approach Men and Women have to be on separate sides of a barrier. Most (if not all in our group) brought prayers on small slips of paper which we rolled up and stuck into the crevices of the wall. It is always a moving thing to watch people praying at the wall. To see old Jewish Gentlmen in Blak Hats, and young teenagers in shorts and sandals. To see the most orthodox and the most secular looking people standing side by side, praying to our One God. To see the powerful prayer of the man who has survived cancer, and the woman with MS. To see the parent who has buried a child and the widow who has lost her husband recently. To see the single woman and the mother of 4 children each praying in a very reverent time. This was personal and public prayer at the same time.
We finished our Pilgrimage with a visit to the Holocaust Memorial / Museum - Yad Veshem. This is a very hard - yet necessary place to visit - if only so that we learn - and this never happens again. We had a sopecial guide from Yad Veshem walk us through the museum - and we learned about the many Righteous non-Jews who sacrificed to save the lives of those who would have otherwise been killed. There is an avenue of the Righteous and a whole forest in the valley below the Museum. We also visited the Children's Memorial - which has simply 5 candles burning in a darkened room, with many mirrors - the effect is that of Stars in the sky - Millions of Stars... I think of the promise to Abraham that he will be father to a multitude more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the shore...
Each time I travel to the Holy Land - there are some things that are new - yet most is the same - these people want to see all the sights important to our faith. Yet each time the newness is in the pilgrims that I accompany - some very good friends - one my Dad - the first time I was able to journey here with a family member. It is the people and the privilege of journeying with them in faith that makes this such an attractive - if exhausting undertaking.
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