We left the US around midnight on March 25th—the Feast of the Annunciation, the anniversary of our engagement (David and me), and… oddly enough, the day that the ONE RING was unmade in Mordor… yes, I am a Tolkien dork… plus I had been watching The Lord of the Rings movies to unwind. 
We took a quick video from our Flip on the plane just before we landed.
I look exhausted (I was), and my constant swallowing is a result of the EXTREME sore throat I had after contracting some SUPER VIRUS a few days before our trip (3 weeks later, I am STILL sick!).
Ok, before I go on about this trip, let me just tell you about how awesome God is. And I mean this in all sincerity.
As you may know, priests around the world have been having some issues. Heck, the Church is having issues. This is not new, as is most eloquently stated by Archbishop Timothy Dolan in a recent blog post which you MUST read! But I told God before we left that I would be offering up all of my sufferings on this trip for priests in our archdiocese and around the world, in reparation for sins and for healing for victims. Well, let me tell you, HE TOOK ME UP ON THAT! Now, we didn’t get struck with any horrific maladies during this trip, but I was beset by little issues throughout our trip, which made it SO HARD for me to work. (Yes, I whined… thank God David was patient with me!) This is what we got:
- I contracted The Super Cold, which kept me coughing and blowing my nose all trip long. I feel so bad for everyone on my bus. They are probably STILL hearing my cough… it may be the soundtrack of their trip!
- I left behind a drawerful of cough drops that David bought me because I didn’t like the flavors…! (Yeah, I deserved to be in pain….)
- I lost my voice for 2 days—which was ridiculous, considering I had to be in front of the camera…
- I didn’t sleep on the plane over.
- I had a 3-day tension headache that made any movement exceedingly painful.
- I had a crick in my neck for two days.
- David FELL on the Via Dolorosa!! (He’s ok, thank God.) And that night, both of his legs swelled below the knee, which put him out of commission for the following day!
As our beloved bus captain, Father Donovan said, “Pilgrimages to the Holy Land aren’t for sissies!” And boy, was he right! But, you know, during the pain of it all, two things kept going through my mind.
One was “quit complaining and get going, girl! You’ve got a job to do!” And for the most part, the only time I could wallow in my pain was in the morning when I woke up—I distinctly remember one morning thinking, “This trip is going to kill me!” (LOL)—and at night, when I went to bed and prayed I could sleep in between coughs.
The second thought can best be illustrated by our day on the Via Dolorosa. I was having some serious cold issues that day: my lungs were filled with a noxious substance and I could barely breathe. But as I walked those uneven streets in the morning light, I thought, “Jesus’ lungs were filled with blood on this road, and that wasn’t even the HALF of what he had to endure.” And that made my pain… not necessarily meaningless, but LESS. I knew at that moment, and certainly after discovering that poor David had fallen, that no matter what we were dealing with, Jesus had dealt with it, too. He fell on that street. In fact, He fell three times. But He didn’t just fall. He was carrying a ginormous cross on his shoulders, He’d just been whipped like crazy. People were yelling at him and spitting on him and hitting him…. He was half naked. He had a crown of thorns on his head… Blood and sweat were probably clouding his vision… Oh, and his lungs were filling with blood.
I mean, seriously! WHAT DID I HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT?!
That is probably the biggest “lesson” I learned during this trip: the recognition that when we unite our sufferings to HIS… He helps us with them and makes them easier to carry.
So, yeah. He is awesome.
We arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport around 2 pm on March 26th, and we immediately boarded a bunch of busses to our first stop, Haifa and THE MOUNT CARMEL! Wait. Let me say it again:
WE WENT TO THE MOUNT CARMEL!
It really was hard to believe that I was about to set foot on Mount Carmel. I know… I know… I keep saying it. But after a lifetime of loving the Carmelite spirituality and Carmelite saints—particularly Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux—I couldn’t wait to see where it all began.
I posted a few photos from that exciting visit here: Holy Land Pilgrimage Day 1
This was also the beginning of the recognition that, although we were visiting sites that were so historically significant, it made most of our other trips seem like visits to Disneyland, the actual locations looked nothing like they did when the historically significant acts took place. So, for instance, Mount Carmel didn’t really look like the Mount Carmel in my imagination, or like the Mount Carmel seen by Elijah. Neither did the place of Christ’s birth, where he was crucified, where he resurrected. It had all changed so much, that you almost had to close your eyes and IMAGINE what it looked like back then.
And that makes me think of something our trusty camerasuperwoman, Sonja Stark asked me about during the trip (and which she later blogged about): when do you FEEL something special in these places?
I’ve been thinking about that a LOT since she first asked it. Partly because it hadn’t occurred to me; I felt something everywhere I went. Granted, it might not have been The Hand of God, touching my shoulder and saying, “THIS is where IT all happened, girl!” But it was the knowledge that, while the places we visited weren’t holy in and of themselves, something special DID happen there, and that’s why we had made that trek.
Think of it this way… Back in the day, my brother-in-law set up this elaborate plan to propose to my sister. We were all living in San Diego back then, and he wanted to propose at Seaport Village, a nice little area Downtown that was right by the water. It all went swimmingly, and they went on to live happily ever after. And I am certain that, to this day, Seaport Village holds a place in their hearts that is unmatched by any other. Seaport Village is SPECIAL to them, not because of what it is, but because of what happened there.
That is why Christians go to the Holy Land. That is also why Jews find this land holy, as do Muslims. Not because of the land itself, but because of what HAPPENED there.
This is the land where God lowered Himself and became a man, born in a dirty little manger to a young girl and an older gentleman who said the most significant yeses of all humanity. This is the land where God established His Church, where He chose his first disciples, where they lived, ate, laughed, and fished. This is the land where saints were made, where martyrs gave their lives; where God ultimately died a horrific death to save us from our sins.
How could this land NOT be special to us?
Sure, it looks little like what it did when HE walked the earth. But it hums with his footsteps. The water sings with the memory of his touch. The trees still shudder at the memory of what they saw that fateful night.
Our belief in this, the Greatest Story Ever Told, is what makes this land special. It is our remembrance of these events, and our belief that they are true that gives us that FEELING that Sony was waiting for. And it is this feeling that we bring home with us; the feeling that we are compelled to share with others in the hopes that they, too, might some day make the trek to see the place where it all began.
This is what I hope to communicate in the episodes of The Faithful Traveler that I will be creating from our trip. Please pray that He guides my hand. I know that He will.
Because He is awesome.
Since today is Holy Thursday, I thought I’d take an early detour from my sporadic blogging about our pilgrimage and jump to Day 6—the day we visited the Upper Room, where the Last Supper is said to have taken place and where Jesus instituted the Eucharist and the Priesthood.
I think Tintoretto’s Last Supper is the best. While everyone’s clothes might not be historically accurate, I love the angels. I also love the way the room—or the look of the room—doesn’t matter. Because, in truth, it doesn’t matter where this took place, but that it took place.
