Where it all began

PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND – 29 JULY TO 13 AUGUST 2019

For a pilgrim, no destination can compare with the Holy Land. That is where it all began. This is the place God chose to make himself present in history; the land that saw how, mysteriously, eternity entered time; the small, remote region where the love of God, made flesh, entered the world once and for all to give new meaning to the lives of people of every time and place.

The summer of 2019 was the moment chosen to carry out this pilgrimage of pilgrimages. After several years of practical and inner preparation, a small group of thirty pilgrims flew out to the Holy Land. With that we began the first part of our journey, which consisted of walking the way that separates Nazareth from the town of Bethlehem, following a route similar to the one Joseph and Mary might have taken before the Child was born, or that Jesus himself might have taken on his pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

So we crossed the whole territory of Palestine from north to south over five stages, and each day we were welcomed with the wonderfully generous hospitality of the small Arab Christian communities that still survive in this sorely tried land. In these communities we discovered that deep, unshakeable and surprisingly joyful faith so typical of Christians who live their creed in adverse circumstances, and which, so piercingly, challenges our often lukewarm following of Christ in more favourable conditions.

This first part of the pilgrimage gave us gifts such as the chance to visit the well of Sychar, the setting of the beautiful Gospel passage that tells of the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Located in the city of Nablus, it is a place few people visit because you have to cross the border between Israel and Palestine to get there. Especially moving, too, was the celebration of the Eucharist in a park in the small town of Duma, at the heart of an area several kilometres across without any Christian presence at all. Celebrating Mass there (probably the first Eucharist in decades in that area) was, in a way, like returning Christ to his land. That day, that small, forgotten park became a heart on fire, beating with love in the middle of the desert.

However, if there was one moment that was engraved on the heart of every member of the pilgrimage, it was our entry into Jerusalem on the last stage of the route. We arrived early in the morning, having started walking in the dead of night. With deep, restrained emotion, we made our way through its streets — at that hour beautifully deserted and silent — to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. With the church practically empty, we went up to Calvary, where time seemed to stand still during the moving and intimate hour of prayer we spent at the foot of the Cross of Christ.

With our hearts renewed after the stop in Jerusalem, we continued the route to Bethlehem. There we met the pilgrims’ parents and families, who had just landed to begin, alongside us, the second part of the journey: a week visiting the main holy places of the Lord’s land. The list of memories is endless: from the visit to the grotto in Bethlehem to entering the Holy Sepulchre, by way of celebrating the Eucharist on Calvary and at the Annunciation in Nazareth, the deeply moving Way of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem, the stirring hour of adoration in the Basilica of the Nations in Gethsemane, the renewal of our baptismal promises beside the Jordan, the boat crossing over the waters of the Sea of Galilee, the climb up Mount Tabor…

It is hard to put into words everything we lived through during those days. The mystery of God and the mystery of man become present in an especially intense way in every corner of the Holy Land. From the moment when, through the window of the coach that took us on the first day from Tel Aviv airport to Nazareth, we glimpsed in the distance the Basilica of the Annunciation, rising illuminated in the middle of the night, the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation burst powerfully into our pilgrimage to accompany us throughout all those days. Everything in the Holy Land points to this wonderful and undeserved exchange by which God became like us so that we could become like Him. That is how all of us who took part in this pilgrimage lived it: we felt this mystery being set continually before our eyes with every step we took in this land made holy by the Lord’s presence, to enter our hearts and leave them deeply moved.