Greetings from Jerusalem. To catch you up, dear reader:

…The Holy Land first welcomed us with lush greenery and bucolic countryside—the Galilee of the Lord’s youth. Traveling south, we came to harder country. Then we entered one of the tensest cities in the world.

One could ask: Where on earth is there a place so beautiful and peaceful that it would be a suitable location for the Son of God to teach and to heal? The shores of the Sea of Galilee are certainly beautiful and peaceful enough.

But one also must ask: What city on earth is such a jumble of antagonisms, long-standing grudges, and self-righteousness that it could kill the Son of God? Jerusalem is such a city.

…Yesterday we left Nazareth. We headed south. We renewed our Baptismal promises on the bank of the Jordan River.

Stepping into the Jordan River

We came to the place where the ancient Israelites entered the Promised Land after their journey back from Egypt. This is where the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan, the water piled up like a mound, and the people walked across the river bed with dry feet.

They headed for Jericho, and so did we.

In hardscrabble Jericho

The Lord Jesus passed through Jericho a number of times, when He Himself was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

His most famous parable is about the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. We ascended to the Holy City on this pilgrim road (now paved)…

…This morning we visited the Upper Room, where: 1) The Lord Jesus instituted the Holy Mass, 2) He appeared after He rose from the dead, 3) the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles in tongues of flame.

Trying on the kafiyeh

Then we left Jerusalem and went out to the Judean hill country, to visit the church built where Zechariah and Elizabeth lived. This is where our Lady came to help her cousin—the Visitation.

From there, we entered Bethlehem. After eating delicious falafel sandwiches, we entered Manger Square, the sight of so much Christian piety over the centuries.

In the hill country of Judah

We recalled the words of Popes who have come on pilgrimage here:

Pope John Paul II was here in 2000:

In Bethlehem it is always Christmas. ‘Here Christ was born of the Virgin Mary’: these words, inscribed over the place where Jesus was born, are the reason for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. They are the reason for my coming to Bethlehem today. They are the source of the joy, the hope, the goodwill, which, for two millennia, have filled countless human hearts at the very sound of the name “Bethlehem.”

People everywhere turn to this unique corner of the earth with a hope that transcends all conflicts and difficulties.

Bethlehem – where the choir of Angels sang: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men” (Lk 2:14) – stands out, in every place and in every age, as the promise of God’s gift of peace. Bethlehem is a universal crossroads where all peoples can meet to build together a world worthy of our human dignity and destiny.

Pope Benedict was here in May:

“Do not be afraid; for behold I proclaim to you good news of great joy…today in the city of David a Savior is born for you” (Lk 2:10-11). The message of Christ’s coming, brought from heaven by the voice of angels, continues to echo in this town, just as it echoes in families, homes and communities throughout the world. It is “good news”, the angels say “for all the people”. It proclaims that the Messiah, the Son of God and the Son of David, has been born “for you”: for you and me, and for men and women in every time and place.

In God’s plan, Bethlehem, “least among the clans of Judah” (Mic 5:2), has become a place of undying glory: the place where, in the fullness of time, God chose to become man, to end the long reign of sin and death, and to bring new and abundant life to a world which had grown old, weary and oppressed by hopelessness.

Looking up at the Basilica, we could see that “the great church built over the Savior’s birthplace stands like a fortress battered by the strife of the ages,” as John Paul put it.

The main basilica, under the care of the Greek Orthodox, is in rough shape. Our visit to the grotto of the Nativity was very moving. Then we went to the cave of St. Jerome to celebrate Holy Mass.

From there we descended to the Shepherd’s Field, where the angels announced the birth of Christ to the humble men watching over their flocks by night.

Barluzzi church on Shepherds' Field

Today we visited the sites of Upper Galilee.

There is a church built over the stone where the Lord set five loaves and two fish–before He multiplied them and fed 5,000 men and their families. The place is known as Tagbha, and the German Benedictine fathers have built an absolutely beautiful church, where we prayed.

On the Mount of the Sermon

At the top is a Barluzzi church dedicated to the Beatitudes. We celebrated Holy Mass in the crypt and then strolled through the beautiful gardens.

A short distance away, we visited the Church of the Primacy of Peter. This church encloses the Mensa Christi, Christ’s Table, where the Lord cooked fish for some of the Apostles after He rose from the dead.

We were at the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Some of the pilgrims waded in and collected water, stones, and shells to bring to back home.

Then we went to eat some fish caught in the Sea of Galilee. The fish were served with their heads. We played with the heads, using them as ventriloquist dummies.

After lunch, we took a breezy boatride, looking at the the entire Sea of Galilee—the scene our Lord Himself gazed upon two millennia ago.

Synagogue in Capernaum

We sat and meditated in the reconstructed ancient synagogue, built on the foundations of the synagogue where the Lord Jesus taught.

Very attentive pilgrims

Today we went to the Basilica of the Annunciation to meditate on a few things.

We considered three points:

1. Our Lady welcomed the Archangel Gabriel here with perfect humility.
2. God became man in our Lady’s womb right here.
3. He lived most of His human life here–His hidden life, the life He has shared with every human being.

On Mt. Precipice in Nazareth (see Luke 4)

II.
To be at the place where God became one of us recalls the teaching of the Second Vatican Council which Pope John Paul II repeated over and over again:

The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light…Christ fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.

It is only by that light of Christ that we can make sense of ourselves. Our hearts are tortured and confused, our pathways are often dark. We can only figure life out by gazing upon Christ. He, and He alone, is the key to the mystery of life.

We are not wastrels in a cosmic kabuki theatre routine. We are not dazed and confused with no idea where life is headed. We are not trapped in the pit of selfishness that modern life can open up before the human soul.

Finally got a Maccabee beer

III.
To be at the place where the Lord lived–His quiet family life with His Mother and St. Joseph–to be here fills us with gratitude for the beauty of the family.

Here is what Pope Benedict said when he was here in May:

All of us need, as Pope Paul VI said here, to return to Nazareth, to contemplate ever anew the silence and love of the Holy Family, the model of all Christian family life. Here, in the example of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we come to appreciate even more fully the sacredness of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift of new life. How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound consciences and the building of a civilization of love!

…Nazareth means all these things and many more. May the Lord help us to savor them all, with loving, open hearts.

Raouf with bas-relief of Barluzzi above

The church encloses the rock on which the Lord Jesus was transfigured.

Moses and Elijah appeared.

Sts. Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of the divine glory of their Teacher and Master.

The church was built by Antonio Barluzzi (click the link for pictures and information).

Fr. Golas loves to Skype

When traveling in the Holy Land, you need a knowledgeable guide.

Raouf Karborani

We had a perfectly delightful trip on the bus…

We visited the ruins of Herod’s Ceasarea on the sea.

While we were there, we meditated on St. Paul’s explanation of his teaching, which the Apostle gave when he was being tried at Caesarea.

We headed north to Haifa, where we prayed at the cave of Elijah. Then we visited the beautiful Bahá’í Gardens.

From there, we went to Cana to visit the church of the Lord’s first miracle. He changed water into wine at a wedding.

All the married couples renewed their wedding vows.

Then we came to Nazareth to settle in for the evening. Tomorrow we will visit the place where the Lord became man, and where He grew up. We will also climb Mt. Tabor to visit the site of the Transfiguration.

…Without Father Golas and the photographer, today would hardly have been as memorable.

More to come…

By the way, I KNOW that I will miss the first two Hoyas’ games of the season. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land come first.

We have arrived in the city where our Lord was conceived in His mother’s womb, and where He grew up.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and good wishes. Be assured of our prayers for you here in this holy place.

We just watched the sun set over the Jezreel Valley. The Kishon Brook runs through this valley. Elijah took the priests of Baal to this brook after his triumph over them.

More to come…

Tel Aviv

Greetings from Tel Aviv, Israel!

We have arrived at the shore of what the ancient Israelites called the Western Sea, a.k.a. the Mediterranean.

On our way from Ben Gurion airport, we drove past the city of Lod.

In New Testament times, Lod was called Lydda. In Lydda St. Peter saw a vision. All the animals of the earth were before him, and he heard the Lord say, “Slaughter and eat…What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”

Anyway, we are weary from a long journey.

It is a great pleasure to re-unite with Raouf Korborani, who was our guide the last time I was here in the Holy Land.

Tomorrow we will visit the ruins of the fortress Herod the Great built on the Mediterranean to welcome the Romans.

These days it is known as “Ceasarea Maritima.” This is where St. Paul was imprisoned for two years before being sent to Rome for his final trial.

When the Muslims conquered the area, they found a beautiful church in honor of St. Paul. They admired the architecture before they destroyed the church. Then they built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to look just like it.

After that, we will go to Haifa, which is where Elijah lived. Back then it was a remote mountain ridge (Mt. Carmel). Now it is a beautiful city.

More to come tomorrow, if it please God!

Someone is going to have to keep an eye on the Wizards for me while we are in the Holy Land.

No meltdowns, please. This is NOT a Redskinesque scenario. (Please, God.)

We can recover from an early losing streak.

…It was nice to catch a glimpse of our old friend Roy Hibbert in his Pacers uniform. Haven’t seen him since that painful Easter afternoon in 2008…

Here is a homily on Mark 12:38-39

Beware the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept seats of honor. As a pretext, they recite lengthy prayers.

Our Holy Father dedicated this year to priests. 2009-2010 is the “Year of the Priest.”

When the Pope began this Holy Year in June, he urged everyone to reflect on the “immense gift which priests represent…presenting Christ’s words and actions each day.”

But when we hear the gospel passage we just heard, it seems like the Lord is telling us that priests will receive a very serious condemnation. After all, wearing long robes, sitting up front, and reciting lengthy prayers is what we do.

Now, let’s make a distinction. It seems pretty clear that the good Lord is condemning not ALL men in robes, but just the greedy and vain ones, the ones who pray without meaning it and who glorify ourselves instead of God.

Vanity and greed are deadly sins for anyone. For a man of God, they are more deadly. A vain, greedy priest harms not just himself, but others, too—because we are supposed to teach humility and poverty of spirit.

We who wear robes are supposed to pray at the altar with humble and sincere hearts. We are supposed to sit up front to honor God, not ourselves.

So the Lord is only condemning the vain and greedy priests. But still I tremble.

I am neither as humble nor sincere as I should be. I am not worthy of the sacred office I have been given. None of us priests can really measure up to the standard, because Christ Himself is the standard.

None of us priests are as holy as we should be, as humble and sincere. Does that mean that the priesthood itself is bad? Should we just all sit in a circle, and anyone can speak whenever he feels like it? Is that what the Lord Jesus means when he warns us to beware the men in long robes who recite lengthy prayers?

Okay. To answer this question, let’s do the one spiritual exercise which is guaranteed to clarify the answer to any question. I don’t mean any math question or history question—I mean any question of a moral or spiritual nature. There is one spiritual exercise that we can do, and when we do it, we see things much more clearly.

Here we go. The spiritual exercise is to ask ourselves this question: Why do we exist? Why?

We exist to glorify God on earth and in heaven.

Everything else is secondary. Everything. Am I meant to succeed in this world? Maybe I am, maybe I am not. Am I meant to be in charge of things? Maybe. Am I meant to have a good reputation and lots of friends and plenty of money? Maybe.

Painful Easter

On the other hand: Am I meant to glorify God on earth by doing everything for Him, by suffering everything for Him in this pilgrim life? Am I meant to glorify Him in heaven forever? Yes. Yes! Definitely yes. That is why I exist.

The Lord Jesus chose the first priests. He trained them; He ordained them. His plan for His Holy Church has involved popes, bishops, and priests from the very beginning.

At one point while He was training the first priests, after He finished explaining some of His parables to the Apostles, He declared: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Every scribe, He said. So there are scribes for the Kingdom of Heaven, clerics for His Holy Church. When the Lord said, “Beware the scribes,” He was not saying, “There should be no priests.”

No, He instituted the sacred priesthood Himself. When He says, Beware the vain and greedy scribes, He is saying: “Remember, o priest; remember, o layman; remember, o widow, o laywoman; remember: You exist to glorify God on earth and in heaven. All of this, all that you see, all that you are—it is not about you. It is for the glory of the One Who made you.”

The priesthood is not for its own sake. Sacred teaching is not for its own sake. Being a layperson is not for its own sake. Religion is not for its own sake. There is a higher reason for it, namely the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the gospel, the Lord is warning us: If we lose the higher reason for church, then we are in serious trouble. Church has to be about humbling ourselves before God. This goes for the priest; it goes for the people; it goes for everybody. Church has to be about praying.

I mean, it’s one thing to draw attention to oneself somewhere else. It’s one thing to be worldly and vain in the office, or at a party, or at home. It’s better to be humble everywhere, of course. But sometimes we need to focus attention on ourselves, for one reason or another.

But if we are self-conscious and vain in church, if we are worldly in church–then where are we going to go to humble ourselves and pray? If we turn God’s house into our house, then where are we going to go when we really need God?

Let me level with you. I don’t like sitting up front. –I do like the robes, I’ll admit. I like nice chasubles…But I don’t like being up front. I would rather kneel in the back, say my prayers–have a nice, quiet life.

But the good Lord gives us all duties to attend to. Sometimes doing your duty is a lot of fun, sometimes it is a challenge. That’s not the point.

The point is to glorify God.

The World Series has never lasted until the Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo before…

…If ever there were a month for meditating on the Four Last Things, November is it…

…During the Year of the Priest, any Catholic may obtain a Plenary Indulgence by going to Mass on the first Thursday of the month.

Applying such an indulgence to the soul of a deceased priest would be a kind deed.

Back on May 13, when your unworthy servant was commemorating the eighth anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate, our Holy Father was in the City of David…

The ancient Basilica of the Nativity, buffeted by the winds of history and the burden of the ages, stands before us as a witness to the faith which endures and triumphs over the world.

No visitor to Bethlehem can fail to notice that in the course of the centuries the great door leading into the house of God has become progressively smaller.

Today let us pray that, by God’s grace and our commitment, the door leading into the mystery of God’s dwelling among men, the temple of our communion in his love, and the foretaste of a world of eternal peace and joy, will open ever more fully to welcome, renew and transform every human heart.

(Pope Benedict, homily in Manger Square)

Grotto of the Nativity

We pilgrims will crouch down through the ancient door of the Basilica of the Nativity in nine days, please God. We will visit the very place where the Son of God was born!

Graft, a.k.a. the White Tree

Down on the Mall, they keep putting up sculptures that make you think of The Lord of the Rings.

They don’t mean to do it. In the spring, they unintentionally put up a sculpture of Shelob, the giant spider, in front of the Hirschhorn Museum.

Now they have accidentally installed a sculpture of the White Tree of Gondor.

“Graft” is what they call a Roxy Paine “Dendroid.” Very trendoid in the art world, apparently. Little do these modern sculptors know that they are setting the stage for the success of the quest…

…Painful loss for the Wizards this evening. (Maybe Shaq isn’t a liability, after all.)

But congratulations to Wizards V.P. Tommy Sheppard for winning the 2009 NBA Splaver/McHugh “Tribute to Excellence” Award!

…Here is a homily which some poor people had to endure on Sunday, All Saints Day:

Your reward will be great in heaven…You will be comforted…You will inherit the land…You will be satisfied…Mercy will be shown you…You will see God. (see Matthew 5:1-8)

These are Christ’s promises to us. Countless Christians have gone before us, and they have already seen these promises fulfilled. Today we salute the saints. They can attest that the Lord is faithful to His promises.

Up in heaven, the saints rejoice in the faithful goodness of God. Here are a few lines of their hymn:

Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever…Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10, 12)

The saints see the promises fulfilled, and they sing out praise to God. May our hymns harmonize with the hymn of the saints in heaven. We sing because we believe in the One who made the promises.

But before we get carried away, we have to pause. To whom did the Lord make His sweet promises?

Blessed are…

The poor in spirit. They who mourn. The meek. The hungry and thirsty. The merciful. The clean of heart. The peacemakers.

This is what the saints were like when they were on earth: poor, merciful, meek, mourning, hungry, thirsty, pure-hearted peacemakers–like Christ Himself. Christ is the Blessed One, the Man of Promise. To be blessed, to inherit the promises, we must be like Him. We must be united with Him.

Every man who has hope based on Christ makes himself pure as He is pure (I John 3:3).

The saints have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

To receive the promises, we must be purified. To be like Christ, united with Him, we must be washed clean of sin.

We may be humble and poor in spirit, but not humble enough. We may mourn the evils of the world, but we do not mourn them enough. We may be meek, but not meek enough. We may hunger and thirst for righteousness, but we are not hungry and thirsty enough. We may be merciful to our brothers and sisters in this world, but not merciful enough. Our hearts may clean, but they are not clean enough. We may make peace sometimes, but nowhere near often enough.

At the moment after we were baptized, we were pure. For many of us, that was some time ago. Then it was God’s good pleasure to leave us on earth for a while. Our mission on earth is to do good and avoid evil, to be like Christ.

By God’s grace, we have done some good. We praise God for it. On the other hand, because we are weak and selfish, we have not always avoided evil. We have no one to blame for this but ourselves. The good is God’s, the evil is ours. The praise is God’s; the impurity is ours.

If only we could go back to the baptismal font, and get washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb again! If only we could meekly, mournfully approach the Prince of Peace—if only we could kneel before the Throne of Mercy, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and have our hearts cleaned and refreshed!

If only…if only? Would the all-merciful, all-loving Lord leave us high and dry, with no way back to His life-giving waters? Would He make promises that could never be fulfilled, because there was no way to purify ourselves so we could inherit them?

Of course He would not do that. What did He say to the first priests? He said: “Whoever’s sins you forgive are forgiven them…Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

All Saints Day. Let’s consider the one thing that all the saints have in common. When they trod the earth, they were very different people. They became holy in different ways.

But they all confessed their sins. They were all humble enough to confess. They were not too proud. They were holy, but they knew they were not holy enough.

And they were not too proud to confess their sins to a priest. They were not too Protestantized to admit that the way God’s mercy works is by confessing to a priest.

So, let’s keep All Saints Day holy by singing our hymns of praise to God. Let’s echo the hymns of the saints as best we can. Let’s give the Lord all the praise and glory that are His. Let us salute the saints with joy. And let’s remember that the saints are the people who spent their lives confessing their sins.