by James Martin
Within a few hours I received a reply, from a Sister Télesfora: “Avec plaisir je vous informe . . .” With pleasure she informed me that their hostel would be delighted to host me, at ninety dollars a night. It looked as if the trip might happen after all.
That’s what I told my friend George around that time, over the phone. George was one of my closest friends; we had known each other since the Jesuit novitiate. A longtime prison chaplain, George had accepted a new assignment just a few months before: Catholic chaplain at San Quentin State Prison in California. And a few years prior, he had stayed at the PBI as part of a month-long seminar on interfaith relations.
“Would you like some company?” he asked.
“You’re kidding,” I said. The prospect of a travel partner, and a good friend to boot, was something I hadn’t considered, especially on such short notice.
“No,” he said. “I have some time at the end of August, and I’d love to go.”
George would be the ideal traveling companion: prayerful, easygoing, and knowledgeable. Another benefit: he volunteered to drive the rental car. “And we can go wherever you want,” he said, “since I’ve already been there.” A final benefit: George has a terrific sense of humor. Besides some moments of prayer, I knew we’d have fun.
We decided to aim for a pilgrimage as close as possible to a spiritual retreat, praying every morning before we began our travels, ensuring that Mass was part of our daily routine even if things were hectic, not dashing from place to place but lingering at sites that invited meditation, and bringing along not just our guidebooks, but our Bibles.
By June the trip was nearly planned. Several Jesuits offered their lists of can’t-miss places, and I ordered a superb guidebook called The Holy Land, written by one of the world’s leading biblical scholars, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, a Catholic priest and a member of the Dominican order. Finally I booked a flight to Tel Aviv.
A pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which I hadn’t wanted to do and which seemed impossible to arrange, ended up being the trip that I couldn’t wait to do and that seemed to have arranged itself.
THE FLIGHT TO ISRAEL would be long; I knew that. What I didn’t know was how unusual it would be. Naturally I expected tight security, but I was still surprised at Newark Airport to see that passengers flying to Tel Aviv were cordoned off in a special section, demarcated with barriers that prevented us from leaving, once passing through customs. Before boarding we would be searched again, extensively, patted down as an additional safety measure.
Milling around in the terminal were, not surprisingly, many Orthodox Jewish men and women. That upped my excitement—I really was going to Israel! What made me less excited was seeing how many rambunctious children there were on our flight—dozens of them. Boarding the plane I discovered that I was seated directly in front of a row populated by four children, each of them screaming. Their harried mother, her head covered modestly in a scarf, was gamely trying to calm them, but to no avail. Discreetly, I asked the flight attendant if any other seats were available. Shaking her head dolefully, she leaned in close to explain. “This flight is always filled with kids; it’s the one preferred by families who fly from New York to Israel.”
Fortunately, my doctor had given me a prescription for sleeping pills in case I needed them. As soon as the plane took off, I popped one in my mouth, eagerly awaiting the pleasantly drowsy feeling that would signal eight uninterrupted hours of blissful sleep. But after an hour, nothing. I was as wide awake as ever. Oh well. I pulled out Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s The Holy Land and tried to ignore a child regularly kicking my seat and shouting, “I hate you, Mommy!” I wondered if George, who was flying from San Francisco, was having a similar experience.
Murphy-O’Connor’s book was precisely the kind of guide I was looking for. For one thing, his reputation was sterling.1 A scholar at the École Biblique in Jerusalem and the author of numerous books on the New Testament, Murphy-O’Connor was eminently trustworthy.2 He deployed words like “unlikely,” “possible,” and “very probably,” as he carefully sifted through the entirely authentic and the obviously legendary places in the Holy Land. Every few pages his wit would shine through. Writing about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he said, “In subsequent centuries the church suffered desecration and destruction more than once. Inept repairs were no less damaging.” His book helped me pass ten hours in relative peace.
BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, in Tel Aviv, was stunningly modern, with a high-tech fountain that poured water from a circular opening in the ceiling into a pool on the floor. My friend David had told to me to locate a sherut to Jerusalem.
I had no idea what a sherut was. So I followed all the other tourists, had my passport stamped by a friendly Israel official (“Shalom!”), exchanged dollars for shekels, and eventually spied a row of vans outside, idling under the broiling Middle Eastern sun. Immediately I felt that frisson of embarrassment you experience in a foreign country when you realize that you are about to sound like a fool for not knowing the most basic words.
“Is this a cheroot?” I shouted over the din of the motors. The driver laughed and said, “Sherut!” (It’s the Hebrew word for “service.”)
“Are you going to Jerusalem?” I asked.
Laughing, he jerked his thumb to a sign on the bus that said “Jerusalem.”
Aboard was a mix of Israeli citizens, Orthodox Jews (from my flight), and an American student, all of whom chatted merrily as the sherut bounced down the streets. We wended our way through the sandy countryside dotted with olive trees and scrub, and passed by the high metal fence that delineated the Palestinian territories. America magazine had published many articles about the wall, but it was still a shock to see: tall, gray, metal, forbidding.
We entered a small town. This was an Israeli settlement, a city for Jewish “settlers” within otherwise Palestinian territory, a deeply controversial political issue. I asked our driver the name of the town, but he declined to give it, instead outlining the various forms of governance: A, B, and C. A: Complete Palestinian autonomy. B: Shared control between the Israeli military and the Palestinians. C: Full Israeli control. The other passengers fell silent as he spoke.
Our sherut dropped off several people at their tidy yellow sandstone houses. After we pulled back onto the highway, I saw signs for Jerusalem.
Soon we were in Jerusalem’s bustling center, threading our way through its narrow streets. Many buildings—from skyscrapers to more modest dwellings—were creamy white, built from what is called Jerusalem stone, the pale limestone used to construct everything from a corner drugstore to the Western Wall. Often highly polished, it gleams almost pure white in the sun. Enchanted, I thought of the Bible verses about pilgrims “going up” to Jerusalem and what a glorious sight it must have been in ancient times.3
“Three Paul Émile Botta Street, please,” I said to the driver. When we entered the heart of the city, I was the only passenger. My heart leapt when I saw the walls of the Old City. Among the most ancient structures in Jerusalem, the walls, or at least their outlines, date back to biblical times; they were improved on by rulers from around the time of Christ, and by Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century.
“Here!” said the driver, as he parked beside a high metal gate. I offered what I calculated to be the correct number of shekels and helped him unload my bags.
“Heavy!” he said, laughing. “How long are you staying?”
Prior to departure I had read the Gospel passages in which Jesus counsels his disciples to “take nothing for your journey” and felt a pang of guilt.4 My practice is to take everything with me on the journey, having endured too many trips when I’ve been forced to spend money for a sweater that I should have brought along. Traveling heavy saves money, even if it makes me appear extravagant. Still, I wondered if Jesus would have approved.
Next to a small sign that said “Pontifical Biblical Institute” was a bell. A cheerful workman opened the door, and I was shocked by what I
had predicted would prove to be a poky Jesuit residence. Instead, a three-story, sand-colored edifice that looked like a Crusader castle (complete with crenellated towers) was fronted by a gravel courtyard that boasted three tall palm trees. At the main building I rang another doorbell.
A smiling, dark-haired Indian Jesuit opened the door. Brother Tony introduced himself. “You are very welcome!” he said. “Would you like something to drink?” He led me through a high-ceilinged foyer paved with terrazzo stone. On the right was a spacious, airy chapel with simple chairs and an impressive crucifixion scene on the wall. On the left, behind glass doors, was a small archaeological museum featuring long vitrines that housed antiquities: statues, pieces of pottery, scrolls. And a mummy—not the most common addition to a Jesuit community. Tucked under the main staircase was a miniature elevator; to the right was a dining room and a living room, both lit by copious sunshine that poured through the frosted windows.
But our destination was the large metal container outside the dining room. “This is very good,” Tony said, as he poured a cup of pale yellow liquid from a plastic spigot on the front. “You can fill your bottles when you go around town.” I took a sip: lemonade! During the next two weeks, the lemonade machine would be as eagerly sought a destination as any holy site.
As Tony prepared a plate of lunch, Joseph Doan Công Nguyên entered the room. Father Doan, the head of the Jesuit community at the PBI, was a Vietnamese Jesuit who had spent several years working in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. He had also spent eleven years in a Vietnamese prison after the Communist takeover there. Father Doan offered to help me plan my itinerary for the next few days, a service he offered frequently to pilgrims.
After lunch Tony said, “You look tired, James. Why don’t you have a lie down?”
Though I wanted to start touring immediately (even sans George), I couldn’t resist the invitation. Tony accompanied me in the elevator to the second floor and escorted me to a large, spotless room with two immense desks, a narrow bed, a sink, and a tall window looking out onto the spacious courtyard.
“Rest now, and see Father Doan later.”
But once I lay down, the sleeping pill kicked in. Four hours later, I awoke with a start and peered out my window—I was in Jerusalem! Groggily, I found my way to Doan’s neatly organized office. In the hallway, I ran into George, who had just arrived. “Shalom!” he said.
A taciturn, scholarly man, Doan asked which sites we most hoped to see. After we ran through our lists, he went over to his bookcase and pulled out a large, creased map of Israel, which he carefully spread out on his desk. For the next hour, we planned the next two weeks. He suggested we start in Jerusalem and visit the most important sites; next, rent a car for the trip to Galilee; and then, upon our return, see whatever we had missed in Jerusalem. His use of so many names that I had heard only in Scripture classes delighted me: Jericho, Gethsemane, Bethpage, Bethany, the Mount of Olives.
A stone’s throw from our residence, said Doan, was Gehenna, the section of Jerusalem where residents in antiquity burned garbage; this was the vivid image Jesus often used to illustrate hell. A few days later over dinner, one of the Jesuits was speaking about some improvements made in the city and said something I never thought I’d hear: “Gehenna is lovely these days.”
George inquired about the possibility of making a retreat nearby. Doan said that in the Garden of Gethsemane the Franciscan friars ran a cluster of about fifteen small buildings, hermitages, that were available for prayer, though reserving them was difficult, so high was the demand.
As Doan described more places on his worn map, sleep almost overcame me. Thrilled and exhausted, I promised myself to review his notes later. Thanking him, we gathered up our notes and left behind his map.
“Oh no,” he said, “that’s yours for the week. Also, we have our big meal in the afternoon and a smaller meal for supper, after Mass, at seven o’clock. And you are most welcome to celebrate Mass if you wish, Fathers.”
As we walked from Doan’s office, George smiled. “Ready?” he said.
CHAPTER 2
Yes
“How can this be?”
IN A PERFECT WORLD George and I would have visited the important places in the life of Christ in sequence: we would have started in Bethlehem, moved to Nazareth, continued on to the Sea of Galilee, and ended up in Jerusalem. But since that would have meant flying from the States into the so-far-nonexistent Bethlehem Airport, we couldn’t arrange it. So Nazareth, where the story of Jesus truly began, came in the middle of our pilgrimage.
After a few days of touring around Jerusalem, as Doan suggested (more about Jerusalem later), George and I took ourselves to the Avis car rental around the corner from the Pontifical Biblical Institute. The details of the transaction were marginally less complicated than applying for a mortgage, but early one morning we rented a little gray car for a reasonable sum, found a GPS for a few thousand shekels, and picked up a road map for free. The GPS was, oddly, rented not from Avis but from a suspicious-looking gas station across the street. The helpful woman at the car-rental desk estimated that Galilee, northeast of Jerusalem, was a four- to five-hour drive.
The GPS seemed largely uninterested in taking us in the right direction. Though George is an excellent driver (i.e., better than me) and we expertly navigated our way out of Jerusalem, we quickly found ourselves lost. At first it had seemed a straightforward journey. All we had to do was find Highway 90, which snaked north, alongside the west bank of the Jordan River, and follow it to the Sea of Galilee. But it soon became clear that we were far from any highway, stuck in the middle of an arid countryside of rolling hills dotted with small gray-green bushes.
George’s patience dwindled as the roads narrowed. Who could blame him? At one point, the GPS said, “Turn right,” and we pulled onto a deeply rutted dirt road.
“Uh!” he said. “Where are we?”
I examined the map. “Shilo,” I said.
“Yeah, right!” said George, evidently doubtful that we were near one of the great cities of the Old Testament where the Ark of the Covenant rested for many years.
“Where do we want to go?” he said. “I’ll plug it into the GPS.”
We wanted to go north to Galilee and along the River Jordan, so I searched the map for a location on the way. “Gilgal,” I said.
“Oh, come on!” said George. Another famous Old Testament town, one that figures prominently in the life of Saul—he was made king there, among other things.
But it was true. I was constantly surprised how the storied names of biblical locales popped up in the most familiar of circumstances: on a simple map, on a graffitied street sign, or in everyday conversations. “The traffic to Bethlehem was terrible last night!” said a Jesuit over dinner one night. Which still didn’t beat “Gehenna is lovely.”
As our GPS kept insisting on right turns, I examined the map. George slowly steered the car down the faux road. Presently an Israeli guard station appeared. A young, dark-haired man with a thin beard and a rifle slung over his shoulder walked menacingly toward our car. (Later I discovered that Shilo is a Jewish settlement, which explained the rifle.)
“Okay, Navigator,” said George. “Ask the guy with the gun.”
The guy with the gun spoke zero English, and my Hebrew consisted of five phrases: Thank you, You’re welcome, Hello, Good-bye, and Peace—the last three of which are the same. So I said, “Jordan River?”
He squinted his eyes, unslung his rifle, and jabbed the point of the barrel into his left forearm. “Dead! Dead! Dead!” he said. Uh oh.
“Then . . . left!” he said and grinned. It dawned on me what he meant. Follow the road to where it dead-ends. Then turn left. His apparent death threat was instead a helpful driving instruction.
“Toda!” I said.
He saluted, and I returned to the car.
“Good job,” said George. “I’m glad he didn’t shoot us.”
In a few minutes we were zipping up Highway 90 through
the Jordan Valley. In another hour we reached the Sea of Galilee.
We spied it first through the trees, as we drove through the city of Tiberias. The cornflower-blue waters and the pink rocks on the opposite shore seemed the most beautiful thing my eyes had ever seen. And I thought, Jesus saw this! Not through the window of a rented car, but he had seen it. From years of reading Bibles illustrated with crummy black-and-white photographs of the Sea of Galilee, I immediately recognized the surrounding hills, which in the hazy summer light looked like folded pink cloth.
We continued up the west side of the sea, heading north toward the Franciscan hostel on the Mount of Beatitudes. As the number of buildings between the highway and the water lessened, the view became clearer. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.
“Jesus saw this,” I said.
“Yeah,” said George. “Pretty great, huh?”
When I saw the sign that said “Capernaum,” I almost laughed for joy. The town where Jesus made his home during his ministry in Galilee. The town where Peter lived. The site of many of the miracle stories. The place that I had most wanted to see. But we weren’t going straightaway to Capernaum (or, as the sign read, Kfar Nahum, which, translated into English, would be “village of Nahum” or perhaps “Nahumsville”). First we needed to find the Mount of Beatitudes hostel.
“Well,” I said, pointing up a gently sloping hillside, “that must be it.”
We both peered up a hill blanketed with dried grass and capped with an impressive gray church. After a few unsuccessful tries, we made it up the side of the mountain and spied a small sign pointing to the monastery.
Having stayed in countless religious houses and monasteries, I expected an unlovely building with closet-size rooms furnished with the following items: a narrow metal bed with a lumpy mattress, a rickety wooden chair, a tiny desk, and, if we were lucky, a small sink with a leaky faucet. We were lodging in a Franciscan hostel, run by an order known for their love of simplicity, so the poverty was bound to be extreme.