40 Days

You do not want to miss Pope Benedict's message for Lent of 2009. Recalling that the first command given to us was a command of fasting ("You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil") in which we crashed and burned, Benedict shows that fasting becomes one of the key ways of repairing what was lost through sin. Insightful and invigorating, the Holy Father's message is an excellent way to launch into this new season.

For those of you who followed with joy last year's Station Masses and are grieved that my current Lenten pilgrimage leaves me far from the churches of Rome, Fear Not! This year's coverage has been upgraded and improved by Father Tim Laboe, who is chronicling each day's visit on his blog, not merely with dreary text, but with video! Complete with commentary and glimpses into history, you can see the first of the installments here--and be sure to bookmark it to return for each day's addition.

Many blessings in this new season!

Grottoes

You haven't wholly landed in the Holy Land until you get out into the hills themselves. Last Monday a group of us hiked out from the Lion's Gate in Jerusalem, past the Church of Saint Stephen, to come to the base of the Mount of Olives. There we literally went into the hill, as we came to the Tomb of Mary, and descended into the darkened grotto.



Cared for by the Orthodox, it represents the place prepared for Mary's final rest, until events happened otherwise, and the Queen of Heaven went to heaven.

Immediately adjacent is the grotto favored by Jesus during his time in Jerusalem, where he went often to pray. It was here that he brought his disciples after the Last Supper. Cared for by the Franciscans, it now houses a small altar.

A few paces away, next to an olive grove filled with trees that date back to the time of Christ, with gnarled massive trunks, is the Church of All Nations, built by contributions from around the world.



Here the large rock is found where Jesus was alone in the moments prior to his arrest by the chief priests. Cherished by the early Christians, it is still recalled daily in the first sorrowful mystery of the rosary, the Agony in the Garden.



You have to walk through the Kidron Valley to get back to Jerusalem from Gethsemane. Believed to be the place of the Last Judgment, it is full of the tombs of Muslims, Jews and Christians who wanted front row seats for the big event. Both Joel and Zechariah in the Old Testament refer to this valley of judgment. Joel 3:1-2 calls it the Valley of Jehoshaphat ('God will Judge'): "For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehosh'aphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there, on account of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations, and have divided up my land." Again in 3:14 Joel reads: "Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision."

A grotto dedicated to one of the twelve, Saint James, is there. This tomb, known as the tomb of Zechariah, is right next to it.



One of the Muslim accounts of the Last Judgment describes two bridges being built over the valley, extending from the Mount of Olives to Mount Moriah (in Jerusalem), one bridge being made of paper, and one made of iron. Everyone will be directed to one bridge or the other. Of course, you and I would want the bridge of iron, right? But the narrative unfolds, and in fact the bridge of iron collapses and sends everyone plummeting to their doom, while the bridge of paper brings those on it over to safety. Being of course a vivid reminder that sometimes God's directive for us is better than the choices we would have made for ourselves . . .

Shabbat Shalom

You can distinctly feel the difference when Sabbath arrives in Jerusalem. A hush falls over the city; on the streets families are walking together; all the businesses--and busyness--close their shutters.

I walked over to the Old City to visit the Western Wall.

Even in February, some early blossoms were braving the brisk air.



For centuries the Jewish Faith was centered around the Temple. It really was the center of the universe, because it was the place where heaven touched earth, where God was present among his people.

Journeying through the wilderness after leaving Egypt, the Israelite tents were always pitched around the Tabernacle, the large tent of worship housing the Ark of the Covenant. The Tabernacle identified the presence of God guiding them through the desert. After King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel, his son King Solomon fulfilled his father's dream, and replaced the tent of worship with a magnificent structure of stone, silver and gold.

Its annihilation by the Babylonians awakened a resurgence among the Jews to rebuild the house of God in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. By the time of Jesus, yet another renovation had been elaborately provided by King Herod.

For centuries the Jewish Faith was centered around the Temple. But those centuries were many centuries ago, because one generation after Jesus, the 10th Roman Legion brought heaven and earth crashing down when they burned Jerusalem and razed the Temple to the ground, leaving no stone unturned.

Jerusalem is a city on mountaintops, and the Temple had been built on Mount Moriah. Herod had created an enormous piazza to expand the area around the summit. This the Romans left behind, so those stones represent the only remnants of the Jewish Temple.

And after all these centuries, the site of God's presence is not forgotten.

Jews from all over the world still come on pilgrimage to pray at the Western Wall, the portion of Herod's Temple structure still accessible today.



No Jew would go on top of the Temple Mount, because they might inadvertently tread on the place where the Holy of Holies had been. And the highly visible Dome of the Rock--built by the Muslims to commemorate Muhammad's ascension into heaven--now dominates the ground.

But before the Western Wall, remembrance of what once was still lingers. Here a community scattered around the globe finds its center. Here the same Psalms of worship are sung before the ancient stones, in the same language of centuries ago.



And this Sabbath, the day of remembering when God rested with his people, is no different.

Kolkata

Nicole has been in Calcutta since the end of January, and has been posting updates of her work in street ministry. In addition to her evocative photography, her revealing of the poorest and their suffering is riveting. Spend a few moments in reading and a few more in prayer for her and those she is with.

Storm at the Gates

It was pouring rain in Tel Aviv when we landed Tuesday afternoon. With my last final ending Monday, 24 hours was too long to wait before heading down here to Israel to begin the next semester! The flight was just over three hours, so after drinking my last cappuccino in Rome, I headed to the land of . . . more cappuccinos, and mochas, and lattes, and mediums, smalls and grandes: Israelis have discovered and fallen in love with the coffee culture.

Sounding out the Hebrew signs is tons of fun: you work hard sounding out ארומה only to figure out that the cafe's name was 'Aroma' transliterated into Hebrew letters.

So it was pouring rain when we got here. Apparently we were stuck on the highway for an hour behind an accident--I found that out later because I was asleep at the time . . .

We made it to our residence without other mishaps--two of us were the advance party for the rest of our group who still had finals to take before flying down. So Wednesday morning we sent out to find our school in the heart of the Old City.

We went through hell to get there. Or at least we went through Gehenna: dropping down into the former garbage dump, now cleaned-up park before climbing back up to enter Jerusalem through the Jafa Gate. The streets were still wet and the sky was still overcast--

We certainly weren't prepared for the brilliance that shone over the city today.

Jafa Gate

So I headed back up to King David's Tower to walk through the timeline of the city found at the museum there.



From the top you had a beautiful panorama of the city: skies freshly cleaned by the torrential rains of the day before.


Behind the golden Dome of the Rock you can see the Mount of Olives; to the left you can see the white steeple of the Church of the Redeemer.

This promises to be an exciting semester!

Roma - Genoa

There is of course no better way to wrap up a semester (yes, that's the calendar here) than to catch a home game at the Stadio Olimpico.

Rome was playing Genoa this afternoon so a squadron of us went out to catch the event.



The best element of the whole game was the sheer volume in the stadium: with Rome building on a lead from the 26th minute on, the energy level only kept increasing.

A.S. Roma ended the game handily 3-0, causing the entire crowd to break out in an enthusiastic rendition of the team anthem.

Returning via Piazza del Popolo:

"Do This . . . "

Remembrance is at the heart of the Jewish faith, and considering Jesus' instructions at the Last Supper, is the core of Christian practice as well. Cultural and personal amnesia might then be our greatest bane: forgetting the big picture, forgetting what God has already accomplished.

To forget the dark side of our past is also disastrous. Santayana's quote is well known: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Our tunnel vision seems to create the illusion that we won't get into the same trouble that we've flaunted before. Like an alcoholic who justifies just one drink, our ability to pretend the past didn't happen allows us dance where the landmines are. In this light the work of Father Patrick Desbois is particularly acute. Encapsulated in a current exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, Father Desbois' pilgrimage into the Ukraine to chronicle the Nazi slaughter of the Jews reveals again what the human race is capable of.

In a recent article, Jordana Horn describes Father Desbois' endurance as he and his fellow workers with Yahad in Unum return to the Ukraine to encounter the ever expanding revelations of human atrocity. Father Desbois confirms that we are in fact our brother's keeper as he recalls the words of Genesis: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground."

Horn presses him on the burden of the encounter:

Even so, I ask him: How can you bear to listen to a woman talk about when she was 14 years old and was forced to walk on corpses, between shootings, in order to pack them down in a mass grave? "I keep my faith in God," Father Desbois responds, "not in humanity."

Paying the Piper

Flipsyde's the Piper came out with this song back in 2006--titled 'Happy Birthday', it echoes a recent post:

Joyful Mystery

Today marks 40 days out from Christmas, a hinge point in the calendar. (Not Ash Wednesday, as some might guess.) Today's feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the temple manifests the fidelity of his family to the law of the Covenant; Jesus participates in the alliance that had brought a people to be uniquely the Lord's.

But for God himself to show up in the flesh in his own house marks a transformative step forward as well; a stunning reversal which shows that now everything has changed. Our own new identity is revealed in this tiny baby. It is one of us, a human being, who comes in to be confirmed as being the Big Guy himself.

Each person baptized into Christ participates in today's mystery. Mary carries us in to present us to the Father, and in our new identity we are no longer strangers, alien to God, but his own beloved child whom he receives with favor.

Speaking of covenants and their renovation, this photo just came in from a friend living in San Giovanni Rotondo:



He writes:

"On the left side of the picture the rainbow starts at the church and friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Our Lady of Grace.) This is where Padre Pio lived for fifty years and where he received the stigmata; also it is where the remains of Padre Pio rests. The rainbow continues over the hospital that Padre Pio built called, The Home for the Relief of Suffering and then goes on to cover the town of San Giovanni Rotondo."

He adds: "This may have been just a coincidence, but I don't think so."