THE PILGRIMAGE IN THE LAND OF THE GOSPEL

Kamal-Hanna Bathish

Visiting the Holy Land you walk on the tracks and in the steps of the Son of God made man in order to accomplish the salvation of all of humanity. Land blessed by the Saint of God, historic land of the Gospel, where every step reproduces the memory of the passage of Jesus! Land which has been given the name «The Fifth Gospel!». But this land offers another living Gospel, human, ecclesial, that with its life and its culture, perpetual witness through the centuries he who one day made the appeal: «The time has come, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; convert and believe the Gospel» (Mark 1, 15): this is the witness of the Christian community, which for centuries continues in a visible way the presence of Christ on his earth and which always, because of him, goes by the words of John: «All that there was in the beginning, all that we heard, all that we have seen with our eyes, all that we have contemplated and that our hands have touched, that is the Word of life, since life was made visible, we have seen it and of it we are a witness and we announce eternal life, which was with the Father and was made visible to us!» (1 John 1, 1-2). Really a privilege! It is a unique privilege of the Holy Land of presenting the places which recall life and the teachings of Jesus, still reflecting his divine mission and speaking of it. The various historical ups and downs and the archeological sciences assure us of the authenticity, at least for the major sanctuaries of the Annunciation in Nazareth, of the Nativity of Bethlehem and of the Sepulcher in Jerusalem. In the Holy Land, but more particularly, in Jerusalem where everyone was born: «Here, Palestine, Tyre and Ethiopia: everyone was born there» (Psalm 86, 4), the Christian finds once again his origins in the terrestrial homeland of Jesus Christ, where the mystery which saved him took place and where the Church was born, which maternally embraces him. In Nazareth and in Bethlehem he finds all the high dignity of his nature and of his human personality elevated by the divinity of Christ. In Jerusalem, at the Mountain of Olives, the Christian understands that his end must be transported by Christ who preceded him to prepare him a mansion with the Father in Heaven. Where can we take on a good and authentic path and pilgrimage of forgiveness and reconciliation with God and with our neighbor which is better than in the Holy Land? Here is the privileged place to live the expectation and the celebration of the Grand Jubilee of 2,000. How through a people and the world, God prepared and accomplished the mysteries of the Incarnation and of redemption, just like through the world and a people he can still accompany them in their walk of God towards the celestial Jerusalem.

Holy Land - A Pole of the celebrations of the Jubilee:
«Seen in this light - as John Paul II says - all of the history of Christianity opens up to us like one river, from which many rivers take their water. The year 2,000 invites us to encounter ourselves with a renewed fidelity and with profound communion on the banks of this great river: the river of the Revelation, of Christianity, of the Church, which runs through the history of humanity beginning from that even which happened in Nazareth and then in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. It truly is the "river" and with its "streams," according to the expression in the Psalm, "make glad the city of God" (cfr. Psalm 46[45], 5)» (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 25). We note the three cities: Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, the city of God: three cities, three steps on the path of conversion, to which we reach Rome, the catalytic center of the Church which puts this river into channels. Nothing should surprise that Sacred Land and Places are considered like a pole of the Grand Jubilee! «A separate chapter will be the actual celebration of the Great Jubilee , which will take place simultaneously in the Holy Land, in Rome and in the local Churches throughout the world» (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 55). With this historic innovation, the Holy Father has satisfied the exception needed to open wider the doors of the Jubilee: «The Holy Door of the Jubilee of 2,000 must symbolically be bigger than the preceding ones» (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 33).

Holy Cities: Itinerary of Conversion

A pilgrimage for 2000
The premise, made in the name of the Gerosolimitano Committee for the Grand Jubilee, at the second European Congress of directors of the pilgrimage and of the Rectors of the sanctuaries, which was held in Mariaposc in Hungary on September 24, 1996, says the following: «It is essential to enter into the spirit of the Jubilee. The pilgrimage must now be to carry the footprint of the Jubilee: time of encounter with the grace of God and with the God of grace, time of looking at our conscience, of revision and of reconciliation with God...
The classic pilgrimage in the Holy Land has become a fast course towards the Holy Sights. A need to want to see the maximum possible. The pilgrim, after a day, and even more at the end of one week of intense sightseeing is physically exhausted. He then remains hungry as he was, and incapable of assimilating, and of perhaps even localizing that which he discovered with so much interest. In a better hypothesis, he remains with the nostalgia of wanting to return».

A three step pilgrimage
Knowing the vastness of the sanctuary built in the Holy Land, the scarcity of the Holy Sights, the extraordinary affluence of pilgrims foreseen for 2,000 and the brevity of time at hand for the pilgrim we have proposed «a form of pilgrimage which is reduced in visits, but more focused on the essential, leaving more time for meditation, to prayer and to the deeper reflection on the mystery of Christ. The pilgrim should feel personally called in order to provoke from him a sincere and convincing response to the fundamental question which is asked of each one of us: For you, who is Christ?»

Nazareth with a theological reflection on Incarnation. What does an Incarnate God mean, a God who divides the condition of man? Islam and Judaism both refute the mystery of Incarnation in favor of the transcendence of God. What does the phrase of the Fathers mean for we Christians: «God made himself man so that man could become God?» We can take advantage even for a reflection on the dignity of man, on the mystery of the hidden life, with the lesson of silence, of work and of the fulfilling of daily duties.

Bethlehem where Jesus is born to this world and starts to live in our society with all its situations and its problems. This invites a meditation on the gift of life, on the family and on society. How therefore, to affirm and live one's own Christian identity in the present society and in a pluralistic way, so well represented in the Holy Land?

Jerusalem with its mystery of the Easter of Christ: Passion, Death-Resurrection; mystery of the reconciliation and the mystery of Pentecost with the birth of the Church of Christ. It is all there, the plan and the accomplishment of the divine economy of salvation with the mission entrusted in the Church of bringing it to all of humanity.

The pilgrimage 2,000, in order to be tuned in with the spirit of the Jubilee as explained in the Tertio Millennio Adveniente, must therefore turn itself around these three centers where we find in condensed form the foundation of theology and of the Christian spirituality. The pilgrimage will logically complete itself in Rome, where the presence of the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ gathers all the faithful spread out in the world in the unity of the Church founded on the Apostles.

In the heart of our Jubilee Itinerary

Holy Mary
At the end of this pilgrimage, in which we have visited the most significant and sanctifying cities of Christ and traveled the various steps of our reconciliation with God and with our neighbor to reach the union with Christ, how can we ignore the place and role of Mary? During all of this walk of faith, both that of the Christian and that of the Church in the pilgrimage towards the Jubilee, Holy Mary so united to Christ and close to the work of salvation, cannot but have a privileged place, and thus merits being mentioned in every step. We do not find better words to describe it than those of John Paul II, which can be applied even to our itinerary of conversion:

«In all this vast horizon of commitments, Holy Mary, daughter of the Chosen of the Father, will be present to the gaze of the believers as an example of perfect love, both towards God as towards thy neighbor. How she herself affirms in the Canticle of the Magnificat, grand things where done for her by the Almighty, whose name is holy (cfr. Luke 1, 49). The Father chose Mary for a unique mission in the history of salvation: that of being the Mother of the long-awaited Savior. The Virgin responded to God's call with complete openness. "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1, 38). Her motherhood, which began in Nazareth and was lived most intensely in Jerusalem at the foot of the Cross, will be felt during this year as a loving and urgent invitation addressed to all the children of God, so that they will return to the house of the Father when they hear her maternal voice: "Do whatever Christ tells you" »(cfr. John 2, 5, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 54).