My entire life I have longed to visit the Holy Land (when you're an evangelical, as I was raised, it's the only pilgrimage site you have, actually, not believing in saints or apparitions). The desire only intensified once I converted to Catholicism (a sacramental appreciation for God's use of material things makes places more meaningful, you know.) I think what made a wish into a determination came from something a family friend who made the trip said. He was a lovely Jewish man -- one of the unsung heroes of the Cold War-- who became very attracted to the person of Christ. Late in life, and burdened by Parkinson's disease, he made the trip, and I'll never forget what he said about walking the Via Crucis.
I could feel Christ there. Him with his cross, and me with my Parkinson's.
So when I read on Zenit that John Paul II had entrusted the Vatican's Notre Dame Cultural Center in Jerusalem to the care of the Legionaries of Christ, I knew my time had come. Here were people who would know how to design a pilgrimage worthy of the name (not just shopping with daily mass). Discovering that one of my good friends, a consecrated member of Regnum Christi, has been reassigned to the consecrated community in Jerusalem didn't hurt. Most of all, for a host of private reasons, I feel I must go.
So. . .off I go for ten days. In Tel Aviv I'll meet up with Spanish-speaking pilgrims of various provenance (doesn't everyone go to Israel to practice Spanish?). I'll pray for you in the holy places; you pray for the fruits of our pilgrimage. (Unbelievers, just send out good vibes into the collective consciousness.) Shalom.
