Doubting Thomas
When I wrote the first post on the reality of Jesus, I was half-way through, on the seventh day. It was the eighth and ninth days that were most impactful for me, and especially the ninth day, which I largely wrote about in the post, “Climbing to Golgotha.”
I must confess that I held out a small hope for an obvious sign that God IS, not that I don’t believe that HE isn’t; but I do deal with doubt, as did even Sr. Theresa, and I’m sure many other people. Even the Apostle, Thomas doubted until he placed his hand in the wound of Christ, then he believed; but he’d already seen quite a bit as a disciple of course, and you’d think that’d been enough.
Although I didn’t observe a direct sign directed towards me personally, it does not mean that it wasn’t there. It may be that I didn’t see it, that I wasn’t good enough, that my faith is too weak, that I am not yet worthy. Sue did have a very spiritual moment on the Mount of the Beatitudes of which I was part of simply by my proximity, and it was powerful. I do believe that I’ve had direct divine intervention at least two times in my life, and so I was pretty much there, relative to HE IS, I just always felt I needed to be better, that I had some work to do.
So, no voice from the heavens or burning bush or walking on water, although it seemed I came close to the latter on the Dead Sea; however, I did feel a certain calm in certain places, and grief in both the Garden of Gethsemane and at the Rock of Calvary. I will never hear the Gospels in the same way again. I’m actually looking forward to the Passion during the Holy Week. The Gospels were brought to life. I’ve been in those places. I’ve walked where he walked. That Jesus of Nazareth was is without doubt. It is not possible for it to be otherwise. That he was the Son of God is the realm where doubt exists. There will always be doubt, until that day I display the stigmata, or see a blinding light and hear a heavenly voice on the road to Algoma or place a hand into the wounded side of Christ; but I shouldn’t need that. I shouldn’t need to see God’s handwriting in the sky because it’s already there. It’s there.
It’s in the fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament that was written five-hundred years before the birth of Jesus and corroborated by the Dead Sea scrolls dug up in 1946. It’s in the preservation of the Holy sites throughout the ages of repeated destruction. It’s in the exponential growth of the Christian faith from the time of Christ. It’s in the conviction and belief of the disciples, who knew Him without doubt, who gave their lives for Him because they knew Him as the Son of God.
And possibly the strongest writing in the sky was the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. I do not see how this could not have happened. How else could you explain the conversion of a Christian-persecuting Pharisee on the road to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus and return them to Jerusalem for imprisonment and execution.
It’s already there. That’s what I saw. That’s what I felt in those special places, so, yes, my faith is stronger, my doubt is much less, and I am spiritually stronger now than I was before, but I still have work to do. I’ll go back. I might yet walk on water.
The River Jordan, Jericho and Camels
I wanted to post a couple of short videos. The first occurred at the end of the ninth day. Our last stop was at a bazaar to shop for souvenirs, and as luck would have it within the lot we found a camel.
The second video was a day spent in the West Bank, including the River Jordan at the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. The videos are self-explanatory.
After the R. Jordan, I jumped the fence and went native, assuming the name Omar Shaunif, recalling how handsome my mother thought Omar Sharif in not only Lawrence of Arabia, but all his movies. My thought was to disappear into the wilderness, to follow the footsteps in my own Imitation of Christ; sadly, I was convinced to rejoin the group and pursue my Imitation of Christ in the more conventional ways of good deeds, obeying the Golden Rule, growing in Faith, and the like.
It may be that Sue would have welcomed my foray into the wilderness, despite the striking similarity to Omar Sharif, as her voice I did not hear in the chorus calling me back.
Side by side comparison.
Just say’in.
Climbing to Golgotha: the ninth day.
It is difficult to describe the feelings of doing the stations of the cross where Christ lived them, except now, they are the streets of a Jerusalem rebuilt three times over; yet, when faced with the stone of anointing, and the tomb of Christ, and touching the rock of Calvary, through a small round hole that barely admits my arm under the altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary of Sorrows, the stone on which the cross was set upright, I am overwhelmed.
Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, to the ground. The
second temple was burned and destroyed. In 130 AD the Roman emperor, Hadrian,
erected a temple to the god Jupiter at the site of a cave containing a rock-cut
tomb. In 312, Constantine sent his mother, St. Helena to Jerusalem to look for
Christ’s tomb. She identified the tomb as that of Jesus. It was marked by crosses
cut in the stone. She also identified the site of Golgotha that had been marked
by the Romans who had built a temple to Aphrodite over the site. Both temples
to the Greek gods were deconstructed and churches were built at the respective
sites.
The reason I am being so specific about the timing and
documentation of these locations of the most Holy of sites is simply to
demonstrate the veracity of the claims. There is always a debate of specific
locations; however, when you consider the erection of temples to Greek gods
within one human lifetime at these two sites and the subsequent deconstruction
and reconstruction in the fourth century, at those sites previously marked, I
think the evidence quite strong. Then, you consider the site of the birthplace
of Jesus as having the most consensus amongst the historians and archeologists,
and taken together, the three holiest Christian sites are valid relative to
their location and reality.
If I had to pick one day, I’d have to say the ninth day, the
day of the Church fo the Holy Sepulchre, which is where we ended the stations
of the cross, walking The Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows). I felt more prepared than the previous day at the Basilica of the
Nativity, I suppose because of the stations of the cross leading up to it,
whereas at the Nativity, I stood in a fairly short line, and was there in no
time at all, and then it was past, and what I had was a memory of kneeling
before a star in the stone of the ground on which I laid my ring and a cross
and a candle. The stone was smooth and cool, but not as cool as I would have
thought. I barely had time to wonder at the awesome power of that special place
before my time was up.
On the day we climbed to Golgotha, we started in the
courtyard of Pontius Pilate where Jesus was condemned to death: –the place
where the people cried, “Crucify him,” and where the Romans released Barabbas.
I remember seeing what was considered to be the base of the column he was tied
to when he was scourged. It was sitting in a niche at the front of the chapel
off the Basilica of the Nativity, where we held our mass the previous day. It
was dark reddish in color as though stained with blood although I knew it was
only the stain of time and the color of stone after 2000 years. I touched it in
passing. It was cold. I shivered. I imagined the freshly green branches of the
Ziziphus spina Christi twisted into a crown, piercing His scalp down to the
bone, and blood running down. I remembered the scene of Jim Caviezel from The
Passion and knew that it must have been much like that.
As we walked the busy, early morning streets of Jerusalem on
the subsequent stations, we passed vendors and storefronts and bakeries, all
the while dodging other people and cars and tractors passing in the incredibly
narrow streets that seemed more as walkways. The stations took us on an
ascendant path, until we were outside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
where we completed them as the last four stations were within the Church itself.
On entering the Church, the first thing I saw was a giant
slab of rock surrounded by a wooden frame. Peoples of all nations surrounded
it, touching it, kissing it. I saw a beautiful Indian woman in a flowing white
gown with sequins and jewelry and a headdress; another woman with a covered
head and a more muted gown, of another ethnicity, on her knees rubbing a cloth
against it. I heard the whisper of voices in unfamiliar tongues and was struck
by the breadth of humanity all gathered together from all parts of the world in
this place, and all the places we had been visiting.
“What’s that, Rauf?”
“That, doctor,” he said with his Assyrian accent giving the “O” the long vowel sound rather than the short, like in us saying “or,” is the is the rock that Jesus was laid upon to prepare the body for burial.”
I nodded, trying to process that information. I think I said thank-you, feeling like any reply would be weak and somehow subtract from the significance I was filled with.
Church of the Pater Noster
On the eight day we visited the church of the Pater Noster, which is Latin for “Our Father.” This site is associated with the teaching of the disciples by Jesus and specifically, the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer.
This was also the day we visited the Church of the Agony, and the rock of the Ascension on Mount Olive, which is the specific site where it is thought Jesus ascended to heaven in the presence of his disciples and Mary.
Within the Chapel of the Ascension is a portion of the rock to which is ascribed the value of being the specific site in the village of Bethany on Mount Olive where it occurred forty days after the resurrection, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter one.
“Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” 12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. “
The original chapel was built as an open rotunda without a roof and open to the sky in about 350 AD, then destroyed by the Persians in 680, along with nearly all other Christian churches in a fourteen-year period of time. Legend has it that Saint Helena identified two specific spots on the Mount of Olives associated with Jesus’s life. The site of the Ascension, and the grotto associated with the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer, and on her return to Rome (she was the mother of Constatine I) ordered the construction of two sanctuaries at these sites.
The Chapel was rebuilt in the seventh century, again with an open roof. It was destroyed, then rebuilt a second time by the Crusaders in the twelfth century, but then destroyed by Salah ad-Din down to a 12×12 meter octagon surrounding a 3×3 meter shrine. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, it was abandoned by the Christians and the chapel was converted to a mosque, and Salah ad-Din walled up the open spaces between the columns and slapped a dome on the top. The rock inside is said to contain the right footprint of Jesus.
I didn’t know that when I saw the rock and so I didn’t look for a foot-print, and do not specifically see one in the image I captured. We saw so much that day and every day. I was impressed by how close everything was, but that should not be surprising as this was 2000 years ago and the primary means of transportation was walking. So, in considering the events of the Holy week: On Holy Thursday the Last Supper occurred in the upper room, which we visited and held our daily mass in. After supper, the disciples and Jesus walked to Gethsemane where Jesus experienced the Agony after which he was betrayed by Judas, and he was taken to a holding cell to await his appearance in the court of Pontius Pilate the next day. This place is now marked by the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, which is Latin for “cock’s-crow,” and is believed to be the location of the High Priest Caiaphas’ place on the eastern slope of Mount Zion, just outside the Old (walled) city of Jerusalem, less than an hour walk from Gethsemane.
I may will do a specific post on that place, but for now, will end this post with The Church of Pater Noster.
The Shepherd’s Fields and Hervy Hodges
I am posting quick video from the airport, having made three on the flight back from Tel Aviv. I know that once I get back I will be busy and am fairly frantic to record as many thoughts as I can on a trip so meaningful as this.
The Eighth Day: Agony in the Garden
The Church of the Nativity that holds the birthplace of Jesus, the caves of Joseph, and later, St. Jerome, who transcribed the Word of God from a dying Greek language to Latin over the course of twenty years; the Rock of Ascension on the Mount of Olives; the Church of the Pater Noster, where Jesus taught the disciples to pray the Our Father; the Garden of Gethsemane and the Agony on the rock, inside of the Church of the Agony, next to two-thousand-year-old olive trees that were present the night of the Agony in the Garden, trees that Peter, James and John may have slept next to or under; it was overwhelming. Of the churches we visited, only the Church of the Nativity escaped the destruction by the Persians during the 14-year period in the 7th century during which they destroyed everything else Christian. The reason the Persians didn’t destroy the Church was because when they entered the church, they saw artwork depicting Kings that had a similar appearance, in dress, to Persian kings and so they left it alone.
Jesus was born in a cave, quite different than what most people think. The reason there was no room at the inn was because it took Joseph and the nine-month pregnant Mary seven days to reach Bethlehem whereas it took everyone else five-days, so by the time they arrived for the census, which was the reason for everyone to return to their home of record, all the homes were already filled with families and guests. As He does, God provided, and they found a person who allowed them to stay in the basement, or cave beneath the house where were kept the livestock and household provisions. Of all the religious sites in Christianity, the one that has the most concordance in agreement of actual location is the birthplace of Jesus, and it is a small grotto, marked by a star in the ground. It is in the back of the caves of Joseph, as they are now called. A humble place of birth, a cave, populated with livestock and provisions.
We walked down fourteen steps into the grotto, two at a time, knelt before the star, touched it, said a short prayer, saw where the manger was, and exited. Sue and I lay down a candle and some religious medals on the star. We took some pictures. Some people were crying. It was quiet despite the hundreds of people in line behind us and all those ahead of us. I felt like I should have prepared more. It was so quick. It was hard to believe that I was there, in that place that two-thousand-years ago happened an event so significant that words cannot describe. I felt that I should have felt a physical change within me, like walking through a wall of water and emerging on the other side, different than I was before.
It wasn’t until the end of the day, in the Garden of Gethsemane, that it caught up to me, when Rauf was reading the Gospel of the night of the Agony in the Garden. We were sitting under an olive tree of course, thirty-one of us, behind us the east wall of Jerusalem, separated from us by the Valley of Judgement. Rauf pointed out how Jesus could see the torches of the Romans coming from the East gate, and then crossing the valley before entering the Garden of Gethsemane. It was not a short trip, no more than two miles. Jesus could have left, but he did not, as his appointed hour was at hand. He gave himself up willingly, and through his sacrifice provided everlasting life, through him, for those that exercise the freedom of their own choice to follow him. It is not a given. It requires a choice, or more accurately, a series of choices through one’s lifetime, and especially towards the end.
Ziziphus spina-christi is the name of the tree from which the crown of thorns was made. When I saw the tree of which two were planted in the grounds above Gethsemane, I imagined the crown of thorns in a completely different way than before. I suppose that’s the thing with most every experience I had. Everything was different. Everything was real. I placed my hands on the rock of Ascension on the Mount of Olives. I saw the solidity and reality of all those places in the Bible that the stories were made of. It’s just that all my life they were stories of far off places in distant times that I was supposed to assign validity to because that is what I was taught, and so I did. Now that I have been physically present in those far off places, and have traveled the path of Jesus, and have seen the demonstrations of faith and conviction through the ages as reflected in building and re-building of churches and the preservation of the Holy sites, the stories that I grew up with have become more like history in my mind, a historical record of the reality of the life of our Lord Savior, Jesus Christ, and you know what that means.
The Reality of Jesus
When we were sitting under the olive trees in Capernaum a couple of days ago, Rauf was talking of how Jesus was not the first Messiah claimant, he said there were eleven others, all killed by the Romans, all false prophets. That was something I had never remember hearing much of, so I looked it up. There were several men who claimed to be the Messiah before Jesus, and several after. The ones before largely came to inglorious ends and most likely the ones after experienced similar outcomes, but I did not take the time to research any of them much for the simple reason that none of them survived history as did the true Messiah, Jesus Christ.
In the span of a week I have been on the hallowed ground that Jesus walked, and this was no more so evident than in Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember sitting on the stone beach under the shade of trees, about a quarter of a block from St. Peter’s house in which Jesus would stay as a guest in the upper room during those years of his ministry. I know that He would have spent His mornings there, looking out over the water at the far shores, because that is what we do, as humans I mean to say, we appreciate beauty and shores, and the gentle sound of the waves. He was there. It was an incredibly peaceful place.
Earlier that day, I was on the nearby shore where the resurrected Christ stood on the rocks and called out to Peter, James and John in the boat and told Peter to cast the net off the right side. There is a church there, now, built over that spot. The day before that, I was on the top of Mount Tabor at the site where the transfiguration of Jesus occurred where Peter, James and John saw the heavenly transformation of Jesus as he begins to shine with the divine light. There is a church built over that spot as well. When I was at the Church of the Annunciation, I saw the house of Joseph and Mary. In Nazareth and in Jerusalem there are churches and shrines at every holy site. In most, if not all cases, these are not the first church or even the second church; most are the third church because the previous churches were destroyed by the Romans and then the Persians, and there were a couple of big earthquakes thrown in as well.
What I find impactful is the presence of that first church, the one long destroyed. That first church was built in the time of Our Lord by people who had known him, or known of him within living memory, who had been present at the miracles performed or known others who had. How else could have this possibly happened? Today, by the Dead Sea I saw cave no. 4 and 11 out of which came the objective confirmation of the validity of the Old Testament.
In a previous post, I wrote about the conversion of St. Paul and the disciples who were martyred. All these men gave their lives to Christianity because of their faith and their belief, similar to the faith and belief of all the saints who came after, including the first saint who was martyred, St. Stephen, most likely under the direction of Saul of Tarsus, at the Northern gate of Jerusalem, which I passed by earlier today. The difference with the disciples, relative to the latter saints, is that the disciples had seen and believed. They lived it. They had no doubt. There was no choice for them other than to give their lives, because they knew where they were going after their earthly death.
The weight of the evidence is insurmountable. This happened. Occam’s razor, the law of parsimony; –The existence of Jesus as the Son of God is the simplest explanation.
The Shabbat Elevator
“Don’t use the elevator on the left,” Rauf said, “You won’t like it because it goes to the top floor and stops at each floor on the way down for 30-40 seconds.”
I didn’t know the purpose of that but didn’t say anything because it seemed like something I should know or have inferred. I knew it was something Jewish and figured there must be a reason for it. It was only a day later I found myself in the Shabbat elevator and noted that it worked just fine and wondered what the hell Rauf was talking about. It was on the last day, conveniently enough, Shabbat, that it became clear, and only after one of the Gentiles pushed a button for a floor in the Shabbat elevator in the presence of an observant Jew. That was against the rules.
Pushing the button represented effort, which represented work, which was against the rules, rules that applied to everyone seemed to be the case as the guilty floor button pusher was quickly apprised of his oversight, within seconds of depressing the circular plastic disc an eighth of an inch. I thought it emblematic of the cultural divide between peoples, a divide as stark as the thirty-foot wall around Jerusalem, a wall that does work, not surprisingly, in keeping some people out that other people do not want in.
For the Jewish Israelites, the land of Canaan was given to them by God, as it was written, but then they were exiled in the 8th century BC after which it pretty much was Palestinian until 1948, so the Palestinians got used to it being their country, their land, and I get that. It would seem that a two-state solution would be reasonable, but from what I’ve seen in the West Bank, it’s like two different worlds; half the buildings are unfinished and are constructed over the time span of generations possibly, and litter is everywhere. If there were two states, they would be starkly different in ways that would not seem equitable, and in this era of equal results over equal opportunity, that would not be perceived as fair and would not be conducive to a positive peaceful outcome, I fear.
Even if there were two states, it’s not like all of one would be in one place and all the other in the other place because the communities are already so intermixed. It simply wouldn’t happen. As an example, next to every church is a mosque, and I’m not sure which one was first and every day there are the wailing tones from the minarets alternating with the peals of the Angelus bells. I stand there, buffeted by the sounds and know there will never be peace.
I do not think we are any more enlightened, as a race, than we were some millennia ago. We are smarter. Sure, we are, but unless there is a return to the principles and faith of and in the Golden Rule, it will not happen.
On the road to Damascus
On the third day of our not-a-vacation pilgrimage, I find myself standing on the elevation of the foot of Mount Hermon, looking down into Syria. In the image at the top of the post, you see what I saw. Syria is to the left, and the border is marked by the complex of white buildings that are roughly center, which is the United Nations Peacekeeping force set up by Henry Kissinger in the mid-seventies. The yellow line represents the Road to Damascus from the region of the Galilee in the west to Damascus in the East; and the x, “by the airport tower,” said Rauf, is where the conversion of St. Paul occurred on the road to Damascus.
Gerry and I are standing there, looking at a Holy place that we faintly see, then Gerry ran off to buy some dates. I remained behind, looking at the border, the road, towards the Holy Place. I remembered standing above St. Paul’s prison in Caesuria on the second day, and of how he was martyred. I imagined him, an unpleasant, homely Roman Pharisee (described as short, bald-headed bow-legged man with a large nose), trotting along on his horse on the road to Damascus, probably thinking of new ways to persecute followers of the new Christian sect sprouting up all over the country like weeds after a rain.
I imagine him coming to that spot then suddenly being blinded by a light so bright that it took his sight, then from the heavens above, The voice, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
I imagine him being led by his traveling companions to Damascus where he was without sight for three days, praying, until Ananias, sent by God, laid his hands on his eyes, restoring his sight. Saul, who later changed his name to Paul, was called by God, and he answered, and he himself was then persecuted all the remaining days of his life, as were all the apostles, save John, who wrote the Book of Revelations.
My time is getting short and I hear Rauf’s voice in my earpiece, “Lets go brothers and sisters. Shake a leg.” I look a final time into Syria and think of the disciples and St. Paul, and I have a thought.
I’ve often wondered why, if God wanted us to believe, why not just write in the sky, between the moon and Mars on the first of every month, I am. Then, at that moment, looking towards that Holy Place, I realize, that would be too easy, that would be rather meaningless, to believe in something so obvious as the sky is blue or fire is hot. What value or worth is there in that?
I think that what God did, through his humanization through Jesus, was reveal himself to a chosen few to bear witness through the ages, and a tremendous burden it was. Such a burden, that to bear it perhaps those so chosen needed to see, for that is what they all seemed to have in common, the disciples, and St. Paul. They all did see, and believed, and suffered tremendously thereafter, their lives (except John) ending in martyrdom: but, they knew. They knew, without doubt, that the Glory of the Lord awaited them.
And then there is all the rest of humanity, then and now, who have not seen and have believed, who must deal and have dealt with doubt. Even Sister Theresa, in her letters describes:
Where is my faith? – even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness & darkness. – My God – how painful is this unknown pain. It pains without ceasing. – I have no faith. – I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart – & make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me – I am afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy – If there be God, – please forgive me. – Mother Teresa
I think that to have not seen and believe is the more difficult course, apart from being persecuted and martyred I should say, and the mark of a true saint, like Sr. Theresa or St. Francis. I understand that many Saints were called by God and likely did have a powerful conversion or experience like Saul of Tarsus; however, it is likely that most of us more common, un-saintly types did not become blinded by The light, and must deal with the intersection of doubt with faith and belief, and that takes effort. It is hard, because it has value and worth. If it were easy, it would not be so.
A Day in the Land of Canaan and on the Sea of Galilee
It seems that God does not want me to sleep. I have been up since 0230. Thinking. I don’t get up to write because I think I should try to sleep, so I keep trying, to sleep. I have three blank documents I’ve started: The Road to Damascus, The Reality of Jesus, and Why Catholic Priests are Gender-specific; however, the idea behind each of the documents remains an disordered entropic jumble of sentences and discordant thoughts that would require an hour apiece, at least, to bring to a relative state of a more ordered decrease of entropy. Sadly, I fear I’ll be too tired. So, here is a video instead. Everyone likes videos whereas only a select few have the patience, or time, to suffer through too many consecutive paragraphs of histrionic tortured prose.
Mount of the Beatitudes
This site is the daily journal of a pilgrim on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with his wife and thirty others, to walk in the steps of Jesus. It’s mostly serious, a quest for meaning, a quest for faith, a quest for certitude.
S Melarvie