We started the third day with a sermon on the mount. Father Brian gave the mass on the side of the Mount of Beatitudes, a vast hillside midway between Capernaum and Tabga. Tabga is the place where Jesus is said to have fed thousands with a small basket of fish and loaves of bread. The sermon on the mount is described in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5. Chapter’s 5-7 pretty much represent the constitution of Christianity is how our quite knowledgeable guide, Rauf, described it.

There are several, 15-20, quiet, separate chapels on the mount for the many visiting groups of pilgrims to hold masses. The open-air chapels are small flat places surrounded by lush foliage, olive and palm trees. The seating area faces the altar, and during the mass we could see behind the fathers and deacon the Sea of Galilee on which Jesus and the disciples fished and sailed.

The only blemish of the morning occurred on the bus, before we parted the hotel, when Rauf stood at the front, with microphone in hand, an instrument so natural to him such that to see him without was strange and uncomfortable. Gently, he admonished one of the pilgrims, shaking his head, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, “Carol,” making one vowel of two as he often does, being of Assyrian descent.

“Carol,” he said, “is Carol here?”

In the back of the bus, a voice speaks up, “Yes.” A quiet, subdued voice no doubt from the stern tone of Rauf’s, cast out like a net, settling over us all. I thought, glad my name isn’t Carol, as did I’m sure everyone not named Carol felt.

“What did you forget, Carol. Did you forget something this morning?” Asks Rauf. You can almost feel the collective relief of all the people not named Carol.

“I don’t think I forgot anything, Rauf.”

“Are you sure.” His voice rises slightly, knowing that he is right. “Did you forget, like, maybe…your credit card.” He adds, his voice rising into the close of the sentence, a rounded belly of a sentence at the end, pregnant with a giant, implied, AH-HAH! I got you now.

“No, I mean, Yes. I didn’t forget it. I got right here.” She holds it up.

“What?” Rauf looks at the note again and realizes his mistake, which I suspect had more to do with his accent, “Oh, Carl,” he says, “Is Carl here?”

We all look around, surely it couldn’t be…?”

Rauf laughs, “Father Carl!”

Father is sitting midway back on the left, guiltily holding his wallet, minus one credit card. It’s like he’s pinned to the side of the bus by the 180 degrees of our surrounding eyes, staring.

“Um, yeah,” says Father with a guilty smile, then adds, “And, Rauf, I also forgot my whisper.”

The whisper is the electronic transistor with an earpiece that hangs around our neck that serves as a life-line out in the un-predictable environment that is Israel without which we are defenseless, like unguarded sheep surrounded by a wolf-pack.

“That’s ok, Father. I’ve another you can borrow.”

We were all happy that it was not, after all, any of us, and we were happy that Father Carl would have the use of a spare whisper so that he would not be defenseless that day although I know that any of us fellow brothers and sisters would have been there for him had the case been otherwise, as any good Christian would be.