“Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” These are the words that Saint Paul had for the Christians of Thessalonica. According to him, joy, prayer, and gratitude are essential parts of the Christian life.
What better time to meditate on these virtues than during a 5-week pilgrimage to the holiest place on earth – the very land where the God and author of history entered into our human drama.
And where did the God-made-man choose to begin his earthly ministry? It was the first stop on our tour this day, the city of Capernaum. This town on the shore of the Sea of Galilee was a large tax station and a main outpost on the principal road known as the Via Maris, or “way of the sea”, which connected Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was also home to Saint Peter and his mother-in-law, whom Jesus cured (Matt 8:14-17), as well as thousands of conservative Jews whose mammoth synagogue is still visible in the foundations of the ruined one that stands there today.
What must these enlightened city folk have thought when this small-town boy showed up preaching forgiveness for sinners and curing all manner of diseases? It captures the imagination how he must have impressed the people, and to picture the countless small houses that have been excavated there left empty, at least momentarily, because their inhabitants had all gone to follow this miracle-worker to see what he might do next.
But Christ did not come to earth to impress people, or even just to cure their diseases. And even if Capernaum was the “big city” to a kid from Nazareth, the Son of God was destined for Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, the “true pole of the earth.” Yes, the Messiah who would die for our sins had to go to the most important city in the Jewish world, the home of the Temple and the center of worship for God’s chosen people. And so the Mundelein pilgrims, being faithful followers of their Master, left their home in Galilee to go up the holy mountain to Jerusalem.
But, before crossing the barren Judean desert, we took a brief detour to the get one last glimpse of Jesus’ homeland from the best view around. The fortress of Belvoir sits on the highest point of the Galilean mountains, west of the Jordan River and south of the Sea of Galilee. The fortress was built by crusaders in the 1160s and stood for only about 20 years until falling to Muslim invaders after a siege lasting over two years. It is a gargantuan structure made of giant framed stones and surrounded by a deep moat on three sides.
The fortress was built to ensure the ability of Christians to make pilgrimage to the land of their Savior, and even though it now lies in ruins, it still calls to mind the herculean effort that Christians made over the centuries to visit the holy sites. God knows how many devoted pilgrims risked life and limb to rejoice, pray, and give thanks to God for the wonderful things he did for us in this land we call holy.
And as we rode the bus from the lush valleys of Galilee through the forbidding desert to Jericho on our way to Jerusalem, it gave us pause to think of the great gift of this pilgrimage. We are here in this place by the grace of God and the generosity of others. How can we but rejoice and give thanks to the God who created us and even more wondrously redeemed us? And so we pray, for those we love and those who have made this trip possible, but also for an increase in gratitude. We pray for the kind of gratitude that leads to generosity – knowledge of the embarrassment of riches that our Jesus has heaped upon us, so that even the most heroic sacrifice of love seems like the bare minimum in light of what Christ has given us.
