Holy Land -- the last mass

"As we come to the end of the journey we will find that life will never be the same again," Fr Michael Murphy said at the final mass of the recent Kilcullen Parish Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, at Abu Gosh where Jesus is said to have appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection.



The mass was held in the Benedictine Church of the Resurrection, on a hill overlooking the way the Kilcullen pilgrims had come from Jerusalem on their way to Tel Aviv Airport.



"We have come into contact with 'the Fifth Gospel', a physical reality which has touched us in a very deep way and will leave us changed," Fr Murphy added. "The greatest gift we can bring from here is a lighter step as we go along the path of our life. We know now what Christ endured for you and me and all of us, so that we too might rise to that new life."

Fr Murphy added that the 'balance is in our favour' for achieving this. As the group moved on, its members should ask themselves what is in their hearts, what did they really want to bring from here?

"What memory, what experience from this pilgrimage?" he wondered, and then suggested a thanksgiving. "We pray that our experience will give us the strength to bear the tribulations that are part of the human condition."

Fr Niall Thornton asked that the grace which had been 'given in abundance' would help all to 'penetrate the materialism that may be surrounding us in our lives'.

Fr Murphy concluded by thanking Carmel Bagnell for her organisation of the pilgrimage and tour operator Frank Tully (right) for taking such an interest in the group.

"And I thank all of you," he said to the participants. "It has been a great privilege to share with you an experience beyond words. I hope you will all bring to your friends word of this beautiful land, and of the powerful work of Jesus."

The Accidental Pilgrim

[NOTE: I had forgotten to write about this last pastoral occasion on the pilgrimage. This definitely is the final piece.]

A trip through the wall

If Mary and Joseph tried to get into Bethlehem this Christmas, so her baby could be born there, they might have problems.

Only a short drive out from Jerusalem, getting in and out of the town where the story of Jesus began now requires going through something like Checkpoint Charlie when Berlin was divided by a wall.

Bethlehem is divided from Israel by a similar wall, part of what will be more than 700 kilometres long when it is completed.

It's officially known as the Israeli West Bank Barrier. It is, to say the least, controversial. Certainly, while we in the Kilcullen group had no serious difficulty getting in and out -- though we had to change buses and tour guides to do so -- it was intimidating and depressing.

The Israelis say they need the barrier to keep out suicide bombers and other terrorist activities. They say that since the construction began in the early part of this decade the incidences of such attacks have been substantially reduced.



On the other hand, the wall -- visible from many vantage points snaking its way up and down the hills around Jerusalem -- in some parts displaces Palestinians from their traditional working lands, and also makes it difficult for many of them to travel into Israel for work. There are also claims that Israel has used the barrier to solidify the position of settlers on disputed lands.

I don't live there. And we as a group were rushing in and rushing out. Privileged to be able to do so. In the few hours we spent in the town, I was conscious of more hardship than had been apparent across the wall in Israel. But the people were friendly. Very. More so than on the side from where we'd come, where the sense is something like success against siege. That kind of thing, unfortunately, can and does breed arrogance.

A ten-day marathon around holy places doesn't qualify me to judge the true political or social situation. But the Bethlehem visit left me uncomfortable. If I was a Palestinian on the wrong side of that wall, I figure I'd feel an awful lot worse.

The Bethlehem experience was mixed. The appellations of 'Manger Street' and 'Manger Square' in front of the church on the holy site seemed a bit exploitative. And every few steps from where we had lunch in the restaurant across the square were running the gauntlet of souvenir sellers. But what's the difference between a fully-funded gift shop and the individual entrepreneur trying to make a buck or two? People have to live, and living requires money.

The church on the place where Jesus is supposed to have been born dates from 600 AD. It's said to be the only Christian church of its time in the Holy Land that wasn't destroyed by the Persians, and it is built on a church raised previously 200 years before that. There's a Greek Orthodox crypt, and an Armenian church alongside.

Confused? Yep, but think of the employment the whole thing has provided.

Consider too what Fr Murphy said during the mass celebrated there for the Kilcullen group. "We remember the greatest event in human history, the coming of Christ ... to bring meaning to our life." That's really why pilgrims travel, not for the subsequent architecture.



We queued to touch the place where the Saviour reputedly was born, under an altar of course, and to look at the manger, behind glass, where he spent his first hours.

Afterwards we went to the 'Shepherds Field' on the outskirts of the town and where the announcement by angels of the birth of Christ is believed to have taken place.

Leaving Bethlehem there was a mandatory stop at a gift shop which, we had been told repeatedly on the bus since we'd boarded, 'helps the Christians in Bethlehem'. A rapidly diminishing and very minority Christian population in the town where Christ arrived on Earth.



The presentations there were slick enough to be usable on a TV shopping channel. And the assistants were dressed and skilled enough to possibly have been trained in Macys of New York. We bought, to 'help the people of Bethlehem', at a level well beyond what we'd done so far on the trip.

Then we left Palestine. Not as quick or easily as we'd got in. There was a long wait as buses and cars were processed through. There were the Israeli soldiers coming aboard with automatic weapons, making sure we weren't carrying Palestinians. There was looking back at the wall, now floodlit in the quick Mediterranean darkness.

And I thought, the only difficulty in Kilcullen is the winter wind as I cross the bridge.

The Accidental Pilgrim

[NOTE: This piece is a little late, but concludes my holy sites contributions related the Kilcullen Parish Pilgrimage to the Holy Land last month. A reunion gathering for those who participated is scheduled for 7 December in Kilcullen Parish Centre.]

Snoozing pilgrim

This pilgrim business can be an exhausting process.



This picture of the Accidental Pilgrim having a snooze on a wall atop Mount Tabor in Israel while the Kilcullen group waited for taxis to get them down was caught by Nessa Dunlea.

A taste of his own medicine for the various photographs taken by the Pilgrim himself during the trip. Incidentally, he is known to take regular 'power naps'to recharge his energy.

The Accidental Pilgrim

More Holy Land posts

For those who have been following the recent parish trip to the Holy Land, I have gotten around to posting a few other stories journalled during the trip but not posted at the time. They've been inserted at the appropriate dates.

Hectic pace in Jerusalem
To Jerusalem with a detour
Thoughts on the shore

There are still some stories to write, which I'll get to in due course. Meanwhile, to see all the posted stories together, use this link.

Accidental Pilgrim.

Pictures from The Holy Land

Pictures from the recent Kilcullen Parish Pilgrimage to The Holy Land are now available here.



Meantime, all of the stories from the tour (so far posted) can be found here.

Pilgrims coming home

The Kilcullen parish pilgrimage group to The Holy Land leave Israel today after four days in the Jerusalem area which brought them in the final footsteps of Christ as well as to the place where he was born.

In a packed itinerary since they arrived an the ancient city on Sunday evening they visited Bethlehem, Ein Kerem where Mary went to visit her cousin Elisabeth to tell her she was pregnant, and to the various sites in and around the Old City relating to the arrest, torture and death of Jesus some two millennia ago.

Led by Fr Michael Murphy PP, the group also participated in masses in the Garden of Gethsemane, Bethlehem, and in the Church of St Catherine which houses the Tomb of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre complex.

Earlier in the ten-day trip, the Kilcullen pilgrims visited many of the sites in Galilee where Jesus conducted his short public ministry, as well as going to the Dead Sea.

Pictures from the trip.

Reported from Jerusalem by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Suffer the children

A quick visit to the Museum of the Holocaust is too short. It is also too long, simply because the assault on the sense of right and wrong is overwhelming.

The Kilcullen group in the Holy Land had less than a couple of hours here at Yad Vashem, located a little way outside Jerusalem. Our guide Abie gave us a typically informative introduction. He also provided a personal angle, as his father was a Polish-born survivor of a Russian labour camp, after he'd 'escaped' from Poland in the early days of the pogrom.

He first brought us to the memorial for the one and a half million children who perished in what Fr Michael Murphy described as 'the most gruesome event ever'.

"The research which the Nazis did was extraordinary," Fr Michael said. "They had lists of Jews in every country, even of those living in Ireland."

Abie noted that the Nazis even had nurses and doctors whose work was to perfect killing systems, and to make them as cost efficient as possible.

He outlined too how the work to develop the 'master race' was also carefully planned and orchestrated, the object being to eliminate 'undesirables', among them those with disability or infirmity, Jews and gypsies. The plan even involved killing half of the population of Poland and using the other half as slaves.

Truth told, that's not the kind of detail I'd been aware of before, but the visit through the museum certainly reinforced that impression.

The photographs, anti-Jew posters, newspaper clippings and the newsreel footage of the event are truly horrifying. As is the documentation displayed that shows the meticulous detail with which the Nazis went about the business after they came to power in 1933.

But most of us in the group have seen similar images before. Shocking though they are, they don't surprise that much. Perhaps the 'new' genocides of the last decades, in Rwanda and more recently Darfur, not to mention what went on in The Balkans, may also have dulled our senses.

The real tough part had lasted just five minutes, before we entered the museum proper. The memorial to the murdered children begins with a walk down a pleasant stone alley, brightly lit by the sun and with the sculpted face of a child on the wall at the end before you turn into the display proper. The representation is the child of the couple who endowed the memorial, a son who was one of the slaughtered children.

The entrance to the interior is narrow, into an ante room with photographs on one wall of a dozen or so children, most smiling in what were clearly family portraits. The room narrows to a point where the throughway is just wide enough for one person, with a handrail to hold as you enter into sudden darkness.

Not quite totally dark. There are five lit candles, and through a complex set of mirrors and glass their light is reflected above, around and below, a virtual constellation of pinpoints in an otherwise black space.

It is actually physically unnerving. The handrail is necessary not just to guide through the exhibit, but to provide an anchor against potential vertigo.

The most terrible impact in the whole experience, however, comes from quiet voices. Taking turns to speak the name of a child, the child's age, and the country from where the child came before becoming a victim of the Third Reich.

Five minutes and we were back in sunlit garden. Some in the party sobbing openly, others clearly just holding back tears. I suspect there was none of us without at least a lump in the throat.

"The first thing you do when you want to annihilate a nation, is kill their children," Abie had said before we went in.

After that, the museum itself was actually less difficult in some ways. But then, we weren't Jews. And we were passing through quickly. Also, we Irish may have had our troubles, but since Cromwell nobody has tried genocide on us.

Reported from Jerusalem by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Hectic pace in Jerusalem

Visiting the holy sites in and around Jerusalem is a much more frenzied affair than doing so around Galilee. This partly because of the traffic, partly because of the complexity of a quite divided city, and partly because of the scrums of people in the narrow streets and at the churches.

The ideal would be to follow the story in chronological sequence, but for all the above reasons, as well as time constraints, this wasn't possible for the Kilcullen group on the first of a couple of hectic days of church visiting.

In Galilee we had got used to the idea that every key point in the new testament narrative had had a church built on it, sometimes more than one because of the interests of different Christian denominations. In Jerusalem it was the same, only more so. There are churches beside churches, and churches over churches of older eras. Because Jerusalem is, in the words of Abie, 'the most destroyed city in the world', with millennia of conquests, capitulations and sackings and reconquests in its timeline, you often have to dig very deep to get to Jesus's era.

Thus most are modern church buildings, built since the early part of the last century. Before them there were those built in the times of the Crusades, around the 12th century. Most were subsequently destroyed or very badly damaged. Inside and under these you'll find the remains of churches built around 400 years after Christ, when the Romans had converted to Christianity. Finally, in many cases there are grottos and caverns with reputed connections to the holy stories. It is a bit like opening those painted Russian wooden dolls, where you keep finding smaller ones inside.

In a way we began at the finish, at the Basilica of the Dormition on Mt Zion, just outside the bullet pock-marked Zion Gate into the Old City. This magnificent church was built by the Benedictines before WW1 and recalls how, according to the new testament, Mary the Mother of Jesus was assumed into Heaven following her death. The eastern church calls this the Dormition, and the crypt in the bottom has a wooden effigy of Mary 'asleep' under a canopy which features other women from the old testament.

Around the crypt are altars donated by six different countries, each in a style reflecting their own cultures, and the mosaics used are all magnificent in their different ways.

After a time for thought here, the group then went around the corner to the location of the 'upper room' where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place. The building of which it is a part was a 'caravan inn' where those travelling the trade routes from the east stayed when they arrived too late to enter the city of Jerusalem itself and needed a secure refuge. The room itself is actually from the 12th century, rebuilt by the Crusaders. That didn't stop a group of vocal Christians from America leading a loud prayer meeting in the medieval hall. Below the courtyard is said to be the burial place of King David, who lived a thousand years before Christ.

"This place was where the first Pentecost took place," Fr Murphy told the Kilcullen pilgrims during a short break for reflection in the courtyard. "It is also the location of the greatest confluence of worship between the Jews and the Christians."



Then it was time to go to the Mount of Olives over which we had arrived to Jerusalem the previous day. There, mass was celebrated in a cavern grotto where the wine press that gave the Garden of Gethsemane its name is said to have been located. It was converted as a place of worship by the very early Christians and has been in the care of the Franciscans since the end of the 14th century.

"This is where Jesus sweated blood and prepared himself for a dreadful end," Fr Murphy noted. "It is a most sacred place. The places that we are seeing are the most sacred places in the Christian world, and these few days here will be the most precious in our memories when we look back on them in the years to come."

After mass there was a visit to the modern garden of olive trees itself, beside the modern Church of All Nations. One of the three back-altar artworks here represents the traitorous Kiss of Judas and was apparently funded by the Irish state. A large rectangular rock in front of the main altar is believed to be where Jesus suffered the agony of preparing for his death by crucifixion.



Two further nearby shrines were visited before lunch. The tiny circular chapel which marks the spot from where Jesus ascended to Heaven. There's a rock outdropping inside with what is said to be an impression 'similar to that of a footprint'. The place is owned today by Muslims, who also believe in the Ascension. The other was the Church of Pater Noster, a small section of which is dedicated as the spot where Jesus taught his disciples The Lord's Prayer. The main building is unfinished, without a roof, and the walls are decorated with ceramic tiled squares on which are written the prayer in more than 60 languages. These include one in Irish, using the old Gaelic form. The group read it aloud to mark being there.



After lunch it was back to Mt Zion and the House of Caiaphas, where Jesus is reported to have been imprisoned after his arrest. Below the modern Augustinian church are Byzantine church remains, as well as stables and a water cistern cut into the rock which had been converted into dungeons. In a section known as 'The Pit', Fr Murphy led the group in a reading of the psalm with the apt lines 'Your furies have encompassed me, your terrors cut me off ... darkness is my only friend'. They then climbed back up the hill on ancient steps by which Jesus might have walked to the point where the cock crowed following the third denial by Peter of knowing Jesus.

We subsequently entered the Old City via the Sheep's Gate, near where the only complete Crusader Church still stands, under the care of the White Fathers. It is known for its superb acoustics, and the group sang 'Star of the Sea' to make a Kilcullen vocal imprint, however fleeting. Beside the church are the excavations of pools from Roman times, believed to be where Jesus met and cured the man who had been paralysed for almost four decades.

Finally it was the time to follow the footsteps of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. Because of time constraints it wasn't possible to actually do the stations properly, a mission that was deferred to the day before the group left for home. The stations are marked by small discs on the walls of the buildings along the street, and the way goes through the shops and businesses of today which probably only differ in what goods they have for sale from the activities of two thousand years ago.

The journey ended at the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, which holds within it both Golgotha, the Place of the Skulls where Jesus and the thieves were crucified, and the Tomb of Jesus itself. A mosaic showing Jesus being nailed to the cross is behind one of the altars, while the Crucifixion site itself is marked by a Greek Orthodox altar under which a silver disc represents the hole into which the cross was placed.

Underneath it is the Chapel of Adam, showing park of a fissure said to have occurred during the earthquake which happened as Christ died. According to legend, the crack went all the way down to the burial place of Adam, an event which symbolises the forgiveness of mankind's sins by Jesus.

The tomb itself, provided by Joseph of Arimithea, is encased in a timber structure within the church and again time was against the Kilcullen group, who deferred their chance to enter the tomb until another day.

Reported from Jerusalem by the Accidental Pilgrim.

To Jerusalem with a detour

As the group travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem, the route was down the valley of the Jordan River as far as the Dead Sea. Both represent the border between Israel and Jordan, and much of the journey was alongside the electronic fence by which the Israelis monitor any attempts to cross, either by terrorist or economic migrant.

For the latter there are good reasons to want to do so, because the average monthly wage in Israel is ten times that in Jordan, for instance. In addition, many people fleeing Darfur have walked the painful and dangerous route to the Israeli border.

Once we left the Jezreel plain we were in more difficult terrain to farm, but the various intensive and often ingenious techniques used by the Israel farmers truly make barren land productive.

Then we were into the Judean hills and the beginnings of the desert. It is a Martian landscape when we are out of sight of water, as we are most of the time because the Jordan River at this time and in this part of its length is a very small river indeed. The mountains are dry beige, in some parts riddled with small caves. Close to the roadside is dry stony land and it is easy to imagine how difficult it was to travel on foot in the time of Jesus.

Eventually we've gone beyond where he would have turned off for Jerusalem and drive by Qu'ran where the first Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in one of the caves in 1947 by a shepherd trying to find his dog.

Finally we stopped at the oasis of Ein Gedi, which is also a national park protecting some typical flora and fauna of the region. The animals seen locally include the little Rock Hyrex, which looks like a hare but is actually related in DNA terms to the elephant. The Tristram's Starling is a bird which always seems to be whistling for your attention. The most prolific bush is the Christ Thorn, also known as the Jujube tree.

This is, as the name implies, the bush from which the original Crown of Thorns was made. It is a bush that won't die simply by cutting it down or even by trying to eradicate the roots ... it will simply grow again in even greater profusion. The people of ancient times knew this and found it best to let it grow tall, where its upper leaved branches formed a canopy from the shade.

The lower thorny branches burn well and were often gathered and stored for kindling. It is believed that from one such stored bundle in the yard of the prison where Jesus was being taunted by the soldiers the 'crown' was twisted together and stuck on his head.

So at a relatively quiet point on a track inside the park it seemed appropriate that mass be celebrated for the Kilcullen pilgrims in the shade of a grove of these Christ Thorns.



It also happened to be Mission Sunday. The theme for the day, Fr Murphy said, was to 'reflect on God's love'. "The best way is, within ourselves, to be aware of God's love for us, and externally by our behaviour."

Concelebrant and fellow pilgrim Fr Niall Thornton spoke about the need for vocations to the priesthood and asked those present to 'pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send laborours to work in his fields'. "You are all missionaries in your own areas," he said. "Keep your eyes fixed on your spiritual needs as well as your material ones."

Later in the afternoon, following lunch and then a 'swim' in the Dead Sea -- you can't really swim in it, partly because of the extraordinary buoyancy and also because you daren't splash the salts-saturated water into your eyes -- we drove up through the hills and then got our first glimpse of Jerusalem.

The modern city on several hills is quite dramatic enough, but as Abie explained, it would have been substantially much more so in the time of Jesus, when the Rock of the Dome and the inhapitants of the old city were surrounded by walls towering twice as high as they appear today. Looming out of the desert as one crossed over the Mount of Olives, it would have been at the same time intimidating, reassuring, and welcoming ... depending on your status and citizenship.

At a strategic lookout point, funded by the Hass family, the full panorama of old and new Jerusalem lies below the incoming traveller. After a detailed explanation of the various parts of the city, including the different churches, mosques and cemeteries in our view, Fr Murphy led a reading of the psalm relating to 'pray for the peace of Jerusalem'.

Our hotel for the duration of our time in Jerusalem was part of the Kibbutz Ramat Rachel complex overlooking the city from its south-east. The kibbutz has sold some of its land for development but still maintains some farming as well as having diversified into hotel, sports club, and conference businesses.

Reported from Jerusalem by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Announcing a child

It defies logic and biological science that a young girl can get pregnant without the intervention of a man in some way. But that's the tenet underpinning what is termed the immaculate conception of Mary.

And in the sources of the Holy Land saga, where it began was at Nazareth, where the mother to be of Jesus lived and where she is said to have been visited by the angel Gabriel to tell her why she was here.

Today it is a sprawling mountain top town of some 68,000 people, but in the time of this tale it seems to have been a fairly insignificant place. Various estimates by archeologists and historians put its population anywhere between 16 and 2,000 people. Most scholars now accept that it was likely 300 or less.

Mary was a typical young girl of her time, with daily chores that included going to the town well for water with which to fill the clay jars in her home. She was betrothed to Joseph, usually described as a carpenter but most likely a working class man with various building skills.

There are conflicting stories as to where Mary was visited by the angel. Some say it was on her way to the well, others suggest that it was in her home. Whichever, it must have been really scary for her, because unwed motherhood wasn't welcomed in Jewish families and communities of the time.

The truth of the whole matter we don't know. There's no direct documentary evidence, no letters, no birth certificates, no doctor's records, all the things that today mark pregnancy and birth. Just a story in the new testament, suggesting that prophecy had been fulfilled. It is still incredible, really.

"But this was an occasion when something extraordinary took place," Fr Murphy said during celebration of a mass for the Kilcullen pilgrimage in the magnificent modern basilica built over the grotto where the Annunciation is said to have happened.

"Part of our faith is that what we commemorate here actually happened, that the angel did appear and that the child was born without the intervention of a human father. This is a very sacred place -- the Word was made flesh here."

As the angel is reported to have said, Mary had 'won God's favour'. But it seems it was a mixed blessing for Nazareth itself, and in the serious years of the ministry of Jesus the townspeople weren't all that enamoured of its newly most famous son or his work. According to the four Gospels, he was a prophet 'without honour ... in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house'.

The Basilica of the Annunciation is a magnificent building which, when completed in 1969, was the largest church built in the Holy Land in 800 years. It is a clear demonstration that today both Mary and Jesus are honoured on a global basis.

In addition to the lower level which is designed around the remains of the grotto where 'the angel appeared unto Mary', there is a truly international second level where the daily worship of the local community is carried out.

It is international by virtue of the various donations from many countries of artwork, bronze doors, and other elements of its architecture, and worth a visit for that alone.

Nearby in the same Franciscan-managed complex is another church, under which is the 'St Joseph's Workshop'. This is said to be the home of Joseph, set underground in the rock for even temperature through the year and with his workshop over where it would get the best light.

Whether it ever was what it is claimed to be is a matter for archaeological investigation and conclusions, which are never final. But as another touchstone for the faith of millions, it is as credible as it needs to be.

Because faith is not in remains of buildings, or in the churches that mark them today, but in hearts and souls.

Pictures from the trip.

Reported from Nazareth by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Was Cana just a matter of proof?

The first miracle said to be performed by Jesus is the changing of the water into wine at a marriage feast organised by a bridegroom in Cana. Said bridegroom wasn't a great organiser, it seems, as he ran out of liquor halfway through the proceedings.

Jesus's mother Mary was a guest along with her son, and she asked him to help out and save her host's blushes.

It is reported that the wine produced by Jesus was of a much better quality than the first lot. If the 'wedding wine' sold in the tourist shops of Cana today is any indication of the quality of what had been served, that wasn't such a big deal. It is rough tack, by all accounts.

Like many of the Holy Land sites, there were several candidates subsequently for the location of that particular event. The town which has the gig, so to speak, is about 7km from Nazareth. The church which is the Catholic pilgrim focus is along a 'Street of the Churches', a narrow alley in which there are other churches of various denominations. A modern edifice off a small courtyard, it is built over other crypts and grottos dating back to the Byzantine era. It is a pleasant place to meditate for a few minutes.

There's an opportunity here for couples to renew their wedding vows if they wish, and a number in our party did so. Part of the deal is they get to buy a bottle of Cana wedding wine. Maybe this is from the second batch, reserved for a second commitment?

Perhaps because it was the end visit of a long day of going to holy sites, but it seemed to this pilgrim that Cana was the least interesting of the venues so far. Maybe even the least credible.

But who am I to say? After all, it's the story, not the place, that carries the faith.

Pictures from the trip.

Reported from Cana by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Go tell it on the mountain

The plain of Jezreel, also known as Armageddon, is on the only valley which runs east-west in the region, and it became the main route to the south-western limits of the Roman Empire and to the trading centres beyond Damascus.

Our guide Abie has a typically Jewish attitude to fortune; when times are good you can enjoy the fruits of that situation ... but when you are the flux point of trade and travel, you'll also find that eventually you'll be destroyed as others, usually outside powers, fight their wars on your territory.

Thus the plain, and the dome mountain which dominates it, have been places of batle, conquest and defeat, as well as prosperous trade since time immemorial. The top of the mountain has been a place of fortresses and sanctuaries on and off for thousands of years.

As a Holy Land site, Mount Tabor has become the reputed place of the Transfiguration story, where Jesus went up a mountain with Peter, James and John just before his last days on earth. There, the story goes, his face and clothing became transformed and he revealed to them his Divine origin. It is also said that Moses and Elijah appeared and talked to Jesus.

"Up to now, as Jesus went about his work, it had become increasingly apparent that there was more to him than met the eye," Fr Murphy told the Kilcullen pilgrims yesterday. "The miracles that were happening, for instance, were all leading up to the moment we are here for."

What actually happened at that moment remains a mystery, Fr Michael continued, something in that 'mysterious zone of aspects of our existence that are beyond what we can see, hear, or know'. "But what we do know is that it was about the Divinity of Jesus."

That it was an event beyond the understanding of his friends is made clear from the account in St Luke's Gospel, which notes that they went down from the mountain and 'in those days told no one what they had seen'.

Even from the vantage point of a strategic mountain, you can't expect to understand everything. But also, given what happened to their leader in the subsequent days, it wouldn't have been in the interests of their personal survival to talk loudly about unearthly light on a mountain top.

Some close encounters can be too close for comfort.

Pictures from the trip.

Reported from Galilee by the Accidental Pilgrim.

The Jordan effect

With most of its length acting today as the border between Israel and its neighbours Syria and Jordan, the River Jordan has tremendous symbolic significance. A very practical one too, as it is the water lifeline for the three countries.

Politics and country names might have been different in the time of Jesus, but there's little doubt that the river had just as much symbolism then. Which probably accounts for a guy named John, 'The Baptist', using it to wash people clean of their past sins and inducting them into a new life of promise.

As Fr Murphy noted during today's visit to a managed baptismal site at Yardenit, Jesus had to search for 'the meaning of life' just like the rest of us. "It wasn't handed to him on a plate," he said. "He had to struggle, to deal with temptations, while trying to find what he had to do."

Presenting himself to John to be baptised was the indication that he was about to do so. It was the turning point, the beginning of his short three years of ministry among the most oppressed people of his time.

"He went to Jerusalem as part of this," Fr Murphy added, "and because of what he was about, he came to a bad end."

The baptismal point on this trip is about a hundred kilometres north of where that actual baptism of Jesus probably took place. But subsequent to Christ's death there were many such places where the disciples symbolically brought new followers into the new religion.

This morning, as probably every morning, there were coachloads of people from all over the world visiting this particular place on their journey through 'The Fifth Gospel' -- the name given to the land on which the life and times of Jesus is based.

Some dipped their toes in the water, which didn't look too clean. Others paddled. One woman totally immersed herself.

Our group simply renewed the promises made on our behalf at our own baptisms, and went on our way.

In the ubiquitous gift shop on the way out, the equally ever present commercialism was reflected in the sign that said: 'Baptism kits for rent - $9'.

But I suppose they gave offerings to John too. The man had to live, after all.

Reported from Galilee by the Accidental Pilgrim.

A thorny subject

The Crown of Thorns kind of tipped it.

That's when I knew I'd had enough biblical history for one day. And it was only the first full day of the trip.

It wasn't the fault of the trip. Just a little too much too much of the layering on of how the Jews have suffered.

The Crown of Thorns was on sale in a souvenir shop to where we were brought at the end of the day by our guide, Abie. Short for Abraham, an Israeli Jew via USofA. A guy quite engaging and really good at his job. You've really gotta like Abie.

"I can recommend this shop," he'd said last night after our introductory boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. "If you're happy with the idea, we'll stop off there tomorrow night."

True to promise, we were here. Pretty worn out, truth be told. And God knows, you gotta tell the truth in Galilee. So we were at the end of a day of touring key locations of the Gospel stories.

It began with the Sermon on the Mount and finished with the church that marks where Jesus is said to have made Peter his first pope, even if that wasn't what he called him.

In between we'd visited the Golan, on the way to and from Banias. That last is the location of a former Temple to Zeus and Pan. There's apparently a Jesus connection too, which at the time of writing I'm still a little confused about. But maybe, like Tiberias where we're based this week, its reputation for Roman Empire debauchery made it a place about which the Lord denounced such goings-on.

Going up there and back gave Abie the time to instruct us on the legalistic complexities of the Jewish Covenant with God. Bottom line, which over the centuries provided rabbis with a great deal to do in interpreting it to make it work with whatever were the requirements of the era. Still does, probably. Though the political mix of secular Israel and its religious orthodoxies must make for even more complicated cohabitation.

Really bottom line, interpreting Abie's homeland truths alongside his narration of the recurrent plights of the Jews in the time of what became that nation's most important prophet, they suffered.

Kind of like Irish history, really. But Jews suffered in one of the cradles of old civilisation, whereas Irish suffering was of a much more recent vintage. And we might even have just got over it.

Back a long time ago, Rome ruled, Jews suffered. And on the Golan today, they occupy it because Jews suffered in the sixties by having their post WW2 Israel homeland subject to bombardment by the original Syrian stakeholders. The fence-enclosed minefields which our road snaked through are grim reminders of that. The warning signs are rusting, though.

But the Israel state yesterday and today are another story. This is a trip through religious history.

For the Kilcullen group -- and with us are a number of Carlow people, it should be recorded -- the mass at the Church of the Beatitudes was a very pleasant start to the day. This is the storied site of the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, but which also is described as the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of St Luke, on whose feast day Fr Michael Murphy's mass was celebrated.

"He probably never knew Jesus," Fr Michael said of Luke. "He wrote his Gospel later, and was like an editor with a vast amount of information. He wanted to tell the story of Jesus outside the area where it had taken place."

Fr Michael is the first to say that new testament locations visited today are not necessarily the actual places of the stories involved. But culture past, and culture includes religion, is mostly about symbols. Locations are symbols which endure beyond most others, at least in folklore. And even if they are not quite right geographically, they're lodestones of belief.

Today there were several of those lodestones. Not least the 'St Peter's Fish' lunch in a restaurant which bordered the beach of Magdala, Mary of Magdalene's area of birth. Before that we had visited Capernaum, with seriously good excavated and reconstructed homes and streets of the time when Jesus had apparently stayed with Peter's mother in law. And also where he is believed to have made his final appearance to Peter before going home to Heaven.

We went after lunch to a close-by pair of churches. The first built in recent times on the place where the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is said to have taken place. Then to another which is built on a basalt outcropping suggested to be the location where Jesus told Peter that this was the 'rock upon which you will build my church'. Making him the first pope, actually.

The modern church is managed by the Benedictines. There's a piece of rock under the altar which people kneel to and even touch fervently with their foreheads.

Outside on the little beach of the Sea of Galilee it was a little closer to the reality of a couple of millennia ago. Waves sloshing on the sand. People paddling in the moving water.

Yes, Jesus could have been here. So could Peter. Neither actually expecting what they might achieve, because there wasn't a global perspective then. Their 'globe' was circumscribed around the Sea of Galilee.

Which was where this accidental pilgrim came from to the souvenir shop. It was a pushy place. High priced too. There were two sizes of Crowns of Thorns. Both of olive wood, and with 'guarantees of origin'.

I didn't look at the prices. But I wondered what kind of friend you would bring home such a souvenir to?

"And look, I got your right size ..."

Reported from Galilee by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Thoughts on the shore

Sitting at a table on the beach at Magdala, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Scruffy kind of place really. A lot of litter, just like the beaches at home.

You have to wonder what kind of litter there was when Jesus walked these shores, looking for a fisher of men? Certainly no Coke bottles, or cigarette packages, or the left-overs from somebody's lunch on another table.

There could have been corpses sometimes, I suppose. When the Romans made examples of those who defied their rule? It wasn't a time of civil rights, except when you were a Roman citizen. If your city or tribe decided to rebel against Rome, or even a few people within your group, everybody was killed, or sold into slavery.

Selling into slavery was a profitable option for the Romans. They built the Coliseum on the profits made from tens of thousands of prisoners sold after the sacking of Jerusalem and the plundering of the Temple.

These are the kind of tidbits which our guide Abie -- short for Abraham -- drops into his commentary on the times of the people in the time of Jesus.

His engaging style works well, and I was prompted to the thought that the Israelis were lucky to have a blockbuster bestseller on which to base their tourist industry.

Well this part of it anyhow. I'm not sure how the rest of tourism works here, but the Holy Land part of it around Galilee is all about places where Jesus worked in the three years of his public life.

Three years might seem short, but when you see the geographical area involved, three years could be enough. The 'sea' of Galilee is a middle to small sized lake. And the biblical tourist trail is mostly a slipping from point to point around it. Church to church, really.

The holy sites are managed in the most part by the Fransiscans.

Reported from Magdala by the Accidental Pilgrim.

Group first mass in Galilee

It was a small crisis, but one which could have been problematic for the plan to say mass on the Sea of Galilee.

"I had been told that the boat we hired would provide the essentials for saying mass, but I've just heard that they don't," Fr Michael Murphy, leading the Kilcullen parish pilgrimage to The Holy Land, said.

Which was why he climbed aboard the bus this afternoon with a bag of bread rolls, negotiated from the hotel kitchen. As it happened, a Mass 'kit' was found to be available in the coach luggage compartment, so all went off in the normal way.

The 'sea' of Galilee is actually a medium sized lake, and according to the biblical accounts it was to the northern part of it that Jesus came to begin his ministry. Many of the stories of those early days in his short few years of work relate to this place.

It was where he met his first 'follower', Mary Magdalene, as well as several others later. Where he is said to have performed a number of miracles. And where he met his disciple Peter for the first time ... also for the last time, because it was in this same area that the story is set of his appearance to his disciples after the Resurrection.

Fr Murphy celebrated mass out on the lake for the group. As he did so, he noted the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim.

"A tourist goes through a place, while a pilgrim lets a place go through him," he said. "Let us pray that we will let the holy places which we visit here in the next few days go through us."

The mass on a boat is a traditional pilgrim event here, and generally is an introduction to the stories from the time of Jesus and his founding of Christianity.

The group enjoyed the afternoon, despite signs of a threatening thunderstorm, which if it had happened could have added just one more element to one of the stories we all learned as children.

Reported from Galilee by the Accidental Pilgrim.