The Holy Land Trek

You may recall that not so long ago I mentioned Günther Simmermacher’s (the editor of The Southern Cross) upcoming book ‘The Holy Land Trek’, which I was really quite excited about. Well, I’m pleased to announce that it’ll be published on October 24 and they have a live website up and running for the book. You can check it all out here.

Let Günther Simmermacher guide you through the greatest holy sites of the Holy Land and Jordan on a virtual itinerary. Read about the history of the places where Jesus and his disciples worked and walked, their biblical and historical significance — and meet some interesting people along the way. Find out where we can locate the historical Jesus – and even the steps upon which he definitely walked – and why the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is most probably the actual site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.  This book is for people who are preparing to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; for people who have been and wish to relive their experience, and for people who have never been but want to get to know the arena of Christ’s ministry.

And here is the foreword by Archbishop Stephen Brislin:

‘…the two disciples followed Jesus. Jesus turned round, saw them following and said: “What do you want?” They answered: “Rabbi,” – which means Teacher – “where do you live?” “Come and see,” he replied; and so they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him the rest of that day.’ (John 1:38-39)

The Holy Land Trek invites you to embark on a journey of faith, to ‘come and see’ where the historical Jesus lived and stayed, taught and healed, loved and suffered. It is an invitation to reflect on — and in some way experience — the great drama of salvation history, centred in this land, so tiny but yet radiating to the ends of the earth. It invites you to see what the Lord saw, to hear what he heard, beyond what the eye can see and the ear can hear, to that which is recognised by a heart searching for and desiring God, the heart that is always willing to say ‘yes’ to him and to open itself to him.

Pilgrimages are an ancient tradition in the Catholic Church, as they are in many other religions of the world. Particularly, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were a custom that began among Christians from the earliest times after Christ’s death, but were popularised after the visit there by the Empress Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine. Interrupted before the Crusades in the Middle Ages, and somewhat disapproved of by the Reformers in the sixteenth century, pilgrimages always remained entrenched in Catholicism as a good thing to do, an expression of faith and a deepening of relationship with Christ. As dangerous — brigands and robbers saw pilgrims as a soft target — and as time consuming — no Airbuses then — as they were in those days, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and later to other places, were popular and part of the Catholic culture.

Although pilgrimages are common to world religions, what makes them appealing to Christianity is the deep-rooted understanding from our Judaistic origins that we are mere sojourners in the world, that life is an Exodus and our dwelling here nothing more than a tent in the desert. For every Jew, their father was ‘a wandering Aramean’ (Deuteronomy 26:5) and they were called ‘to a land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow’ (Exodus 3:8), a land that God promised them and itself filled with promise.

The Christian understanding is that we are still on the way to that Promised Land, that Christian life itself is a pilgrimage, that we are still seekers wandering through the desert of light and shadow, hope and disappointment, of good interwoven with evil. We are only too aware of Christ beckoning and calling, ‘Come, follow me’ (Matthew 19:21), encouraging us to leave behind the familiar, the comfortable, what is safe, and embarking on a journey of the unknown, sacrifice and indeed risk. But we do so with the sure faith that we are not left unaided or unguided, that ‘the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night’ (Exodus 13:21) are always with us, and that Christ promised that he would not leave us orphans (John 14:18), but that his Father would give us the Holy Spirit.

And so, as you read the chapters of this book and trek through the Holy Land — in this case guided neither by pillar of cloud nor fire, but by the author — you will continually be aware of the fluctuation between the physical and the spiritual, between what was, what is and what is yet to be. You will be enveloped with that knowledge that you are part and parcel of this great story and that the history uncovered is also your history. (Incidentally, this is the reason why — should you need a local guide in the Holy Land — it is far preferable to have a Palestinian Christian to guide you: not only is he or she deeply rooted in the land and history, but the tour will be an expression of faith and not merely repeating the guidebook).

Whether you are reading of King David’s Bethlehem, the unimportant Nazareth, the dangerous road to Jericho, or crossing the once mighty Jordan River, you will be fascinated as the history of God’s people is uncovered. Every archaeological find, whether it be the synagogue in Magdala or Jacob’s Well, the house of Peter or the ‘Jesus Boat’, brings alive our faith and tantalises us to dig deeper, to find out more. Every discovery becomes an allegory of the treasures of our faith which we uncover on our journey of faith, often incomplete, often nothing more than a glimpse as through a glass darkly, but occasionally a discovery that makes the scales fall from our eyes and we can only wonder at the marvels of the Lord.

If you have been to the Holy Land, this book will bring back vivid memories of your pilgrimage and will certainly make you determined to return to discover even more and breathe the air that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Apostles and the Prophets breathed. It will make you realise that even though you have seen the holy places, there is more to see and more to learn — much like Scripture: no matter how many times we have heard the readings, there is always something new and more to learn.

If you are planning to go on pilgrimage, this book will help prepare you for the journey so that you will be able to appreciate the holy sites, not in some abstract way, but as a strengthening of faith. The descriptions and the history recorded in this book will put you in the frame of mind that will enable your pilgrimage to be what a pilgrimage should be — a deepening of your relationship with the Triune God.

If you are unable to undertake a pilgrimage for whatever reason, the pages that follow will bring alive an experience of Jesus in history and God’s intervention in the life of the world. They will lead you to an encounter of God’s care and love for his people, evidence of his closeness to his people and his oneness with us. Christ is Lord of the cosmos and his reign has no barrier. You don’t have to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to be in relationship with Christ, but this book does give you a sense of the land that Christ walked and helps the Scriptures to be appreciated in a new way.

Open your hearts as you read on and enjoy the journey.

+ Stephen Brislin
Archbishop of Cape Town
Grand Prior for South Africa of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem

The Francis We Never Knew

Surprising Revelations about the man from Assisi:

“In his final words to his followers, the issue he found most pressing was not poverty, not obedience, but proper reverence for the Eucharist.” Imagine summing up Saint Francis of Assisi by pointing to his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Yet this is not all we learn from Father Thompson, O.P. In the course of putting to rest various myths about his subject, he tells us surprising truths: for instance, Francis expected his followers to work with their hands rather than to impose upon others by their begging. Francis was more incensed by dirty altar linens and chalices than mistreatment of the poor or breaches of the peace. And Francis, far from being a Deep Ecologist, “was emphatically not a vegetarian.”

If he was not the man we thought him to be, or the man of those with agendas, then what was he? A man who with dogged determination tried to put the words of the Gospel into practice; a man so transformed by grace, that when the barbaric thirteenth-century physician approached his diseased eyes with a red-hot brand, thinking to cure them by cauterizing the flesh of his face, Francis, far from flinching, made the sign of the Cross over the iron and said: “My Brother Fire, noble and useful among all the creatures the Most High created, be courtly to me in this hour. For a long time I have loved you and I still love you for the love of that Lord who created you. I pray our Creator who made you, to temper your heat now, so that I may bear it”…

Continue here.

 

The British Library Buys St Cuthbert Gospel

For 9 million pounds. CBS News:

London — The British Library has paid 9 million pounds (US$14.3 million) to acquire the St. Cuthbert Gospel, a remarkably well-preserved survivor of seventh-century Britain described by the library as the oldest European book to survive fully intact.

The palm-sized book, a manuscript copy of the Gospel of John in Latin, was bought from the British branch of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), the library said Tuesday.

The book measures 96 mm (3.8 inches) by 136 mm (5.4 inches) and has an elaborately tooled red leather cover. It comes from the time of St. Cuthbert, who died in 687, and it was discovered inside his coffin when it was opened in 1104 at Durham Cathedral.

The British Library said the artifact is one of the world’s most important books.

“To look at this small and intensely beautiful treasure from the Anglo-Saxon period is to see it exactly as those who created it in the seventh century would have seen it,” said the library’s chief executive, Lynne Brindley.

“The exquisite binding, the pages, even the sewing structure survive intact, offering us a direct connection with our forebears 1300 years ago,” she added.

Cuthbert’s coffin arrived in Durham after monks had removed it from the island of Lindisfarne, 330 miles (530 kilometers) north of London, to protect the remains from Viking raiders in the ninth and 10th centuries.

The book will be displayed at the British Library in London and then in Durham, northeast England, next year.

Wikipedia has more on the St Cuthbert Gospel here.

 

Calendar and Sanctorale for Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter Published

Picked up by the ever vigilant Steve Cavanaugh:

The web site of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has published its particular calendar and sanctorale. Like the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England and Wales, this calendar has the following differences from the Roman Calendar:

• The term “Ordinary Time” is not used of the Sundays. Sundays following the Christmas season are named “Sundays After Epiphany”, while the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday regaining their historic names of Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima.
• The Sundays following the Easter season and the feast of the Most Holy Trinity are named “Sundays After Trinity”, according the practice of northern Catholicism in general and the Church of England in particular.
• The Rogation Days before the feast of the Ascension are restored.
• Observance of the Octave of Pentecost is restored (in vestments and propers, but using the weekday readings from the Roman Lectionary).
• The Ember Days, at their traditional times, are restored.
• The first Sunday of October is permitted to be used for a parish’s dedication festival, if the date of the dedication is unknown

The Calendar specifies that the Sundays After Epiphany will use the Roman Lectionary, and so Second Sunday after Epiphany would use the readings for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time; and the Sundays After Trinity will use the Lectionary readings from the weeks of Ordinary Time.

In the Sanctorale, several feast days are added to the US calendar, and some feasts of the US calendar are raised in rank: The Chair of St. Peter on February 22 becomes a Solemnity. Our Lady of Walsingham on September 24th is added to the calendar as a Feast, and Our Lady of the Atonement is added to the calendar on its traditional day of July 9th as an optional memorial.

Download the Calendar and Sanctorale at this link.

As a postscript (to the above), I have been enjoying reading the book edited by Stephen Cavanaugh, ‘Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments’ (Ignatius Press, 2011) which Fr Raymond Ball (from Canada) gave me on a recent private visit to Cape Town. It looks at the history of the Pastoral Provision in the US and the roots of the Personal Ordinariates. Worth getting:

Simply Jesus: NT Wright Interviewed

Dr NT Wright is interviewed on his new book, Simply Jesus:

HT

Jesus as a Bisexual Druggie?!

I suppose we’re coming up for Easter…

Every year it happens. Someone releases a documentary or book saying something awful/ridiculous about Christ or Christianity as a way to cash in and be hailed as speaking truth to power or something. Well this year the writer/con man James Frey is coming out with a book on Good Friday which depicts Christ as a bisexual drug addict who has come back to…I guess do what bisexual druggies do which is take drugs and have sex, I guess. (Hmmm, I wonder how James Frey spends his days.)

Frey has already been exposed as a con man in the past so this is just the next chapter in his “I’ll do anything for money tour” he calls his life.

Read all about the author/con man here.

The above was here.

Do Beautiful Churches Produce Vocations?

Fr Dwight Longenecker asks and answers the question.

BTW.  I picked up his book More Christianity – Finding Fullness of the Faith earlier at the bookshop today, and I’m really looking forward to getting into it. 

How Does the Pope Write?

Jesus of Nazareth Part II is the much anticipated book from Pope Benedict XVI published by CTS. Many column inches will be used for earnest discussion on what the text says and means in the coming weeks, for now however, we want to look at the practicalities of its writing…

… Following the success of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ released in 2007, ‘Light of the World’ hit bookshops and the headlines in November 2010. Now in March, the second part of Jesus of Nazareth is due but where does the Pope, who is a priest, a pastor and a head of state, find the time to do all this?

One possible answer is that for him, writing is not work, he does it in his spare time. For example, it was widely reported that the interviews with Peter Seewald, which make up Light of the World, were conducted during the Holy Father’s summer holiday at Castel Gandolfo.

In his own hand

This one too, is said to have been largely written in his leisure hours but amazingly by hand. The 83 year-old pontiff writes in small and close handwriting that is sometimes difficult to decipher, but he has help…

Read on here.