The World Wide Web, The Holy Sepulchre, and Gratitude

This morning I chanced upon two Mundelein pilgrims in adjacent chairs skyping each other on their phones. The vignette confirms the reach of the ubiquitous world wide web – even if the occurrence of similar scenes over the last month and a half in the Holy Land has been rare. From email to skype to messaging, the 2016 Mundelein Pilgrims are definitely connected to the world. They email parents in Illinois, trace South Carolina primary election returns, watch internet videos describing the architecture of the Holy Sepulchre, and daily gloat over temperature disparities between the Holy Land and Chicago. They aren’t alone. Earlier in the pilgrimage I watched an elderly Israeli take out her pink-encased smart phone to make an urgent call from the top of Masada – a high plateau in the Judean wilderness that now houses the ruins of a great palace.

Yet, the other morning I rose not much earlier than I rise at Mundelein, dressed, and set out on a ten-minute walk. After entering the doorway of an imposing edifice I turned right, climbed pilgrim worn stairs and knelt in front of the altar marking the place of Jesus' Crucifixion. In the company of three or four pilgrims and an Orthodox nun, I rose, stepped back, took a seat and prayed the Rosary as a German Franciscan celebrated mass at a nearby altar. As I recited Hail Mary’s under breath and counted beads, my eyes were drawn from kneeling adorers to the depiction of Christ in silver and paint above the altar up to flickering candles and back to fellow pilgrims. Rosary finished I knelt a few moments and then descended a second set of stairs. Near the bottom of those steps again I gently dropped to my knees for a few moments - this time at the stone upon which Jesus' body was prepared for burial. Climbing to my feet I took fewer steps than it takes to walk from my bedroom to the refectory at Mundelein and placed my hand on the rotunda built over the empty tomb. That morning Italian - or maybe Polish - faithful were preparing for mass at its altar. 

Give or take a few years, two millennia ago the world wide web of its time would have been a missive being read aloud by a Roman senator, or a native mother calling out to her daughter somewhere in the Americas, or a messenger being sent between Chinese officials – all of which would have, most likely, missed the person and events that draw Third Year Theologians from Mundelein to the Holy Land. While the traces of the Canaanites, the Judaic Kingdoms, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hellenists, the Hasmodians, the Roman and Islamic Empires attract, it is the life, death, and resurrection of the Galilean Jew - who commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us - whom we have come so far to encounter. We encounter him in a cave in Bethlehem, a small house in Nazareth, at the banks of the Jordan and at the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We encounter him in our accommodating roommates, sometimes pushy icon sellers, patient waiters and knowledgeable site guides. We encounter him in evening prayer, classroom study, holy hours and the blessed sacrament. And we encounter him in the places of his passion, death and resurrection. That morning, as I leisurely walked back to our residence in time for communal prayer and mass, I pondered how good it is that we are here and gave thanks.