Israel: A pilgrimage to suffer and remember

Filipino Christians head for the Holy Land on spiritual pilgrimages of a lifetime, but what confronts them there is a nation deeply, sometimes violently divided into irreconcilable parts. It has been so since the birth of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago; it has been so since the first Jewish-Arab war of 1948 and will remain that way for the foreseeable future, some fear in the grimmest biblical sense, until Armageddon or the end of times.

You hear these disconcerting arguments over and over again: Why go there at all when the Jews and the Muslims are forever at each other’s throat and you may be the latest collateral damage? More recently, there’s been the spectre of no less than a nuclear confrontation with Iran that could blow up Israel and everybody else within hundreds of miles into smithereens.

Why must retracing the steps of our Savior Jesus Christ entail so much danger and untold complications? Why not skip the whole wretched territory and just settle for safer and more convenient destinations like Rome, Lourdes or Fatima?

Well, for the simple reason that the Christian faith has never been bereft of heartaches and frustrations. Christianity has never been for the finicky or the faint-hearted.

More important, Jesus Christ lived, worked and died in what is now modern-day Israel, parts of which have been disputed (and barricaded behind massive security fences) by the emerging state of Palestine. Only His disciples or second-tier followers are to be venerated elsewhere — Saints Peter and Paul in the Vatican, St. James in Spain, St. John and the Virgin Mary in Selcuk, Turkey.

If you go only for the real thing, Jerusalem and the surrounding towns of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Taghba, the Mount of Beatitudes and other related places are simply irreplaceable and to be taken on their most challenging terms. You go there and savor it all or forever hold your peace.

The same goes for Jews and Muslims, who consider the same unwieldy patches of Middle Eastern earth equally holy and worthy of digression from their normal lives.

The three great monotheistic religions share one God and one holy land, with one notable point: that Muslims view Mecca and Medina, somewhat farther away, as the holiest cities of all.

But in the ancient city of Jerusalem, all three faiths converge with astonishing closeness, their most important shrines cheek-to-jowl, in so many words. The reason is that their adherents are all lineal or symbolic descendants of the patriarch Abraham, who came to Israel-Palestine some 4,000 years ago from the land of Ur (modern-day Iraq) in quest of the one true God. Indeed, most other ancient nations or empires were polytheistic or worshipped many Gods and Goddesses simultaneously.

Abraham found Jehovah or Yahweh in Jerusalem. It was there that this all-powerful, omnipresent and jealous God tested him with the required sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac. The complying patriarch’s hand was stayed as he was about to slay Isaac. Thus did Abraham and his progeny become God’s Chosen People. The common blood and heritage of Abraham, according to biblical scholars, makes ensuing fratricide among the three religions the deadliest curse of the human race.

Where Abraham affirmed his faith on a rock in what is now the heart of Jerusalem, tradition has it, was where the Jews built their holiest temple. This was twice destroyed by Babylonian and Romans conquerors, and the Jews themselves dispersed to the uttermost parts of the earth. Only after World War II, after Hitler’s holocaust almost obliterated the entire Jewish race, were surviving Jews able to gather in significant numbers to reestablish a Jewish state in what they have always considered their homeland. It’s a homeland they are fated to fight over or share with Muslims and Christians (apostates or offshoots of Judaism) on terms that have so far denied them any durable peace or, sad to say, even minimum civility. 

Muslims built their magnificent Dome of the Rock over the ruins of Solomon’s temple after the Jewish banishment, further enriching their own narrative that this was where Mohammed (“The last Prophet”) ascended into heaven on a winged white horse.

Within a hundred meters stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, first built in the 4th Century AD by the Byzantine Christian Empress Helena over the hill of Golgotha, site of crucifixions, and the venerated tomb of Jesus Christ (“The Messiah”). 

As far as the Jews are concerned, of course, the old patriarchs hold sway and their own Messiah or Last Prophet is still to come.

With the last of the crusades in the 14th century, the dispersed and converted Christians of Europe, Africa and Asia stopped claiming the Holy Land as their sovereign territory; in exchange, they have been grudgingly granted access to their holy places by Muslim and Jewish occupiers alike.

Because it was too late and too geopolitically unthinkable for the Jews to demolish the Dome of the Rock and rebuild in its place their long-obliterated temple when they returned for good in the 1940s, they’ve prudently settled for a remnant of its Western Wall as their holiest shrine of all, the so-called Wailing Wall.

It comes as no surprise that Jews gather in front of this massive wall, Muslims go up to the Temple Mount to behold the Rock with the hoof marks of Mohammed’s horse, and Christians troop to the Holy Sepulchre, each engaged in their respective rituals and ceremonies, and with side trips to outlying places of veneration.

Remember, too, that it takes all kinds of Jews (Orthodox and secular with all sects in between), Muslims (Sunni and Shia) and Christians (Catholic and protestants of all stripes), each with  differing traditions and memories, some more irreconcilable than others. Let’s just say that a De Venecian “Rainbow Coalition” between and amongst them has always been a pipe dream among pipe dreams and a most severe contradiction in terms.

Take note that the Holy Sepulchre Church itself is governed or misgoverned by a gaggle of some 17 contentious sects from Franciscan Catholics to Egyptian Coptics and Greek Othodox as well as Ethiopian and Georgian Christians. It cannot but evoke the Tower of Babel before it was struck by an exasperated God’s wrath. 

Everywhere you turn in the congested, pedestrian-only walled city (roughly the size of our Intramuros) there are Benedictine monasteries, Armenian basilicas, Syrian mosques, Jewish synagogues, Lutheran pastoral houses, etc. honeycombed into the forbidding walls and labyrinthine alleys. This rabbit’s warren, frozen in 10th-14th century medieval form, is itself heavily populated by Palestinian Arabs; the whole setting reminds you of the crowded souks or old bazaars of Turkey, Jordan or Morocco.

Although the Jews have staked their own quarter closest to the Wailing Wall, their presence is most felt in West Jerusalem where their Knesset or parliament is located. The Palestinians stick to still Jewish-occupied East Jerusalem and the Old City. Since both people claim the city as their national capital, the explosive issue is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. In between the big wars of the last 60 or so years, there have been stonings and riots, but these disturbances have been regarded by residents and visitors alike as par for the course.

When you go to Jerusalem, you are not in any position to dictate terms. You roll with the punches and stay out of harm’s way. You simply take your chances.

I am one of the countless people who have made the trek to Jerusalem, in fact thrice, the last one only last month in October.  On my first trip in 1994, I was a guest of the Israeli government along with four other Filipino journalists. In 2000 and this year, I returned on my own to go deeper into the roots and assumptions of my Christian faith. For as long as my health and finances hold, I see myself going to Jerusalem a couple of times more before I call it a life.

Like New York and Paris, Jerusalem holds an attraction to me that goes beyond traveler’s itch or writer’s curiosity. Like I lived there in another life or time. Perhaps I will be always a stranger in my own country and a returning soul in other places that draw me from afar. It may have something to do with memory and consciousness that play tricks and make of the whole human experience your happy and sad hunting grounds of the senses.

As a journalist, Jerusalem comes to mind as a battleground of nations seeking to make their imprint on the world we live in. Some of the most ferocious wars of the 20th century were fought there — the Six Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 — and I grew up with headlines of impending nuclear catastrophe that could only be triggered in the Middle East with Jerusalem as the epicenter of conflict. Nothing really new for Christians who are primed to accept that history will end there with the Second Coming of Christ, coinciding as it may seem with the cataclysmic destruction of the world.

Why fear death when it will surely come whether you like it or not?

But I come to Jerusalem only in quest of personal peace and enlightenment. I know it will come in bits and pieces, in small revelations while on the run, instead of a total package of awareness delivered to my specifications.

I retrace in my mind the 30 or so years of the life of Jesus by going through the places he inhabited — Nazareth where he was conceived by the Holy Ghost through the Virgin Mary, Cana where he performed his first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding feast, Mount of Beatitudes where he preached to the multitudes, Taghba where the miracle of loaves and fishes happened, Capernaum where he walked in waters of the Sea of Galillee, Bethlehem where he was born in a manger, Jerusalem where the Jews hailed him as the Messiah and the Romans shortly after crucified him.

It is obviously difficult, even impossible, to account for Christ’s life and the faith He handed down to us through the distorting prisms of literature and, most heinous of all, today’s mass tourism.

Everywhere there are the rampaging hordes from the ends of the earth to contend with. In the Old City, you line up for an hour or so to sneak just a few seconds in the claustrophobic holy tomb. You go up a small stairwell to the gaudy chapels that have replaced Golgotha. You go through the gauntlet of souvenir shops and surging humanity to divine what was the Via Dolorosa. In Cairo on another trip, I also went down to a Coptic church basement to see where the Holy Family took shelter after their flight to Egypt to escape the Massacre of Innocents.

Let’s just concede that we can’t win over the organized pilgrimage groups, bus tours, souvenir stores, and cookie-cutter hotels that are there to service our collective piety for a fee. Pilgrimages have always been bloody business; sometimes, frankly, con games to bilk the gullible masses. In past centuries, pilgrims were plied with pieces of the Holy Cross, enough fragments to be drawn from a large forest. Wealthy kings and penitents bought Holy Shrouds, Holy Nails, Holy Grails to bring back in triumph to their homelands.

Worst of all, thieves and murderers lay in wait on the tortuous road to Santiago de Compostela. Medieval European monarchs and knights ventured on crusades to retake the Holy Land by force from the Muslim Infidels. The net result has been centuries of hatred and violence, capped by what contemporary writers have called a “Clash of Civilizations” that may yet vaporize the human race into nothingness.  

Pagan excesses and distractions there will always be in the quest for simple truths and spiritual fulfillment. You may have to load yourself down with all those rosaries, crucifixes, icons, holy water, holy wine, etc to give away to friends and relatives who couldn’t join your pilgrimage.

And yes, you go on the trip because the old senior citizens’ gang is going, you’ve gotten some windfall from the stock market, or the family inheritance has just been parceled out.

Back in the prosperous 1960s, Cardinal Santos’ cronies invented the pilgrimage-now-pay-later plan that every retiring school teacher or bureaucrat has availed of down the years. You don’t have to be rich; just save a little every day and, voila!, your dream will become a reality by hocking yourself to the bank.

The most powerful argument of all has it that you’re getting along in years and may no longer be ambulatory sooner than you think. Or some deadly disease compels you to seek the ultimate solace or even a miracle where Our Lord and Savior once lived. So why not blow what remains of the earthly goods you can’t take with you to heaven on a last trip to Jerusalem?

But perish all illusions. Security is tight, the merchants are smarter than you think, prices are zooming up all the time. You’ll be on a forced diet of kebabs and falafel or rubber chicken and spaghetti à la Americain.  Israel has all the contradictions of modern life and ancient bad habits to complicate your visit. Blissfully ignore all provocations and, like Good Christians, turn the other cheek and spare yourself the unnecessary aggravation or heart attack..

Best news of all, Israel has no visa requirement for Filipinos. No need to line up, present wads of documents and be humiliated by ersatz embassy personnel. If Jerusalem isn’t just a way station of your Grand Tour of Europe, you need not worry further and just arrive, unannounced if you wish, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, once dismal like our NAIA, but now holding a proud candle to Changi.

Prayers go a long way. Take it from old cynical me. Whole flashes of my dimly remembered past have come blindingly clear on otherwise hectic and routine peregrinations to a land that kindly reserves a place for the unholy and worldly of the human race. You are never alone and in Jerusalem you are with your kind— the same ones the Good Lord loves with all His heart and never will give up on.

* * *

E-mail the author at noslen7491@gmail.com.