Lynn Cuffari reflects on her Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Since returning home from my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I have been struggling to find the words to describe not only the people and places I encountered, but more significantly, the heritage of my own faith formation.

After a couple of weeks of beginning, and then deleting, this blog post, I chose to organize my thoughts like the English teacher I am. The elements of plot (and an overabundance of metaphors) have once again come to my rescue!

Exposition: Visiting the birthplace of Christianity proved to be as disconcerting as it was inspirational. I felt like I had jumped into the pages of a book I had been required to read my whole life but still didn’t fully comprehend. As a Roman Catholic, the sacraments of baptism, reconciliation, communion, confirmation, and marriage have put flesh on the bones of my very being. Skipping through the chapters of Jesus’s life as we traced a path around the map of Israel offered me a glimpse into his humanity from his birthplace to the city where he began his ministry to the banks of the sea and along the rocky paths that led to the sights of his death and resurrection. Along the way, I discovered a conflict in the plot of my own life – one that, even in my sixth decade, is rocking me from my comfortable cradle of Catholicism and into the very thorny realm of deeper thought.

Setting: Israel is about 270 miles long and only 85 miles at its widest point (roughly the size of New Jersey!). It is bordered on the north by Lebanon, the northeast by Syria, the east by Jordan, the southwest by Egypt, and the west by the Mediterranean Sea. I can’t even begin to scrape the top layer off the fledgling knowledge I have about Israel’s history. Ongoing archeological excavations have uncovered a pre-Biblical world that has evolved through the Roman and Byzantine empires, Islamic dynasties, the Crusades, and onward to the end of World War I when it was placed under the control of the British. Only in 1948 did Israel become an independent state, which has further enunciated the divisions between its current residents, Israelis and Palestinians. Discernible tension is marked by territories divided not only by neighborhoods, but also by checkpoints and barbed-wire fortified settlements. Disputes continue over land and the status of refugees. In any newspaper, there is usually at least one article a day about the often-deadly conflicts that arise in this small but strategic corner of the world.

Rising Action:  In Tel Aviv where we boarded the bus on the first morning of our pilgrimage, our guide Nassar introduced himself as a “Palestinian Christian Israeli Arab.” During the next few hours, we stopped for visits in Caesarea Maritima to see the ruins of Herod the Great’s palace and then continued to Haifa and Mt. Carmel. Nassar explained that out of 9.8 million people in Israel, only 165,000 are Christian and that number is decreasing. About three-fourths of the Christians are Arab. Most of Israel’s population is Muslim, followed by those of the Jewish faith. In addition, there are Bedouins, Druze, Soviet refugees, and several other groups within groups of religious and cultural denominations. A living example of this erased the lines of history as we drove past a Bedouin camp adjacent to Israel’s modern main highway. Although they had been given land to settle on, many Bedouin families have chosen to live in traditional temporary neighborhoods comprised of tents and makeshift structures (some even with satellite dishes on their “roofs”)! 

Conflict: While many conflicts exist in Israel, this is where the plot became personal to me. I became a character rather than a voyeur in the story. Being “in” the scenes where Christianity was born and where it is obviously a minority religion, I found myself constantly asking, “Would I have accepted Christianity at the time of Jesus?” and “Who, way back in my family’s history, was the first person who chose to become a Christian?” (This certainly doesn’t show up in my Ancestry.com report!)

Over our 12-day pilgrimage, we walked in the footsteps of Jesus, his family, and his disciples. We visited the Church of the Annunciation in the area where Mary said “yes” to becoming the Mother of God. We saw where tradition says places the workshop of Joseph. We ate lunch at Christian pilgrim houses and said grace before our meals while through the windows we heard Muslims being called to prayer over the speakers of the surrounding mosques. We celebrated the renewal of wedding vows in Cana for the couples on our trip. We stood on the path Jesus walked from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee. We visited Capernaum (Kfar Nahum), said to be the hometown of Matthew and the apostles and where Jesus spent much of his time in ministry. We sailed on the Sea of Galilee. We visited Jericho, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. We spoke with student ambassadors at Bethlehem University who shared not only a tasty meal from their culinary school, but insights about their own cultures and religious practices – living normal lives as young adults of all faiths within the boundaries drawn between neighborhoods and communities in this small state. We spent three days within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, located in the Christian Quarter. There, we walked past the site where Jesus was crucified and touched the empty tomb that marks the place of his resurrection. We walked the Via Dolorosa, each of us taking turns to carry the cross. It was also an honor to pray at the Western Wall alongside sisters of the Jewish faith.

Climax: Each stop along the way of the cross humbled me…and unsettled me. More questions: Would I have been one of Jesus’s followers? Would I have been one of his those jeering at him? Would I have been working at one of the shops in the city, and barely looked up when I saw the commotion along the street that day Jesus was led to his crucifixion? How was I chosen to be a Christian and born into membership of the Catholic Church?

Much of my faith formation has been based on practices including church on Sundays, the sacraments, teaching at Catholic schools, and a catechism that I often call my “rules for the road.” Nowadays, I find myself hungry for more. I am studying the catechism. I am making connections between the theology and my life through a new lens.

Falling Action (or perhaps not): I confess that the stranger assigned to the seat next to me on the airplane ride from Tel Aviv back to the United States tested my pilgrimage peace with un-Christian like thoughts that ranged from anxiety to frustration. Fifteen hours, six movies, a couple of glasses of wine, and a myriad of deep-breathing exercises matched with poor attempts at prayer made me want to kiss the ground even before my husband when I finally got home! But now that I have had time to do laundry, disperse gifts, organize photos, and read my journal, I can truly say that what I experienced was not a vacation. It was a pilgrimage.

Resolution: There is grace to be found in conflict. I have re-discovered a passion to learn more about the history of Christianity that has shaped me as a woman of faith in this complicated kaleidoscope of a world. I desire more theological knowledge and am grateful to finally have time in my retirement to study. Last year’s Bible in A Year program with Father Mike Schmitz was fresh in my mind as I visited the sights on our pilgrimage – mostly because I now have a “visual” of Old and New Testament readings. This is being reinforced by the Catechism in a Year program I am pursuing this year. I am adding titles to my reading list titles of books I own but have never read – those by Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Merton, and even Saint Augustine!

While the conflict I touched upon during my trip made me ponder my own Christian roots and the person who I would have been 2,000 years ago, it also has led me into an even more determined conviction to share my faith. The number of Christians are not only dwindling in Israel, but they are also falling in the United States. Pew Center statistics estimate that in 2020, about 64 percent of Americans, including children, were Christian. Those religiously unaffiliated accounted for 30 percent. Other religions – including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists – totaled about 6 percent. The study further notes that if these rates continue, projections show Christians of all ages will shrink to 54 percent by 2070 and the unaffiliated could rise to anywhere between 34 and 52 percent of the population. 

I realize that in trying to summarize my trip, this account is drafted solely from my perspective – from the times in which I have lived, my upbringing, books I have read, places I have traveled, and Mass every week since I was baptized into this life. One way for me to reign in the experience of my pilgrimage has been to constrain it along a plot line. Although I am compelled as a writer to share my observations, I understand that the story line is flawed because it is written by an author whose journey through this life is still very much a work in progress. What is not flawed, however, is my conviction that I know I would have walked with the women who followed Jesus along the Via Dolorosa. This, I sincerely believe, will guide me to the ultimate resolution. “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (1Cor 13:12).