Walking in the footsteps of Christ in a 'truly wonderful place': Fr Paddy O'Kane

I have just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where we walked again in the footsteps of Christ.

There were 37 of us. It was my eighth trip to a truly wonderful place.

It was a grace-filled experience.

The night before our return I called a special gathering after dinner when I said: “All week you have been listening to the sacred Scriptures that related to the places we visited and to my homilies in which I tried to tease out how these relate to our ordinary lives.

“Now it’s your turn - I want to listen to you as you share what was your grace filled moment, the special memory that you will cherish as you look back again on this week we spent together.”

There was a variety of responses.

For some it was the garden of Gethsemane in which the same olive trees grow that were there on the night of his passion and temptation; for others it was carrying the Cross on the Via Dolorosa.

For some it was entering Christ’s tomb fulfilling a cherished dream; for others it was something I said in a homily that seemed to touch them deeply.

For most it was their experience on the Sea of Galilee when I had finished reading the story about the storm and invited them ‘to be still and know that I am God… to be still and know… be still… be… ‘Be mindful of this moment, cherish it ‘I said, ‘hold on to the peace you know feel. Taste the silence’ and when the silence was over I said ‘You can return to this period of calm, like returning to a well, to sip the sweetness of this stillness, when your life again becomes just too busy, burdened or troubled.’

Finally, for some it was our last Mass on Mount Tabor, a fitting end because it is there that Christ told Peter ‘No- you can’t stay here forever. You must return to your ordinary lives and let this beautiful time we have just spent together go’.

The one experience above so many that I will hold dear was the dip in the Dead Sea (see photo).

On a pervious pilgrimage the mischievous boy within me got out to play when I had had fake tattoos all over my body and I enjoyed seeing the shocked expressions on my fellow pilgrims’ faces.

The feeling of total weightlessness is unique to this place where the density of the water with salt content causes everything to rest in a state of suspension.

“This is how the astronauts must feel in space’ I thought and then ‘this is also what death may feel like, total vulnerability, freedom, letting go, drifting into the arms of our Heavenly Father.”

I don’t know why, but that moment of death when we have to let go of this life had been on my mind since the meditation I did at the Twelfth Station a few days earlier at Calvary when Jesus said ‘It is finished’ and breathed his last. Perhaps it was due to my father’s recent death or perhaps because I am becoming more and more aware of my own mortality as the years gather pace.

At Elijah’s cave on Mount Carmel I concluded our pilgrimage with this final prayer called “Come over to Me.”

“Come over to Me all you who are restless and I will teach you how to be quiet, how to leave yourself alone.

“Come over to Me, all you who are anxious, even if I don’t take your anxiety away, I will change it into fresh currency, as you turn your cares into greater belief in my caring.

“Come over to Me, all you who are lonely, I was lonely too, and could find no place to lay My head.

“Come over to Me, all you who worry what others really think about you. It doesn’t matter. They misunderstood Me, no matter what I did.

“Come over to Me, all you who are always talking and pleading and explaining yourselves to others. I know you inside out. I know the worst. So you can come to Me without any explanations.

“Come over to Me, all you whose great plans for yourself have failed. You don’t know how lucky you are. And others too.

“Come over to Me, all you who can’t stand yourselves. I touched lepers, and once I called a man out of a tomb who had been stinking there for four days. Some come over to me – I can stand just about anything.

“Come over to Me, all you who can’t stand other people. I know what is behind their misery. I know the worst in them and I know it in you. And I embrace you both.

“Come over to Me all you who fret about the past. I was there. I was part of your past, and I have forgotten all about it. So be like me and forget it too.

“Come over to Me, all you who can’t live peacefully in the present or the future

“Do not fear. I am your present, your future.

“Come over to Me … just come.”

Photo shows Fr Paddy relaxing in the Dead Sea during the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.