I thought of heaven

A few days ago we attended mass with a French Religious community somewhere on the Road to Emmaus. The monks and nuns there wore crisp white habits and veils, and when they bowed down double I realized how thin many of them were, and their faces gaunt [with fasting?] They sang beautiful resounding harmonies. A nun played this instrument I'd never seen before- it had a set of strings for each hand which were set perpendicular to the neck and drum like a sail (or some suspension bridges). She played this enchanting, driving, sort of sad accompaniment while the priest chanted the Gospel in french. I thought, 'if i make it to heaven, I hope they sing this as I walk up to the gate.' It was a sound which drove me to silence: I realized, "this is what our voices were made for." I stood afterwards facing the walls and studying the frescoes- the images were preserved only piecemeal and the faces of the saints had been sanded off somewhere in the centuries.

We had our morning of reflection yesterday. I can’t believe it’s the end of the pilgrimage! We went to Dominus Flevit for our final, official pilgrimage mass. It is a quiet spot halfway up the Mount of Olives which commemorates the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem as He sat upon a colt, and people sang Hosanna. I sat picking a guitar in some clovers under a red pine- over the silver green tops of olive trees and the roof of the Church on the terrace below me I could see all of Jerusalem. My mind was mostly blank after ten weeks of travel and experience and intake. I felt like I’d just come out onto a bridge through a railway tunnel and found that the ground had dropped beneath me, and the train was hundreds of feet above the land. I thought of Revelation 21- the vision of a New Jerusalem coming down: the symbol of heaven. This pilgrimage has just been a compact version, or a microcosm of that larger pilgrimage that we are all on.

People e-mailed me and said that they feel as though they’ve been able to see the sites through our eyes- and I thought of how much all of you have been very much a part of the pilgrimage for me, and I really have carried you with me.

We still have a few more things to say so keep checking back! Thanks for journeying with us-
Mike