How does one approach the mystery of Christ's Agony in the Garden, standing before an ancient olive grove in the Garden of Gethsemane next to the Church of all Nations on Holy Thursday evening? With awe and reverence, in silence and with great inner peace. Amidst an amazing number of people there was great silence. Everyone made space for others as best we could. This was a community of strangers in vigil with their Savior. So began the Holy Week Triduum in Jerusalem for 10 seminarians from Blessed John XXIII and Fr. Paul Fitzpatrick.

The doors at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre opened at 7:50 a.m. for the Good Friday Service. The crowd surged forward. The doors would be closed at 8:10. When the group of 11 got to the door, the Israeli Security Guard said "No More!" Luckily a Franciscan spoke up for us and we were in. No more room above on Calvary. At the Franciscan Chapel the procession formed. First the acolytes with candles, then the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, then the Franciscans, followed by Auxiliary Bishops and the presider, followed by diocesan priests in clergy shirts like the 11. We fell into line. We made it to Calvary for the Good Friday Service. Very thoughtful Eastern European women who could not understand the Latin of the Service booklet gave us their copies. The Palestinian choir sang the group responses in the Passion. We venerated the Cross on Calvary itself that day.

Later, just outside the Damascus Gate, Père Marcel Sigrist lectured us at the famed Ecole Biblique (which published the Jerusalem Bible) on a new translation of the Bible that the Ecole was understaking. The process of consultation they had set up to insure they would have in place the proper structure to facilitate the research and text criticism for this new Bible was itself an education. Our men represented the seminary well in the question and answer session with Père Marcel. He offered to give a lecture at our seminary whenever he is at Yale, his Alma Mater.

Holy Saturday morning we took a van from the Old City to Bethany, the town of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. After visiting the Church we began the same treck Jesus would have made on foot from their home back to Jerusalem. This time, 2,000 years later, there was a Separation Barrier with an Israeli soldier at the opening. We were Americans. No problem. If we were Palestinians, not so easy. Later in the week in Bethlehem, a Palestinian Roman Catholic was to tell us that this year, since he had never been able to get permission for his wife, his 3 sons (9, 7 and 5 yrs. of age) and himself to visit Jerusalem, he had crossed illegally through an unfinished section of the Separation Barrier to visit Jerusalem for the Palm Sunday procession so he could finally show his sons the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. On our 2 mile walk to the Old City we stopped for a visit at the Bethphage Church where the Palm Sunday procession begins every year. Now we were doing the treck from Bethany to Jerusalem and the Palm Sunday Procession route; two things at the same time, a leitmotif for the whole week!

Weary pilgrims though we were after that hike, we showed our true grit by trudging down Saleh-din Street, the heart of the East Jerusalem commercial district, to the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research for a presentation from the Director, Sy Gitin. In charge of the excavations at Ekron (one of the 5 cities of the Philistine Pentapolis in the 11th century BC) he gave a fine presentation with many examples from his 14 summers at Ekron on the significance of archaeology for Biblical Study today.

Holy Saturday afternoon we followed the Via Dolorosa with Mary, seeing her son's suffering through her eyes. We began, of all places, at the Bethesda pools where that cranky old man couldn't get into the water on time. In the Church of St. Ann there, known for its acoustics, we began our Marian Way of the Cross singing the Salve Regina. Hushed silence from the onlookers by the time we finished. The Gothic vaulted ceilings from the 11th century, bouncing our voices around, improved the finished product tremendously. That evening before dinner we watched a DVD "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land, U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"presenting a 7 point Israeli schema to slant American reporting on the crisis.

Holy Saturday evening we spent in the Holy Sepulchre, 9:00 p.m. to 11:45, in vigil at the tomb of resurrection. Hardly anyone was there. We spent more time on Calvary, this time we were alone. We moved forward and touched the rock of Calvary. Then the Orthodox began First Vespers of Palm Sunday. We shared the space. Dancing pairs of deacons and acolytes, circling with censors swirling with smoke, lost in a liturgy of frenzied and festive devotion. So caught up in the celebration of the sacred, they incensed the Roman Catholic altar, too.

Monday we headed for Nazareth and stopped at the premier Archaeological Park in Israel on the way: Beth Shean. The 1st century BC/AD Roman ruins with their theatre, baths, nymphaeum, basilica and forum stretching out the length and width of 2 parallel football fields before us would have been enough, but atop the mountain overlooking the Roman period city were the remains of 1) the 11th century BC Philistine city where Saul and his sons had been impaled after their deaths at the Battle of Mt. Gilboa and 2) the walls from the 15th century BC Egyptian garrison of Thutmose III. We had gone back 3500 years in time.

In Nazareth, because of the size of our group, we were able to celebrate Eucharist in the Grotto of the Annunciation itself. It was a cave venerated as special to Mary by the members of Jesus' family living in Nazareth from the 1st century AD onward. Mary's well in the center of town, our next stop, had been gurgling water for many centuries before Mary would have used it. It would have been the only well in the city when Mary went for water.

We spent the night at the Italian Sisters' Hospice of the Mt. of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee. In the morning we celebrated Eucharist in an outdoor chapel 20 feet from the Sea of Galilee at the Church of Peter's Primacy. If Peter had to be three times chastened in order to be three times healed, the Lord couldn't have chosen a more merciful setting. At Capernaum we visited the octagonal church built over and around a room revered from the 1st century to have been used by Christ in the home of Peter's extended family. The Roman period synagogue there would not have been his, but its black basalt foundations would have been from the synagogue of Jesus' time. At the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, at Yardenit on the River Jordan we renewed our Baptismal promises and sought to understand with Nicodemus what it means to be born again by water and the spirit.

Wednesday, after getting through the checkpoint into Bethlehem (which reminded some of the seminarians of their experiences of prison ministry in the States) we visited Herod's massive Herodion fortress/palace. Five stories inside a mountain which Herod himself built and two stories emerging out of the mountain, the inner rooms overlooked a rather ample atrium garden in the center. The guest quarters were down below with a swimming pool of Olympic proportions. Here was the possible site of Herod the Great's burial where, after his death, 200 assembled notables were also to be put to death so at least there would be sorrow in the land even if it wasn't for him. Oh yes, he could have killed those infants in Bethlehem.

After Eucharist in St. Jerome's cell in the Basilica of the Nativity and some shopping in Manger Square, we headed for the Palestinian Center for Conflict Resolution. The Director, a Palestinian Roman Catholic with a Master's in Peace Studies from Notre Dame (and a wife from Indiana, as well!), hosted us with a wonderful meal of native foods and entertained questions on the Israeli/Palestinian crisis since the election of Hamas and Ehud Olmert (an election in which Zougbhi, himself, was elected to the Bethlehem Town Council along with members of Hamas). The Center, among other services, does mediation work between Muslims and Christians in Bethlehem, sets up programs to help children deal with the traumas of an unstable political situation, finds work for the unemployed in Bethlehem and salaries them through monies received from the Latin Patriarchate. Our seminarians had already generously helped to fund their Christmas Shoebox Project last Christmas which provides gifts for Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian children. Because of the Intifada many of these children would have nothing without these gifts which include warm clothes, school supplies and children's games.

Friday's highlight was our audience with the Latin Patriarch, Michel Sabbah, whose Archdiocese covers Jordan, Israel and Cypress. A native of Nazareth, he was pastor of a parish in Jordan in 1988 when he was chosen to be Patriarch. An avid advocate of Palestinian rights, he must also not alienate the Israeli government who can deny visas to Jordanian seminarians and faculty at the Archdiocesan seminary in Beit Jala (one hill over from Bethlehem). I asked him how he walks that fine line. His answer: "I don't walk a fine line. I walk in the mud!" If this is what happens to the green wood, imagine the rest of us! The rest of the day was free with early to bed and a 2 a.m. departure for the airport near Tel Aviv. In our time there, each of us had been touched by the Holy, deepened our knowledge of Scripture, and grown in our understanding of and compassion for the complexities of the realpolitik of the region. Truly we had been blessed.