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Perspectives: Theological Implications of Pilgrimage
Jacques Fontaine, O.P.
The Bible: A Map for the Journey
Our life here on earth is a journey from the earthly city to the city of God. The Bible is the map which the Lord puts into our hands to enable us to find our way. The map is drawn and its details filled in as we make our way through the various books. As we set out in answer to God's call we meet along the way men and women of flesh and blood who seem to be very much our contemporaries in spite of the long separation in time which divides us from them.
These people whom we meet in the pages of Scripture have been guided by God through their own personal experiences to map out for the whole of humanity the paths that lead to the city of God. The ways that they travelled are, in fact, the very ones that we are struggling along as we journey between the two cities. The roads they followed lead through the centre of our own hearts.
When we read quickly through the Bible as we have it today — which is not a bad method for a first contact — we see the unfolding of a map which, from Genesis through to the New Testament, takes shape little by little. Just as a modern technician would project on to a screen mountains, valleys, hills and rivers in a succession, so our vision of the map of the Bible gradually becomes complete.
Sacred Geography Underlying Sacred History
The Holy Land has lost nothing of its attraction in becoming the Land of Israel. More and more frequently, journalists are making brief stop owes on the occasionof Jewish feasts which are so rich in their traditions. Some of them, it is true, having learnt little about salvation history in their catechism classes, make use of cliches which correspond with their own recollections and, in their reporting, they mingle a childish conception of religion with prefabricated politics. There is no place among their equipment for a Bible, even a pocket edition.
Pilgrims have not yet learnt to take advantage of new ways of doing things. They still beat the two drums of piety and archeology. Their ceremonies do not come to an end until the sun is high in the sky and so they have to burn up many kilometres in order to reach the Holy Places before they close. They gather in crowded crypts to explain how a certain problem, which never existed in the first place, has been solved, or else they discuss matters whose issues were long ago closed. The best guide books, those which have appeared as stop gaps over the last fifteen years or so, are waiting for another delineation of frontiers before issuing revised and completed editions.
In the meantime, tourists play the truant, running from Dan to Eilat and down to Sinai — wherever shorts and sun dresses are not barred — with the Society for the Protection of Nature. They read the Bible in a Hebrew which they have learnt in an ulpan where grammar is kept to a minimum. They would, it is true, wish to give the lie to the words of the Prophet Amos:
"They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro,
to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it."
Amos 8 : 12
Those who make use of the Bible to overwhelm pilgrims with theses and problems should listen to the very stones of this country as they cry out. They would then sing the New Song of the Word of God resounding to the four corners of the globe in the springtime of a new Pentecost.
If you set yourself up as a provisionary guide, do not look upon biblical sites as an occasion to deliver a lecture. Rather, help people to meet God at this place as did the Patriarch Jacob:
"And he came to a certain place" "Vayiphga bamagom".
Gen. 28:11
Jacob was pre-occupied about ordinary things while on his journey and his thoughts remained on the horizontal plane. When he lingered at the place that he was later to name Bethel, however, his thinking changed, even though he did not at first perceive what was happening within him. When he became aware of the vertical dimension he was able to recognize who was there:
Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.
Gen. 28 : 16
Can it still happen today that a Christian (let us call him Nathaniel) might find what he is looking for, first of all and above all else, when he journeys to Israel? The "true Israelite" knows that Jacob's ladder is set up everywhere and that every place is a holy place when we discern the vertical dimension of things and happenings in our lives, and try to discover their meaning for us. But how many Christians really know how to live like this? We need to be initiated into this knowledge. One of the best ways is still that of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when we can relive salvation history while being impregnated with the manner in which the divine teaching leads humanity towards the fulness of time. Nathaniel, to be worthy of his name, presupposes the religious experiences of Jacob.
Jacob's ladder is indeed well set up on earth and for this very reason it reaches up to heaven. Underlying sacred history, then, there is, for each one of us, as also for the whole of humanity, a sacred geography. Without it, Christianity would be nothing but an ideology.
Brother Jacques Fontaine, a Dominican of Isaiah House, Jerusalem, has been for many years a guide accredited by the State of Israel. In this capacity he has organized pilgrimages whose main aim has been to rediscover the Bible and its impact on every-day life. Contact with the Land of Israel, knowledge of its countryside, of its topography and its geography have helped Brother Jacques to discover the Bible anew while reading it on the spot. He has been sharing this with others because he is convinced that, just as it did formerly, so in our day also, the Word of God will re-echo with a renewed vigor from this Land to the very ends of the earth. In October 1975 he published a little book entitled "La Bible Arrachee aux Professeurs" (The Bible Snatched from the Experts) edited by Isaiah House, P.O. Box 1332, Jerusalem, together with a preface by Brother Marcel Dubois. The following are some extracts from this work.
