Evidently every year for the past few years, the liklihood that there would be a Pilgrimage to the Middle East from Boston seemed small given the continuing upheaval, the veritable civil war, disturbing the peace in that region. But until now the Pilgrimage has confirmed its reservations year after year in spite of all the bleak and disturbing news, and flown into Tel Aviv for a highly-concentrated 10-day tour of the sites where our salvation was wrought in the midst of the earth.

This year we are 36, including some teen-agers travelling with their parents or guardians, some quite elderly women, and many in-between. Some, of whom I am one, arrive already with sore throats and cold symptoms. Fortunately, an unusually compassionate and communicative medical doctor (V. Mihailoff) is with us with the kind of bedside manner that prevents any of us slipping off into despair over the barb in our throats that makes every swallow painful. We also have an eye surgeon with us - our Deacon, Father Chris Patitsas.

Only a few of the moments along the path trodden by this year's Pilgrimage can be recalled here in this essay. The highlights, almost overwhelming in significant presence, are of course in Jerusalem itself, within the walls set up by the western Crusaders and, more particularly, the Muslims who drove them out of the Middle East. The Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha rest beneath a veneer of modern marble slabs and an overlay of 19th century, mostly-Russian, ikons, themselves overlaid with the elaborated silver and gilt metal covers reflecting the ecclesiastical taste of that era, the whole fronted by a wall of oil lamps suspended on chains. At the sites, one reaches into recesses, down through the veneers, significantly enough, to touch the actual rock that was the surface of the events we celebrate every year in Holy Week and at Pascha. Over the time of almost daily visits to the principle shrines, the names of the men and women who stood just where we are standing reel through the mind like the long lists of credits at the end of films, there are so many, they are so close to us who from childhood have been told the Bible stories that constituted the core of what had been the Christian West.

Archimandrite Panteleimon, leading yet another crowd of pilgrims through the labyrinth of the Old City, and through the Holy Land and Sinai, came here in 1957, 22 years old, dazed with reverence for the place which still reverberates with the awesome mystery of the Church of the Old Testament and of the New, and lived for a time within the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre in a tiny wooden cell built out from the stone walls of the present Crusader-built church, high up, reached by a ladder. He knows all the older people who are still resident here, and all the little alleys and winding staircases that course through the vast constructions like veins.

Everywhere we walk, someone carries a little censer with the familiar incense fragrances made in Boston, and gifts of incense and coloured glass oil lamps are given to all the shrines we visit. There is an outpouring of alms for the poor of Jerusalem - and at all the holy places throughout Israel and on Sinai - that is especially awaited by Palestinians in these long oppressive years during which, as always, it is the poor who pay the heaviest prices for the violence over which they have no contral at all, and by Bedouins in Egypt. Tourism and pilgrimage are at their lowest ebb in memory and everywhere we go we are told we are the first to enter the shop since the last pilgrimage a year ago.

We visit Khozeva, an ancient monastery deep in a ravine ("wadi") well-documented in Derwas Chitty's wonderful history of the first centuries of the monastic adventure, "The Desert a City", written almost half a century ago, still in print (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, NY) and still by far and away the best account in any languge of the early history of Christian monasticism. When Father Chitty visited Khozeva in 1925 he remarked its poverty and particularly remembered two monks, whose personal and spiritual inadequacies served him as a kind of existential question mark over the whole enterprise of monasticism as such. Khozeva had been burned in 1917 by retreating Turkish troops, defeated by their Arab co-religionists in episodes familiar to us from the celebrity of Lawrence of Arabia, and the monastery, remote and difficult of access as it was and is, still showed signs of the Turkish destruction when Chitty visited it as a young archaeologist in 1925 . Today it is in far better material and spiritual circumstances. It is a small community (one of its members is Japanese, whose courteous hospitality was wonderful) but overall it is a young and fervent brotherhood. I have no idea if the chanting today includes the "interminable, tinny, nasal, gabbled Kyrie eleisons" that Father Chitty found so irritating in 1925, but the kindness and warmth of the small community could not itself have constituted a more harmonious prayer.

We venerated hundreds of relics from the more thorough destruction of this (and many other) monastic settlements in the 7th century by Chosroes II of Persia. When the famous Qumran "Dead Sea" scrolls were found in 1947 inside a cave, western academics of all kinds descended on these valleys and deep ravines, ransacking the caves and simply throwing the human bones (devoutly interred in them when the monks returned to survey the carnage and destruction of the Persians in the 7th century) out into the ravines. The famous modern Elder, Saint John the Romanian of Khozeva, beholding yet another depradation wrought against the monastic community, prayed that God would intervene and, suddenly, a large section of a ravine collapsed and fell down, covering the naked bones carelessly tossed out like so much garbage. St. John the Romanian's body is incorrupt and reverently venerated inside a glass casket at Khozeva. In addition to a life of remarkable ascetic struggle, he left a body of wise sayings and the example of steadfast fidelity to the Church's historic calendar and faith.

We visited Bethany School, a most beautiful complex of buildings put up by the Russians in the 19th century. During the First War the Turks used the buildings to stable their horses and mules and a great deal of wanton damage was done by the retreating, demoralized Turkish military. Metropolitan Anastassi, the second Primate of the Russian Church Abroad, had lived in Jerusalem in the 1930's, and he it is who began the work of repair, reconstruction and renewal. The site's importance lies in a large rock, on which sat our Saviour awaiting Martha and Mary to escort Him to Lazaros' tomb. One venerates this rock in the forecourt of the School, remembering what words were spoken here. The administrators of the school, Mothers Martha (a Russian-Australian) and Agapia (a Greek-American) offered coffee, banana cake, a tour of the neighbourhood and the most insightful and carefully-balanced assessment of the ongoing crisis brought about by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heard on the pilgrimage. We also saw the wonderful work being done at the school which educates some 300 girls, some of them Moslems.

A highlight of the trip was a tour through Galilee, positively green from the Jordan river and a beautiful contrast from the rocky desert landscape predominating elsewhere. We are in Cana, Nain, we are on Tabor, and we are on a long boat ride on the Sea of Tiberias/Galilee ending up in Capernaum on a wonderfully mild day, in a modern boat modelled on one dug out of the lake bottom some years ago by archaeologists and dated to the time of the Saviour. We then are back on our Arab bus, driving through Gadara (of Gadarenian Daemoniacs fame) and pass by cliffs where, one day, a herd of Hellenistic pigs tumbled off into the water. And we end the day changing into chitonas, and going down into Jordan River, chanting the troparia of Theophany. On the way back to Jerusalem, in addition to troparia, a few African-American spirituals themed to Jordan are also sung. Quite amazing.

One morning we are up at 3 am and onto our bus, stepping off later that morning at Mount Sinai, spending the night, and (almost everyone) up again at 3 am to climb Mount Sinai and see the sun rise. But of the 3 of us from St. Gregory of Sinai two of us are having about our worst days coping with sore throats (in the midst of it, Father Anthony alights on the right phrase for our collective suffering - "barbed throat", which says it all) and general malaise and we decide to forego that climb in favour of a far easier walk out into the desert to the cave of St. John Klimakos, the author of the "Ladder of Divine Ascent". A Bedouin teen ager is hired as guide and off we go, just under an hour of mild climbing and descending out through the stark beauty of great granitic cliffs, changing colour as the sun rises (we leave at 5:30 am) and we spend over an hour in and around St. John's cave, mostly in a silence meant to honour one who gives so much to our lives.

A nun from France lives in a modern, tiny complex of Chapel cum living quarters at the base of the cave, where one begins the climb up and into it. She is highly-educated, in her late 60's, and tells us that St. John spent only one year as abbot of Sinai. Put off by the demands on his time and attention there, he returned as soon as he could to solitude and spent overall 40 years in this very cave. It was here that he wrote the "Ladder of Divine Ascent".

We read the "Ladder" every year during the 40-day Fast for Pascha, communally, in our chapel. All of us are also reading the "Ladder" throughout the year in our cells, and if any single book other than the Bible informs our particular community off in a remote forest here in northern California, the "Ladder" is that book. We three pilgrims return to St. Katherine's Monastery certain that other than Jerusalem's major shrines, this is the highlight of our pilgrimage - that we came here to see this, to stand in these places, to pray here.

The long time spent in silence at this place gives us the chance to look out at the stark rocks soaring high up into the sky, not very much changed since the time that St. John gave a lifetime to this place. Here he worked out what is, for all the change in vocabulary (especially in the last century thanks to the popularizing of a kind of psychology), the most amazing study of the human condition - we often call it the "Grey's anatomy of the human soul".

No matter how many times we read this book, it is always pouring new things into us, and demanding new things of us. One understands how it came to be the companion of the salvation of so many Christians since it was first written. It was the second most-popular book in Christendom (based on the number of extant manuscripts) until early modern times; it was the first book to be printed in the new world (in Lima, Peru, in the 16th century, long before English Protestants landed on Plymouth Rock) and until fairly recently, was standard lenten reading even by married laymen in Russia. The beautiful editions found today in religious bookstores in Greece demonstrate its continuing vitality.

A fine and incisive study of the "Ladder", entitled "Ascent to Heaven", written by Father John Chryssavgis (his doctoral dissertation at Oxford), is available from Holy Cross Press. The best English version of the "Ladder" is published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston, based on (and improving) a translation done originally by Archimandrite Lazarus (Moore) published in the '50's by Faber's. Another, less complete and somehow less successful version is published by the Roman Catholics (Paulist Press). We were glad to see the Boston edition in use wherever the "Ladder" was in evidence throughout the Holy Land, and glad to hear monastics everywhere calling it the best edition for English-speaking readers. It is that.

Particularly moving for us is the fact that our patron, St. Gregory of Sinai, was here, albeit briefly, and as we look up into the conch of the apse above the Holy Altar, at the great mosaic of the Transfiguration of the Lord, it is something to realize that he also stood here looking at the same great ikon, as did, apparently, St. John of the Ladder - and how many, many others whose names we hear at the dismissals through the year. This Church is one of the few Byzantine constructions still above ground and in use, and the sense of connectedness with the culture that is normative for the Church, and especially for monastics, is overwhelming.

A pilgrimage like this is not for everyone. The pace is intense, and the constant Israeli military check-points and the presence of uniformed soldiers armed with machine guns everywhere is frankly oppressive. There is no need to comment on the Palestinians' grievances against the Israeli's and no need to comment on Israel's need to eliminate terrorist attacks. On the whole, it was interesting (upon return to the US) to compare notes with non-Orthodox and non-Christian visitors to Israel over the past 20 years or so: the vast majority come away with a markedly pro-Palestinian tilt. This might have something to do with the characteristic preference for the "underdog" to be sure. It may, however, have wider sources as well. Never has the phrase, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" meant more, however, and while instances of unfortunate behaviour were encountered on both sides of this deep human divide, one is grateful to remember kindnesses on the part of both communities as well.

Towards the end of the pilgrimage, one began to hear from all age groups the idea that it would take a long time, after returning to the US and Canada, to "unpack" this experience. That has turned out to be so, writing this reminiscence about a month after the pilgrimage's end.

We were told by "old hands" that this was a most remarkable pilgrimage. First, the weather was uniformly wonderful, mild and pleasant day after day. There have been times when from beginning to end the pilgrims had to cope with cold, or heat, and often with constant rainstorms. We had light rain in Jerusalem off and on for the last 2 days, and it was welcome and refreshing. Secondly, at 36, we were a small group, moving more conveniently and able to hear more of Father Panteleimon's descriptions of the sites accompanied by reminiscences of what the places were like almost 50 years ago when he lived there. There have been as many as 50 on these pilgrimages, making for a more crowded, more slow-moving and less agile tour overall. Third, in spite of hearing from time to time of "incidents" here or there in Israel, we were remarkably secure throughout. We had one unpleasant encounter with conservative Jews - four men in their early 20's in yarmulkas at the pool of Siloam who heckled us throughout Deacon Chris Patitsa's chanting of the Gospel associated with that site, but the Israeli soldiers the four Jews summoned and encouraged to tell us to leave instead pushed them off and when, a few minutes later, they returned alone, their catcalls and derisive gestures were much toned down. And at the end of the tour, a power outage one night caught some of us (me among them) out in the labyrinthine, tunnel-like streets of the old city on the way to the Holy Sepulchre, and for a few minutes there was a sense of unease, quickly overcome. Minutes later we were all inside the Holy Sepulchre, a blaze of warm light from candles and oil lamps, finding the rest of our party already inside, and everyone feeling very safe indeed. In contrast to what pilgrims have encountered over the centuries of coming up to Jerusalem, we were in very comfortable circumstances indeed.

Around the turn of the 20th century, an Anglican named Stephen Graham wrote a series of books including one about a pilgrimage he took alongside Russian pilgrims of that era. Three nuns from our convent in Boston were on this pilgrimage and they had copies of that book with them which they loaned to our California pilgrims. It remains a fascinating book on its own merits but, for us who were there, it became a wonderful revelation of that world of piety bludgeoned into bloody graves by the marxists who short years after Graham's pilgrimage, imposed a lawless power in the world's largest Christian nation, ending a thousand years of national aspiring to that salvation to which we are summoned by the Church, and driving the Church herself underground into the pre-Constantinian world of catacomb Christianity, having murdered St. Constantine's last heir, and his family. Nothing could inform a pilgrimage like ours more deeply and movingly than the view of those earlier pilgrims coming from a radically different culture than our own, yet who gave evidence everywhere of our own ecclesiastical life.

Next year, as God wills, three more from the forests of Lake County will be part of the pilgrimage, all things earthly being equal in Israel. We have some idea of what they will be feeling as they move from sacred site to sacred site. We ask their prayers, long in advance, at those holy places.

Archimandrite Sergios