We went through the life of Jesus in symbolical procession, journeyed
to Bethlehem and kissed the manger where the baby Jesus was laid, that
first cradle as opposed to the second, the hollow in the rock. We came
as the Kings, saw the shepherds and their flocks, saw the star stop
over the house of Mary, and went in to do homage, bringing thither the
gifts of our hearts--gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
We tramped to the river Jordan, and all in our death shrouds at
Bethabara, waded into the stream and were baptized. In symbolic act
the priest baptizing us was veritably John, but in second symbolism it
was Jesus. As we stepped down into the water it was John, but when
we stepped up again it was Jesus receiving us into light. We made a
picture of the past, but we had also in our hearts a presentment of
the far future. As we stood there on the banks all in our white robes
it seemed like a rehearsal of the final resurrection morning. These
shrouds in which the pilgrims are baptized they preserve to their
death day, in order that they may be buried in them. They believe that
on the Last Day not only will their bodies of this day be raised up,
but the Jordan-washed garments will be restored as well.
We followed the course of the river down to the Dead Sea, the lowest
place on earth, and thence walked across the wilderness to the
Mountain of Temptation, where in innumerable caves had lived thousands
of hermits and saints. In a great caravan we journeyed to the Lake of
Galilee, where the Twelve were called. We camped upon the mountain
where the five thousand had been fed, and scattered bread there. We
dwelt in the little town of Nazareth and saw the well where Mary had
drawn water. We heard of all the dearnesses which the priests and
monks had imagined as likely in the boyhood of Jesus. We stood and
wondered at the place where Mary and Joseph are supposed to have
stopped and missed their twelve-year-old son who had gone to the
Temple to teach. We stood where Jesus had conversed with the woman of
Samaria. We visited the cottage where the water was changed into wine.
At Bethany we prayed at Lazarus' grave.
We lived with the life of Jesus as the story has been told. It was a
second pilgrimage, an underlining of the essentials of the first. We
finished the first pilgrimage at the Church of the Tomb on the day
after our arrival in Jerusalem; we should finish the second on the
last day of Holy Week, at the triumphant Easter morning.
On the Friday before Palm Sunday we went out to Bethany and slept
in the monastery which is built "where Martha served." Next day we
returned to Jerusalem with olive branches, palms and wild flowers,
scattering blossoms as we walked. On Saturday evening and in the
morning of Palm Sunday we filled the churches with our branches. Two
aged pilgrims who had died were buried on Palm Sunday. They lay in
open coffins in church dressed in the shrouds they had worn at Jordan,
covered with olive branches and little blue wild flowers (Jacob's
ladder), which the pilgrims had picked for them at Bethany. On their
faces was perfect peace. The pilgrims thought them happy to die in the
Holy Land and be buried there.
The crown of the pilgrimage was Holy Week. By Palm Sunday all the
pilgrims were back in Jerusalem from their little pilgrimages to
Nazareth, Jericho, and Jordan. The hostelries were crowded. Fully five
hundred men and women slept in the hall in which I was accommodated.
All night long the sound of prayer and hymn never died away. At dawn
each day a beggar pilgrim sanctified our benches with incense which he
burned in an old tin can. By day we visited the shrines of Jerusalem,
the Virgin's tomb, the Mount of Olives, the Praetorium, Pilate's
house, the dungeon where Jesus was put in the stocks. We saw the
washing of the feet on Holy Thursday; we walked down the steep and
narrow way where Christ carried the cross and stumbled, kissed
the place where Saint Veronica held out the cloth which took the
miraculous likeness. We examined our souls before Good Friday; we went
to the special yearly Holy Communion now invested with a strange
and awful solemnity. There was the prostration before the Cross at
Golgotha on Good Friday, the receiving of the Sacred Fire, symbol of
the Resurrection, on Holy Saturday, and then the night of the year and
the Great Morning. It seemed when we all kissed one another on Easter
Morning that we had outlived everything--our own life, our own death;
we were in heaven. In symbolic act we had attained unto bliss. The
procession had marched round the church to the supreme emotional
moment. We had all stood on the highest holy place on earth and looked
out for a moment upon Paradise. We had caught the gleam of the Sun of
another universe.
What happens in the pilgrim's soul on Easter Night is something which
you and I and all of us know; if not in our own minds and in the
domain of letters and words, at least in the heart where music speaks.
To those who have not themselves attained unto Jerusalem and the
"highest of all earthly" it is a promise, and to those who have been
it is a memory and a possession. The Greek monks say that at the
sepulchre a fire bursts out of its own account each Easter Eve, and
there is at least a truth of symbolism in their miracle. An old bishop
and saint was once asked to give sight to a blind woman. He had
performed no miracles in his life, yet he promised to pray for her.
And whilst he knelt in church praying, the candles which were unlit
burst of themselves into flame. The woman at that moment also received
her sight and went home praising God. It is something like that which
happens when the pilgrim kneels on Easter Night. Candles unlit in the
temple of his soul burst into flame, and by their light new pictures
are seen. The part of him that was blind and craved sight gains open
eyes at that moment, and that which seemed impossible is accomplished.