And I, to use the metaphor of the unvisited island, had in a dream
crossed the ocean, had become, through the fulfilling of a rite, more
bound to the life which is beyond. Henceforth I have a more credible
promise and a more substantial hope.
But what then? The journey is ended, the gleam of the vision fades,
and we all return to the life we came from. We descend from what the
pilgrims call the highest holy place on earth and get back to the
ordinary level of life. How can we go back and live the dull round
again? Shall we not be as Lazarus is depicted in Browning's story of
him, spoiled for earth, having seen heaven? The Russian at home calls
the returned pilgrim _polu-svatoe_, a half-saint: does that perhaps
mean that life is spoilt for him?
Some hundreds of aged pilgrims die every year in Lent; they fall
dead on the long tramps in Galilee on the way to Nazareth. Many pass
peacefully away in Jerusalem itself without even seeing Easter there.
They are accounted happy. To be buried at Jerusalem is considered an
especially sweet thing, and it is indeed very good for these aged ones
that the symbol and that which it symbolised should coincide, and that
for them the journey to Jerusalem the earthly should be so obviously
and materially a big step towards Jerusalem the golden. It would have
been sad in a way for such old folk to return once more across the
ocean to the old, somewhat irrelevant life of Mother Russia. But what
of the young who must of necessity go back?
Once Easter was over it was marvellous how eager we were to get on the
first boat and go home again. What were we going to do when we got
there, seeing that we had been to Jerusalem?
We carry our vision back into daily life, or rather, we carry the
memory of it in our hearts until a day of fulfilment. All true visions
are promises, and that which we had was but a glimpse of a Jerusalem
we shall one day live in altogether.
The peasants took many pictures of the sacred places of Jerusalem,
and Jerusalem ikons, back with them to their little houses in Russia,
there to put them in the East corners of their rooms. They will
henceforth light lamps and candles before these pictures. The candle
before the picture is, as we know, man's life being lived in front of
the vision of Jerusalem; man's ordinary daily life in the presence of
the heavenly city.
We realise life itself as the pilgrimage of pilgrimages. Life contains
many pilgrimages to Jerusalem, just as it contains many flowerings of
spring to summer, just as it contains many feasts of Communion and not
merely one. Some of the pilgrims actually go as many as ten times to
that Jerusalem in Palestine. But there are Jerusalems in other places
if they only knew, and pilgrimages in other modes. It is possible to
go back and live the pilgrimage in another way, and to find another
Jerusalem. Life has its depths: we will go down into them. We may
forget the vision there, but as a true pilgrim once said, "We shall
always live again to see our golden hour of victory." That is the
true pilgrim's faith. He will reach Jerusalem again and again. He may
forget, but he will always remember again; he will always rise again
to the light of memory. Deep in the depths of this dark universe our
little daily sun is shining, but up above there is another Sun. At
times throughout our life we rise to the surface, and for a minute
catch a glimpse of that Sun's light: at each of these times we shall
have attained unto Jerusalem and have completed a pilgrimage
within the pilgrimage. There is light on the faces of those living
heroically: it is the light of the vision of Jerusalem.