From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

As many of you know, Saint Philip’s has a Holy Land pilgrimage coming up this November. After many delays because of the pandemic we hope we are now firmly set! (Click here for details.)

Cn John Kitagawa, Fr Peter, Shirin McArthur, and I will co-facilitate the trip and I’m very much looking forward to it. It’s a wonderful time to grow closer to one another and to Christ, and it brings alive the sacred stories we hear each week.

One of the strange realities of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is that we encounter several realities at once. We encounter, of course, the places of Scripture: Galilee, Bethlehem, the Jordan River, Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, and Golgotha, and many, many more places. We’ve heard these names, perhaps all our lives, but they now become places we experience in a real and tangible way.

We also encounter the place as it is. With its lived complexities, heightened security, divisions, and more, the Holy Land does not always feel like a sacred place. It’s the conjunction of three faiths and the conjunction of two millennia worth not only of prayer, but of conflict. The checkpoints and soldiers and more remind us that this is a living land with breathing rivalries and still beating conflicts.

Finally, we encounter the possibility of the place. Each site we visit is not just a place where something once unfolded but a site where something still unfolds. Encountering the tomb of Jesus is not just an encounter with his death but a living, breathing conversation between us and the Resurrection. It pushes our belief into new places—the pilgrimage happens in our own heart and soul, too.

Seeing the realities of today in the Holy Land helps shape the encounter with the Holy Land of the stories. For example, walking the hustling and bustling market path that is the Way of the Cross brings home the reality that Jesus was marched through a hustling, bustling city as an example to its citizens. As we imagine him mocked and jeered along the way, we get a very different sense of what Good Friday was like.

In the stories of loss and separation and bitter division we hear from the people of the land today, we begin to get a sense of the division and disunity that Jesus was dealing with when he talked of Samaritans and Pharisees and the Roman occupation. We hear the living disputes and can imagine just how shocking and unbelievable his message of peace and reconciliation would have been—and still is.

The realities we encounter in these places are the same realities unfolding in our own soul. The day to day realities collide with our own history and, if we let it, unlock a sense of just what is possible in us. 

I’ve been thinking about this pilgrimage encounter in our own nation, too. As the last couple of weeks have unfolded, I keep pondering the intersection of what is, what could be, and the stories we tell. It is possible to hold both the promise before us while not shying away from the difficulties and complexities of our own day. Indeed, not shying away from them may be the very thing that helps us truly and most fully live into the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a nation where all are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights.

Pilgrimage is an encounter with the truth. It is an encounter with the places and the people and hope of the story. It is also an encounter with our own sense of what is possible. It is an encounter with the truth we might yet see if we choose to. It is possible to encounter the truth and to look away. That’s always an option. But it’s also possible to encounter the truth and to look more deeply—to see with the eyes of faith and listen with the ears of hope.

I think we need more pilgrimage encounters in the Church—more opportunities to discover the living Lord in new and old places. We also need a pilgrimage spirit in our national life—to encounter what’s possible amidst the daily stresses and strains we too easily don’t see. In such circumstances is true hope revealed—just as it always has been.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert