Retreat on the Sites

June has been a busy month here at Saint George's College Jerusalem, and an important part of it has been a special course with the Rev. Dr. Andrew Mayes entitled Retreat on the Sites.

Saint George's Colleges Jerusalem's Palestine of Jesus course does a great job of introducing serious minded pilgrims to the life and land of Jesus.  It follows the earthly ministry of Jesus, tracing the incarnation from the Annunciation to the Ascension by visiting the sites where the events took place (often as best we know or according to the pilgrim tradition), reading and reflecting on the appropriate scriptures, and looking seriously at what modern archaeology and study reveal about the setting and times of Jesus' life and ministry.  The pace of the course is not rushed, but the days are very full.  By the end of the Palestine of Jesus course, no one who attends it will ever read the Gospel accounts the same way again.  The Palestine of Jesus is Saint George's signature course.

The Retreat on the Sites course was different.  Dr. Mayes took us into the liminal spaces in Jesus' life, and asked us to live there for a time.  We renewed baptismal vows at the Jordan, and spent time reflecting on what it meant for Jesus to leave Nazareth, cross the Jordan from West to East and then travel south to the place John was baptizing, and to cross the Jordan again, from East to West, leaving behind his life as a techton (carpenter?) and entering into a new life, responding to a call from God.  We spent quiet time in the Judean wilderness, exposed to the sun and wind, or embraced by the earth in a cave, wondering at the time Jesus spent in prayer and fasting before (or during?) his temptations to take his ministry in a different way.  We spent time on the Mediterranean shore, thinking about what that western horizon might have represented to Jesus and his disciples, and about what effect the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman might have had on him.  We spent time in a olive grove near Gethsemane, thinking and praying about things we might need to relinguish if we truly are to live in accordance with God's will for us.

Sharing Holy Eucharist

The Church of the Beatitudes

A high light of the course for me was sharing in the Holy Eucharist in a beautiful outdoor chapel at the Church of the Beatitudes, on the top of the Mountain of Beatitudes, above the shore of the Sea of Galilee on Pentecost Sunday.  I wore the red stole that once belonged to the Rev. Richard Brown of Medway, Massachusetts, which his widow gave me hoping that it might see service in the Holy Land.  Through it Fr. Brown was there with us as we celebrated another liminal moment in our Christian history--the birthing of the church, and the empowering of the disciples to go forth and change the world.

The Retreat on the Sites was another blessing of our year in the Holy Land and ministry to pilgrims.