Holy Land: Mission Accomplished

Volume XXII, Number 9 – November 15, 2018

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Hey, I'm back from the Holy Land and Rome! This. Message. Is. Jam. Packed. So jam-packed that I was flummoxed, which I solved by placing most my Holy Land Pilgrimage reflections at the end, after my signature, thus un-jam packing it.

but first...

Think Inside Your In-Box

My next Message in early December will launch our extremely crucial (yet fun!) annual Christmas Appeal, without which this apostolate, which as influenced tens of millions over the span of three decades, will cease to exist.

As you will read in the Holy Land Diary below, for this year's very cool “gift exchange,” I believe Our Lady inspired me with a creatively tangible way to bring something back for you that is both utterly unique and spiritually potent.

Hard Work in the Holy Land

Unfortunately, it would take dozens of pages to provide you with a comprehensive diary of what occurred during the ten-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Rome. I could write in detail about each fellow pilgrim, every holy place where we prayed or attended Mass, the incredibly challenging tasks and multiple divine interventions required to film Messiah (actually, I shall write about one intervention below), and especially what it was like bringing (and “hiding”) your intentions on flash drives at ten super-cool Old and New Testament holy sites where they will remain for, well, a very long time. So here's my plan:

Reminding God: Flash Drives

First, I will simply list all the places I brought the encrypted hard drives containing your several thousands of intentions. With careful planning or bold last-second ingenuity (including help from fellow pilgrims), I hid them so well that virtually all of them will remain where they are for many years, if not decades, or, until Jesus returns.

In effect, we employed a physical means to, uh, remind Our Father and the saints to answer our prayers. As you might guess, I am a big fan of Jesus' teaching about the lady who keeps bothering the judge until he hears her case.

I also want you to know that I personally wrote onto every flash drive that all your intentions for all three of our previous pilgrimages (Fatima 2015, Rome 2016, and Ss. Joseph and Anne Shrines, Canada 2017) are included in this year's pilgrimage, in perpetuity.

Although I did not read any of your intentions, from my correspondence with thousands of you over the decades, I know very well they are mostly about heartache. Conversions needed, crushing bills, physical and emotional healing, guidance from God; prayers for the Church, for priests, nuns, bishops, vocations, our nation, our friends, our children; for forgiveness; and for the many burdens we all bear, often for the sake of others. I have suffered, as have you. I know. You know. We know.

Finally, before I hid the drives, I doused them with Lourdes water and I then carefully touched every one to my powerful Relic of the True Cross and to my first class relics of Saints Jude, Anthony, Therese of Lisieux, Francis Xavier, and Maximilian Kolbe, asking each saint to intercede for your needs. Fr. John then formally blessed them in Jerusalem.

So without further adieu:

Your Intentions Are Here

In Jerusalem, Israel:

• The Garden of Gethsemane (on the very rock where Jesus sweat blood)
• The Upper Room (Last Supper and Pentecost)
• The Tomb of King David (two stories below the Upper Room)
• The Holy Sepulchre (the tomb where Jesus rose from the dead)
• Golgotha (Calvary, where Jesus was crucified)
• Chapel of the Holy Cross (where Saint Helen found the True Cross)

In Nazareth, Israel:

• Basilica of the Annunciation (the very place where Jesus as conceived—several of my fellow pilgrims were spiritually overwhelmed here)
• Wedding Church at Cana (while the four married couples in our group had a surprise renewal of their vows with Fr. John!)

In Rome, Italy:

• Tomb of Saint Catherine (reformer of the papacy, in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva)
• Tomb of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (In Gesu, the beautiful church of the Jesuits. I jumped a railing to get this one hidden.)
• Tomb of Saint Peter (in St. Peters Basilica itself, pictured below, where I brought your intentions in 2016—I broke into tears thanking our first pope and Our Father for listening to our prayers, for intentions answered)

And, without going into too much detail, I creatively employed chewing gum to, uh, secure our flash drive just paces away from his bones, in a way it will never be discovered given Italian standards of janitorial maintenance!

In addition to physically placing the hard drives in these places where Jesus, Joseph Mary, the apostles, Old Testament prophets, kings, and early Christians walked and lived, my fellow pilgrims and I prayed for your intentions and offered every Holy Communion in numerous other holy sites, churches, and film locations. This is an incomplete list of highlights:

• Hill of Lament (“Dominus Flevit” where Jesus weeped over Jerusalem)
• Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (where Jesus was born, including Mass)
• Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Church of the Holy Sepulchre (with the pillar of Jesus' scourging)
• Shepherds Field (where young David was anointed by the prophet Samuel)
• Synagogue of the Centurion in Capernaum (ruins upon the ruins of the synagogue the Centurion with the “greatest faith in all of Israel” helped build)
• Sea of Galilee (literally on the water in a reproduction apostles fishing boat)
• Mensa Christi (on the shore of the Sea of Galilee—where our resurrected Lord prepared fish and ate with the apostles)
• Mount Stella Maris (where Jesus proclaimed the Beatitudes)
• Saint Peters Residence in Capernaum (Mass offered in the chapel above)
• Via Delarosa in Jerusalem (the way of the Cross—probably not always the actual path he took after years of destruction and rebuilding of the city, but a moving spiritual experience for our group)
• Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (what's left of the Jewish temple the Romans destroyed)
• Mount Carmel in modern Haifa (one of my favorites, a church high above the city with the rock from which Elijah was taken up into heaven)
• Mount Precipice in Nazareth (where irate Jews tried to throw Jesus off a cliff, across from Mount Tabor, where Jesus was Transfigured)
• House of Saint Joseph in Nazareth (Mass offered in a church above the Holy Family's home, just a few blocks away from Mary's home!)
• Caesarea Maritime on the Mediterranean Sea (where St. Paul was put on trial and then shipped to Rome)
• Saint Peter in Chains Church in Rome (where the first pope was incarcerated and freed by angelic miracle)
• Saint Mary of Angels and Martyrs in Rome (better known as the Pantheon, former pagan temple)
• Basilica of Mary Major (where I prayed for your intentions over the relics and tombs of many saints)
• Tomb of Saint Paul (in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of the largest and purest Romanesque shrines on the planet)
• The Appian Way (where Saint Peter walked before returning to Rome for his inverted crucifixion)

(You can find all these places on Wikipedia for photographs and history.)

Join Tens of Thousands in Prayer

Take a breath. I'm in a warrior mood. Let's begin, tens of thousands of us together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

Dear Jesus, King of the Universe and Messiah, we come to you as your baptized brothers and sisters, fellow soldiers, thankful for your saving grace. We boldly ask you to lay our enemies at our feet! O Jesus, conquer even the smallest influence of the evil one and all the sinful habits in our lives! Destroy the dark forces that besiege our beloved Catholic Church from within and without!

Please, beloved Brother, we have no power of our own. We beg you to hear and answer the intentions we offered on the Holy Land Pilgrimage, and to turn your loving, merciful gaze upon our most desperate needs! Turn not your ear away from the saints who selflessly plead for our causes! Please, heal us, fill our hearts and our relatives' and friends' hearts to bursting with your Love, even if your Father's overwhelming divine intervention is required—now, at this very moment, or whenever is best in your judgment in time through eternity.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us and our Holy Land intentions...
Saint Joseph, Terror of Demons, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Jude, cousin of Jesus, and apostle, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Therese, little sister, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Anthony, miracle worker, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, martyr of love, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Francis Xavier, patron of missions, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Ignatius, teacher of the divine will, pray for us and our intentions.
Saint Catherine, papal reformer, pray for us and our intentions.
Saints of Old Testament, pray for us and our intentions.
All our relatives in heaven, pray for us and our intentions.
Guardian Angels of all our relatives in heaven, guide, guard, and protect us!
Amen.

Thanks for being a part of our work and our lives. The Holy Land Diary begins next!

With Jesus the Messiah,

Bud Macfarlane
Founder and President

HOLY LAND DIARIES

Cast of Characters

I will set the scene so you can imagine it, describing the cast of characters and sharing just a few events, especially what happened when I brought your intentions and the Christmas Appeal gift to Golgotha (or Calvary) and then to the tomb where Jesus rose from the dead, both located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Yes, your intentions were placed on the very rocky ground where Jesus was tortured—yes, where His blood spurted and dripped onto the land. The exact place on earth where He conquered Sin and Death! Where He saved us!

Eighteen Souls

Our group consisted of eighteen souls—five dedicated to filming Messiah and thirteen supporting saints who interceded unceasingly for your intentions, each other, and the film project. We punctuated and centered each day with private Mass, often at churches marking holy sites, so Jesus in the Eucharist was our true Guide through our wonderful priest, Fr. John O'Brien (who I shall describe in a sec).

My first priority was to deliver your intentions via flash drive to ten holy places in Israel and Italy while doing whatever was needed to support the resourceful film crew, who shot footage in over twenty-odd locations all-day, every day.

You were represented in person by CatholiCity Citizens Rod and Kim Ballard (California), Deacon Mike and Chris Koile (Missouri), and “Saints” Gloria Espinoza (Kansas) and Kathy Iocone (Maryland).

Melanie Flowe, Linda Granzow, Carolyn Klika, and her fiancé Gil Catino, all from North Carolina and friends of Rick Rotundi, the writer and executive producer of Messiah, rounded out the almost-instantly tight-knit group.

Along with fearless Rick, who quit his job and is investing his own savings to produce the mini-series, the tireless film crew consisted of award-winning host Leonardo Defilippis, his lovely wife Patti, John and Lisa Strong (the husband and wife two-camera duo), Rick, myself, and often Melanie and sometimes other pilgrims. Following brutal plane trips, it was a rise-too-early, fall-asleep-too-late kind of project.

Ginny Mooney is the Emmy-winning producer and director for Messiah, who has already interviewed expert commentators across America (including our own Roy Schoeman). For family reasons, it was simply not possible for Ginny to join us. Her sunny disposition, creative intelligence, and comforting decades of expertise were missed beyond words. Here she is with Rick Rotundi and Mary Healy, biblical scholar, during a film shoot in a church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Along with you, Ginny was one of our “eighteenth” pilgrims who prayed for the intentions of the project.

As I sport zero film-production experience whatsoever, I wish you could have witnessed my often comical ineptitude while holding lighting-related stuff up in the air, carrying camera equipment bags, manning our jerry-rigged white board “teleprompter”; charming, cajoling or filibustering pesky officials, all while endlessly carrying on like a third-grader with fellow troublemaker Leonardo. I found myself “wrangling” many groups of curious pilgrims and tourists (brandishing two dozen languages I do not speak) away from the filming area, often failing miserably with apparently hilarious or terrifying hand gestures and ultimately ineffective facial expressions. Oh, and I got to yell “Quiet on the set!” a few times.

In fact, for me, the most spiritually moving aspect of this difficult and challenging trip was the sacramental, charitable, and enjoyable bond that grew stronger as we ate, prayed, worked, walked (and walked—averaging 8 miles a day!) while sharing cramped spaces in tour buses hour after hour, day after day, Mass to Mass to Mass.

Fr. John O'Brien was our spiritual director. I arrived at his Jesuit residence in Toronto, Canada, to meet him the day before three flights to Tel Aviv. Son of the famed Catholic painter and novelist, Michael O'Brien, I've been friends with John since he was finishing up college; he quickly became the indispensable editor of my novels. That's us in Saint Peter's Square minutes after I permanently secured your intentions inside!

Like some of us, he kicked around before discerning his vocation—two of my sons and I had the honor of attending his ordination in May of 2017! John is now forty-two, a completely faithful Jesuit in the authentic spirit of Saint Ignatius and is the national vocations director for the Jesuits of Canada.

Alter Christus

That's merely his bio. More importantly, John has influenced my relationship with Jesus and thereby everyone else I know (including you). As the leader of our outlandish little group, he was “our father.”

As I witnessed him pray the Divine Office, nightly prepare his thematic homilies that built momentum over ten days, make himself available for every pilgrim no matter how tired, and find time somehow to film multiple segments as an expert commentator for Messiah, I was inspired to pour myself out for all of you. He was priest, prophet, and king. He was Alter Christus, another Christ. (And he kept me sane as a few things went haywire back in the States.)

On the morning before our flight, I began our first day by serving the first of so many Masses Fr. John offered for your intentions, just me and him in a little private Jesuit chapel.

After weeks of prayerful preparation and discussion, John suggested we make a kind of spiritual pact: the Catholic Church is in the midst of a long, painful, and deeply disturbing crisis, and we would offer everything about the pilgrimage: sufferings, joys, and depravations as reparation for the Holy Father and the Church.

One of Fr. John's “rewards” was to contract a nasty vomit-inducing sickness on the night before our nightmare 30-hour triple-flight journey back to Toronto. (My reward was to be in a Boston pub the night the Red Sox won the World Series!)

Jerusalem is Not America

We began in Jerusalem, which has been destroyed and overrun so many times that most of the holy sites are churches built upon the locations of actual Gospel events. It is a hilly, desert city located in the center of the nation. There are few trees and vegetation, no visible farming on stone covered hills. It is parched. Israel is quite odd in that nobody paints their homes, which are made from beige stone or concrete. Colorless.

The city is safe enough, littered with garbage on narrow stone alleys, and is palpably tense with centuries-long hostility between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, who keep to their own sections. Millions of Christian pilgrims (not counting Jewish and Muslim pilgrims) from everywhere on earth—Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Africa—overrun the poorly-organized holy sites. It is not like America at all. It is not at all what you imagine it to be—not like the movies.

Your Leather Cord

I wracked my mind for weeks trying to figure out a way to bring something back that thousands of you could have as a tangible, holy sacramental object from our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. One day after Mass I found myself imagining the leather straps that were used in the whip during Jesus' scourging. I purchased yards and yards of thin genuine leather cord wrapped onto spools and carefully packed them for my trip, knowing I would be going to Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus' torn flesh from his whipping bled onto the True Cross.

I have since arranged to have the Ghirelli family in Italy create a custom-made, blood-glass jeweler-quality rosary featuring a crucifix depicting in amazing detail the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the background with Jesus being flanked by two seraphic angels. (It's utterly striking and beautiful, as you can see below.) This crucifix will be struck only once and this rosary will made by hand by the Ghirellis only for this year's Christmas appeal and will never be made again.

I plan to personally cut and tie a piece of that cord onto every rosary.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Dating back the early centuries, then rebuilt after the Crusades and added onto until our day, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the magnetic, beating heart of pilgrimage in Jerusalem. It is less like a church than a confusing, huge, multi-level complex of passageways, chapels, basement chapels leading to lower basement chapels, and ongoing archeological digs going down into the earth and time itself.

Thus there is no rhyme or reason to the architecture, it very poorly lighted, and is even kind of dirty. There is no “security” whatsoever, virtually no “crowd control,” no usher, and no sign in any language. Rival Eastern, Orthodox, and Western Christian religious orders jealously “share” control of it or parts of it. It features Calvary where Jesus was crucified and the tomb where Jesus rose from the dead (literally, “the Holy Sepulchre”).

There are worn marble steps leading up to a relatively tiny chapel of Calvary. Almost two levels down and away, literally placed in the middle of the main church area, there is a several-foot thick RV-sized structure surrounding the tomb where Jesus rose from the dead—every day, under the watchful eye of harried Franciscans, thousands enter the little entranceway of the “RV” then “duck” into a hole the size of a small bathtub that leads to a tiny chamber that can barely hold two people. Here is a photo from outside the "RV" into the tomb:

Inside that tomb is the stone slab where Jesus was raised from the dead. On my second day in the Holy Land, after I visited Calvary (below), this is where I took your intentions, placed and prayed over them on the slab, and then hid the flash drive where the angels pushed away the rock and the holy women heard the risen Lord speak to them.

Your Intentions at Golgotha

On our second morning in Jerusalem, the jet-lagged film crew, a few pilgrims, and I awoke extra early to walk down the narrow dog-feces strewn cobblestoned streets to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre just after 6:00 am. Because we were scheduled to film on location elsewhere that day, we were hoping to beat the countless other pilgrims groups to the tomb—many thousands of Christians in large groups would soon arrive.

Around my shoulder, in a little red backpack barely larger than a purse, I was carrying your intentions on two flash drives plus 130 Bethlehem olivewood rosaries along with those spools of leather cord.

Now inside the main Holy Sepulchre Church, Leonardo and Patti, John and Lisa (the camera couple), Fr. John, and producer Rick stayed in the “line” (really a friendly multi-ethnic mob) for the tomb. The crowd was surging, beautifully delayed by a Mass taking place before the entrance of the tomb itself. Feeling the weight of your prayer intentions, I made a beeline through the halls for the steps in another part of the church leading up to Golgotha, “the Skull Place,” featuring what was indeed a skull-shaped rocky ledge inside a relatively cramped chapel; I saw a small altar over a hole in the rock into which the Romans jammed the cross onto which they nailed Our Lord.

The day before, we had arrived late, and Fr. John celebrated Mass with Deacon Mike for all of us in a side chapel, but the line for Golgotha was too large and slow, and we had to leave.

This morning, shockingly, there were just a few pilgrims in front of us at Calvary! There was a Mass in the side chapel; I waited and received the Holy Eucharist. After just a few moments longer, with my Lord inside me, I took the flash drive and my backpack and prostrated myself (laid completely on my stomach, as the next photograph shows) on the very spot where Jesus was tortured, hour after hour; where his mother and Saint John suffered spiritually with him.

My friends, this was the place where her Immaculate Heart was “pierced by a sword,” the inspiration for my first novel bearing that same mysterious title. A few feet to my right, there was a statue of Mary with a sword going through her heart!

My forearm disappearing as I placed the flash drive into the hole in the rock, which had an arm-sized opening through a kind of ornate metal cover. I lingered as long as I dared, for less than a minute. I was so honored, so grateful, and so humbled to go there for you.

You Were With Me

Surprisingly, I was not moved emotionally or spiritually at that moment—there was too much at stake, and then I took the little pack with the leather cords inside and placed it over the hole, my eyes closed. I was not emotional at the time, yet I am getting teary-eyed as I type this, as it sinks in. In the mystical body of Christ, through the Eucharist (His Risen Body) in my body, you were with me in a way more real than if you and I were in the same room right now.

I got back in line and a few minutes later, I returned and prayed for you again! Then I sprinted down and back to the line/mob at the Tomb and convinced the Leonardo and John and their wives and Rick to come to Golgotha with me because there inexplicably was such a short wait. They went, and then divine intervention happened when we arrived.

First, after the film crew venerated the crucifixion site themselves, the entire chapel emptied. It was just strange. Our guide assured us later that such a thing simply never occurs. Suddenly there was no one there, just an unseen priest guarding the altar from behind a pillar.

Moving quickly, John broke out his handheld HD camera, Rick made his phone into a teleprompter, and for several minutes Leonardo narrated two scenes for Messiah with Golgotha just beyond his shoulder!

Where Did It Go?

Then, after we finished, I decided to make a third visit to the place where Jesus was murdered for our sins. I reached into the hole again, to touch the flash drive with your intentions one last time, to pray for you for a third time, and it was no longer there. Other pilgrims had left papers with intentions in the hole of the cross, and these were all still there. Where did our flash drive go? Did it dematerialize? Did it fall into a crack? I reached around, and there did not seem to be any cracks.

Saint Helen and the True Cross

A little history. The Messiah laid the Roman Empire at His feet via three centuries of the blood of the martyrs, and, more specifically, by having the holy cross appear in a dream to Roman Emperor Constantine.

Constantine then had the cross painted on the shields of his soldiers before his unexpected underdog defeat of an invading rival in 311 AD. He converted to Catholicism, then legalized Christianity. His own holy mother, Saint Helen, made her own pilgrimage to the Holy Land to find the real Cross which had defeated her son's enemies.

In Jerusalem, the Emperor's mother took her troops to Golgotha and they began digging until they found a cistern. In the cistern they found three crosses covered in dried blood—clearly reused by the Romans during crucifixions and stored there, and eventually forgotten and covered over 270 or so years later. They found a leper, and when they placed him upon the third cross, his fingers, limbs, face and skin regenerated before their eyes in a public miracle confirming it was the True Cross. Over the next 1700 years, the True Cross was cut up and distributed to churches around the world.

I have a piece of it. I have been carrying it through life's pain, sleeping with it clasped in my hand, and sharing it with my closest friends for most of my years running CatholiCity and the Mary Foundation. I have touched it to many objects, including the rosaries, art prints, and medals we exchange during the annual Christmas Appeal.

On our way out of the church, late for the tour bus, Melanie and I saw a stairway leading downward. We played hooky and ran down the steps to a beautiful crypt chapel, then down more steps to the Church of the Holy Cross. Shocked and surprised at what we found, we scrambled to the very spot where Saint Helen found the True Cross I have been carrying for decades! There's my Cross and the flash drive before I hid your intentions:

And there they will remain.

And, alas, thus I must end the Holy Land Diaries. I part with a gift from Fr. John. He sent all the pilgrims an article entitled Why the Holy Land is the Fifth Gospel of Christianity, which is a local saying used by the priests and religious who live there.

Thank you for joining me. Amen.