In Via
The Witness of the Early Church: Pilgrimages to the Holy Land with Mike Aquilina
As we continue our miniseries on the history of pilgrimage, we turn to Mike Aquilina, an author who brings the writings and lives of the early Church Fathers alive. In our conversation, we explore pilgrimage as imitation of Christ and the witness of the early saints in the Holy Land. We consider how we know the location of the Gospel sites and the power of oral tradition, entrusted to early Christians by figures like the Blessed Mother. With figures like Melito of Sardis, Jerome, Paula, and Eustochium, and the important diary of Egeria, the history of Christian pilgrimage in the Holy Land reminds us that when we walk these paths, we follow in the footsteps of Christ and His Mystical Body.
To find out more about Mike, visit: https://fathersofthechurch.com
To travel with Mike this November, visit: https://versoministries.com/departures/mike-aquilina-italy-pilgrimage-november-2024/
Recommended Reading by Mike Aquilina
The Fathers of the Church
The Apostles and Their Times
Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World and Can Change It Again
Good Pope, Bad Pope: Their Lives, Our Lessons
Want to know more about Greco-Roman Pilgrimage?
Pilgrim Diary of Egeria
Pilgrimage in Grego-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity by Jas' Elsner and Ian Rutherford
The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity by Gorgia Frank
As we continue our miniseries on the history of pilgrimage, we turn to Mike Aquilina, an author who brings the writings and lives of the early Church Fathers alive. In our conversation, we explore pilgrimage as imitation of Christ and the witness of the early saints in the Holy Land. We consider how we know the location of the Gospel sites and the power of oral tradition, entrusted to early Christians by figures like the Blessed Mother. With figures like Melito of Sardis, Jerome, Paula, and Eustochium, and the important diary of Egeria, the history of Christian pilgrimage in the Holy Land reminds us that when we walk these paths, we follow in the footsteps of Christ and His Mystical Body.
To find out more about Mike, visit: https://fathersofthechurch.com
To travel with Mike this November, visit: https://versoministries.com/departures/mike-aquilina-italy-pilgrimage-november-2024/
Recommended Reading by Mike Aquilina
The Fathers of the Church
The Apostles and Their Times
Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World and Can Change It Again
Good Pope, Bad Pope: Their Lives, Our Lessons
Want to know more about Greco-Roman Pilgrimage?
Pilgrim Diary of Egeria
Pilgrimage in Grego-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity by Jas' Elsner and Ian Rutherford
The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity by Gorgia Frank
Welcome to In Via the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, Joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday.
Joan:Welcome back to In Via the podcast where we are navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are currently in a little series, a mini series, looking at the actual history of pilgrimage. We've talked a lot about people going on pilgrimage, various pilgrimages, the lessons we can learn on pilgrimage to help us navigate that daily life pilgrimage. Right now we're in a mini series looking at the history of pilgrimage. We looked at the Jewish tradition of pilgrimage with the Jewish pilgrimage feasts with Dr Bergsma. Today I'm excited to welcome another friend of mine, Mike Aquilina, to talk a little bit about the Holy Land. Hi Mike, hi Joan. Thanks again for joining me and talking about the Holy Land. Mike, you might recognize Mike's name. He's the author of. I don't know, is it 100? Yet 100 books.
Mike Aquilina:No, no, no, Almost Probably around 70.
Joan:Okay, okay, we'll have a big party when you write the 100. But Mike has written many books and his specialty really is the Fathers of the Church, when we're looking at those early voices of Christianity, to help us unpack the faith in the voices of those early great men and the women, the Mothers of the Church. I thought it would be fun to talk to him today about the Holy Land. I think I'm going to learn a lot and so I'm excited to go back to the history, go back to the beginnings of our faith there in the Holy Land. But, mike, if people maybe don't know you, I would love to them have a chance to get to know you a bit. I always ask people on this podcast if you could only tell people three sentences about yourself, what would you say?
Mike Aquilina:Three sentences, Okay. The first I am a sinner who knows God's mercy. That's number one. Number two I am madly in love with my wife, and a madness that borders on obsession, even after knowing her for 40 years. And the third thing is that I feel particularly blessed because I've had the privilege of working in an area that I'm fascinated with, and working with people whom I love.
Joan:Love it, love it. That first sentence reminds me of Pope Francis. I think that would be Pope Francis' first sentence as well. He's always reminding us that, first and foremost, he's a sinner, and I think it's something we need, especially in this Lenten series season, to remind ourselves of. So I appreciate that that was your first sentence, too this area. Can you tell us briefly, how did you get involved in the Fathers of the Church? What made you start? Because that's really your niche, and I love that you have a niche, because the riches are in the niches and I think you can delve so deeply into this, but it's a huge timespan and it's a huge. You never can exhaust the riches of it. How did you first get involved in the Fathers of the Church?
Mike Aquilina:Well, when I was a little boy I must have been in fourth or fifth grade we had libraries, little mini libraries, in the back of the classroom and there was one set of shelves for boys and there was another set of shelves for girls, right, and I don't know what was on the girls' shelves, but I know that on the boy shelves there were cowboy books, there were World War II books, there were all kinds of books about sports figures. You know, when I was drawn to one book I don't remember the title of it, but it was the story of Heinrich Schliemann's Discovery of Troy and I read that book and I read it again, and I read it again, and I wanted to be Heinrich Schliemann, who read a book and then got on a boat and went to the place where the action in the book took place and it's put a spade in the ground and he found what he was looking for. He found that place. I wanted to do that.
Mike Aquilina:I wanted to be an archaeologist and as I got older I realized that archaeologists spend a lot of their time just poking around with a toothbrush or a toothpick. They spend weeks poking at a rock or something and most of the time they don't really find anything, so I didn't want to do that. That seemed boring. I liked Schliemann's version better. I remained a history buff and I loved looking at history books with those rich illustrations about the ancient world. And as I grew into adulthood, and especially as I grew into an adult faith, I remained who I was before and I had this fascination with history. I was a history buff and so I would consume books about history and I just zeroed in on that period of time Christian antiquity, centuries one through four especially, but centuries one through eight generally.
Joan:I love it. In a sense you are an archaeologist for us in that you are poking through now maybe books rather than dirt, but bringing it alive to us. And I'm not. I don't want to embarrass you, but your, your writing style is so relatable and so readable that you're bringing these great minds and these very important councils and this very important time in history to the average pew- sitting Catholic. And that's what I think so many of us appreciate in you is that you can make it relatable, you're discovering it and then giving it to us in a way we can understand.
Mike Aquilina:Well, I'm not an academic, I'm not a scholar, I have no advanced degrees, but I love the works of academics and scholars and those who have advanced degrees.
Mike Aquilina:I recognize, however, that they are inaccessible and mostly unknown to people outside their academic field.
Mike Aquilina:So what I try to do is take the great research, the great discoveries that are being made and bring it out to people and make you know I try to make make, make ordinary Catholics aware of it, because the fathers of the church do not belong to the university, they do not belong to the museums, you know, they don't belong in an archive, somewhere where you have to handle them with gloves and their writings have to be protected from everyone.
Mike Aquilina:You know, I think the fathers of the church are saints and so they belong to the church, and I think it's kind of my job to bring them to the church, to bring them to the people who will be devoted to them, who will be inspired by them, who will receive their ministry, because most of the fathers were ordained for ministry to the people, and I think that this is what they're they're intended for, this is what they're created for, not only for the brief space of time they spend on earth, and especially the brief first space of time they spend in ministry, but for all time, as long as the world is turning, as long as the earth is spinning, as long as as Christ gives the church on earth.
Joan:Yeah, yeah, they were. They were bishops, they were preachers, they were talking to the people in the pew and I think they would be. The fathers would be so sad if they knew that they were they. Many of us think they belong in the academic world because that's not what they were. They weren't writing for fellow they're. They're brilliant, but they were writing for us and they're still writing for us.
Mike Aquilina:There wasn't much in in those early centuries that we could call a Christian academia, there wasn't much in the way of a secular academia. So they weren't just doing scholarly researches, they weren't just doing, they weren't just talking to their, their colleagues who had advanced degrees, they were talking mostly to congregations or writing to friends. So these are the writings that have survived. You know, these, these, these, these these great works that that in ancient, ancient times were letters and sermons.
Joan:Yeah, yeah, to make them real again and real people. I think it's so, so important, and I think we can tie that to pilgrimage, because I think that's one thing pilgrimage does is maybe not with the people, but with the places it takes. Those places don't belong in a museum either. They are to be touched and encountered and known, and so the Holy land shouldn't remain some mysterious antiquity. It should be known by us. It should be touched with Rome and the other places that Christ walked, that the saints walked. These people were real. They were real. They had their flaws, and so when we go on pilgrimage, we are able to touch that history of the church. That's one thing I love about pilgrimage is being open to the ups and the downs of church history, and so when we look at pilgrimage, we're starting this series on the history of pilgrimage, but we find pilgrimage in so many different world religions. Why do you think pilgrimage plays a role in not just Christianity but in most of the major world religions?
Mike Aquilina:Well, christianity as a religion is an imitation of Christ. It's a participation in the life of Christ. In the Gospels we see him making pilgrimage right. We see him going to Jerusalem for the feast days, as he was required to do according to Exodus and Deuteronomy Three times in the year. You shall keep a feast to me Three times in the year. Shall all your males appear before the Lord God. So our Lord kept that precept. He went to Jerusalem for the pilgrim feasts. So that's something he did and we want to imitate him in what he did. And I think the fathers of the church would say that we can look at our Lord's life, his incarnation itself, as a pilgrimage, that he took flesh and dwelt among us in a place that was not his birthplace, that was not his home, so to speak. But he came to earth and he lived among us. He was on pilgrimage for his entire life. And when we look into the Acts of the Apostles and the other writings of the New Testament, we see that St Paul made pilgrimage. He went back to Jerusalem and he was kind of hustling to get back there in time for the feast. So this is something that that first generation did in imitation of Christ.
Mike Aquilina:And what's interesting to me is that in the generations after the time of the apostles, almost everyone we know about made a pilgrimage to Rome. All right, because at that time the Holy Land was kind of a dangerous place so it would be difficult to go there. The Romans were building shrines over the Christian sacred spaces. They were building shrines over the places venerated by the Jews. But you look at the early Christians Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Origen, Irenaeus, all of these men made pilgrimage to Rome for one reason or another right, and they looked upon their journeys as pilgrimage.
Mike Aquilina:And we know that Christians were going to the Holy Land in those early generations as well, even though we can't name the pilgrims who went there. But Justin Martyr talks about people going to venerate the site of our Lord's birth. Justin knew this because he grew up in Palestine. He grew up there near the Holy Sites, he knew the traditions and he was born, you know what, about 70 years after the time of the ascension, our Lord's ascension. So he had privileged inside information that he passed down to the generations. So this is this is a rich record of what happened in those early times, when we walk the way of the fathers, which is what we want to do. When we walk the way of the fathers, we're walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and we're going on pilgrimage.
Joan:So you already answered. My next question was when do Christians start going to the Holy Land? And it seems to be immediately that there's an immediate desire to go to the places of Christ's birth In addition to Rome, which we're going to have a whole episode on but there's this desire to go to the place of his birth, the place of his death. But yet you mentioned the Romans building temples. Can you speak more to that at all, about why the Romans would do that?
Mike Aquilina:Well, the Romans are really good at moving the earth. Ok, they can wipe out a hill or build a hill in a city, and what they wanted to do? Well, let's back up in the year 70 AD. The temple is destroyed, jerusalem is leveled. Our Lord saw this coming. He said there wouldn't be one stone left upon another, and if you go there to Jerusalem today, you'll see how thoroughly the Romans leveled the area of the temple. All that's left now is a retaining wall, the Wailing wall, we call it right.
Mike Aquilina:So the Romans were pretty thorough about that, and they identified the shrines that were holy to the Jews, because the Jews had fought this ferocious war that resulted in many Roman casualties, and the Romans had to lay siege to Jerusalem for a long time before they took it over.
Mike Aquilina:So by the time they took it over, they were very angry. The people back home were grieving for the losses, and it had been very expensive too. So they wanted to exact a memorable vengeance, and so they started to cover over the sacred spots and then build spots that the Jews would have considered profane. They built temples to the Roman gods on the holiest sites, and as Christianity began to grow and the Romans had similar contempt for the Christians. What they began to do is build shrines to the gods on these sacred places as well, and we find this out especially in Justin's account of the cave of the Nativity and in other accounts of the site of Calvary, that in order to get to Calvary, for example, centuries later, the Empress Helena had to destroy a Roman temple that had been built on the site and then begin her excavation. So the Romans were really good at moving earth. They were really good at landscaping on a grand scale, and that's what they would do around these sacred places.
Joan:But they did us a favor in a sense, because then they're marking the place of his Nativity, they're marking the place of his death, making it kind of convenient for Helen to find the spot right.
Mike Aquilina:I think you're absolutely right and I also think that there were traditions kept by the local communities that they remembered the places where Jesus fell and fell again on his way of the cross. I believe the stations of the cross that we have today are largely the church's memory of those moments along the way For those women who were following along with Jesus, and apparently the Apostle St John as well. They remembered every step of the way. They remembered the places, they remembered Jesus fell here and certainly they passed that knowledge on to the next generation. It was passed on to the next and the next and the next. I believe it wasn't just a few people who knew. It was a community that kept the memory and they kept each other accountable. If you look at the studies done in communities that pass on tradition by oral means, just by telling the story again and again, if you deviate in the telling of the story, you're corrected immediately and severely right, because it's important that this be passed on unscathed, and I think that that's the way it was in early Christianity.
Joan:Yeah, I always when going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, like if there's ever somebody that doubts, like oh, is this really the place, is this really?
Joan:I think of the Blessed Mother and the guides are usually very good at saying, like the wedding feast at Cana, we don't really know where this banquet hall was, where this person's house was right, and they're good, like when you think of the cave of the nativity, you think Mary's not going to remember where she gave birth and pass that on in the community, like that the word became flesh in Nazareth and then came into the world in Bethlehem. You don't think Our Lady is going to ponder all these things in her heart and share them with the community and anybody who knows, like I think we don't value oral tradition enough because we live in this world where everything's documented and everything's footnoted. But that Mary would have passed this on to the community, that the people who walked the Via Dolorosa with Christ would have remembered this it's not, it's a big deal and they would have, they would have shared it. I think that's a really a really valuable point in the Holy Land.
Mike Aquilina:That's a very long. It's not a very long time between the time of Jesus and the time of Justin. You know, justin was born probably around the year 100. And again, he was born in the Holy Land and he grew up among people who certainly knew the apostles and he would have had knowledge that's privileged, so I think we can trust him as a source. He was also a very smart man, you know. That comes across in his writings, and he was renowned as a philosopher among the Romans, even among the pagans. He died because they grew jealous of his skill and so so he he's. He's a reliable witness, I believe yeah.
Joan:Who are some of the other witnesses? We have Justin really witnessing, even to a time when, you know, there were no churches on this spot. Right, we have Roman temples. St Helen doesn't come till the fourth century. What are what? How else do we know about early Christian pilgrim practice in the Holy Land?
Mike Aquilina:Well, Eusebius says, just in passing, that the great Saint Melito of Sardis, who lived also in the second century he lives, he was more or less a contemporary of Justin. We know that Melito made a pilgrimage back to the Holy Land from Sardis, which is in Asia Minor, present day Turkey. So so then someone like Melito, who was probably, was probably a Jew by his background, you know, made it a point to go back to the Holy Land and see the Holy sites. So so he's in that same time period. And then, you know, as you mentioned later on, we see, we see pilgrimage in many places on the map, including some sites in Egypt and, of course, the sites in Rome that are related to the apostles. But we see an increase in pilgrimage to the Holy Land around the time that Christianity is legalized by the Emperor Constantine. So at the beginning of the 300s, 312, 313, we begin to see people going to Jerusalem for pilgrimage in greater numbers because it's legal, you know, there aren't those obstacles that there were before. Actually, you know, the numbers may not have increased all that much, but what happens at that point is that we know about it, more people are writing about it, more people are telling the story.
Mike Aquilina:I remember, Joannie, when you were living in Rome some years ago, you kept a blog called Joan in Rome, and every day you would talk about the things you did that day, the things you saw, the things you learned, because it's exciting to be in these holy places, because you're seeing things constantly. It's like a barrage of these things from history, these things from the scriptures, and you're learning so much. So we have pilgrim diaries begin as a genre around this time. When I was a kid, I grew up in an Italian neighborhood and if any people in the neighborhood went back to the old country, well, they'd return to America with all these slides and you'd go to their house and you'd see the slideshow on their wall, you know, or on a sheet that they hung up, because you were going to hear the story and you were going to see the pictures. Well, these pilgrim diaries were. They serve the same purpose, you know, because we have the Bordeaux pilgrim from around 333. We have Egeria from the 360s. Egeria 381, I think, is the time for Egeria, so right around the time of the Council of Constantinople. So you have these pilgrim diaries, which are just records, so that the pilgrims remember everything that they want to relate to their friends back home, to their family back home. So it's kind of cute.
Mike Aquilina:You know, it's this connection we have with way back then, because pilgrimage has that element to it, has that element of witness. We're not only going over there for our own entertainment, we're going over there to bring the word back home, you know, to witness to those around us that this is what I've seen with my own eyes. My prayer, my reading of Scripture has changed, because I've been there. I now see things in color that I used to see only in black and white, or I see, I see it in motion picture, whereas before it was just stills or sketches. You know, you got to come back and witness to what you've seen. You've, in a sense, you've seen the Lord as they, you know they say in the Gospels yeah, I remember going.
Joan:Every time we've gone to the Holy Land we've actually had Mass in the tomb of our Lord and the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, and afterwards our guide always reminds us. Now you are witnesses to the resurrection. Yeah, you have come, you have seen the empty tomb. You are witnesses and you have to go back home and witness to this resurrection. And it's a reminder to us that all the graces of pilgrimage were not given to us, for us alone, but that we have to see. Okay, why was I given this grace? It's not just to increase my faith, but it's to take it back, especially to those who can't travel, and I can imagine you know, I love to think of Egeria's blog, right, like she's writing this blog for those who can't that she's taking these experiences back home to those who are too sick or too poor to make this hazardous trip to the Holy Land, and I love that sharing of the grace, yeah we have so many pilgrims from the fourth century, from the fifth century who exemplify that.
Mike Aquilina:Really, Jerome talks about Paula and Eustochium who worked with them, who worked for him, who founded religious communities with him in the Holy Land. They lived in Bethlehem, where he lived, and when Paula died he wrote this letter. That's kind of a eulogy to her because he's trying to comfort those in her family who loved her. You know she worked there with Jerome, along with her daughter, her daughter Eustochium, and Jerome describes her going to the sites. He says she started to go around visiting all the places with such burning enthusiasm that there was no taking her away from one unless she was hurrying on to another. She fell down in worship before the cross as if she could see the Lord hanging on it. On entering the tomb of the resurrection, she kissed the stone which the angel removed from the sepulcher door. Then, like a thirsty man who has waited long and at last comes to water, she faithfully kissed the very shelf on which the Lord's body had lain. Her tears they were known to all Jerusalem, or rather to the Lord himself to whom she was praying.
Mike Aquilina:I love that passage. I really do, because you recognize the feelings. You know. If you've been to these places, you recognize the feelings that Paula had as she went from one site to another. You just can't believe this is happening.
Joan:I cannot believe I'm here, yeah yeah, and you'll never be the same after You'll never be the same, yeah. And just to know that when we go on pilgrimage to these places, we're in the footsteps of Christ, but we're also in the footsteps of Paula and Jerome and these great saints who have gone before us. We're in their footsteps as well. I think sometimes it's easy to get stuck in our 2024 minds of like, oh, I'm the first person to have done this. I remember going to San Clemente in Rome and loving it and then realizing, oh, like Cyril and Methodius did this way before me, right. And just like, oh, that's embarrassing, right. But just knowing like I am not alone, I'm in this great cloud of witnesses and we're making this pilgrimage together, is really powerful.
Mike Aquilina:It is. It is and it's so many of the fathers too, down to the very last of them, St John of Damascus, the last of the fathers. He made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and he stayed there. That's where he did a lot of his most important work. I'm not recommending that people stay there, but it is something to go there. It really is something to go there, and it's something to return there after you've gone there, because my second pilgrimage was vastly different from my first. I saw a lot of the same sites, but my experience of it was different. It's like you learn in layers, the way they do archaeology. You learn in layers and you build on the learning you have from your previous visit.
Joan:Yeah, in some ways the first visit, you're just so overwhelmed I mean I was just constantly in tears and crying at every place that it was my second visit that I could kind of yeah, I was that second layer of okay, I've had this the first experience, and now I'm seeing other things, even at the same spot, right, Like I'm like we had Mass near the tomb of Saint Paul, of Paula, in the caves underneath the Catholic church in Bethlehem.
Joan:There. That's where Jerome lived and that's where he did a lot of his work, because he too went to the Holy land and didn't? He stayed, I don't know, there's something there right To stay and work in Bethlehem. But I had never even heard of Paula, and so I was like we were in this chapel and I was like who's that woman in this mosaic with Jerome right? Like who's this lady? I've never heard of her. And so then, to do this deep dive and to find this new friend of this very intelligent woman who uses her talents and skills and helps Jerome, and maybe Jerome helps her, I don't know Like it's just like this new discovery. So every time you go is a new discovery.
Mike Aquilina:It is, it is. I really love my visits there. It can be a difficult culture because it's so different from our own, even though you recognize a lot of American things and a lot of shops even take American dollars there. But it is a very different culture. It took me a couple of days to adjust to it, but once you do you come to love it. I would say, still as an outsider, because it's so different from where I live and just the manner there is so different. But, I've come to love it.
Joan:Yeah, isn't that one of the beautiful things about pilgrimage is being taken out of that comfort zone and being stretched and being thrown into something new and finding where the Lord is helping us in our own.
Mike Aquilina:Yeah, Something new to me, but something very old to Christianity. You're walking in the footsteps of so many saints. You're walking in the footsteps of the fathers. You're walking in the footsteps of the apostles themselves.
Joan:Yeah, what's your favorite place to go in the Holy Land? What would you say? I know it's probably really hard to find a favorite, but you've been there many times. What would be your favorite place to go?
Mike Aquilina:The Mount of the Transfiguration. It's kind of a hairy ride up the mountain. It's a very steep mountain and the roads are very narrow and the locals like to drive like crazy people on the roads and scare each other and scare the pilgrims too.
Joan:Yes.
Mike Aquilina:There's something to that. But once you get to the top you're at the Mount of Transfiguration and you see the church there. That's just beautiful and the peacock motif that's in the artwork throughout the church. The peacock is a symbol of our Lord's resurrection because the peacock is transfigured right when it fans out its tail and you see a different animal from the one you saw a minute ago, and also because the ancients believed that the peacock's flesh did not decompose. Saint Augustine even performed experiments to see if this is true. It's not true, but the ancients believed that it was true. So this peacock became a symbol of the resurrection and I just love that church.
Mike Aquilina:I do. It's far from the city, it's on a mountain and the event that took place there is one of those great events and weird events in the New Testament that fulfills so much of what we find in the old. It fulfills the law and the prophets because Elijah and Moses are there and so many of the fathers loved that story, so so many echoes were in that church for me and I got to give a talk on the angels outside under I don't know what you'd call it a little awning that's there beside the church.
Joan:Lovely. That place really helped me realize, because we have the Mount of Beatitudes and it's not really a mountain, not like Mount Tabor, and so to be there, I thought about Peter and James and John going up this very steep mountain away. They really were away from the other apostles, like it really, I think, seeing the geography, maybe realize they were taken apart and no wonder Peter wanted to stay right Because he was getting Jesus to himself. He had this amazing experience and just this idea like it's not like they walked down the street and had this transfiguration moment, but they really had come away, and so it helped me remember that importance of coming away with Christ, those mountaintop experiences. I think, yeah, then going to the Holy Land, you see the scriptures in a different way, where you just read these three sentences in Mark and you're like, okay, the transfiguration, but then to live it in a sense is completely different.
Mike Aquilina:It is. It's a powerful thing.
Joan:Yeah, so as we wrap up, would you have any recommended resources to learn more, maybe about any of the thing that we've talked about? Any books? We're also going to be linking several of Mike's books that I would recommend people taking a look at, but would you have any recommended resources for our listeners?
Mike Aquilina:Well, I'd always drive people back to the primary sources, right? So if you can get the Pilgrim Diary of Egeria that's the most lively account of a visit to the Holy Land in this time Get your hands on that and read it. It's easy to get. It's online. You can find it at archive. org. It's the Pilgrim Diary of Egeria, I think. In the version that they have at archive. org her name is translated differently, so I think it's Etheria, e-t-h-e-r-i-a or A-E-T-H-E-R-I-A. So one of those places. That's the place. I would begin with that ancient Pilgrim Diary, because it really captures the spirit of Pilgrimage as well as describing the places and she you know Cyril of Jerusalem. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem makes a cameo appearance because she talks about his preaching during Holy Week and how the people just applauded from the beauty of the mystagogy that was going on.
Joan:There are a couple of interesting scholarly works.
Mike Aquilina:I think they might be pricey, but there's this book called Pilgrimage in Greco-Roman and early Christian antiquity and it's very good. You know it's got a lot of detail in it but it talks about Pilgrimage, the experience of it and how it's different among the major religions. it's interesting Pilgrimage in Greco-Roman and early Christian antiquity. Seeing the gods. There's also this one called the Memory of the Eyes Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity, by Georgia Frank, the Memory of the Eyes, and it's also a very beautiful book about Pilgrimage as it was done in the time of the Fathers, especially Pilgrimage to Living Saints, you know, during their lifetime, going to see Saint Anthony, for example or Saint Augustine and draw from their wisdom.
Mike Aquilina:So so yeah, it's an ancient custom. If you're a history buff like me, you want to know how people have done it before, as, and then you want to go see the places themselves, and it's a very satisfying experience. It's a very exciting experience. I look forward to the next time I do it.
Joan:Yes, and while at this very moment, in the spring of 2024, we can't go to the Holy Land, we can go to Rome, and so I'm just going to throw out a quick pitch for that Mike is taking a trip to Rome in November and November 2024. And so if you're interested, you know you can reach out to me at Verso. And I'm really excited for that because there is something about going back to Rome.
Joan:We're going to have a whole episode on Rome but to really walk again in the footsteps of these great saints, really, and these ancients like.
Mike Aquilina:Monica and Augustine.
Joan:Yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent. Well, thanks, Mike, thanks for joining us, thanks for the chat about the Holy Land and, as we continue through this lenten season, continue through our lenten pilgrimage I am going to have you back on. If you'll have me to do I'd love to talk more about the incarnation as pilgrimage. I think that's really, really fascinating, so that's something I want to delve into.
Mike Aquilina:So, if you'll come back on, I'd love to have you again, excellent.
Joan:Well, thanks, Mike, Thanks listeners. Share this with someone who might be interested in pilgrimage. Maybe that history buff in your, in your life that you want to kind of poke If you want them to go on pilgrimage with you and send this episode to them. So share it with a friend and know of our prayers as we continue through this Lenten time. God bless.