Chapter One

1.
On the Road with Jesus


In the summer of 1982, when I was twenty–one, I walked alone through Israel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to Nazareth to Galilee on a pilgrimage to see for myself the land that Jesus knew. I had spent the previous year working odd jobs in Washington, D.C., saving up for the trip as one last voyage into the world before I entered the Jesuits. It was the middle of June when I boarded an Amtrak train to New York City’s Penn Station, walked to Thirty–first Street, and said a prayer in St. Francis of Assisi Church. Then I caught a cab to JFK Airport.

Unfortunately, just then, Israel invaded Lebanon. Many people canceled their plane tickets. I decided to go ahead with my adventure. Instead of the quiet pilgrimage I had envisioned, however, I found myself in a war zone. As I stepped off the plane that day in Tel Aviv, I was greeted with machine guns and interrogated. Wherever I went during those weeks, I saw not the dream of faith, hope, and love but the nightmare of bombs, tanks, and jets. My life would never be the same.

Toward the end of that summer pilgrimage, on a hot July morning, I rode the local Galilee bus from the sea town of Tiberias some twenty miles to the foot of Mount Tabor, the large, round mountain where tradition holds that Jesus was transfigured before his disciples, where Moses and Elijah appeared to him and God spoke from the clouds. After the bus driver let me off and drove on down the deserted road, I stood alone at the foot of the mountain, looking up. I still remember my excitement as I started up the dirt path, through the bushes and olive trees to the mountaintop, thinking about the mystery of the