The Land Called Holy 2

"HOLY LAND REVIEW"

I see that the regular Franciscan magazine, "HOLY LAND" was dropped in 2006 and now has been re-incarnated as "HOLY LAND REVIEW".

It could be useful for display in the Guesthouse,
and also to encourage the Catholics who are having such a hard time in Israel.
The English and Irish Bishops are on a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land this weekend.
There will be two Scottish Pilgrimages during the year.
Prayer is always the greatest need.
Here is the Editorial for the Spring 2008 Issue.

The Holy Land Review
Spring 2008

Insights into the Holy Land
by Father Jeremy Harrington
Welcome to the new Holy Land Review, a Franciscan Journal of Faith, Culture and Archaeology for the English-speaking world. To more effectively offer insights into the many dimensions of the Holy Land, its people and the ministry of the Franciscans, Custos Pierbattista Pizzaballa, O.F.M., decided to take a new approach. The smaller publication Holy Land was discontinued with the Autumn 2006 issue. The Holy Land Review will be published four times a year from the Franciscan Monastery, Washington, D.C., in close cooperation with the Italian Terrasanta, headquartered in Milan.

It's been 60 years since the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. Scholars from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (the Faculty of Biblical Sciences and Archaeology of the Pontifical University "Antonianum") bring us up to date on what we have learned and on questions that remain. Was Qumran an Essene community? If so, was there any Christian connection? Is the Khirbet Qumran excavation directly related to the Essene community? What have the scrolls revealed about our Old Testament?

We meet personalities like Franciscan Stanislao Loffreda who discovered the village of St. Peter in Capernaum and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, former papal representative in Jerusalem and now papal nuncio to the United States. He tells of his love and hopes for the Holy Land. In addition, you will find in this issue book reviews, columns and important news from the Holy Land.

We invite your readership, your ideas and comments, and your subscription. Peace!

COMMENT
Following the COMMENT on what Jerome Murphy-O.Connor says, "That Luke is the only evangelist to mention the Ascension of Jesus. And that in the two places, Luke 24:51, Acts 1:1-12.”, it seems to me that the compression of an Archaeological GUIDE may tend to become a “Rough Guide”, the trademark of a Series of popular Travel Guides..

Two questions are very different.

1. Luke – “not recording an historical fact”.

2. Luke – using a “literary way of drawing a line between the terrestrial mission of Jesus and that of the apostles”,

In the first Fr. Jerome uses his archaeological scalpel to narrow the focus as to the historical fact. In that case is he entitled to make a theological statement that is tantalising inconclusive?

Regarding the first, A very different view is taken in the parallel, “Guide to the Holy Land” by the Franciscan, Fr. Eugene Hoade OFM.
"The place of the Ascension is determined by the Acts with a mathematical exactitude. In the Acts it is said that the Apostles after the Ascension of the Divine Master "departed from the Mount of Olives, which is distant from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey, and returned to. Jerusalem" (Acts 1, 12).
A Sabbath day's journey, i.e., the walk a Jew could take without infringing upon the law of the Sabbath rest is said by Rabbis to. be 1392 m., which is approximately the distance that separates Jerusalem from the top of the Mount of Olives. A Sabbath day's journey was 2,000 cubits.
Besides, the event of the Ascension was such for the Christians that they could not possibly forget the exact place whence Christ left to go to his heavenly Father. It was on the way towards Bethany.
(Eugene Hoade “Guide to the Holy Land” - Editions 1942-1996

The Scriptural references build up into an integrated body of all that was said about the Ascension by Jesus and others. It is a formidable collection.

“The general and most common understanding of the Christian doctrine of Ascension holds that Jesus bodily ascended to heaven in the presence of his apostles, forty days following his resurrection. It is narrated in Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, Acts 1:1-12,[1] and mentioned in John 20:17, Ephesians 4:7-13, Romans 10:5-7, 1 Timothy 3:16, 1 Peter 3:21-22”.

The Ascension knits together the words of Jesus and of Apostles and Evangelists into a non-simplistic understanding of the sacramental, ecclesial reality of the Ascension.

“Even within the pious Christian tradition, the language used by the Evangelists to describe the Ascension must be interpreted according to usage. To say that he was taken up or that he ascended, does not necessarily imply that they locate heaven directly above the earth; no more than the words "sitteth on the right hand of God" mean that this is his actual physical posture, but rather denotes his equality with the Father, according to Trinitarianism. In disappearing from their view "He was raised up and a cloud received Him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9), and entering into glory he dwells with the Father in the honour and power denoted by the scripture phrase. It is something in which our lives are part”

If Shakespeare could say, ‘Death is the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’, his tongue was equally adept in finding the words that lift the mind to another plane, “There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Coming to the second question, a more theologically grounded speaker takes us into the Ascension of Jesus and of each of us,

“This day, in which for the first time I may sit in the chair of the Bishop of Rome, as Successor of Peter, is the day in which the Church in Italy celebrates the feast of the Lord's Ascension. At the center of this day, is Christ. And only thanks to him, thanks to the mystery of his Ascension, are we able to understand the meaning of the chair, which in turn is the symbol of the authority and responsibility of the bishop. What, then, does the feast of the Lord's Ascension tell us? It does not say that the Lord has gone to a place far away from men and the world. The Ascension of Christ is not a journey into space to the most remote heavenly bodies, because in the end, heavenly bodies, like the earth, are also made up of physical elements.

The Ascension of Christ means that he no longer belongs to the world of corruption and death, which conditions our life. It means that he belongs completely to God. He, the eternal Son, has taken our human being to the presence of God; he has taken with him flesh and blood in a transfigured form. Man finds a place in God through Christ; the human being has been taken into the very life of God. And, given that God embraces and sustains the whole cosmos, the Lord's Ascension means that Christ has not gone far away from us, but that now, thanks to the fact he is with the Father, he is close to each one of us forever. Each one of us may address him familiarly; each one may turn to him. The Lord always hears our voice. We may distance ourselves inwardly from him. We can live with our backs turned to him, but he always awaits us, and is always close to us”. (Benedict XVI's MAY 9, 2005)

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