How iconic are those 3 words….In the beginning….The Bible is the Word of God and what a journey it takes us on. You could not make this stuff up, it’s a roller coaster ride of incredible stories and a glimpse into our past history. Whether you’re a believer or not, it’s an amazing record of the past and an inspiration to many. I have never read the Bible from cover to cover but I am slowly making my way through it.
This my friends, is my journey exploring the Catholic faith and I hope you join me for the ride. I am coming to you as a REVERT….someone who revisits their faith as opposed to a CONVERT who adopts a new faith or religion. Originally the word REVERT is an Islamic term, but I think it fits pretty well here and to be honest, I will be exploring the Quran too, as it does share some history with the Bible.
But let us first start at the beginning…..the only reason I know I am a Catholic is that my brother and I were sent to a Catholic primary school as children. It was run by nuns and overseen by the local Parish. We attended religious education and church through the school, but our family were not Catholics! We didn’t attend church on Sunday or observe any religious holidays but for some reason we were baptized, received the Holy Sacrament of Communion and were Confirmed. When it came time for us to leave primary school and attend high school as teenagers, that was the end of our Catholic experience. No more church, no more religious education, I don’t think we even owned a Bible. So, for many years, I just carried on with life and forgot about God.

This is how it happened…I received a glimmer of faith. After many years, a failed marriage and becoming a single parent, I received a visit from an old school friend and her husband. As we lived out in the country, they stayed the night and the next morning at breakfast they abruptly got up and announced that they were going to church. It was Sunday morning and I was shocked. This woman had been wild in her youth and had surprised us all and ran away with the circus as a teenager. After expressing my curiosity, she said that she now went to church and helped out and was involved in her church community.
When she left, I pondered my own faith or lack thereof. I thought she was extremely brave to come out and own it like she did. I guess in my workplace and circle of friends, religion was something that was shunned and made fun of. If you expressed any faith at all, you were considered a Bible Basher or worse a nutter! I had baptized my daughter and sent her to a Catholic school but that was mainly so that she could get a good education, but we still did not practice our religion or attend church. The seed was planted in my mind however, but it took many years for my faith to grow and I am ashamed to say, I never kept in contact with my friend after her revelation.

Fast forward to 2023, when I was travelling through Europe and met a lovely Jewish lady from Tel Aviv aboard a Greek cruise. She was horrified when she learnt that my next stop would be Israel and that I was planning to stay a week in Jerusalem. She felt with all the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, I would be better off staying in Tel Aviv as it had the protection of the Iron Dome from incoming missiles. She kindly offered her telephone number and a place to stay if things didn’t work out and I thought that was very kind of her. Silly me, arrived in Jerusalem on the Sabbath and quickly found that everything was closed. No shops open, no restaurants and no one to assist at the hotel. The place was dead until sunset. Luckily, I had stashed a packet of M&M’s in my bag and that served as brunch. I checked my phone and found my government had sent me a text message, warning of the escalating hostilities between Israel and Palestine and suggested I know the location of the nearest bomb shelters in my vicinity. The hotel map said there was one down stairs so I went to bed feeling slightly better but a little apprehensive.

The next day my religious education was renewed as I boarded a bus and set off for the Mount of Olives. For those who don’t know, this was where Jesus was arrested prior to his crucifixion and where he ascended to heaven after his resurrection. Unfortunately, our bus hit a huge stone plinth on the mount which burst a tyre and dented the bus. We were herded onto the side of the road and walked to a nearby lookout, with a spectacular view of the city of Jerusalem. The golden Dome of the Rock shone in the sunlight as our guide presented a lecture on the history of Israel from Genesis to present day.
I lapped up the information as the guide informed us that the rock under the Golden Dome was where Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac and was the original foundation of God’s temple in Jerusalem, covering a shaft that leads to Hades (Hell). Now it is an Islamic holy place and known as the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven with the Archangel Gabriel upon a flying horse. Once in heaven he met Adam, Jesus, his cousin John, Enoch, Aaron, Moses and Abraham before meeting God. What an adventure that would have been!

With the bus fixed, we boarded and were dropped at the Gates of Zion, the walls and gate looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. History oozed around every corner, with cobblestones and stone walls, the colour of the desert surrounding us. We visited the Western Wall where we were segregated as male and female. I had never had this happen before so I was a little shocked. It happened again at the Tomb of David and it slowly dawned on me that women perhaps aren’t treated that well in this part of the world.
We visited the Room of the Last Supper, which didn’t really do it for me. I felt no connection and of course it had been rebuilt since Jesus’s time. We passed Mary’s house and then followed the 14 Stations of the Cross. I rested against the wall where Jesus stopped with the cross and imagined how he must have felt. I guess Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ is the closest thing we will ever know of how truly horrible it really was.

Now this dear friends, is where I wish I had known more of the path I was taking. Usually I research everything before planning a trip so I don’t miss a thing, but then invariably I feel let down because I’ve seen it all before on YouTube or books or television. This time I went in blind but that was a mistake. Upon arriving at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, our Jewish guide would not step in the doorway and we were left to fend for ourselves. We had no literature or maps and no idea where to find the Crucifixion site or the tomb Jesus was laid.
I stepped aside for the crowds and ducked into what looked like a cave. Finding an alcove with a stone bench set into the wall, I sat and closed my eyes. A tour group wandered past me and I heard their guide pronounce this as Adam’s Chapel. Apparently, the skull of Adam was buried under this very place and when Jesus was crucified on the cross, an earthquake occurred and blood from his wounds ran down the crack of the earth to rest on Adam’s bones, thus washing away the sins of Man. The tour guide finished by stating that, “It’s quite a story” before leaving. When they had left, I opened my eyes and there on the wall was the crack from the earthquake, dramatically highlighted by a spotlight.

From my youth, I remember getting a packet of Christmas cards each year to share with my friends. Depending on how well I knew you, you received Santa Claus on a card if you were a best friend, Rudolph and Frosty for close friends and the Nativity scene, Christmas wreaths, candles or carolers for acquaintances or people I disliked. Terrible but true! In my head, I pictured Bethlehem as a flat desert with a stable and a few mud huts, as per the annual Christmas card. It was much different in real life.
Our coach driver delivered us through an Israeli checkpoint at gunpoint and we stopped in a rather non-descript car park on the West Bank of Palestine. We changed buses and were then on our way to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. Our guide was a jovial Palestinian man who looked after us well and led us into the Church. There was a line of a thousand people waiting to see the grotto where Jesus was born. The guide slipped next to me in the queue, taking my hand and whispered into my ear, “Come with me.”
We left the line and he took me to a small doorway in the church wall and then down a dark flight of stone stairs that looked ancient. It led to a very narrow tunnel that was dark and at this stage I was having serious reservations about my safety but it was too narrow to turn back and I could only see the back of the guide in front of me. I had no choice but to continue on and hope for the best. We popped out into an alcove of the Greek Orthodox Church where the guide spoke to a security guard, who spoke to a priest and before I knew it, I was allowed to walk down the stairs into the grotto. The Christian line was coming from another staircase into the grotto, but everyone was halted as I knelt down and touched the silver star which marks the location of Jesus’s birth. I was then helped off my knees and up the steps and led to a garden, where I waited in bliss as the rest of the tour moved through the line. That guide received a hefty tip from me that day!