Traveling Unknown

Today’s Gospel is about predictable public movement and changed, secret plans: “Jesus moved about within Galilee; He did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill Him.  But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.  But when His brethren had gone up to the feast, He Himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.”  The Jewish feast of Tabernacles or Booths involved one of three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple.  This feast was distinctive as a combined festival of gratitude for the harvest and a sacred recalling of how the Israelites had to live in tents as they crossed the desert from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. 

These obligatory rituals were known to all, and yet Christ chose to enter Jerusalem in secret.  He was, nonetheless, recognized:  “Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, ‘Is He not the one they are trying to kill?’”  The Gospel explicitly indicates that the murderous plotting had already begun but did not thwart the Savior’s divine purposes, which were ultimately deeper and more mysterious than the ordinary movements of pilgrimage.  In Jerusalem during a later celebration of the Feast of Passover, Christ will establish at the Last Supper the Holy Eucharist as the definitive “Thanksgiving Feast” of the New and Eternal Covenant, accomplishing in His saving Death and Resurrection the all-encompassing “Passover” from sin and death into our true and lasting Homeland of Heaven.  But in our meditation today, we simply pause to contemplate our Lord’s travel for a time in secret.

Anyone who has ever been to an airport these days knows the soul-crushing obsession with identity verification to prevent murderous plots, paradoxically combined with seemingly endless movement through the wasteland of anonymity between home and destination.  It is not, in other words, a generally happy adventure to travel a long distance alone, especially to a new place.  Such was my first experience traveling this past September for my initial jaw evaluation at the Piper Clinic.  By design I tried to keep this trip a secret from all but a few staff members of Queen of Peace; not even my parents knew that I was going, still less for what purpose.  Why worry my parishioners and my family, I thought, until I know more answers and am chronologically closer to the recommended surgical resolution of my TMJ problems.  Of course, predictably, some people did find out!

It is my practice always to travel dressed as a Priest, for the simple fact that I am a Priest.  So while most people do not know my unique identity as the Pastor of Queen of Peace Parish, they are given unmistakable visual clues (ecclesiastical advertisement?) that I am ordained and somehow supposed to be about the Lord’s business.  Arriving at the airport for the first time in St. Petersburg, for example, all of the cabbies jokingly wanted me to ride in their cab for “good luck” and gladly accepted a blessing instead.  The technicians at the Piper Clinic were amazed that I always showed up in the same outfit (except in post-operative visits when---to their complete surprise---I arrived wearing shorts and a t-shirt [not even black!] to make the medical exam and removal of stitches from the abdominal fat graft site easier).  And yet throughout my first days in Florida---before my parents and some friends arrived---it was so oddly difficult to be both “known” as a generic Priest and at the same time virtually unknown as Fr. Daniel Scheidt.

In these first days of Pope Francis’ papacy, we must pray for his personal movement into St. Peter’s succession.  From the beginning, the Christian life in general---and the election to the papacy in particular---has always involved the taking up and transformation of one’s familiar identity into a new mission.  As this mission opens up and demands to be “filled in,” the living of it opens one up to receive a new identity:  You are a Disciple of Christ; you are Peter.  There is so much about the papacy that the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio knew last week; but there is now even more of that unique secret of his new identity and mission that remains for him to seek and discover and live---all day by day.  And so it is for us.

You may recall my account of seeing many years ago then-Cardinal Ratzinger secretly slip into a certain side chapel of Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major to pray before the Mass on October 11, 1992 at which St. Pope John Paul II would promulgate the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Today, Pope Francis---at the very outset of his assumption of the Petrine Office---chose to visit discretely (with only ten minute’s notice to the Basilica staff!) the very same chapel in St. Mary Major to pray.  In this holy place is kept an icon of Our Lady holding the Christ Child, under the title of Salus Populi Romani (“Salvation of the Roman People”).

We would be wise in following more closely these two shepherds in prayer, separated in mysteriously identical pilgrimages by decades, yet visibly united in complimentary missions as Bishop of Rome to safeguard and pass on the one true Faith in the one true Lord.  In entrusting the unknowns of their future to Our Blessed Mother Mary, each points us to Christ, Who first chose to be carried in the secret of the Virgin’s womb.  The murderous plots against Jesus were already afoot from the outset of His earthly life---as the mortal dangers and countless lesser threats to our faith and well-being ever seem to surround us and the Church.  But our confident freedom in moving through this Lenten wilderness to the particular new graces of Easter 2013 is the knowledge that Christ accompanies us in hidden closeness every step of the way---assuring us that in our shared faith, walking on the blessed and secure foundation of St. Peter’s faith, we never travel alone to the festival of the Heavenly Jerusalem, where everyone is fully known and eternally loved.