Janet and I are in Nazareth, as I’ve already shared, and right now we are at the pre-wedding party of 1,000 people — family and friends of the bride and grooms family. We are honored to be guests.
The groom’s family puts on this huge party to welcome the family and friends of the bride (including us). Amer and his family had hosted a party for the groom’s family a few days earlier.
Families are very involved in the weddings to a degree unknown in the West. No wonder divorce and premarital sex is virtually unknown here.
Actually the wedding is in Nazareth, but that is only four miles away. Janet and I are going to the wedding of Nagum Shehadeh who is the beautiful daughter of our friend and local Catholic guide Amer.
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I will also be posting YouTube videos of this authentic Holy Land pilgrimage here on my blog at http://www.CatholicConvert.com/2010.
While there Janet and I will be renting a car, exploring new places, running new trails (like from Nazareth to Cana) and working on our next book for Ignatius Press. Keep us in your prayers.
The new iPhone 4 has the ability to make movies using a new app called iMovie. It is pretty easy to use and I thought I would experiment while sitting for over three hours flying home from Seattle. This is the result. Not perfect but I am learning.I will be more aware of the pictures and videos I take with the iPhone knowing now what I need to make a better movie.
You will see a handsome young man named Isaac in this video. He was an exceptional young man who came right up to me, looked me in the eyes and said, “My name is Isaac and I want to be an apologist like you!” I was very impressed with his manner, his forthrightness and his intelligence. He also, along with his whole family, had a palpable love for Jesus and the Church.
So you will see a brief segment where he states his name and says “and I want to be an apologist.” There were a good number of very impressive young folks at this conference. Watch out world, there is a new generation on the horizon that will rock the world with their love for Jesus and his Church. They will fact tough times I think, but the Lord will bless and prepare them to be lights in the darkness.
Hope you don’t mind my little experiment with technology.
I’ve been to many third world countries and have had better mobile service and Internet than the abysmal service I’ve had so far in England. Sorry! I’ll catch up soon.
See my latest runs with map and pictures — through England.
Just posted a new Running trip, “2010-08-04 London Run”, to @EveryTrail. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/bGGiI9
Just posted a new Running trip, “2010-08-05 Norfolk Countryside”, to @EveryTrail. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/9EHDRj
Just posted a new Running trip, “2010-08-06 Another Country Run”, to @EveryTrail. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/a94HN1
Just posted a new Running trip, “2010-08-05 Reading England Countryside”, to @EveryTrail. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/dlJwzS
Pictures below: 1) country road, 2) idyllic cottage, 3) location of execution of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher, 4) inside Bell Tower where Tomas More was imprisoned.
Salmon, marsh weed, mashed with crawfish for dinner. Gave conversion story in a tent during a rain at the Marian Shrine in Walsingham near Norwich England. Made 100 Brits cry! Glad to be Catholic. Two or three talks tomorrow.
What a day in London! 2.5 hour bus tour of London, fish and chips and bitter in an English pub, then a tour of the Tower of London where we were specially allowed into the Bell Tower where St. Thomas More was imprisoned, the spot where he was executed and the crypt where he was buried.
From there changed and took off running along the Thames River toward Big Ben, Westminster Abbey meeting up at Victoria Station to take the Tube out of London. Great run!
Our host Peter McKay is fantastic Today we head to Norwich to give three talks at the New Dawn conference. More soon.
What a day in London! 2.5 hour bus tour of London, fish and chips and bitter in an English pub, then a tour of the Tower of London where we were specially allowed into the Bell Tower where St. Thomas More was imprisoned, the spot where he was executed and the crypt where he was buried.
From there changed and took off running along the Thames River toward Big Ben, Westminster Abbey meeting up at Victoria Station to take the Tube out of London. Great run!
Our host Peter McKay is fabulous. Today we go to Norwich to give three talks. More soon.
We will miss our friends in Australia and the Philippines. We finally go home Friday after over a month away. Already making plans for return visits to both countries! Apologetics is terribly needed in both places.
We are home for a week before heading to England to give talks at two Biblical and Theological conferences. Whew! Then a month and a half home to write a new book for Ignatius Press.
Boarding our plane from Perth Australia to Manila Philippines with a pit stop in Brunei. Tomorrow I speak to all the Manila seminarians in the morning and the Defensores Fidei in the afternoon with a huge welcome dinner in the evening.
They expect that I will address all the bishops of the Philippines on Sunday at the request of Cardinal Rosales. This is our Fifth Missionary Journey to the Philippines. Please pray for us!
Just gave a talk “Witness to Hope: the Early Church and Martyrdom” at the University of Melbourne. Excited, enthusiastic youth responded with joy and commitment!
We then visited sites related to Blessed Mary McKillop who will be canonized a saint in October. More soon.
Driving 3.5 hours from Sydney south to Canberra. Just saw a “troop” of kangaroos bouncing across a field. God blessed us! How cool! Real kangaroos and they were big ones!
July 10th – Apologists Get-together at VirraMall Greenhills – Chapel of the Holy Family 1-5PM
July 12 – Chapel of the Eucharistic Lord (5/F MegaMall Atrium area) 7-10PM. Free Admission
July 14 -Christ the King Greenmeadows (To be confirmed) Free Admission
July 18 – Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) 1-6 PM with Lord’s Flock, Rivers of Living Water and Lights of Jesus Communities. Free Admission
PRIESTS / SEMINARIANS can attend the San Carlos Seminary talk scheduled on July 10 at 9 AM. (To be confirmed)
Any questions, please email me at info@defensoresfidei.com
Please tell your Filipino friends and family
To see the comment thread, follow the link below:
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Exhilarating and exhausting time in Sydney. Great Lebanese lunch with local family. Talked last night on Peter and the Church; discussed with inquisitive and hungry young people until late into the night.
Today to Canberra to give talk on Raising a Catholic Family. Ran six miles over the last two days – keeping in shape Down Under.
For the Australian website with our schedule, the talk venues, a video trailer and more, visit http://www.thecatholicforum.org/
After over 24 hours in airports and planes we arrived in Australia. At home in Michigan it is now 4:30 PM Sunday. Here it is winter and 6:30 AM Monday. Very strange :-)
We landed Sunday morning (pictures and video to follow soon). Deacon Alex Jones and his wife Donna arrived with us. Charbel Raish, his lovely wife Christine and his brother Joseph. Met us.
After getting out of the airport we drive into beautiful Sydney to visit the massive Gothic Cathedral of St. Mary. They don’t build them like this any more. We came back later to hear the eloquent homily of Cardinal Pell though we couldn’t stay for Mass.
We walked down to the harbor for breakfast in the view of Harbor Bridge and the famous Sydney Opera House.
We visited some of Charbel’s Lebanese family and friends before our hotel was available. The name Charbel is common hear – coming from the great hero of Lebanon and the Maronite Catholic rite – St. Charbel.
We are staying in a suburb of Sydney called Liverpool next door to the large Catholic Club next door where I will give my first talk tonight.
After a nap we drove to St Charbel’s Catholic Church for the Mass according to the Maronite Rite with about 500 young Lebanese. Very beautiful and reverent Mass. I spoke a few minutes afterward.
We then joined hundreds of your Catholics our for dinner before crashing Into bed around midnight. We saw the famous constellation of the Southern hemisphere – the Southern Cross. Janet was very excited.
It is now early Monday and I’m heading out for a run as soon as the sun makes it’s daily appearance. More later.
We are on our way to Australia for two weeks of talks. Also on tour, though on different tracks, are Deacon Alex Jones and Fr. Mitch Pacwa.
After my 16 talks in five cities Janet and I head to the Philippines to give another 20 talks in two weeks to conferences, auditoriums, seminaries, huge high schools and parishes.
Watch my blog for updates and videos. Pray for us!
On your mark, get set — GO! I set the alarm for early to run the route I would be leading our pilgrims through Assisi and to get a four-mile run in before the rest of the group got up. I wanted to cover four miles and did a bit more.
Assisi is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Medieval with gates, stone walls, banners, flowers, churches, a fortress and tile roofs. It is quaint and stunning — candy for the eyes.
I ran through the life of St. Frances — his birthplace, his family home, the “prison” where his father constrained him. I also ran to the church named after him and past his tomb. “No fotos, no fotos!” but in the morning it is always allowed, since no one is there to yell at you.
Down the valley is the Church of San Damiano where the “St. Damiano Crucifix” spoke to Francis and said, “My church is falling into ruin. Repair my church.” Francis thought he meant the little porziuncola in the valley. He realized later that God meant his universal Church. These sites are all within hiking distance in Assisi.
Today we saw the Holy Shroud of Turin! No words can describe what the pilgrims experienced and felt — though some try to express their thoughts and feelings as they stood within a few feet of the precious relic of Christ.
No one in this group doubts for one second that it is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ who died painfully on the cross in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago for our sins and rose again for our salvation.
You can insert your name in the famous verse from John 3:16 — “For God so loved [insert YOUR name] that He gave His only Begotten Son that if [insert YOUR name] will believe in Him he will not perish but have everlasting life.”
It was an awesome day and probably the highlight of the whole trip! We were all moved and profoundly blessed. It demonstrates that Christianity is not a myth or wishful thinking, not just faith — it is fact rooted deep in history. It is objectively true and demands our obedience.
We had free time after our visit to the Shroud (see upcoming video) and many went back to the Shroud, entered the main church and prayed in front of the Shroud as long as they wanted.
We were on a plane for a LONG time and landed in MIlan exhausted but exhilrated to be here. We have two days to get ready for our group of about 140 to arrive. We will take them to Turin to see the Shroud of Turin and the rest of the city.
Then to San Giovanni Rotundo to venerate Padre Pio, Lanciano to see the Eucharistic Miracle, Monapelo to see the face cloth of Jesus, Loreto for the Holy House, Assisi and Rome and more.
So yesterday after landing I thought the best way to beat jet lag would be to run.
I took off from our hotel and had three places in mind to see. It was a great day for running since it was a bit cool, had just rained and was still overcast. I ran 6.4 miles.
First I went to the Church of Santa Maria della Grazie where Di Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper is housed (actually in a museum next door) but like I already knew, you can’t see it because you need advance reservations and only a limited number can view it per day.
Then I ran to the Basilica of St. Ambrose, Doctor of the Church and patron of Milan. He will be one of the four Doctors of the Church included in our upcoming DVD in the Footprints of God series.
Then on to the Cathedral, the magnificent Gothic Duomo which is the third largest church in the world. It holds 40,000 people. It is incredible and has to be seen to be believed. You can walk on the roof to see the 3,500 statues.
I got back to the hotel still full of energy, amazingly.But I felt it this morning when I woke up :-)
Today we will return to some of these sites with our videographer Joe Reynolds so we can get footage of our new pilgrimage DVD series.
You can see my whole run with a map and pictures HERE To see our walk, click HERE.
We were beat and eyelids at half mast. Staying up over 28 hours always does that to us, especially with the added stress of travel – cooped up on a plane over the Atlantic, waiting around, catching cabs, making and confirming reservations for hotels and rental cars, and eating airplane food. If you ever hear the phrase “airline cuisine” don’t believe it. “Airline cuisine” is an oxymoron – a contradiction of terms.
We are in downtown Milan Italy today waiting for our Turin/Rome group to arrive tomorrow. Augustine once taught here as a pagan. He listened to the Bishop of Milan – St. Ambrose, Doctor of the Church – and through those lectures he was converted to the Catholic faith. Great thing for us, since he was one of the brightest and most influential Catholic thinkers of all time.
As bishop in the 4th century, St. Ambrose built a church here in Milan. It was destroyed and later rebuilt. In the grotto below lies the remains of St. Ambrose. In the picture to the right, the arrow points to his skull. The church is also full of marvelous paintings of the saint along with the oldest known representation of him – a mosaic of his early years (see picture below).
When kneeling in the grotto below the high altar, observing and praying near the bones of St. Ambrose in the glass coffin, I thought “Some people must think Catholics are morbid, putting on display and honoring bones and relics and body parts and stuff that belong to dead people.”
I remembered that as a Protestant I was not concerned with such things. Our religion was one of spirit and propositional truth – not of body parts and morbid bone collections.
But why divide the two? God made us both spirit and flesh and he made a religion to correspond to both. Jesus said we would worship in “spirit and truth”, but he also used mud and spit to heal, and held the physical body to be of extreme importance – so much so that the resurrection of the body was a crucial element of Christian teaching.
And remember, the bones of the patriarch Joseph were carefully brought out of Egypt to his homeland in Israel (Gen 50:25) and Elisha’s bones could raise the dead on contact (2 Ki 13:21).
From the earliest years the bones of saints and martyrs were treated as the most precious possessions and were honored and venerated. Read the story of St. Polycarp if you don’t believe me. He was a disciple of the Apostle John – burned and stabbed in a coliseum in AD 155. Eyewitnesses wrote of his martyrdom and collected his bones as precious treasures. His bones and the bones all of the saints have always been respected as treasures and these relics have been kept in churches as reminders for the faithful.
As Janet and I sat in the grotto looking at the 1,600 year old bones of a defender of the Faith, we couldn’t help but be proud. We honor and venerate (not worship!) St. Ambrose and desire to be like him. He is in the Catholic Hall of Fame – Sainthood!
We walked around the old city of Milan for seven hours today We saw the famous Duomo, and climbed to the top – the largest gothic church in Italy. I won’t even try to tell you about it, but imagine a church with more stained glass than you’ve ever seen in 50 churches combined and which contains over 3,500 statues of other Saints in the Catholic Hall of Fame! The whole story of salvation from Adam to the Apocalypse – all portrayed in glorious color and feather-light spires reaching to the sky. Gothic on steroids! It made us proud to be Catholics.
I have been on a Relevant Radio speaking tour through Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee and now Green Bay Wisconsin. Tonight I will speak to a sold out audience in Green Bay on MARY, REAL GIRL & WOMAN OF MYSTERY.
Tomorrow I will also be giving two talks at a men’s conference here too. Great guys ready to know, explain, defend and live the Catholic faith.
This morning I was on the air live in the Relevant Radio studios with my friend Sean Herriott (picture right). I have been on his show by phone many, many times but it was nice to see him in persona and do the show live in the studio.
Then this afternoon I joined Drew Mariani and Fr. Rocky.
I also met friends I knew only by voice: Doug Thompson (picture below – excellent producer of Morning Air), Josh Raymond (bearded and handsome like Joshu in the OT), Eddie O’Neil (”call no man father”), Cassandra Everts (producer of the Drew Mariani Show) and Chris Frost (who invited me to speak all over Relevant territory) among others.
What a great bunch of folks doing a great job to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ and his Church.
I do a lot of radio interviews and topical shows while overseas. Here is how I do it! This is me doing a Catholic radio interview with my iPhone from Jerusalem.
UPDATE: After 15.5 hours in the air on two flights, we are almost home!
UPDATE – SATURDAY, 4/17/10: We are now boarding our alternate flight home. Glad to have a flight direct to Atlanta and avoiding the lava cloud.
There is a huge volcano in Iceland spewing a unbelievable plume of volcanic ash into the air. It has canceled thousands of flights as European airports are shut down. We were to leave Israel tonight, via Amsterdam, but our flight was canceled since the huge Amsterdam airport is completely shut down.
(Pictures: Volcanic plume above the clouds over Iceland.)
We were lucky to grab a flight on Saturday evening direct from Tel Aviv to Atlanta and then to Detroit. It pays to be Diamond Medallion with Delta — and to have Corporate Travel taking care of your travel arrangements! I especially compliment Kim Bedford for her exceptional efforts!
My question though — why doesn’t Obama pass a law against such things? Doesn’t he know that this will cause more “carbon emissions”, and damage our environment more than all the cars and corporations in the USA will do for years to come? Why has the Obama-Messiah let us down like this?
As bishop in the 4th century, St. Ambrose built a church here in Milan. It was destroyed and later rebuilt. In the grotto below lies the remains of St. Ambrose. In the picture to the right, the arrow points to his skull. The church is also full of marvelous paintings of the saint along with the oldest known representation of him – a mosaic of his early years (see picture below).
From the earliest years the bones of saints and martyrs were treated as the most precious possessions and were honored and venerated. Read the story of St. Polycarp if you don’t believe me. He was a disciple of the Apostle John – burned and stabbed in a coliseum in AD 155. Eyewitnesses wrote of his martyrdom and collected his bones as precious treasures. His bones and the bones all of the saints have always been respected as treasures and these relics have been kept in churches as reminders for the faithful.
We walked around the old city of Milan for seven hours today We saw the famous Duomo, and climbed to the top – the largest gothic church in Italy. I won’t even try to tell you about it, but imagine a church with more stained glass than you’ve ever seen in 50 churches combined and which contains over 3,500 statues of other Saints in the Catholic Hall of Fame! The whole story of salvation from Adam to the Apocalypse – all portrayed in glorious color and feather-light spires reaching to the sky. Gothic on steroids! It made us proud to be Catholics.
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