Following the Flame, Part II: The Road to Jerusalem

When I look back now, I sometimes wonder how I managed to do some of the things I did when I was young.
Perhaps youth gives us a courage that age later replaces with caution.
I had finished high school at a young age and enrolled in higher education then as the youngest student ever to enroll.
In my life, I did everything young…too young. Except for becoming a bishop at 53 years old.
My life seemed to be opening before me, though I had very little idea where the road would ultimately lead.
Then, before the Christmas break, something unexpected happened.
Someone offered to pay for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
For many people, such an opportunity would have been a pleasant journey. For me, though I did not yet understand it, it would become one of the decisive moments of my life.
I knew almost nothing.
I had never been to the Holy Land.
I did not know Jerusalem.
I did not know the customs of the holy places.
I did not know anyone in the Holy Land.
All I possessed were a few letters of introduction which would allow me to stay with a hieromonk named Sophronius, whom I had never met. In his own youth, he had left the Monastery of Stavrovouni due to the calendar change and had arrived in the Holy Land.
And so I boarded a plane.
Looking back, it seems almost unbelievable.
Today, a traveler carries a telephone that can show every street, every building, every turn. One can reserve rooms, send messages, and receive directions instantly.
None of that existed for me.
I arrived in Tel Aviv.
I found a bus.
I traveled to Jerusalem.
As the bus approached the city, I caught my first glimpse of the place that generations of Christians had longed to see with their own eyes.
The city appeared before me not as an idea but as a reality.
Jerusalem.
The very name seemed to carry a weight of centuries.
When I arrived, I stepped into a world I did not understand.
I remember hearing the Muslim call to prayer for the first time that evening as it awoke me from a deep sleep, being exhausted from my trip.
I made my way toward the Old City carrying little more than determination and a few precious references.
The daylight was already beginning to fade.
The streets were unfamiliar. And yet it was like I was being led.
Somehow, one step led to another.
I found the road called “Greek Orthodox Patriarchate”.
And finally, as evening approached, I arrived at the Monastery of Saint Constantine.
There I met Father Sophronius. I showed him the letter that my friend Sarah had written him.
The journey was over.
Or rather, what I thought was the journey had ended.
In truth, it was only beginning.
At the time, I believed I had come to see holy places.
I thought I had crossed the sea to visit churches, monasteries, and shrines.
But God had something deeper for me.
The stones of Jerusalem impressed me.
The holy places moved me.
Yet it was not only the land that captured my heart.
It was the life.
The atmosphere of living faith.
For the first time, I began to sense that Orthodoxy was not merely something to be studied or admired.
It was something to be lived.
Something to be breathed.
Something capable of transforming a human life from within.
In America, where I was born and grew up, except for 2 monasteries, I had seen such a “sterile” version of Holy Orthodoxy.
Many years have passed since that first pilgrimage.
I have returned to the Holy Land so so many times.
Yet I have never forgotten that first arrival in Jerusalem as an inexperienced young pilgrim searching for a monastery before nightfall.
When I think of it now, I see the hand of God everywhere.
At the time, I thought I was finding my way through Jerusalem.
In reality, Christ was leading me further along the road that had begun years before with a flame that would not go out.