TRANSPLANTED TO BE TRANSFORMED

Olive Tree

When a plant is uprooted and put in new soil, it doesn't become a different plant. If the plant is cared for in the same fashion in its new home, little will change with that plant. The pilgrim is just like this plant. While we may have been transplanted to a new and strange land, if our prayers, habits, and dispositions remain the same, little will change in us.

How is what we're doing going to make us better?

As we study Scripture we're seeing the plants, animals, places, and images the inspired authors used to relay to us the word of God. Through this process we're given new and concrete understandings of the Scripture we will be charged to teach and preach.

As we pray in these many holy places we place before our minds our fathers in faith, their triumphs and faults, but recognize that it was their fidelity to the Lord that has been handed down to us. We become reinvigorated in knowing that we who live today are given the same charge: to hand on the faith to future generations.

We are shaken from our habits of convenience. Hard as it is to admit, cold showers and checkpoints have their teaching moments.

Here we witness the joy, the busyness, the faults, and the injustices of life. We also witness the faith people hold through it all. We realize that we, like these people here, are all plants situated in a different garden. It is faith that firmly roots us in the soil.

Perhaps the right formula for our time here is this:

Scripture grounds

and prayer astounds,

Habits altered

while dispositions falter.

Almond Tree

All the places we visit are beautiful, and all the statues, icons, and rosaries we are getting for ourselves and loved ones are all good things. Each of these things, however, are aids for our hearts. Real change begins by recognizing God as our desire on this trip and seeking him in what we do. We have all been challenged by what we've seen and also amazed. We don't necessarily hope to return as different people, but we hope to return as more fruitful in our faith. There's no greater souvenir for our loved ones than that.