JERUSALEM: 25th March 2005 -- The opening words to the Studium Theologicum Salesianum celebration of the Way of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa put it well: "walk of solidarity...discipleship; a priestly and kingly walk...walk of hope, of fullness".  All that and more, and in a better political climate, on a warm morning, thousands of others today trod the same path.

    For the EAO correspondent, the experience had to be warming.  At Ratisbonne Institute, the newly located and now international theological studentate hosts a number of confreres from East Asia Oceania - from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor.  There are others from Africa, Europe, Asia, The Caribbean, The Middle East itself.  This crowd of a couple of dozen mingled with every nation on earth today - or so it seemed and so it possibly was.  

    The encounters were both spiritually sensitive and sensually spiritual.  Praying the Way of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa is spiritually moving; praying it midst the nations, word and song inseparable from the sounds of the Old City, is something again. 

    One could hardly call it interreligious dialogue, but certainly there was every element of contact, at times quite tactile: Christians with their Cross, Muslims with their beads and Jews, today, decked out in carneval mode with the kids doing trick-and-treat (it's Purim); the ultra-orthodox Hebrew element, sombre, black-suited;  the inevitable 'Catholic' collisions as Religious and national groups overlapped at various Stations; Stabat Mater adding Christian counterpoint to strident Eastern Top Tens blaring from the shops; the Latin Patriarch hurrying down the path (we were ascending), with black-robed Legionaries (of Christ) fore and aft. 

    By the eighth station, the pungent smell of spices was itself a reminder of where our pilgrimage would end - at the Holy Sepulchre.  But that was only after a diversion brought on by police barriers hastily erected, a reverent bow to the Coptic Shrine to our left and an orthodox nod to the monk on our right. 

    A sideshow we missed was a minor contretemps between the Greek Patriarch and his faithful - but it's not Easter for them just yet.

    And there, at the 14th Station an unexpected EAO encounter!  Our correspondent was suddenly embraced by none other than Fr Jun Lingad, Rector of the Staff community at Paranaque (FIN) and proud leader of the first pilgrimage by his Word of Life Foundation.  They have been in Jerusalem since Palm Sunday.  Another member of his community, Fr Stephen Placente, was also in the offing .

    It seems an appropriate moment, then, for austraLasia to wish all of its readers Happy Easter and every blessing from the Risen Lord.

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