All pilgrims and visitors to Jerusalem include Gethsemane, the valley of the Cedron, and the Mount of Olives in their itinerary. This eastern side of Jerusalem is all ‘holy place', for as St John tells us, our Lord was often there (cf. John xviii, I-2). Very few however linger long enough to trace the course of that occasional torrent-bed or wadi, which starts as the Cedron and continues down towards the Dead Sea as the Wadi en-Nar. But let us suppose that we have done so and skirted the site of Old Testament Jerusalem, past the pool of Siloam (John be) on our right. If we continue down the course of the wadi by what at best would be called a bridle path, twisting and turning, strewn with boulders, we finally plunge down between high cliffs of sombre and sinister rock. We start south, but a sharp bend serves to make the general direction south-east.

The Benedictine maxim Pax inter spinas—Peace among thorns—is applicable to everyone who is trying to live the life of the spirit, but whereas the peace is supernatural and due to the indwelling of God in our souls, the thorns chafe the unspiritual parts of us, and because they are painful or irritating we are often more conscious of pricks than of peace. Our Lord warned us that following him entails many things which are hard to nature, but he also said that if we took up his yoke we would find rest to our souls, and the over-all pattern of the spiritual life as depicted in the New Testament is undoubtedly one of eager service and of joy. It could not well be otherwise, for the following of Christ is nothing less than the doing of God's will, and all our true happiness is grounded in union with him.

St Alphonsus said, ‘Lord, I am poor, but I give thee as much as I can; having resigned to thee my will, I have nothing more to offer thee.'

To give the will unreservedly, in generous love, to God, is to give him all. The wise man said, ‘My son, give me thy heart’, but before the heart can be given, the will must choose to give it, for the will is always the prime mover. In yielding it to God one seeks deliberately to negate the effects of the fall, and ally oneself with the creator's original plan for mankind. One shoots an arrow back into Paradise, with a string attached to it that leads one, as Theseus in the maze, through all the intricacies of life straight to union with God.

The story of Bl. Anthony's capture by pirates, of his apostasy, recantation and glorious death, comes to us from two very trustworthy witnesses who both knew the saint. One was his fellow-captive and an eye-witness of his martyrdom, the other was the Dominican provincial in Sicily, from where Anthony had sailed to imprisonment and death. The first of these was a Jeronymite hermit, Fr Constantius of Capri, who had been carried captive to Tunis some considerable time before the arrival of Anthony. Shortly after the latter's martyrdom on 10 April 1460 he wrote a long account of all that had happened to him, and sent it to the Dominicans in Sicily, whose provincial, Fr Peter Ranzano, had welcomed Anthony to the island three years before. Fr Ranzano embodied this account in a letter he wrote to Pope Pius II, and added details of his own which he had evidently learned from the Genoese traders in Tunis on their visits to Sicily.

A legend, once extremely widespread and influential both in the Eastern and Western Churches, relates that Abgar V, king of Edessa 4 B.C. to 58 A.D.) once exchanged messages with our Lord. Two main versions of Abgar's letter and our Lord's reply have been preserved: the first in Eusebius History of the Church, the second in the fourth-century Syriac document known as the Doctrine of Addai. It is from the latter that my translation is taken. Addai, so the legend goes, was the disciple sent to King Abgar at Edessa after the Ascension, in fulfilment of our Lord's promise. Edessa was from a very early date the centre of Syriac-speaking Christianity, and it was thither that St Ephraem transferred his school in 363, when Nisibis, his native town, fell into the hands of the Persians. Even by that time the legend must already have been well established. It is valuable, not of course as an historical record, for it is completely apocryphal, but as a very early witness to the spirit of direct and simple piety which is characteristic of the best traditions of Syriac Christianity.

Abgar would have liked to make the journey to Palestine in person, and to see with his own eyes all the things that Christ was doing. But he could not travel to a territory of the Romans other than his own, lest this should provide an occasion for the malice of his enemies. For this reason he wrote a letter, and sent it to Christ by the hand of Hannan, the scribe. Hannan left Edessa on the fourteenth of March, and arrived at Jerusalem on the twelfth of April, in four weeks. Having found Christ at the house of Gamaliel, a great man among the Jews. he read the letter before him.

By saying redeemer, not creator, he is clearly announcing one who appeared amongst us in the flesh, long after he had created all things, in order to redeem us from captivity, one who delivered us by his sufferings from never-ending death. And notice with what strong faith in the power of Christ's godhead he pulls himself together; just as St Paul says: ‘Even though he was crucified through weakness, yet he lives through the power of God’ (2 Cor. xiii, 4), so Job says here: ‘I know that my redeemer lives', as much as to say, more openly, ‘Any unbeliever can know about his being scourged, laughed at, knocked about, crowned with a crown of thorns, smeared with spittle, crucified, and dead; but I believe with the certainty of faith and I freely and openly declare that he lives after death. For my redeemer lives, whom the hands of wicked men slew.’