By Jennifer Mauro | Managing Editor

Father Andrew Jamieson, pastor of Holy Eucharist Parish, Tabernacle, has been trying to organize a pilgrimage to Jordan for years. But it wasn’t until picking up a spring issue of The Monitor that he saw his dreams become a reality. 

Having traveled to Israel twice, Father Jamieson understood that the Holy Land goes beyond Israel and that he wanted to lead a spiritual yet adventurous retreat to Jordan. He tried to organize a pilgrimage himself many times, to no avail.

Then came spring and the Pilgrimage & Travel supplement of The Monitor.

“One weekend, in prayer, I was praying, ‘Lord if you want this to happen, you have to show me a way,’” he said. 

Within hours, he opened up The Monitor and saw a two-page article about photojournalist Jeff Bruno’s recent trip to Jordan and his idea of a new genre of pilgrimage that he calls “Catholic adventure.”

“Anything that takes you out of your comfort zone can be an adventure,” Bruno, a freelance photographer for The Monitor and member of St. Mary Parish, Barnegat, said in the article. “You create adventure by pushing beyond the familiar.”

Knowing this was an answer to his prayers, Father Jamieson contacted Bruno. Now, the two are leading a 12-day “Adventurers Holy Land Tour” to Jordan from Oct. 20 to Nov. 1.

“The trip is a mixture of relaxation, prayer and visiting the holy sites,” Father Jamieson said. “The whole person, hopefully, will be refreshed and renewed in faith – body, mind and soul.”

The tour, organized by 206 Tours, will begin in Amman and continue with visits to historic and Biblical locations including: Mount Nebo, where Moses stood and looked at the Promised Land; Machaerus, the hilltop fortress that is said to be where John the Baptist was imprisoned and executed; the “lost” city of Petra and the Baptism site of Jesus; the windswept valley of the Wadi Rum, and Aqaba, where Moses crossed the Red Sea.

Weaved into the excursions are many opportunities for downtime, visiting museums, riding camels, swimming in the Dead Sea and diving/snorkeling in the Gulf of Aqaba. Father Jamieson will celebrate Mass daily, including at the holy sites.

“Downtime gives us opportunities to be alone with God and think about all that’s been happening on the trip, personally, and how we have been touched by the sites we have visited,” Father Jamieson said.

Bruno – co-founder of the Catholic website damncatholic.com, which focuses on the idea of “heroic Catholicism,” and former art director of global imaging for Aleteia, a daily online Catholic news website – calls the trip “a unique pilgrimage. It will combine adventure with faith by taking faith to nature, to the rugged and rural terrain where Jesus, John the Baptist and the Apostles walked.”

“It’s like going on pilgrimage with Indiana Jones and Pope Francis, like if they were your tour guides – that is the concept,” Bruno said with a laugh.

Bruno, who has traveled the world as a photojournalist, said the pilgrimage is open to those of any age, stressing that Jordan is a safe and “Western-culture friendly country.”

“The first couple of days, there’s a lot of visiting different locations and getting the feel of what Jordan is – its ancientness, sense of the past, the presence of the Roman Empire at that time and early Christianity,” he said.

Spiritually, the locations visited will easily “put you in Scripture,” Bruno said.

“When we read Scripture, we envision the Scripture stories – when Jesus was walking down the street and the woman touched his cloak, what was it like? What were the people like?” he said. “You get to be there; the places are relatively untouched. Like the baptismal site, you can walk among the reeds next to the Jordan, feel the sand under your feet. You can envision the whole thing – when Jesus went down to the river and talked to John the Baptist. After experiencing that, when you open the Bible again, it gives you a deeper connection to the text.”

That connection is exactly what Father Jamieson is praying for – for himself and the faithful pilgrims.

“I want to have a deeper faith – to touch the places where Jesus was, and I’m looking forward to seeing the site where tradition says John the Baptist baptized Jesus – to look at my own baptismal life and commitment and deepen that for myself.”

For those on the trip, “I would hope and pray that they, too, have a deepening of their faith and grow in relationship with God.”

As a photojournalist, Bruno stresses that he will be happy to help anyone who brings camera equipment with their photo skills.

“If anyone brings a camera, I plan on sending them home with a collection of beautiful images that they have taken themselves,” he said.

Bruno said he is looking forward to returning to Jordan and seeing it through others’ eyes. “Jordan is very rustic, it still feels ancient. That’s one of the beautiful things about it – the destinations have remained basically the way they were 2,000 years ago and even further back.”