We are told in the First Letter of Peter: ‘Come to him, to that living stone rejected by men, but in God’s sight chosen and precious, and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’

In 1984 Christians in the village of Ibillin, in Galilee, said to a British group of pilgrims that visitors to the Holy Land should not confine themselves to visiting the ancient shrines of past ages; they should also visit the ‘living stones’ of the Land. From this originated the setting-up of an ecumenical organization in Britain called ‘Living Stones’.

Last year a group associated with this organization, but predominantly made up of Vincentians (namely, priests of the Congregation of the Mission, founded by St Vincent de Paul), decided to make ‘a retreat through pilgrimage’ in the Holy Land. It was my conviction that the Land, its peoples, and its history combine to provide an extraordinarily powerful context in which to ‘make a retreat’. What would be unique about this one was that it would include meetings with indigenous Christians, living in the throes of the intifada.

Some idea of what that meant both for the group and for the Christians that the group met is best conveyed in the words of some of those Christians.