Episode 9 – On the way back…

In the ninth and final episode of the podcast In the footsteps of Scripture: a travel diary in Jordan between the Old and the New Testament, the pilgrims are on their way home. They share photographs and, above all, the experiences of faith that marked their lives: from the desert of Wadi Rum to Petra, from Mount Nebo to the Jabbok, from Amman to Bethany beyond the Jordan, and finally to Gadara and Gerasa.

“The common thread," Father Francesco Giosuè Voltaggio explains, "is the Catechumenate, or Christian initiation. The Fathers of the Church, especially in the fourth and fifth centuries, the golden age of the catechumenate, shaped according to the stages of the people of Israel in the desert”. “The whole of Christian life is a paschal itinerary.”

It was essential for the pilgrims to immerse themselves in person in a tangible history and geography, where so many events of Scripture took place. Thanks to the renewal brought about by the Second Vatican Council, this pilgrimage, recounted in these podcast episodes, was therefore intended to begin with the Word of God, which speaks to the heart of the Christian community.

This episode features the experiences of Donata Longo Censori and Loretta Raffaeli Ravaglia. In the words of all the pilgrims, one senses joy and gratitude that the kerygma, which resounded very early on in the cities of the Decapolis, had reached us.