At the interactive displays of Saxum Visitor Center, visitors can trace the physical development of the Holy Places from their origins to the present day. It is a way of demonstrating the authenticity of the tradition that identifies and preserves them.
Visitors can see, for example, what Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre looked like after Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of temples to Venus and Jupiter on the site in AD 130. The ground had first been leveled in an effort to erase the memory of what had taken place there. Yet the very structures intended to conceal Golgotha from Christian veneration ended up preserving and identifying it. Everyone knew that beneath those temples lay the places of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Events such as these help us better understand our capacity to see beyond what is immediate, to transcend appearances, and to recognize that what is essential is invisible to the eye, as the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry so memorably expressed through the Little Prince.
Pilgrims from Nigeria, the Philippines, Uganda, and Kenya in Jerusalem.
Isn’t this precisely the way faith teaches us to see? Faith trains our vision to recognize what truly matters, what is worth preserving, and what ultimately gives meaning to life and transforms it. Those who see what is essential can recognize the tree hidden within the seed and work with joy, confident that the fruit is already there—unseen, but real. Hope, rooted in faith, nourishes resilience: it does not deny suffering but faces it constructively.
Hope is not a disembodied virtue that dreams of a utopian future where things will somehow improve. Christian hope, on the contrary, encourages us to work diligently, day by day, striving for excellence in our daily tasks and cultivating positive relationships at every level. Ultimately, the Christian’s hope is sustained by the certainty that God chose to enter our time, to make our calendar His own—with its rhythms of work and rest, its unique days that often seem indistinguishable—in order to introduce us into His: eternity. And He does so not as honored guests, but as beloved members of His family.
Group from France at Saxum
Emmanuel, “God with us,” foretold by the prophet Isaiah, came to remain with us. He “pitched His tent among us” (John 1:14) and remains forever: truly, really, and substantially present in the Eucharist, and present in the Church, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. Hidden God, yet always present—“Sweet Guest of the Soul,” as the Pentecost Sequence describes Him. Our lives are transformed when, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we walk with Christ, listen to His Word, and sit at table with Him, ready to share the Bread that is Himself, freely given to us.
Group from Romania at Saxum
In light of this reality, the words spoken by Saint Josemaría in 1967 during an outdoor Mass on the campus of the University of Navarra remain strikingly relevant today. On that occasion, he said: “God is calling you to serve Him in and through the ordinary, material, secular activities of human life: in a laboratory, in a hospital operating room, in a military barracks, from a university chair, in a factory, in a workshop, in the fields, in the home, and throughout the vast panorama of human work, God awaits us every day.” And he added: “Never forget it: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”
On June 26, the Church celebrates his feast day—a fitting opportunity to discover more deeply his message about the greatness of ordinary life.
By Carmen Rodríguez Êyre