Just over a year ago, I had the joy of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the second time, staying at the Saxum Conference Center near Jerusalem. In two parts, I would like to share some personal experiences from that unforgettable pilgrimage. The title itself already suggests the connection between the knowledge offered by faith in Jesus and the places He walked throughout His life, places that we too can still contemplate today.
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land to Discover the Life of Jesus
Christian faith has its original source in divine grace, “through an encounter with an event, with a Person who gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction,” as Pope Benedict XVI writes in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love). The divine Person who became man, Jesus Christ, walked upon and sanctified our earth; this is why we call it the “Holy Land.” Unlike Heaven, which, as Benedict XVI also says, belongs to the “geography of the heart” because it is not a material place but the very life of divine love, the Holy Land belongs to the geography of physical space, where Jesus was born, worked, died, and rose again. It is tied to a geographical setting of cities, rivers, and mountains that, when contemplated today, awaken in believers a renewed faith and love. Pilgrims who have set foot in the Holy Land will surely agree with what I have just said.
Altar in front of the Grotto of the Annunciation. Basilica of Nazareth
This was also confirmed by the moving experience of the first man to walk on the moon: Neil Armstrong. This deeply Christian astronaut visited Jerusalem in 1988 and asked Thomas Friedman, a professor and expert in biblical archaeology, to guide him to places where there was certainty that the Lord Himself had walked. Friedman led him to the remains of the Temple stairs from the time of Herod the Great and told him: “These steps were the main entrance to the Temple,” adding, “There is no doubt that Jesus walked up them.” Upon hearing this, Armstrong paused in deep prayer for a few moments and then said to Friedman: “For me, walking on these stairs means more than walking on the moon.”
There is little more to add except to say that, in my own case, it was not those stairs — which I also climbed in Jerusalem — that moved me the most among the holy places, but rather other sites where the Lord not only certainly walked, but where He was born, died, and rose again. Strong historical and archaeological evidence supports this. I will briefly refer to five places: two in Nazareth and Bethlehem, and the remaining three in Jerusalem itself. Each deserves that the Christian pilgrim, without haste, pause in prayerful recollection so that divine grace may strengthen and rekindle faith and love for Jesus.
Nazareth, Where the Earthly Life of Jesus Began
Nazareth: its very name echoes the divine message given to the Virgin Mary, calling her to become the Mother of God. Beneath the large and modern Basilica of the Annunciation, an ancient and modest grotto commemorates the announcement of the Archangel Gabriel. At the center of the grotto stands a small altar bearing these words in Latin: “Here the Word became flesh.” Mary’s “yes” to the divine will allowed the eternal Son of the Father to begin sharing our time and our human nature. Little more is needed for the pilgrim, reliving those moments, to keep faith and love alive.
Every day at noon, the Franciscan custodians of the basilica commemorate with a procession, hymns, and the praying of the Angelus that sublime moment when Heaven and earth were united through the Incarnation of the Divine Word. I had the grace of attending that procession and later concelebrating Mass at another altar within the basilica.
Mary’s Well, Nazareth
Very close by stands the modern Church of Saint Joseph; nearby, it is believed that Joseph’s house and workshop once stood, and later the home of the Holy Family. Not far from there, about a ten-minute walk away, flows an underground spring whose waters delighted the villagers of Nazareth for centuries. There, a small structure known as “Mary’s Well” recalls the presence of the Virgin Mary, who would so often have come to this or another nearby spring to draw water for the home in Nazareth.
Today we close this window onto the places and life of Jesus, only to reopen it in a second article that will take us to Bethlehem, cradle of His Birth, and to Jerusalem, where through His death and Resurrection He completed the work of redemption.
The current painful circumstances of war and conflict in those territories fortunately do not affect the pilgrimage sites. Yet this makes it all the more fitting to conclude these lines by asking the reader to join the prayer of Pope Leo and so many Christians and people of goodwill, that the Lord may grant peace to all: the peace brought to earth and proclaimed by the angels on the night of His birth in Bethlehem.
Altar at Saxum Conference Center
By Father José Antonio García-Prieto