It's Empty

By the end of my sabbatical pilgrimage, I’ll have spent two months of my life in Jerusalem. That has given me the great blessing of countless hours of prayer at the holiest site in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There is always a long line to enter that holy place and get a few precious seconds to venerate the sacred tomb.

It is a striking image: People line up and easily wait an hour or more to enter a place where there is, frankly, nothing to see.

Because He is not there.

He is Risen.

I chuckled as the irony washed over me. We were anxiously waiting to get into a tomb that is famous because Someone got out of it!

Of course, there is a natural desire to venerate the place of that history-changing, life-transforming moment of the Resurrection. Yet as I waited in that chaotic line, I wondered if we pilgrims had gotten our priorities slightly inverted.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what’s in that tomb. What matters is the One who walked out of it alive; the one who cannot be contained by a tomb but chooses to be the prisoner of every tabernacle in the world.

Standing there, dwarfed by the towering dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I found myself convicted by a question: If Jesus is present in the tabernacle at my parish, isn’t that a much holier site, a more venerated place, than even this most sacred of Churches in Christendom? Isn’t my parish tabernacle a site due far more reverence than the Holy Tomb because while Jesus left that tomb, He is waiting in that tabernacle?

Sixty-two days into my sabbatical and I realize that all of this - while a tremendous blessing - doesn’t matter. From the experience of the holy sites, the beauty of the art, and the insights found within history, all of it is unimportant compared to the One who stands at its center. To dwell in the presence of the Risen One I don’t need to be in the Holy Land, Rome, or any other place of "significance."

I simply need to be in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

I first accepted the call to discipleship in my late 20s. Soon after, I stumbled across something at my parish called “Eucharistic Adoration.” At the time, I had no idea what that meant. But I wanted to try all the “Catholic things,” so I went without understanding or preparation. At first, sitting silently before the Eucharist Lord was a little odd. I kept wondering if there was something I should be doing. Was it okay if I read? Should I pray a rosary? But rather quickly, it became the most life-giving aspect of my weekly schedule, the time I could simply rest with the Lord and let His Presence transform me. In Eucharistic Adoration, that young disciple first recognized the call to the priesthood.

While it has been a great grace to celebrate Mass at the holy sites here in Israel, the greatest consolations and experiences of God’s presence have been those times I’ve prayed before the Blessed Sacrament in the simple chapel at my hotel.

A pilgrimage is not an end in itself. The goal isn’t to experience certain things or have some great pictures to look back on. The pilgrimage must always stay an outward journey that fosters an interior journey of repentance, conversation, and renewal. Suppose my time on sabbatical pilgrimage does nothing but deepen my love of the Eucharistic Jesus present in the tabernacle of my parish back.

In that case, this will have been the most valuable time of my life.