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YOU ARE THE PILGRIM

The experience of visiting the Holy Land is unlike any other pilgrimage. It cannot be compared to pilgrimage sites anywhere around the world. You are coming to the heart of the Bible, the heart of the incarnation, death, and resurrection.

 

You will be setting your foot on the very land the Lord set his foot on; you will be walking where He walked, eating some of the same food He ate, and seeing the same landscapes He also saw.

 

Our faith in Christ is indeed based on faith. "Blessed are those who have believed without seeing." But, don't you think that it would great to associate the wonderful Gospel and Bible narratives with real places and meet real people from the very land of Christ?

 

A Holy Land pilgrimage can only reaffirm and strengthen our great faith with tangible proof and a personal encounter with our Lord. A Holy Land pilgrimage is a Bible lesson on the exact spot where it happened. It is a surreal feeling that can feed you, the pilgrim, with more spiritual food. Seeing the actual place can only reaffirm the belief in our Lord. "The saying, 'Seeing is believing' will take a new dimension in your understanding and feeling of the Gospel.

 

Come and stand on the shore of the sea of Galilee. View the ancient olive trees at the Garden of Gethsemane, the four-thousand-year-old Jacob's Well, or first-century Capernaum. You will develop a special connection with the Scriptures and a captivating bond with Christ, unlike anything you have ever experienced before. No other land in the world can match that. And the feeling of Jesus, as a Living God, will overwhelm you. He is no more a God you worship from far away, but God incarnate, daily taking our humanity in its fullness. You will see it and live it yourself!

 

However, you have to come to the Holy Land for you to experience this feeling. And second, you have to close your heart, not from God, but from everything else that might keep you away from God. You must 'Close for Renovation' so that you can open your heart to the transformation that can happen with a sincere will for a personal encounter with Christ.  

At the same time,

 

  • "As pilgrims, we have to learn to be spiritually attached to the sites, but at the same time physically detached from them. tourists want to see the site and pass through it; therefore, their presence in any particular site is physical. As pilgrims, we want to have the site see us and pass through us, and as a consequence our presence in a particular site is spiritual."

 

  • "As pilgrims, another way is to look at sites from the perspective of the sites themselves. The Sea of Galilee and its landscapes saw the lord and as a result, they commemorate and honor his presence by passing through his earthly life. These sites can give pilgrims enough inspiration to help them see him and pass through his life as well." 

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Selected Excerpts from the book,

"Closed For Renovation, On the Road to Emmaus."

(author, Peter E. Sabella) 

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