This article first appeared in the 2025 Travel Guide of Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
Our group is rushing along the cobblestone streets of the Old City of Jerusalem. As we weave through the labyrinth of sand-colored passageways lined with open-air markets of colorful fabrics and perfumed spices, I can’t help but pause when we turn the corner. There it is: the fifth Station of the Cross.
I’m on the Via Dolorosa (“Sorrowful Way”), the path that Jesus is believed to have walked to his crucifixion, with Philos Catholic, part of The Philos Project, a nonprofit dedicated to Christian engagement in the Near East. We’re passing by the 14 Stations of the Cross — locations that memorialize moments of Jesus’ passion and death. They are moments I’m familiar with: Nearly every Catholic church depicts the stations with pictures hung inside.
Here in the Holy Land, we can imagine ourselves in those scenes.
At the fifth station, a passerby named Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry his cross. A chapel marks the spot. To the right of the entrance appears a square-shaped stone, darkened and worn from the touch of countless pilgrims.
“Do you see the indent there?” I point the stone out to a friend, as the others continue ahead. “That’s where tradition says Jesus rested his hand.”
We are surrounded by passersby chattering in different languages, muezzins announcing the Muslim call to prayer, customers perusing wares. Still, there is a silence in knowing what happened here.
God was here
The Bible comes to life in the Holy Land, a land where the relics of God abound. This is my second trip to Israel, and, like the first, it has been an unexpected gift. The first time, I wondered at the direction of my life; I met my future husband. This second time, I carry with me the weight of grief, of loved ones lost too soon.
Both times, I find myself asking the same question: “God, where are you?”
I ask this in Nazareth, where we visit the Church of the Annunciation, believed to be the spot where God became man. Inside, the church cradles a small, rock-hewn grotto or cave considered to be the Blessed Virgin Mary’s home. I think of the angel Gabriel announcing to her that she will conceive and bear Baby Jesus. And she, after questioning him, responds with her “yes.” A black metal grille lets us see, but not touch, the sacred space. God was here.
I think of God’s whereabouts in Bethlehem, where we enter the Church of the Nativity built above the grotto where Jesus was born. We descend into the cave and kneel to kiss the silver star on the marble floor marking the spot of his birth. I think about the baby whose death saved us, and I think about the Holy Innocents, the babies who died in his place. God was here too.
I think of my question again on the Sea of Galilee, as we step into our own boat on this body of water. The quiet surrounds us as the sunlight dances across wind-blown ripples. White birds resembling doves dance around us in the sky. This is where Jesus fished. This is where he walked on water. This is where he calmed the storm and asked, “Why are you afraid?” (Mk 4:40). He was here.
I wonder where God is as we visit the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus felt alone, betrayed. There, in the Church of All Nations, I touch the rock where he prayed and bled ahead of his arrest. At Mass, when bread and wine become his body and blood, I realize afresh what I knew all along: We needn’t fly halfway around the world nor rewind 2,000 years to be present at his sacrifice. In this moment, we are not bound by time and space; we are at the foot of the cross. He is here.
Carrying each other’s crosses
Finally, we reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We climb up steep, worn steps before crawling down on our knees underneath the altar to touch the rock of Calvary, where a crucified Jesus died. A few steps away, in the same church, stands his empty tomb. I think of Christianity and its many paradoxes: Death leads to life. A human helped God carry his cross.
Even Jesus did not carry his cross alone; perhaps it’s a reminder that we don’t carry ours alone either. Maybe Simon of Cyrene’s story is an invitation for us to help with others’ crosses and to be vulnerable enough to let them help with ours too.
What if we considered our many crosses part of the one cross, and what if we helped each other carry it? I like to think that if we saw someone struggling with her cross, it could be our cross too. That if I were falling under the weight of my cross, someone else might treat it as she would her own.
This cross is something we can learn to embrace: It is suffering and death, but also love and our path to life. Proof of a God who loves us unconditionally just the way we are, right here, right now. For he is not a relic; he is alive.
