Angelus News | July 29, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 15

of Jesus Christ, continued to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem
for Pentecost (Acts 20:16).
And others followed his example. St. Melito of Sardis, in
the mid-A.D.100s, made his way to the Holy Land in order
to enrich his understanding of the Scriptures. A few decades
later, the Egyptian scholar Origen recounted his own
sojourn in Palestine as a pilgrimage and availed himself of
opportunities to visit the sacred sites.
The pagan Romans even took measures to discourage
Christian pilgrimage. The pagan emperor Hadrian ordered
that the cave of Jesus’ nativity be buried and a grove planted
over it, dedicated to the god Adonis. Every deterrent was in
place, but believers visited anyway.
As the Church spread outward from Jerusalem, Christians
made their way to other pilgrim destinations. There was
Rome. St. Paul himself was led inexorably toward the empire’s
capital (Acts 19:21, 23:11; Romans 15:30–32).
St. Peter was, too. Both men sanctified the ground there by
their martyrdom — and so drew many more pilgrims in their
wake.
In the next generation after the apostles, in A.D. 107, St.
Ignatius of Antioch felt himself to be propelled toward
Rome, to die there as a martyr, but also to pay his respects to
the place that was already regarded as the religious capital
of Christianity — the Church that “presides in the place of
the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor,
worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of
obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy,
and which presides over love.”
In spite of persecution, Christians streamed to Rome and
left their marks in graffiti at the burial places of St. Peter and
St. Paul — and then at the sites associated with other saints.
Paul and Peter, pray for Victor! …
Martyrs and saints, keep Maria in mind …
O Hippolytus, remember Peter, a sinner …
Master Crescentio, heal my eyes for me! …
O St. Sixtus, remember Aurelius Repentinus in your prayers! …
O holy souls, remember Marcianus, Successus, Severus, and
all our brethren!
In the fourth century, St. Jerome traveled from Croatia
to Rome to pursue his studies; but he spent his Sundays
wandering with a torch through the dark tunnels of the catacombs.
There he prayed in a weekly pilgrimage.
Later in life, St. Jerome would go to Jerusalem, along with
an entourage from Rome. They would become history’s
most ardent promoters of religious tourism to the Holy Land.
He describes the effect such an excursion had on his friend,
St. Paula of Rome:
Tourists leave after visiting the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem in 2010. Tradition holds that the church is built over the spot where Jesus was born. |
CNS/AMMAR AWAD, REUTERS
July 29, 2022 • ANGELUS • 11