Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, September 05, 2008
Holmen priest plans pilgrimage to Holy Land
When the Rev. Robert Schaller was in college, he spent a summer in Germany, in part because he was studying German. More importantly, he said, “there was something in me that wanted to see that land that my ancestors came from.”
His pilgrimage to the Holy Land last February was kind of like that, only bigger. “This was more important than that because it’s a matter of faith,” said Schaller, priest at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Holmen.
Schaller traveled to the Holy Land for 10 days with a group of 23 priests, including Archbishop Raymond Burke. He went thinking he might want to lead a Holy Land pilgrimage himself and came back convinced it was something he needed to do. He wants others in his parish and from the surrounding area to see and experience the same things he has.
“It was a remarkable, remarkable trip,” said Schaller, who will lead his own pilgrimage Feb. 8-18.
“To go to those places is a tremendously enriching spiritual experience. It brings a lot more stuff alive. To actually see the Sea of Galilee or be in Jerusalem and see the Mount of Olives, it makes it so much more real.”
Schaller, a 1975 Holmen High School graduate, has twice been to Rome and served in Okinawa, Japan, with the Marines. All of his world travels, even his visits to Rome, pale in comparison to seeing the places where Jesus walked, he said. And the amazing thing, he said, is much of that area remains undeveloped, so it looks like it could have 2,000 years ago.
The upcoming pilgrimage will include the same sites as Schaller’s earlier trip, with visits to the Sea of Galilee, Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle, the River Jordan, the Tomb of Lazarus, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Mount Zion and a host of important sites in Jerusalem, including the Via Dolorosa, Stations of the Cross.
One of the most moving sites for Schaller was the spot where Jesus was tried the night before his crucifixion. The building no longer remains, but the underground cells where Jesus would have been held overnight are still there. The lowest one is called “the pit,” and Schaller said that is where Jesus is believed to have been held.
Schaller and the other priests were able to descend to the pit, where they read Psalm 88, a lamentation psalm of a man who has being abandoned. “It was most evocative, given where we were standing,” said Schaller, who said he could easily imagine Jesus calling up that psalm from memory as he awaited his fate.
Schaller will lead the pilgrimage with a priest from Stevens Point, Father Kevin Louis. Every day, they will say Mass at one of the sites visited.
For Schaller, who started at St. Elizabeth in June 2005, the pilgrimage to the Holy Land was just the right amount of time and was the spiritual experience of a lifetime.
“You’re seeing so many things that are part of the faith. ... It was really a tremendous spiritual gift to be able to do that,” Schaller said. “Now when I read the Scriptures, there’s something that comes to my mind.”
AT A GLANCE
WHAT: Pilgrimage to the Holy Land led by the Rev. Robert Schaller of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Holmen
WHEN: Feb. 8-18, 2009
DETAILS: Log onto www.stelizabethas.org for costs and other information
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