Paul would have been standing right in the area where we were celebrating Mass. Huge crowds of people would have been walking all around him and the court officials surrounding him, some stopping to look and listen, just as people were stopping and looking at our strange group of pilgrims, gathered around a makeshift altar in the sun.

I’ve been fortunate to make this pilgrimage several times before, and it is indeed life-changing — or can be, if we will allow the Holy Spirit to guide us. Christians have gone on pilgrimage almost from the very beginning. We do things like this quite simply because God acts in history, in concrete time and space. Visiting and praying in places where He did wonders of old can serve to remind us that He wants to do them now in our time and space.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “It is our perennial spiritual and psychological task to look at things that are familiar until they become unfamiliar again.” This is so true. How have we become used to these mysteries we’ve been celebrating in the Easter season? How can it be that we find these realities…dry, boring, dull, of little to no real interest?

What, then, does it mean to say that Jesus “is seated at the right hand of the Father”? Most succinctly, it means He reigns. To profess in the Creed that Jesus is seated right now at the right hand of the Father means that Jesus, the God-man, Lord of the universe, is “in charge.” It means to profess that He holds the world, the Church, history, and each one of us in His hands. This position is rightfully His because by His loving self-offering on the Cross He defeated the powers of Sin, Death and Satan himself who had held the world captive since that dark day in Eden.