Pilgrimage is a fitting term to describe a 10-day trip to the Holy Land experienced by 18 priests serving Hispanic parishioners in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The group visited and prayed at sites from both the Old and New Testaments. Points of interest included the Mount of Olives, Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem, Kind Herod’s mountaintop fortress at Masada, the Sea of Galilee and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

The trip was the result of collaboration between Israel Ministry of Tourism and Father Marco Mercado, director of the Office for Hispanic Catholics, who wanted priests working in Hispanic ministry to experience the Holy Land and to bring their experiences and understanding back to their congregations.

For Father Roger Corrales Diaz, pastor of St. Leonard in Berwyn, the biggest benefit was “visiting the places where Jesus preached and getting a little closer to the New Testament and Jesus’ parables and understanding that when Jesus preached he had in mind the sheep that I saw, the mountains that I saw, the river and ocean that I saw. It was an opportunity for me to connect with this Jesus that preached 2,000 years ago precisely in the context of all the natural beauty that was all around him.”

The priests who went on the pilgrimage, most of whom had never been to the Holy Land before, celebrated Mass in some of the most fascinating and holy places on the face of the earth. Father Ismael Sandoval, pastor of St. Benedict in Blue Island, said celebrating Mass on a boat on the Sea of Galilee was a spiritually profound moment. “How Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John, who were fishermen, and how he preached to them on the boats from the shore. Just being there, celebrating the Eucharist was a very intense, spiritual moment for me.”

Father Francisco Israel Ortega Muñoz, associate pastor of St. Nicholas of Tolentine Parish, 3721 W. 62nd St., felt a spiritual connection to the Basilica of the Annunciation.

To be standing “in the place where Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel; to be there and to be able to share our faith with other pilgrims who were there celebrating the Eucharist and to reflect on how it was here that it all began, all that we are now living,” Muñoz said.

Augustinian Father Anthony Pizzo, pastor of St. Rita of Cascia, 6243 S. Fairfield Ave., found meaning in the opportunity to pray together as priests. “Our celebrating the Mass, especially in the sacred sites, getting a very deep sense of our fraternity together and being able to identify with one another to appreciate our priesthood, living out my vocation, living out my religious life in the context of something historical and yet something very sacred to our tradition had a deep impact,” he said.

The pilgrim priests used technology to reach out to “friends” thousands of miles away. Some posted snapshots of their pilgrimage to Facebook and received immediate reaction.

“Utilizing communications tools such as Facebook and being able to communicate with parishioners as well as friends that live around the world, I was able to offer up their petitions and intentions at the holy places we happened to be that day,” said Father Alejandro Marca, associate pastor at St. Victor Parish in Calumet City.

Corrales and the other priests in the group found plenty of moments to reflect on how Jesus invited his disciples to follow him.

“I look around me and I see this beautiful, green, scenic place, and I ask myself why these men left all of this beauty to follow Jesus?” he said. “It means that the message that they heard from Jesus was a message that converted them, that changed them. It doesn’t matter where I happen to be on this earth, what I do recognize is that God is there.”