"The Last Judgment" by Michelangelo Buonarroti is pictured in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museums. The Vatican announced March 8 that the Vatican Museums will be closed until April 3 as a precaution against spread of the coronavirus. Also closed for the same duration are the necropolis under St. Peter's Basilica, museums at the pontifical villa at Castel Gandolfo, and the museums of the papal basilicas.
Photo: CNS 
While the coronavirus means we can’t travel, we can still be transported to the heart of the faith writes Ruadhán Jones
The practice of making pilgrimage has a long history in the Church, reaching back to the 4th Century. Christians would travel to the sites of Christ’s life, or to the graves of martyrs and saints such as Peter and Paul. For many today, Holy Week and the Easter is a time to make pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land, as well as the sites of famous Marian apparitions such as Lourdes and Medjugorje.
But, as with many other aspects of our lives, pilgrimage has become near impossible because of the coronavirus. This Holy Week we were confined to our homes and this Easter season continues in the same fashion.
But if you still wish to spend Eastertide as a pilgrim, there are ways to do so. Virtual pilgrimages also have a long history, reaching back to the Middle Ages. Walking in Christ’s footsteps wherever you were was a popular devotional ideal back then.
However, few nuns and women religious had the freedom or funding to make the journeys. Instead, by using images, holy objects, and the accounts of pilgrims, they conducted virtual pilgrimages within the convent.
By virtue of the internet, we can practise this domestic pilgrimage to an even greater level of detail. If you want to follow Christ’s path on the Via Dolorosa, or to be inspired by the beauty of the Sistine Chapel, virtual reality offers an alternative.
Many of these shrines and holy sites are now accessible through video, images and remarkable 360 photography. We have picked out a few which are especially relevant old.
Life of Christ: Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
A story is told about a 15th Century nun called Sr Maria Minz. Before she joined the Dominicans, Sr Maria vowed that she would make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But after joining her order, she saw no way of fulfilling her vow and this upset her.
Eventually, she worked out a way of conducting the pilgrimage within the convent. She said goodbye to her sisters and for one year – the duration of a pilgrimage – she didn’t speak or dine with them. She walked round and round the convent, passing between shrines and altars, each identified with a holy location in Jerusalem.
Though her actions are remarkable, they highlight a tradition among women religious. Instead of visiting Jerusalem itself, they would imagine their convents as miniature models of the holy city. They would observe all the rules of a pilgrimage, such as fasting and solitude, and conduct them in their homes.
While this may seem an alien approach, it is one that is open to us in a less demanding but still rewarding way. Beginning at the top of Mount Nebo, where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land, you can make a virtual pilgrimage through the Holy Land which takes in 84 locations, concluding with the Dome of Ascension.
This pilgrimage can be accessed on P4Panorama.com, a website dedicated to the production of virtual tours. The tour is free to access and provides brief descriptions of each site. Thanks to the 360 degree photography, you can get a near-complete image of all the sites. The main limitation is the lack of a tour guide’s commentary, but the internet provides many different sources for information on the holy sites.
There are many different ways you could approach the tour. It can be an educational tool, for yourself or for children. To see the sites named in the Gospels – such as the Mount of the Beatitudes or the sea of Galilee – and the Old Testament can bring them to life in a vivid and concrete manner.
This would be a particularly good way to teach children about the life of Christ, used in conjunction with the Gospel or as part of religious education. It is incredible to consider that the site of Christ’s birth, his baptism, his temptation and his miracles are still in existence and accessible from our homes.
Another possible approach is to use the tours as a devotional or reflective tool for the Easter season. It can be a great way to enter into a new understanding of Christ’s Passion. On Holy Thursday, you could explore the room in which Christ’s Last Supper took place. From there, you can move to the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ waited and prayed while the disciples slept. You could, in all, follow Christ right up to his Crucifixion.
Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa
It may not be obvious, but every year we take part in a virtual pilgrimage in a manner similar to the nuns of the Middle Ages. The Stations of the Cross are an integral part of the Holy Week celebrations. On Good Friday, every parish conducts the stations to commemorate Christ’s Passion, but it is also a common practice throughout the year.
The stations are based on the Via Dolorosa, the Sorrowful Way, which is believed to be the path Jesus walked to his crucifixion. This processional route is in the Old City of Jerusalem and has been an important place of pilgrimage from early in the Church’s history.
The Stations of the Cross as you find them in your local church are designed to represent the Lord’s Passion, and are in a sense a virtual encounter with the Via Dolorosa. The recreation/imitation of Holy Sites such as the via was common in the early Church, and continues up to present times.
It was as a result of St Francis’ special veneration for the Passion of Christ that the stations as we have them today were created. The Franciscan’s established a settled route along the Via and during the 15th and 16th century began to build outdoor shrines to duplicate their counterparts in the Holy Land. By the 19th Century, the stations were a fixture in most Catholic churches around the world.
Now that we are confined to our homes, the physical practice of the stations is difficult. But it also offers the opportunity to conduct the stations in the footsteps of Christ on the Via Dolorosa. Through a virtual tour offered by youvisit.com, you can walk the via from beginning to end.
The tour includes 360 degree images of each station, as well as standard photos and videos. At each station, information is provided about the significance of the site and, where appropriate, includes scriptural references and quotes. As with the tour of the Holy Land, there is no guide, but there is plenty of information available online.
Beginning at the Church of the Flagellation, the possible site of Christ’s condemnation, the tour takes you along the winding route of the via through Jerusalem. It takes in the site of Christ’s conviction, his three falls, his encounter with his mother Mary, with Veronica and finally his crucifixion. Fourteen stations are set up along the via and these are some of Christianity’s holiest sites.
By walking in Christ’s footsteps, we join in a memorial of his Passion. This was the intention of the stations down through the centuries. While it is better to do this physically, calling to mind the immensity of Christ’s suffering, the virtual tour enables us to carry out a pilgrimage which is still true to the intentions of the stations. As we are reminded at the ninth station, when Christ falls for the third time he does so in sight of the place of his crucifixion.
Beauty and the divine: The Sistine Chapel
Rome has been a site of pilgrimage since at least the 7th Century. The Venerable Bede records in his Ecclesiastical History that princes and princesses would often visit the shrines of the apostles in Rome.
Similarly, St John Chrysostom expressed the love it inspired in many Christians, and himself yearned to see the remains of St Paul: “If I were freed from my labours and my body were in sound health I would eagerly make a pilgrimage merely to see the chains that had held him captive and the prison where he lay.”
This love of Rome has carried on to our own era and is one of the reasons why the images of Pope Francis’ solitary celebrations in St Peter’s Square are so remarkable. Rome would typically be thronged with tourists and pilgrims at this time of the year. Instead, due to the extensive lockdown, the city is almost empty. Sites such as the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basilica and all the Vatican museums are all closed to the public.
However, we are still able to make a pilgrimage of a kind to some of the Pope’s museums and churches. The Musei Vaticani offer virtual tours to a number of the most popular sites, including the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s Rooms, the Chiaramonti museum, and four others. All of the tours can be accessed at museivaticani.va.
The tours are quite light on information, but are exquisitely detailed in terms of the photography. The fact that the museums and chapels are empty is also a great advantage. You are able to experience the Sistine Chapel without obstruction or distraction. The quality of the images mean that you can magnify them and examine the details of Michelangelo’s ceiling to an extent otherwise unimaginable.
However, due to the lack of information provided during the tours, it is a good idea to look up the history and details before you enter the buildings. A little guidance helps to understand how each display is a testimony to the power of art as a way of understanding God and the divine.
Art has been an important part of the Church and many great artists, writers and musicians have used their talents in its service. The beauty of Rome’s churches and its museums is a reminder of that fact.
By reflecting on the works of great sculptures, painters, and architects, we can come to know God in the beauty of his creation. It was St Augustine who described God as an author and it is his artistry that we see represented in the best art.
The Easter Season is an ideal time to contemplate the Sistine Chapel in particular. Pope St John Paul II, reflecting on the chapel at its restoration, said it “introduces us to the world of Revelation. The truths of our faith speak to us here from all sides”. The works of Michelangelo and Renaissance painters such as Botticelli and Pinturicchio work in communion with each other to bring to life the Old and New Testament.
On one side of the chapel, the life of Moses is depicted – on the other, the life of Christ. The ceiling ranges from the beginning of time, through the creation of man and up to the New Testament.
Finally, on the back wall is Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. In this great fresco, St John Paul II said, Michelangelo “strikingly reveals the whole mystery of Christ’s glory linked to the Resurrection. To be gathered here during the Easter Octave is extremely propitious. More especially we stand before the glory of Christ’s humanity.”
If you are looking for a way to contemplate Christ’s death and resurrection this Easter season, a pilgrimage to the Sistine Chapel is a good possibility.
Contemplate the face of Jesus: the Shroud of Turin
Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus is a relatively recent Catholic tradition. Though it has roots in the story of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus, the devotion was given papal sanction by Pope Leo XIII in 1895.
The modern devotion to the Holy Face began with the visions of Sr Marie of St Peter, a French Carmelite nun. In 1844, Christ told her that “those who will contemplate the wounds on My Face here on earth, shall contemplate it radiant in heaven”.
Though formal recognition for the devotion came in the 19th Century, the tradition has a strong link with the Shroud of Turin. Believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus, the shroud shows a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death.
The shroud has been the source of a great deal of scrutiny and controversy. The Church has not officially endorsed or rejected the image, approving of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Pope St John Paul II described the shroud as a “mirror of the Gospel”, while entrusting to scientists the task of proving or disproving its true nature.
Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin led a special exposition of the Shroud of Turin on Easter Saturday, April 11. This decision, he said, was in response to the “thousands and thousands” of messages he received asking for it to be displayed.
Pope John Paul II visited the shroud and reflected that “we cannot escape the idea that the image it presents has such a profound relationship with what the Gospels tell of Jesus’ passion and death”. It turns us towards Christ, making tangible his suffering and inviting us to discover the “ultimate reason for Jesus’ redeeming death”.
Pope Francis, when he visited the shroud in 2015, spoke of the love Jesus had for humanity when being crucified. He described the shroud as an “icon of this love”: “The shroud draws [people] to the tormented face and body of Jesus and, at the same time, directs [people] toward the face of every suffering and unjustly persecuted person.”
In light of these reflections, contemplation of the shroud, whether it is real or not, is an opportunity not to be missed. It offers us the chance to be like the pilgrims who have visited the shroud for centuries, seeing in in the image of Jesus Christ’s redeeming suffering and his exalting love.
For more information, visit www.shroud.com
