Lord, We Have Come
Lord, We Have Come
Beloved in Christ,
Happy are the people whose strength is in you!
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims' way.
--Psalm 84:4
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which houses the sites of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, contains a lot of ancient graffiti. For many centuries, pilgrims who traveled there would etch small crosses, or occasionally make small drawings, in the stone of Golgotha, and take the stone they scratched away as holy souvenirs. One of the most famous and well-preserved drawings is from a fourth century group of pilgrims who drew a boat, underneath which is written: Domine Ivimus, “Lord, we have come.”
It’s a powerful experience to retrace the crosses cut in the stone, a physical connection to pilgrims many centuries past, and to those who will touch the same stone long after I am gone. It’s an incarnate reminder that we do not stand on our own. We are connected to elders and ancestors who have walked the way of Jesus before us. Like us, they came carrying fears, hopes, gratitude, grief, and illness. They faced oppressive governments and changing cultural landscapes.
Like the centuries of pilgrims who have come before us, the road we walk is not new, and we do not walk on it alone. We put our boats into a river that started flowing long before us, and will continue long past our ending point. We do not belong to ourselves, but to a vast family that transcends time and space, and is held together by the power of the Spirit.
So as we face these challenging days, we do well to remember that we have been here before. Our elders and ancestors in Jesus have cut a path for us. This is a moment to spend some family time reading and praying with the disciples and pilgrims who have come before us, to practice the spiritual exercises around scripture, prayer, community, and sacrament they gifted us, placing our fingers on the stones they carved, drawing nourishment from their strength, until, arriving on the kingdom’s shore, we can join in their cathartic shout of joy as we behold a world ruled by perfect love: “Lord, we have come.”
Grace and Peace,
The Right Rev. Craig Loya