Rev. Sylvester Nnaso, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Hampshire, led a group of 28 Catholics on a 10-day pilgrimage to Israel this Lenten season.
“We traveled by Turkish Airlines from Chicago O’Hare Airport to Istanbul, Turkey,” Nnaso said. “It is about 11 hours to Istanbul and another two hours from Istanbul to Tel Aviv in Israel.”
The pilgrimage ran from Monday, March 2, to Wednesday, March 11. Most of the “pilgrims” were from St. Charles Borromeo Church.
Nnaso noted that they celebrated mass every day at the different holy sites they visited.
The tour began by visiting Caesarea in Haifa.
Other sites included: Megiddo, Tiberias, Mount Carmel, Mount Tabor, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, the Jordan River, Nazareth, Bethany, Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, Bethlehem, the Western Wall, Bethesda, the Holy Sepulchre, the Dead Sea and Calvary.
Nnaso said that there are four journeys that are encouraged by the Catholic Church: pilgrimage, mission, education and vacation.
“A pilgrimage to Rome is walking in the footsteps of the saints. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is walking in the footsteps of Christ,” Nnaso said. “A mission trip or journey is traveling for the purpose of giving a helping hand to someone or a group of people in need. In other words, you become the face of Christ to others just like Christ who went about doing good. An educational trip is when one travels to empower his or her intellectual ability in order to be intellectually effective in his or her areas of ministry. A vacation is when someone takes time off work to travel to a place for the purpose of recreation. In a vacation, you are in control of your time. During the other three trips, your time is controlled by someone else or circumstance. For a priest or minister, the first three trips are extensions of ministerial service to the community.”
He stressed that the recent journey to Israel was a pilgrimage and not a vacation.
Nnaso was born and raised in Nigeria. He still has ties there with the Seat of Wisdom Library project in Abatete that he started in 2007 with a $20 donation from Frank Polizzi of Crystal Lake. He said the 7,000-square-foot library will open on Dec. 31.
“It has been my experience that any project that is motivated by a true love for the poor is always being managed by God himself,” Nnaso said.
He has served as associate pastor at St. Mary Church in Woodstock and Church of the Holy Apostles in McHenry. He has also been a teacher at Marian Central High School in Woodstock. He became the pastor at St. Charles Borromeo Church in 2011.
He made his first pilgrimage to Israel in 1999.
“I traveled with a group of seminarians from Detroit and spent two months there,” Nnaso said. “My favorite places were sailing on the Sea of Galilee and doing the Stations of the Cross following the path of Christ to Calvary.”
Sun City Huntley couple Tom and Darlene Bischoffer, who have been parishioners of St. Charles Borromeo Church since 1976, said they liked certain places in Israel for different reasons.
“There were places like Bethlehem and Nazareth, where Jesus was born and raised, that felt peaceful,” Darlene said. “There were places like Calvary where Jesus was crucified that were heartbreaking. We all went through a gamut of emotions. The sun was out when we took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. I could envision Christ walking toward us on the water.”
The group walked the Stations of the Cross from the palace of Pontius Pilate to Calvary. Everyone took turns carrying the cross. Darlene said she carried it with three other people.
“I wondered how Christ ever carried it,” she said.
Pingree Grove couple Jim and Maria Gisseler enjoyed their pilgrimage to Israel.
“It was both surreal and awesome,” Maria said. “When we were atop the Mount of Olives, we could look down and see other places that I thought would be further spread out. My favorite place was Jerusalem. It was both the old and the new mixed together. There were street vendors. You could really imagine what it was like in the time of Jesus. As we walked down a gravel road, I would remind myself that Jesus once walked here.”
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“My favorite places were the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane,” said Jim. “The trees in Gethsemane were so old they could have been here in the time of Jesus. It’s unbelievable to go to places that you have read about in the Bible.”
Darlene was impressed by how kind and cordial the Israelites were to their group.
Nnaso said that it is safe to travel in Israel because the country’s security system is very strong.
Darlene said the weather was beautiful during the entire pilgrimage.
“We left Chicago before the snow fell,” she said. “We never had a problem doing things outside while we were in Israel. The temperature got up to 70 degrees.”
When Darlene and her husband celebrate Easter this year, she said: “It will be extra special because we have visited every place of the Easter story.”
Denise Moran is a freelance reporter