Pilgrimages hold a special place in my life. Give me a sacred destination that allows for contemplation, prayer, and time spent with fellow travelers and I’m hitting the road before you can pack a snack.

My love for pilgrimage has taken me to sweet neighborhood shrines in my own town to long and hard walks through the Adirondack mountains, sandstone caves, and the Camino de Santiago in Spain with its brisk 25 kilometers walk per day. On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, one holy site where Jesus called James and John required me to swim to the sacred spot along the banks of the Sea of Galilee. That was a refreshing twist to the concept of pilgrimage!

While there are many pilgrimages I’ve taken in this life, there is only one that matters.

That pilgrimage is from the cross to the empty tomb – from Calvary to the Holy Sepulcher. It is the shortest pilgrimage I’ve ever encountered, and yet, it is the hardest. I didn’t count the steps between the two, but if I had to guess, I’d say the distance is only that of a couple hundred feet. When I knelt on the ground and put my hand on the rock of Calvary where the blood of Christ was shed, I was aware that several of my friends knelt around the corner in the very place where he rose from the dead. Suffering and joy; bliss and pain; gratitude and grief; life and death – all under the same roof.

In God’s great salvific orchestration, He saw fit to place death within sight of life, joy within sight of pain, and suffering in the shadow of peace. They are so close together that they are even covered by the same roof of worship.

This pilgrimage is one we are all familiar with and encounter on an often-daily basis. There is tension on this journey that we often struggle to justify, and we are very good at trying to escape one location for the other (especially to “skip to the good part”).

The “both/and” teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is true. In short: it is possible for two things to be true at the same time, even when they seem diametrically opposed to one another.

The juxtaposition of the cross near the empty tomb is often deeply felt in our lives. Are there moments in your life when you feel pain for yourself and joy for a friend? Or perhaps you are grateful for a gift and grieving a loss at the same time? Just as the cross is not invalidated by the empty tomb, so are our sufferings not invalidated by simultaneous joy. God wants both – and. When God died for us on Calvary and rose again just steps away, He invited us to a journey of a lifetime that speaks of a righteous dissonance.

Tension is not a bad thing, and I think we can sharpen our ability to hold space for it in our hearts. Here are three things we can consider when invited to journey the shortest pilgrimage from the cross to the empty tomb:

1. Embrace the Unfinished Symphony: In music, tension is often expressed through dissonance. There is a lack of resolve or harmony in a chord or melody that leaves the listener longing for unity, resolve and oneness. The next time you feel tension of two things being true at the same time, try to think of it as the unresolved dissonance in a masterpiece symphony, knowing that the grand finale is yet to come, and allow yourself to long for its fulfillment.
2. Let Opposites Attract One Another: When I offer catechesis to small children, I never lift up the death of Jesus without also proclaiming the Resurrection. Similarly, when I speak of the resurrection, I always mention His death. The loss of Jesus would be too much to bear without the Resurrection. And the Resurrection would mean nothing without the sacrifice of His love. So it is in our lives: suffering means more when it’s held with joy, and the joy has much more meaning when it’s accompanied by suffering. Let’s not shut one out from the other but let them live together.
3. Surrender the Unknown to God: When Mary and St. Joseph received the gift of myrrh from the Magi, I can imagine it caused some tension in what a very joyful occasion was otherwise. Myrrh – used for anointing the dead? Mary had to hold the newborn along with this ominous gift. God repeatedly asked her to live in the tension, holding tension in her maternal arms. Like Mary, we cannot let the tension stop us from our walk on the journey to God. There is no way to know why certain tensions exist. God will either surprise us or give us the courage to endure until He’s ready to give us an answer. We can go to Mary for comfort and aid. She understands.

As strange as it seems, the challenge we are given to walk the hardest pilgrimage comes with a privilege that even those who witnessed Christ’s crucifixion did not have – we can see the Resurrection! Our eyes and ears were made to see redemption. When we behold His face in all its glory, we also see His wounds of love. Through this lens, every pilgrimage, no matter how arduous or long, can become a step toward profound intimacy with the divine.