By Ben Owens | Posted June 29, 2023

For centuries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has attracted religious pilgrims from all over the world. It is believed to have been built over the sites of the Lord Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Every year visitors can be seen by the thousands, weeping, wailing, begging for some special mercy—in the very place where full atonement was already made. It was reflection on this tragic irony that prompted the poem below.

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Upon the place

Where the battered face

Of the Savior grimaced in propitiating anguish

Stands a monument to bondage:

“No relief for pilgrims here.”

They come. Crawling, crying, kissing

The crumbling stone—still decaying from the fall.

Despairing din hushes the voice

Of Him who says, “It is finished.

I paid all.”