By Jessica Easthope
It’s one of our country’s hidden secrets, a little piece of the Holy Land.
Tucked into the nation’s capital, it’s been there since 1880.
The Monastery of the Holy Land in America, where Franciscan friars have built 85 replicas of some of the most important Christian sites.
“You will find a replica of the Holy Sepulchre and a replica of Calvary, that are at the same distance as in Jerusalem,” said Father David Grenier, the commissary of the Holy Land. “And the height of Calvary is the same. Then in Jerusalem, you have the Grotto of Bethlehem, the Grotto of Nazareth, the Grotto of Gethsemane, the place of the Ascension. I mean many, many replicas that you can see in the Holy Land. So that’s why we are called the Holy Land in America.”
Each year on special feast days, like Christmas and Good Friday, the friars celebrate services in the American counterparts of the Holy Land’s holiest places.
“We try to take advantage of this beautiful legacy that we have here with the possibility to have the people to experience some things special that we do in the Holy Land because that’s the whole idea of the place, to have the people experience how it is in the Holy Land as much as we can,” Father Grenier said. “On Good Friday, we do a celebration that is done at the Holy Sepulchre, which is the burial of Christ. We take the body of Christ from Calvary and with songs, we bring Him into the tomb, reproducing the rites that were done at the time.”
Throughout the year, the monastery helps financially support Franciscan missionaries serving the Christian community in the Holy Land.