33 Years in the Holy Land: What Jesus Saw from Bethlehem to Golgotha

by Antonin Sertillanges

With this penetrating prequel to Fr. Sertillanges's bestselling book, What Jesus Saw from the Cross , you'll go behind the Gospels to experience a richly textured, moment-by-moment account of the incredible events of Christ's life, from the Nativity to Golgotha. In a style that has won praise and admiration from Catholics for nearly a century, Fr. Sertillanges masterfully unites the familiar stories of the Gospels to the peculiar circumstances and geographical surroundings of Christ's life. These stories, combined with his lyrical descriptions of the Holy Land, bring vividly to life those secret and holy places sanctified by our Lord, and will deepen your prayerful meditations and enrich your spiritual reading. Happy are those who have stood in the cave in Bethlehem, walked in prayer the roads that Jesus walked, and knelt at the tomb of our Redeemer. Now the rest of us who have never visited Israel can open the rich pages of 33 Years in the Holy Land and gaze in silence at the crib in Bethlehem, hear Jesus say to the dismayed fishermen, "Follow me!", and feel the chill of Golgotha as it looms ever larger in His mind. Take up these pages. Let these reflections deepen your meditations on the life of Christ and fill you with gratitude for His tremendous love for you. Your faith will grow stronger, your meditations richer, and your prayers more fervent and more frequent.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Catholic

144 pages, Paperback

Published April 18, 2019

About the author

Fr. Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P. was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer.

Born Antonin-Dalmace, he took the name Antonin-Gilbert when he entered the Dominican order. In 1893 he founded the Revue Thomiste and later became professor of moral philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Henri Daniel-Rops wrote that it was rumored that President Raymond Poincaré asked Léon-Adolphe Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, for a reply to Pope Benedict XV's peace proposals, and that Amette passed the request along to Sertillanges; in any event, Amette gave his imprimatur to this reply on 5 December 1917, five days before it was made public. In The Heroic Life, Sertillanges had defended Benedict's attitude toward peace, but in "The French Peace", Sertillanges said, "Most Holy Father, we cannot for an instant entertain your appeals for peace."

His scholarly work was concerned with the moral theory of Thomas Aquinas. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for two non-specialist works. The Intellectual Life is a practical guide for how to structure one's life so as to make progress as a scholar. What Jesus Saw from the Cross is a spiritual work that drew upon the time Sertillanges spent living in Jerusalem. Certain of Sertillanges' works are concerned with political theory, with French identity and the structure of the traditional French family.