Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic where real faith meets real life.

One of my favorite places to go when on a holy land pilgrimage is not a place you might

expect.

It's not a church, a cathedral, or a basilica, there's no chapel there, there's not the

blessed sacrament there, it's not run by the Catholic church, it's called the Davidson

Center.

You can see them run by the Israeli government on the southeast corner of Jerusalem, but when

you go in here, you can go and touch the walls of the temple, the base walls, the stones

that are at the foundation of the temple, the stones that were there in the time of Jesus.

It's amazing.

And when you go into this place, you can actually go to what's known as the southern steps

of the temple.

And there are some of the very steps that remain from the first century, the steps that

Jesus himself would have walked on.

The steps that Mary, and Joseph, and Peter, and James, and John, and St. Paul would have

walked on.

And this week, we're getting ready to celebrate a great feast day, the feast of the presentation.

And that big scene, that fourth joyful mystery of the Rosary, we can imagine taking place

somewhere at the temple, but we know on that day, Mary and Joseph probably would have come

up right there from the southern steps of the temple.

They might have met Simeon right on those very steps.

It was amazing.

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