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

I'll never forget the first time kneeling at Calvary. I was on pilgrimage as a graduate student in the

Holy Land and we had a chance to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in

Jerusalem which is built over the place where Jesus died. And there I was with hundreds of other pilgrims in this long line

waiting for 90 minutes and finally it was my turn to go to the very spot of Jesus'

death and it was so moving to be here. I heard this is where it all happened.

This is the climax of all of salvation history. This is where Jesus died for our sins.

And I remember afterwards thinking about how I was just one of thousands of other pilgrims that day that went to remember where Jesus died.

And really I was just one of millions of people throughout the century that made great sacrifices to go

to remember the place where Jesus died there in Jerusalem.

And I remember wondering, wow, why do people remember this one man's death.

You know, some people might say, well, it's because Jesus was the Messiah.

That's why they remember his death.

But I knew from my studies that there were many other people around the time of Jesus who

claimed to be a Messiah.

In a generation or two before and after the life of Christ, there were almost a dozen other

Messiah figures, people that claimed to be a king, took up some kind of royal status, led a movement, started to rebel against Rome.

And we can read about this with people like Judas the Galilean and Jesus' childhood around the time of his birth.

He led a tax revolt in Galilee.

There was a man about a generation and a half after Jesus named Simon Ben Cosiba who had some of the leaders in Jerusalem say here

at last is the Messiah.

So there were other people who claim to be Messiah.

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