Candle at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Light a candle

Light a candle at the empty tomb

Write what is on your heart. We carry it into the church, light a real candle for it, and send you a video of your flame burning in Jerusalem - once, or every month.

Holy Land Treasures LLC, an independent service lighting candles at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Light a candle - US$19.99/mo or US$24.90 once
The domes and bell tower of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Aedicule under the rotunda, flanked by tall candlesticks, with pilgrims waiting at its door.

The Tomb

Non est hic, surrexit

Your candle burns at the door of the tomb

Under the great rotunda stands the Aedicule, a small marble house built over the rock-cut tomb where Jesus was laid. What was said here was not that he had gone. It was that he is not here - he is risen. Candles have burned outside that door for seventeen centuries. Yours can be one of them.

Hands lighting slender beeswax candles among rows of others already burning.

How it works

Three steps, a real candle - once or every month

  1. 1

    Write your intention

    A name, a person, a hope, a grief - as short or as long as you like. We do not publish it and we do not share it.

  2. 2

    We light your candle

    We light a real candle for your intention at the church in Jerusalem - wax, wick and flame. Not a symbol rendered in software. We do this once, or every month - as you choose.

  3. 3

    You receive the video

    Within seven days of each lighting we email you a video of your candle burning, so you can see it was done.

A printed intention held up before rows of burning candles.
The video you receive looks like this: your intention, printed, before the burning candles.
The dome of the rotunda rising to its open oculus above the tomb.

The church above

Six communities under one roof

Consecrated in 335 over the quarry that held both Golgotha and the tomb, and rebuilt after fire, earthquake and Crusade. Six Christian communities keep it together today under an arrangement so exact that a Muslim family has held the door key for centuries - and above the tomb the rotunda opens to a single round light.

Pilgrims kneeling around the Stone of Anointing, hands and foreheads pressed to the slab.
Mosaic detail of the deposition: Mary cradling the head of her son against a field of gold.Mosaic detail of the deposition: the ladder set against the walls of Jerusalem, a mourner bowed beneath it.

You are not the first

People have been coming here for seventeen centuries

They queue through the night for the tomb, and they kneel at the Stone of Anointing and press their foreheads to it - from Ethiopia, Armenia, Greece, Poland, the Philippines. Those who could not make the journey have always sent their names ahead with someone who could. This is one more way.

Light a candle

Holy Land Treasures LLC, an independent service lighting candles at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Choose your candle

Private. Read only by us, when we light your candle.

Your intention may reveal your religious beliefs. By sending it you explicitly agree that we may read and store it for one purpose only - lighting your candle. We never publish it, share it, or use it to advertise anything.

Your payment goes to Holy Land Treasures LLC, not to the church. It is a purchase, not a donation, and it is not tax-deductible.