We start our day with a visit to Old Jerusalem. We entered through the Lion's Gate, originally known as St. Steven's gate. St. Steven was thrown from this gate and stoned to death, he is known as the first martyr (protomartyr). His stoning was witnessed by St. Paul.
There are seven gates into Jerusalem:
Damascus (under restoration)
Harod
Dung
......
First we walked to St. Anne church, a place where Joachim and Anna lived, and the Virgin Mary was born. One of the Christ's miracles in Jerusalem (70% of all miracles were performed near in the Sea of Galilee) was healing of the man paralyzed for 38 years near the pools of Bethesda. The pools are located very near St. Anna's Church. Jesus might have actually seen that man as a boy when he came with his mother to visit the house where his mother grew up. The healing pool, about the sirring of the water to heal, was a pagan belief.
Next we walked Way of the Cross, probably most well known to most other Christians who come to Jerusalem. The way of the Cross is a Catholic arrangement but it is very close to the route which Christ would have taken.
There are "stations" marked on the buildings:
I "Ecce Homo" church od the Sisters of Zion order.
II Christ's Prison Church - Jesus was brought to the Romans since the Jews did not have the authority to impose the death punishment. This is why they had to bring him to Pontius Pilate.
III Place where Jesus fell under the Cross
IV Place where Jesus met His Mother
VI Place where Veronica wiped his face
Last five stations are in the Church of the Sepulchar. It is amazing how all these little churches/chapels are connected, right next to one another, built to commemorate different parts of the route that Christ took on the way to His Cross.
A group photo is taken just before we enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Church of the Ressurection). Don't we all look happy? That's because we are!
We arrive at the Tomb of Christ and Joseph quickly gets us into the line which is not as long that morning as it could be. The Tomb has two chambers, first is where the stone was rolled away (there is a piece of stone there in a glass case) and the actual place where Christ's Body lay. We stood in line for a few minutes, getting ready to enter. Joseph told us about how to enter and what to look for, like the fact that the only original thing in the main chamber is the bedrock behind the icon (you have to open the icon to touch the bedrock, which we did!). I have to say that being there was a very moving experience, even if at the moment you are there there is so much to see and feel that it's almost impossible to be present as one should be. It would be difficult to realize the enormity of this experience if one were there totally alone and in perfect silence, but being there surrounded by the tourists, pushing and shoving makes being present almost impossible. But the way I like to think about being in all these places, whether I felt present or not, is remember Fr. Mel's words from one of his talks: that being in the presence of God changes us, imperceptibly to us and others, but nevertheless very much for real, even on the molecular level. I sure hope this kind of change happened to/in me on this wonderful trip!!!
Well, then we went around the Church some more, looking at different architectural features of the church, which include early byzantine, late byzantine and the crusaders'.
The historical facts about the places and events related to this church were reported as early as year 90 (St. John the Theologian would still have been alive) by a pagan historians. They wrote about "the Nazarenes" (followers of a certain Nazarene). He said the Nazarines go to venerate at certain places and they claim their leader has resurrected.
Roman's built pagan temples over these places to suppress Jewish and Christian traces.
Next we visited Adam's Chapel, which commemorates the place where Adam was buried and freed the moment Christ died and stepped down to Hades. The rock split beneath the Cross. All ancient Saints resurrected at that moment, since Christ broke the gates of hell and freed them. Crusaders buried their kings under the Calvary:
Next we entered the room full of relics (museum of the Patriarchate):
St. Andrew of Crete
John Chrysostome
St. Martinien
St. Panteleimon
St. Macrine (la main gauche)
St. John the Baptist
St. Mercure
Apostles Andrew, Philippe
Constantine
St. Basil
St. Mary Magdalene (hand)
st. Paraskieva
st. Charalampy
St. Steven
(and that is only the few I had time to write down)
Then we went for a audience at with the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He gave a really nice speech about the meaning of the presence of the Patriarchate in the Holy Land. The Revelation of God started in the Holy Land on Mt. Sinai (with Moses seeing a God in the burning bush and receiving the Commandments) and it culminated in Jerusalem with the Resurrection of our Lord. So Patriarchate's presence in the Holy Places is of spiritual importance but also a guaranty of physical presence of Christianity in the Middle East.
Lunch: part of the group sat down at a nice Italian restaurante, while others found a pizza-by-the-slice next door.
Next, St. John's monastery (of St. John the Baptist)
Then we drive through Jerusalem, by the University, main bank, Kneset, Museum where Dead Sea Scrolls are kept (most of us are so tired, it is getting hard to keep track of where we are, what we are seeing, even my own notes fro these last places for the day are now making no sense.....)
Monastery of the Cross, looks like the Monastery of St. Catherine (I cannot remember if we even went inside). Yes we did. It is an Armenian Orthodox Church, with very old frescoes and ancient Armenian writings.
I do remember though going into the Monastery of St. Simeon. He was one of the three scholars who translated the Bible. We were told his wonderful story, I will add this story here later, since it is long. He is the one who was only able to die after holding Baby Jesus at the age of 270 (some say 300). His body was stolen many times, and currently I think is still in Zata, Croatia.
Church of Ascension is on the Mount of Olives. It was saved from destruction many times and in miraculous ways, most recently in 1992 . We visit the rock with Christ's footprint. Fr. Achillos is abbot of that monastery.
We drive by the church "Pater Noster", where Christ taught his disciples how to pray.
Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane. We visit the garden, with beautiful old olive trees. Eight of the trees in the garden are at least 2000 years old. Inside the church is the Rock of Agony. We sit by it for a few moments.
Final stop that day was the Tomb of the Virgin Mary. It was saved becasue it was a mosque for a time. I think this is where we sat for a few moments in silence.
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