This week began and will end with the Crucifixion. In the middle of the week, we sang Christmas carols.
Note: There are a few video resources below this post.
If I am not woken by the Call to Prayer each morning, then I am woken by the sweet song of little sparrows nesting in the date tree outside my bedroom window. But on Monday, I had to set my alarm because our group was set to depart from Ecce Home before sunrise for a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher - the Church built on the hill where Romans crucified Jesus 2,000 years ago.
Like all other excursions, we met at Reception on the ground level of the Ecce Homo convent, the house I have called "home" these last three weeks. This place, where I've dined, drank, slept and studied (not necessarily in that order) is also the traditional site marking the Second Station of the Cross (2nd Station: Jesus Takes Up His Cross) along the Via Dolorosa. "Via Dolorosa" is translated as the Way of Grief, the Way of Sorrows, Way of Suffering, or the Painful Way. It is remembered as the path Jesus took as he carried his cross to Calvary (a.k.a Golgotha).
Under this convent and pilgrim house lies ruins that date to the first century C.E., including the Lithostrotos (Roman pavement). And extending over this ancient roadway is the ruins of an archway that was discovered during the construction of the house in the mid-1800’s. Until recently this archway was believed to be Herod's Antonia Fortress where Jesus is believed to have been condemned to death by Pontius Pilate. Upon its discovery it was incorporated into the sanctuary of Ecce Homo's basilica.
Ecce Homo Basilica. Directly behind the altar is one of two smaller arches. To the right of the picture begins the larger of the three arches found under Ecce Homo and spans the 1st century Roman pavement.
In recent decades however, archaeological findings would again remind us that our current context can sometimes influence historical interpretation. It has since been determined that the basilica’s arches are in fact what remains of Hadrian’s Triumphal Arches built after he conquered Jerusalem in the early 2nd century. The Antonia Fortress is likely across the street from the convent, under a Muslim school. This convent and what lies beneath it is an appropriate place to commemorate Jesus' condemnation, Passion and death at the hands of an oppressive occupier. It is perhaps ironic that an archway built as a monument to a conqueror’s great triumph over a people now adorns the sanctuary of a Catholic convent that promotes peace and justice.
The Frailty of Humanity
In the wee hours of Monday morning we walked along the Via Dolorosa toward the Holy Sepulcher. Living in Jerusalem’s Old City, this much travelled street at times feels more like a nuisance than a way of contemplation. It is a main thoroughfare used by Old City dwellers and visitors. The street bursts with tourists, pilgrims, shoppers and people simply trying to get to and from work or school. The road to the place where Christians commemorate Jesus’ death and resurrection is not a straight path. It makes several sharp turns. The first turn is at the bottom of the hill from Ecce Homo. There, armed Israeli soldiers and police are ever present, standing behind their road blocks each day and night. I'm sure for some, their presence makes them feel safer, but it makes me uncomfortable as an inhabitant of this neighborhood. And I am pretty sure that the people who make their home in the Old City's Muslim Quarter are also not comforted by their presence either.
The corner of the second turn on the Via Dolorosa also happens to be the location of the Fifth Station of the Cross (Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry His Cross). During the day this corner is always a quagmire of people trying to maneuver through the very tight space. Here also begins a long, steep climb up to the "Place of the Skull," a hill that at one time was outside the city walls and was where Roman soldiers crucified their victims so that all who entered the city could see their imperial power. Today, this climb on the Via Dolorosa is flanked by holes in the wall and vendors trying to draw you into their shops.
Along this “Way” one hears many languages and witnesses a variety of religious acts of piety. In the moments when I am able to ignore the chaos around me and recall the history of this place, I am moved by the fact that among the diversity of those who revere this roadway there is the common reason they journey to this place…to remember the death and resurrection of the Christ of their faith. The crescendo of this remembered story is marked by a sacred space so nondescript among the surrounding buildings that one easily stumbles upon by accident. Below is a quote that aptly describes this phenomenal place. Following this post I've embedded a helpful video about the history of this Christian pilgrimage site.
Entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
“One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. One looks for numinous light, but it is dark and cramped. One hopes for peace, but the ear is assailed by a cacophony of warring chants. One desires holiness, only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: the six groups of occupants—Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians—watch one another suspiciously for any infringement of rights. The frailty of humanity is nowhere more apparent than here; it epitomizes the human condition. The empty who come to be filled will leave desolate; those who permit the church to question them may begin to understand why hundreds of thousands thought it worthwhile to risk death or slavery in order to pray here. Is this the place where Christ died and was buried? Yes, very probably.”
Me reaching into a gilded hole in the ground in order to touch the natural rock of Golgotha.
Pilgrims venerating the Stone of Unction that commemorates the place where Jesus' body was prepared for burial. The current stone is only about one hundred years old.
A first century tomb in a side chapel within the Holy Sepulchre.
It was good to visit the Holy Sepulchre in the early morning hours, before the rush-hour of pilgrims. It was the best way to be formally introduced to all of its various rooms and hidden memorials. In many ways, despite the “frailty of humanity” represented by the clash of people in this space; there is something sacred in the shared experience of all those people, trying in their unique way, to navigate the meaning of what happened here 2,000 years ago. It seems to me that this communion of pilgrims who have traveled here for millennia to remember and participate in Jesus Christ's Passion and Resurrection is in fact the source of holiness in this place.
The stone walls throughout the church bear the markings of pilgrims who have worshipped at this place. You can still run your fingers over etched crosses carved by pilgrims centuries ago...saying, "I was here."
Monday began with a reminder of Jesus’ suffering on the cross; it ended that evening with our guest speaker, Dr. Samah Jabr, who opened our eyes to the suffering of the Palestinian people. At the end of this blog I encourage you to watch a video of her speaking about the effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian women. However, on Monday she spoke with us about the trauma suffered specifically by the children and adolescents who make up nearly half the Palestinian population.
O Little Town of Bethlehem
The following morning our Biblical Formation group climbed onto a tour bus for our final excursion outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. We headed to Bethlehem, a small town just five miles away from Jerusalem, but outside of Israel. We were entering Palestinian territory. With passports in hand, it seemed we never left Jerusalem since the suburbs of Israeli settlements in the West Bank filled the gaps of land that had previously separated the two states. I thought about a common Mexican-American trope uttered by those whose families have lived in Texas since before it was a U.S. state.
"We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
Staring out the bus window, I wondered… “how many of the construction workers building these settlements are Palestinians?” Some settlers certainly buy up this land - often illegally - in order to stake a claim and expand Israel's territory. But I also wondered about those Israeli “settlers” – perhaps not unlike many settlers of the U.S. West – who are young, economically poor families relying on government subsidies for cheap housing in order to finally have a home to call their own...with no intention of “occupation” on their mind.
On the road to Bethlehem. You can see one of the settlements built on the hill.
Our first stop in Bethlehem was “Shepherds’ Field,” the location that since the 4th century, tradition has commemorated as the place where angels proclaimed the birth of the Messiah to shepherds. At the pilgrim site there is a small chapel adorned with angels and frescos depicting the Lucan scene. The domed ceiling is modestly decorated with small, circular skylights. We sat facing one another, eyes raised, and imagined ourselves on a hillside looking up at the night sky like shepherds years ago. Together we lifted our voices and sang the chorus to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Another tour group filed into the chapel one by one as we sang....a tourist faux pas…and their gradual presence seemed like a flash mob of Christmas carolers descending upon the unsuspecting fresco figures.
Chapel at Shepherds' Field.
After caroling we wandered around the grounds with more time on our hands than intended. I sat down in front of a tall, beautiful fountain at the center of an open square. On the side is a quote from the Infancy narrative in the Gospel of Luke. There are two tiers of realistically carved sheep. The fountain is topped with a statue of a simple shepherd clothed in chiseled wool, with crook in hand. It is not often that one sees such a humble human figure atop a monumental structure. We usually think of kings, mighty warriors, political power brokers or mythical gods crowning such towering monuments. But on top of this fountain stood a simple shepherd who had neither home nor a country to call his own.
"There were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.” (Lk. 2:8)
Staring up at this humble figure I thought it fitting that this shepherd was chosen as the witness to a message brought by a baby….the helpless child who would bring the Good News to the world. That Good News proclaims that true and lasting power is not what we think it is; that the kind of power which lasts eternally is available to the humble shepherd, or a young girl, or a helpless infant. This Good News sheds light on the impermanence of the power possessed by kings and imperial states. It reveals that the powers which seek to control and oppress will one day decay and be forgotten. Looking at the stone shepherd perched in prominence, I smiled at the humor in Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
’My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Jesus, formed by his Jewish faith, announced a different kind of Kingdom with a different kind of lasting power. He would eventually give his life for this Good News and the Resurrection that Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday would be the first fruits of what is possible in such a kingdom (1 Cor. 15:20-28). Jesus’ followers would continue to experience his Presence after he had left them because the Peace incarnated in him, through his life and his death, does not crumble, but leaves a final and lasting legacy.
“Come and see the works of the LORD, who has done fearsome deeds on earth; Who stops wars to the ends of the earth, breaks the bow, splinters the spear, and burns the shields with fire; ‘Be still and know that I am God!’”
Be Still and know that I am…
Studying the Gospel of Mark this month I have come to better understand Jesus’ command during the storm on the sea..."be still." Truly, sometimes the actual miracle is the calming of the storm within ourselves during chaotic times, rather than the cessation of the chaos that surrounds us. Did the disciples misunderstand when they said, “who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” (Mk. 4:41)
Like with all study of Scripture, hearers of the Word are meant to also find meaning within their own context....this is what makes it Scripture rather than a historical text. And so it is no wonder that the theme of peace, stillness and letting go of control keeps surfacing for me as I move through this course at Ecce Homo. In recent years it seems that “stillness” has eluded me. The past few years I’ve become increasingly aware that the cause of much of the suffering in my life comes from a desire to control things (events, circumstances, people)…and my inevitable inability to do so. I have had to learn this lesson the hard way; sometimes to the detriment of my sanity it has seemed.
While others wandered as they wondered, I sat reflecting on the fountain that honored the shepherds in the field. Andrew from our group then called me over to follow him into another nearby cave that had been fashioned into a chapel. We had a half hour to kill before our bus was scheduled to arrive, and so the group spontaneously decided to celebrate Mass. Father Andrew would be our presider and he asked if I would present the Baby Jesus during the Offertory, when the gifts of bread and wine are brought up to the altar. He handed me a nearly life size ceramic Baby Jesus to hold until the time came to place him in the small wooden manager. The Baby Jesus was of a size that demanded it be held the way one would hold an actual baby. To hold the ceramic likeness any other way would at best look awkward and at worst seem sacrilegious. And so I cradled the ceramic Baby Jesus in my arms.
Fr. Andrew Ebrahim, SDB. Photo Credit: Heather Cousins
The Mass was beautiful and intimate. We read from the Gospel of Luke and sang more Christmas carols. As we made our way through the Liturgy of the Word I lost all control of my emotions, and tears streamed down my face. I frantically looked for a handkerchief, for no matter how hard I tried to control the tears, I could not. Cradling Baby Jesus in my arms, I grieved for the baby that had died inside me almost five years ago. I grieved for the child that will never be. I grieved for my husband and a family legacy that ended as quickly as it began…or so it feels. I cannot control this body that for too many uncertain reasons has refused to give life; I cannot control the passage of time that makes me despair of any hope.
In that cave-turned-chapel it was evident that I cannot even control my own grief since no matter how hard I try and how many years pass, I still have been unable to fill this hole inside me. Nor can I control the suffering of oppressed people an ocean and continents away. I grieved as I held Baby Jesus….I grieved for the children of this Land; the ones who are harassed by the constant presence of militant authority; for the children who are pulled from their warm beds and incarcerated, even tortured; for the adolescents who enter mandatory military service as teenagers and come out as scarred soldiers; for the children who come home from detention and are changed forever; and for the children who never come home at all. I wept because I cannot control any of it.
If you think you’re in, you’re really out…
At our impromptu Mass, and in the cramped space, we passed around the consecrated Host and the cup. During the Communion service our little enclave was disrupted by a man and woman entering the chapel. Despite the disruption we continued caroling and the uninvited couple entered into our song. Then they entered our Communion circle, partook of the Eucharist and sat down with us for the closing rituals ending with a verse or two from “O Holy Night.” My initial, involuntary instinct was one of judgement. Who do they think they are, interrupting our private and intimate celebration? How do we even know if they belong here; that they are Catholic and “should” be partaking in the Eucharist?
Here I was, rattled again by the unexpected; trying to find a way to grasp control where control wasn’t even necessary. Realizing the frailty of my own humanity, my eyes were opened and I saw the beauty of the strangers’ participation and the communion we shared. I wonder, what impression did that experience in Bethlehem have on these two strangers as they continued their tour of Jesus’ birthplace?
What did Mary and Joseph think about their unexpected visitors?
Is it the “desire to control” that is the frailty of humanity?...What if it benefits a righteous cause? But even a desire for peace by means of control inevitably overshadows any possibility for a Peace that is everlasting. Such desire for control is played out by the multiple “caretaker’s” of the Holy Sepulcher who have abandoned their posts as shepherds watching over the flock, in favor of judge who litigates liturgical infractions in order to control the "purity” of piety. Is this not the kind of fleeting, impermanent power that some in Jesus’ own community lorded over the people of Israel? A responsible reading of such contentious texts where Jesus confronts religious leaders of his day requires a "listening with two ears," as our professor Michael Trainor would say. Not only should we hear what is being said during Jesus' own time, but also recognize that any story chosen by the Evangelists was chosen because it was relevant to their own post-Easter community decades later.
In Mark’s mostly gentile, Roman community living in 70 C.E. – following the destruction of the Second Temple – the need for purity laws was irrelevant. So we might ask then, “what was the meaning of Jesus’ confrontations with purity laws and why are they remembered by Mark’s community?” These stories ask the early members of the Jesus Movement, as well as us today, “who are the people being excluded from our community because of an imposed system or our desire to give order to chaos? What are the reasons the marginalized are deemed unfit and unwelcome...and is this a reason to exclude them from the kind of kingdom Jesus announces? If they should seek, who are we to say whether or not the find?"
Hope against hope
Our next stop on Tuesday was Bethlehem University, a Catholic university run by the order of De Le Salles Brothers. We were greeted by the university’s P.R. manager and six students, all of whom are Palestinian. These beautiful young people were articulate, passionate and most of all, filled with hope. If I were to describe in one word all of the students who greeted us as we toured the campus, it would be “joyful.”
Palestinian college kids enjoying time together.
Their campus buildings carry the scars of Israeli missiles; their friends remain detained without trial; and color-coded cards distributed by a foreign power arbitrarily segregate them from their fellow countrymen. Yet, these young people - Muslim and Christian - have found peace within the university walls. Everyone in our group was so very impressed and inspired by the hope and courage of this next generation. In a Q&A session with the students it became clear that even at their young age they have come to understood the limits of the kind of power that seeks to control. They see neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Israeli government as the answer to the conflict that began before their birth.
Students at Bethlehem University spoke with our group from Ecce Homo.
On Monday we toured the Holy Sepulchre. On Friday, along the Via Dolorosa, we will remember Jesus' passion and death by praying the Stations of the Cross. Our week may have been bookended by suffering and death, but in the middle we sang Christmas carols. The frailty of humanity that seeks power through control - the same kind of power that nailed Jesus to the Cross - may find redemption in these Innocents. Remembering the child in the manger who reveals the Power of God, I wondered...will it be children, like these Palestinians at Bethlehem University, who will finally bring the peace of God’s Kingdom to this Land?
Muslim Palestinian college kids enjoying time together.
Jewish children enjoying a day at Mamilla Mall celebrating the Simchat Torah holiday.
Muslim college student studying at Bethlehem University.
This Jewish Israeli child joined out group as we listened to our tour guide introduce us to the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City.
“Blessing of the Children.
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’ Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.”