Holy Tuesday: Betphage and the Mount of Olives

30 March, 2010

We started the day with an early visit to the Latin (Roman Catholic) Church at Bethphage.  This church commemorates the events of Palm Sunday.  There was a lovely fresco in the apse of the church, which depicted Jesus as riding with only a few people watching him.  One figure in front of him is veiled, and we are intended to imagine ourselves as that figure, so that we can enter the event ourselves and be part of it in our imaginations.

Following our visit to the church, we were led in a reflection on the significance of Jesus' actions.  An insight that I hadn't really focused on before was that Jesus was making an intentional and prophetic contrast with the Governor Pilate's entry into Jerusalem, so that he could be present at the Passover celebrations to quell riots.  The this-worldly kingdom of power and status belonged to Pilate, but Jesus was presenting the reality that there was another kingdom not ruled by power, but by humility.  And the powers of the day could not bear to allow this kingdom to live on in Jesus, because it presented too great a threat to their control and their own established way of doing things.

After our visit to Bethphage we went straight on to the Eleona (Pater Noster) Church on the Mount of Olives.  This is the site from which Jesus is thought to have ascended, and it is also associated with the more apocalyptic message of Jesus.  In this church are over 60 versions of the Lord's Prayer, praying in many languages "your kingdom come".  The group stopped close to the Maori version of the prayer, so I asked one of them to take this photo of the two New Zealanders in the group.

When we prayed at the end of our time there for the coming of God's kingdom by using the English version of the Lord's prayer, the group kindly waited prayerfully as I said the Maori version as well.

There was a very ancient basilica on the site of this church, built by Constantine, and this site is traditionally identified as the site of Jesus' ascension.  So the connections with the life and ministry of Jesus are very strong here.

We then briefly visited the church built in the place where Jesus is remembered as having wept over Jerusalem - the Dominus Flevit ('the Lord wept') church.  The church is designed in the shape of a tear.  And on the altar there is a lovely depiction of Jesus as a hen gathering chicks (the people of Jerusalem) under his wings.

We went on to visit the Franciscan Basilica of All Nations, or Basilica of the Agony, built in the place where tradition remembered Jesus to have prayed at the time of his agony in the garden.  There is a big rock on which he cast himself to pray, built into the sanctuary of the church.

After quite a "churchy" time where we were part of a crowd, we were led to an area of Gethsemane that is still and peaceful, and where not many people come. 

It was great to be able to meditate for about 20 minutes in silence in the general area where Jesus himself often meditated and prayed.  A number of us felt that this was a special part of our morning.

In the afternoon we had some time off so I caught up with my blogging, and then we went to the St Antony Coptic Monastery for a Coptic (Egyptian) Orthodox Evening Prayer service.  The monastery is situated in old (walled) city of Jerusalem, very close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Copts date their presence here back to 325AD.  While we didn't understand the service, some of us were told what Bible passages were being read, and we noticed how fervent many of those who attended were in their prayer.  It was a strange experience being both on the outside of the event and drawn by the prayer.  This was the first of the Orthodox liturgies we are to attend during this course.

It was great to walk through the old city, with its bazaars and narrow lanes, on the way there and back.  This part of the old city was clearly in the form of an Arab-style souq.