Monday of Holy Week

29 March, 2010

Last night the six students on my Holy Week and Easter course and some of the staff members met for dinner and an introductory session together, but today was the beginning of work for our course.  We began with a couple of lectures.  The first was on The Eastern Churches in Jerusalem, which was a very helpful outline of the 13 historic churches in Jerusalem, along with their points of difference.  The second lecture was an introduction to Orthodox Holy Week.

We left to have lunch at a French house called 'Maison d'Abraham" or in Arabic 'bait Abraham'.  This is an order of Roman Catholic sisters who welcome all those who are children of Abraham, and of course this includes the people of the three major religions in this land - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.  (I'm sure they wouldn't turn anyone else away either.  After lunch there, we went up to the roof for a dramatic outlook over the Kidron Valley to Jerusalem.  The topography of the Passion was the subject of a short talk, through which we got some idea of the places and routes of Holy Week and the Passion narrative.

In the upper left of the picture, in the corner where the two walls meet you can see a white expanse leading up to the wall.  This expanse is the stairs of the Temple that Herod built, which was the one known to Jesus.  The valley below the walls is the Kidron Valley.

Following this visit we set off for Bethany.  Although it is only 2 miles or so from Jerusalem, it takes 30 minutes in the bus to get there, because of the huge dividing wall built to separate Palestinian areas from Jewish ones.
We visited two churches, a Latin (Roman Catholic) one on the site where Mary, Martha and Lazarus' house once stood, and another (Greek Orthodox) one on the site where Martha and Mary went out to meet Jesus. 
The Latin church had been built quite recently by a famous Italian architect named Barluzzi.  It had a lovely atmosphere and was surprisingly light.

We had a Eucharist in a little 11th century chapel on the church grounds:

The Greek Orthodox church was dark and impressive on the inside.  On the outside it looked fairly normal.

We even visited 'Lazarus' tomb', as Lazarus Saturday (the day before Palm Sunday) is part of the Orthodox preparation for and observance of Holy Week.  It was actually pretty clearly that the tomb we visited was from a later period than Jesus. 

We are not being encouraged to believe that everything is original and authentic, but rather to connect with the faith of Christians down through the years who have visited the holy sites especially in Holy Week and Easter to find a way of identifying with Jesus, his passion and his resurrection.