From the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem

The day's journey took us from the top of the hill above the Kidron Valley where the traditional site of the Garden of Gethsemene is located. As we stood among the budding olive trees we learned that their pattern of growth include a life cycle during which the tree, after several hundred years, will split forth from the trunk. While the old tree falls away, an "upshoot" or "nazaret" emerges from the ancient tree and a new tree's life begins from the old roots. We prayed in the Garden, remembering Jesus' invitation to stay awake and to watch.

As we walked from the Garden, the view of Old City Jerusalem, surrounded by the graves of thousands of both Jewish and Muslim peoples, could be seen. We learned from our Guide that the Jewish graves all faced toward Jerusalem, so that when the Messiah came their ressurrected bodies would be able to rise to ready attention in homage before him. The journey to the city, which we took by foot as Jesus would have at his arrest, led us by Dominus Flevit Church, which, shaped like a jar of tears, commemorates the moment when Jesus wept for Jerusalem saying: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem...how often would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her young and you would not..."

We entered the city at the Lions Gate and proceeded along the Via Dolorosa, or the "The Way of Sorrow." This 14 station devotion, initiated by the Cursaders, leads the pilgrim through the various trials of Jesus as he went from his arrest, his humiliation, his carrying of the cross, and his death on the cross. Along the way, one station allows the pilgrim to lean against the stone where Jesus is said to have placed his hand to balance himself as he carried the burden of the cross.

Old City Jerusalem bustles with 100,000 people a day and is home to some 35,000 Muslims, Christians, Jews and Armenians who have lived for generations in connected quarters of the city. Everywhere indicators of the multitude destructions and reconstructions of the City can be evidenced. Here and there the foundations of the Biblical memories stand out as symbols of the One Story of the Gospel and bid the pilgrim not only to remember the Good News but to walk in its way. One such location, the Bethseda pool reminds of Jesus' question to the crippled man who waited beside there for healing some 38 years. "Do you want to be healed?" Jesus asked the man, insisting that he have the courage to hunger for the life that Jesus could give to him. The pools are now essentially dry because of shifts in the bedrock which over the centuries have closed the springs that fed the pool. Nonetheless, Jesus' question echoes in that place. "Do you want to be healed?" Indeed, do you?