In this third installment of a series, Editor Rick Snizek follows the path Jesus took on the way to his crucifixion in Jerusalem during an educational tour to Turkey and the Holy Land with Turkish Airlines and Marian Pilgrimages. He reports on areas visited during the tour, as well some locations visited independently.
JERUSALEM — For a Christian pilgrim, walking the path that Jesus is believed to have taken during his last days on Earth is an experience you will never forget. The journey can be even more meaningful if it is undertaken during Lent, especially during Holy Week.
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Visiting Jerusalem, especially its old city, has the added benefit of educating the traveler about a unique place in the world that is home to three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sites such as the Western, or “Wailing Wall,” and the Dome of the Rock are sacred to both Jews and Muslims respectively, and attract their share of the millions who visit the Holy Land each year.
The sites detailed in the Bible are venerated by countless pilgrims, from the garden at the Mount of Olives known as Gethsemane, where Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested, to Pontius Pilate’s praetorium, believed to be the site of the former Antonia fortress. Today, the place believed to be where Jesus was handed over to be crucified is a school, whose dark metal door marks the first of the 14 Stations of the Cross.
For the modern pilgrim, the agonizing road to the crucifixion is relatively short, and takes about 30 minutes to traverse, depending on the length of time spent reflecting at the first nine of the 14 stations encountered before entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is here, at the end of the procession along the Via Dolorosa, known as “The Way of the Cross,” but which more accurately translates as “The Way of Suffering,” that the final five stations are venerated. Under one roof the church houses the sites of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and ultimately resurrection.
But like any area frequented by tourists, including faith tourists, even the sacred path has its share of distractions.
Omnipresent shops line the narrow limestone streets of the Via Delorosa peddling jewelry, woven handbags, place mats and t-shirts – including some promoting the “Holy Rock Café,” which, located between Stations VI and VII is a fresh-squeezed fruit juice, mint tea and Turkish coffee shop, a parody of the more universally known and musically inclined hamburger spot with nearly an identical logo.
While such kitchy businesses can at first glance seem to detract from the religious experience of retracing the path to salvation, it should be noted that even in Jesus’ time, the area also teemed with vendors hawking their wares, sellers who probably looked on with as much curiosity as contempt as a young man named Jesus struggled toward his final breath at Calvary.
Traveling with an established group has its advantages, and Marian Pilgrimages arranged for its pilgrims to carry a cross along the length of the Via Delorosa. They stopped at each station, allowing each of the three priests traveling on the journey – two from the U.S. and one from Ireland – to pray and offer a reflection. Each pilgrim who desired to had an opportunity to carry the cross along a portion of the historic route.
Reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was filled with hundreds of pilgrims from all over the world, each eager to venerate the locations where scholars believe that Jesus was crucified and later buried, Marian arranged for a private Mass to be celebrated by the group in the Catholic chapel only feet from Jesus’ rock-hewn tomb in the Greek Orthodox basilica.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has the distinction of being shared, to different degrees, by six Christian denominations, as outlined in the Status Quo Agreement of 1852.
Pilgrims entering the church ascend to Golgotha, known as “the place of the skull,” by a very steep set of stone steps. At the top, the highest point in the area which the church was built over, is the location of what believed to be the site where Jesus was crucified on the cross. The Greek Orthodox chapel here, like other areas in the church, is filled with oil lamps and icons.
A long line of the faithful wait their turn to kneel at the spot where the cross is believed to have stood, eager to place their hand or a relic on a silver star beneath the altar there in an effort to forge a personal connection with Jesus’ sacrifice.
The site of the church was consecrated in A.D. 326 following a visit by Helena, mother of the Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the fourth to occupy this site, was constructed in the 12th century by Crusaders.
After taking their turn at the altar, pilgrims file down another stairway to a rose colored slab of marble upon which Jesus’ body would have been anointed for burial. Several visitors wiped tears from their eyes after touching the marble, which is out in the open and easily accessible.
Pilgrims then process to the tomb itself, which is enclosed in a large structure of pink marble that sits directly below the great dome of the church, which allows for sunlight to stream in and illuminate the otherwise darkened area. As is the case at the crucifixion site a couple of hundred feet away upstairs, the tomb is surrounded by oil lamps and shelves to hold burning candles. A Greek Orthodox priest illuminates and then quickly extinguishes candles outside the tomb in quick succession, handing them back to pilgrims who will keep them as a remembrance of their visit to this sacred spot.
Next week, the series concludes with a look at some of the struggles faced by those living in the Holy Land.
