THEY FOLLOWED CHRIST'S LAST JOURNEY

A few of the ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane are so old that they may have actually been growing when Our Lord used to meet His disciples there, when He prayed there after the Last Supper, and when Judas came there to betray Him to the chief priests and the scribes. 

It was there, just outside the Garden itself, that Norah read from the Gospels to the group who had travelled to Jerusalem with her and Jim last week.

 

This is where they began to walk the Via Dolorosa, which is thought by tradition to be the route followed by Jesus as He carried His Cross to Calvary. You would expect to find some kind of consistency in the ownership of the churches where each of the fourteen stations on Christianity's sacred Way of the Cross are marked.     But it isn't so.

 They reach the third station: Jesus falls the first time. Some of the points where the stations are marked, such as this one, are on buildings belonging to different rites of the Catholic Church. (Most Catholic Churches in Iran are of the Armenian rite.)

The fifth station: Simon helps Jesus to carry His cross. This building is the Franciscan Catholic Church of Simon of Cyrene. (Cyrene, now known as Shabbat, is situated on the Libyan coast about midway between Benghazi and Tobruk.)

The eighth station: Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem. This station is against the wall of a Greek Orthodox monastery.

The ninth station: Jesus falls the third time. The actual station itself is on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It stands between an Egyptian Coptic Church and an Ethiopian sanctuary.

   The fourteenth station: Jesus is placed in the sepulchre. This beautiful mosaic is in an Orthodox Church. Until we get more practical unity among Christians, perhaps the best we can expect is to have the sacred places and the stations on the Via Dolorosa shared out among different owners like the different bits of the British railway system.

Norah places her hand on a part of the wall left exposed because of the tradition that Our Lord put his hand there to support Himself during His final journey. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land - what a wonderful experience for you both - thanks for sharing this piece of it with us.
                                                                 photos by Norah and Jim