8: Jesus HQ in Jerusalem

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published August 17, 2005 · Updated September 30, 2008

The Mount of Olives was to Jesus� times in Jerusalem what the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee was to his Galilean ministry: the HQ. It seems Jesus had at least three sanctuaries on the mount. Here he prayed, slept and wept. Here he was arrested, and from its summit he discreetly ascended into heaven. And it was on the peak that we started our morning on the Mount of Olives � ironically at the place where the story of God becoming man ends: the chapel of the Ascension.

There are three reputed sites of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. The Catholic Church marks the Ascension in a tiny mosque which used to be a Christian chapel. In it is a stone with what appears to be the imprint of a foot, presumably created when Jesus slammed down his foot to gather sufficient momentum for his final journey.

We then walked down the mount towards Paternoster church, the place where Jesus supposedly taught his disciples the Lord�s Prayer (some say that he actually did so in the Galilee). Jesus� prayer has echoed through the centuries, and it is superbly commemorated at Paternoster church, with ceramic panels sporting the Our Father in many different languages and dialects � including the original Aramaic. Even South Africa is represented, with Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans. As is, to this writer�s delight, the northern German dialect of Plattdeutsch.

Not far from Paternoster church is the tear-shaped church of Dominus Flevit � “the Lord wept”. The view of Jerusalem from the church�s garden is majestic, with the panorama dominated by the commanding golden-roofed mosque of the Dome of the Rock. In Jesus� time, the vista would have been dominated by the temple. And it was the notion of the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem by the Romans just four decades later that moved Jesus to tears. If only they had believed that he was the Messiah�

Jews are, of course, still awaiting the appearance of the Messiah. And when he arrives, the belief goes, he will enter on the final day through the bricked-up Golden (or Eastern) Gate, which faces the Mount of Olives, to redeem the Jewish nation. That is why so many Jews across the diaspora have been motivated to be buried in the vast, ancient graveyard at the bottom of the Mount of Olives: to be among the first to rise when the Messiah comes through the Eastern Gate.

This assumption, however, has hit a snag. In a show of spectacular religious spite, the Muslim ruler Suleyman built an Islamic graveyard in front of the Golden Gate. A rabbi is not allowed to go through a graveyard, their reasoning went, so a Jewish Messiah most certainly cannot do so either. Ergo, the end of time may have been indefinitely delayed.

Christians may dispute that the Messiah already has entered the Golden Gate, albeit not through the current 7th century structure, but its precursor (remains of which have been excavated).

According to tradition, Jesus entered Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate, hence its alternative name: the Golden Gate. It stands to reason that he would have done so, coming from the Mount of Olives or from nearby Bethany, where he often stayed with his close friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus.

At the foot of the Mount of Olives is the garden of Gethsemane. Today only a tiny portion of this once expansive olive grove survives. Here, where Judas delivered his Lord to the High Priest, still stand a couple of olive trees, just like those Jesus sat under.

Next to the small garden is the Church of All Nations, so called because of the international funding that preceded its construction by the celebrated architect Antonio Barluzzi in 1924. It is also known, more aptly, as the Church of the Agony.

Our group celebrated Mass in this beautiful, haunting church, seated around the putative rock on which Jesus suffered the despair of what was to come, and on which he appealed to God for a release from his impending torment. What inner turmoil Our Lord must have suffered in those hours!

At all our Masses, spiritual director Mgr Clifford Stokes invited pilgrims to make their bidding prayers. Throughout the pilgrimage, many poignant prayers were made, some of a general nature, some deeply personal. None was as appropriate to its setting as that by the pilgrim who prayed for those suffering psychological torment and those contemplating suicide. Facing the rock of the agony, and the simple sculpture of the crown of thorns before it, those who have lost loved ones to depression will have understood.