JERUSALEM— We arrived at the outskirts of Jerusalem for lunch in a place called Abu Ghosh, which is located in between Jerusalem and Nicopolis, which is known as the “Road to Emmaus†which is now a Christian-Arab village. This is also known as the ancient Kiryat Ye’arim.
Then we went off to Ain Karem, the traditional site where Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth lived. During the Annunciation the Angel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin that her cousin Elizabeth who was barren was expecting a son and was now on her sixth month. As the Bible story goes, “Mary went to visit Elizabeth in haste to the hill country.†I have come to realize that the visitation wasn’t an easy journey for the Blessed Virgin Mary as Ain Karem is 150 kilometers south of Nazareth where the roads were difficult and extremely rugged especially for a pregnant woman.
In Jerusalem we stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is overlooking the old walls of Jerusalem and nearby is the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament and office of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Our first visit was to the Mt. Olivet, which had a church known as the Ascension Church because tradition says that it is the place where our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. But it has been renamed the Church of the Pater Noster… as tradition also says that this was the spot where our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. We sang the “Ama namin†in that chapel.
We went down the Kidron Valley on foot, which is a very steep downhill trek in order to get to see the Basilica of the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where a huge stone slab is believed to be the place where our Lord Jesus Christ prayed in agony… to the point his sweat turned to blood.
It is in Bethlehem that you can see the political boundaries between the Israelis and the Palestinians as this place is under Palestinian Authority. There is a checkpoint with armed guards, but then tourist buses bring precious money to the coffers of the Palestinians so they did not have to check our bags nor our passports. But with so many tourists coming to the Church of the Nativity… it took us two hours from the time we alighted from the bus to the time we touched the very spot where our Lord Jesus Christ was born.
To enter the Church of the Nativity, you have to stoop low lest you bump you head on this very narrow door. Inside you will see a small altar that was placed on top of a 14-star hole that is believed to be the very floor where the Baby Jesus was born inside a cave. You have to crawl to reach it.
Finally we got inside the inner walls of the old Jerusalem where we entered through The Lion’s Gate (the Lion of Judah is the symbol of Jerusalem) or St. Stephen’s Gate, so named after the first martyred follower of our Lord Jesus Christ who was stoned just a few yards from that gate. From there we saw the ruined Pool of Bethesda, where scripture says that our Lord Jesus Christ cured the paralytic man.
Then we turned into the street called the Via Dolorosa or the Stations of the Cross. We did the Way of the Cross there, after we loaned a wooden cross while the pilgrims of the Delmar Tour carried the cross for a few minutes each and everyone had a chance to carry this cross in order to feel how it is when our Lord Jesus Christ carried the cross of our sins.
My thoughts of the Via Dolorosa was totally blown away because I thought that the route was an unpaved road that led to Golgotha. The Via Dolorosa is like carrying the cross in the middle of Carbon Market, with hawkers and shopkeepers selling their wares. In some areas, it gets to be so narrow and we had to climb a steep incline. But we only got to the 10th Station because when our Lord Jesus Christ was stripped of his garments, he was already in Calvary (Golgotha), which was now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, ran by Greek Orthodox Christians.
Like in the Church of the Nativity, you have to crawl under and altar to touch a hole where the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ was inserted when the cross was lifted up and pilgrims do it one-by-one, which is why the queues take so long. Then on the side we saw a slab where our lifeless Lord was prepared for anointing, then a few steps away is the empty tomb…or what’s left of that stone slab, because pilgrims in the past chipped away the stone and only a little part of it is left.
We then left the inner walls of Jerusalem and proceeded to the Western Wall a.k.a. the Wailing Wall… the holiest site of Judaism. This is the retaining wall that used to be Mt. Moriah, the exact place when Father Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac, but was stopped by an angel. As this is a sacred place, we had to wear a Jewish skullcap and just like any devout Jew, we faced and touched the Wailing Wall as God promised to the Jews that his presence would never leave the Temple. That’s what they believe.
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