With the support of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church we were able to join Ukrainian pilgrims on their trip to the Holy Land.
Every Christian longs to see Jerusalem and Galilee and set his foot on the pavement along which Jesus walked 2,000 years ago. This is all the more important for Ukrainians scattered around the world — from Argentina to Kamchatka — for whom the church has become the main unifying factor and spiritual core. They have been able to preserve their identity in foreign countries thanks primarily to the church.
VIA DOLOROSA
There is an ancient Ukrainian tradition of setting up 12 crosses around a church to signify the 12 Stations of the Cross to commemorate the stops Jesus made on his way to Calvary. This is how pilgrims used to picture the Way of Grief.
The true Via Dolorosa looks different. It begins at the Lions’ Gate through which Jesus was brought into the city for trial after he was betrayed by Judas.
The real Way of Grief is a narrow street paved with pale yellow stones. We had imagined it as a hidden lane where silence reigns supreme. What we saw was pilgrims having to make their way through the clamor of a congested street, avoiding eagle-eyed vendors, who catch every glance directed at their merchandise, and trying to find wall-mounted bronze plaques with the names of the stations marking the memorable stops on Jesus’s way to His Crucifixion. A Muslim school stands at the place where Pilate tried Jesus. Somewhere deep in the recesses of an ordinary Jerusalem house there was a dungeon where Christ was held. Here is a crossroads with the ruins of a Roman pavement; here the Savior fell for the first time under the weight of His cross, and here, right in the building of the Russian mission and several meters under the ground is the Gate of Judgment through which convicts were taken to Calvary. Closer to Calvary the street turns into an ogive- domed tunnel.
What is most striking is that the entire street has been completely overtaken by a market place where Arabs sell a jumble of sandals, wooden crosses by weight, icons, and fruit. Finally, after many a wrong turn, we step into a quiet deserted street with a view of the temple’s domes. After our escape from the jostling crowd the quiet of the street seems especially solemn.
CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION
The way to the courtyard of this temple, which is more commonly known in Ukraine as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, lies through two churches of an Ethiopian monastery perched on the church’s rooftop. Over the centuries various Christian denominations-Catholics, Greeks, Armenians, and Copts — strived to be as close as possible to the church. Thus, the land around the Lord’s Tomb is measured in millimeters, not even centimeters. The chaotic roofs of ordinary city houses cling to the temple, almost touching it. Dozens of languages and hundreds of tourists are all mixed up here, but there is no hustle and bustle. People are sitting on the ruins of columns from the old church, which was much bigger than the current one. Everyone is trying to find solitude despite the incessant streams of tourists. The buzz of the crowd recedes.
THE HOLY SEPULCHER
You get a special, sacred feeling as you walk down the same streets of Jerusalem at night. Tonight there will be a night service at the Church of the Resurrection. Pilgrims are praying as they wait for the church courtyard to open. At midnight we enter the temple. Barely illuminated and majestic, it is revealed to us in its true grandeur.
We enter the church, where candles and icon lamps create solemn semidarkness. Everything here is close by. Next to the entrance is the Stone of Anointment, where Jesus’s body was anointed with oils after it was taken down from the cross and before entombment. A narrow staircase on the right leads to Calvary. The church is simply embedded in the rock. On the left, inside a medieval giant-domed rotunda, is the main Christian sacrament — the cubiculum, or the Lord’s Tomb. This is the burial cave in which Christ’s body was placed and where the miracle of the Resurrection took place. This was once an underground cave, but many centuries ago the surrounding rock was hewn away and now the cave is on the surface, inside a chapel.
Tonight the service is run jointly by His Beatitude Volodymyr, Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. High up under the dome, Greek songs mingle with Slavic prayers. The service ends with pilgrims making their confessions on Calvary and receiving Communion performed with holy gifts that have been consecrated on the altar next to the Holy Sepulcher, where the Resurrection took place.
JERUSALEM
Early in the morning both the Old and the New City begin to bubble with activity. The old city is divided into several sectors, and the Arab sector is much larger than the Jewish one. Here one can encounter representatives of all nations: Armenians, Italians, Greeks, Japanese, and Hindus. Over the millennia various peoples — Babylonians, Romans, Arabs, and Crusaders-came here in war or peace. All of them both ruined and built the Eternal City. These cycles of ruination and building layered up over thousands of years to create a unique multilayer melting pot of cultures and nationalities, which is still boiling today.
GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
Most likely Jerusalem is the same today as it was in Jesus’s time. That is why Jesus chose the Mount of Olives as a place for meditation, solitude, and prayer. Where does the name come from? The mountain slopes were covered with olive groves, where Jesus and his disciples liked to sit in the shade. This is where the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus prayed on the night of Judas’s betrayal, has been preserved until our day. We had imagined it as a shady, cool orchard with large trees, but it turned out to be a small, albeit well-tended, patch of scorched land with squat olive trees. The ones with thick knotty trunks probably witnessed that dramatic night more than 2,000 years ago. Olive trees are extremely long-lived, and as the main trunk withers away young shoots wind around it to give the tree new life.
MOUNT OF OLIVES
The Mount of Olives also offers the best view of Jerusalem. Right before our eyes is the Temple Mount. Today it belongs to the Arabs and is one of their four holiest sites. The prophet Mohammed rose to heaven from the place now covered with a golden dome. At the foot of the mountain are the ruins of Solomon’s Temple and the Wailing Wall. Farther away are the gray domes of the Church of the Resurrection. You can feast your eyes on this panoramic view for hours on end, but this is best done after you have seen these places up close; then the view will not seem lifeless. Instead, you will perceive the restless character and throbbing nerve of this eternal city.
