Mount of Olives and Jesus' last days

Going back in time to the day before Jesus’ last, I went to explore the Mount of Olives. Walking the same route as yesterday, I visited the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, named for Peter’s rejection of Jesus and his later repentance. The main sanctuary has lovely pastel mosaics in an art nouveau style. Caves on a lower level are believed to be a possible location of Christ’s prison, and an ancient stairway along the side of the church, possibly the path Jesus took down to Gethsemane on the other side of the Kidron Valley that night. Walking along the Eastern Wall, I could see the various churches on the Mount of Olives, to their right the historic Jewish cemetery, and beyond that the town of Silwan.

I descended into the valley and investigated the monumental tombs at the base of the mount. These tombs, traditionally identified as the tombs of Avshalom, Zechariah, and Jehoshaphat—and a fourth marked as the tombs of the sons of the priests—were carved out of the very rock of the mountain. I meandered through the thousands of Jewish graves, some new, some ancient, cracked, and worn to oblivion. The churches were closed for siesta, so I trekked up and up to the top of the mount by the Seven Arches Hotel with its spectacular views of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. I tried to follow a church spire but got disinterested and stopped partway at the Pater Noster church, close to where Jesus related the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples. The walls of the church, cloisters, and courtyard are covered with translations of the prayer in more languages than I knew were spoken by Christians, everything from Cornish to Tagalog to Hmong and beyond.

On the descent down the mount, a small residential complex also includes an underground complex of tombs, believed to be the burial place of Malachi. I ran into some Americans in the blackness and searched the tunnels with them. Farther down is the Dominus Flevit Church, where Jesus wept for the destruction of Jerusalem. A window at the front of the chapel looks across onto the Temple Mount. The grounds also include ossuaries of the type used at the time. Sadly, the Church of Mary Magdalene, with its gilded onion domes, is only open to visitors for two hours once a week.

At the foot of the mountain is the Church of All Nations, built on the site of two older churches, which sits next to the Garden of Gethsemane. “Gethsemane,” derived from the Aramaic for “olive press,” is where Jesus and his disciples gathered the night before his death. A small olive grove stands there today, and a very forward young Arab man with surprisingly good English offered to show me through, until I mentioned that I was not willing to pay him. The church façade’s stunning mosaic, the colossal marble columns in the interior, and the ornate architecture were the most awe-inspiring I’d seen the whole day. But for all their beauty, I was still surprised that all of these churches were less than two hundred years old. Their locations were historic, but the actual structures less so.

Just outside the garden is the tomb of the Virgin Mary, an Orthodox crypt cut out of the ground, and housing the sarcophagus in a small shrine. As an Orthodox site, the dimly lit space, heavy with smoky incense, profuse with lamps and mismatched art, stood in stark contrast to the elegant, carefully crafted Western spaces I had visited earlier. The father wished me well in very broken English, then I headed back to Emek Refaim, where, in one of the odder sights of the day, saw frummies on Segways. Miracles never cease.