Resurrection

The Church of the Resurrection.

Today we completed our steps through Holy week with a visit to the Church of the Resurrection or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as it is more commonly known in the West.

The Via Dolorosa has been a place of pilgrimage devotion for centuries.

We began our morning with a 6AM walk to Herod's Gate where we began the day's devotions on the Via Dolorosa with the Stations of the Cross. It was a morning of deep thought, great reflection, prayer, song and tears as we followed a cross and remembered that Good Friday that Jesus carried his own cross to Golgotha and was crucified.

The steps that lead to Golgotha.

Of course, the Church of the Resurrection is also known for the empty tomb and our walk to the cross would not be complete without the celebration of the empty tomb and our Lord's defeat of death itself!

The ladder outside the Church of the Resurrection.

For those of you who have never been to the Church of the Resurrection, it is an interesting place as it is a shared holy space between six denominations: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox. It is always sad to see division in the Christian Church, and it is evident here at the place where Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. A ladder outside the church, which was placed there by one of the denominations in 1852, remains there to this day because of terretorial disagreement over the space in the Church of the Resurrection, and stands as a testament of the divisions in this land.



But as the sun streamed into the Church and in the silence of the space (even though there were a few hundred people in the church), I was able to forget all the centuries of division and find for a brief moment the solace of that glorious morning when the women discovered the empty tomb.

'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.' Luke 24:5