It is the wee hours of Holy Saturday, 4:23 AM. The activities and TV shows about Good Friday kept me tossing in bed. Sleep stayed away. Among other things, Cielo and I watched the classic film, "The Passion of the Christ" produced by Mel Gibson. Though I had seen it a few times before, I was still so moved by the exceptionally dramatic portrayal of Jesus' last hours. Slowly, the Holy Land sites pertinent to the Passion and Death of Christ unfolded in my mind. I was there! Thank God for the privilege of having walked on the very ground where Jesus walked, seen the scenery which displayed before His eyes on a day-to-day basis and touched some objects whereupon His hands had lain! Praise the Lord!
I remembered having walked the Bethpage route which Jesus took when He entered Jerusalem. Under the noonday sun, our group followed the way in silence minus the joyous cries of "Hossana, Hossana! Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!" Without palm branches, too. I prayed and felt sad remembering that the same crowd that hailed Jesus then was the same one who condemmed Him to be crucified. How fickle-minded can man be? How shallow can man's conviction be? How strong can the force of evil be on man's readiness to compromise? I shook my head in sadness....and in disgust.
The Church of All Nations could be seen as the tour bus climbed up Mount Olives. It was built on the place where Jesus communed with His Father during His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The significance of the suffering of Christ is so poignantly made more alive and felt by the darkness that pervaded inside the church. The pale stained-glass windows permitted only a slight glow of the bright sun outside. I believed it was done on purpose. The main altar table was supported by a central structure shaped like a cup since the agony of Jesus is known to be the "Cup of Suffering" for the redemption of mankind. This truth is part of our Christian heritage. Right before the altar lay a large section of rocks bordered by a low (about 10 inches tall) of iron fence of thorns. This was the place where Jesus prayed and sweat blood. The flow of tears by many pilgrims was natural. I spent sometime in the Adoration Chapel which was located on the left side of the church parallel to the main altar. Some thousnd-year-old olive trees could be seen in the courtyard but were protected by flat iron sheets so that it was impossible for any pilgrim to even reach out to pick a leaf.
I espressed my earnest desire to have olive leaves right from the Garden of Gethsemane to Benji Shavit, our guide who actually owned the travel agency in Jerusalem. He said that he knew the "caretaker" and would talk to him about the matter. He added that maybe a small reward would facilitate the request. Without hesitation, I handed a sizeable reward. Within minutes, a smiling bearded middle-aged man came out with Benji. After the usual introductions, he took me across the street from the All Nations Church area and opened a wide huge iron gate with chains larger than the size of my wrists. Lo and behold! Before me lay a large tract of land covered with olive trees whose gnarled roots sprawled above ground. My heart was pounding with excitement! He called a teen-aged boy before we entered. As we walked along the grove, he explained in very good English that most of the trees were more than a thousand years old. He asked the boy to climb up. I watched him break some tiny branches and twigs profuse with olive leaves. I was almost mesmerized with the thought that I was inside the Garden of Gethsemane and that I was witnessing the gathering of olive leaves right from the aged gigantic olive trees! My heart was panting in prayer, "Thank you, God. You are so good to me!"
I shared the olive leaves with the other pilgrims, my family, relations and friends. Do you know something? The olive leaves I have kept since 1994, my first visit to the Garden of Gethsemane are still GREEN up to this date - May 23, 2011. In my succeeding visits to Israel in 1995 and 1999, I was able to get olive leaves through the help of the caretaker. Praise the Lord! But during my first visit to the Holy Land in 1977, I was not able to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. Neither was I able to go to Gethsemane in 2005 when I joined a pilgrimage because of a happening which I will relate in a separate blog.
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