My Mount of Olives Adventure
Always know what closing time is before you leave the house.
Author’s note: I had intended on publishing this piece as a Substack Note. Notes are relatively quick and simple installments, as opposed to full-blown essays. However, Notes will only allow you to attach photos at the end of the piece and, as you’ll soon see, this story requires me to place the photos where they’re needed, rather than insert them as a footnote.
On Tuesday, I headed up the Mount of Olives, just to the east of the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s a place where Jesus and the Apostles spent a lot of time.
It’s technically [topographically] not a mountain. It’s just a really, really big, really, really steep hill.
It’s where Jesus began his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
Five nights later, on Holy Thursday, it was at the base of the Mount of Olives, in the Garden of Gethsemane, that he was betrayed and arrested. (In the photo above, the area immediately to the left of the Church of All Nations is the garden.)
Further uphill (if you put the pieces together in Luke’s Gospel), he’d previously taught the Apostles the Lord’s Prayer, popularly known as the “Our Father” or, in Latin, “Pater Noster.”
That location is memorialized at the Cloister of Pater Noster, which I stumbled upon after visiting the Chapel of the Ascension, at the crest of the mount.
The site of the Ascension was my primary objective that morning.
Since arriving in Israel, I’ve been to the place where the angel told Mary that she was blessed among women. I’ve been to the field where the shepherds heard the Christmas news from a “multitude of the heavenly host.”
On Good Friday, I walked the steps of Jesus’ Passion. I’ve knelt at the site of his crucifixion, kissed the stone on which he was anointed, and been inside his tomb.
The location of his Ascension seemed like a pretty logical item to be next on the training schedule.
Side note: The Church of the Ascension is maintained, not by any of the Christian churches, but by the Islamic Waqf, which is a sort of counterpart to the Catholic (Franciscan) Custody of the Holy Land. The Waqf is responsible for the care and maintenance of Islamic holy sites and, since they turned the site of Jesus’ ascension into a mosque in 1187, they still run the place, and it’s a mess. I mean, a gross, sloppy, unkempt disgrace.
So, anyway, after throwing up in my mouth at the site of Jesus’ Ascension, I was making my way down the hill, toward the Church of Mary Magdalene, when I found a couple of sites that weren’t on my agenda.