Jesus' footsteps, part 2

The gates of the Pater Noster

We left the Chapel of the Ascension and walked a few blocks to the Pater Noster. We have been taken for a French women for much of the trip (I have helpfully replied by demanding baguettes and telling my name in French) and this lovely little cloister is actually owned by France and populated by a group of Catholic sisters.

Our Father

Much like the Church of the Visitation, the Pater Noster features the Lord's Prayer on ceramic plates in something like 160+ languages. In seminary, our Greek class recited the Greek version every day when we began.

The sisters particularly venerated St. Therese de Lisieux, a young Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis before reaching her 30s but whose wisdom has outlived her many times over. She is known for professing "the little way" -- that recognizing her smallness before God let her fulfill her tasks of loving God and others with confidence.

"What a comfort it is, this way of love!" Therese wrote. "You may stumble on it, you may fail to correspond with grace given, but always love knows how to make the best of everything; whatever offends our Lord is burnt up in its fire, and nothing is left but a humble, absorbing peace deep down in the heart." The Pater Noster was a place of deep peace.

From there, we began our walk down the Mount of Olives toward the Old City of Jerusalem. A cascade of white tombs covered the steep hillside. The tombs are Muslim on one side and Jewish on the other, with a locked golden gate between. Christian cemeteries are similarly partitioned throughout the city, with great walls and barbed wire stretching to the sky. We will not even rest together.

Jesus' words against legalism ring out from this viewpoint: whitewashed tombs whose outsides look pristine but whose insides are full of decay and impurity -- pointing to the land to point to the heart.

As a hen gathers her chicks

We followed a steep descent to Dominus Flevit, happy to find level ground. A flat of cold bottled water sat like bait beyond the entrance gate. "How much?" I asked before thinking, knowing the question is one that no one likes to answer around here. "Try it first!" when I asked about the dried dates. "Let me tell you more about the Bedouins who wove it!" when I asked about a scarf. "40% off for you!" is the fantastic deal that my French features seem to be winning at every turn. Yep.

It was close to noon at this point. I handed over some shekels and we entered the newer, tear-drop shaped church. The architecture reflects the name, Dominus Flevit -- where the Lord wept over Jerusalem on his approach. The story is in Luke, a part of the not-so-triumphant entry of a crying king riding a donkey. The image there hearkens to Zechariah:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

I told Melissa the story of King David fleeing the city after the insurrection of his son, Absalom -- fleeing rather than retaliating against his beloved child, weeping as he went. And here was the return of a humble, weeping king, to bring the end of war not only for the children of Jerusalem, but for the whole world.

Gethshemane, the garden of Jesus' vigil before his betrayal, was at the bottom of the hill. The place means "oil press," a fitting image for a night of struggle. We sat inside the beautiful church and waited, too, heeding the wise words posted outside the doors.