The Holy Land - Day 2

My day began with me waking up at 3:15am. Still suffering from Jet Lag, my body had not yet become accustomed to the local time. After getting only around five hours of rest, I tossed and turned for quite a long while, unable to get back to sleep. Eventually I surrendered to this restlessness and began to pray a rosary for all the intentions that people had given me before coming to Jerusalem, and I thought of the mystics(or even the desert monastics of the Judean countryside) who considered it a joy to wake up at 3am, exactly twelve hours from when Jesus suffered and died on the cross (3pm).

I was awake long enough to hear the sound of one of the first calls to prayer echoing across the valley near Tantur from several mosques just beyond the wall separating Jerusalem from the West Bank. If I had gotten up to look out our window, I would have seen the dark horizon speckled with the green lights from around fifteen minarets from which the call was being given. Staying in bed, I listened to the Arabic chant, which lasted only two minutes or so but cannot help but leave me with the sense that I’m out of my familiar world, though I’m not sure why. In many ways, this call to prayer is no different than the five a.m. bells which rouse the sisters at the convent in my hometown to prayer every morning. But there is something comforting and familiar about the bells; I cannot yet say the same about the morning call to prayer.

On this day we went to Bethlehem (located in the West Bank). We had to pass the checkpoint behind the wall which separates Jerusalem from this area under Israeli occupation. Our driver Samir just told the guards (with guns) that we were “all Americans” in Arabic, despite the fact that we had a Nigerian on the bus too.  Driving into the West Bank, I was immediately struck by how very different the environs looked; in many ways, the West Bank reminded me of my trip to Bosnia. There were a large number of buildings made of cinder blocks, many of them incomplete or decaying; there was trash everywhere, and crowded streets. The landscape is rugged, hilly, mountainous even. The terrain is the same as Jerusalem, except that is was noticeably more economically distressed.

Immediately after the checkpoint, we met up with our guide – Elias, a Palestinian Christian who lives in a town right near Bethlehem.

Our first stop was a small mosque located in Bethlehem – Omar Mosque. We were met there by an alum of Notre Dame who is Muslim and lives in the West Bank just outside of Jerusalem. The women had to cover ourselves (I wore long black pants, my spring jacket, and wrapped a green scarf around my head to cover my hair).  As we entered the mosque, the first step has a little wall around it – about a foot high, signaling to those who enter that one ought to remove one’s shoes before proceeding any further. We walked barefooted up two flights of stairs, into the main prayer room, which was quite simple. It was carpeted in green carpet, which was marked by ornate gold lines, forming guidelines for rows of worshippers in the main worship space of the mosque.

 

We heard an interesting presentation from this ND Alum about the basic teachings of Islam and the structure of Muslim prayer, and about different features of the architecture in the mosque. It was interesting to see how in the basic beliefs of Islam there are many similarities to Christianity. Both emphasize that there is only one God; both have strong traditions of prayer. Both believe in angels and in the final judgment.

Additionally, our guide was quick to point out that in Islam women and men have equal status before God. However, there are certain distinguishing things about men and women – women for example, are the ones who bear children, etc.  Not unlike traditional Catholicism, there is a distinction in role between men and women in Islam. But unlike Christianity, there is a separate area for women to pray at mosque. The women’s prayer area is behind a green curtain and is separate from the main worship area. They explained that women are not required to go to mosque to pray five times a day (for example, if they have their period, or have other duties to tend to at home). Women are permitted to stay at home.

This quick talk about the separate role of women would serve a motif throughout our day. Our next stop was to visit the famous Mar Saba (St. Sabas) Monastery in the Judean wilderness. The road that we took to get to the monastery took us through many distressed towns – and finally led us out into the wilderness. The Judean hills are breathtaking. They have a reddish tint, and are covered with rock and dry grasses and wiry plants. We passed a group of three boys who were, along with their cattle herding dogs guiding a herd of goats and sheep to pasture. One was on a grey donkey; the others were on foot. The road out to Mar Saba was one lane- and was very, narrow and windy. I began to get worried that too much more of this would make me carsick when we spotted the monastery up ahead of us, not too far from the edge of the last buildings.

 The Mar Saba monastery is controlled by the Greeks, and has been so for many centuries. Though the monastery boasted hundreds – perhaps even thousands of monks in the early centuries of Christianity, there are currently fewer than 20 residing there today, and all of them are men. The monks there live a very austere life – they eat one meal a day, and spend their time in prayer and manual labor. Most of them live in solitude in one of the caves or rooms of the monastery. 

Having read some stories from St. John Moscus (another early monastic) about the early Saints and monks who lived there, I was struck by how obsessed they were with purity. So many of the stories we read involved monks who were tempted to sin against chastity. It seems that their harsh and austere life – their constant denial of the flesh for the sake of Christ – led them in many ways to struggle constantly with the desires of the flesh.

At the monastery, the men in our group / class were allowed to enter the monastery, but the women had to sit outside and wait. Less than five women have been permitted to enter the monastery in its almost two thousand year history.  Traveling with a group of women, of whom many have been influenced by feminist theology, it was very difficult to not be permitted to enter.

Another issue is that we are Catholic, and the monastery is run by the Greek Orthodox, who can sometimes be less than welcoming to Catholics, whom they often regard (and even refer to) as heretics. Thankfully, our guide Elias (a Greek Orthodox himself) was able to get the men into the monastery, despite the fact that the majority of them were Catholics. The gatekeeper was kind enough to bring us womenfolk a printed sheet in English, describing the history and some of the features of the monastery which we read while waiting for the men to come back out.

Though the women could not enter the monastery, we could hike up one of the hills and look out over the valley and cliffs on which the Monastery is built, and see the caves which monks used to dwell in hundreds of years ago. It was a beautiful sight.

After that, we visited another monastery- The Monastery of St. Theodosius -- which was back towards Bethlehem. We had some problems getting in, but our guide was finally able to get us in. A monk (a priest?) showed us the Church (he spoke in Arabic to our guide, who translated for us) and told us the history of the monastery. He also showed us the skulls of some of the Christian martyrs from the Persian invasion. 

He took us down to see the tombs of John Moscus and St. Sabas’ mother. There really wasn’t a whole lot to see there, but the courtyard in the middle of the monastery was beautiful and filled with flowers and grape vines. There were two Greek nuns who were hanging laundry out to dry, and one of them brought us a dish of candy on our way out.

Our next stop was the Church of the Nativity. Walking into the Church of the Nativity, one has to bend down to enter through a small door. During the Crusades, the large door was blocked off to make it impossible for maurading Muslims to enter on horseback and sack the sacred building. People through the ages have commented that it is fitting that one ought to stoop down to enter the humble place where Jesus was born, who himself “stooped down” to take on our flesh, though he himself was God.

The Church was dark, old, and seems kind of dirty, much like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which I saw the day before in the Old City in Jerusalem. The walls are held up by huge columns which appear orange-ish on the bottom, and dark on the top, as if covered from soot from all the incense burned there. From the ceiling hang numerous lamps – both Armenian and Greek. There are icons all over.

Our trip down into the place where Jesus was born was very, very brief. The Armenians were just preparing to go down into the chapel to venerate the place of Jesus’ birth, and several police officers / guards were working to clear the area so that the procession and service could happen. On my way down the steep steps into the small chapel, I was overcome with emotion.  Although I had visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (though had not yet had a chance to venerate the Tomb of Christ, place of the Resurrection), I wept, overcome by the fact that Jesus was born on this spot.

Though I have believed all my life that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, being there was a reminder to me that yes indeed, Christ did all of this for me. He was a real human being who really lived – not a mythological figure. When it was my turn, I climbed in and kissed the spot where Jesus was born before quickly getting up and moving to the back of the chapel to be out of the way. I felt a little embarrassed because I was crying. Elias seemed to take notice and I think he may have said something to the guard, something to the effect of, “look, she’s crying. Give her another minute to pray” because we were allowed to stay for another few minutes before being shuffled out the exit and back into the main church. Afterward we went and looked at the Franciscan controlled portion of the Church. Just as at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Church is owned by the Greek Orthodox, but is shared between three denominations: the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Catholics.

We also made a quick visit to the Church of the Milk Grotto. The tradition says that Mary stopped there as the Holy Family was fleeing Bethlehem and going to Egypt, and that she nursed Jesus in a cave. There, some of her milk spilled on the ground, coloring the stone white. Since then, pilgrims have traveled there asking Mary's intercession, particularly those suffering with infertility.

On our way out of the West Bank, I couldn’t help but notice a large image painted on the wall immediately before the security checkpoint which leads back into the city of Jerusalem. It was an image of a Lion (symbol of the city of Jerusalem) gnawing on (attacking) a white dove, on which someone had put a Palestinian style black-and-white head covering. The image made it clear that all of those leaving the West Bank were heading into hostile territory, to the land of the enemy. Israel – Jerusalem – was portrayed as a lion which preys upon the innocent dove – Palestine.

I wanted to take a picture, but was discouraged from doing so by the threatening officers with guns just ahead of us at the security checkpoint. My friend Layla informed me that I wanted to take a picture from the bus window I ought to do so discreetly; during her last trip, some had taken pictures and the guards had confronted them and demanded that they delete them immediately. I decided not to take any chances, but a friend of mine was able to get a picture of it on another trip into Bethlehem a few days later. She also took other pictures of some of the other images and graffiti  on the wall which detail the sad state of affairs there.

 At the checkpoint, a guard got onto our bus / van and asked to see our passports. We held them up for him to see, and he said “thank you” and got off. He looked to be about 17 years old and had a large gun and was dressed in a simple grey police uniform.