A Holy Week Like None Other in the Holy Land

For Christians everywhere, this Lent and Easter season in the time of the COVID 19 pandemic has been one like none other, a challenging time of not being able to enjoy liturgical and community traditions, parish gatherings, and of course, Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday services. Getting used to watching services at home, live-streamed through the web, finding ways to have confession and communion, and accepting that this time of community, the start of the change in seasons, and so many unfortunate adaptations to what joyful practices that are associated with Easter has been a challenge for all.

For those Christians that planned to go on pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land to celebrate Holy Week and Easter, relief that they were not stuck abroad or in international transit comes with a feeling of deep disappointment and frustration of missing a pilgrimage of a lifetime.

Frustrating as it is, it may be some comfort to know that in both Rome and the Holy Land, public processions with open attendance of services have not been held, and in most cases, even a minimum of clergy, monastics, caretakers and local laity participating. So in many ways, those in places such as Rome, Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem are celebrating the same as people around the world: on TV and the internet. Imagine living just a short distance away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and yet not being able to reach Jerusalem for Holy Week!

In the Holy Land, this year, the Orthodox Church celebrates Easter (called Pascha in Orthodox terminology) a week after the Catholic and Protestant Churches due to different calendars, with Easter Sunday on the 12th and 19th of April, respectively. The process of Jerusalem celebrating two major feasts is usually additionally complicated with Jewish Passover coinciding with the feast dates, and in the coming years, the Muslim feast of Ramadan will also make for one of the most crowded Easters of recent memory, provided regional and international travel resumes.

This year, however, Jerusalem and the Holy Land were devoid of pilgrims. Eerie pictures of the normally packed Old City streets, monasteries, churches, shrines and pilgrimage stops being devoid of not only pilgrims, but people, has been an almost surreal scene to behold. That being said, the most essential services of Easter were still held, even if behind closed doors and the bare minimum of participants involved. So while the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is closed to the public for the first time in nearly 700 hundred years, the monastic communities of the Greek Orthodox, Franciscan and Armenian Churches still conduct services from inside the Holy Sepulchre, the church built over the place of Golgotha and the tomb of Christ, and the chapels and shrines along the Via Dolorosa, the physical locations commemorated the stations of the cross, have been able to continue on Easter traditions on a sort of ”liturgical life support.” So let us take a moment to examine what these traditions are, even in the time of pandemics and quarantine.

In the Catholic tradition, the first major procession in Jerusalem begins on Palm Sunday, with a procession from nearby Bethpage on the Mount of Olives to the Holy Sepulchre in the heart of the Christian Quarter in the Old City. Services in innumerable monastic chapels and parish churches, some with specific connections to some part of the Holy Week Passion story, continue almost nonstop from Monday to Wednesday. The service of the Washing of the Feet, usually conducted by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, occurs on Holy Thursday, as does a service at the Cenacle on Mount Zion, adjacent to the Armenian Quarter in the Old City, where a special agreement with civic authorities for the Franciscan Custos allows for a celebration to occur in what is now considered a Jewish holy site connected to the tomb of King David. Evening services are conducted at the Church of All Nations, a church built on Gethsemane in the Kidron Valley, where visitors can see the extraordinary millenia-old olive trees, some of which stood at the time of Christ’s moment of prayer before his arrest as he prayed throughout the momentous evening. From there, the focus shifts once again back across the Kidron Valley to the Old City, where services are held at the Church of St. Peter Galicantu, where St. Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crowed, and a holding cell, hewn from the stone of the hillside, is held to be the place where Christ was held before his trial.

Good Friday services are held in Jerusalem, with the annual evening procession and the service of the symbolic laying of Christ’s body in the educible (tomb) of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. From Saturday to Sunday morning, a nearly non-stop litany of services across Jerusalem are held, leading up until Easter Sunday for the final and most important of masses. Every third year, when Catholic and Orthodox Easter dates coincide, this already packed itinerary is further compounded by the extraordinary service of the Holy Fire, in which the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem enters the educible with two bundles of 33 candles symbolizing the 33 years of Christ. The Patriarch within the educible is ”quarantined” inside by closing the door and temporarily sealing it with wax, and, moments later, he emerges from the tomb with both bundles of candles having been lit through what is held to be a miracle from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Fire is then passed throughout the Holy Sepulchre, out into the street, and then across the Holy Land by car, and to various countries throughout the world.

After Bright Monday services in Jerusalem, a final afternoon service at Emmaus within Israel is held. During the week, a lively social calendar of receptions of religious community leaders to extent Easter greetings, as well as the start of spring baptisms, engagements and weddings begins through to the summer and early autumn within the local Christian community.

Though the festive atmosphere and pageantry may have been muted during this Easter, the celebration of Easter remained, and remains, joyful and with greater meaning in Jerusalem as more Christians than ever before turn to examine their faith in a moment of global crisis and uncertainty.

Easter is here, and the gates of hell are once again broken. Christ is Risen! Indeed, He has Risen, and is with us as He will be until the true end of days. May you yourself one day bear witness to the celebration of this most glorious gift of God by participating in a Holy Week pilgrimage in Jerusalem, the place where it all occurred.

Be Not Afraid!

Good Shepherd Travel offers pilgrimages to the Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Rome, Lourdes, Fatima, Ireland, and many other places. For more information on how to begin preparing for a pilgrimage in late 2020 or in 2021, contact Tony AbuAita at Tony@goodshepherdtravel.com. We will return to pilgrimage – and we hope to see you with us!