Journeying through Christendom

Israel’s stunning capital city Jerusalem is dense with religious significance, its golden walls crammed with a million holy sites, as history whispers from every building, every corner.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a sprawling shrine located in the Old City, is one such structure.  Surrounded by the whirligig of shuks (markets) and noisy tourists, the church’s neighbourhood is a quaint mix of the cosmic with the commercial.

With no majestic steeple rising out of its top, nor a grand facade hinting at the ostentatious within, the church is an underwhelming sight at first. As I looked across a hemmed-in amphitheatre, the dilapidated façade of a tawny Romanesque basilica with grey domes and a weather-worn belfry greets me. The church looked more like an excavation project abandoned midway by nervous archaeologists than the holiest of holy sites!

However, as we entered the complex from the southern side, near Souk-el-Dabbagha, a street brimming with shops selling religious paraphernalia, we experienced several jaw-dropping moments. Housed inside is a staggering conglomeration of 30-plus chapels and worship places encrusted with the devotional ornamentation of Christian rites. Immediately to our right — as we enter the church’s doorway — is the Stone of Unction, a limestone slab dating back to 1808 commemorating the preparation of Jesus’ body.

The walk

Our guide Tami Halperine put things into perspective. “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” she explained, “is the pre-eminent shrine for Christians who consider it the holiest place on earth. It attracts pilgrims by the thousands daily, all drawn to pay homage to their Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

The church — which displayed a mix of architectural styles — was one of the most complex structures ever built. “The first building on this spot was a pagan shrine built in the second century by Emperor Hadrian. Stones from a ruined temple were recycled as building material as a painful reminder to Jews and Christians that Romans were the boss of their holy places,” Tami elaborated.

History

The construction of the first church began by Emperor Constantine I, the first Roman king to convert to Christianity in 312 AD. The emperor commissioned numerous churches across the holy land, the most important being the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 326 AD. The king tore down Hadrian’s shrine and had Christ’s tomb cut away from the original hillside. During excavations, Constantine’s mother St Helena was said to have discovered the True Cross near the tomb.

Apparently, St Helena was the one to have discovered three crosses — those of two thieves and that of Christ. To pick the one belonging to Christ, a leper was brought in, to touch each one and he was miraculously healed by one of them. The church was burned down by Persians in 614, restored and then destroyed again by the Muslims in 1009 before being partially rebuilt again. The Crusaders completed the reconstruction in 1149 which is essentially the version of the church as it exists today.

We proceeded towards the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows that commemorated the Thirteenth Station. This was where Jesus was taken down from the cross. A silver disc beneath the Greek altar marks the spot where it stood.

Faith

Visitors are allowed to touch the limestone rock of Calvary through a round hole in the disc. On the right, through a transparent glass, we spotted a fissure. Legend says the deformation was caused by the earthquake at the time of Christ’s death. Others believe the rock of Calvary was eschewed by quarrymen because it was cracked and therefore considered impure. We next descended a flight of stairs the walls of which were are plastered with crosses incised by hundreds of pilgrims over centuries. This was the subterranean section — deep in the bowels of the earth — where Helene stumbled upon the cross.

The centrepiece of the main floor — the Edicule was marked with icons and lanterns. Believers say they feel spiritually uplifted in the silence of the tomb. Some had their eyes closed while others had tears streaming down their cheeks. The stunning mosaic behind the stone illustrated the journey of Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb.

Up a steep flight of stairs, we went to the site of the crucifixion, marked by a Greek Orthodox and a Catholic altar. Christians from around the world stood patiently in a serpentine queue waiting to touch the sacred rock.

The end of the journey

Time and tide have not been kind to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Ravaged by nature, desecration, and neglect, it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1927. Hence, in so many ways, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was hardly the quintessential shrine one expected in all of Christendom to be. Yet it remains a living, breathing beacon of faith, its ancient stones steeped in prayers, hymns and liturgies.