Today’s guest post is from Ami
ra, who lives in Kyrgyzstan and blogs at The Golden Road to Samarqand.
I climbed over stones on the roof of the church and down a ladder to a railing overlooking the main courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was Orthodox Maundy Thursday, the Holy Thursday before Easter, and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch’s ornately embroidered robes were being removed while another man sang. When the Patriarch was wearing a simpler white robe, he knelt down and washed the feet of twelve of his clerics.
A few weeks earlier on Palm Sunday I had walked with Catholic and Protestant Christians from Bethphage down the Mount of Olives into the Old City toward the Church of St. Anne. We cried hosannas together as palm branches waved above my head. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, indeed.
Later I went to Dominus Flevit, a church on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem. In contrast to the hosannas we shouted at St. Anne’s to remember Jesus’ triumphal entry, I remembered His weeping over the city.
On Orthodox Holy Friday we walked the Via Dolorosa with thousands of Christians. I mostly heard Arabic around me and watched different groups carrying crosses together, stopping at the stations of the Cross to sing and pray. I stopped to ask an Arab Christian what name he used for Good Friday. “Al-jumah al-hazina,” he replied. Sad Friday.
On another Sunday I sat in the traditional site of the Garden of Gethsemane and sang “Reverenly and Meekly Now.” Later I would go inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where I watched Christians from all over the world enter and kneel at the anointing stone. They kissed its worn surface, smoothed over centuries of devotion. I wound around to the stairs leading to the chapel of St. Helena, tracing my fingers in the crosses etched on the walls by pilgrims who had traveled far to reach this site. I sang “More Holiness Give Me.”
Those buildings and the people who serve and worship in them taught me about the Easter traditions of Christians from around the world, so different from my own LDS background. I met Ethiopian and Syrian Christians holding on to a corner or a roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Baptists from Georgia who had come as pilgrims, Armenians who taught me their alphabet and their beliefs, and Palestinian Christians who maintained their faith in their ancient city. Their faith reinforced mine as I celebrated their traditions and festivals with them.
Every year I wish I had a LDS community with whom I could share Holy Week, especially Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Holy Friday. Holy Week, like the sacrament, is communal. But even though I don’t worship weekly with that sort of community, Holy Week is a chance for me to reach beyond my LDS roots and feel part of all Christianity. I count that as a blessing.
Christ the Lord is Risen. We are so blessed to know that whether we are Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon.
How has the faith of others strengthened your own?
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