Church of the Singing Chicken! - Jesus' Last Day Retreat Pilgrimage

Let me just say that I had a very relaxing and wonderful weekend. And that Class on Monday -Dealing with Jesus' Healing Miracles - was especially enlightening. I have done very little site seeing over the last few days and until this morning, had not taken any pictures since Friday. I made up for it today.

In preparation for our celebrating Mass in Jesus' actual tomb tomorrow morning, my classmates and I had another themed "retreat day" today. The theme of today's retreat is "Jesus' Last Day" and we retraced the foot steps of Jesus from the last supper to the tomb. It was really an extended "Stations of the Cross" that remembered Holy Thursday and Good Friday events.

It has been a rather long day as I went our early this morning to take some morning pictures around old Jerusalem. TO begin the retreat we met at the Cenacle (the Upper Room) for the 7:00 am Mass that is supposedly celebrated there every day. We had been warned that the actual Mass might be int he chapel of the Franciscans connected to the Cenacle and sure enough there was no one int he Cenacle itself. We tried our best to find and entrance to the Franciscan Convent but to no avail. Fortunately, the German Benedictines at the Dormition Abbey had a Mass (in German) beginning at 7:15 am and we were able to join them. We then went to the Cenacle and prayed Morning Prayer. After a time of reflection int he Cenacle, we sat down in a little grove of trees outside and read the beginnings of the Passion Narratives, reflecting on the institution of the Eucharist and Jesus' washing his disciples feet.

After a quick cup of coffee in the Dormition Coffee Shop, we headed across the Kidron Valley to a garden on the Mount of Olives where Jesus used to pray with his disciples. There we made two stations; the Church of the Agony in the Garden (the Church of All Nations) and Grotto that commemorates where Peter, James, and John slept in the Garden while Jesus prayed, where Judas betrayed Jesus, and where Jesus was arrested. When we arrived at Gethsemane and went into the Church of the Agony, there was a Mass going on in Italian. We sat in prayer and refection during that Mass. It gave me some time to do some reflecting on Jesus' agony in the Garden.

In my life, I have gone back and forth on quite a regular basis between the two sentences Jesus utters in his prayer in the Garden. I suppose I take some comfort in the fact that Jesus suffered the ambivalence, but then again, the cup of which he was asked to drink was death on the Cross. I am asked to drink of much easier cups and often ask, at least figuratively, that the cup might pass me by. I don't want to suffer for the sake of the Gospel - and again the "sufferings" I face a so minor compared to what Jesus suffered at Calvary. On my good days, I can get to "not my will, but yours be done..." And that is a sincere prayer on my part. If I am honest with myself, I suppose I have to admit that live somewhere between "let this cup pass from me..." and "Your will be done..." almost all the time. The real challenge is to get to that place where we are living "thy will be done" all the time. "But it is so hard to know the will of God..." some might argue. In my experience, God is really good about letting us know what his will is, both generally (do good, avoid evil) and personally (the way to live happiness in the context of my specific job or vocation). If we are ready to open ourselves to the will of God and to allow him to form us into, he is ready to do it.

Speaking for myself, I will admit that this is easier said than done - my will keeps getting in the way. My prayer today is that I can more completely surrender my will and grow in God's. I take as my model Jesus in the garden. Lord help me to move from my will (let this cup pass) to thy will (thy will be done...).

When the Mass was over, we had another one of those Great "Jesus of Nazareth slept here..." moments you can only have in the Holy Land. The area in front of the main altar in the Church of the Agony is exposed stone from the Garden that surrounds the Church - the Garden of Gethsemane. It is revered as the place where Jesus experienced the agonizing prayer in the Garden. I have been in the Church two other times already and at no time was that area open so that you could go in and pray at the stone. Today, because Mass was finishing, the gate was open and I asked the Franciscan "guard" to let us in to pray - probably my habit opened that door too - he let us in. I was able to conclude my prayer (the reflection of the last two paragraphs) as a prayer of submission asking God to give me the grace to conform my will more to his. After our brief time of prayer at Agony rock, we went out onto the portico of the Church and did our common Scripture study on the agony.

We then made our way over to the grotto of the denial - which commemorates the sleeping apostles and the betrayal and arrest of Jesus. It is another of those places that demand silence, so we sat in silence and read our scriptures and prayed before the Blessed Sacrament.

Now we had already walked once (in the intense morning sun) from Mt. Zion to the Mount of Olives to commemorate the post Seder walk that Jesus took with his disciples. Not sure the distance, but probably 1/2 mile down one slope of a the Kidron Valley and up the other. Now to continue our pilgrimage, we had to reverse that walk , this time much later in the morning and wit the sun higher and more intense. "It was about noon..." Only we decided to walk all the way down into the Kidron Valley into the cemeteries and all the way back up the other side. Because it is a day of follow in the suffering of the Lord ...and because we are idiots. This time our destination was the CHURCH OF THE SINGING CHICKEN. I'm not kidding.

The actual name of the Church is St. Peter in Gallicantu - which is probably best translated the Church of St. Peter and the crowing Rooster - But "Gallicantu" is Latin for Singing Rooster - and I really like the idea that there is a church of the singing chicken here in Jerusalem. A number of things are commemorated at this Church - Jesus' arrest, trial before the high priest (it is supposed that this Church is built on the site of the real house of Caiaphas (as opposed to the other three places in Jerusalem that make such a claim) and of course, the denial of Jesus by Peter three times before the chicken sang...

It is a beautiful 20th Century Church under the care of the Augustinian Fathers. Like so may other churches in Jerusalem, its primary art form for depicting the events it commemorates is Mosaics. These are quite simple and modern mosaics but they are stunning. The difference in this Church is the extensive excavations that have been done beneath it and that are open to the public. There are rooms of the house of a wealthy man ( a high priest?) and rooms that are remembered as the prison that held Jesus overnight as the Sanhedrin debated his fate. There are "holy stairs" that certainly go back to the first century BC and may have been walked by Jesus and his disciples. We parked ourselves in one of the lower caves of the excavation and read the Gospel accounts of trial of Jesus before the high priest and Peter's denial of Jesus.

All of this set us up to begin the traditional stations of the cross which wind their way through the Muslim and Christian Quarters up Golgotha to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Te 10th -14th Stations are inside the Basilica. Not much to report about the stations except that the business of Old Jerusalem went on around us as we prayed. Most of the first 9 stations are commemorated right on the busy streets of the Arab souks (markets) and the crowded alleyways of the Old City played host to us, but went right on with business as usual. Prayer in the midst of the busy day is the way it should be in our lives all the time and it was great that the three of us could pray in this way.

It has been a wonderful day of praying and sharing with my classmates! What a privilege it is to be able to take such time. It's like every Holy Thursday and Good Friday I have ever experienced rolled into one - and here in Jerusalem!

But the real exciting part of out June Holy Week experience happens tonight. When the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is locked at 9:00 PM tonight, Frs. Carl, Steve, and I are going to be locked inside to spend the night in vigil awaiting our celebration of the resurrection - Our Easter will take place at 6:30 in the morning when we celebrate Mass inside the tomb of Jesus. All night tonight, we will be observing our vigil in preparation. I have not proofread this post, because I wanted to get it on the blog before I head over to be locked in. Throughout the night tonight, I may make some short posts from inside the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher of Jesus...