From Jane B. Sherwin On the Church of the Resurrection/Holy Sepulchre

Tuesday January 13

The Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem is a vast confusion of architectures and centuries and, as in most of Christian Jerusalem you go deeper and deeper underground the closer you get to the original sites, the first century ones, many of them identified by Helena, mother of Constantine. 

Helena built the original fourth century structures to identify and protect the central Christian sites. Then the Byzantine emperors and the Crusaders and a total of six different organized Christian religions (not including any Protestants) rebuilt, tore down, and rebuilt. The little that remains of Helena’s buildings are limestone walls, high and thick, with heavy columns headed by capitals in an odd three-dimensional basket weave, and no windows.

At the main entrance we approached the anointing stone, cracked and uneven pink and white marble lying on the floor under a canopy. People kneel to kiss the stone or bring something they care deeply about for anointing by a fragrance that our guide said often remains. I’m always willing to give these things a try—placed my hand flat on the stone but it remained cold as an egg, and I didn’t smell anything. Someone had left a little round rubber band, distracting, on the surface. Penny kindly brushed it away. Jerusalem is a cold place in winter. The stones hold the cold.

After the anointing stone we passed the blackened wooden structure covering the actual tomb and began going down and down again, this time along a corridor past the walls of the out-of-use stone quarry identified as Golgotha, the place where Jesus hung on his cross. Through a glass window one is able to view a rough limestone crag in the quarry, a crag which Helena had identified as the precise location of Jesus’s own cross. The crag was behind glass to stop pilgrims from chipping off bits to take home. 

Down and down again we went to a chamber where there was neither gold nor mosaic nor brass hangings nor icons nor shabby oil painting, but one remaining wall of the same out-of-use quarry where we were shown the marks laborers made to extract stone for all the buildings the Romans were busy constructing, especially walls to defend their possessions. And at the very bottom of the passage, at floor level, were rectangular spaces cut for placement of the dead—much as Jesus’s tomb might have looked. It was still cold, but there was enough air.

Our guide said the church is a numinous place with all the wild variety of religious construction, devices, hangings, brass, candles and altars. Easter must be brilliant, filled with people standing in the dark shouting Come Lord Jesus and suddenly filling the huge place with the lighting of thousands of candles. Still, for me, the notion of Helena’s determined effort, a resolute detective, a careful questioner—I admire her. 

Looking at the chipped quarry walls I thought, there could have been one stone worker there, even if they had closed the quarry. Maybe he needed a little cash to buy a drink. Maybe during yet another crucifixion he was just working away, like the horse scratching his behind while Icarus fell from the heavens, his wings melting, in Breughel’s painting. Maybe his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter gave evidence to the great Empress herself. The mystery of presence is evoked as much by story as by any kind of proof. The more the story begins to come together the more my heart fills.

Jane B. Sherwin

The Parish of the Epiphany, Holy Land Pilgrimage 2015