by Marcel-Jacques Dubois
Professor Marcel-Jacques Dubois is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been a lecturer in philosophy since 1968. He entered the Dominican order in 1938, and since 1994 is a Magister in sacra Theologia (Dominican order).
Professor Dubois is a former Consultant of the Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with Judaism, and was awarded the Legion of Honor (1985), Yakir Jerusalem (1989), and the Israel Prize (1996).
From the summit of the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem is strikingly manifest, both in its reality and in its mystery.
Just as it stands like a promontory, on the edge of the desert, as a watershed, Jerusalem holds fast to the frontier between East and West, between the past and the present. Indeed, that frontier cuts through the city to the point of tearing it apart. It is the meeting place and the point of confrontation of the sacred and the profane, of holiness and sin. It belongs equally to the everyday and to the transcendent, to the human and to the divine, to time and to eternity. City of stone and city of heaven, it is both a town where people live with their cares and their passions and the symbol that foreshadows the Jerusalem above.
The earthly Jerusalem is for this reason the high place of remembrance and of hope, a remembrance and a hope that find their roots in a precise point in space and time. Such is Jerusalem for those who believe. This city is the holy place par excellence, the place where God is found through the remembrance of faith. The Christian vocabulary has a word that expresses well enough the significance of Jerusalem in Christian remembrance: this city is a sacrament. Bright or dark, painful or enthusiastic, its earthly reality invites the discovery of the transcendent reality that lies beyond it. Jerusalem is the point in space and time where God intervened for the salvation of men, and where he continues to work in history.
The paradox of Christian Jerusalem, sometimes saddening, is that it appears before the world as a symbol of disunion. Many pilgrims who visit Jerusalem declare themselves scandalized by the juxtaposition of, indeed the competition between, the various Christian communities that share custody of the Holy Sepulcher. The all-too-human appearance of the Church in the very place of the Redemption is seen as a sign of contradiction! It is as if diversity and contradiction themselves were inviting us to go beyond appearances and to discover the mystery that is hidden, sometimes deceivingly, behind the veil.
In short, even if at first sight the spectacle of the Holy Places or the divisions between Christians in Jerusalem may seem shocking to some, it is a sign of contradiction that entreats our faith in the actual presence today of the Incarnation. Paradoxically, the divisions between the Churches show the immediacy and the depth of the mystery of God come to humanity.
If they are considered in this theological light, the differences themselves may be seen as the various tensions within the people of God in its long march towards the accomplishment of the Kingdom. Seen from above, in the eyes of a God who draws to him all men of good will, Jerusalem is revealed as a mysterious pole of unity.
It is in this sense, too, beyond divisions, differences and rivalries, that the city unites the three religions that meet there and whose faithful live in it together. Indeed, for Jews, Christians and Muslims it is the place of encounter with God, a point in space and time where eternity is present, the capital of prayer. In this respect, the rhythm of the days, the weeks and the seasons, the rhythms of all life in the city are astonishingly synchronous. The life of Jerusalems Christians forms part of this great movement. Even nowadays, it is through the rhythm of prayer that the life of the Christian community can be best understood.
This prayer, which continues all through the day, is given a rhythm by the bells of the different churches: the great bell, solemn and grave, of the Holy Sepulcher; the more airy belfries of the Russian monastery on the Mount of Olives; the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion; or the more modest and discrete bells of the Benedictines, the Carmelites and the Clares. And it is all the more striking that the ringing of the Christian bells interferes with the voices of the muezzins, calling Muslims to prayer in the various mosques of the Old City. And in addition, at the same times and following the same rhythm, pious Jews may be met in the street, hurrying to the Temple Wall or to the little synagogues of their quarter; from dawn, for the prayer of shacharit, to nightfall, for the prayer of minha or of maariv. Christian prayer forms part of a synchrony of many voices that makes Jerusalem, in truth, the capital of prayer. "Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent" (Is. 62:6). The incessant prayer that rises from the holy city fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah.
At the end of every week, from Friday morning until Sunday evening, Jerusalem presents a picture, unique in the world, of what could be called ecumenism in time. Muslims, Jews and Christians in turn offer their weekly worship according to a rhythm whose cycles are superimposed.
Some people say that in this remarkable situation the lazy find an alibi for a three-day holiday! On Friday, Muslims congregate in the mosque, especially the Dome of the Rock, in the Temple courtyard or at al-Aksa. When they return home through the streets of the Old City, they come across Jews heading for the Western Wall for prayer of kabbalat shabbat. All day Saturday, Jerusalem teems with a crowd in which men and women from all over the world, of every faith and every language, are intermixed. Arab Muslims and Christians busy about their daily work, Christians of all denominations, monks and nuns in the most varied habits, devout Jews who are going to the Temple Wall for the Sabbath offices, non-practising Israelis taking advantage of Saturday to make their purchases from Arab shops, and pilgrims from every land, bustling through the city to savor its sights while they add their own color to the general mix.
On Saturday evening, as the tumult dies away, church bells ring to announce Sunday vigils. And on Sunday mornings, as civil life returns to its normal rhythm and shops, offices and workshops open their doors, the Christians - Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Copts, Syrians, Russian Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and Baptists - gather in their various churches, convents and monasteries, for the celebration of "the Lords Day".
Devotion to the "way of the Cross" has the same source as the veneration shown by Christians toward the holy places. To be sure, history does not tell us if the apostles and their first disciples came to visit the places Jesus passed on his way to Calvary, but from the first centuries it was certainly part of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and of a visit to the scenes of the Passion. The report of the pilgrim of Bordeaux, the peregrinatio of Egeria and many other travel accounts testify to this spontaneous movement of the Christian soul.
The journey from death to glory, through the suffering of this world transfigured by Christs victory, was summed up once and for all by St. Paul: "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Phil. 3:10). Such is the key, the golden rule, that opens to our understanding both the way of the Cross and the whole Christian destiny. Whatever may be its route, or the authenticity of its stations, it has given meaning to the steps of those who, during the centuries, have trodden the flagstones of the Via Dolorosa.
"And when they had sung a hymn (Hallel), they went out to the Mount of Olives" (Mt. 26:30; Mk. 14:26). For the attentive reader, this simple Gospel sentence summarizes most concisely the passing from the old covenant to the new, and the continuity of the history of salvation. It was after having sung with his disciples the Alleluia Psalms that conclude the Seder of the Jewish Passover that Jesus set out to achieve, by his passion and his cross, the mystery that the Church proclaims in its Easter Alleluia. The Easter mystery is unfolded between two Alleluias. By means of the first, articulated by Psalms 113 to 118, the Jewish people give thanks for their escape from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea; by means of the second, the Church proclaims Jesus victory over death. Christians who celebrate Easter in Jerusalem cannot fail to be struck by the conjunction of the two. It is easier to grasp here than elsewhere that in the Easter mystery Jesus places himself at the meeting point of two memories.
In effect, Jesus linked the proclamation of his own mystery to the celebration of a Passover Seder. Whatever may be the transpositions and the differences, it is easier in Jerusalem than anywhere else to discern the continuities. The Christian Easter was originally a Jewish Passover. By its very realism, the latter allows a better understanding of the former. Like the entire Bible, the singular adventure of the Jewish people carries with it a value at once unique and exemplary. To introduce the history of salvation, the Easter liturgy, in all its forms, recapitulates as a fundamental theme the story of the children of Israel.
In this way, exile and slavery, the flight from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the entry into the Promised Land, all exemplify for our faith, forever, the initiatives of a God who saves and liberates his people. How can one not be struck, celebrating Easter in the heart of the Jewish people, by a sense of the reality of these facts, which are, for Israel, events in its history?
The important point here is the sacramental attitude, of which the Jewish Passover celebrations is the example and which Christian tradition has inherited: it might be called "the actuality of memory". It is not by chance that Jesus chose precisely this occasion to tell his disciples, and all those who would believe in him, "Do this in memory of me." It is at the very moment when he is commemorating the Exodus with his people that he invites us to commemorate him! "In each and every generation, it is a mans obligation to regard himself as if he, too, had come out of Egypt." This sentence, which Jews re-read every year in the Haggadah, gives Passover Night a present-day and permanent significance.
Seven weeks after Easter, celebrated in Jerusalem amid a Jewish population that observes the feast of Shavuoth, Pentecost is an occasion for the discovery of other harmonies: those found in the freely given nature of Gods gift and in its continuity. If Pentecost is for us, as Christians, the commemoration of the gift of the Spirit (the English term Whitsunday stresses the connection) then for Jews, Shavuoth is the commemoration of the gift of the Torah. The parallelism is very evident.
This parallel with the Jewish festival of Matan Torah invites reflection on the structure of Gods gift. At first sight the comparison may seem surprising, since it is usually presented as the touchstone that marks the distinction between Jewish and Christian tradition. For Jews, in fact, the Law includes two complementary aspects: the Torah shebikhtav, the written Law, and the Torah shebealpe, the oral law. A faithful Jew attaches as much importance to the tradition of scholarly wisdom, Hazal, recorded in the Talmud, as to the letter of the written text.
In this respect, the "written law - oral law" dichotomy is, for Christians, a very powerful example of the gift of faith, which brings together an object to be unveiled, a message to be deciphered and an affinity with God, an internal instinct, which gives the heart of man the ability to perceive what God has said. In brief, just as the Jewish people read Scripture according to the oral law, that is to say, in the tradition of their community, so the Christian reads the Bible according to the tradition and the memory of the Church, that is to say according to the internal instinct which is the Holy Spirit.
There is another aspect of the Christian Pentecost to which the Jewish Pentecost serves as an introduction: its universality. That day in the synagogues is read the megillah, the scroll, of the Book of Ruth, one of the most poetic stories in the Bible. The choice seems to have been inspired by two reasons. The first is that the text evokes harvests, and talks of messengers. The second, more important, is the fact that the protagonist of the story is a foreign woman, a descendant of the Moabites, the traditional adversaries of Israel. The intention behind the choice is clear: to stress the universality of the Jewish Pentecost. To be sure, the Torah is first of all given to Israel, but it is given for all and its promise also concerns pagans. Every open and upright soul that, following Ruths example, allows itself to be inspired by its benevolence, is already part of the chosen people.
The Christian Pentecost, then, appears as the accomplishment of this universalism. The new People of God unites all men, beyond everything that humanly opposes them. Christ has reconciled Jews and pagans, destroying the barrier that divided them and bringing an end to hostility (Eph. 2:14). Pentecost is the memorial of the inflowing of that Spirit, which beyond all the differences of language, race and culture achieves fraternal unity between men. In this sense, the Church is Pentecost continued.
To the pilgrim who comes to Jerusalem from the eastern side and views the landscape from Mount Scopus or the Mount of Olives, the city appears at first sight as an immense cemetery. From both sides of Kidron, along the road that leads to Bethany and Jericho, a glance takes in an immense field of tombstones. Over the centuries, many faithful Jews have sought to be buried in Jerusalem, taking literally Ezekiels prophecy: "Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord... Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live." (Ez. 37:4-5). "Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel" (ibid. 37:12). "And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live" (ibid. 37:14). That is why this gigantic cemetery is not at all sinister; it is a place for waiting.
Beside this great field of Jewish tombs, in particular under the eastern wall of the Temple in the shadow of the Golden Gate, in the hollow of Kidron, Muslims and Christians have also buried their dead. The entire valley thus appears as the parvis of a shared repose and a single hope.
The view of Jerusalems landscape leads to a vision that is greater still, suggested by the panorama of the city seen from the hill at present occupied by the United Nations headquarters. From there in a single glance one can see all Jerusalem, the old and the new, the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, the Mount of Olives, the Judean Wilderness, the depression of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Before this view, the prophecy of Ezekiel reverberates with extraordinary realism: "Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east..."
Seeing in a single glance Jerusalem, the desert and the Dead Sea helps us understand the meaning of the prophecy. It is easy to imagine the eruption of life under the flowing waters of the river that emerges from the Temple. By faith, we recognize the source from which this life-giving water springs. This spring is at the center of the city. In this way the whole of Jerusalem, high place of the Cross and the Resurrection, appears in the eyes of faith as the symbol, par excellence, of the victory of life.
It has become commonplace to say that Jerusalem is a meeting point of the three monotheisms. In fact, considering what history has made of it and the present state of relations between the three great religions, Jerusalem appears rather as a high place of disunion. Its history is a long road marred by rivalries and conquests, persecutions and revenge. The city still carries, in its stones and in its hearts, the marks of ancient struggles. The wounds of different ages have not yet healed over. Today, a waiting situation that is neither peace nor war seems to have congealed into a state of permanent tension, mutual ignorance and deaf hostility, three communities who believe nonetheless in the same God and who all three claim descent from Abraham.
This city, where the three great monotheistic religions co-exist, sums up in its history and in its stones the tragedies, the conflict and the bloody events that have torn apart, throughout the centuries, Jews, Christians and Muslims. Jerusalem is the place where the contradictions and the divisions that separate religions cry out in the most visible - and most symbolic - manner. In this respect, Jerusalem has been and remains a symbol of contradiction. But it is also a symbol of hope. Jerusalem is the high place, where for the believers of the three great monotheisms, God intervened in human history. It was there that He revealed to men his proposal for unity and peace, where He prefigured its realization.
Such is Jerusalems permanent vocation. A point of impact that is absolutely unique in eternity and in time, this city is called to be the laboratory of mutual comprehension and respect between men. For believers who live in Jerusalem, in the fidelity of each towards his own internal light and in the joy of discovering in others the same fidelity, the meeting between religions is an experience at once unique and exemplary, which is addressed to all men of good will. "And of Zion it shall be said: This one and that one were born in her" (Ps. 87:5).