12th-13th May. The Easter period is coming to its conclusion: the joy of Easter needs a long period of time to take root in the heart and to become an experience of rebirth! And it also has to be reconfirmed as a celebration: the first, today’s solemnity and, in ten days’ time, great Pentecost Sunday.
On the eve, reaching the chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, we rediscovered the climate of “joint Easter”. The Gregorian and Julian calendars indicate the same date for Easter and therefore for the Ascension. The area around the Shrine was occupied by the tents of the Franciscans, the Greek Orthodox, the Copts, the Syrians and the Armenians. And if the tents of the Franciscans do not show any particular novelties because they are “utilitarian” and they celebrate in the Shrine, every religious or lay person who took part in the pilgrimage visited the tents of the other Christian confessions, which each have a particularity of their own in the decorations and arrangement of the altar.
In this way, we have been able to understand, as at Easter, this conviviality of differences which underlines the positive aspect of how different the way of celebrating the truth that unites us can be: faith in Christ who was resuscitated and ascended to heaven.
A kite flew in the sky, accompanying the procession around the Shrine at the end of the prayer of Vespers celebrated by the Franciscans. Skilfully made, but from poor materials and with a long tail made from the fraying seam, it was flown by three little rascals who alternated in flying it in a circle above the Shrine until they pulled it down at the end of the procession. It was a friendly Muslim participation in the inauguration of the solemnity of the Ascension.
The Compline prayer and the solemn office of the eve and, at midnight, the start of the Mass which followed on one another non-stop until the great concelebration of the Eucharist presided by the Vicar of the Custody, Fr. Artemio Vítores at 5.30 a.m. this morning, Thursday 13th May, celebrated this feast-day in the Place where the Ascension of our Lord is commemorated, in a prayer of adoration and thanks, to return to Jerusalem with great joy.
Irene Boschetti
On the eve, reaching the chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, we rediscovered the climate of “joint Easter”. The Gregorian and Julian calendars indicate the same date for Easter and therefore for the Ascension. The area around the Shrine was occupied by the tents of the Franciscans, the Greek Orthodox, the Copts, the Syrians and the Armenians. And if the tents of the Franciscans do not show any particular novelties because they are “utilitarian” and they celebrate in the Shrine, every religious or lay person who took part in the pilgrimage visited the tents of the other Christian confessions, which each have a particularity of their own in the decorations and arrangement of the altar.
In this way, we have been able to understand, as at Easter, this conviviality of differences which underlines the positive aspect of how different the way of celebrating the truth that unites us can be: faith in Christ who was resuscitated and ascended to heaven.
A kite flew in the sky, accompanying the procession around the Shrine at the end of the prayer of Vespers celebrated by the Franciscans. Skilfully made, but from poor materials and with a long tail made from the fraying seam, it was flown by three little rascals who alternated in flying it in a circle above the Shrine until they pulled it down at the end of the procession. It was a friendly Muslim participation in the inauguration of the solemnity of the Ascension.
The Compline prayer and the solemn office of the eve and, at midnight, the start of the Mass which followed on one another non-stop until the great concelebration of the Eucharist presided by the Vicar of the Custody, Fr. Artemio Vítores at 5.30 a.m. this morning, Thursday 13th May, celebrated this feast-day in the Place where the Ascension of our Lord is commemorated, in a prayer of adoration and thanks, to return to Jerusalem with great joy.
Irene Boschetti