“Salve Columna nobilis, Christi dolorum conscia”.
It is Wednesday, in this Holy Week with its most solemn days fast approaching. Today, feverish preparations are under way in Jerusalem for the Easter rites that the Latins and Orthodox will be celebrating on the same day this year.
The Holy Sepulchre is filling with pilgrims, the streets in the Old City that lead to the place of the tomb where the body of Christ was laid are full even in the early hours of the morning, whilst the local Christian community is joined day after day by visitors from all over the world, mixing new languages with the many that already echo in these streets.
Today, in Jerusalem, it is the day we exalt the Grace of the Holy Places, that can be seen, touched and kissed. Every piece of this land, where He passed, transmits the encounter with Christ. In the Basilica of the Sepulchre, the Column of the Flagellation - “Columna nobilis” as it is celebrated in the hymn that marks the start of the rite – is venerated. Led by the Vicar of the Custody Brother Artemio Vitores, the Franciscans arrive in procession from Gethsemane, where the “Passio Christi” was sung again this morning. The liturgy of the Gospel of the passion, today, also had its act of tangible devotion, when the stone in the Olive Grove – on which Jesus sweated drops of blood on the night he was captured – was kissed by the lector.
Greeting the column, on the other hand, involved the pilgrims all day long: they queued up, after the prayer, to lay the palm of their hand on it or kiss it. It is the expression of a faith that is not based on thought, that is not cerebral, but that involves the whole person.
“This object has a very ancient tradition,” the Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre, Brother Fergus Clarke reminded us. “We cannot be definitely sure that it is the one Jesus was tied to, but we need to touch it because out faith is not made up of concepts. The column is a “metaphor” of the love of Christ, who suffered and died for us.” The metaphor of this love and physical place which, like the stone in Gethsemane, received the blood and the sweat of the Saviour.
The stump of ref porphyry is today in the Chapel of the Apparition, one of the places of the Holy Sepulchre belonging to the Latins. On the right of the altar, framed by a red cloth, until a few years ago it was displayed for the veneration of the faithful only on the Wednesday before Easter. It reached its current location in around the 14th century, but there are traces of it that date back a thousand years earlier. The pilgrim Egeria talks about it in her journal and in her time it was venerated on Good Friday near the Cenacle.
Today, which opens the doors to the Easter Triduum, continued in the afternoon with an office presided by Mons. Kamal Hanna Bathish, auxiliary bishop for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, when the singing of the Psalms and reading the passages from the old and New Testament prepared the faithful for the events that will be commemorated on these holy days.
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso
It is Wednesday, in this Holy Week with its most solemn days fast approaching. Today, feverish preparations are under way in Jerusalem for the Easter rites that the Latins and Orthodox will be celebrating on the same day this year.
The Holy Sepulchre is filling with pilgrims, the streets in the Old City that lead to the place of the tomb where the body of Christ was laid are full even in the early hours of the morning, whilst the local Christian community is joined day after day by visitors from all over the world, mixing new languages with the many that already echo in these streets.
Today, in Jerusalem, it is the day we exalt the Grace of the Holy Places, that can be seen, touched and kissed. Every piece of this land, where He passed, transmits the encounter with Christ. In the Basilica of the Sepulchre, the Column of the Flagellation - “Columna nobilis” as it is celebrated in the hymn that marks the start of the rite – is venerated. Led by the Vicar of the Custody Brother Artemio Vitores, the Franciscans arrive in procession from Gethsemane, where the “Passio Christi” was sung again this morning. The liturgy of the Gospel of the passion, today, also had its act of tangible devotion, when the stone in the Olive Grove – on which Jesus sweated drops of blood on the night he was captured – was kissed by the lector.
Greeting the column, on the other hand, involved the pilgrims all day long: they queued up, after the prayer, to lay the palm of their hand on it or kiss it. It is the expression of a faith that is not based on thought, that is not cerebral, but that involves the whole person.
“This object has a very ancient tradition,” the Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre, Brother Fergus Clarke reminded us. “We cannot be definitely sure that it is the one Jesus was tied to, but we need to touch it because out faith is not made up of concepts. The column is a “metaphor” of the love of Christ, who suffered and died for us.” The metaphor of this love and physical place which, like the stone in Gethsemane, received the blood and the sweat of the Saviour.
The stump of ref porphyry is today in the Chapel of the Apparition, one of the places of the Holy Sepulchre belonging to the Latins. On the right of the altar, framed by a red cloth, until a few years ago it was displayed for the veneration of the faithful only on the Wednesday before Easter. It reached its current location in around the 14th century, but there are traces of it that date back a thousand years earlier. The pilgrim Egeria talks about it in her journal and in her time it was venerated on Good Friday near the Cenacle.
Today, which opens the doors to the Easter Triduum, continued in the afternoon with an office presided by Mons. Kamal Hanna Bathish, auxiliary bishop for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, when the singing of the Psalms and reading the passages from the old and New Testament prepared the faithful for the events that will be commemorated on these holy days.
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso