Lent Has Begun in Jerusalem...

... and what an extraordinary Lent it is!

Somewhat, for me, it is presently a season of joy, a joy that is difficult to channel at times, but when I am alert to it, it feels almost too much to bear. In this city of His, Our Lord is killing me with His love.

Right now everyone is singing Alleluja in our coffee room. What is more, on the first Sunday of Lent I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or Church of the Resurrection as it would perhaps be more correct to call it, and not only were they singing Alleluja, but also Regina Caeli in the end of the Mass! I assumed it was some special sort of dispensation for the church where our Lord has been risen from the dead - it is always Alleluja in the Holy Sepulchre. But someone else went to another Franciscan church, and they were also singing Alleluja at Mass. Apparently, joy seems to overflow in every direction, seasons nonwithstanding...

I dont even know how to summarize what I have been experiencing here. Being touched by the Lord at prayer, experiencing His love, His desire for me. Or meeting people, complete strangers who would give their food, time and posessions to a foreigner?

Seeing God in the love I have been shown by people of all religions and nationalities? Shall I tell the story of how I walked past the Western Wall towards the end of the Sabbath, and an Orthodox Jew jumped up to greet three Africans behind me with the words: "Come, will you sing a song with me?" Or of a Sabbath dinner where beggars from the streets danced with a rabbi from the US? An Arab barbeque on a dead-end street of the Old City? Half of the Jewish Quarter helping us fix the electricity in an apartment we were given by someone who knew me only from 3 previous - and very short - meetings? A Muslim woman reading the book Jabez Prayer, and spending her precious day off buying me dinner and showing me around? Where do I begin, how do I show? If everything could be written, it would have been such a huge book, or perhaps no book could ever contain everything I have to say. Why am I immediately reminded of the words of John, the Beloved Disciple, the man who truly knew that the Lord loved him. Is there a connection? Because the Lord is endless, immeasurable, unexplainable, and no books could ever contain anything that can be said of Him?

Of course, there are sad things. For someone who has spent some time researching the history of the Troubles in Ireland, and who has been indirectly affected by some of the wars on the territory of the former Soviet Union, the story is all too familiar. More painful, perhaps, because it goes side by side with a profound sense of the Lord's presence. But apparently, people are the same everywhere. And in places like this it is impossible to judge. The Christian responsibility for what we did throughout the history to breed hate by our hate of the Jewish people cannot be overlooked. Anything else and more specific I will only be at liberty to write when I get back.

Getting back scares me. I suppose, this is the feeling I share with most people who have spent more than a couple of weeks here. The intensity of emotions, the supernatural energy of the place, the profound sense of living every day as if it were your last, breathing fully, living intensly, with no reservations, no unnesessary provisions for the future - it cannot be repeated elsewhere. I live just a few metres from what was believed to be the foundation stone of the world, the place where Cain killed Abel, where Abraham wanted to sacrifice Isaak, where medieval maps had the centre of the world, where New Age cults mark the energy pole of the Earth, where the Holy of Holies once was. Sometimes I don't feel it, sometimes its ovewhelming. That same place - the Temple Mount - was also made into a city dump by the Church in Jerusalem (hence the name Dung Gate, the gate that now leads to the Western Wall) prior to the Muslim conquest, in an obvious move to underline the way how the Jewish Temple was made obsolete. That's Jerusalem...

Someone who lived in Jerusalem for 5 years and now lives in Eilat said she often was moved to tears just walking the streets, for no reason at all. That's Jerusalem. That's how I feel at times, too. Knowing this is not going to last is devastating. That is why, perhaps, the Bible ends with references to the heavenly Jerusalem - where we will be experiencing God forever. Now I know a little better what it will be like.