Our small group went through the great Damascus Gate, and plunged into the narrow streets below, swept along by the sea of people making their way towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers.  But before reaching the Temple Mount, surmounted by the mosque and the beautiful Dome of the Rock, our band of pilgrims turned aside into a somewhat quieter street to begin a momentous journey of our own.  For we had come, as students from St. George’s College, Jerusalem, to walk the Way of the Cross, to walk with Jesus on his way through the streets of Jerusalem, on his way to that hill outside the city walls where he was to suffer and to die on that Friday so many years ago. 

Step by step we followed his stumbling path, stopping to hear the words of Scripture at each station, each one of us caught up in our own thoughts, no longer just hearing the story but now, in some way, living it also.  And every so often another one of us would step forward to take up the weight of the large wooden cross which we had brought with us, to become a Simon of Cyrene, to bear the burden, to share in the sufferings of Christ, to hear the words of Jesus calling us to take up our cross and follow him.  Each time a new pilgrim took up that cross, I had the overwhelming sense of the true nature of the Body of Christ, that community to which we are called in our baptism, a community of people committed to bearing one another’s burdens and indeed helping to shoulder the burdens of God’s world, a community formed and transformed by engaging in that journey of suffering and joy together.

Finally, we reached that great church, know both as the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  We went up the stairs inside to the chapel of Calvary, to kneel before the altar of the cross, to reach down into the space below the altar to touch the hard unforgiving rock of Golgotha.  On that rock Jesus’ life was broken and poured out for us.  He bore the burden of our sins, our brokenness, that we might be forgiven and healed.

But our journey did not stop there, for within that great church, the most important church in all Christendom, is not only the chapel of Calvary, but also the shrine of the empty tomb.  And so, our journey came to its climax and its fulfilment, not at the place of the skull, but rather at the sign of the resurrection, the promise of new life, the breaking forth of God’s new creation into the midst of this world.

I pray that each of us may be able to join Christ on that journey, that journey that leads through suffering and death to the glory of that first Easter morning, the wonder of Christ’s resurrection.  May you know the transforming power of Christ in your life and may we live that new life in joy and hope together.