The Holy Land and SyriaCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Religion
The Holy Land and Syria
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Palestine -- Description and travel; Syria -- Description and travel
The Mount of Olives is now spotted with churches and chapels. It has
monasteries and convents, a great Russian church, and several hospices,
including the huge sanitarium built in honour of Augusta, Empress of
Germany. One of the most interesting of these institutions is a Carmelite
nunnery, which has been erected over the spot where tradition says Christ
taught the Lord’s Prayer to His disciples. The church here is called “The
Church of the Lord’s Prayer,” and has in its court tablets inscribed
with the prayer in thirty-two different languages. I visited the chapel
of the nunnery, where prayers go up every day and night and every hour
of the day all the year through. The nuns so divide their time that one
is always praying. They kneel behind a screen and are not to be seen by
visitors. This church is one of the quietest and most solemn of all in
the Holy Land. After the noisy scenes which take place about the Holy
Sepulchre it is a relief.
The Carmelite nuns are devout. They do not go out of the nunnery except
it be absolutely necessary. Even when they walk in its garden they wear
such heavy veils that they have to hold them out from their faces to
see where they are going. My guide tells me that each nun digs her own
grave, and that when she is about to die she is dressed in her shroud and
carried into the church in order that she may pass away there.
In the floor of the Chapel of the Ascension near the nunnery is a spot
which looks like a footprint, and is said to be the place where the foot
of the Saviour rested before He ascended to heaven. The chapel belongs
to the Mohammedans and is let out at times to the Christians. But to me
the Garden of Gethsemane was more interesting. It lies at the foot of the
Mount of Olives, just off the Jericho road. It is surrounded by a wall
of yellow limestone twelve feet high and about four feet thick. On the
outside of it, in the shade of the wall, sat a score of lepers who held
out their hands for alms as we passed. They were dirty and filthy and
their disease had made them repulsive sights. Some had no fingers, some
no noses, and one held out a tin can tied to the stump of her wrist from
which the hand had dropped off.
The garden goes up the side of the mountain. It is almost square and does
not cover two acres. It is cut up into flower beds bordered by inverted
beer and wine bottles. There are eight old olive trees, pansies of all
shades of the rainbow, and many beautiful flowers, as well as dark
cypress trees. The garden belongs to the Franciscan monks who opened the
gate at our knock. The gate is a mere hole in the wall, so low that all
who enter must stoop. It is closed by an iron door, with a round black
bar of iron, ten inches long, as a knocker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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