{N}THE MOUNT OF OLIVES{/}

The Mount of Olives is found to the east of Jerusalem, between Mount Scopus to the north and Mount of Scandal to the south. It forms part of a chain of hills that give origin to the line of summits that are elevated between the western and eastern slopes of the central mountainous crests of the country. The valley of the Kidron separates it from the old city of Jerusalem and from the meadow around the Temple, that can be seen at a distance of one hundred meters. From the top, the pilgrim discovers, the inside of the walls: the Mosque of the Rock outstands, with its golden dome catching the light, powerfully calls attention to it; the mosque of El-Aqsa, is more discreet; the two somber domes of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. From these points of reference, one discovers the diverse holy places among the innumerous bell towers and minarets that stick out over the buildings. But the panorama spreads out even more towards the east, towards the desert of Judah, which, starting from the same gates of Jerusalem, descend until the depression of the Dead Sea, and further beyond, towards the mountains of Moab. This mountain receives its name from the olives that, during centuries, covered the hillsides and of which remain hardly any examples, only some damaged and torn up trees in the orchard of Gethsemane.
The numerous churches spread out over the hill commemorate the last moments of the earthly life of Jesus: his final teaching to his disciples in the {C}Church of the Pater{/}, the lamentation of Jesus over Jerusalem in {C}Dominus Flevit,{/} the {C}Garden of Olives{/}, and the {C}Church of the Agony{/}. The golden domes of the russian Church of Saint Magdalene, constructed at the end of the nineteenth century, give a touch of clarity and originality to this place, impregnating it with an air of sorrow and sadness. However, this place charged with shadows and suffering, is opened to the light of the Ascension, where the glory of the risen Christ is revealed.
All of the above biblical references are linked to the New Testament. Yet, in the second book of Samuel, the Mount of Olives is already mentioned as well as a holy place, {C}where God is worshiped{/} [2Sam_15,32]. 

{K}IN THE OLD TESTAMENT{/}
The Mount of Olives is mentioned a few times in the Old Testament, and only as a result of the takeover by Absalom when we hear it named for the first time. David preferred to flee from Jerusalem with the soldiers that stayed faithful to him, in place of resisting, so as not to risk having to kill his own son. The old king goes down to the valley of Kidron in order to take, in this way, the road to Jericho, since {C}he went up to the Mount of Olives{/} {C}weeping, with his head covered and his feet bare. All the people who were with him had their heads covered and wept as they went. {/}
[2Sam_15,30].
Four centuries later, when the glory of God abandons Jerusalem, where its Temple has been {C}profaned by all the abominable things that are practiced there{/} [Ezk_8,13], the prophet Ezekiel tells us that: {C}the Glory of Yahweh rose, leaving the city to rest on the mountain that is to the east.{/} [Ezk_11,23]. There, over the Mount of Olives, the Spirit takes up Ezekiel and brings him to join the exiled ones in Chaldea.
In the last centuries before Christ, an apocalyptic vision, told in the book of Zechariah, describes the final battle, the victory of Yahweh and the glory of Jerusalem, and over the Mount of Olives Yahweh is raised up as Judge of the nations:
{C}The day of Yahweh will come ... I will let all the nations come against Jerusalem to attack it. The city will be taken and houses pillaged, women violated ... Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against the nations as he does on the day of battle. On that day his feet will rest on the mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem on the east and the mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west by a deep valley leaving half of the mountain to the north and half to the south ... and Yahweh will come and all of his holy ones with him. {/}[Zec_14,1] - [Zec_14,5]. 


{K}- THE PALMS - BETHPHAGE{/}
On the southeastern extreme of the hill, the small town of Bethphage seems to be nestled in a green patch of thick vegetation.

{K}THE ENTRANCE TO JERUSALEM{/}
According to the Law, the Passover must be celebrated in Jerusalem, but this small city had less than 25,000 inhabitants in the times of Jesus, and therefore it was too small to accommodate all of the pilgrims that came up to the temple for the feast. Those that did not find shelter inside the city looked for it in the towns and villages in the surrounding area. Bethphage was very close by, at about two kilometers approximately, exactly the distance that was authorized for travel on a {C}day of the sabbath {/}[Acts_1,12]. Therefore Bethphage was considered as an extension of Jerusalem and the town was practically invaded during the festivities. Jesus formed part of one of those groups of pilgrims that had succeeded in finding lodging in Bethphage, or a little farther away, in Bethany.
{C}When they drew near Jerusalem and arrived at Bethphage, on the mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, with this mission: "Go to the village in front of you, and there you will find a donkey tied up with its colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me."
This happened in fulfillment of what the prophet said: Say to the daughter of Zion: "see your king comes to you in all simplicity, riding on a donkey, a best of burden {/}.

{K}YOUR KING COMES RIDING ON A DONKEY{/}
Jesus enters into the city riding on a donkey, bringing a message of peace, as the prophet Zechariah had already announced at the end of the fourth century [Zec_9,9]. But Jesus is also a lord, his royalty remains underlined by the gestures that make reference to the ritual of the royal enthroning: cloaks and branches spread out on the road where the king had to pass, and the acclamations of the crowds that evoked the verses of the Great Hallel [Ps_118,1]. When the Feast of the Tents was celebrated, with this psalm the universal royalty of God is acclaimed and the coming of his Messiah. Like all Israelites, Jesus must have sung this psalm each year of his life on earth, in order to give thanks to the all-powerful God, liberator and savior. But from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus had chosen a different path from what the people expected. God had not sent him to return to Israel its political independence, but rather to establish his Kingdom among humankind, and his path would pass through poverty, voluntary deprivation and death on the cross.

{K}JESUS WEEPS OVER JERUSALEM{/}
On the slope that looks towards the Temple, a church commemorates the stop that Jesus made in front of the Holy City, when his ascent to Jerusalem was concluding and the descent to the Mount of Olives was approaching after going over the top:
{C}When Jesus had come in sight of the city, he wept over it and said, "If only today you knew the ways of peace! But now your eyes are held from seeing. Yet days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you with barricades and shut you in and press on you from every side. And they will dash you to the ground and your children with you, and leave not a stone within you, for you did not recognize the time and the visitation of your God".{/} [Lk_19,41] - [Lk_19,44].
None of the inhabitants of Jerusalem came out to receive Jesus at his entrance into the Holy City; he was only accompanied by his disciples and the people from the neighboring towns. He came to his own house and his own did not receive him [Jn_1,11]. Today Jesus weeps for the city that was not able to recognize in him the King - Messiah, nor how to welcome his message of peace. Just as the prophets did in ancient times, Jesus announced the ruin and fall of Jerusalem. Forty years later the prophecy is fulfilled. Titus imposed a siege on the city. The Romans camped on Mount Scopus and on the Mount of Olives. At the end of May in the year 70, the northeastern wall is torn down; the Romans advanced until the second wall that, at the same time, also gave way. The fortress Antonia was conquered on the 24th of July (month of Ab for the hebrew calendar, which is the same one that Nabucodonosor took over Jerusalem in 587) and on the 29th the Temple was burned down. The last defenders were put to death or reduced to slavery; on the 25th and 26th of September, Jerusalem was no more than ruins. 


{K}- GETHSEMANE{/}
In the evening of Holy Thursday, during the vigil of his Passion, Jesus leaves the Cenacle with his disciples and very probably takes the steep street that goes down from the hill of Zion towards the valley of the Kidron where the olive grove named Gethsemane was found; a name which means: an oil press in the aramean language. Jesus goes to this place very familiar to him, where he liked to spend the night with his disciples.
There he starts to pray: in front of him the Temple rises up, the Sanctuary of the Glory of the Father, from whom he knows he was sent, even more deeply in this hour.
Gethsemane is a place that is frequently visited and loved by the pilgrims. They come here with the most profound recollection in order to associate their prayers with those of Jesus the night of Holy Thursday.
The Olive Trees, with knotted trunks and bare and damaged branches that are seen there now, are without a doubt, more than hundreds of years old, but in no way do they reach the two thousand years of age, nor can they go back to the gospel times.
The Olive Trees of the first century of our era could not have resisted the two sieges of Jerusalem by the Romans. In 70 and in 135 A.D. they were used in order to construct the continuous stockades around the city according to the way of besieging the cities practiced by the Romans, to make war equipment or simply to feed the fires of the legions' camps. But the place where Jesus spent the night praying before his arrest remained in the memory, just as the Mount Calvary and the Sepulchre did. Saint Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem in the middle of the fourth century, makes it a tradition established during this epoch, the custom of the Christians to gather together at the top of the mount around their bishop and to go down by the lights of torches until the place where Jesus entered into agony. There they celebrated the liturgy of Holy Thursday.


{K}- THE TOMB OF THE VIRGIN{/}
At the foot of the Mount of Olives, at some fifteen meters to the north of the garden of Gethsemane, a stairway of some fifteen steps goes down towards a square atrium; one of its sides is closed by a wall that dates approximately to the year 1130, from which a door of ogival arches opens up. From there a stairway of some fifty steps leads to the interior of a church, nowadays completely underground, due to the progressive embankments of the valley of the Kidron from the beginnings of the christian era. The christian tradition worships the tomb of Mary here.

{K}THE TOMB{/}
The tomb possesses a funerary bench. A flood due to torrential rains in February of 1972 implied the restoration of the small sanctuary. Underneath the altar can be seen the support cut into the rock as was common in the jewish tombs of the epoch. One perceives that before the construction of the altar, it was perforated with numerous cavities since the faithful extracted fragments of it as relics. This would be sufficient testimony to confirm the ancient tradition of Jerusalem, according to which the body of Mary had been deposited here before her assumption.

{K}THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY{/}
There are numerous authors who consign the burial of Mary to the Valley of the Kidron, and this before the Council of Chalcedony (451 A.D.) in which Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, testifies to the fact before the emperor Marcian and the empress Pulqueria, but furthermore, and with the same strength and assurance, proclaims his faith in the Assumption of Mary. In this way the most ancient tradition of Jerusalem, sustained by the apocrifal texts, tells us that Mary was placed in a tomb in Gethsemane before being taken up to heaven.
She is full of grace - meaning - that over which has overflowed all of what is good, of luminous quality, and holy among the gifts that God could give to any creature, without ever having been touched by evil or its minimal shadow; could she then have known a death distinct from that of her son? For Mary, according to the will of God, one day the hour arrived for her to pass from this world to the Father's. After having shared in the sufferings of her son, she was called to share in the Glory of his Resurrection.


{K}- THE ASCENSION{/}
The last appearance of the risen one told by Luke, took place on the Mount of Olives, and this fact is not without relation with the texts of Zechariah. Jesus the first ever resurrected from among the dead, is elevated to the right hand of God where he sits like a Judge over the living and the dead [Acts_10,42].
In the place from where, according to a tradition somewhat decorated over time, Christ ascended to heaven, leaving the imprint of his foot over the rock, the Byzantine constructed a small temple, separated from the surrounding rock, as the tombs of the valley of the Kidron are characterized. Saint Jerome, who at the end of the fourth century, remained in Palestine, speaks in his writings of the veneration that was lavished on the footprints of the Savior.
