Kawas ceremonial guards at the Ascension

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On their calendar, today was the great Feast of the Ascension for Orthodox and Eastern Christians.
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 Jerusalem's Chapel of the Ascension was first built around 390.
It was destroyed and rebuilt by various conquerors many times.
A mosque and minaret were added next to the chapel in 1620 and the entire site remains in Muslim possession.
The main octagonal edicule surrounds the Ascension rock, said to bear the footprint of Jesus as he ascended, forty days after the resurrection.
It is on the Mount of Olives, in the Arab neighborhood A-Tur.
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You can see photos of the 2012 celebration there in my posts about  Ascension along with links to information about the holiday and the place.
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Today I want to show you only the Kawasim that were at that Ascension celebration.

Since Ottoman Turk times, these Arab ceremonial guards lead the way and clear the way for processions of Jerusalem's Christian clergy, with a rhythmic tapping of their staffs. 
The Kawas is kind of like the Swiss Guard in the Vatican. 
Some of them are Muslims and some are Christians. 
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You can see more nice Kawasim in my posts  about a Papal Mass and in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
They are a wonderful part of Jerusalem.
UPDATE April 2021: The story of Shibly Abu Sada, a kawas for 24 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xJDdyKmQU


UPDATE May 27: The [Orthodox] Jerusalem Patriarchate today published online their photos and videos of their Ascension Day on the Mt. of Olives, May 21.  
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Sr. Dr. Vassa has a new and very interesting brief video about making the transition from Ascension to Pentecost.  It is about what/why is Church.

(Linking to inSPIRED Sunday.)
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UPDATE April 28, 2005:  See a short reel about the history of the kawas in Jerusalem: 
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BhQUsrv59/
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Ascension Day in Jerusalem

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Happy Ascension Day to the Catholics and other Christians celebrating it today. 

This is the ancient Chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives.

The Eastern churches will be celebrating Ascension next Thursday.
To learn more about the ancient chapel and the holy day please read this article.
You are also welcome to revisit my posts about the Orthodox Ascension prayers of 2012.

UPDATE: The Franciscans just published an article describing their worship at the Ascension Chapel last week. 
UPDATE May 27: The [Orthodox] Jerusalem Patriarchate today published online their photos and videos of their Ascension Day on the Mt. of Olives, May 21. 
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(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday.)

Ascension

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The incense was ready for today's Feast of the Ascension.

These are my pictures from 2012  but it is the same ritual every year at the Chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives.
Click a few times on the photos to enjoy the details.

For more about the holy site and about the holy day, please see previous posts.
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The Franciscans now have a nice article about last Wednesday/Thursday's celebrations:
http://www.terrasanctablog.org/2014/05/30/feast-of-the-ascension-together-disciples-of-christ/

UPDATE:  See a little video of this year's celebration: http://www.terrasanctablog.org/2014/06/03/ecumenical-ascension-in-jerusalem/
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In the Russian bell tower

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Ascension Day was my first time to visit the Russian Monastery of the Ascension.
(I showed you some of the graves there last Tuesday.)

Everyone knows its tall landmark bell tower; you can't look toward the Mount of Olives and not see it rising on the crest of the mountain.

And guess what!
This was the only way up the tower.
Needless to say, I climbed to the first level and not to the very top.

Right next to the convent we saw this big Muslim cemetery and a mosque.

Beyond, one sees the modern tower of the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus campus.
(You can enlarge all the photos here.)

To its right is the tower of the Lutheran Augusta Victoria.
Off to the top right, in the haze of summer heat--the eastern desert.
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While we were up there looking out in all four directions, our tower's bells rang!
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The guidebook says

Sent from Russia to the Holy Land port of Jaffa [on the other side of the country] in 1885, the bell weighed eight tons and was too heavy to transport by horse.
In the end a special wheel-shaped wagon was built to house the bell, which was pulled, pushed, and rolled by Russian pilgrims--most of them women--all the way to the Mount of Olives.
The trip took three weeks and several pilgrims fell by the wayside.
But eventually, singing hymns, the group reached Jerusalem and the bell was lifted into the tower.

Aviva Bar-Am, Beyond the Walls: Churches of Jerusalem

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I hope you enjoyed this tour for Our World Tuesday and just a glimpse of a Muslim cemetery for Taphophile Tragics. Shalom!
Linking also to inSPIREd Sunday.
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Head west, feet east

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Welcome to the Russian Orthodox Convent on the Mount of Olives.

Thursday, Ascension Day, was my first time to visit this welcoming place, also known as the Russian Monastery of the Ascension.
Now that I am one of Julie's many Taphophile Tragics taphophiles, I paid special attention to the graves.
You can click on the photos to have a closer look.


A few tombs of VIPs were inside, or next to, the church, but there were more graves in the courtyard.

And some not far from the well.

The monastery was built between 1870 and 1887.
I think the old Made in Czechoslovakia Sigma pump is from those early days.
There are many underground cisterns in the big compound and it looks like some are still being used for the garden watering.

Many nuns were buried in a fenced graveyard.

I noticed some of the gravestones were "backwards," I mean facing the cross, facing eastward.

Now I knew that this monastery in the Arab village of A-Tur is the highest point on the Mount of Olives at 818 meters (2,683 ft) and the ridge is the watershed, its eastern side being the beginning of the Judean Desert.
But I rather doubted that the spectacular view toward the Dead Sea, the mountains of Moab, and Jordan was the reason the dead were looking in that direction.

Back home, I googled.
One source said that Orthodox Christians bury the body facing east [i.e. the person's head on the west] because when Jesus was born the guiding star was in the East.

An older source, a William Tyler Olcott, writing in 1914, explained the custom thus:

The funeral rites of all people reveal the universal belief that the east is the source of all that men hold dear, light, life, warmth, and happiness, while the west, on the contrary, is said to be the abode of darkness, death, cold, and sorrow. The worship of the Sun cultivated and strengthened this idea, and down through the ages the influence of this belief has swept, retaining even to-day much of its ancient force and vigour. . . .
It is said that the body of Christ was laid with the head toward the west, that the risen Lord might face the eastern realm of eternal life and glory, and the Christian custom that sprang from this belief led to the usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through mediæval times, and is common with us to-day.
In the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel we read: "For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." From the literal interpretation of these words there arose the belief that Jesus would, at the resurrection, appear from the east, and hence that those buried with their faces upward and their heads to the west, would be in readiness to stand up with their faces toward their Judge.

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(This cemetery mini-tour also joins Our World Tuesday.)
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Ascension Day at Christendom's 2nd holiest site

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As I started telling you yesterday, Thursday was Ascension Day for the Orthodox churches.
It was my first time to see the very old Chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives and to experience four different liturgies going on at once, each in a different language.

Photo opportunities were so plentiful, I don't know where to start!
Maybe we start with pictures of the processions, so you can have a better look at the interesting faces and vestments.

From time to time the Greeks or Armenians or Syrians or Copts would leave their area of the courtyard and walk in procession into the chapel.
(You remember, they are allowed to pray here but once a year by the Muslim owners, and each group sets up an awning or kind of tent for their hours-long liturgy.)

You always knew when a group was exiting the chapel by the rhythmic tapping of the kawas' ceremonial staff.
Since Ottoman Turk times, they lead the way and clear the way for the Christian clergy.
The Arab kaswassim will get a separate post in the coming days.
They are sort of like the Holy Land version of the Vatican's Swiss Guard.

Here come the Greek Orthodox.

(Click on any photo, and then again on the photo that opens, to enlarge it. Enjoy the rich detail.)


This Armenian was leading the choir of the seminary students.
There seems to be almost no spoken word in the Orthodox liturgies, only singing/chanting.

These star-shaped things with little bells were also beautiful to hear.

The very old Syrian Orthodox church still uses Aramaic (mixed with some Arabic) for their prayers.

Indeed, if you closed your eyes to the lay people in modern dress yesterday and just focused on the look and sound of the clergy, you could imagine you were far back in the earliest Christian centuries in Jerusalem.
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Happy Ascension Day

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It was a day of much incense on the Mount of Olives this morning!
Greek Orthodox, Russian, Armenian, Coptic, and Syrian clergymen were all swinging incense in the smallish walled area surrounding the Chapel of the Ascension.
For this one day of Ascension Day the Muslim owners of the chapel let these historical Christian communities erect altars and tents in order to conduct their separate Divine Liturgies concurrently, side by side.

It was all very colorful and when I've made order in my hundreds of photos I'll be showing you the clergy in their best vestments.

The present chapel is about 800 years old, although the first Byzantine rotunda was there already in the 4th century.

As you see in the "wall" painting on the wall of one of the tents, the apostles were sky-watching on this very spot almost 2,000 years ago as the right foot of Jesus took his last step of earth.

The New Testament book of Acts (1:9-11) says

He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

And inside the Chapel of the Ascension the faithful kneel and kiss the stone that (tradition says) bears the footprint of his right foot.
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(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday.)
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