Walking the Way of the Cross and The Church of the Holy Sepulcher 7-10-13

You have to enter the Old City to walk the Way of the Cross the way Jesus did to his crucifixion.  Our guide said that many times he does this backwards because it is less crowded and easier to manage going down instead of up!  We took his advice and started at the end.  We or at least I was not prepared for what we would see when we walked into the church.  Following the stations of the cross, if you are Catholic, we walked right into the 13th station, Jesus is taken down from the cross.  There was a slab of marble on the floor raised up from the floor and it has many lanterns hanging above it.  There were people kneeling beside the slab pouring water over it and then putting the water onto their faces, there were also people laying bibles, rosaries, bracelets...on the slab to have them blessed.  Most people just reached down to touch the slab. Many people were overcome and crying as they were kneeling by this slab.  This is where they cleaned Jesus' body and wrapped him in a white cloth for burial.  The 14th station is very near, Jesus is laid in the tomb.  We went to this station and there was a line longer than getting through security in the Orlando airport on a holiday weekend!  Our guide took us around the back of the tomb and we were able to see the back of the tomb.
After we left the church, we continued our way working backwards through the stations.  By the way, station one is now a Muslim school.  Nobody can access that station now.  Also, they moved station number 4 because it was in a bad location?  Now stations 3 and 4 are only about 20 feet from each other.  The stations are marked only on a bronze disks and of course written in Roman numerals.  I have to tell the truth.  This was a huge disappointment.  The Way of the Cross is now a shopping market and stalls of all kinds of good things and many stalls of junk quality plastic toys and souvenirs.  When you see the pictures you won't believe it.  The stations are hard to find and if you ever tried to do it on your own, you just couldn't.  After we finished we had a welcome glass of lemonade and headed toward the Jewish section of the Old City.  To do this from where we were we had to go through security near the Western Wall.  This is not security to go into the West Bank, it is security to keep some crazy people from trying to do something to destroy the Western Wall.  They check purses, backpacks,, everything goes through security just like at the airport.  We will go back to the Western Wall tomorrow.  Today was just a glimpse as we wanted to see the stalls on the Jewish quarter.
Station number 12, Jesus dies on the cross.  This area of the church also has an altar protecting the hole in the rock where Jesus' cross was in place as he was crucified.  The hole in the rock is also cover with a small piece of ceramic pot with a lid to access the opening and you can put your hands on it or even down into the hole.  There was a Greek Orthodox priest explaining to a large group in Greek what they were looking at right in front of us and when it was our turn to go up to the altar it was cleared out and quiet for a few seconds so we could make some pictures and we could crawl under the altar and touch the rock.  It was amazing.  I told the kids when we were walking down the steps that it was the best place we have ever been.  Again the altar had many adornments from many countries and did not look like I thought it would but it was moving and beautiful all the same.