On the ancient cobblestones of Jerusalem’s Old City Christians on Friday retraced what tradition holds as the path of Jesus in his final hours of life.
Marking what is referred to in the Roman Catholic religious calendar as ‘Good Friday,’ there are annual reenactments, in which an actor playing the role of Jesus wears a torn robe and a crown of thorns. He stumbles under the weight of a heavy wooden cross while other actors, dressed as Roman soldiers, beat and torment him along the way.
This somber walk along the “stations of the cross” and the joyous Easter celebrations — with waving palm branches and white flowers, — that will follow on Sunday are all a tactile expression of Christianity’s origins. Christianity was born in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank town of Bethlehem and grew out of the fires of the ancient Middle East. It was only later, through the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, that Christendom became a Western religion and an expression of power as well as an expression of faith.
But today the indigenous Christians of the Middle East who see themselves as part of a 2,000-year continuum of the religion’s history are steadily disappearing in the land where the faith began. These Christian minority communities are dwindling in every corner of the modern Middle East.
Read more: The Road to Emmaus: Dwindling Christian communities in the Middle East
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