It was on Wednesday, Ascension Eve, that I made my way up the long incline of the Mount of Olives, past the gnarled trees of the Garden of Gethsemane, alongside the vast Jewish cemetery and the overlook where tradition says Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and on to the Dome of the Ascension. The chapel stands at the top of the Mount of Olives, an octagon of white stone so unassuming that one could easily walk past it. I climbed a flight of wide stairs, walked through an initial entrance, and then continued into a courtyard surrounding the dome, which on this day was exposed to the relentless May sun. I followed the stone pathway to the door of the chapel itself and ducked inside. To the right, pilgrims were kneeling and kissing what looked like a framed, imprinted stone in the ground. For centuries pilgrims had journeyed to place their hands in those indentations, believing it to be the very footprint of Jesus, marking the last place where his body touched the earth before he ascended into heaven.
In a land of grand churches and basilicas, the Chapel of the Ascension in Jerusalem is an anomaly. Humble and unadorned, its smallness stands in contrast to the vastness of the sky above it, the arches on the chapel’s sides inviting the pilgrim to look upward. But its simplicity is not the only thing that makes the chapel unusual. The Chapel of the Ascension is also a mosque. For most of the year, the Dome of the Ascension is administered not by a Christian community, but by the Islamic waqf of Jerusalem, the Islamic religious endowment in this case tasked with overseeing one of the most important holy sites in Christianity. On almost every other day, Christian pilgrims who wish to pray there can pay a fee at the entrance and visit inside the chapel, but no liturgies are celebrated.
Yet every year on the feast of the Ascension, because of the status quo agreements of the Holy Land, the Muslim waqf allows the Christian communities to celebrate their diverse liturgies inside the Ascension compound. On that day, the mosque/chapel is transformed into a Christian liturgical space, complete with icons and incense and altars, processions and prayers and Masses, an ephemeral moment in which an entire liturgical world suddenly appears and is lived before it vanishes.
Because the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches follow different liturgical calendars, the feast of the Ascension is usually celebrated twice in the mosque/chapel each year. But 2025 was different. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches follow the Julian calendar for Easter and the Western churches follow the Gregorian calendar, Easter in 2025 fell on the same day for everyone. This meant that the Ascension, celebrated 40 days after the Resurrection, would also overlap. The Orthodox, Armenian and Latin Rite (Roman Catholic) Christians of Jerusalem would all celebrate the Ascension in the same place on the same day, negotiating how to share a small dome that had only enough space inside to hold a handful of people at a time. It was complicated. It was also glorious.
This is the story of how, unnoticed by most of the world, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians in Jerusalem came to celebrate their feast of the Ascension in the holy space where they all believe Jesus ascended to heaven, a space that is also a mosque. It is also the story of the hard work of the theology of life, and what it points to as possibilities for the rest of us.
•••
At 1:30 p.m. on Ascension Eve, the Franciscans were already gathering outside the entrance of the church, wearing their brown robes. Inside the compound, much had already been prepared. The Franciscans had pitched small tents, one of which contained a sacristy, another of which would hold beverages and snacks for nourishment as the long day wore on. The Armenians had put up a large tent in the back left-hand corner of the compound, a carpeted space with an icon of Jesus ascending into heaven hung behind the altar. To their immediate right, the Coptic Christians, mainly from Egypt, had pitched the small tent they use for this event every year, the top of which depicted Jesus above his disciples. Beneath it, a banner read in Arabic: “O you men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”
To the right of the Coptic tent, the Syriac Orthodox Church had pitched their own, where they would pray in Syriac, a liturgical dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus. Finally, the Greek Orthodox Church pitched a large tent that took up much of the right side of the courtyard, a green covering that sheltered the clergy and faithful from the heat.
It was a remarkable testament to the diversity of Christianity in Jerusalem. I watched the Armenian clergy carry in a fan. A young Greek Orthodox priest appeared clasping a large bunch of rosemary that he would use to sprinkle holy water on arriving pilgrims. The Roman Catholics carried in a keyboard that they would set to organ mode to accompany their singing in Latin from inside the dome. This would be a tightly choreographed festival. Every community had strict guidelines about when they were allowed to pray inside the shrine, how many times they could process around it, how often they could incense the door and where they could pitch their tents. The electricity for the lighting and fans was possible thanks to working relationships with the Muslims in charge of the mosque.
The feast would begin with vespers on Ascension Eve, continuing with prayers through the night and culminating in Masses the following morning.
At 1:45 p.m., Ibrahim Faltas, the vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land, led the Franciscans as they made their official entrance through the main door in two long lines of brown robes, singing in Latin. By 2 p.m., they were cleared from the path, and officials from the Greek Orthodox Church made their entrance. They were led by a kawass, one of the armed church escorts dating from the Ottoman period, sometimes referred to as the Swiss Guards of the Holy Land, who was wearing a suit and red tarbush. They circled around the dome, sprinkling it with holy water and singing in Greek. Next, the Armenian Orthodox clergy entered, wearing black vestments, along with lines of seminarians in yellow robes with gold sashes, singing in Armenian. At 2:25 p.m. the Coptic Orthodox Christians officially entered, their black qalansuwa hats embroidered with crosses representing the 12 Apostles, followed by the Syrian Orthodox Christians at 2:35 p.m.
Between these entrance processions, three men stood in the center of the compound checking in with one another. It became quickly apparent to me that they were tasked with making sure that everyone was in the right place at the right time. Father Athanasius Macora, an American Franciscan who is secretary of the Status Quo Commission of the Custody of the Holy Land, stood in his brown robe and floppy hat, busily writing down in his notebook the precise time that each community entered and left the shrine, and how often they incensed. He introduced me to Father Vazgen Alekyan, the chief dragoman of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who was similarly tasked with facilitating communication between the Armenian community and the other churches, and to Father Mattheos (who does not use a last name), the elder dragoman archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. They all spoke multiple languages, and because it was unusual that all three of their communities were sharing the Dome of the Ascension on the same day, they knew dialogue would be essential.
I asked them if the feast of the Ascension is indeed the only day of the year in which they are allowed to hold the liturgy inside the compound. Father Macora confirmed that for the Catholics of the Latin Patriarchate, this is true. Father Alekyan told me that the Armenians are able to additionally celebrate on one Sunday during Lent. Father Mattheos clarified that the Greek Orthodox Christians also celebrate at the Dome of the Ascension on Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday on which they remember Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in the nearby village of Bethany.
It was an unusual glimpse into the intricate details of the status quo, the historical and legal agreements that outline which religious community can worship where and when in the holy sites of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Though the rest of us may not know the details, these agreements are essential to the peaceful functioning of daily life in Jerusalem.
Father Macora noted that for the most part, everything usually goes smoothly on the shared feast days. Misunderstandings or moments of tension can usually be cleared up with a handshake or a conversation.
“It’s a lot about relationships here,” he told me. “The Middle East is really about relationships. I see my job as being a cease-fire observer, because the easiest way to understand the status quo is as a cease-fire agreement, in which no one is able to change the armistice lines.” In most cases, this means making sure that his own community does its part to keep the peace. I watched him ask fellow Franciscans to clear the path for other processions, to move their chairs and to remain aware that they were sharing space.
Considering the sensitivity, I was surprised by the conviviality among the clergy of the diverse churches. A Syriac Orthodox priest called out “Buono Festa!” in Italian to the Franciscans walking by. There were congratulations for the election of Pope Leo. “It’s nice weather this year,” someone commented. “Last year it was hot!”
Franciscan brothers filmed on their phones as processions from the other churches entered. Priests switched back and forth between Arabic and Greek, Italian, French and English, with the occasional Syriac greeting thrown in.
As I finished taking notes, a pilgrim came up to Father Macora and quietly asked where he could use the men’s room.
There were no bathroom facilities inside of the Dome of the Ascension. But again, the Christian communities had found a solution to this challenge through dialogue with the Muslim community.
“You can use the bathroom of the mosque next door,” he answered.
•••
By 2:45 p.m., we were sitting in the courtyard for vespers. Because only a few people could fit inside the dome, we listened to voices in Latin that emanated through the door of the chapel and wafted outside. A Franciscan priest handed me his program when he saw my empty hands. Now his own were freed, and he ducked into the tent sacristy to prepare the incense. I read the refrain from the Gospel of John: “No one can ascend to heaven except for the one who has descended from heaven.”
Of the four Gospels, the story of the Ascension appears only in the Gospel of Luke. Yet it also begins the Book of Acts, making the Ascension story the narrative link between the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and the life of the church. In Luke’s Gospel account, Jesus ascends into heaven, and the disciples return to Jerusalem with great joy.
Yet the Book of Acts preserves some of their bewilderment, as they watch him disappear into the clouds, straining to still see him. Two white robed men ask them: “Why are you standing here staring into heaven?” They explain that Jesus had ascended into heaven, and one day he would return.
Since early Christianity, pilgrims had come to the Mount of Olives to remember this moment. Christians initially connected the Ascension with a nearby cave, where tradition held that Jesus often taught his disciples, the site of which later became the famed Eleona Church. When the pilgrim Egeria visited Jerusalem in 384, she mentioned praying at “the place where the Lord ascended into heaven” but did not mention a church, suggesting that at that time the Ascension was venerated in an open space. By the late fourth century, a church had been built at the site on the top of the Mount of Olives. Later pilgrims would describe a church with a dome, open to the sky, and the footprint that has become its hallmark.
In time, the site became the center of particularly strong devotion. In her book Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages, Lucy Donkin notes that pilgrims to the Holy Land often quoted Psalm 131 to give meaning to their journey. Though the Hebrew might be translated: “Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool,” she writes that Eusebius translated the verse into Greek as “We shall worship in the place where his feet have stood,” a translation that then carried over into the Latin. Pilgrims came to the site of the Ascension to answer the psalm’s invitation to worship at the place where Jesus’ feet had stood, a reminder that Jesus had been raised into a body.
In a sense, it is not so different today. I spoke to Hana Bendcowsky, the program director for the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue and the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. As an expert in the holy sites in Jerusalem and the Christian sites in particular, she trains tour guides to recognize how the different faith traditions in Jerusalem are in dialogue with one another. She told me that she had always seen the Mount of Olives as a kind of cosmic elevator for the three religious traditions, linking earth to heaven, the site not only of the Ascension but of prophecies about when the Messiah will come again. She noted that when she brought many Christian pilgrims to the chapel, she could sense the importance for them of being physically in contact with the last place where they believed Jesus was when he was on earth.
It was almost as if they wanted to grab hold of him and keep him there, she said.
•••
To tell the full story of the Chapel of the Ascension, it is necessary to hold multiple narratives at the same time. While the Church of the Ascension is sacred for Christians, it is also the Mosque of the Ascension, belonging to the Muslim community since the time of Saladin. The entrance is marked by a plaque with an inscription in Arabic marking a Muslim holy shrine. Inside the dome, not far from the footprint, is a mihrab, showing Muslims the direction of prayer. And while Muslims today do not pray in the site—they pray at a neighboring mosque—the Islamic architecture at the site is undeniable. A minaret is part of the exterior wall of the compound, and every time I climbed the mountain to reach the chapel, I used the mosque’s minaret as my reference point.
To try to understand the site’s significance to the Muslim community, I spoke to Mustafa Abu Sway, a Palestinian Islamic scholar and the holder of the Integral Chair for Al-Ghazali at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He grew up nearby the traditional place of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, playing in the groves of Gethsemane as a child and watching the Palm Sunday procession that descended the hill once a year. Like many Muslims in Jerusalem, he also attended Christian schools, studying with the Anglicans at St. George’s primary school, with the De La Salle Christian Brothers at Bethlehem University and then finishing up with a doctorate in philosophy from Boston College in the United States.
He told me that for him as a Muslim, the mosque of the Ascension is a reminder of the great esteem that Muslims have for Mary and Jesus. Though they do not believe in the divinity of Jesus or that he is the son of God, they hold Jesus as a prophet equal to all other prophets, one who performed miracles and raised the dead to life, always by the power of God. They also honor the Virgin Mary, and a chapter of the Quran, Surah Maryam, is named after her.
“I have never found a Muslim scholar—in 14 and a half centuries—who has ever said anything that is negative or inappropriate about the Virgin Mary, may peace and blessings be upon her,” Dr. Abu Sway said. He noted how many Muslim families name their daughters Mary. “We love Mary and Jesus both,” he said.
But why is there an Islamic site at the place of the Ascension? He noted that while Muslims do not believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross, most believe that the Prophet Jesus was lifted up by God and ascended into heaven. Though today the dome is not a traditional place of Muslim pilgrimage and is primarily a Christian pilgrimage site, it is still respected by Muslims and serves as a reminder of the Ascension.
And while he has never seen the Christian feast of the Ascension himself, he’s not surprised to hear about the agreement that allows Christians to celebrate their liturgies in the space each year. For Dr. Abu Sway, the place of the Ascension is a reminder that religious communities in Jerusalem have shared space for centuries, especially on the Mount of Olives. He notes that on his daily walk to Al Aqsa Mosque, which is fully visible from the mountain, he passes Gethsemane and the Jewish cemetery.
The idea that Jerusalem is separated into different religious quarters distinct from one another is a fiction invented by foreign tour guides, he insists. Just as he grew up as a Muslim on the Mount of Olives, surrounded by churches and playing in the Gihon Spring, some of the holiest sites in Christianity, such as the Way of the Cross, run through the so-called Muslim Quarter. Likewise, the Mosque of Omar, an important site for Muslims, stands just across from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
He laments that this shared narrative of Jerusalem is slowly being forgotten: “Interfaith dialogue has collapsed here,” he said. “We need people to be courageous.”
•••
I left the Chapel of the Ascension to rest for a few hours and climbed the hill by flashlight at 10:30 p.m. to find the courtyard filled with Catholic pilgrims. At 11 p.m., there would be Catholic Masses in Latin, Italian and Arabic simultaneously. In this case, Latin is used so that people from around the world could participate by using a common language. Services would continue through the night.
In the dark, lamps cast light on the dome, and the stone pathway leading to the entrance was illuminated. Inside, we could see the candles alight on the altar. I sat with the Arabic speakers, their presence a reminder of the local church that remains in the Holy Land despite the challenges. During the Gospel reading, the priest kept pointing to the ground, to emphasize: It happened here. In this place.
When the Mass finished, I descended the hill for a few hours of sleep. At 4:30 a.m., I climbed the Mount of Olives one last time. The air was full of birdsong. What appeared to be a fox leaped across the path and into the olive trees. A new set of pilgrims had arrived for the 5 a.m. Mass. I watched the faithful receiving Communion, the minaret visible behind them, the rising sun imbuing the stones with warmth.
Peter Jadallah, an Egyptian American Jesuit, greeted me. Like many Jesuits, he held a particular attachment to the place of the Ascension. Years before, he had spent hours praying inside of the aedicule, asking for the intercession of St. Ignatius to help him discern if he should remain in the Holy Land. His choice of praying in the chapel had been intentional—after all, St. Ignatius himself had visited the site during a critical moment of transition in his own life.
The story of St. Ignatius’ visit to the Dome of the Ascension is a curious one. In his autobiography, Ignatius recounts the story of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in September 1523, shortly after his conversion. While he had intended to stay a long time in the Holy Land, visiting the holy places often and journeying in the footsteps of Jesus, things did not go as he hoped. Shortly after his arrival, he was ordered by the provincial superior of the Franciscans to leave. He obeyed.
Before he left, however, his autobiography notes that he was seized with a great longing to visit one last time the place on the Mount of Olives where Jesus ascended to heaven, wishing to see Jesus’ footprints again. He climbed the Mount of Olives and bribed the guards to let him inside. He prayed, then left and continued to Bethphage but later realized that he had forgotten which direction the right and the left footprints of Jesus had been pointing. He returned, this time bribing the guards with scissors.
Shortly after, Ignatius left the Holy Land on a boat, never to return. His obedience had a significant repercussion in church history. It was only later that he founded the Society of Jesus with his companions.
For many Jesuits, Ignatius’ visit to the place of the Ascension is seen as a metaphor for discernment, looking to the person of Jesus in seeking direction. But for David Neuhaus, a Jesuit in the Holy Land and professor of Sacred Scripture, St. Ignatius’ attachment to the site of the Ascension has another meaning. Father Neuhaus notes that in the Lukan narrative the Ascension is the essential link between the historical body of Jesus of Nazareth, who ascended into heaven, and the body that represents Jesus in the world, whose main job is to make the absent one present.
“It’s there at the Ascension that the historical, corporal body of Jesus goes up to heaven,” he told me. “And at that same place the disciples are told: ‘Why are you looking up into heaven? He will come again.’ From there they need to re-present the absent body. For Ignatius, that is the Society of Jesus.”
In that sense, the Ascension was not only an event. It was a beginning with a purpose.
•••
The morning Mass for the Roman Catholics concluded, and workers entered the shrine to remove the keyboard, to take down the white curtain, and to carry away the altar and the white candles placed around the footprint. I left for breakfast at the Carmelites, who served us bread and coffee near the site of the ancient Eleona, where today tradition holds that Jesus taught the disciples how to pray the Our Father.
By the time I returned an hour later, the place of the Ascension had been transformed to an Orthodox liturgical space for the final hours of the feast. A young Greek Orthodox priest set up a table at the entrance to the site, blessing the incoming pilgrims with holy water. Pilgrims who entered the shrine lit beeswax candles, knelt on a small red carpet now placed on the ground and blessed the footprint with perfumed oil.
Then the diverse Orthodox churches began celebrating their liturgies, all at once. I could walk from the Armenian tent, where priests were singing in Armenian, next door to the Coptic tent where they prayed in Coptic, then on to the Syriac tent, where they sang the Our Father in the original language, to the Greek Orthodox tent, where amid the Greek liturgical chants pilgrims were lining up to kiss an icon of the Ascension. On perhaps no other day in Jerusalem was the remarkable diversity and ecumenism of Christianity on display so vividly.
This would continue for hours. At the end, as tradition holds, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox community and other clergy would sit down with the sheikh of the mosque before leaving in a courtesy visit, and they would drink coffee together.
For Ms. Bendcowsky, who describes the coffee as “part of their liturgical routine,” that small gesture held great meaning. “It’s still a Muslim place,” she told me. “They [the Christians] are guests, and they are allowed to pray in a place that doesn’t belong to them.” While she acknowledged the practical aspect of the courtesy visit, she ultimately saw the act of sitting together, across faiths, as a symbol of communities who work hard to maintain relationships.
“It’s connected to mutual respect,” she concluded. “For me it is a great sign of humility.”
•••
By the end of the day everything would be carried away—the chairs, the altars, the icons, the incense, the tents—until the shrine was returned to its unadorned state. Next year, the feast day will fall on separate calendar days for the Eastern and Western churches. It will be much less complicated, but I will miss the languages and the liturgies, the small acts of attention, the camaraderie of the churches together.
It is possible to see this year’s feast of the Ascension as simply a day. But perhaps it is more. On a year in which the church celebrates the 1,700-year anniversary of the ecumenical council of Nicaea, the footprint at the center of the simple dome is a telling reminder that what unites the Eastern and Western churches is the person of Jesus.
It was also a much-needed sign of hope. The Christians of the Holy Land, already a minority, find themselves in crisis. The ongoing war in Gaza, the collapse of Christian pilgrimage to the region and the related economic hardships, and the increasing regional instability—with no end in sight—have all taken a toll on the morale of many local Christians. A recent survey from the Rossing Center in Jerusalem found that 48 percent of local Christians under the age of 30 are considering migrating.
Conversely, the common struggle to survive has united local Christians in what has been called an “ecumenism of witness.” Together with the interreligious dimensions of daily life in the Holy Land, this means that there is a quiet vocation to simply being a Christian who remains in Jerusalem, even if the work of dialogue and human fraternity is largely made up of notes on paper and moving chairs, being willing to learn the language of our neighbor, making space and cups of coffee, and the concrete work of being together.
For Father Frans Bouwen, a member of the Missionaries of Africa who has worked on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue in Jerusalem for over 50 years, events like the feast of the Ascension point to something greater. He notes that the Christians in the Holy Land, rooted in their history, still have an awareness of being one church in the beginning. For that reason, Jerusalem is a locus theologiae, a source from which theology is made.
“It means something that the communities in the land are able to coexist,” he said. “For centuries we have been able to live together in this land—not without tensions sometimes—but we always found a solution. That’s the message of Jerusalem to the world.”
He points me to the words of Pope Francis, who in an address in 2022 noted that “the dialogue of doctrine must be theologically adapted to the dialogue of life.”
“When they speak of ecumenism in Europe,” he continues, “They say: ‘Where is the dialogue?’ For them, ecumenism is doing theological dialogue. But that’s not the prominent thing. Ecumenism is living together.”
This article appears in October 2025.
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