Christ’s Tomb In The Church Of The Holy Sepulcher Is Restored

By FR. SEAN CONNOLLY

The holiest shrine of Christendom is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem built over the site of Christ’s death and Resurrection. Yet, the first reaction of Christian pilgrims when they behold this church for the first time is often bitter disappointment. A scholar and archaeologist of the Holy Land, Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, wryly notes:
“One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. One looks for numinous light; it is in fact dark and cramped. One hopes for peace, but the cacophony of warring chants is punctuated by the ring of mason’s hammers. One desires holiness only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: the six groups of occupants — Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, and Ethiopians watch one another suspiciously for any infringement of rights.
“The frailty of man is nowhere more apparent than here; it epitomizes the human condition. The empty who come to be filled will leave desolate” (Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1980], p. 36).
Palestinian author Edward Said, on a last visit to Jerusalem in 1992 before his death, called the church “an alien, rundown, unattractive place full of frumpy middle-aged tourists milling about in a decrepit and ill-lit area where Copts, Greeks, Armenians, and other Christian sects nurtured their unattractive ecclesiastical gardens in sometimes open combat with each other” (Edward Said, quoted in: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography [New York: Vintage Books, 2011], p. 541).
So, could this really be the holiest site on Earth where the redemption of man was won? Appearances to the contrary, the answer is yes.
There is good news, however. Things are getting better, both in appearance and with regard to the relations among Christian groups who occupy the church. All this was accomplished on March 22 when a historic restoration of the aedicule was completed (aedicule, from the Latin aediculum — a small building).
The aedicule is the focal point of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is a limestone and marble shrine that houses within it the sepulcher, or tomb, from which the Lord Jesus rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday.
The tomb monument has been described as “a hideous kiosk” (Murphy-O’Connor, p. 41), and dates only from the nineteenth century. On October 12, 1808, an Armenian sacristan fell asleep by the stove in the Armenian gallery on the second floor of the church. The stove caught fire, burned him to death, and then spread destroying the eleventh-century edifice that had been built over the tomb (Montefiore, p. 335).
In the ensuing chaos and due to outside politics, the Greeks were able to consolidate their control over the church and built the aedicule that stands around the tomb today (ibid.). Since 1808, black soot from these many decades of burning candles and incense as well as bird droppings discolored and dirtied the shrine.
Even worse, there were serious concerns about the shrine’s stability, a worry which dates back to 1947 when British authorities built an unsightly iron cage around the aedicule to shore up the walls. Thanks to the restoration, the filth, iron cage, and stability concerns are all gone.
The restoration began in June 2016 after Israeli police briefly closed entry into the aedicule after Israel’s Antiquities Authority deemed it unsafe in 2015. The three Christian groups with access to the aedicule, the Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Armenians, put aside their longstanding mutual suspicions to work together in making the restoration possible. The cost of the restoration was $4 million. Large donations were generously made by Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The results are a great success. Daniel Estrin of the Associated Press reports:
“A restoration team from the National Technical University of Athens stripped the stone slabs from the shrine’s facade and patched up the internal masonry of the shrine, injecting it with tubes of grout for reinforcement. Each stone slab was cleaned of candle soot and pigeon droppings, then put back in place. Titanium bolts were inserted into the structure for reinforcement, and frescos and the shrine’s painted dome were given a facelift.”
The restorers also made some discoveries.
On October 26, the team entered the inner sanctum of the shrine, the burial chamber of Jesus, and temporarily slid open an old marble layer covering the bedrock where Jesus’ body is said to have been placed. Below the outer marble layer was a white rose marble slab engraved with a cross, which the team dated to the late Crusader period of the fourteenth century.
Beneath that marble slab was an even older, gray marble slab protecting the bedrock, and mortar on the slab dates to the fourth century, when Roman Emperor Constantine ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher built. The restorers have cut a small window from the shrine’s marble walls for pilgrims to see — for the first time — the bare stone of the ancient burial cave (Daniel Estrin, AP).
On March 22 the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, presided over the reopening of the aedicule along with representatives of the other Christian communities who occupy the church.

The Empty Tomb

The restoration of the aedicule which houses the tomb of Our Lord Jesus can only bring joy to the Christian heart. Christ’s modern-day disciples who occupy the church are cooperating closely in fraternal charity. This is critical to the long-term stability of the shrine.
And, perhaps more important to the onetime visitor, a little beauty has been restored to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This is good and important, too.
But, contrary to the sentiments expressed at the beginning of this article that speak to pilgrims’ disappointments at the appearance of Christendom’s holiest shrine, one does not journey to the Holy Land for glorious basilicas or cathedrals. One should go to Rome or Paris for that.
A pilgrim journeys to the Holy Land to bolster the faith within his own heart. Those who go and are able to reflect upon the emptiness of the tomb before their very eyes in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher realize why so many before them, repentant sinners, zealous crusaders, and the saints alike, were willing to risk everything to pray there.