![]() At the center of the church were two stone slabs believed to have an imprint of the feet of Christ before he ascended into heaven a stone which survives until this day. Founded in the late 4th Century AD, the original church was built over the site that pilgrims had long considered the place of the Ascension, and was constructed in the Byzantine Christian era. The historical and most authentic site dedicated to the Ascension of Christ is a short distance from the Russian Orthodox convent and is no longer a Church, but a mosque. Another lesser-known monastery belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church exists further down the Mount of Olives is also dedicated to the Ascension, but does not contain any churches or features of interest to pilgrims. While a beautiful and inspiring convent that also holds a small chapel built over the place where the head of Saint John the Baptist was discovered during the Byzantine Christian era, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Ascension is less than two hundred years old. The Russian Orthodox Convent of the Ascension on the northern side of the Mount of Olives, famous for its spiraling bell tower, is dedicated to this feast, but it is rarely visited by pilgrims who are not Orthodox, and services by other faiths within the church are forbidden as per Orthodox canon law. Yet where is the church for one of the most important moments in the Christian faith, the Ascension of Christ, as recalled in Mark 16:19: After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God, and why isn’t it better known?įirst, there is, in fact, a major church on the Mount of Olives, the place of the Ascension. There is the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and all the churches and monasteries commemorating the many miracles of the life and Passion of Christ in and around the Galilee and Jerusalem, to save a few. In the Holy Land, almost every major moment in the life of Christ is commemorated with a basilica, church, shrine, or convent on or nearby the place where it occurred.
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