A dear friend of Bethlehem Handicrafts, Mila Glodava, wrote in one of her blogs:
Not too long ago, a friend of mine, George Bannoura, a Christian from Jerusalem, gave me a most precious gift: a crown of thorns, with a Certificate of Origin. It was also sanctified in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
It quotes Matthew 27:29: "And when they had plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand."
The certificate also describes that thorn bushes grow abundantly in the Jerusalem environs. During a Holy Pilgrimage in June 2014, I saw a couple of trees of thorns in front of the Church of Dominus Flevit, which translates from Latin as “The Lord Wept.”
Church of Dominus Flevit, Jerusalem
Join us today in a remarkable pilgrimage to the Holy Land to visit the Church of Dominus Flevit and be one of the most blessed people who get to walk on the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
Since then, I have often meditated on how Jesus could have handled the pain it caused him. It must have been excruciating with all those thorns piercing his head, and blood trickling down his face. It is also said that the soldiers kept on pounding the crown hard as they continue to mock him, so much so that “a thorn pierced an eye so that the point appeared on the surface of his eyeball” (James Groenings, S.J.). Yet he took all these: the pain, the scourging, the mocking, quietly, “like a lamb led to the slaughter, or a sheep before its sheerers” (Is 53:7). I would have cried out loud with that kind of pain. But not our Lord. Oh, what our Lord has endured even before his death on the cross for our redemption, for his love for us.
Last night at the Lord’s Supper, we prayed, “How shall I make a return to the LORD, for all the good he has done for me?” (Ps 116:12). If my sin has caused our Lord to suffer the pains of his scourging, the crowns on his head, the torments, and his death on the cross, then I should “make a return to the Lord” by avoiding not just sin, but even temptations, and by going to confession more frequently. I need to remember that our Lord died on the cross so that we might be “holy and blameless” (Eph 1:4) before God, who has planned our eternal life with Him even before He created us and all creations.
We, the Bethlehem Handicrafts’ team, are so proud to put the Holy Land in your hand by giving you a variety of the best and the most outstanding original Bethlehem’s olive wood carvings with the best quality made in the Holy Land.
