From the little I was able to see, this Passion of Jesus and the Stations of the Cross attraction (the whole thing is free) — things that I, as a nice Jewish girl, really only know about because I spent a few weeks teaching social studies at a Private Catholic grade School in Chicago (teaching 5th, 8th, and highschool history and economics) … during Lent is a massive garden devoted to the story of Jesus — with a few other things thrown in,. That said, I was expecting The Shrine of Christ’s Passion to be more over the top than it turned out to be… it’s actually rather tasteful… from the little I saw
That said, I didn’t managed to see more than a bit of it, nor was I able to appreciate the what I did see in full due to a horrible traffic leaving Chicago that DOUBLED the amount of time it took to get here … I was supposed to arrive at 3:30, but instead arrived about 10 minutes before it closed at 5pm …. So I had NO time to explore the MASSIVE gift store (seriously massive) before heading to the main event of the place…
When I first arrived, it the weather was cloudy and dry, but you could still see blue sky, so I went to first see Moses on the mount (above)… cause you know… Moses…otherwise, I know, this is not someplace you’d expect a nice Jewish girl to go, this is SO NOT something Jews tend to do — idolotry anyone? But I love this sort of stuff — I mean come on… they advertised as having a 33 foot tall steel lady!!! (never saw it)
and then I entered the Jesus section and it started to rain, but lightly at first …. The first Jesus thing was the last supper… Every tableau came with a recorded “acting out” of the scene — the sound system at this park ROCKED… they have spent serious money on it.
For the “Garden of Gethsemane” tableau you pushed the button at the entrance to a cul-de-sac type layout, and the loudspeakers were spread in such a way that you could walk through it at your own pace without missing any of it.
When I got to Jesus being condemned the rain was starting to come down harder, but I was determined to not turn back…
I made it through a few different stations of the cross, at which point I was starting to get soaked through and my iPhone’s touch screen stop working making it impossible to take photographs, even though it was in a “water-resistant” Otterbox case — at which point I gave up and headed back to the car….
As SOON as I was at my car, the rain stopped and the sky blued up…. almost like the powers that be didn’t want me seeing the Jesus stuff
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Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 