The Gethsemane and Its Sacred Olive Oil

The Garden of Gethsemane is a small grove con­sist­ing of eight ancient olive trees located at the foot of the Mount of Olives just out­side the Old City of Jerusalem. Its name derives from the Aramaic word gat semãnê, which means ​‘olive press’ and sug­gests the pres­ence of a mill in ancient times.

This piece of land is famous because, accord­ing to the Gospels writ­ten by Matthew and Mark, here is where after the Last Supper Jesus retired with His dis­ci­ples to pray, when He was betrayed by Judas and arrested by sol­diers and Pharisees.

The Gospels and other sacred texts, con­firmed by arche­o­log­i­cal finds, are con­sid­ered reli­able sources on the life of Jesus, who is the founder of Christianity but is praised and respected also by other reli­gions. The Agony He suf­fered dur­ing the last night of His life at Gethsemane gave this place a deep spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance which reaches its peak dur­ing Easter cel­e­bra­tions.

The Holy Week has just ended when we talked with the 44-year-old Italian Franciscan friar Father Diego Dalla Gassa, who is in charge of the Hermitage of Gethsemane, to learn more about these spe­cial olive trees.

“The Custody of the Holy Land fol­lowed the research activ­i­ties car­ried out in the olive grove dur­ing a study real­ized by experts in biol­ogy and plant phys­i­ol­ogy from Italian uni­ver­si­ties and the National Research Council,” he explained. The project coor­di­nated by Giovanni Gianfrate and Antonio Cimato, aimed at eval­u­at­ing the state of preser­va­tion of the olive trees, show­ing that the por­tion of them which is cur­rently vis­i­ble dates back to the mid-12^th cen­tury.

“But cer­tainly, the orig­i­nal part of the plants is much older,” Fra Diego said. ​“We well know that it is dif­fi­cult to deter­mine the exact age of sec­u­lar olive trees due to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the most ancient sec­tion of the trunk. The CNR esti­mated that the aer­ial part of the trees is rel­a­tively young, prob­a­bly due to actions taken by the Crusaders, when they arrived in Jerusalem, to pre­serve them bet­ter.”

The actual level of the soil is higher than that at the time, due to strat­i­fied deposits over the ages. ​“Analysis on root-core sam­ples showed not only that the olive trees belong to a unique orig­i­nal vari­ety, but also that, extra­or­di­nar­ily, all of them have the same DNA which means that cer­tainly they were prop­a­gated by cut­tings from a mother plant,” Fra Diego revealed.

We know that after 70 A.D., which is the date of the destruc­tion of the Temple at Jerusalem, and in 130 A.D., the olive trees prob­a­bly suf­fered from rav­ages and fires fomented by the emperor Hadrian and his troops, which would not have destroyed them com­pletely as the older part of them has been pre­served.

“The olive tree is effec­tively con­sid­ered a sym­bol of eter­nal life,” Fra Diego observed. ​“The fact that these plants were prop­a­gated by cut­tings indi­cates that, most prob­a­bly, the Christian cus­to­di­ans who later kept the Garden opted inten­tion­ally for this solu­tion: They wanted to pre­serve the genetic her­itage of the olive trees which had wit­nessed the Agony of Jesus.”

We do not know which the mother plant is, but it is not excluded that these olive trees have been planted more than two-thou­sand years ago. ​“To know that these olive trees were present at the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to be here now and see that they still bear fruits is an incred­i­ble feel­ing,” the Custodian affirmed.

Further analy­sis showed that the plants are healthy and free from any dis­eases. The olive fruit fly does not pro­lif­er­ate thanks to the high tem­per­a­tures recorded dur­ing sum­mer and, in gen­eral, the ideal micro­cli­mate of the area makes the work of the cus­to­di­ans eas­ier. Even the researchers called ​“a small mir­a­cle” the fact that the soil of Gethsemane seems able to pre­vent the growth of harm­ful bac­te­ria and pathogens.

The Franciscan Friars of the Custody, mostly Italians, take care of the olive trees with the sup­port of experts. Pruning is per­formed every year by one or two peo­ple, and the branches are cut del­i­cately based on a train­ing sys­tem not intended to increase the pro­duc­tion, but to main­tain a shape which aes­thet­i­cally fits into the con­text of a sacred gar­den.

The olive grove is man­aged with great care in such a way to ensure noth­ing dis­rupts the healthy growth of the plants, which do not need any par­tic­u­lar phy­tosan­i­tary treat­ment thanks to their excel­lent con­di­tion.

“Last time I took care of the har­vest we col­lected about 700 kilo­grams (1,543 pounds) of olives,” Fra Diego revealed, explain­ing that dur­ing har­vest time they gather a group of no more than 20 vol­un­teers and, if it is good weather, they start har­vest­ing on the sec­ond Saturday in October.

“We need a week to con­clude har­vest­ing oper­a­tions because we gen­er­ally we work on max­i­mum two trees a day,” he added. Then, the olives are brought to a local mill where oper­a­tors take spe­cial pre­cau­tions. The Franciscan fri­ars also help super­vise the neigh­bor­ing Kidron val­ley.

While the pro­duc­tion of the sur­round­ing groves is used for the main­te­nance of their con­vents, the extra vir­gin olive oil obtained from the olive trees of the Sacred Garden is used exclu­sively for litur­gi­cal pur­poses; that is why every year on Holy Thursday it is blessed dur­ing the Chrism Mass cel­e­brated at the Holy Sepulcher. After Easter, the oil is sent to the parishes of the ter­ri­tory, where it will be used for sacra­ments through­out the year.

Nothing is wasted, and with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of local fam­i­lies, pits are used to cre­ate rosaries which will be given to fri­ars on the day for con­se­crated life, February 2^nd, together with a thumb-sized bot­tle of oil.

On Holy Thursday, again this year, the sacred oil was blessed and the olive trees of Gethsemane were sur­rounded by prayers and emo­tions.

• Custodia Terrae Sanctae