After breakfast we are off to Mt. Tabor where the Lord showed Himself to his closest disciples, Peter, James and John. The Hymn of Transfiguration says that He showed them as much of His Glory as they could absorb. As Metropolitan Kalistos says in one of his talks, it was not Him who changed, but the disciples who were changed enough to perceive Him as He truly was.
Mt Tabor is 576 m above sea level. Our bus took us half way up the mountain, where we transferred to smaller, swiftly-moving buses (taxis) to go up the windy mountain road. At the transfer point we ran into a group of young military boys, ALL carrying their automatic weapons!
Two soldiers and their weapons.
The Church of the Transfiguration is a Greek Orthodox Church. It is very difficult (for me at least), to actually realize where we are, what incredible events have happened in the past in the very place I am standing. To be present in the present moment in those holy places would be such an incredible gift. It's so easy to be distracted by the picture taking, the flies buzzing in front of your face or souvenirs in the gift shop. Being present in any moment is difficult, but being present in these holy places requires even greater, if not impossible, effort. I am making a resolution to work harder on that from now on. It would have been so nice to have had the Liturgy here, but with so few Orthodox (and Christians) left in the Holy Land, that possibility and hope did not get realized.
Two guys on a rock.
Another group picture. Everybody hates me for making them stand like that for one,
but don't you think these are awesome? One per day is not that much to ask for, is it?
From Mt. Tabor, we drove through the Jezreel Valley to Nazareth. This valley is the most fertile area of land in all of Israel, with two growing seasons. In the winter they grow corn, wheat, and in the summer cucumbers, lentils, cotton, beans.
Nazareth is today the largest city in Galilee with about 80,000 inhabitants. In the time of Christ there were only 120 people living there! This is why Nathaniel said to Philip "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
(since it is so small?).
On the way from Tabor to Nazareth is a mountain with a city where prophet Jonah was from. He was the only prophet from Galilee, all other prophets came from Judea.
In Nazareth, we stopped in the Church of Annunciation. This is where Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she will be the Mother of God. There are two accounts of where the annunciation happened, one of them being by the well. That well and the spring of water is still there, right in the church!
We had lunch at a falafel restaurant, Mr. Baguette.
From there, we went to the Greek Orthodox Church of the Wedding in Cana, where the Lord performed His very first miracle. We just got to take a few pictures in the courtyard of the church when the Greek priest-in-charge came and literally threw us out! Fr. Meletios expected something like that, based on what our tour guide Joseph experienced in the past. It would have been nice to go inside and to see the church and also to purchase our Cana of Galilee wine from the Orthodox source. Instead we spent our money at the little Russian souvenir store, who's owner treated us to juice and wine samples. Many of us bought wine, I did a
set of 3 bottles, so now there will be Cana of Galilee wine at Luke, Marc and Alan's weddings!!! The wine will be well aged by the time of their weddings.
So instead of visiting the Orthodox church, we went to see the Catholic church.
No comments:
Post a Comment