Day 7, May 9th Monday
We start our day in Haifa. This city is built on Mt. Carmel, which means "the vineyard of God". Most famous story about Mt. Carmel is the story Prophet Elijah's contest of gods, which happened on Mt. Carmel in 9th century BC. The tribes of the area worshiped false god Baal and Prophet Elijah could not stop them so he challenged 150 prophets of this false god Baal to a contest. They built two altars, one for Baal and one for Elijah's true God. They slaughtered two bulls and placed them on two altars. Elias encouraged the other prophets to shout hard and loud (these are the words of our guide Joseph, he has an wonderful way of bringing these stories to life, with his voice and style of storytelling, as he explains everything to us) to their gods, but nothing happened. When it was Prophet Elijah's turn came, he prayed to God telling him "this is the time to show yourself". And God sent the fire to burn his sacrifice! After that Prophet Elijah had to flee, and he went to Mt. Sinai, where we will follow him in a couple of days!
Haifa is a beautiful port on the Mediterrenean. We saw the port, with cruise ships stopped in Haifa Bay.
So first, we went to Prophet Elijah's Church. On this spot St. Elijah (he is the only prophet we call a Saint, since he did not die, but was taken alive to Heaven) experienced God, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, not in the wind, but in a small still voice, in the sound of silence. So this place could be considered the birthplace of hesycastic tradition of the Orthodox Church , since it was here that God revealed to us that He can only be found in the sound of silence.
In the cave of Prophet Elijas Joseph translated for us an ancient prayer to the Prophet. This is more or less how it went:
"Peace to you the living prophet of the Lord, who has strong faith and jealousy for the power of God. You defended and stood strong among false prophets. Through your prayer rains, we ask you to protect and help us and ask the Lord to save us from sickness, drought, poverty. Remove all evil thoughts from us, help us as you did the widow by raising her son". It was such a beautiful prayer, translated by Joseph from Arabic, I think, on the spot! By the way, Fr. Meletios did the same thing almost every time he read a Gospel for us in any of the churches, as only Greek Gospels were available in those churches. His translation was so good and simultaneous, that only after a while I realized he was doing it. He also spoke fluent Greek with all the priests we met. I would love to learn Greek some day, but I am afraid there will not be enough time for this for me in this lifetime.
The church of Propher Elias is now in the hands of Catholic order of Carmelites. I even spoke with one who looked just like my cousin Jacek, but turned out to be Hungarian!
Next we stoped by Baha'i shrine on the hill of this town. The shrine is in the middle of tarraced garden. Each Baha'i believer has to donate a dollar a day to maintain this shrine. There are 19 levels of gardens, since they have 19 months in their calendar, each having 19 days.
We drive south along the Mediterranean to Cesarea. It is the most expensive city in Israel (Richard Gere has a villa here). We stopped by the beach (thanks to Dan's request, thank you Dan!) and dipped our feet in the water, on the beach next to the remains of the Roman aqueduct. Cesarea was built in 25 BC, with artificial harbor, theaters, bath houses. First Olympic games were held here (???). It became one of three major ports of the times (the other two were Alexandria and Pyrrea in Greece).
As we drive by the beach, we see lots of Roman ruins, remains of Crusaders castle. Then a kabutz where Caesar Stone is made. The beaches are sandy and beautiful here. Joseph tells us that the sand in the Mediterranean comes from the Sahara desert, carried into the sea by the Nile river. Sandy beaches stretch from Cesarea all the way to Egypt.
We stop for lunch in Tel Aviv. I think this was my favorite lunch so far! I sat a the table with Suzanne, Dan and Cheryl and we split just two dishes: one fish plate and one falafel. But the one of those came with a sample of 15 different salads, basket of bread and a big pitcher of lemonade! It was a fantastic way to sample a lot of different dishes.
Today is a Memeorial Day in Israel, so we saw a lot of people near cemeteries.
South of Tel Aviv is Joppa (Jaffa). Our first stop after lunch was the Church of Archangel Michael. We walked to it through the old town streets, passing the house of Simon the Tanner on the way to St. Peter's church. The views in this town are so Mediterranean, like being in southern Spain or France. We get just a little taste of being on vacation.
St. Peter came to Joppa often and stayed at the house of Simon the Tanner. The story is in the Book of Acts, chapter 10. I read it on the bus after the visit, and reading these Bible passages after seeing the actual places makes such and amazing and enormous difference. All of the sudden it is not just some irrelevant place or person, but real place and a real person, one from an actual past.
Pictures to add: 1585 walk to st. Peters church, 1589
Next we drive to St. George's Church in Lydda. Lydda is a biblical town, known today as Lod. It's poor today, looking more like West Bank than other towns in this part of Israel.
1602
St. George lived around 295. His mother was from Joppa, and his father was a Roman soldier. So he aslo became a Roman soldier, and therefore there was a conflict between his job and his faith. He chose his faith and for that he was martyred. In Greek, Georgios means "farmer".
St. George with a dragon is a pagan myth. In the Orthodox Church the dragon represents the evil, or the Roman army.
1603 1605 1608
At the Church we are met by Fr. Sofronios, an young Australian born Greek, who is the abbot here. We venerated St. George's tomb (I think this was another one of my favorite spots, my father's name was Georgi and also something about the tomb of St George was unusually moving for me), as well as relics of St. George, St. Prokpios and St. John Cala-something.
Then Fr. Sofronios hosted us with coffee, chocolate croissants and candy. One of the nuns is Romanian, so Theodore, Moina, Fr. Meletios and the nun sang "Christ is Risen" in Romanian.
On the way back to hotel, going back "up to Jerusalem", Fr. Meletios reminded us of the songs of ascent sang during the Presanctified Liturgy in Lent. Those songs of ascent were pilgrims' songs, which described the delights of pilgrims as they traveled towards the Temple of Jerusalem. So next year at the Presanctified Liturgy those songs will have a real meaning for us as we remember this wonderful trip.
Pictures: 1610 Our hotel, Flowers by the hotel
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