If you pardon my musing, I want to open today with an adventure I had today in Nazareth. After that, I’ll summarize the site visits.

An Adventure

A few years ago I spent time meditating on the hidden life of Christ, the time between when Mary and Joseph found Him in the Temple and when He began His public ministry. During those periods of meditation, I imagined the times when Jesus would leave the home, leave the workshop, and go up on a nearby hillside to spend time with His Father in prayer. It ended up being a fruitful time of prayer for me, trying to enter into the dialogue between Christ and the Father. And as the time has gone by, I have often wondered just how close to the reality of Nazareth my imagination was. One of my excitements about coming to Nazareth was seeing what the topography was like, hoping that maybe there was a small rocky hill nearby to match my meditation. Once I got here, I realized just how hilly Nazareth is, and I stopped thinking about my meditation.

So, today, after we took our tours, I decided to just walk around Nazareth, a city of 80,000. I like walking around and seeing the people and places, without a real agenda. Eventually, I decided to scale the highest Nazareth hill to visit a monastery I saw on the top. It was quite a trek through back alleys streets and up steep streets. I discovered how out of shape I am. Eventually I got to the monastery, only to find it was more secure than a fort. I almost decided to just head back, but something told me to try the other side. I finally found the street that ran along the top of the hill, behind the monastery. I was looking for an entrance on my left when a view opened up to my right. Suddenly, I realized that God had given me a treat. I believe He inspired me to climb the hill in order to see perhaps where Christ spent time in prayer. I don’t know how He wouldn’t have prayed up there, because the view was incredible. On the left, several miles away, were Mt. Carmel, Haifa, and Acco. On the right were the mountains of Lebanon. In the middle, just barely visible due to heavy haze, was the Mediterranean Sea (my favorite body of water, by the way.) It hit me like a ton of spiritual bricks and I started laughing at the generous of God. My imagination of the “small rocky hill” paled in comparison to what Christ actually saw. The view, created through Him long ago, was enough to take even His breath away. God is truly good, especially when we aren’t expecting it.

Cana

We went to Cana, to the place where Our Lord began His ministry. The Church that is built there is simple but beautiful. There is also the excavations below that include buildings from the first century, though there is no certainty about where the miracle took place. It was neat to be in the area below knowing that my parents had a picture from when they went to Cana and had their vows renewed.

The best part of this visit was the traditions our guide shared with us about Palestinian weddings. He said that his niece was getting married this July, and he has already taken ten days off. He said that he, his wife, and his kids would be over at his brother’s house a lot, helping to host the hundreds of family and friends that will show up for the seven days before the wedding. The hosts have to have food and drink ready for everybody, and if they don’t, it is a real embarrassment. So, for the wedding party at Cana to have run out of wine already “on the third day” was a real problem. Jesus’ first miracle was quite opportune.

Basilica of the Annunciation

While we are in Nazareth, we are staying just a block away from the Basilica. After Pope Paul VI visited in 1964, they decided to tear down the old church and build a new one to accommodate what they thought be an influx in pilgrims. Unfortunately for them, the Six Day War in 1967 hurt tourism, but they still finished the new church in 1969. It definitely looks like it was built in 1969. It is truly a period piece, a concrete structure with angles all over the place, though it is symmetrical. The inside walls on either side of the nave have mosaics or paintings from each country honoring Our Lady. The one from the US is a monstrosity. The concrete columns were supposed to be covered with an alabaster marble veneer, but they decided against it, so all the concrete has fist-sized divots where the marble would have connected. It is not a good look at all.

The basilica is two levels. I like the lower level, which preserved the grotto where Mary lived with Joachim and Anne, as well as some of the structure of the two previous churches. We had Mass down there, and it was so powerful to be just yards away from where God became man. Although I didn’t care much for the basilica design, the fact that the grotto was there made it all worth it.

Shrine of St. Joseph

The basilica and Mary’s grotto mark the southern edge of first century Nazareth. There were probably only about 250 people, so the town was not very big. In fact, the northern end of the Franciscan monastery connected to the basilica is the shrine of St. Joseph, which was the northern most point of the town. They have found something like 25 caves in the area, which were the only types of homes used in Nazareth at the time. So, both Joachim and Anne’s abode and the Holy Family’s abode were caves.

The Holy Family’s cave is below St. Joseph’s shrine, which was built in the early to mid 20th century. It is a simple church, but I enjoyed praying there. St. Joseph is one of my favorite saints, so it was comforting to spend time inside.

Our Lodging

The place where we stayed was run by the Religious of Nazareth, an order of nuns. There wasn’t much special about the place, except that it is situated over ruins of a crusader church. They just found in the last year or two a grave attributed to a just man. According to oral tradition going back a long way, this grotto grave would have been for St. Joseph. It would have been situated outside the walls of Nazareth, which makes sense for a grave.

 Report this post as having objectionable content.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.