2019 Holy Land Pilgrimage

 

On Friday, May 10, I began a trip to the Holy Land, where I will walk in the paths of Jesus life and explore the places familiar to him.

Throughout the tip, I will be posting various types of updates here, so please check back to follow along!

 

Day 1/2 (May 10-11): My flight to Tel-Aviv left Newark at about 11 pm Friday to arrive in Israel at 4 pm local time Saturday. The high drama was that my dad’s flight in was so late that he had to be specially shuttled down the tarmac from his flight to make it to ours before the doors closed. This means that, while he is here and we traveled together as planned, his luggage will arrive tomorrow (hopefully).

As I’m not a travel reviewer, I won’t talk too much about how cramped the United Economy Plus cabin was or how narrow the seats were. We made it, and soon after being spirited to the hotel in a sleek Mercedes cab, we met up with the other two in our party for a walk down the boardwalk and a wonderful seafood supper looking out over the Mediterranean Sea. No real tour stuff yet, as that officially begins Monday, so it remains to be seen what we will come up with for tomorrow. Blessings to all as this journey is underway!

Day 3 (May 12): Today we awoke to spend our first full day in Israel. First, the hotels that our tour booked are okay, but the food is wonderful. There was great coffee, excellent breads, vegetable dishes that looked (and were) good enough for me to eat, and more delicious olives than I have ever eaten.

Next, we went for a couple walks in the day, one before our excellent dinner and one after. During the day, we walked to Independence Park and then down the beach in Tel-Aviv. We got to talk to some local folks and dip our feat in the Mediterranean Sea!! For the evening walk, we walked down to the Marina and back, seeing cool boats and the life of Tel-Aviv, returning back through Independence Park.

Day 4 (May 13): Today, our pilgrimage tour began in earnest. We had another great breakfast before finishing our packing. Well, I also got up SUPER early to watch Game of Thrones at the correct time, which surprises literally no one.

After embarking on the bus, we went down the coast to Old Jaffa and visit St. Peter Church before returning through Tel-Aviv and meandering north. We spent a good amount of time in the various areas of Caesarea Maritime, built by Herod the Great for his manse and public areas. It is also where St. Paul defended himself before going off to Rome.

We then headed to Mount Carmel, where Elijah challenged the false prophets of Baal, with the Mount of the Transfiguration in the distance, then to Megiddo, where the term Armageddon derives from the original "Harmegiddo." We closed the day by visiting Nazareth, home of Jesus, where we saw Mt. Precipice, where Jesus was nearly hurdled from the cliff by those in Nazareth, and the Church of Annunciation, where Blessed Mary accepted the call to bear the Christ-child. We then headed to hotel in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee by way of Cana.

Day 5 (May 14): Our day began as the group left our hotel early to sail across the Sea of Galilee in a wooden boat. We prayed and sang and talked. In the few moments of quiet, it was easy to slip into thoughts of the gravity of this location, the holiness by proximity to where Jesus had been, easy to think on the call to witness after being there, as Christians have sought to be present in this place since soon after the time of Christ. Too soon, we docked at Kibutz Nof Ginosar (Gennesaret in Jesus' day) and went to a museum housing the remnants of a two thousand year-old boat that had been preserved in the muddy bottom of the Galilee since then.

Afterwards, we visited the beautiful area of Banias, ancient Caesarea Philippi, and got to share in some stories as the cool, crystal clear water flowed beneath the rocks on which we stood. We also saw the ruins of the ancient pagan temples carved into the rock face. Our last stop was Tabgha, where we visited the Church of Multiplication, where the miracle of the feeding of the multitude took place.

 

Day 6 (May 15): We set out early to visit more spots around the Galilee before heading south. We began with a trip to Yarsenit, a baptismal site on the Jordan River. There, my dad took care of Renewals of Baptism with full immersion into the river, and I was blessed to lead a few folks in a less-wet version standing up to our knees and scooping water up onto folks heads with a reminder of our baptismal call. My dad and I also got to do the same for one another, and I brought back some water to include in baptismal water at my parish, St. Stephen's.

After this, we headed to the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus' Sermon on the Mount took place, and Capernaum, where Peter lived with his family. This was the site for many miracles of Jesus, and the home of Peter's mother-in-law has been a Church of and on since roughly 300 CE, with worshippers gathering there in a less permanent way before that. We then continued our journey south and visited the ancient city of Beth She'An, which along with some Biblical association during the war with the Philistines, was a massive Roman City which has only been partially uncovered. We got to walk that and visit Magdala, and Migdal, where Mary Magdalene came from. We closed the day by getting to the Dead Sea, after a stop at a renowned Dead Sea beauty company for shopping, and I floated in the Sea before deciding I am much more of a pool guy than a super salty sea guy.

Day 7 (May 16): I woke up early in the morning with the worst nosebleed I have ever experienced. The combination of desert, salt, and being 700 meters below sea level apparently did not agree with me. After getting our tour guide, Jerry, and some hotel staff involved, we got it stopped three hours after it started. While this put a damper on my morning, as I just took some pictures at the top of Masada, the fortress hold out during the rebellion against the Romans in the mid-1st century CE, I rode back down and hung out with other folks who couldn't be that physical on the top of a mountain in the desert. We then went to Win Gedi, where David cut a piece off King Saul's cloak just to prove he could get that close to him, and stood by the beautiful waterfall there. Our last desert stop was Qumran, where the Essenes lived and stored the Dead Sea Scrolls.

After lunch, we headed to Jerusalem, took some pictures at the top of the Mount of Olives before walking down and visiting the Garden of Gethsemane and the church there. Along the walk, we stop at Dominus Flevit, "The Lord Wept," before continuing the slippery way down. We then went into Old Jerusalem and visited the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, before getting an underground tour of the excavations there by a delightful young man called David, who is not, he says, 3,000 years old. These tunnels showed things ranging from a 2,000 year-old Roman bathroom to a room called "The Room of Ages," because it has layers from every rebuilding of Jerusalem, dating back roughly 3,000 years.

Day 8 (May 17): By this point, our faithful tour guide, Jerry, has completely left behind the itinerary the company had given us, as most spots on there for this day were visited yesterday. We began the day stopping at Ein Karem, the birthplace of St. John the Baptist, and saw the beautiful church there. Afterwards, we headed straight for the Palestinian border and went to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. After stopping, for way too long, to shop at a store operated by local Christians, we headed for lunch, which I only mention here because it included some of the best lamb I have ever tasted.

After, we went to the Church of the Nativity, which is the oldest church in continuous use in the world. We were there with roughly 57 million other people (number exaggerated for emphasis) and crowded around a small door down a few steps. Inside this spot, which sits underneath the altar, is the stone stable and manger thought to be the exact spot where Christ was born. I blessed all of the olive wood items I had purchased before lunch, and had a brief moment of prayer before exiting this holy space. Our guide for the day then took us to the Shepherd's Field, which is a spot where shepherd's of the day hung out with their herds, so it is used as a placeholder for where the events with the angels and shepherds took place. Before heading back to our hotel in Jerusalem for the day, we stopped by the churches at this site.

Day 9 (May 18): It's my birthday!! What a cool experience to spend my birthday in Israel. Today, we went straight into Jerusalem and visited Mt. Zion, where we went to the Tomb of King David and the Upper Room, recognized as a space where the Last Supper could have taken place. From there, we walked to St. Anne Church (the mother of Mary) and looked out over what was once the Pools of Bethesda, where Jesus healed a man who had been ill for 38 years. From there, we were led through the shops of Old Jerusalem and passed the markers for the Via Dolorosa (The Way of Sorrow, what we often call the Stations of the Cross).

This walk concluded at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where we toured around and talked about all of the different spaces. I will leave it at that for now, since we went back two more times before the end of the trip. After lunch, we got to do a little bit of highly negotiated shopping before we were bussed to the Garden Tomb of Jerusalem. This is a place that some protestants found and wanted to offer a second option for where the crucifixion took place, making it a place of reflection. After this, our tour was officially over, and we were dropped at the hotel to be on our own the rest of the time.

Day 10 (May 19): All of our little group of four is still around today, so we started out by attending morning Eucharist in a mixed English/Arabic service at St. George's Anglican Cathedral, which was just up the street. After this, we headed straight for the Damascus Gate of the Old City and prayed the "Way of the Cross" from the Book of Occasional Services along the way, stopping for prayer and reflection at each station. This led us to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher again. This time, we not only had time to pray the stations, but we also waiting in the queue at the upstairs chapels built by St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine the Great of Rome, around what had been regarded as Golgotha since roughly the mid-1st century CE, by people who had known it as such even without its relationship to Christ. Here, we experienced again the shoving that some think appropriate around holy sites, but eventually got to kneel below the Greek Orthodox altar and reach through a hole in the floor to touch the stone mount beneath.

We took some extra time to finish the stations around the actual Holy Sepulcher, the tomb of Christ, but were not able to go in due to extremely long lines. We then headed south through the city, passed the Western Wall, and walked on the outside, talking about the archaeological site around the old southern steps of the Temple. Exhausted, we headed back though the city and to the hotel. After resting a bit, we had a late lunch in the hotel bar that was great simply because it was different than the rest of the week, and then said goodbyes, as Lydia and Larry were heading out early the next morning.

Day 11 (May 20): For the first time on our trip, we slept in a little bit before heading out for the day. Well, this was after I had been up at 3:30 am to see Larry and Lydia and to watch the series finale of Game of Thrones, because priorities. After breakfast, my dad and I took a bus all the way across town to the Israel Museum. There, we saw an amazing 1/50 scale model of the city of Jerusalem before its destruction by the Romans in the late 60s CE. This model included the Second Temple, the palaces of Herod, the Roman areas, and the theater. All of this was way cool, but what came next was even more astounding. Entering the Shrine of the Book, we got to actually look at fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and hear about them.

After a good amount of time there, we moved on the the historical artifacts portion of the museum, and exhausted ourselves again walking through the seemingly endless hallways. Things dated back several thousand years we around every corner, including pieces from pre-monotheistic religion in the region, early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One of the most fantastic finds was the blessing of Aaron, from Numbers 6, which has been dated as the oldest existing piece of scripture, dated to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE. This was also cool because it was the evening blessing from my dad when my brother and I were growing up.

Day 12 (May 21): It's the last day in Jerusalem, and we decided to get up very early for breakfast before trying once more to get into the Holy Sepulcher, which we now knew how to get to without any sort of map. It was interesting to be in the city before the shops were open and most of what we saw were children heading to school.

We arrived at the Holy Sepulcher just in time to have to wait a while to enter, but for a very cool reason. We got to hear a Roman Catholic Mass standing outside the Tomb of Christ, and were blessed by a bishop who used the sacrament blessed on the altar within the Sepulcher itself. After Mass, we were able to join the folks who were in the group holding it so that we could be near the front of the line to enter. and we were on the tail end of people who got to go in before others had to wait for a Greek Orthodox Eucharist. I had to duck down to enter the Sepulcher, and then crawled into the small room at the back where the stone slab sits above the place where Jesus was laid in death. This was a moving experience, and I was able to bless some items on this slab and altar, as I had been doing throughout the trip.

Having completed our pilgrimage, we returned to the hotel to clean up and finish packing, so we could check out of the hotel and wait until the evening for our pickup to the airport. The driver got us an hour early to avoid some incoming traffic for a football (soccer) match, and we got a beautiful tour of the countryside out of the deal. Having arrived at the airport and boarded the plane home, our trip was officially ended.