Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee

Haifa, Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee November 5, 2011

Today was another long but enlightening day. We left very early and took our bus to the top of the high hill the surrounds the port city of Haifa. Here we saw the top part of the Gardens of B’iatha. B’iatha is a sect of the religion of Islam that was formed in the mid 1800’s. They are a liberal group that give women considerably more rights than traditional Islam. For some reason our tour guide was unable to give us, the leader of B’iatha built a golden domed building about half way up the hill and then a series of gardens stretching in both directions up and down the hill from the domed building. They are large, very formal and beautiful gardens that we could see from our ship At night they are illuminated and as we left the harbor this evening they were very striking.

We left the Gardens of B’iatha and drove to Nazareth to visit the Church of the Annunciation. It was in Nazareth where the angel came to Mary and told her that she would be with child and she should call the child Jesus. Before 1964 there was a Mosque near the site that dwarfed the Christian church. In 1964 Pope Paul VI visited the site and announced that the Vatican would see to the building of a much larger church. The resulting structure is larger than any of the other buildings in the area and is very contemporary in design. Countries from around the world were invited to send a mosaic honoring Mother Mary and baby Jesus, resulting in a series of mosaic panels both inside and outside the church that are beautiful indeed. Of particular interest were the mosaics from several Asian countries that portrayed Mother Mary looking like an oriental woman. Again, we thought of Nazareth as a small town but, in fact, it is a bustling city of 45,000 people today.

From Nazareth it was on to the Sea of Galilee where we ended up a kibbutz located where the River Jordon leaves the Sea of Galilee. It was somewhere near this site that Jesus was baptized. One can arrange to be baptized at this center. While we did not see any baptisms, we did see many people take their shoes off and step into the river. After seeing all the catfish and muskrats swimming about, we chose not to! On our way to this site we had passed the church where Jesus performed his first miracle; turning the water into wine. At the gift shop at the River Jordan, in addition to stocking small bottles of Holy Water from the River, we could have bought “First Miracle Wedding Wine”.

After lunch our bus took us to the site of Jesus’s miracle of feeding 5000 people with two loaves of bread and five fish. There was a lovely little church marking this spot. Nearby we visited the town of Capernaum. Jesus left Nazareth shortly after turning 30 and spent 19 months preaching in and around Capernaum. Unlike Jerusalem and Nazareth, in Jesuss’s time Capernaum was a large city. Now it is just a tourist site featuring archeological digs. Parts of the synagogue where Jesus preached are still standing although recently it has been determined this particular structure was built in the 5th century, probably above the original. It was also in Capernaum that Jesus met many of his disciples for the first time.

Our last stop was at the Church of the Beatitudes, where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount outlining the 8 beatitudes. This site also had a pretty little church that was built in the 1930’s. We also saw vestments worn by Pope Paul and Pope Benedict when they visited here and they left as gifts to the church.

At each stop mentioned in the Bible, both yesterday and today, one of our shipmates read the appropriate passage from the Bible. This certainly added to our understanding of the significance of each of the places we visited. Lynda kept pinching herself as she knew how much her mother would have liked the idea of our visiting these sacred places.

Yesterday, on our drive to Jerusalem, we passed mostly desert land. Today, on our way to the Sea of Galilee and back, we drove through a large, broad valley where much farming is being done. Agriculture is big business in Israel. They grow much fruit and produce that is sold throughout Europe year round.

While it is hard not to be a bit skeptical about the exact locations of these historical events, research shows that we were close enough to take it all very seriously. Both days in Israel there were crowds of people at all of these sites and we could tell that for many of them it was a pilgrimage of a lifetime. We are both also very thankful that we had the chance to visit the Holy Lands.