Day Two - Nazareth and Cana: Me again, Alex. I'll get my compatriots to add their thoughts and reactions soon, but some are still pretty tired right now. We had a long day of touring, but it went by quite quickly. We started out from Tel Aviv along the King's Highway up the Israeli Mediterranean coast. King's Highway was in ancient times a major trade route, and it goes into modern-day Syria. Our ultimate destination was Nazareth, the home of Jesus. Father Michael explained to us that there are conflicting stories regarding how and when exactly the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph ultimately came to Nazareth after Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, but these basic facts of location are generally not in dispute, at least as far as the towns are concerned.
Our first stop was the Annunciation Church, built at the location Christian pilgrims have taught to be where Mary was informed by Gabriel that she would bear the son of God. Pictures from these sites will be posted later, once I figure out (or someone does) how to upload them to a computer. Some days the pictures will tell the story. But today I want to bring up an interesting point that came up at this time with Brother Michael-Leonard, in which he explained to several of us standing in the yard of the church that the term "Immaculate Conception" is often misinterpreted by those using it to refer to Mary's impregnation with Jesus, but this is not accurate. The term actually refers to Mary herself being immaculately conceived in order to spare her from original sin and make her worthy of bearing the son of God--a concept that he explained is a bit of a controversial one in Catholic doctrine. It is sometimes questioned why, if humans are made in the image of God, why then would it even be necessary give someone such a status in order to bear Jesus, when some would say humans are, demonstrably, good enough for God if indeed created in God's image, even without the purity and lack of original sin of one immaculately conceived. But effectively, the Annunciation is actually the proper term for what many people incorrectly refer to as the Immaculate Conception. We had mass in the church, amidst a cacophony of sound of other prayers (much louder than ours, of course), which Father Michael thought was actually a fitting start to the trip, because amidst our travels we will always find things to stand in our way and will sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and the ability to work through and around that only enables one to see (and hear, and otherwise experience) God even more clearly.
Our next stop were two locations of Mary's Well, where Mary would often gather water in the mornings, as was the typical role of a woman at the time. We saw both the location of the well itself as well as the original water source of that well (coins and all--seems people treat it as a wishing well sometimes!!). From the footsteps of Jesus's early years, we continued on to the town of Cana, the site of Jesus' first reported miracle, the turning of water into wine at a wedding feast. This gave Father Michael the opportunity to explain that with certain Christian holy sites, the exact location of the events is somewhat fuzzy (this holds true both for Nazareth and Cana, though not so much for some of the sites we will later see in Jerusalem, particularly the Holy Sepulchre. But these early sites in Jesus' life were often assigned to certain locations by early pilgrims often more by convenience of location than strict archeological evidence, and sometimes varied from tradition to tradition. We were demonstrated this a bit comically in Cana (the city itself having two different locations, with it even somewhat unclear as to whether the accepted Cana is actually the historical Cana of Jesus's wedding feast miracle.) There are two different churches built on possible sites for the miracle, one by the Greeks and one by the Romans (Latin church). After finding, to our great disappointment, that the Latin church was closed, we tried to get into the Greek church, which was open, but apparently no to just anyone. The woman in charge (not sure by what authority, but clearly she had it) opened the door briefly, apparently asked one of our guys "Group"? (as in were we part of a specific group she was expecting), and then for whatever reason, she slammed the door in our faces! Father Michael tried going to the side door--she was coming out, maybe to try to escape from us, but he talked to her again, not sure what was said, but still she refused to let us in. We waited a bit, though about giving up, but then our fearless leader went back to her again, and something he said this time did enough of the trick for her to let us in for a few minutes, at least to look around at the artwork and get some basic explanations of it. Even here, she hovered over us and shooed us out in a few minutes, barely hiding her contempt. We really weren't sure what that was about, but Father Michael explained that in some cases it's just a territorial thing and those in charge sometimes only let in those groups with which they are familiar, and it can even change with the mood. We didn't make too much of it, but some of us found it somewhat humorous.
Now we're in Haifa tonight at an abbey guest house, having stopped along the way for a couple of photo ops overlooking the city and the sea and the harbor, as well as the Baha'i Gardens--breathtaking to be sure--photos to follow later. We were discussing what we saw, and the consensus in a few of us was that in places where exact locations are somewhat ambiguous, it is less about the specifics and more the awe we feel at the very idea that we are walking where Jesus walked. As Brother Michael-Leonard said--you know you're bound to cross his exact paths somewhere. This is something that may not sink in completely until later, though, and hopefully more thoughts on that idea will follow in the coming days.......
Alexander Adams-Leytes
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