Lord of Armageddon
As far as I can tell, the internet is totally inaccessible here at the convent at which I'm staying for the next three days. So I'm just going to type this out, and then hopefully post it three days from now, the next time I can get online.
Today is the first of three red-letter days in January for my godchildren, and as a proud godfather I must trumpet this to all: Three years ago today, Ian was baptized at Our Lady of Mercy in Aurora. Huzzah! Later on this month Jeremy will be celebrating his fifth birthday, and Jill will be turning four. This is definitely a month in which to rejoice. I wish I could be with all of them, but I must admit that rejoicing in January is made a lot easier when the temperature is in the 70s every day...
I had just enough time after I woke up this morning to head up to the roof of the Carmelite mother house and look out over Haifa and the Mediterranean, and see what it looks like during the daytime. Gorgeous, of course! After having spent 32 consecutive nights at the Betharram House back in Bethlehem, it was a bit jarring to spend just one night at such a nice place, only to move on first thing in the morning. But by 8:00, we were heading out for another day chock full of amazing historical sites here in Galilee.
Our first stop was Megiddo, which most people recognize under the much more popular name of ARMAGEDDON. Megiddo is several miles inland, due east of Haifa. If I thought Casearea had been interesting because of how many twists and turns had happened throughout its history, Megiddo blew me away even more. Between 3000 BC and 400 BC, the small town was conquered, destroyed, and rebuilt no fewer than 25 times. Each time its new owners rebuilt the town on top of the ruins of the previous one, and so over the centuries it slowly became a hill that kept increasing in height. The resulting mound is known as a "tell", and when one digs down into it, one will find 25 separate layers of archaeological history.
Megiddo really isn't that big - just a small, unassuming mound in the middle of the Galilean countryside. But it was fought over so much because it sits at a major crossroads. One ancient road led east to west (from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean), and at Megiddo it intersected one of the only north-south roads in the entire Middle East, because of a break in the mountain range that happens right there. So every single culture throughout early civilization wanted control of Megiddo, not because it itself was a nice place, but because you had to go through it to get anywhere. That's pretty much the story of all of the Holy Land, actually. This little swath of land really doesn't have many redeeming characteristics, but it's on the way to every major continent, and so every nation has fought over it for millennia.
By the time Hellenism took hold in the fourth century BC, the new mentality was that no towns or fortresses could be built on top of the ruins of old ones, and so "tells" stopped being made. That's why nobody ever lived in Megiddo again after that. For the last 2400 years, it has sat dormant. A brief battle fought over that piece of land during World War I resulted in victory for the British. The British commander who won that battle earned the coolest nickname that any real man could ever ask for: "Lord of Armageddon".
After walking through several levels of history in the ruins of Megiddo, we exited by way of a long tunnel that had been dug so that the people in the town could have access to the nearest water source while the city was under siege. It was an impressive engineering feat for such ancient people. The tunnel went absolutely straight for quite a long ways, and came out right at the fresh water spring for which it had been aiming. How the heck had they known which way to dig, that far underground? We've been asking ourselves that all day.
So what's all this talk about there being a cataclysmic, end-all be-all battle of the forces of good and evil at the end of the world... here? Like I said, Armageddon is a pretty unassuming little mound. Well, who knows? Revelation chapter 16 is the place where the Bible identifies it as the final battleground, but nobody knows why it should be there rather than anywhere else. It's important to understand that there definitely will come a time when good will ultimately triumph over evil... but such a battle will be waged in a way that far transcends a physical location with physical weapons. When this material universe eventually melts away and its Creator is revealed, that's when evil will finally be conquered. And it's going to be a heck of a lot more spectacular than anything we can imagine. It certainly won't involve a skirmish around this mound that's been sitting around for a couple of millennia.
After that we turned back westward and came back to the sea coast, then turned northward to the town of Akko, which is the next city along the coast from Haifa. Near the center of the city is what's left of a main stronghold for the Crusaders when they were in the Holy Land in the 11th and 12th centuries - and in fact, most of that town is still preserved to this day. It's the only fully preserved Crusader settlement anywhere. The fortresses through which we walked were extraordinarily impressive - gymnasium-sized halls with massive stone arches and pillars. It actually looked a lot like the way the Mines of Moria were depicted in the theatrical version of "The Fellowship of the Ring". Our visit featured two more awesome walks through long, dark tunnels that snaked their way underneath the city, thus bringing our tunnel tally to three for the day.
After a delicious lunch of catfish, we turned back eastward to head for where we'd be staying for the next three days: Nazareth. Now here's a town that should need no introduction! As I type this now, I am not only sitting in Jesus Christ's home town, but I am literally across the street from the home of Mary, before she married Joseph. Our residence for these three days is the beautiful convent of the Sisters of Nazareth, which is full of pleasant courtyards and palm trees. But when you consider the implications of what's across the street, it should boggle the mind more than any religious claim that has ever been made.
If that spot over there really was Mary's home during her early lifetime, that would mean that the Annunciation took place there. And we all know what the Annunciation was: It was nothing less than the most dramatic invasion of the physical universe that Heaven ever perpetrated. That spot about a hundred yards from the rooftop where I'm typing this now was precisely where the Word became Flesh. The exact spot of Jesus' birth which is so revered back in Bethlehem is all fine and good, but that's merely where he came out of the womb. The spot I'm looking at now from our rooftop is where God literally became part of His own physical creation. It's about as absurd an idea as an architect becoming part of the house he designed, and no other religion in all of human history has ever suggested something so ludicrous, so outlandish. And how did God make that unprecedented appearance within His universe? As a 900-foot Jesus that conveyed His grand awesomeness to all who beheld Him? Nope, it was as a single microscopic cell - as a human zygote. The Second Person of the Trinity became physically present in this universe in the same way that every human being starts out - hidden and unknown. God was determined to live out the human condition in its fullness, and that meant that He not only had to suffer and die as all of us eventually do, but also that He had to start out in the tiniest way. That zygote was fully God and fully human at the same time. Ponder that if you can.
As difficult a concept as that is to contemplate, my task will be to present a reflection on that very thing two days from now when we gather in that grotto. Throughout this pilgrimage, at every holy site we visit one of the seminarians has to give a reflection for everyone that includes the appropriate Scripture reading and short little homilette. Back in October, I signed up for here because I knew that there could be no place more epic than right where God first came on the scene among us. There's no way I could possibly do justice to that... but I'll still say all I can. As I put the finishing touches on it in these two days, I realize that it could be something I can store away for any homily that I give every March 25- the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
It would be appropriate to commemorate a spot like this with a nice church, right? Well, they've done just that. The Basilica of the Annunciation is so far the largest church I've seen in the Holy Land. After we arrived here this afternoon and I napped and showered, I had just enough time to go in there and marvel at its vastness. As I sat there and prayed evening prayer underneath the massive dome, it reminded me of what it's like to sit in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. What a treat it is to be living across the street from such a place for three days!
But our official tour of the basilica has not yet happened, so I cannot yet give you better details about the history of it. For now, I should really wrap this up not only because last night's entry took me two and a half hours to type and I ended up getting to bed way too late, but also because I'm sitting up here on the roof right now and my laptop only has so much battery power. (Writing this in my room while my roommate is trying to sleep isn't an option, so I have to find privacy somewhere.)
Today is the first of three red-letter days in January for my godchildren, and as a proud godfather I must trumpet this to all: Three years ago today, Ian was baptized at Our Lady of Mercy in Aurora. Huzzah! Later on this month Jeremy will be celebrating his fifth birthday, and Jill will be turning four. This is definitely a month in which to rejoice. I wish I could be with all of them, but I must admit that rejoicing in January is made a lot easier when the temperature is in the 70s every day...
I had just enough time after I woke up this morning to head up to the roof of the Carmelite mother house and look out over Haifa and the Mediterranean, and see what it looks like during the daytime. Gorgeous, of course! After having spent 32 consecutive nights at the Betharram House back in Bethlehem, it was a bit jarring to spend just one night at such a nice place, only to move on first thing in the morning. But by 8:00, we were heading out for another day chock full of amazing historical sites here in Galilee.
Our first stop was Megiddo, which most people recognize under the much more popular name of ARMAGEDDON. Megiddo is several miles inland, due east of Haifa. If I thought Casearea had been interesting because of how many twists and turns had happened throughout its history, Megiddo blew me away even more. Between 3000 BC and 400 BC, the small town was conquered, destroyed, and rebuilt no fewer than 25 times. Each time its new owners rebuilt the town on top of the ruins of the previous one, and so over the centuries it slowly became a hill that kept increasing in height. The resulting mound is known as a "tell", and when one digs down into it, one will find 25 separate layers of archaeological history.
Megiddo really isn't that big - just a small, unassuming mound in the middle of the Galilean countryside. But it was fought over so much because it sits at a major crossroads. One ancient road led east to west (from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean), and at Megiddo it intersected one of the only north-south roads in the entire Middle East, because of a break in the mountain range that happens right there. So every single culture throughout early civilization wanted control of Megiddo, not because it itself was a nice place, but because you had to go through it to get anywhere. That's pretty much the story of all of the Holy Land, actually. This little swath of land really doesn't have many redeeming characteristics, but it's on the way to every major continent, and so every nation has fought over it for millennia.
By the time Hellenism took hold in the fourth century BC, the new mentality was that no towns or fortresses could be built on top of the ruins of old ones, and so "tells" stopped being made. That's why nobody ever lived in Megiddo again after that. For the last 2400 years, it has sat dormant. A brief battle fought over that piece of land during World War I resulted in victory for the British. The British commander who won that battle earned the coolest nickname that any real man could ever ask for: "Lord of Armageddon".
After walking through several levels of history in the ruins of Megiddo, we exited by way of a long tunnel that had been dug so that the people in the town could have access to the nearest water source while the city was under siege. It was an impressive engineering feat for such ancient people. The tunnel went absolutely straight for quite a long ways, and came out right at the fresh water spring for which it had been aiming. How the heck had they known which way to dig, that far underground? We've been asking ourselves that all day.
So what's all this talk about there being a cataclysmic, end-all be-all battle of the forces of good and evil at the end of the world... here? Like I said, Armageddon is a pretty unassuming little mound. Well, who knows? Revelation chapter 16 is the place where the Bible identifies it as the final battleground, but nobody knows why it should be there rather than anywhere else. It's important to understand that there definitely will come a time when good will ultimately triumph over evil... but such a battle will be waged in a way that far transcends a physical location with physical weapons. When this material universe eventually melts away and its Creator is revealed, that's when evil will finally be conquered. And it's going to be a heck of a lot more spectacular than anything we can imagine. It certainly won't involve a skirmish around this mound that's been sitting around for a couple of millennia.
After that we turned back westward and came back to the sea coast, then turned northward to the town of Akko, which is the next city along the coast from Haifa. Near the center of the city is what's left of a main stronghold for the Crusaders when they were in the Holy Land in the 11th and 12th centuries - and in fact, most of that town is still preserved to this day. It's the only fully preserved Crusader settlement anywhere. The fortresses through which we walked were extraordinarily impressive - gymnasium-sized halls with massive stone arches and pillars. It actually looked a lot like the way the Mines of Moria were depicted in the theatrical version of "The Fellowship of the Ring". Our visit featured two more awesome walks through long, dark tunnels that snaked their way underneath the city, thus bringing our tunnel tally to three for the day.
After a delicious lunch of catfish, we turned back eastward to head for where we'd be staying for the next three days: Nazareth. Now here's a town that should need no introduction! As I type this now, I am not only sitting in Jesus Christ's home town, but I am literally across the street from the home of Mary, before she married Joseph. Our residence for these three days is the beautiful convent of the Sisters of Nazareth, which is full of pleasant courtyards and palm trees. But when you consider the implications of what's across the street, it should boggle the mind more than any religious claim that has ever been made.
If that spot over there really was Mary's home during her early lifetime, that would mean that the Annunciation took place there. And we all know what the Annunciation was: It was nothing less than the most dramatic invasion of the physical universe that Heaven ever perpetrated. That spot about a hundred yards from the rooftop where I'm typing this now was precisely where the Word became Flesh. The exact spot of Jesus' birth which is so revered back in Bethlehem is all fine and good, but that's merely where he came out of the womb. The spot I'm looking at now from our rooftop is where God literally became part of His own physical creation. It's about as absurd an idea as an architect becoming part of the house he designed, and no other religion in all of human history has ever suggested something so ludicrous, so outlandish. And how did God make that unprecedented appearance within His universe? As a 900-foot Jesus that conveyed His grand awesomeness to all who beheld Him? Nope, it was as a single microscopic cell - as a human zygote. The Second Person of the Trinity became physically present in this universe in the same way that every human being starts out - hidden and unknown. God was determined to live out the human condition in its fullness, and that meant that He not only had to suffer and die as all of us eventually do, but also that He had to start out in the tiniest way. That zygote was fully God and fully human at the same time. Ponder that if you can.
As difficult a concept as that is to contemplate, my task will be to present a reflection on that very thing two days from now when we gather in that grotto. Throughout this pilgrimage, at every holy site we visit one of the seminarians has to give a reflection for everyone that includes the appropriate Scripture reading and short little homilette. Back in October, I signed up for here because I knew that there could be no place more epic than right where God first came on the scene among us. There's no way I could possibly do justice to that... but I'll still say all I can. As I put the finishing touches on it in these two days, I realize that it could be something I can store away for any homily that I give every March 25- the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
It would be appropriate to commemorate a spot like this with a nice church, right? Well, they've done just that. The Basilica of the Annunciation is so far the largest church I've seen in the Holy Land. After we arrived here this afternoon and I napped and showered, I had just enough time to go in there and marvel at its vastness. As I sat there and prayed evening prayer underneath the massive dome, it reminded me of what it's like to sit in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. What a treat it is to be living across the street from such a place for three days!
But our official tour of the basilica has not yet happened, so I cannot yet give you better details about the history of it. For now, I should really wrap this up not only because last night's entry took me two and a half hours to type and I ended up getting to bed way too late, but also because I'm sitting up here on the roof right now and my laptop only has so much battery power. (Writing this in my room while my roommate is trying to sleep isn't an option, so I have to find privacy somewhere.)