Lord, it is good that we are here
There are many occasions during this pilgrimage in which our dress code seems inappropriate for what we're doing, and today that happened a couple of times. The dress code, which is in effect at all times (even during anything that might be construed as a "day off"), is business casual - dockers and a button-down collared shirt or sweater. Jeans or other casual gear can never be worn because the seminary wants to emphasize that we're not here as tourists or college students. But that becomes problematic when we visit hot, dusty archaeological sites, and it especially doesn't fit when we end up doing a lot of hiking. My adventures today ended up being more like backpacking or geocaching than anything else... and I did it all while trying not to get my nice clothes dirty.
When I woke up for my first full day here in Nazareth, I opened the window next to my bed and breathed in the clean, crisp air. This town seems to have the best weather yet (our guide says that the pleasant weather is the doing of the prayers of the local people for us... "we Galileans are more powerful than anyone else in the Holy Land," he boasts). As I type this, I'm sitting outside at 11:00 PM in the central courtyard. There are few things more pleasant than the feel of a summery breeze at night.
The massive Basilica of the Annunciation isn't the only worship space that's across the street from us - also a block away is a mosque, and this morning its minaret greeted me with prayer, just like back in Bethlehem. My experiences in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa had begun to convince me that the only Muslims over here were in Palestine, but it turns out that there are quite a few Muslim communities on this side of the wall as well. In fact, Nazareth is a rare Israeli town that has no Jewish population whatsoever - it's 38% Christian and 62% Muslim. It's the highest percentage of Christians of any town in all of Israel, but there's still quite a bit of tension between the two. Prominently displayed just outside the basilica are two massive banners with quotes from the Koran that denounce any non-Muslims as "the losers" in the life to come. Those banners were put up by some more fundamentalist Muslims that are moving into town. I was talking with one of the locals here about that, and he told me that the Christians decided not to respond in any way whatsoever, knowing that it would probably only make those who put up the banners even angrier. "Did it work?" I asked. The guy smiled and nodded. "You have no idea!" I can resonate with that, because that's the same tactic I use when people get angry at me in traffic. I continue staring straight ahead, pretending not to have even seen the person yelling or gesturing obscenely at me. I wonder how that's going to work once I get ordained and start regularly driving around in a collar?
Our first stop today was the small nearby village of Nain, which is where Jesus raised a widow's son from the dead during a funeral. Because Nain is only known for that one event, there really isn't anything there to see. The Franciscans built a small chapel there in the 19th century, and so all we did was pull up in our bus, walk into the chapel, and listen to one of our guys give a Scripture reading and reflection on that event. After our five-minute visit, as were driving off the guide explained to us that shrines like that are used for actual Catholic liturgies only about once a year at best, because there's no Christian community to speak of that could attend that church. If it weren't for pilgrimage groups like us that stop and visit, these shrines would all fold up. But it's quickly becoming clear to me if we could know where Jesus stopped to relieve himself, they'd build a church on that spot - that's how many of these places dot the landscape of the Holy Land. About the only thing that I was truly able to learn from having visited the village of Nain was to get an idea of where it is in relation to Jesus' hometown of Nazareth. In fact, his whole Galilean ministry is really starting to make a lot more geographic sense to me as I internalize which mountain and which valley is where - and our next stop was indeed a mountain.
Mount Tabor is also fairly near Nazareth, and it's where the Transfiguration happened. We had to park our large tour bus and take several mini-vans to the peak. A narrow series of switchbacks wound their up the mountain, and eventually we were there. At the top of Tabor is a sizable Franciscan complex, dominated by - what else? - a large church. Also at the site are the ruins of earlier churches and monasteries. The history of Tabor is similar to the history of the other holy sites in this part of the country: Christians enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity up until the seventh century, Muslims came and tore it all down, Crusaders came back in the 11th century and built it all back up, Muslims came and tore it down again, and then by today Christians and Muslims figured out to let the site remain in peace and the Franciscans take good care of it all. It's all just variations on a theme.
Our visit to Mt. Tabor was unique in that we were given a large block of time in which to explore the grounds and pray. We were planning on having Mass in the church, and I had ninety minutes to look around. So I started by exploring all of the buildings and ruins, trying to find the best vantage point to look out over the vast Galilean plain beneath. I'd be hard-pressed to call Tabor a "mountain" by Nepal or Colorado standards, but in contrast with the rest of this area, it is an impressive land formation that rises high above the rest of Galilee. Whenever I'd read the story of the Transfiguration in the Gospels, I'd always pictured a desolate, beige, dusty, barren mountain where Jesus suddenly becomes dazzling white. But in fact Tabor is a lush, forested mountain. Visible below are endless farmers' fields, all green and fertile. Walking up to the top would certainly be an exhausting climb, but easily doable by four men without any equipment. For Peter, James and John, it would simply have been another tiring hike that their master was making them do. But they were definitely rewarded with some awesome views.
After having seen all of the grounds, I decided to venture outside the main gate a ways. After crossing the picnic area, I discovered a small, craggy foot trail that headed down the mountain a bit, then turned to follow its contour. The backpacker in me lighted up with delight, and I eagerly started following that trail, wondering what exciting things I would discover. The trail twisted and turned between trees and rocks for a while. After I'd walked for about half an hour, I stepped off the trail a ways to relieve myself - and that's when I discovered the cave.
The entrance to this cave was out of sight of the trail, and was low to the ground. I crouched down and peered in, and I could see that it went fairly far back. Well, this was something I couldn't miss, and so I went in, crouching and using the flashlight app on my iTouch for illumination. I waddled for a while, trying to keep my dockers and sweater clean, and eventually, the cave opened up into a cavern that was tall enough for me to stand. As I shone my iTouch around, I saw that the cave branched off into several different corridors. I went down one of them, then turned and headed down another, until I figured I'd gone in far enough. It was only by turning my iTouch off and looking for a faint light from the entrance that I was able to find my way back out.
That brief spelunking adventure was just the kind of thing I needed to feel like my old self again. This wasn't something that could have been on any kind of guided tour, and because it was out of sight of any trail, it wasn't something that anyone would even know about. Instead of being shuffled from one significant spot to another along with our group of thirty, I'd done some personal exploration of a hidden nook of Mt. Tabor in Galilee. These are the kind of experiences that make this pilgrimage my own. Lord, it is good that we are here!
So with a light heart I hiked back up the mountain for Mass. When we ended our previous part of the pilgrimage, Fr. Lodge left us and two other Mundelein priests joined us as we passed through Jerusalem. These priests have decided whenever we have Mass we'll just use the day's proper prayers and readings, regardless of where we are. So instead of doing the readings from the Feast of the Transfiguration (which falls on August 6), we used the liturgy of the Thursday after Epiphany. The church had been built in such a way that its stained glass windows maximize the sensation of light flooding the place, particularly at sunrise and sunset. Apparently its most spectacular light show is at sunset around the time of the Feast of the Transfiguration, when the light is designed to reflect off the floor in such a way that the whole place is illuminated.
But as if my business casual clothes weren't dusty enough from my hiking already, soon after we got back here one of the Sisters of Nazareth took us on a tour of the excavations that are directly below the convent in which we're staying. Apparently they have discovered the ruins of a legitimate first century house right here on this spot, and they've unearthed quite a few rooms. The fact that it's just across the street from the first century home of Mary can lead to all kinds of speculation, but regardless of who lived here, this house certainly figured somewhere in the life story of Jesus as he grew up in this small town.
I mentioned last night how impossible it is to wrap one's mind around the reality that God physically entered into His own universe right across the street from me, but I'm even having trouble trying to grasp the much more banal fact that right now I'm sitting in the town where Jesus lived, worked and played from the time he was two years old until when he was thirty. For all these years the people of this town had God Himself right there in their midst, hidden as an ordinary carpenter. Certainly they would have been able to tell even in the simple things that he was a man of extraordinary character, but the idea that he was God would obviously have been way outside of anything they would consider.
That's why for so long I've had such an interest in how Jesus lived his hidden life - we're all supposed to seek to model the way he lived (what would Jesus do?), but the only things we know about him are all the spectacular stuff; the miracles and teachings. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have some insight into how he reacted when an angry customer came into his workshop, demanding to know where that chair was that he ordered three weeks ago, but which Jesus hadn't been able to make because the cedar wood that he'd ordered from Lebanon hadn't arrived yet? The way that Jesus lived out his hidden life has a lot more bearing on my day-to-day life, I always used to say. But somewhere along the line, I must have gotten tired of that dearth of real-world examples from a part of Jesus' life that remains shrouded in mystery, so I decided that I would instead embark on a life that more resembled the public ministry that Jesus lived out in his final three years.
So now I'm going to be a priest instead. My "hidden life" is about to come to an end, and my "public ministry" will soon begin. I'll no longer be able to say that I can't find any concrete examples from Jesus' life...
When I woke up for my first full day here in Nazareth, I opened the window next to my bed and breathed in the clean, crisp air. This town seems to have the best weather yet (our guide says that the pleasant weather is the doing of the prayers of the local people for us... "we Galileans are more powerful than anyone else in the Holy Land," he boasts). As I type this, I'm sitting outside at 11:00 PM in the central courtyard. There are few things more pleasant than the feel of a summery breeze at night.
The massive Basilica of the Annunciation isn't the only worship space that's across the street from us - also a block away is a mosque, and this morning its minaret greeted me with prayer, just like back in Bethlehem. My experiences in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa had begun to convince me that the only Muslims over here were in Palestine, but it turns out that there are quite a few Muslim communities on this side of the wall as well. In fact, Nazareth is a rare Israeli town that has no Jewish population whatsoever - it's 38% Christian and 62% Muslim. It's the highest percentage of Christians of any town in all of Israel, but there's still quite a bit of tension between the two. Prominently displayed just outside the basilica are two massive banners with quotes from the Koran that denounce any non-Muslims as "the losers" in the life to come. Those banners were put up by some more fundamentalist Muslims that are moving into town. I was talking with one of the locals here about that, and he told me that the Christians decided not to respond in any way whatsoever, knowing that it would probably only make those who put up the banners even angrier. "Did it work?" I asked. The guy smiled and nodded. "You have no idea!" I can resonate with that, because that's the same tactic I use when people get angry at me in traffic. I continue staring straight ahead, pretending not to have even seen the person yelling or gesturing obscenely at me. I wonder how that's going to work once I get ordained and start regularly driving around in a collar?
Our first stop today was the small nearby village of Nain, which is where Jesus raised a widow's son from the dead during a funeral. Because Nain is only known for that one event, there really isn't anything there to see. The Franciscans built a small chapel there in the 19th century, and so all we did was pull up in our bus, walk into the chapel, and listen to one of our guys give a Scripture reading and reflection on that event. After our five-minute visit, as were driving off the guide explained to us that shrines like that are used for actual Catholic liturgies only about once a year at best, because there's no Christian community to speak of that could attend that church. If it weren't for pilgrimage groups like us that stop and visit, these shrines would all fold up. But it's quickly becoming clear to me if we could know where Jesus stopped to relieve himself, they'd build a church on that spot - that's how many of these places dot the landscape of the Holy Land. About the only thing that I was truly able to learn from having visited the village of Nain was to get an idea of where it is in relation to Jesus' hometown of Nazareth. In fact, his whole Galilean ministry is really starting to make a lot more geographic sense to me as I internalize which mountain and which valley is where - and our next stop was indeed a mountain.
Mount Tabor is also fairly near Nazareth, and it's where the Transfiguration happened. We had to park our large tour bus and take several mini-vans to the peak. A narrow series of switchbacks wound their up the mountain, and eventually we were there. At the top of Tabor is a sizable Franciscan complex, dominated by - what else? - a large church. Also at the site are the ruins of earlier churches and monasteries. The history of Tabor is similar to the history of the other holy sites in this part of the country: Christians enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity up until the seventh century, Muslims came and tore it all down, Crusaders came back in the 11th century and built it all back up, Muslims came and tore it down again, and then by today Christians and Muslims figured out to let the site remain in peace and the Franciscans take good care of it all. It's all just variations on a theme.
Our visit to Mt. Tabor was unique in that we were given a large block of time in which to explore the grounds and pray. We were planning on having Mass in the church, and I had ninety minutes to look around. So I started by exploring all of the buildings and ruins, trying to find the best vantage point to look out over the vast Galilean plain beneath. I'd be hard-pressed to call Tabor a "mountain" by Nepal or Colorado standards, but in contrast with the rest of this area, it is an impressive land formation that rises high above the rest of Galilee. Whenever I'd read the story of the Transfiguration in the Gospels, I'd always pictured a desolate, beige, dusty, barren mountain where Jesus suddenly becomes dazzling white. But in fact Tabor is a lush, forested mountain. Visible below are endless farmers' fields, all green and fertile. Walking up to the top would certainly be an exhausting climb, but easily doable by four men without any equipment. For Peter, James and John, it would simply have been another tiring hike that their master was making them do. But they were definitely rewarded with some awesome views.
After having seen all of the grounds, I decided to venture outside the main gate a ways. After crossing the picnic area, I discovered a small, craggy foot trail that headed down the mountain a bit, then turned to follow its contour. The backpacker in me lighted up with delight, and I eagerly started following that trail, wondering what exciting things I would discover. The trail twisted and turned between trees and rocks for a while. After I'd walked for about half an hour, I stepped off the trail a ways to relieve myself - and that's when I discovered the cave.
The entrance to this cave was out of sight of the trail, and was low to the ground. I crouched down and peered in, and I could see that it went fairly far back. Well, this was something I couldn't miss, and so I went in, crouching and using the flashlight app on my iTouch for illumination. I waddled for a while, trying to keep my dockers and sweater clean, and eventually, the cave opened up into a cavern that was tall enough for me to stand. As I shone my iTouch around, I saw that the cave branched off into several different corridors. I went down one of them, then turned and headed down another, until I figured I'd gone in far enough. It was only by turning my iTouch off and looking for a faint light from the entrance that I was able to find my way back out.
That brief spelunking adventure was just the kind of thing I needed to feel like my old self again. This wasn't something that could have been on any kind of guided tour, and because it was out of sight of any trail, it wasn't something that anyone would even know about. Instead of being shuffled from one significant spot to another along with our group of thirty, I'd done some personal exploration of a hidden nook of Mt. Tabor in Galilee. These are the kind of experiences that make this pilgrimage my own. Lord, it is good that we are here!
So with a light heart I hiked back up the mountain for Mass. When we ended our previous part of the pilgrimage, Fr. Lodge left us and two other Mundelein priests joined us as we passed through Jerusalem. These priests have decided whenever we have Mass we'll just use the day's proper prayers and readings, regardless of where we are. So instead of doing the readings from the Feast of the Transfiguration (which falls on August 6), we used the liturgy of the Thursday after Epiphany. The church had been built in such a way that its stained glass windows maximize the sensation of light flooding the place, particularly at sunrise and sunset. Apparently its most spectacular light show is at sunset around the time of the Feast of the Transfiguration, when the light is designed to reflect off the floor in such a way that the whole place is illuminated.
But as if my business casual clothes weren't dusty enough from my hiking already, soon after we got back here one of the Sisters of Nazareth took us on a tour of the excavations that are directly below the convent in which we're staying. Apparently they have discovered the ruins of a legitimate first century house right here on this spot, and they've unearthed quite a few rooms. The fact that it's just across the street from the first century home of Mary can lead to all kinds of speculation, but regardless of who lived here, this house certainly figured somewhere in the life story of Jesus as he grew up in this small town.
I mentioned last night how impossible it is to wrap one's mind around the reality that God physically entered into His own universe right across the street from me, but I'm even having trouble trying to grasp the much more banal fact that right now I'm sitting in the town where Jesus lived, worked and played from the time he was two years old until when he was thirty. For all these years the people of this town had God Himself right there in their midst, hidden as an ordinary carpenter. Certainly they would have been able to tell even in the simple things that he was a man of extraordinary character, but the idea that he was God would obviously have been way outside of anything they would consider.
That's why for so long I've had such an interest in how Jesus lived his hidden life - we're all supposed to seek to model the way he lived (what would Jesus do?), but the only things we know about him are all the spectacular stuff; the miracles and teachings. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have some insight into how he reacted when an angry customer came into his workshop, demanding to know where that chair was that he ordered three weeks ago, but which Jesus hadn't been able to make because the cedar wood that he'd ordered from Lebanon hadn't arrived yet? The way that Jesus lived out his hidden life has a lot more bearing on my day-to-day life, I always used to say. But somewhere along the line, I must have gotten tired of that dearth of real-world examples from a part of Jesus' life that remains shrouded in mystery, so I decided that I would instead embark on a life that more resembled the public ministry that Jesus lived out in his final three years.
So now I'm going to be a priest instead. My "hidden life" is about to come to an end, and my "public ministry" will soon begin. I'll no longer be able to say that I can't find any concrete examples from Jesus' life...