Thursday Morning: At 5:00 a.m. a group of us walked again to the Church of the Nativity. The street in from the hotel is called Paul VI Street, in honor of St. Paul VI who visited the Holy Land in January of 1964. The street rises at a good rate and then goes downhill the rest of the way to the Church of the Nativity which is built over the cave in which Jesus was born. We took our time, listening to the Muslim call to prayer, taking pictures of the empty street, and pausing at Christmas Church, the Lutheran church in town.
Cave in which Jesus was born. |
On our first full day we visited the Mount of Olives, going to the Pater Noster Church. Today it is best known for the commemorating the teaching of the Our Father, and there are now over 200 translations of it hanging on walls near the church. But it was originally the site of a church built by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine around the year 330 to designate the Ascension. St. Helena, who found the true cross, built three churches: in Bethlehem for the birth of Christ; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for the death and resurrection, and a church on the Mount of Olives for the Ascension. (Luke 24:50-51). We had a short prayer service there, and recited the Our Father. Joseph, our guide, had been a seminarian for five years and studied many ancient languages, and prayed the Our Father in Armenian, the language in which it was probably taught to the disciples.
After lunch we went to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. It is a very sobering place to visit. A museum chronicles particularly the events from 1933 (rise of Hitler) to the liberation of the camps and the efforts of reconnecting with family afterward. It ends in an area where you see an immense wall of books filled with the stories of as many of the six million Jewish victims. It makes you realize that behind of of those six million, there was a particular life and story. Other buildings on the site include one with an eternal flames and the names of the many concentration camps. There is also a building particularly for the child victims in which one or a very few lights are multiplied by mirrors. As you walk through the dark, circular building, you either hear mournful music or the reading of the names of children where were killed. As I said, it is a very sobering place to visit.
We took the back way to Bethlehem to enter it in a different area. The next day's blog gives some of the reason why.
What a blessing you are! I am organizing my thoughts in a memory book of my very spiritual journey and your notes are so helpful. What a great team you and Joseph were!
ReplyDelete