Last post

We have made it safely back!  Thank you for reading this blog and for all your prayers.  Please keep praying for us.  As a final piece of house keeping, here are the dates for diaconate ordination for the various dioceses in our class. We would love to have you come to as many as you can (though logistically it's impossible).

Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: May 3rd

Diocese of La Crosse: May 3rd

Diocese of Madison: May 23rd

Diocese of Crookston: May 31st

Diocese of Superior: June 1st
Diocese of Sioux Falls: June 5th

Archdiocese of Anchorage: June 6th

Diocese of Des Moines: June 6th

Diocese of St. Cloud: June 7th

Thank you, and please pray for us!

The penultimate post (hopefully)

If you have been keeping a mental checklist of sites associated with the life of Christ, you'll have noticed that I haven't mentioned one big one: the Upper Room.  Now Biblical scholars like to argue back and forth about whether there is only one Upper Room or many, because a lot happened there: the last supper, the appearance of the risen Lord to the disciples, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, but you still think there should be something.  

The Fransican chapel

Today we finally went there, and there is not much, only a crusader church that has been converted into a mosque and then nationalized right next to Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion.  According to the Jews and Muslims the place we hold as the site of the upper room is the site where King David is buried, so they want to commemorate David there.  There is no real proof for either site being correct,  but both were in the general region.  There are two chapels, one Armenian and one Catholic (run by the Franciscans per usual), on either side of the site, and we had mass at the Franciscan site.

After that, I stopped by the upper room site, which has a synagogue in the lower part, and nothing really in the upper room site. It has nice crusader arches, but no art as befitting an ex-mosque. I didn't get any pictures because there was a large eastern European Catholic group there at the same time as me.  Then I went back, packed, and spent about an hour at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and did the route of Golgotha, anointing stone, and the tomb one last time. 

We start traveling tonight very, very late (at about 12:30) and will hopefully be back around 4 or 5 on Friday.  Hopefully there won't be any delays and hopefully we get through customs well.

The last free day

Today was a fun day.  We started with mass in Dormition Abbey, which is very pretty and has very nice mosaics, especially on the floor.  The floor depicts salvation history (a zodiac calendar with the Trinity at the center surrounded by the prophets, the evangelists, and the twelve apostles), but is also very dark (so my photos turned out poorly).  Under the church is a very cool Marian shrine, with what looks like a tomb, since the Abbey is built over the house of Mary in Jerusalem, so if she fell asleep in Jerusalem, she did so there (I still believe the Ephesus site is better, and I am still not convinced Mary died before the Assumption).  The dome overhead is really cool and shows the Old Testament matriarchs (Ruth, Eve, Esther, etc) but again, it was dark.

Dormition Abbey

The shrine to Mary

A risen savior cross I can get behind.

After praying there, TJ and I went to the Wailing Wall.  It is a very powerful place to pray. What struck me was the feeling of collective sorrow, that this is as close as Jews can get to the Temple.  The closest analogy i can think of is if we were able to attend mass but never receive the Eucharist.  I don't think many of us would last long, and yet for almost 2000 years Jews have come to Jerusalem to pray.

I spent the rest of the day just hanging out, and tomorrow we have a half-day free (but I must pack).  Then we travel for 25 hours, but at the end we are home. I looked at the weather forecast today for the Twin Cities and freaked out, but luckily I was looking at Celsius. 

Last scheduled day!

Half of us started today by going to the temple mount. The Dome of the Rock is truly stunning, but I still wish we could have seen the stone it was built around.  We also spent a lot of timing looking at the Golden Gate, where Jews and Muslims believe the Messiah will enter after appearing on the Mount of Olives. Of course, they believe he will do vastly different things once he enters, but either way the gate was walled shut so as to prevent any false Messiahs from entering.

The Dome of the Rock

The site where most of the Second Temple stood

After picking up the other half of the group, we went down the street to the Latin Patriarch's headquarters. Like last year's class, we didn't get to meet the Patriarch but had to "settle" for Bishop William Shomali, one of the associates. He gave us a brief (shorter than today's homily) talk on the Church in the region and we had a very good Q&A session with him.

The group with Bishop Shomali. The antechamber had portraits of
all the Patriarchs of Jerusalem that are saints.  Must be intimidating for
the Patriarch.

After visiting the convent and then the underground complex of the original courtyard of the Antoine fortress, where Jesus stood trail and was scourged, we visited the Ecole Biblique.  As the name suggests, it was founded by French, in this case, Dominicans as a scriptural college to rival the Biblicum in Rome (because it is run by the Jesuits, who fought with everyone).  When they were building their complex, they providentially discovered a Byzantine basilica dedicated to St. Stephen, deacon and protomartyr. They rebuilt it close to the original plan, but may have gotten carried away with the side altars to various Dominican saints.  We had mass in their chapter house, and then got a tour of their complex, which includes a crypt that has the original (although now anonymous) monks from the 5th century monastery. 

The courtyard of the Antoine fortress

The Basilica of St. Stephen

Tomorrow is technically a free day, but we have mass at one of the churches that is still on my list to see.

Ups and downs on the Mount of Olives

My hike up and down the Mount of Olives did not happen.  Sadly the mount is divided roughly in half by the Israeli security barrier, so it takes a half hour by bus to get to Bethany (not Bethel as last post says, that was a typo).

We started as planned at the Church of All Nations (though I don't think most of us were expecting a 52 minute mass), then went across the street to the cave were tradition says the apostles waited while Jesus prayed, and where Judas led the arresting guards (so it's called the cave of the Betrayal).  Right next to it is another cave with tombs, one of which tradition says is the tomb of Mary.  Now we hold that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven, but the Orthodox and some Catholics hold that Mary died before the Assumption.  We call this view the Dormition, and so Mary has a tomb (actually two, there is one in Ephesus as well).  The definition of the Assumption was deliberately left vague so that we can hold either position that either Mary died or she didn't so long as we hold that she was taken up, body and soul.

The tomb of Mary in the foreground, the cave of the betrayal in the back

After that we went to the top of the hill to Ascension Mosque and then to the Church of the Pater Noster.  The orginal sites were both built by St. Helena because there was confusion over which site was the real place of the Ascension, but a forged- I mean a miraculous- footprint in Ascension Mosque convinced Byzantine Christians it was the place.  Since Muslims believe in the ascension of the prophet Jesus/Isa, they took over the site, and Christians just have the Church of Pater Noster.  It's runs by the Carmelites and is very simple but is nice.

The Ascension Mosque. Trust me, we got the better site.

Finally we went to Bethany.  The actual tomb of Lazarus has a mosque built over it, for much the same reason as Ascension Mosque (namely they think Isa really raised Lazarus from the dead), but to the right there is an Orthodox monastery, and to the left is a Catholic church with very nice mosaics.

The Catholic church on the left, the mosque is on top of the wall to the right

Some of us in the tomb of Lazarus

Tomorrow some of us are going to the Temple mount (there was a lot of drama about going because there is a ban on non-Muslim prayer items, and I think based upon my phrasing you can tell which side of the argument I was on), and then we all have a meeting with his Beatitude Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.  In the afternoon we are touring the convent built over the Antoine fortress where Jesus was condemned by Pilate. 

Bethlehem

We went to Bethlehem today. We started at the grotto of the Shepherds where we had mass. Actually, I should say a grotto of the Shepherds because there are two, both with the ruins of Byzantine monasteries.  They are in the same general vicinity, and the one we went to was the Catholic site.  Bethlehem is part of the West Bank, and both sites sadly have impressive views of the security barricade and an illegal settlement.  We had mass there, and then were off to lunch.  After lunch we went to one of the tourist trap olive tree carving stores, but I successfully resisted the urge to buy things.

From there we went to the Church of the Nativity, which is literally falling apart.  The original Byzantine basilica built by St. Helena was destroyed by the Samaritans, but it was rebuilt by Justinian, and his building still stands.  The grotto of the Nativity under the high altar is very moving.  We Catholics have only one altar there, but we have an adjoining church, St. Catherine's which is well maintained and roughly the same size. In "our" basement (which really cuts back under the main church) there are a series of caves and if you take two rights, you end up in front of the tomb of St. Jerome.   Jerome came to Bethlehem to learn Hebrew and write the Vulgate, and his cell is right next to the tomb.  I and a couple others have a devotion to Jerome so it great to pray there.

The main nave. They are in a two year project to restore the roof before it collapses (more).

The group in the grotto of the Nativity

The tomb of St. Jerome. As the sign says, his bones were here "olim" (once).
Being a popular saint means your final resting placing isn't very final (instead your relics are carried off for devotion).

Finally we stopped by this Milk Grotto place, where according to tradition the holy family stopped hike fleeing to Egypt. Mary feed Jesus there, and a drop of her milk fell on the ground which turned the rock white.  It is an odd legend, but there are many anecdotal miracles, particularly for fertility, from the site.

The church

The icon over the altar at the site

Tomorrow we are going by foot over the mount of Olives starting at the Church of All Nations, then all the way to Bethel, but my blister has closed so it should be fun.

Free Day Deux

So today was our second free day. We started with mass at the Church of St. Anne which is one of the possible spots for the childhood home of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is right next to the old pool of Bethzatha, and there are other better sites that claim the honor, so I don't really buy it.  This morning I worked on my homily then a bunch of us went to get shawarma for lunch.

My homily prep nook. That is an arrow slit in the city wall.
Our hotel's courtyard is back by the wall.

In the afternoon, TJ and I went to the Holy Sepulcher to touch a few rosaries to Golgotha, the anointing stone, and the slab inside the Cenacle, but got delayed because there was a two hour Armenian Orthodox mass at the Cenacle.  While waiting I learned fun things like that Armenian bishops wear two copes while sitting in choir.  In the Holy Sepulcher, the Greek Orthodox monks serve kinda like bouncers to keep the lines moving at the various sites, and the one at the Cenacle nearly took out a guy who was trying to undo the rope blocking the way into the Greek sanctuary after reopening the Cenacle for veneration (the three custodian groups, Armenians, Greeks, and Catholics all have private side chapels framing the Cenacle). I had heard that brawls occasionally break out but I didn't expect to nearly see one.

Since I didn't take pictures I must use old ones
The class of 2015 on the shore of Galilee

Once we were done with that I had to preach, and that went well, though evidently I need to work on my transitions and not speaking to seminarians like they are seminarians (aka providing theological definitions and providing pastoral suggestions and applications) but such is life.  As you can tell, I accept the first critique but the second irks me.

The American dome in the Church of All Nations

Tomorrow we are off to Bethlehem and are having mass at someplace called the Chapel of the milk. I can't wait to find out what crazy story gave it that name.

As a last note, please pray for Archbishop Neinstedt and all those involved in ongoing cases in the Archdiocese.  It has been one month since he withdrew from public ministry, and we want him back.  To be a little selfish and horribly presumptuous, I want to be ordained by him, and so to repeat, please pray for him.

The northwest burbs

Today we started at the western wall.  We didn't go into the plaza where the wailing wall is, but instead walked the tunnel that the Israelis have built that exposes all of the wall (there is a lot of controversy about it since the Muslims are convinced the Jews are trying to dig under the Temple mount and collapse the Dome of the Rock).

After that, we got on our bus and headed to the northwestern suburbs of Jerusalem to visit the churches of the Visitation and John the Baptist.  I assumed that they would be the same church, but as we see in Luke 1:24, Elizabeth withdrew into seclusion to ponder John's conception (seclusion in this case means up into the hills into a then rural area).  Both are our standard spilt-level Byzantine lower-renovated Crusader into modern upper structure (seriously it's going to be weird to go back home and not have another older church in the basement), but the Church of the visitation had really cool wall paintings and a piazza. John the Baptist also had a cool courtyard, but the upper church was covered in tile, so it was a bit strange (though it had the better lower church).

The piazza at the Church of the Visitation 

Under the oldest altar at St. John's. The Latin translates to here
 the forerunner of the Lord is born.  There is a similar place at Nazerth that
says the word became flesh here

In the afternoon we visited one of the three possible Emmaus sites (there are ruins of towns the correct distance away in three directions).  This one is run by the Benedictines, and they haven't renovated their Crusader church, so although the paintings are falling apart and were defaced by Muslims, it gives you an idea of what the Crusader churches would have looked like.

The main altar

Tomorrow is our second free day, but since it is my turn to preach at evening prayer (this is a preaching practicum course after all), I will probably spurn most fun things and endlessly worry over my homily.

Eastern Jerusalem

We started today by going to the Mount of Olives, and spent most of the morning in the Garden of Gethsemane, which was a working olive grove, and these days has a lot of churches in it. We started with mass at the chapel of Dominus Flevit (Latin for the Lord weeping), which was very nice (though mass went longer than most of us were expecting, we got used to half-hour masses). The altar piece really motivated me to pray for those who had done Cursillo, as it was a mother hen gathering her chicks, and for my teaching parish which had a large Cursillo group.

Des colores!

As a side note, the majority of the mount is a giant cemetery, as Rabbinic tradition hold the messiah will enter the temple from the golden gate on its east side and the resurrection will begin there. Walking past the cemeteries, we visited the very impressive Russian Orthodox church of Mary Magdalene, which sadly bans cameras in the church.

St Mary Magdalene

Then we went to the Church of All Nations. Like St. Peter in Gallicantu, the name hides a very impressive site, in this case, the rock that tradition (based upon long standing devotion, even pre-Byzantine) holds as the place where Jesus prayed in the garden after the last supper.  It's built over a Byzantine church's plan, and the current church went to the trouble of matching the crusader church's floor mosaics (so I am very impressed).  The name comes because in 1927 when they renovated the current church they asked for support from the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher and got overwhelming support from many nations.  Each of the major donor nations has a mosaic donated to it, most of which are in the domes (of which there are 12: if you're following Theology II's blog, it's similar but a lot smaller than Westminster Cathedral).

The church

After a holy hour there and lunch, we went to the City of David, the oldest part of Jerusalem, and saw the ruins there.  It is a highly controversial site because it is a Palestinian neighborhood that the Israelis are buying up and tearing down so they can do archaelogical digs.  The highlight of the trip was exploring the old water system, and the majority of the group stayed dry and went through the old  Canaanite tunnel, but a few of us (including me, mom, so I didn't "wuss out" like I did at the Dead Sea) went through Hezekiah's tunnel, which he built in anticipation of Assyrian invasion.  It has water in it which is waist-deep for about 5 feet, so I didn't bring my phone.  Both tunnels feed into the pool of Siloam (see John 9).

Looking at the old walls near David's palace

Despite being told that we didn't have any early starts left except for the airport, tomorrow we are getting up very early to walk the length of the western wall (or wailing wall). But to make up for it, we are having mass at the birthplace of John the Baptist, which then and now is in a suburb of Jerusalem.

All around Jerusalem

Today we started very very early with mass at Golgotha. We didn't get to use the main altar because it is Greek Orthodox and sadly, despite it being the week of Christian unity, we aren't to that level of union yet. Instead we celebrated mass at the altar of the eleventh station of the cross, which is all of ten feet from the main altar.  This altar was paid for by the Medici and was built in 1588, so we weren't exactly settling.

The 500 year old altar we "settled" for.  The mosaic is better in person

After a brief tour of the side chapels, including the rather depressing Syrian Orthodox chapel (it badly needs renovation, but it's techincially on loan from the Armenians, and they and the Syrians want to do it themselves, so the project has been in limbo for decades) and the cool chapel of St. Helena, and breakfast, we went to the western citadel near the Jaffa gate.  Despite tradition and possible ruins depending on interpretation, this is not the citadel of David.  It has amazing views of the old city, so most of us took selfies for Facebook and the like.

The gate in

The inner courtyard

Then we went to the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu (that last word is Latin for rooster's crow), and to be honest I was expecting it to be dull, but it is probably my favorite site so far. It is on Mount Zion and has a stunning view of the Mount of Olives and the old city, as well as the valleys.  As is typical, there are two churches, an upper and lower one, and the upper has these amazing art nouveau mosaics and a stained glass cross in the dome. The lower church has an amazing icon series of Peter denying Christ, Peter repentant, and Peter restored, and as expected is built over a Byzantine basilica.  But under this basilica when they did excavations, they found the ruins of a second temple period villa, and in this villa they found an old cistern that had been clearly turned into a prison marked with Byzantine crosses.

One of the crosses

According to all the Gospels, Peter's denial takes place at the house of the high priest, where Jesus was imprisoned overnight after being found guilty of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin (which in this case meet at the high priest's house) before being tried and crucified by Pilate.  St. Peter in Gallicantu is built over the place where Christ was imprisoned, and so we got to go and stand in place where Jesus spent his last night before the crucifixion.  It was a very moving experience, on par with seeing the Cenacle or Golgotha because they are all connected in the passion of Christ.  And unlike the other two, this site is largely ignored, so there is great stillness for prayer.

The prison cell

We rounded up the day by heading to the Israeli museum, which has the dead sea scrolls, a large archaeological collection, and a very decent art collection.  Unfortunately, the site, which is quite large, is very poorly curated and organized, so while I enjoyed the scrolls, the Picassos, and a traveling exhibit on the Plains Indians, I missed out on the Chagalls, and the chief scroll on display is a facsimile.  if I hadn't discerned properly and instead had followed my plan to be a curator, I would have even stronger opinions (but I would never have seen the Israeli museum).

Tomorrow we are running around the oldest part of Jerusalem, built by David after he conquered Salem.

Return to Jerusalem

Today we left Eilat and on our way back made some fun side trips.  The first stop was at a nature park in the En Gedi wilderness.  1 Samuel 24 took place somewhere around there, and there was a series of pretty though small waterfalls that feed eventually into the Dead Sea.

After that, we went to the Dead Sea,and most of us went floating. Sadly, I got the open blister that I was afraid of a couple days ago while in Petra, so I avoided the water.  We spent too long there, so we had to truncate our tour of Jericho.  Jericho is impressive, though we spent most of the time viewing the oldest part of the city.

The Dead Sea

After, we got to go back to Jerusalem.  We're staying in the same place and even in the same room, and it was very comforting to come back to our home base for the rest of the trip.  We came in by the Jaffa Gate, which meant that from my free day I knew exactly where we were going, which also helps with my feeling of stability.

A 10,000 year old tower (yes, 10,000)

Us at old Jericho

Tomorrow is going to be a very full day starting with a mass at 6:30 at Golgotha, so that should be as impressive as the tomb at the Cenacle.

Petra

Yesterday (or today for most readers) was spent mostly getting to and from Petra, which is two and a half hours plus a border crossing away from Eilat. I still have no idea as to how Petra connects to the Bible other than it being very likely that the Hebrews wandered through the general area on their way to the promised land 700 or 800 hundred years before the city was founded and almost 1200 years before the famous parts of city were built.

One of the narrow parts of the canyon. During the Exodus, it would have been a riverbed.

Petra is an architectural masterpiece, but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Most of the cool buildings are temple-tombs, and they don't allow you inside the famous Treasury (despite the name, it is one of the temple-tombs). Petra has an impressive theater carved into a hillside, but since we've seen freestanding Roman theaters of similar size and design, we were not as impressed as our guide thought we would be.  The structures are also sprawled out over a couple of miles of canyon walls with little rhythm or reason except the allowance of space.  Compare this to the tels and Roman cities which had to maximize space, and it just seems piece-meal in design because it was.

The treasury. Sadly not the resting place of the Holy Grail

The royal tombs from the first century AD, about a mile from the treasury

Despite this griping, we still had fun.  A lot of the class got kippahs (or shemaghs) in Jordan, and I must confess we had some less than charitable jokes about our Jordanian guide, who must either get a cut from all the busking Bedouins or was really devoted to improving the Jordanian economy, because we always seemed to stop near one to extol whatever product was available (camel rides, group photos, fresh juice, the list goes on).  Either way, it made us appreciate our Israeli (really Palestinian Christian) guide more.

Tomorrow we are off to more sites that don't really relate to the Bible but provide historical/regional texture, and then we get to go up to Jerusalem (fun fact: Jews always speak of going up to Jerusalem regardless of the actual direction).

The Judaean Desert

Sorry about taking so long to post, but it took forever to find wifi here in Eilat. Eilat is on the Red Sea and is one of Israel's resort towns (and despite what some of my classmates thought, Jewish not Palestinian).  We're using it as our home base for our trips into the Negev (which contains both the Judaean and Jordanian deserts).

On our way down we stopped at Qumran and Jericho. Qumran is where the dead sea scrolls were written and eventually hidden by a isolationist sect of Jews called the Essenes who were active from about 150 BC to the first Jewish revolt (68 AD). Based upon their beliefs, they seem like a cross between Trappists and Amish who had the misfortune of being in the way when the Romans were moving south to deal with our second site, Masada.  They hide their scrolls in caves, and we will see them when we are back in Jerusalem, so the rest of the story can wait.

Two of the caves where scrolls were found

One of the ritual baths with some of the settlement behind

Masada was built as Herod the Great's bolt-hole. If something went wrong, and the Jews revolted in large numbers, Herod wanted some place safe to stay while waiting for Rome to come save him, and being Herod, wanted to hide in style.  He built a very impressive palace-fortress complex on top of a mountain, and kept it well-stocked enough to hold out for years.

The lift/gondola/whatever up

After Herod, the Romans kept it stocked, but didn't keep a large enough garrison to hold it, so the Zealots took it in the first days of the revolt.  It was the site of last stand of the revolt.  It has a lot of meaning to Israelis as a symbol of resistance even when defeat is inevitable, but what struck me was the sheer scale of the Roman siege works around the site, which are very well preserved because of the desert climate.

The Roman fortifications around the mountain

More Romans, but of a different type

Tomorrow we are off to see Petra if the border crossing goes well, and then back to Jerusalem via the Dead Sea.

First free day

Today we got up very early for mass at the cenacle at 6.  It was amazing, as we stood in the antechamber and Fr. Klockeman said mass on the slab of the tomb itself (they have a portable altar that goes over it).   

Thank goodness Br. Alvaro lacks my qualms about taking photos during  mass

Almost nothing in Jerusalem opens until 9, so most of us napped following breakfast.  I spent the rest of the day wandering the old city (don't be worried by the singular, parents, I was in a group), and saw but didn't pray at the Wailing Wall because it was very full (Shabbat and all, plus we are going on the 17th).  I visited the co-cathedral of the Latin Patriarchy, and saw the ruins of the old citadel by Jaffa gate.  Jaffa is one of the main gates, so it was fun to people watch.

The Jaffa Gate

I also walked outside the gate to the new city which has a nice mall. It was a little slice of home though unlike home it was closed because of Shabbat.  To close off the day, the Des Moines seminarians ran into their bishop earlier in the day, and invited some of us to join him for drinks. Bishop Pates confirmed me and supervised my parents for a number of years, so it was very good to see him.

The city from outside the walls

Tomorrow we are off to the Red Sea and Eilat, to do Dead Sea sites and Petra.  I really hope I can find an Indiana Jones hat to be tempted by.