Mount Tabor

Yesterday was spent most on Mount Tabor, site of the Transfiguration. The church is very impressive and had to deal with a unique problem: the old crusader ruins were still visible and could have been used. The solution was to build what I'm calling a spilt level church.

The Church of the Transfiguration. On the left are ruins
of a Benedictine abbey, on the right the Franciscan friary.

The spilt-level church. 

In the entrance, they have a grate to drop in prayers requests, and I know a lot of us used it to drop off prayers for our teaching parishes.

I intend to fit Nazareth in this post, but I have run out of room.

Pilgrim's Path: St. Helena

I am not sure if we will have wi-fi in Nazareth  for the next two days, so here is some pre-loaded material:
St. Helena is a very interesting figure.  The mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, she made her pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the years 326-328, and when she was there, built the Church of the Nativity, the Church of the Pater Noster, and the Chapel of the Ascension (or at least their first iterations).  She also, according to tradition, built the first Chapel at what would become St. Catherine's Monastery (one of the oldest monastery in the world, and home to the second best collection of ancient manuscripts after the Vatican).  Most importantly of all, when she was there, she found the true cross, which she is normally depicted holding.

The statue of St. Helena in St. Peter's Basilica.
She's not just there to look pretty.  Above her niche
is a large statuary reliquary that holds a large piece
of the cross she found.

This journey to Jerusalem is what St. Helena is known for, but what draws me to her is her personal story.  Helen was of humble birth and married Constantine's father, Constantius Chlorus, out of mutual love (a rarity in those days).  This wouldn't last.  Constantius divorced her to marry the daughter of the western Roman emperor and secure his place as heir to the throne.  He sent his son, Constantine, and Helena to the court of the eastern Roman emperor, Diocletian.

Diocletian should sound familiar, as he ordered the last great systematic persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.  In fact, because prior persecution was sporadic and Christians were more or less accepted most places, Diocletian's persecution created more martyrs than any prior persecution.  There would be a great number of apostasies and would create a vast headache for the early Church about who had remained faithful and what to do with those who hadn't.

The skull of St. Helena in Trier.  The veneration of relics
and the offering of mass at Saints's tombs experienced a vast
increase in popularity as during the Diocletian persecution.

But returning to Helena, who was alone, wronged by her husband, and now at the court of Diocletian, it would have been incredibly easy for her to renounce the faith for political gain.  She didn't.  Even Constantine's detractors, who question whether or not he was validly baptized, don't suggest that Helena apostatized.  It must have been incredibly tempting for her to do so, but instead, she held onto her faith.  It is this faith that I find incredible and it is this faith that we see reflected in her latter actions in the Holy Land.

Carmel and Acre

Greetings from the western slope of Mount Carmel!  I was surprised to find out that Mount Carmel is more of a range than a single mountain. Today after mass on at the site we're staying at (which is supposedly built over the cave mentioned at the end of 1 Kings 18) we went to the other end of the range where the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal happened (we know that because the creek is still there at the base). The views were amazing!

Sadly the views were great because it was very clear, which meant lens glare.
What turned out best was this Carmelite sigil from over the church door.

We had lunch in the citadel of Acca, which I know better by its Latinized name of Acre.  This was the greatest Crusader stronghold in Palestine and home to both the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller.  The citadel was built by the Knights Hospitaller, better know by their modern identity as the Knights of Malta, but was rebuilt heavily under the Ottomans. 

A view of the great hall

Another view

We then spent a lot of time out on the water front.  Tomorrow we are off to Nazareth! 

The harbor walls

Caesarea by the sea

To be blunt, I feel bad writing about today to those of you in the Minnesotan cold snap.  We started with mass in the Crusader's chapel at St. Peter's and went north an hour or so to Caesarea, which was built by Herod the Great as an artificial port and became the center of Roman activity in the region for about 600 years.

The Crusader Chapel

The city shows up in a couple places in the New Testament, but most importantly in the end of Acts, where Paul stayed for a few years under a type of arrest before being sent to Rome for trial (see Acts 23-26 for more details).

Herod's palace,which was taken over by the Roman governors after his death

The audience room in which most of Acts 24-25 likely took place

After an afternoon in the ruins and the tourist traps that have been built into the town (including an excellent gelato shop), we left for the city of  Haifa, which is built over Mount Carmel.  We are staying the next two days with the Carmelites.

The Roman aqueduct into Caesarea

Fr. Klockeman climbing the aqueduct 

Crusaders, Cushites, and connectivity

It turns out St Peter's in Jaffa is far more impressive than I thought. It is built on the ruins of a castle built by Louis IX of France (aka St. Louis, king of France).  Napoleon stayed in the attached monastery when he invaded the area prior to invading Egypt, and to put it mildly it has an amazing  view of the Mediterranean.

One view of St. Peter's

Another view

.And to think, we haven't even gotten to the main sites yet.  As you can see, I have figured out how to add photos.  It turns out all you have to do is let Google have access to pretty much everything, or at least let them know that they do.  I didn't have to create any accounts, I just had to let everything talk to everything else.

The rest of the day was spent at Tel Aviv university. Someone in the group commented on how all universities have the same feel to them, and it really is true.  Most of the day was spent reviewing the relationship of ancient Israel to its neighbors, and we had fun digressions to relationships of ancient Egypt to other groups. In particular we focused on what the archaeological record tells us, and we had a field trip to the lab where they reconstruct pottery,which gives us dates and what generally was being done in an area (for example if you have four hundred pithos of one style, you know that there was large-scale trade going on at your site and generally the date based upon design characteristics)

And with that long rant out of the way,
enjoy the group in front of the  Tel Aviv skyline

Tomorrow we are off to Mount Carmel, which is going to be gorgeous!

Dawn of the first day

Good morning from Tel Aviv!  I intended to do a post last night, but feel asleep at 8 (and I think I was one of the last ones out).  There is nothing like eleven hours of sleep to make up for a day and a half of traveling.

Today we have mass in Jaffa, which is a suburb of Tel Aviv.  Jaffa or Joppa is the older city, and Tel Aviv started as the Jewish suburb under the Ottomans before it outgrew Jaffa.  Jaffa shows up in the Bible as the port where Jonah left while fleeing God's mandate to preach to the Ninevites and as one of St. Peter's bases of operation (see Acts 10 and 11).

For the rest of the day we are headed to the university of Tel Aviv for talks on Biblical archeology, and we have our first reading assignment for tomorrow.  Hopefully I can figure out how to upload pictures after doing that, or this is going to be a very plain blog.

Touchdown in Tel Aviv

We have all survived (to varying degrees) the flight. Our bus has wifi so I thought I would do a quick update while in rush hour. More to follow once we've settled in.