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| We did not drive this in one shot, rather stopped in Haifa and Jaffa. I'm also not sure that middle leg is correct. It looks too close to the Mediterranean coast which I was not seeing out to our left. |
In any case, I woke up at 06:30 and went out on the balcony for the first time, where I prayed Lauds from the St. Benedict's Prayer Book. Then I finished packing up -- I'd done a good bit last night -- and had my bags waiting outside the door at 08:00, where the bell-hop picked them up. I went to breakfast, which was every bit as good as previous mornings. Then we were to the bus by 09:00 -- I stopped in briefly to the little gift shop and picked up a mug showing the mosaic from the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves.
As an aside, allow me to comment on something we unfortunately missed. Without a doubt, this pilgrimage is giving us a lot – covering an incredible amount of spiritual and religious geography in a very short time. With two calendar days getting to Israel and one getting back home, our “Nine-Day Pilgrimage” is really only six. And, doubtless because of time as well as money, there are two places not on our itinerary I really wish had been. One is in the north and one is in the south. In the north I would have really like to have gone to Banias. As a Catholic group its absence is particularly ironic, because it was there, in that place (to paraphrase Padre), at Caesarea Philippi (not to be confused with Herod’s seaport town of Caesarea Maritima), in the shadow of a great pagan shrine to Pan, that Jesus asked his Apostles the most important question of all – “Who do you say that I am?” …
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. 16: 13-19)
Protestants like to minimize the significance of this event, including the context of Jesus changing Simon’s name to “Rock,” based on some fancied distinction of meaning between Greek petros (Peter’s name bestowed here) and petra (the form used a few words later) as respectively “little rock” and “big rock,” but it does not work either in Greek (the language in which the Gospel was written) or Aramaic (the probable language Jesus and his apostles would have been speaking). In Greek, since petra was grammatically feminine, giving that name to a man necessitated changing the grammatical gender to masculine ending in -os. In Aramaic, like in English, moreover, there is no distinction anyway – kepha is kepha, “rock” is “rock.” What Jesus did not say was, “You are a pebble, and on this boulder I will build my church….” It would have made no sense whatsoever. He said, “You are a rock, and on this rock I will build my church….”
“Banias” is from an
ancient pagan shrine which the Greeks identified with the god Pan. It is an
incredibly picturesque site, a huge rock with a cavern (an entry to the
underworld, a gate to hell) underneath it – out of which flow the headwaters of
the Jordan River. A rock from which
flow the waters which give Israel life. With the Roman imperial associations
of Caesarea Philippi, consider the immense symbolism of Jesus essentially
founding the life-giving Roman Catholic Church on Peter in that specific
location! “And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16: 18
KJV). It is a shame we did not go there! But we could not do everything. And the fact is, we ended up doing so much more than was on the itinerary ... starting with today.
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| Pardon the window reflections |
When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" And he answered, "I have not troubled Israel; but you have, and your father’s house, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Ba′als. Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Ba′al and the four hundred prophets of Ashe′rah, who eat at Jezebel’s table."
So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel, and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people, and said, "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Ba′al, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, "I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord; but Ba′al’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let two bulls be given to us; and let them choose one bull for themselves, and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; and I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, and put no fire to it. And you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, he is God." And all the people answered, "It is well spoken." Then Elijah said to the prophets of Ba′al, "Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it." And they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Ba′al from morning until noon, saying, "O Ba′al, answer us!" But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped about the altar which they had made. And at noon Eli′jah mocked them, saying, "Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is musing, or he has gone aside --
-- at this point in Tony's narrative, I interjected that the original Hebrew basically means, "he's gone to the bathroom"! --
-- or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice; no one answered, no one heeded.
Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come near to me"; and all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down; Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, "Israel shall be your name"; and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, "Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the burnt offering, and on the wood." And he said, “Do it a second time”; and they did it a second time. And he said, "Do it a third time"; and they did it a third time. And the water ran round about the altar, and filled the trench also with water.
And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that thou, O Lord, art God, and that thou hast turned their hearts back." Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, "The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God." And Elijah said to them, "Seize the prophets of Ba′al; let not one of them escape." And they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and killed them there.
And Elijah said to Ahab, "Go up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of the rushing of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he bowed himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, "Go up now, look toward the sea." And he went up and looked, and said, "There is nothing." And he said, "Go again seven times." And at the seventh time he said, "Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising out of the sea." And he said, "Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.'" And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezre′el. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezre′el." (1 Kings 18: 17-46)
One interesting aspect of Tony's narration of this story is that he likened the priests and prophets of Ba'al, who did, after all, sacrifice babies to their god, to today's terrorists. So brainwashed and desensitized to the slaughter, they became addicted to it -- and there was little if any hope that they could be "rehabilitated." Elijah had to kill them. Tony's implication was clear....
He also described what we were about to see -- how Haifa, the major port, industrial, and military center of northern Israel, is now a pretty secularized city with a fairly substantial representation of five different faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahai, and Druze. Rather amusingly, when someone asked for confirmation that the two large towers that could be seen off in the distance were a nuclear plant, he deadpanned, "No, that's a chemical plant." ... Right. ...
The first thing we stopped and viewed, from afar, was the tomb and gardens of the father of Bahaism. Just to summarize the story very quickly, Bahai was founded in Iran in the 19th c. nominally as an offshoot of Shi'a Islam but in reality a syncretic hodge-bodge of different religions -- and its founder was executed there. But he had expressed a desire that he be buried on Mount Carmel, which his followers eventually did, purchasing a large area on the side of the ridge which they then developed into the great terraced garden that can be seen today, which Tony likened to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They were pretty spectacular, a great photo-op everyone took advantage of.(Another amusing tidbit -- Bahai is by no means a large religion by numbers, only a few million around the world, but each and ever member is obligated to automatically deposit one dollar per day into the bank account of the religion. The religion is not large -- but it is very, very rich! Also, each member is obligated to spend one month during his life there in Haifa, tending the tomb and the gardens, for free.)
It was only a short ride from the Bahai Gardens to the Stella Maris, "Star of the Sea," Carmelite Monastery where we had Mass in a small chapel. The name comes in some way from that aforementioned miracle by which Elijah saw the end of the drought.
Padre's theme was that Mary is our Mother in heaven, praying for us.  |
| Elijah's Cave |
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| Robert, Kathie, Mary, Fr. Emilio, and Maria |
Tony had planned for us to eat at an adjacent restaurant, but it was too full so we got back on the bus and rode maybe half an hour before stopping at a small restaurant beside the road to Jaffa-Tel Aviv. Along the way, Tony gave us another very impassioned and frank assessment of the current state of Christianity in Israel vs. the Palestinian territories, whom he insists are not "Palestinian" but rather "Aramaean." The state of the latter is pretty grim; Islam is fairly quickly worming its way into the remaining historically Christian territories, with Christians being quickly squeezed out. It seems a demographic inevitability, the "Soft Jihad" compounded by the fact that although under Israeli law a man can have only one wife, under Muslim Shariah law he may have up to "four" -- one legally, the other three not, but therefore classified as "unwed mothers" and therefore entitled to state support which essentially gives the man four incomes. The result, predictably, is that the state is essentially subsidizing the expansion of Islam -- just as is happening in Western Europe and to a lesser degree even here in the United States. He again expressed his support for Trump, and strongly defended the recent definition by the Knesset of the "Nation-State" Law that Israel is a Jewish state (which drove the Muslims insane)! The law does not disenfranchise other faiths; it simply requires that the government be officially Jewish, that the president and the prime minister be Jewish. It disenfranchises no one; it explicitly grants freedom of religion and worship for Israeli citizens although it gives a preferential option to Judaism. As an Israeli Christian, he for one would much rather be governed by a tolerant Jewish government than persecuted as is inevitable under Islamic rule.
Our choices for lunch were chicken or felafel; it being Friday I got the felafel, which was very good. I did not get the name of the establishment, but I suspect it is run by Druze, a family if I understand correctly. The Druze are another minority sect with some pretty odd beliefs (for instance, the Messiah when he comes will be born of a man!), usually persecuted by Islam but historically allies of the similarly persecuted Christians.As we continued the drive southward (not really in sight of the coast as the map above seems to indicate), it was time for our daily Rosary. We said one, as well as a Divine Mercy Chaplet, almost if not every day.
By the standards of this pilgrimage and the size of Israel it was a relatively long drive to Jaffa, just north of Tel Aviv. Tony described Tel Aviv as essentially the San Francisco of Israel -- with all the decadence that entails. Less than a hundred years old, it is the wealthiest city in Israel. It is the world center for diamond trading, which is the number one source of Israel's national income. Second is military manufacturing. Third is Jesus -- the pilgrimage industry. It's also renowned for its beaches, where the decadence comes out full swing. Tony said he would not take his children there.
Right next door is, as I said, Jaffa -- our real destination for that leg of the journey. In contrast to brand new Tel Aviv, Jaffa is the oldest harbor in the Mediterranean Middle East, dating from the fourth millennium BC. Biblically it is the site of two important stories involving St. Peter: the raising of Tabitha and the vision which began the evangelization of the Gentiles.
The first story goes like this:
Now there was at Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which means Dorcas or Gazelle. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she fell sick and died; and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him entreating him, "Please come to us without delay." So Peter rose and went with them. And when he had come, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping, and showing coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed; then turning to the body he said, "Tabitha, rise." And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and lifted her up. Then calling the saints and widows he presented her alive (Acts 9: 36-41).
Which is immediately followed by the second as the entireity of Acts 10:
At Caesarea [Maritima] there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms liberally to the people, and prayed constantly to God. About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius.” And he stared at him in terror, and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa, and bring one Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those that waited on him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.
The next day, as they were on their journey and coming near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. And he became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heaven opened, and something descending, like a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “No, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.
Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the men that were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood before the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down, and accompany them without hesitation; for I have sent them.” And Peter went down to the men and said, “I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for your coming?” And they said, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house, and to hear what you have to say.” So he called them in to be his guests.
The next day he rose and went off with them, and some of the brethren from Joppa accompanied him. And on the following day they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his kinsmen and close friends. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am a man.” And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered; and he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.”
And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, about this hour, I was keeping the ninth hour of prayer in my house; and behold, a man stood before me in bright apparel, saying, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the seaside.’ So I sent to you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here present in the sight of God, to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.”
And Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses to all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days. (Acts 10: 1-48)
We stopped and went in the Church of St. Peter -- one of two Catholic churches in Israel oriented west, toward Rome, because of the latter story symbolizing that ultimately the great missionary drive of the book of Acts is toward Rome -- where we said the Divine Mercy Chaplet, took some pictures both inside the church and looking down on the waterfront, then were off again.
This was the last leg, passing Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport, and at least one area where burned-out husks of transport vehicles have been preserved as a memorial of a tragic incident in the lead-up to the outbreak of the 1948 War. I had asked Tony if we would see them as we started along the highway, remembering the evocative passage in Collins and Lapierre's 1972 opus, O Jerusalem! Dominque Lapierre recalls:
Just as my partner [Larry Collins] and I began our search for a new book to write, I accepted an invitation to give a lecture in Tel Aviv on Paris' miraculous survival in the fading months of WWII. Having never had the chance to see Jerusalem, I decided to jump in a taxy for a quick tour of the holy city before catching my plane back to Paris. Who could have guessed that that cab ride would last three years?
Spring 1948. Just a few weeks before the birth of the state of Israel. Jerusalem found itself surrounded by armed Arab-Palestinian partisans led by the charismatic Abdel Kader el-Husseini. More than a hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants were trapped in the holy city with neither food nor water and were on the verge of surrender. In order to prevent a disaster, the then-leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, requisitioned all the trucks and utility vehicles he could lay his hands on in order to get water and supplies to the desperate population. During the night of March 23, 1948, a convoy of more than three hundred trucks, driven by immigrants recently arrived from Europe, set off toward Jerusalem.
Having been warned by his scouts, el-Husseini unleashed his partisans, who fell on the convoy like a wave of locusts, burning the trucks, killing the drivers, and looting the precious supplies. Fire, blood, and hate ruled that night. Not one single ounce of food or a drop of water leaked through to Jerusalem. The graveyard of carcasses that had lined the road to Jerusalem since that fateful night became silent witnesses keeping alive the memories of those terrible days when the State of Israel almost disappeared even before it was born.
The tragic tale of this convoy inflamed my imagination: this was the story that Larry and I had to tell in our next book. I could picture the men and women gripping the steering wheels of their trucks as all hell broke loose around them. Most had probably just escaped Hitler's death camps, and struggled across a war-torn Europe to embark on a windy, desperate road while trying to save their starving brethren in Jerusalem. Then there suddenly appeared in front of my eyes the Queen of all cities rising majestically in all her splendor in the distance, as if spread on a lunar landscape. (O Jerusalem!, Introduction)
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| Photo from Ingrid |
As we approached Bethlehem, Tony got serious in cautioning us not to leave this hotel after dark. We would not be in Galilee, in Israel, anymore, but for all intents and purposes in another country. Then, in the late afternoon sun, we saw the massive security wall with watchtowers and barbed-wire fencing running along its top. Bethlehem is part of the West Bank -- under the Palestinian Authority -- and its people are strictly forbidden from entering Israel. This is a relatively recent development -- a legacy of the 2000-2005 Second Intifada, when the Muslim Palestinians started sending continuous waves of suicide bombers into Israel, many of them into Jerusalem from Bethlehem. The Israeli response was to initiate a great building project variously called the “West Bank Barrier” and far worse names, but most practically simply "The Wall." The Israelis consider such defensive measures imperative; the rest of the world largely considers it a gross violation of international law and the Palestinians' rights -- but the rest of the world does not have to live with the threat of daily suicide attacks that went from a daily occurrence to a rarity. It has, however, had tragic consequences, especially devastating the dwindling Christian community in the birthplace of Our Lord, who are now trapped behind enemy lines -- considered Palestinians by the Israelis, considered Israeli collaborators by the Muslims.
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| The Wall (inside) |
For all that, I will say that we never felt unsafe -- in our bus, in our hotel. And none of us ventured out away from there further than line-of-sight of the hotel. And that only during daylight. And we were now in Bethlehem, where the light came into the world.
In those days a
decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all
went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from
Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is
called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be
enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. (Luke 2: 1-5)
We arrived at the St. Gabriel Hotel and checked in. Kristal and I, as well as several other of our group, were on the first floor ... which was really, as we would count it, the fourth floor. The ground floor was the lobby; above that was the bar; above that was the restaurant. Others of our group were on the two floors above our own -- and there were several floors above that, but as far as we could tell we were the only guests for the first few nights of our stay. We were given cards making it happy hour for us in the bar all that first evening, and a group of us ended up there as soon as we freshened up. I discovered a good Israeli beer -- Taybeh -- then we went up to supper at 19:00. Since we were the only group, there was no expansive buffet like at the Ron Beach Hotel, but rather the food was served to two tables seating eight people each, what we would call "family style." But the food was just as good.After supper, I excused myself, came back up to the room, and worked on this blog until soon after 22:00, when I decided I need to get to bed.
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