This morning I awoke early, even before the wake up call came. Knowing that this was our last full day in the Northern region, I wanted to waste not one minute of the day. I showered and meant to walk the grounds a bit before breakfast at 7am. I walked up the stairs and saw out the window, the sunrise on the Sea of Galilee and that was it. I ran outside, navigated through the walkways, and made my way to a place where I had an unobstructed view of the water and the sun coming up over it. I’m not sure if it’s seasonal or what, but there seems to always be heavy haze over the Sea. This always helps when shooting sunsets as it magnifies the light and enlarges the sun. I spent a fair amount of time shooting both stills and video and then when the good light was gone, I headed back up the hill to eat.
After an outdoor 8am Mass, our first stop today was a walk on the Mount of Beatitudes. We walked on a dirt path all the way down to the main road. We stopped at one point and Fr. Charlie and I climbed up the mountain to where there were a couple trees and an ancient cave. From there, Fr. Charlie addressed our group who were well below us on the hillside. It was self evident that Jesus could have taught 5,000 people from that place. The acoustics were very good, especially with a favorable wind, which we did not have today. Once you remove auto/bus traffic, pull the planes out of the sky, you’d be left with our Lord preaching in the draw of a shallow valley, that would be protected from strong winds. Fr. Charlie read from the Gospel according to Mathew, where Jesus proclaims to all the people that they are the light of the world.
We left there and visited an early Jewish settlement called Tabgha which is where Jesus fed the 5,000. It is the site of a serious archeological dig where they are uncovering artifacts that span multiple millenia. There we were able to see the impact of the the Greeks (Hellenism) as well as the constancy of the faith of the Jews throughout each time period, evidenced by many frescos showing the various influences in the region.
We next took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, which was really great. The pilot even showed us how you throw the net to catch fish but he came up empty twice, so I guess we showed little faith... It was nice to be out on the water, and know that we were looking out in all directions at scenery that would have been familiar to the apostles that he had taken under his wing to that point. I read the gospel account of Jesus calming the storm and with Peter walking briefly on the water himself, until he took his eyes off the Lord. Good lesson for us all. After the boat ride most of us enjoyed eating a lunch of “St. Peter’s Fish,” a type of Talapia that is found in the Sea of Galilee. I chickened out and had “St. Mathew’s Chicken” instead. I’ve never been a fish guy, and with the head and eyes staring at everyone as they picked through the bones, I didn’t feel like trying something new today.
Our next stop was to visit the town of Capernaum which is where Peter’s mother’s house is located. In the usual fashion, they built a super nice modern Church over the site, but they suspended it on huge legs so as not to cover the ruins of Peter’s home. You could look down into what was once a house, surrounded by a large stone wall. The center of the Church above has a glass floor so you can look straight down into the 1st century dwelling even while attending the parish Mass. Very cool! Just a few steps away from Peter’s house, there is an enormous synagogue there that is really impressive. It has massive columns still standing and the surrounding stones show etchings of the Temple in Jerusalem, the star of David (6 points) as well as the cross of xxxx (6 points). The site has been fairly well preserved and you can really see the streets winding their way through the many small dwellings that made up the sort of blue collar town of Capurnaum. At one point, our guilde Samil, showed us a set of steep stairs going up and stopping about five feet in the air. He described that this may have been the house in which the man’s friends cut a hole in the thatched roof so as to lower him down to be healed by Jesus.
We last traveled to a large city on the Mediteranian Sea where we got off the bus and got to walk on the beach. Behind the beach was this massive aqueduct still standing, from the time of ancient Rome. It's in amazingly good shape for its age. One of the pilgrims offered to take a photo of me in front of it. It's always the last day of a trip when I realize that I have no photos of myself, so I'm glad to have this one!
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