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Our visit to the Holy Land – Cana and the Church of the Nativity
From Nazareth we traveled to Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle and turned water into wine at a wedding where the hosts had run short on wine. According to John 2:1-11: “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”…
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Our visit to the Holy Land – Church of St Peter’s Primacy & Church of the Annunciation
From the Sea of Galilee we proceeded to Tabgha to the Church of St Peter’s primacy. In John 21, Jesus appears to his disciples for the third time after his resurrection on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The night before, Peter and several other disciples had sailed out on the lake to fish, but caught nothing. In the morning, a man appeared on the shore and called out to them to throw their net on the right side of the boat. Doing so, they caught so many fish they couldn’t drag the net back into the boat. At this point Peter recognizes Jesus, and promptly jumps out of…
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Our visit to the Holy Land – site where Jesus was baptized and the Mount of Beatitudes
One thing to keep in mind when visiting the Holy Land is that some of the sites most important to Christians are based on tradition as to their location in the context of the life of Jesus Christ. Occasionally, there are differing opinions as to the correct location of a particular site. One such example of these differing opinions is where Jesus was baptized. We visited Yardenit that is viewed by some as the approximate location where Christ was baptized. There is an alternative location closer to the Dead Sea and there is no consensus as to which location is the right one. Frankly, it did not bother me. What…
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Our visit to the Holy Land – Crossing into Israel from Jordan
We stayed one night at the Amman Airport Hotel and left the next morning by bus for Israel driving through downtown Amman just in order that we get a glimpse of the capital since the previous day we were on the outskirts of Amman while visiting Madaba and Mount Nebo. We had wanted to visit Petra – which is not part of the itinerary of this tour but we were willing to pay the extra amount involved just so that we could see it given that we were within three hours of Petra while in Amman. Unfortunately there were logistical issues in doing so and therefore it will have to…
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Our visit to the Holy Land – Amman, Jordan
We flew from Cochin to Amman, Jordan. There was nothing remarkable or striking about Amman. It is essentially desert – probably akin to areas like Los Angeles and Las Vegas many decades ago before development occurred and sources of water were either found or redirected to those cities. Jordan is primarily Muslim but Christians live peacefully with Muslims and there is no tension between the groups – they socialize, work together and are respectful of the respective traditions and beliefs of the other group. Jordan also has a tradition of receiving refugees from other parts of the Middle East at times of upheaval in those regions. In the 70s’ there…
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Our visit to the Holy Land – Introduction & Overview
It has been months since I updated this blog so our visit to the Holy Land seems a good reason to restart the blog. We returned earlier this morning from our tour and I will try and capture the salient parts both in terms of our visit to the religious sites as well as other thoughts and observations. There is too much to cover in one single posting so I will break it out over multiple postings. A visit to the Holy Land is something that I have wanted to do for the best part of a decade. For one reason or another it never came to fruition until this…