Today's pilgrimage started at the Church of the Visitation in Ein Kerem which means "the spring of the vineyard" and is located southwest of Jerusalem. And from the gate of this church we could look out at the hills of Judah. Tradition holds that this is where Mary came to stay with her cousin Elizabeth during their pregnancies. I love the statue of them - and behind them are plaques of the Magnificat in different languages - beautiful!
Our next stop was at the Church of John the Baptist, which marks the location of his birth. The plaques along the wall here contain the Song of Zechariah.
An icon of John the Baptist
Our next visit was to Bethlehem and the Shepherds Fields. I made a video panning across the fields and capturing birds chirping and the wind in the trees, but my computer is too full of photos to transfer it into a format I can post here. Come back later and I'll have it added after I get home and move my photos to my external drive. In the meanwhile, here are a couple pictures...
Door of the chapel in a cave nearby.
Ruins of a Byzantine monastery being excavated.
Another church up the hill.
We then had lunch at an outdoor restaurant that served traditional Middle Eastern food - lots of salads...
After lunch we visited the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where we could touch the stone said to be the location of where Jesus was born. As we approached the outside of the church, we happened upon a funeral procession, with the men carrying the open casket out of the church grounds and onto the street. This was an important reminder to those of us visiting sites, that even though the Christians in Israel are less than 2% of the population, these places are indeed living churches, providing for the pastoral needs and rites of their congregations. The church itself, as with many of the places we have visited, have had numerous churches built and destroyed and rebuilt again. And often, the location is shared among various Christian traditions - like the Armenians and the Greeks and the Roman Catholics.
We went into the caves below the church which are where St. Jerome lived and worked in the 4th c., translating the Bible into Latin. (Latin Vulgate)
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