I have travelled a bit over recent years, thanks to the
international technical conferences that I had to attend as part of my PhD work
and supported by generous ANU funding. I was impressed by history-laden Europe,
where every alley and stone has a tale to tell of centuries old, the wonder of
modernity in the US and Canada, the beautiful blend of the new and the ancient
in the streets of China, and the natural beauty of “God’s own country” – Kerala
(my home state!), where we can breathe God in the air. But nothing has left the
lasting impression that my recent visit to the Holy Lands has! The Bible came
to life as I walked the walk Jesus and his disciples did in those lands.
After celebrating the first anniversary Mass for my brother
at home in September, I started a Holy Land pilgrimage. I was in a group of 50
and took my mum with me. We flew from Kochi to Amman, the capital of Jordan.
From Jordan, we entered Israel, then later from Israel to Egypt - all by road.
No flights to and from Israel can fly over Muslim countries which surround by
it. That is one of the reasons we enter through Jordan and exit via Egypt – but
they all are part of Holy Lands of the Bible.
The Moses Moment
In Jordan we saw Mount Nebo, where Moses watched the
Promised Land, which he would never enter. It is a stunning landscape, claimed
to be the deepest valley in the world, where we could literally look to the
horizon to see the Promised Land (present day Israel). That was the “Moses moment”
for me where I felt how Moses felt thousands of years back.
Bit of Biblical
Geography
To understand the Israel of Jesus’ times we need to be aware
that there were three major regions then – Galilee in the north, Samaria in the
middle and Judea to the south. Galilee is the place surrounding Lake Galilee
(Lake Tiberius and the sea of Galilee are all the same), where Jesus spent most
of his time. Nearby are Nazareth,
Cana, Magdala, Mount Tabor and Capernaum, etc. Jerusalem is in Judea, which is
164 km from Nazareth. Bethlehem
and Jericho are within 20-25 km of Jerusalem. It is amazing to learn that Jesus
did this walk of 160 plus kilometers between Galilee and Jerusalem three times
during his three-year public ministry with his group of friends, called apostles.
Jesus deliberately developed his ministry around these three great walks.
Samaria was the place of gentiles. Most Jews avoided travelling through this
part because they did not want to mingle with gentiles, but Jesus did, which
was revolutionary. That’s why we have the Bible story of the Samaritan women.
A Great Travelling
(Holy) Family
It was not only Jesus, but the Holy Family were also great
travellers. The parental houses of Joseph and Mary are near Jerusalem. But they
settled in Nazareth in Galilee – perhaps for work. After Annunciation, we see
Mary visiting Elizabeth in a mountain village, Ein Karen, a picturesque village
near Jerusalem. Then Mary goes back to Nazareth. Then she returns to Bethlehem
for the census, which is few kilometres away from Jerusalem. It’s lot of
travelling for Mary. The only means of transport she could afford was a donkey!
It doesn’t end there as the Holy Family walks to Egypt, after Mary gave birth
to Jesus, through the Sinai desert, which would be somewhere between 200 to 300
kilometres, and returning to Nazareth after the death of Herod.
A typical Holy Land
Surprise – Capernaum
One of the great surprises was the city of Capernaum, a city
near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, in Jesus’ time. We would not have
gone to that place unless our guide, ‘Moses’, insisted. This is the city Jesus
lived in for almost 18 months during his public ministry – that is around half
of his public life. When we arrived we understood why Jesus chose to live in
that city. Readers may recall that Jesus was expelled from his hometown of
Nazareth (Luke 4) when he started his public life by saying that the Scripture
was fulfilled in Him. He moved to Capernaum. It was a major city from where the
road to Jerusalem began from Galilee. That meant that almost all the people
from Galilee had to go through this town for their annual pilgrimage to
Jerusalem and all merchants and other travellers from Jerusalem to the rest of
Galilee also passed through this city. There was not a better-connected place
than Capernaum in Galilee to spread the new message of the gospel for Jesus.
Moreover, Jesus selected his first disciples: Peter, Andrew, James and John
from this little town and found a home to hang around in Peter’s
mother-in-law’s house. The house
allegedly is still there in Capernaum.
The city had the most prominent synagogue in the region and also a Roman
military outpost. The remains of the synagogue, which was built over the
foundations of the old one in the 4th century AD, is still there.
Jesus tried his level best to pursue its inhabitants to
convince them of his divinity. He raised from the dead the daughter of Jairus,
who was a leader at the Synagogue, and cured a servant of a centurion who was
stationed at the Roman post there. Also, he healed Peter’s mother in law at her
house and cured the paralysed man who was brought in through the roof of the
same house. It all came to life for me when we were there. We could feel how naturally these
things would have happened during Jesus’ time, but of course with great
disbelief and admiration from Capernaum’s residents. But interestingly Jesus
curses Capernaum towards the end of his life by saying that if he had done the
same to them as in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented more (Luke
10). Sodom and Gomorrah are on the
other side of Jerusalem, on the way to Mount Sinai along the Dead Sea. It was
amazing how Jesus related these stories, which would have been part of the
folklore of Jews, even in Galilee, at that time.
A lot more
A lot more things would bring the Bible to life in the Holy
Lands during the remainder of the trip, for example, the
feeling the little cloud of prophet Elijah coming from the sea (1 King 18) as
we look from Mount Carmel to the sea in Haifa, Bethlehem and Calvary, the
passion tracks from Gethsemane to the very city of Jerusalem and the exodus trail from Egypt through mount Sinai. All these
experiences bring new meaning to what we read and contemplate in the
Bible.
* To be published in the "Parish Magazine", Corpus Christi Parish.
* Thanks to Robbie Costmeyer for the proof-reading.
