What I Saw In The Holy Land 5.1This is the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth (photo credit). It's a modern church --dedicated 1969, but the original Church there dates to the 3rd century, and the tradition of Jewish Christians venerating the grotto here as Mary's House and the site of the Annunciation is even older.
This was perhaps my favorite Church in the Holy Land, because, as you can see from the second picture, the construction of the new Church was done very carefully so that you can get a sense of what the older. . .ahem. . .incarnations looked like, and you can even still see the original cave that served as the house. If you could enter the grotto of this photograph and
round the corner, you'd see the little stone staircase hewn into the ground. How I longed to go up and see the whole house, but it's roped off. And over to the left of this photograph are more ruins of previous churches and more cave-stone, too. It just looks more the way you want it to; and let's be candid, to my latin-rite aesthetic, it was a relief not to have everything plated in silver, mounted with icons and strewn with candles.
This was the place I started to feel like a pilgrim and not simply a tourist. There's a kind of peace and sweetness that surrounds this place that I wasn't simply imagining, as my companions remarked on it as well. I hadn't really thought much about the Holy Land as a place to encounter Mary, although it's obvious she was present every place Christ was. But I think you can't fail to notice her presence and influence here. Not just in the Church itself, but all around the grounds, where you can take a path down to "Mary's well," where women drew water in ancient times. The whole area seemed to me to be permeated almost palpably with Mary's presence, something comforting and maternal. Where Nazareth is loud and bustling, here atop the city it's quiet, and as there weren't many other pilgrims, we could not only have our mass, but pray our rosary together --in the very place Gabriel uttered the first, "Hail, Mary." This was also the place we all noted the weather cooperating with our pilgrimage, which I'll explain more in further posts. But here our mass was in the late afternoon, the sun bathed everything in a warm Mediterranean light, and by the time we'd finished our oblations and touring, it was dark. We walked down to our hotel and at precisely the instant we walked into the lobby, the wind whipped up, the temperature plunged, and it started to pour.
