Mount of Transfiguration, Wedding Vows in Cana, Prayer at Grotto of Annunciation

by Steve Ray on April 29, 2014




This group is full of curiosity and questions. I love it! Sunny but not too hot. Breezy but not enough to blow your hat away. Like always we were the first ones up to the Mount of Transfiguration so we didn’t have to wait in line. Brian! I hate lines instead of my groups. We got up there and had a wonderful outdoor mass and the top of the Mount of Transfiguration.

Another favorite aspect of a everyone of our program images is renewals of wedding vows. We had three couples that hair celebrating 50 years of marriage and it was quite exciting. We also had an older couple who discovered each other late in life after losing a spouse and have been married two years. We took a of all of them renewing their wedding vows together.

We went to Nazareth for lunch at a local restaurant run by three Christian brothers, not one set up for tourists, but where the locals eat. It was delicious with salads, hummus, grilled chicken and beef kebabs. The sweets afterwards were heavenly.

Nazareth is one of my favorite places in the world. It’s where the Annunciation took place but if you think about it, it’s also where the incarnation began. The altar in the grotto of the Annunciation says, “The Word became flesh HERE”. The hair goes up on the back of my neck when I realize that God became man in this cave. No science-fiction could ever be that exciting.

After that we went to the house of St. Joseph where the Holy Family lived for 30 years. We discussed their restroom facilities 🙂  This is something we don’t think about when we meditate on the Holy Family. But they were real people living in the real world. Here I gave one of my favorite talks entitled “A Day in the Life of the Holy Family.”

We know that people are tired on the first full day after arriving in the Holy Land so we make sure they have some free time in the afternoon. Some want to go swimming in the See of Galilee, to take a nap, to walk through Tiberias, or do whatever they wish. A delicious dinner followed the three hours of free time and then everybody went to bed to get ready for another exciting and deeply spiritual day tomorrow.



One Comment

  • Deacon Steve Minninger says:

    The past three days in Galilee have far exceeded my expectations ! I would encourage all Christians to make this trip to the place where Jesus lived and ministered….words can’t do it justice.

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