Israel post, fourth in series

Hello, everyone.

I think I'll combine the Church of St. Joseph/Workshop & Home of St. Joseph and the Church of the Annunciation into one post. It's not that the Annunciation church has a shortage of things, it's that I didn't take a lot of pictures of St. Joseph church.

To recap the order of the day, we went first to Cana, then rode over to the vicinity of the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of St. Joseph, then ate, then rode up to Haifa to visit the monastery of the Carmelite fathers and then rode back to the hotel. It doesn't sound like so much, until you remember that there was a fair amount of strolling around at most of these places. And by the time we returned to the hotel, I at least was tired.

So: the Church of the Annunciation. The inspiration for this shrine is found in the gospel of Luke. The angel Gabriel was sent to carry a message to Mary. "Hail, full of grace, the LORD is with thee," I think his salutation went. She was understandably perturbed at this. I will allow interested readers who don't already remember to look into the Bible to see the rest of it.

Our bus couldn't actually go up to the church, because of the street layout and traffic. We walked around, up some gradual steps, and around so more to find it. The church has a wall around it, forming the cloister, and on the inside walls of the cloister are many, many images contributed by the nations of the world. They were contributed to show that the world as a whole supports the shrine. Even Japan sent an image. I couldn't photograph all of them.

 These two images, the statue from Peru and the mosaic from Brazil, seem to me to show the image known as La Santina. I believe they are referencing the shrine in the South American mountains to Our Lady. They resemble the image of La Santina that is honored at Covadonga, in Asturias, Spain.

 
This image, contributed by Spain, is of the apparition to St. James the Elder (St. James Major as he is sometimes called in English) of Our Lady with the pillar. This apparition took place in Zaragoza in Spain. You will note that St. James is here depicted with his scallop shell and his walking staff with water gourd.

Inside the church there are more inspiring things. We also got to see laid out the tightly scheduled access of this popular shrine, as first one group and then another had a prayer service, sang hymns, or had Mass at the altar in front of the ruins of the ancient house.

The line going past the ancient house (behind the altar)--there are a lot of lines in the Holy Land. 

We walked from there over to St. Joseph's home-and-workshop.

There were many, many collections of pilgrims' petitions in the various shrines. It seems to be a thing, to carry written requests for the intercession of a saint, or just written requests for prayers to be granted, and then drop them in shrines or tuck them into the Western Wall of the ancient Temple, or similar.

I confess myself unable to really understand the custom, but it is very important to a lot of people. There are, consequently, heaps of little papers in all of the popular shrines.

This depiction of the Holy Family at home in Nazareth was interesting in the way it depicts St. Joseph in his workshop, Mary kneading bread dough, and Jesus pointing out to the viewer how His family lived.

I noticed that the walkways of the city were sometimes broad and easy to walk, but other times all of about 2 feet wide. And pretty much all of them are stone pavement.

When we ate lunch (forgot to take a photo of the food) there were lots of little dishes of various things like salads, bread, and hummus, followed by a meat dish and spaghetti with tomato sauce. (The tomato sauce tasted like it had sugar in it. Some people like it that way.) The restaurant brought around meringue kisses for dessert.