San Antonio Missions, the fourth one

Hello, everyone.  This is the final post in the San Antonio Missions set. 

Mission Concepciòn de la Purisima, a church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is also a working parish. At the time the church was built the mission fathers were into the alignment of buildings,  beyond the basic rule that churches face the east. (This is based both on the theological teaching that Jesus is the Light of the world and an ancient tradition that He will return from that direction.) This church has a beautiful alignment of windows that results in a sunbeam landing directly on certain images once a year. The volunteer that was there when we visited had made a cell phone video of the most famous sunbeam which he showed to us. It was beautiful! 

The sunbeam illuminates this painting, lingering on the image as it transits, in an amazing way. There is also at least one other alignment in this church, which illuminates another holy image which is to the left. The church is cruciform, that is, shaped like a cross, and in the second illumination the sunbeam crosses the church directly above the crossing of the arms of the cross.

The parish has a banner of the current jubilee year. I think that Mission Concepciòn is one of the (many) regional churches that make a Jubilee pilgrimage accessible even to people who can't visit Rome. The stylistic contrast between the old stone buildings and the modernistic (Tyvek?) sign is interesting. 

This mission is in the middle of a neighborhood of the city, not too far from a golf course and many businesses, and using a map app is recommended to find it. 

San Antonio Missions, the third one.

Hello, everyone. It's been busy around the home place, and I forgot to post anything for a few days.

The third of the San Antonio Missions, going from south to north, is Mission San Jose. 

As you have surely noticed by now, these sites are fairly spread-out and even if one drives a car instead of walking between them, the visiting will give a healthy walk all by itself.

Mission San Jose has a more involved history than the first two. Its full name was actually San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo. 

approaching the front. 

After the Franciscan fathers founded the mission, it later was operated by members of a different order. They did some repairs, and made their own typical arches as they did so. In this photo some of both shapes are visible.

The vee shaped one at the back was one of the refurbished arches. 

This covered entrance has a large collection of opuntia pads, also called nopales, which being left to themselves have sprouted. There was no indication of why they spread out the pads like that. They seem to have been there for some months.

This carved cross is at the top of the front of the church.  Below it are some lovely carvings of saints, restored, and a wooden door with geometrical carvings, also restored. 

The retablo of the church. As y'all can see, the local parish is keeping it in use and pretty.

There is a museum in one of the buildings which has photos and explains the history of various restorations and visitors over the decades.

With a little judicious cropping, I am getting better at keeping the photos upright. Fray Antonio was depicted in the typical habit of a Franciscan missionary, with his walking stick and hooded cape. I think someone enlarged, and maybe added color, an old painting. It's hard to tell if the object in his hand is one of the "ladder" type of rosaries. These are still around, though less common than the single strand form. 

 There is a souvenir shop in the Park Service visitor center, and helpful people at the desk.

Triacastela to Sarria

Hello, everyone. As we approach the goal of our pilgrimage,  we join many of our fellow pilgrims in wanting to get it done. (Something about sleeping somewhere new every night, I think.) 

Triacastela is a smallish town, and the masses of pilgrims passing through there has affected the layout. Along the pilgrims' path there are eating places and sleeping places, and in the afternoon as the day's arrivals filter in, there are people hanging out at the outdoor tables watching for trail friends to come past.

The dog knows where to find a cool drink 

This old fountain still has benches around it. Pilgrims passing through use them to rest or to remove layers if the day is warm.

From Triacastela to Sarria there are 2 routes. We took the San Xil way.

We stayed in a barndominium in Sarria, a former barn that has been converted to a small pensión for travelers. Our room appeared to have been a dovecote in the past. The stone walls are about 2 feet thick and the original windows are about 10 inches square. (Now glassed in, of course. ) There was a modern window in our room and on a shelf below it was an electric heater.

As it's getting late, I will sign off now.

Hello, everyone.

Today I am putting up a picture of something I saw from yhe freeway while driving. I don't know what it is. Some kind of weather radar?

It's clearly visible while driving north on I 35 in Texas.

My readers are invited to chip in on the comments if y'all have an idea what this device is.

Eleventh update on pilgrimage 2021

 Hello, everyone. 

We walked from O Cadavo to Lugo, about 30 km, and the walk was nice. Long, but nice.

One of the bridges of Lugo. 

The city, founded by the Romans, is surrounded by three rivers.

One of the first things we saw, a bar, reminding all that this is one of the 100 kilometer cities of the Caminos de Santiago. (If you want to qualify for a Compostela certificate for walking the pilgrimage, you have to get two sellos (stamps) per day in your pilgrim credencial for the last 100 kilometers...you must personally walk those last 100 kilometers, too.)

We took a rest day here.

Memories of getting out of the house

Hello, everyone.

As we're still mostly cooped up in the house...well, except for looking for supplies to fix things...and sitting in the palapa for gin and tonics in the afternoon. Hey, that's in our own yard! It doesn't count as getting out!

One consolation is to look back at recent visits to parks and such in the area. A few weeks ago, we met up with DS and DGD and DGS to stroll at the McAllen Nature Center. This is a smaller garden spot with some trails. In fact, they have more trails now than they used to have! The city is also now asking for a donation from visitors. But they're working with the place so it's worth giving them something.

They have a somewhat old-style purple martin condo on the property. They aren't really squashes as they try to pretend to be, but they're cute. We were there before the martins were back from their winter abroad, so I can't tell y'all whether the "customers" appreciate the lodging. Probably they do!

Israel pilgrimge: sixteenth in series

Hello, everyone.

This post will cover the last day of visiting in the Holy Land.

We rolled out early as usual. The visits of the day were all in Bethlehem, near our hotel. The first visit was the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord, also known as the Church of St. Catherine Martyr.

As y'all can see, our group had matching ID lanyards in pale blue. These had our names, and on the back of the little name insert was the name of the tour company. In case it should be needed.

St. Catherine. Note the broken wheel which, being a way the Roman
 government tried to kill her, is an identifying item in her images.

The image of St. Catherine was in the Latin part of the church. (Remember, all the major shrines are shared.)

The Church of the Nativity was never fully destroyed during
 the centuries of conquest and ruin. A few of the original mosaics
 are conserved on the walls.

We passed through from the Latin part of the shrine to the Orthodox (Greek) part of the shrine. The line of pilgrims was beginning to build.

The Orthodox are very into ostrich eggs
 on their lamps.

One of the pilgrims from another group was talking to me. We discussed the significance of the ostrich eggs. I mentioned the eggs being a symbol of the Resurrection of Our Lord. He mentioned another beautiful image: the mother ostrich, he told me, is said to stay near her eggs while she is setting. Even when she gets up from the eggs to eat or drink, she keeps her eyes on the nest. Thus, the ostrich eggs remind us that God, like the ostrich hen, is always watching over us.

(We had time to talk, since our group was at the head of the line for the Latin access to the grotto of the Nativity, and we were a little bit early. The Armenians were still praying inside the grotto. And no, you can't just scooch in on another group's time!)

When we went down the steps into the actual place of the Nativity, we discovered that there were filmmakers there, and also a man was setting up for Mass. (Not Mass for our group. We wouldn't have all fit into this tiny space anyway.) I settled for respectfully looking in from the edge and taking a photo to remember with.

After this, we went to the Milk Grotto. Or possibly it's the Milky Grotto. The significance of this shrine is that traditionally it is the place where Joseph took Mary and Jesus to hide on their way out of town after the angel appeared to him in a dream and told him to get the Child and His mother out of their PDQ.

An altar inside the Milk Grotto. The images are the betrothal of Mary and Joseph,
the Annunciation, the birth of Jesus, the adoration of the shepherds, the
adoration of the magi, and possibly the Holy Family hiding out
in the Milk Grotto as they fled Bethlehem towards Egypt.

The stone of the Milk Grotto, another cave shrine, is white instead of dirty gray-black. Possibly it was never used for cooking. (Thus explaining why it was a safe place to hide for a day or so?)

An icon of Mary feeding the baby Jesus. 

There are a number of interesting images of various saints, and also an altar with reliquaries.

The Flight into Egypt. Someone had placed a bouquet
among the rocks at one side. Possibly this is a thing for
Christian brides?

The shrine is administrated by Franciscan nuns. They have, at the very deepest part of the cave, an adoration chapel. It is separated from the area the pilgrims visit by a glass window. (Franciscan nuns tend to be cloistered.) They have made the neighborly gesture to place a kneeler by the window for any pilgrims who wish to join them in adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Taken from outside of the chapel. This is a very modern, yet very respectful, monstrance. I see the shape of His Sacred Heart in the metal at the center. But that could be just me.

We also visited the Church of the Shepherds' Field.

We had Mass in the Cave of the Shepherds.
Above the door there was a bee nest.

Above the cave was this angel. (?)

While walking the paths back toward the entrance, we saw a group of Korean (?) nuns, also on pilgrimage. There are people from all over the world who visit the holy sites.

View of the entrance to the Shepherds' Field from the shop across the street. The lines were beginning to build up. By the time we left this place there were crowds going in.

A view of the place we later ate lunch on this,
our last day in the Holy Land. It has nice views
of Bethlehem from those big windows. 

This picture was taken because it was an interesting building. Little did we know that later that day we would be in there!

The offices of the tour company, next to the door leading to the
restaurant where we ate lunch this last day,

When we stopped for lunch, we were in front of the offices of the tour company who were organizing our visit to the Holy Land. We didn't go in and bother them, though. We went into the door at the right and rode the elevator up to the Skyline cafe.












We returned to our hotel for dinner and a very short night.

I finally remembered to take a food picture at the hotel.

The salad bar at the Hotel St. Gabriel

We met in the lobby at 1 a.m. the next morning. We had to hitch a ride on another group's bus for part of the way to the Tel Aviv airport--something about our bus's engine belt coming off--but about half of the way there our bus caught up with us and we switched back over.

After waiting in the airport intake line--these folks are serious about security, for good reason--we had a few minutes before we had to be in the gate area. We took the moments to visit shops in the airport and also the facilities. Because airplane facilities are guaranteed to be more miserable to use than airport ones!

In the airport, departing, this nifty wireless device to summon aid for restroom problems. Cool!

And that was the final day of our visit to the Holy Land.

The next few posts will be catch up posts for various things on the home front.

Israel pilgrimage: Fifteenth in series

Hello, everyone.

By now, we were close to the end of our visiting in the Holy Land. It was the day after the Stations of the Cross, which had been a lot of standing and a fair amount of walking on pavement. On this day we began by visiting the last surviving wall of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem.

(Herod's temple was I believe an enlargement of the second temple that was built by returnees during the Persians' rule. I think we're talking about the book of Nehemiah here, but am not completely sure. At any rate, later after the Maccabees pushed the imperialist Greek colonizers--who insisted that the occupants of this area become Greek pagans like themselves instead of letting them live their own lives with their own religion--there was unrest and much turnover in the kingship of the area. The Romans having come along by then, they grew impatient with the fighting over the king's seat and put in place the family of Herod as kings. One of the Herods decided to make the temple in Jerusalem really impressive and added on to it.)

The western wall foundation is the last remnant of Herod's temple. The rest was torn down during the rebellion of about 100 AD when the Romans rolled through in force and sacked the city.

Pigeons in a niche in the wall.

Ladies praying at the wall. (The local custom is for the ladies to have a section that is theirs and the gentlemen to have a section that is theirs.) It is the strictly observed custom for all the ladies to wear hats or scarves and all the gentlemen to wear a kippah, the Jewish mens' cap, while visiting the Western Wall.

Ruins in the vicinity of the wall.

There were a lot of people there. We saw a number of groups processing in to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of their young man, carrying canopies and singing and being accompanied by drummers and other musicians. Some of them were dancing as they went. (To respect the privacy of the various people in these groups, I am not putting those pictures up.)

After that visit, we went by bus over to the church of St Peter in Gallicante, St Peter of the Crowing Rooster. (So named because here St. Peter was called out by various persons as part of Jesus' party and in an attempt to remain low profile he denied that he knew Jesus. And the third time he did so, the rooster crowed.)

A good look at the front of the church of Gethsemane, which is too close to the sidewalk for a view of the mosaic above the entrance, but from across the Kidron valley shows beautifully.

St Peter in Gallicante is built over the ruins of the house of Caiaphas the High Priest, who as y'all will remember was the one who interrogated Jesus after His arrest and convened a (kangaroo-style) court to judge Him. After the group of elders they had on hand condemned Jesus to death, they stored Him in an old grain cellar, lowering Him by rope, until morning. Then they dragged Him over to Pilate to convince the Romans to permit the death penalty.

These days there are stairs down to the grain cellar. Groups take turns paying respects to the site.

After this visit, we went to Ein Kerem, which is not pronounced in the German fashion like I expected but instead as if the I in Ein isn't actually there, and visited the Church of the Visitation. (The Visitation is the second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, it is when Mary visited her cousin St. Elizabeth and is described briefly in the Gospel of Luke.)

Ein Kerem is in the hills and we had a very respectable walk uphill to the church. It was the longest continuous walk in our visit to the Holy Land.

There was a very peaceful outdoor chapel there where our pastor offered Mass.

When we returned to the parking area at the bottom we discovered that there is a walk in the hills around the area. The trail mark was oval and two-colored; it looked to me like the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings

but I'm sure the people who picked it out were probably unaware that a movie would pick that shape for the eye years later.

This was the last stop of another full day.

Israel pilgrimage, fourteenth in series, and Christmas greetings (updated for spelling)

Hello, everyone.

This is the third post for the day we walked the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem. It will complete the day with a brief remembrance of the chapel of Golgotha, which is also inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

As you enter the church, if you look to the right immediately, you see some very steep steps. These are the steps of Golgotha. It's a really steep little peak--granted there may have been a little more dirt over the rocks back then. Still, a tough climb up at the last from someone who had been beaten, dragged across the city three times, and then had to drag/carry a cross to the outside of the city. I almost wonder whether they had to do the nailing a little below the peak as there appears to be not much flat space for the executioners to work in at the top.

Inside the door of the chapel is another, very crowded, line.

The line. Also an overview of some of the beautiful and edifying mosaics on the ceiling and walls. (The birds alongside the cross are souls ascending into Heaven.) This is the Latin chapel, the actual place the Cross stood is in the Orthodox chapel which is out of sight around the corner on the left.

Detail of the mosaic: the Bark (ship) of Peter on the left, a symbol of the Church; the Eucharistic pelican on the right. The pelican here is a theological, poetic pelican. She feeds her young with her own blood by piercing her breast. It is a very ancient analogy of the Eucharist.

A detail of the Sorrowful Mother, viewing her Son. Even the executioner is sad.

Another image of Mary as Sorrowful Mother. Besides the candles and the crucifix (it's an altar) you can also see some of the devotional gifts that have been offered to the honor of the mother of Our Lord. This time she's portrayed with the sword prophesied by Simeon when He was presented in the Temple as an infant. ("Your heart, too, will be pierced by a sword, that the thoughts of many may be revealed," I think it goes. It's in the Gospel of Luke.)


And speaking of the Gospel of Luke, today is Christmas Eve, AKA the Vigil of Christmas.



The tree has a bow because the fake trees are too delicate to accept a star. Trying to strengthen it never really worked, so I capitulated.






The angel was a light cover from a tree light strand that had a whole flock of angels. It came with a little clip, which holds it nicely atop the stable.


I hope for all y'all to have a blessed and merry Christmas and a happy new year. Feliz navidad, y prospero año y felicidad!

Israel pilgrimage, thirteenth in series

Hello, everyone. It's been busy around ye olde homestead, and days slipped by without being noticed. (Hey, it's Christmas season. It happens to us all.) Sorry about the gap in posting.

We left off on a busy day that had already included visiting the place of Our Lady's birth and the Upper Room. Today's post will go over walking the Stations of the Cross. 

The first station is at a location that is presently a Muslim school. Understandably, we combined Station 1 and Station 2, commencing to pray in a plaza outside the Church of the Flagellation.

The church has carved friezes depicting elements of the Station, and of Christ's passion. This is the left-hand frieze.

Station 3 and Station 4 are about 8 feet apart. Y'all will notice that because the Passion of Christ is a central element throughout all Christian groups, there are a lot of different shrines, monasteries, etc., throughout the area of the Stations. The souk, the marketplace, grew up around and between all of these things so the collection of shops, restaurants, churches, and so on is basically an organic whole.

Our group was far from the only glob of people standing/kneeling in the ways of the souk. The other folks just make their way around the groups. Our guide had stressed the need for us to STAY TOGETHER so we did. It was really tempting to observe the many shops as we passed, and the many side alleys. But we behaved.

Here, outside the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, we prayed all four of the final stations. The actual locations are inside the church. We were early compared to many, but the lines were already voluminous with the many pilgrims. (Estimated actual time in the line was maybe a couple of hours? Plus another hour for those of us that went up to Golgotha at the end. That part is being saved for another post as this one already has a lot of photos.)

In the center of all these heads is the Stone of Anointing, where the ladies did their rush job of cleaning and anointing the body of Jesus before putting Him into the (borrowed) tomb and running back to a place to stay over the Sabbath. (Work and travel on the Sabbath--Saturday--was strictly forbidden, and the day began at Friday's sundown.)

The moving mob-that-was-a-line passed another area of devotion. Various people were lighting candles  under the baldachin here. I was unclear exactly why. There were some scattered seats along walls for the infirm to sit and rest for a while. Some of our group members did rest near the baldachin for a bit.

This is the Aedicule, the original shrine of the Tomb. It is not large at all! Y'all can see that it is inside the larger church. When the Christians rolled through and restored/reconstructed various things, where they found a shrine or most of a shrine, they repaired and then surrounded it with a larger, protecting building. And decorated the larger building in recognition of the shrine's meaning and dignity.

Out of sight around the corner, the line that narrowed from 15 wide to about 4 suddenly narrows again to 1. This is enforced with ropes. It is most likely the reason why the large line is so-o-o-o slow. The single file line comes around to the front of the Aedicule (on right side of photo) and enters it. A monk? priest? stands there inside and allows groups of 4 to enter and reverence the actual spot. He saw us and said "Ameriki! Krickly! Krickly!" which was clear and easy to understand. And entirely reasonable given the many pilgrims. You get about 10 to 20 seconds. Pray fast! And move out expeditiously.

Above the Aedicule there is this dome. It lights the area. The high ceilings inside the larger church help to fend off any feelings of claustrophobia, even though you're still all packed in like sardines.

One of our group members asked the guide if there is a better time as far as avoiding lines at all the shrines. He said--here's the hidden secret!--that in January it is winter locally, there is some wetter weather, and there are a lot fewer visitors. But that the wet weather is not flooding monsoons, it's very bearable. I suspect that the guides, and hotels, etc., would like to even out the visiting traffic just a little, too.