Inside the Encounter Chapel | Photo by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and then you will be my witnesses…
Acts 1:8
The Spirit calls us to share our faith with those who are near and far. It could be as simple as giving witness in our everyday lives. Or it might involve a vocation to go to a foreign land [Holy Land] or at least to support missionaries who do that in Christ’s name.
Rev. Jude Winkler, OFM Conv., 2008.
Have you ever been asked about your faith in God? Have you been tested, as to be shunned, because of it? Did you get a chance to examine your life to see how much blessed you are, by God’s grace? Are you reading about folks who lost their lives, while praying inside a mosque in Ne w Zealand, a synagogue in Poway or a church in Sri Lanka?
Gifts of seeing with the heart’s eyes
Do you recall reading about the Sea of Galilee, where much of Jesus’ ministry happened? Where Jesus multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 people?
The feeding occurred in the Tabgha Capernaum near the Sea of Galilee. Read Mark 4:1, where it states: “On another occasion he began to teach by the sea. A very large crowd gathered around him so he got into a boat on the sea and sat down. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on land.”
During Jesus’ time, the Sea of Galilee supported a fishing industry, with about 230 boats involved, according to Flavius Josephus, a first century historian born in Jerusalem.
“The Sea of Galilee yielded an unexpected catch in 1986 — the hull of a fishing boat old enough to have been on the water in the time of Jesus and his disciples. The remains of the so-called Jesus Boat were found in the muddy lakebed (the Sea of Galilee is actually a freshwater inland lake) during a time of severe drought. The remains were 27 feet long, 7.5 feet wide and 4.3 feet high. This size would have enabled it to carry up to 15 people.” (Seetheholyland.net).
| Photo by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz
It took 10 years of conservation, which included excavation by hand, protecting the hull with resin, since washing the wood off to clear the mud would have disintegrated its wood pieces. It was kept secured to the pool floor, while every piece was being reconstructed to become a whole boat. When it came time to remove the boat, a system of telescopic legs was devised.
“In 2000 the vessel — officially known as “The Ancient Galilee Boat” — went on permanent display in the Yigal Allon Museum at Kibbutz Ginosar, near where it was discovered.
I was so moved by what I saw, as this boat was similar to the one Jesus was preaching at, in the Sea of Galilee. The boat also revealed 12 types of wood used in the boat construction: Christ Horn, Carob, Aleppo Pine, Hawthorn, Cedar, Tabor Oak, Sycamore, Laurel, Willow, Judas Tree, Plane Tree and Atlantic Terebinth.
But, to the skeptics, the question remain – did this 2,000-year-old boat belong to Jesus and his disciples? Or did they belong to the fighters of the Migdal battle or simply to a fisherman from the Sea of Galillee?
Magdala Ruins and Encounter Chapel
Instead, I correlated this finding of the 2,000-year-old boat with the recent archaeological findings in Magdala.
In Magdala, we saw the ruins of very recent 21st century archaeological findings of 2009, of the only first century synagogue on the Sea of Galilee, one of only seven synagogues from this period in the world, along with the archaeological remains of the 2,000-year-old city of Magdala in 2010. It quickly became a holy site, and the original plans of simply turning this into a guesthouse was set aside for a bigger vision.
The story goes that Fr. Juan Solana, L.C. was drawn to Mary Magdalene as a Christian witness. “Fr. Juan’s mother had a significant life event that endeared Mary Magdalene to her. As a result, Mary Magdalene also held a very special place in Fr. Juan’s heart as he became a priest and ultimately was assigned to serve in the Holy Land. Upon arrival in Galilee, Fr. Juan was surprised to find nothing in Magdala to honor this woman of God. It was then that he felt inspired to purchase land in the area to build a place for pilgrims to experience Jesus’ ministry. In just a few short years, with only part of the site excavated, Magdala has already become a very special place of history and culture for the Jewish community as well as a holy site for reflection, teaching, prayer, and worship for all Christians, regardless of background or denomination,” according to Magdala.org.
The Encounter Chapel, a basement chapel, made use of the original stones found in the excavations of the road and marketplaces near the port. Remember that this synagogue was on the sea of Galilee. This interdenominational place of prayer, as its brochure states, is modeled with six columns, like a synagogue with colorful walls and placement of stones.
It was not so much the chapel, nor its structure, but it was how folks were overcome by tears, perhaps moved by the depths of spiritual wisdom from the homilies we were lucky to receive from Fr. Michael P. Hanifin, our spiritual chaplain, who celebrated daily masses at our Holy Land Pilgrimage, organized by Lourdes Alo of QTS Tours and Travels.
It was also here that we realized the false mythology around Mary Magdalene and appreciated her more as a loyal follower of Jesus, whom Jesus delivered from seven demons.
It was also here where St. John Paul II wrote the golden Latin phrase encircling the image on the cupola, echoing the dignity of woman from his letter #31: “In this holy place, the Church gives thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the mystery of woman, and for every woman, for her eternal dignity and for the wonders God has worked in and through her in the history of humanity,”cited from Magdala’s brochure.
The cupola is shown reflecting the sky, stars, and sun’s rays with a piece of image from Our Lay of Guadalupe, the Mother of Jesus, found on the “tilma” of a native Mexican in 1531, named Juan Diego. How appropriate is it that another Fr. Juan Solana, born in Puebla, Mexico, led to the unearthing of the first of the Magdala stones from one of the seven synagogues of 2,000 years ago?
The year of the millennium is also ushering us to more physical evidence of Jesus’ life on earth, more specifically in the Holy Land, and in this junction, Migdal Junction in Migdal, Israel.
Qumran Scrolls
In 1947, there were two young Bedouin shepherds who were looking for their lost goat, and what they discovered was a hoard of ancient manuscripts in a cave in Qumran.
The Holy Land souvenir book, with an introduction by Fr. Benedict, published by Palphot, described Qumran as situated in the lowest point of the earth’s surface in the Great Rift Valley: “At that time, it was a flourishing settlement, where the community of the Essenes found an ideally secluded place for prayer and contemplation. Exiled from the temptations of the city, high up on the limestone plateau, overlooking the Dead Sea, they awaited the coming of the Lord, according to prophet Isaiah 40:3”
“The ruins included Assembly Hall, kitchens, laundry room, cisterns, ritual baths and vast writing room where the Essenes transcribed Biblical texts on leather, papyrus and copper scrolls. When the Roman conquerors came, the Essenes fled and hid their scrolls in nearby caves. The desert kept their secret for 2000 years, “ the souvenir book described the excavations.
Many of these discovered scrolls at Qumran are now housed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which we also visited.
Do we need more evidence of Jesus’ life in Holy Land 2,000 years ago?
Do you notice that not all of the excavational findings were discovered in the same year nor in the same century, nor in the same period?
The boat was a happenstance, brought about by the drought, revealing the mudfloor of the lake bed in 1986.
Or that the city of Magdala was discovered in 2010, a year after the 2,000 year old Jewish synagogue was excavated in 2009, by a Father Juan, a Mexican who taught primarily in Italy, philosophy and theology for 14 years. He spent four years in the U.S. with the Legion of Christ communities in New York and Connecticut, and then, he went to Jerusalem for another assignment. The Legion of Christ communities are now helping him with the development of this area.
In 2004, Fr. Solana was appointed by St. John Paul II to be Chargé of the Holy See for the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center and has been serving in this role ever since. He initiated the Magdala Project in 2005 and similar to Notre Dame in Jerusalem, it will be an opportunity to offer services, in the form of a guesthouse and a restaurant, but mostly to highlight Magdala as a house of prayer, meditation and spiritual growth but also a confluence of Jewish and Christian faiths.
To be congruent, “the architecture of the Magdala Center was designed by Nassim, Shireen and Raneen Nakhleh (Christian Arabs from Nazareth), as well as the overall vision of Fr. Juan Solana. The architects used colors and materials that blend with the atmosphere here: the color of the land, water and the ancient synagogue frescoes blend to create a warm, bright and peaceful ambiance,” the Magdala brochure described.
Published on Asian Journal