A Day at the Sea

Hey Everyone!

We hope and pray all of you are doing well!  Today was our last major day to travel out of Jerusalem to see sites since our pilgrimage is coming to an end soon.  Today we went to the city of Jaffa. It is a city close to Tel Aviv and has some neat connections to biblical history. We began the day by visiting the tomb of St. George.  The tomb is located underneath a Greek Orthodox Church. We arrived at the church and were told about the story of St. George by our guide and then proceeded down to his tomb. It was nice to be able to spend a few minutes in prayer with him.

            The next stop on our trip was the Church of St. Peter for Sunday Mass. It was a beautiful Mass and a great way to celebrate the 4th Sunday of Lent. The ambo in the church actually is meant to look like a fruit tree.  It was explained to us that it was meant to look like a fruit tree since the Word of God should be fruitful and produce fruit in our lives. Following the Mass our tour guide took us on a tour of the old city of Jaffa. We saw Simon the Tanner’s house, where St. Peter stayed, and also went down to the Port of Jaffa, right on the Mediterranean Sea. This port is special since it is the port that the cedar wood from Lebanon came through on its way to build the Temple under Solomon. The reason this port was used was it was considered the closest port to Jerusalem.  This also was the port that St. Peter sailed out of to go to Rome. A lot of neat history in this city! 

After visiting the port we went and had a nice lunch at a restaurant off the Mediterranean coast. It was a great meal and we had time to go down to the beach for a few minutes afterwards to enjoy the water. Overall it was a good pilgrimage day. This coming week we will be wrapping everything up as we prepare to come back to the seminary. Please keep us in your prayers as we keep you in ours!