Following the footsteps of Jesus in Galilee

JERUSALEM, Israel — How time flies indeed when you’re in a religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land and for me, it is another cellphone vacation because none of my postpaid cellphones with roaming worked in the Holy Land! Anyway a week ago, we went up to that “High Mountain” as written in scripture… called Mt. Tabor, where our Lord Jesus Christ was transfigured and turned into a dazzling white light… then a solitary cloud came upon them and the voice of God the Father was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!

Call us lucky that as the bus was going towards Mt. Tabor, the sky was literally cloudless, but there was one solitary cloud right on top of the summit of Mt. Tabor. Everyone in our tour group was awed and took a photo of that cloud. For sure, we had divine guidance for this trip.

We stayed at the Leonardo Club in Tiberias, the city founded by Herod Antipas, son of King Herod the Great located by the Sea of Galilee. Take note that our Lord Jesus Christ preached in what was a mere 10-mile area along the banks of the North shore of the Sea of Galilee. Just a few kilometers from Tiberias is the town of Magdala. Yes it is in this town that Mary Magdalene came from.

A few kilometers from the town of Magdala is the place called “The Primacy of Peter”. This is the spot where our Lord Jesus Christ found his disciples after he resurrected. They went back to their old ways… fishing. In that place our Lord asked Peter, “Peter do you love me?” three times and Peter also replied three times that he loved Jesus. This was our Lord’s way of forgiving Peter for denying him three times before his crucifixion.

This place is also reported to be the fishing area of Peter and his brothers and where our Lord Jesus first met Peter and told him, “Follow me for you shall be fishers of men.” Inside the chapel is the “Mensa Christi” or the table of Christ, a limestone rock with an altar placed over it.

From there we motored to Capernaum to see the house of St. Peter. It is all in ruins now, but the Franciscans built a church on top of it and our tour guide told us that one of the benefactors that helped build this church was the late Don Ramon Durano, Sr. Political patriarch of Danao City, Cebu. It was there that we held another mass officiated by Fr. Dante Barcelona with Fr. Gerry Martiano. After the mass we went to the ruins of the old Synagogue where our Lord Jesus Christ used to teach and preach to his disciples and cured countless sick people.

Then we were off to the Church of the Multiplication, the very site where our Lord Jesus Christ performed the Miracle of the Loaves or the Feeding of the Five Thousand.  For lunch we had Holy Fish or Tilapia, which is plentiful in the freshwaters of the Sea of Galilee courtesy of Mrs. Marilou Ordoñez of Delmar Travel and Tours.

In the afternoon, we took a boat cruise in the Sea of Galilee operated by Messianic Jews who believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ was truly the Messiah. So we had spiritual readings and songs by the boat’s crew. On the boat we had a scripture reading Matt.8: 23-27 where they took a boat to the Sea of Galilee and were caught in a storm, while our Lord Jesus was sleeping. The disciples fearful of their boat sinking, woke up our Lord and told them, “O You of Little faith, why were you afraid?” Then calmed the sea and the storm. There his disciples knew that their Master had divine powers!

After three-days of touring in the Region of Judea around the Sea of Galilee, we finally left Tiberias and moved towards Jerusalem. But we didn’t go straight to Jerusalem… rather we took the longer route by first going to Haifa, the biggest Port in Israel where the original Carmelite Monastery in Mt. Carmel is situated on top of a very high mountain overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It is an hour and a half freeway ride from Tiberias.

From Mt. Carmel we went to Caesarea to the Caesarea National Park, which was once the city, built by King Herod the Great whom he named in honor of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. There you will still see the ruins of King Herod’s magnificent Palace that juts out into the sea. While it is in total ruins now, but you can still see the flooring of this palace, which had a swimming pool in the middle of the Palace courtyard.

Behind King Herod’s Palace is the Amphitheater that the Romans used for their Gladiatorial entertainment. Beside the Palace is the Hippodrome where Chariot Races were once held. That’s the Roman equivalent of the F1 races in their time. This facility that King Herod built also had an excellent man-made harbor where sailing ships would dock from the Ports of Rome or from Crete or Greece. This made Caesarea a bustling economic powerhouse in the Region. Today, it is one of Israel’s most popular tourism sites, next to Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee.

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