By Adar
There’s a saying in Nazareth that if you come as a tourist, you’ll leave as a Pilgrim: and if you come as a Pilgrim you’ll leave feeling holy.
Though that saying may be hyperbolic, I will say I found it very cool to walk through the hometown of the most famous person in modern history. And further, to see what kind of society stands there today. As far as I could tell, Nazareth is primarily Arab residents and has a large religious Christian population (not surprisingly). The Christians are Roman Catholic and Orthodox. I got an opportunity to walk through both sects’ Church of the Annunciation to see the differences The Church of the Annunciation is where Mary was met by an angel who told her she would give birth to Jesus. Though I personally would find that conversation a little unsettling, two churches were built in honor of it. The orthodox church is covered in paintings, and is bright and decorative with Armenian-looking patterns on its walls. It has a simple main room and many decorative altars. The Catholic one has engravings etched into the facade of important figures, and is absolutely huge. The bottom floor is where supposedly the exact location of the announcement was held (first holy site of the semester!) And above it there is a sanctuary with a beautiful pyramid ceiling. In the Catholic church, nearly all of the walls hold representations of Mary from every country with a large Catholic population. That aspect was absolutely beautiful.
One of my favorite moments of the day was standing in the courtyard of the church and hearing the loud call to prayer from a nearby mosque. The juxtaposition of cultures and religions that remains harmoniously in Nazareth is something I deeply admire. I was thinking about why this can’t be the case in more places. And I think that maybe part of it is that Nazareth is an old city. It is a place that people live in because their families have never moved out, or because they came solely to practice their religion and don’t deal with those from other faiths all that much. It is not a city I would find myself moving to. Maybe the reason it functions with different cultures is not because it’s learned to deal with it better than much of the country, but because it hasn’t yet dealt with modern changes in politically charged faith. There is still much for me to understand.
Though I don’t think I became a Pilgrim after my trip to Nazareth, I was certainly glad to have gone.