Seeing the Holy Land for the first time

THE HOLY LAND — Last weekend we arrived here in the Holy Land for my first ever visit to the land where our Lord Jesus Christ once walked on this earth. Mind you, it is not really a vacation as my good friend Marilou Ordonez of Delmar Travel & Tours requested me to do a travelogue for my TV show, Straight from the Sky. Indeed it is a golden opportunity for me to literally “walk the pages of the Bible” so to speak as the Holy Land is not just a historic place to visit, it also uplifts your soul.

We started this pilgrimage in Amman, Jordan where from the airport we proceeded to Mt. Nebo, the site which we read in the Bible where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land that he wasn’t allowed to enter. Mt. Nebo is an elevated ridge some 800 meters above sea level. From the tour bus we passed to the ancient City of Madaba. We saw what Moses saw with the terrific view of the Promised Land… where one can see Israel.

After lunch we motored to the ancient city of Madaba, to the Greek Orthodox Memorial Church of Moses. On the floor of this church you will see the oldest map of the world… it is a mosaic map nearly 1,400 years old which was discovered in 1976. Indeed there is no older map on this earth!

The whole day last Saturday morning we rode to the historical and archaeological city of Petra (Al-Batra). It is a three-hour freeway drive from Amman, nearly 240 kilometers one way. This is located at the town of Petra or Wadi Musa (The Valley of Moses) after hours of driving along the Plains of Moab. Historians wrote that this was the capital city of the Nabateans or Nabaioth, the firstborn son of Ishmael… son of Abraham. Beside Petra is Jabal Haroun or “Aaron’s Mountain” where his tomb is supposed to be located. Petra is where the famous movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was filmed.

It is dubbed the second wonder of the world, a UNESCO Intangible Heritage site and one of those famous places you should visit before you die. The visit to Petra alone is worth the entire Holy Land Pilgrimage.

On Sunday morning, we left the Al-Fanar Palace Hotel for a short 45-minute ride to the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge spanning the Jordan River, the border between Israel and Jordan. It was a tense moment for us, after all, every now and then, there are spot skirmishes between Israel and its neighbors and we expected a tighter than usual security at the border post.

To my great surprise, a lady official pointed to me and Fr. Gerry Martiano to follow her with our bags and led us to the Immigration Booth, where there were long lines, many of them in Muslim garb. The Immigration asked me only two questions… “Are you Filipino? Then he asked… when are we going back home? Then it was all done. But what took me aback was, they didn’t even had our bags x-rayed. Here we are, anxious about Israeli Security and they didn’t even bother to check my bags?

So off to our first pilgrimage to Mt. Tabor with new tour guide Exie Schlosberg who is a walking biblical encyclopedia. Here’s a helpful tip if you’re taking a pilgrimage tour. You must brush up on your Bible or at least get a tour agency that gives you smart tour guides who are well versed in scriptures and the gospels, thus making the Bible stories truly alive as they’re no longer words or stories but it all happened here in Israel 2,000 years ago!

Then we took a short steep ride to Mt. Tabor, which was truly a very high mountain, and as we were looking up the summit of Mt. Tabor everyone noticed a solitary cloud right above the summit. Was it the same cloud where God the Father spoke when our Lord Jesus Christ was transfigured and turned dazzling white? Who knows what God want us pilgrims to see?

At the top of Mt. Tabor is the Franciscan Church of the Transfiguration, which has two smaller chapels on each side, the Chapel of Moses and the Chapel of Elijah. Fr. Gerry Martiano officiated the Holy Mass there and to my surprise, instead of him giving the group a homily, he asked me to do a reflection of our first few days in the Holy Land. It was a first for me.

After that breathtaking view at Mt. Tabor, we took the tourist bus towards the City of Tiberias, which was founded by Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great located along the Sea of Galilee, which is 200 meters below sea level. It is the biggest city in the Sea of Galilee when our Lord Jesus Christ held his Galilean Ministry. As our tour guide Exie Schlossberg told us, the area along the Sea of Galilee is the place where nearly 80% of the gospel teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ were done.

A month ago I took a three-day retreat in Tagaytay City with the Opus Dei, and now that I’m in the Holy Land and experiencing not just an ordinary travel to a historic place but a place that is close to the heart and soul of Catholicism, after all, this is the place where our Lord Jesus Christ came down to become a man and be one of us… and save our souls.

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