The Scandal of the Incarnation

The four gospels take a dim view of Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus Christ. Early in his gospel, John says that Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples,  invited Nathaniel to meet “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip replies. (John 1,46).

 The other gospels recall the sad rejection of Jesus by his hometown after his baptism by John the Baptist. According the Matthew, it takes place after Jesus has spoken to a large crowd in parables. Then, he goes to Nazareth and speaks in the synagogue to his own townspeople, who are at first astonished at his wisdom, but then wonder where did “the carpenter’s son” get all this. They know his mother and his family, and they reject him. (Matthew 13,54-58)

Mark’s gospel puts the event after Jesus has raised a little girl from the dead. Going to Nazareth with his disciples, he’s greeted in the synagogue with astonishment because of his wisdom; they’ve heard of his mighty deeds, but then they ask where did this “carpenter” get all of this? He’s “Mary’s son” and they know his family. Jesus “was amazed at their lack of faith.”    (Mark 6,1-5)

Luke’s gospel has the most detailed description of the event, which he places at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Last Sunday we read the first part of his account: in the synagogue Jesus takes up the scroll from Isaiah and reads “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” And he says,  “This reading is fulfilled in your sight.”

This Sunday we hear about the reaction to his claim. “They are amazed at the gracious words that come from his mouth,” but then ask “Isn’t this Joseph’s son.” Then, enraged by his sharp rebuke to them for refusing to accept him, they take Jesus to the steep hill on the outskirts of their town and are ready to throw him over, but he passes through their midst. (Luke 4,16-30)

Why do they reject Jesus? The reason seems to be that they know his family and what he’s done for a living, and they can’t believe someone like him could be a messenger of God to them.  He’s just a carpenter. What does he know? He came from an ordinary family, some of whom may not have been nice people at all. So they dismiss him.

At Nazareth we see an example of what’s called the “scandal of the incarnation.” People can’t believe that God could come to us as Jesus did.

That scandal still continues.  One obvious instance of it is when people claim to be “spiritual, but not religious.” They want God and not the human ways God comes to us. They want God to be in the beauty of a sunset, but not in a church. They want God as they would like him to be, and not in the messiness of humanity.

I think of that line from one of the English poets:

“I saw him in the shining of the stars, I marked him in the flowering of the fields, but in his ways with men, I knew him not.”

The scandal of the Incarnation is always with us.

The Holy Family

Luke 2,41-52

For most people, Christmas is over– the music  has stopped; Santa Claus is gone from the malls. The decorations are down and put away. It’s over.

But in church Christmas isn’t over. We’re still singing  carols and continue to celebrate, and with the celebrations we continue to think  about what it means when we say “our God was made visible.”

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. The Word was made flesh; Jesus was born; he became the child of Mary and Joseph in the small town of Nazareth in  the hills of  Galilee. He was part of a family.

Let’s  think about this part of the life of Jesus. First, remember something about family life at the time of Jesus. Families of his day were extended families or clans, that lived close together and worked side by side,  as  archeological excavations in Nazareth and Capernaum make clear. They worked  in the fields or in  business,  ate together and moved together, as they still do in parts of the Middle East and elsewhere today.

It’s safe to say that in Jesus’ day nuclear families did not exist. A nuclear family– mother, father and children– is a modern form of family life. For this reason, the picture we sometimes have of the Holy Family– Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus all by themselves in a small house in Nazareth– is not a realistic picture. Jesus was raised in an extended family where  grandfathers and grandmothers, uncles, aunts and cousins were involved in bringing him up.

That doesn’t  take away the part Mary and Joseph played in his upbringing, of course. They weren’t props, standing at a distance while angels brought him up.

Some of the apocryphal gospels – early stories about Jesus which the church rejected  – picture Jesus’ childhood in almost angelic terms. One  story describes him forming  the figure of a bird from clay, then breathing on it, and instantly it becomes a living bird and flies away. Stories like that presented him as a child exercising  miraculous powers.

The church rejected the apocryphal gospels and stories like that because they gave a  false picture of how Jesus grew up. He “was subject” to Mary and Joseph, the gospel of Luke says. He grew up in their care as an ordinary child would.

Like mothers and fathers everywhere, they saw to his needs, they held him in their arms,  fed him, clothed him,  stayed up at night when he was sick. They taught him his first words,  guided his first steps,  nudged him along this way and that.

They  brought him to church–the synagogue, the temple–as we see in today’s gospel from Luke. They instructed him in his tradition. They taught him to pray,  interpreted events for him,  listened to his questions,  encouraged him over and over. They had their misunderstandings, as today’s gospel  indicates. In fact, they  influenced his life. Yes, angels were there, but at a distance.  Mary and Joseph and that larger family and village around him brought up the Child.

Today’s  feast of the Holy Family takes in the years of Jesus’ childhood and early adult life sometimes called his Hidden Life. His  years in that nondescript town among those ordinary people were truly hidden, yet were they less important  than his Public Life, the few years he taught and did great miracles,  suffered and died and rose from the dead? In those hidden years “he humbled himself.”  A hidden life is important, and a hidden life is what mostly characterizes life in a family.

We need to think about family life today.  It’s in trouble.  For one thing, the nuclear family– father, mother, children– is  in trouble. I read some disturbing statistics recently. In every state in our country, families where children have two parents have declined significantly in the last 10 years. One of three children live in a home without a father. Almost 5 million children live in a home without a mother. A single mother may have an income of $24,000. Two parents are likely to have an income significantly greater.

What can we do? How can we help? Feasts  like the Holy Family focus our attention on important things.  They remind us what’s important in God’s eyes. The feast of the Holy Family focuses on the family. It’s important, it says.  At the same time, it tells us God’s grace will be ours when we work to make families go and when we support them all we can.  God points to family life today. It’s vitally important in our world.

The Soul of Mary

In Luke’s gospel, you live when you believe and faith always sends you on a mission.

After the angel announces the coming of Jesus in Nazareth and then leaves her, Mary’s not alone. The Spirit who comes upon her remains with her, and the Word of God dwells in her womb.

She sets out “in haste” for the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, who also was with child. It’s not an ordinary visit. She hurries on because she’s filled with a sense of her mission. She hurries to Judea, where her relatives serve in the temple of God.

“Blessed are you who believed,” Elizabeth says to Mary.

“You too, my people, are blessed,” comments St. Ambrose, “ you who have heard and who believe. Every soul that believes — that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognizes his works.

“Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God. According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us.”

 

Approaching Christmas we ask that our souls be like the soul of Mary.

The Higgs-Boson Particle

Scientists all over the world are celebrating the discovery last week at a research center in Switzerland of a mysterious particle called the Higgs Boson particle. It’s a particle that’s found in all matter and its existence contributes to a new understanding of the nature of our universe.

After fifty years of searching for it, physicists seem to have found it.

I certainly can’t explain what they found, but I admire the scientists for their curiosity, their imagination and their patient searching for this mysterious piece in the puzzle of our universe. They want to know and I admire their drive to know.

I also admire their humility. The scientists say they’re only beginning to see how this world of ours began and how it works. To use a religious analogy, like Moses on the mountain, they’re approaching this mysterious universe with shoes off.

Our search for God is similar to theirs. We know God step by step, little by little. We can’t look straight at the sun; neither can our minds know God completely and at once. We search, not for particles, but for signs and experiences of life that reveal God little by little.

The truth of it is that God does not hide from us. In fact, we believe God revealed himself in the extraordinary sign of Jesus Christ, God’s  Son, who came humbly into our world as God’s Word.

Today’s gospel for the 14^th Sunday of the year (Mark 6,1-6 ) recalls the rejection  of Jesus by his own people in Nazareth, a town in Galilee where he was brought up. He suffered the rejection that prophets often receive; later he would suffer a cruel death on a cross, but he did not turn away. In his life, death and resurrection, we see God’s love, God’s desire that we know him.   In him, we have God’s invitation to share his life more deeply, face to face.

We have to fix our eyes on him, patiently and steadily. If we do, we will find him.

Wednesday, 3rd week of Advent

Holy Family Church, Nassau

Tonight at our mission at Holy Family Church in the Bahamas, we are going to reflect on Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the most important of the witnesses to him we remember in Advent.

I wrote a story about her some years ago that’s on Bread on the Waters. I’m going to repeat some of that story tonight. You can read it in full here.

The angel came to Mary in Nazareth, the last place we might expect an angel’s message. In this little known place, Jesus became flesh. In this young unknown woman, he came to dwell among us.

It wasn’t in Jerusalem, in the temple where God’s Presence was proclaimed. It was in Nazareth, in the quiet hills of Galilee, on a routine day, that He came.

We celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation and pray, “Pray for us, O holy mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

Patron of Blended Families

The great old stories from the scriptures have a way of speaking to us today, if we  hear them right. Tomorrow’s gospel from Matthew is about the announcement of Jesus’ birth made by an angel to Joseph.

Joseph is ready to divorce Mary who is mysteriously pregnant, but prompted by the angel he takes her into his home and raises her Child as his own. Anything like that going on today?

How about all the blended families we meet now, where divorce or death have created other groupings not based on original marriage vows or blood relaltionships? The holidays will bring many of them together. Stepfathers and stepmothers, stepchildren.  Some of these families have known divorce, maybe once, or twice or three times. There are kids and relatives from family number one, number two, number three.

Joseph loved  Jesus and Mary with a love, not based on flesh and blood, a love that made him father, husband, and all the other relationships that blood or vows are supposed to bring. He showed us that love is what counts after all.

Later on, Jesus said in Capernaum, when they announced that his family were outside waiting to see him: “Who are my mother and my brothers? “  He was proclaiming a love higher than that based on flesh and blood. He saw it in Joseph.

How about naming Joseph, Patron of Blended Families?

Safe and Sound

We are safe and sound on the Sea of Galilee, forty two weary pilgrims from St. Mary’s in Colts Neck. After an uneventful flight, (always appreciated) we were met my our guide, Joseph, a Palestinian Christian, and our driver, Eiz a Muslim from Bethany at about 8 AM this morning. Since our hotel rooms would not be ready till later because of the Sabbath, we toured Joppa, where a lovely Mass was taking place in French, and the ruins of Caesaria Maritima, where we saw Pilate’s  inscription and the great stadium and harbor of that important city. We finally made our hotel Gai Breach Hotel, in Tiberias, around 3 PM.

Joseph is a wonderful guide who explained the land and its development around Tel Aviv. He studied archeology at Drew University in Madison, NJ.

Tomorrow we go for Mass to Nazareth, then to Cana. If we have any energy left tomorrow, Joseph says he will take us somewhere else. Christians tourists are all over the area, from Houston, West Virginia, California, and of course New Jersey.

I have the homily tomorrow.

Nazareth–November 7

Where Jesus Was Raised

Some think Nazareth, at the time of Jesus, was a quiet little hill town in lower Galilee cut off from the outside world, but recent historical studies tell a different story. The town was not as isolated as once believed.  Just four miles away was the thriving Greco-Roman city of Sepphoris, recently uncovered by archeologists, and nearby were roads to Tiberias, Jerusalem and the sea coast.

The economy of Galilee was booming then, thanks to the rich soil of the Esdraelon plains and the fishing villages along the Sea of Galilee. A new port, Caesaria Maritima linked Galilee to the rest of the Roman world. Roman rule brought stability and a skillful administrator and builder, Herod Antipas, was firmly in charge. His new regional capital, Tiberias–a model of Greco-Roman city planning– dominated the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Could Nazareth, 15 miles east of the Sea of Galilee and 20 miles west of the Mediterranean Sea, a few miles away from a booming city, be shut off from this world?

How did Jesus get there?

Some historians say Joseph and Mary were not from Nazareth in Galilee, but from Judea. Matthew’s gospel, in contrast to Luke’s, indicates that Joseph was a Judean associated with Bethlehem, David’s city. Mary’s family may have been associated with the temple in Jerusalem. We will visit the Church of St. Ann, which claims to mark Mary’s birthplace in that city.  Another tradition, however, says Mary was born in Sepphoris.

After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, some believe that his family moved north to the small town of Nazareth to escape the clutches of Herod the Great who ordered the slaughter of infants. When Herod died, he was succeeded by his son Archelaeus,  who  was just as unstable as his father. Did relatives of Jesus living there  invite his family to the safety of Nazareth?

Herod Antipas, another of Herod’s sons yet slightly less dangerous than Archelaeus, inherited power in Galilee after his father’s death in 6 BC and ruled till about 36 AD, over the lifetime of Jesus.  He began building the city of Sepphoris in 3 BC . Wouldn’t it be likely that he recruited nearby workers like Joseph to help in the building?

Jesus and his followers rejected

Nazareth will always be a mystery. Instead of supporting Jesus, the Nazareans turned their backs to him, the gospels say. They drove him out of their synagogue when he announced his mission and said he was mad. (Mt 13,54-58)  After his resurrection, there is no evidence Jesus appeared there; his followers in Nazareth were few. “No prophet is without honor except in his native place,” Jesus said. (Mt 13,54)

A Christian Minority through the Centuries

Followers of Jesus in the town where he was raised continued to be few, it seems. By the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, around the year 90, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD,  scribes and temple officials, as well as the pharisees from that city had moved to the Galilean cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris, near Nazareth, and began a powerful new movement in Judaism.

Did they drive the followers of Jesus out of the Galilean synagogues just as his contemporaries drove him out of Nazareth?  Matthew’s gospel offers numerous warnings that the disciples would be handed over to the courts and scourged in the synagogues. (cf. Mt 10, 17)

“Slender evidence suggests that a Jewish Christian community survived in Nazareth during the C2 and C3 AD, “ writes Jerome Murphy-O”Connor. (The Holy Land, 423) The nun Egeria, one of the few Christian visitors in the 4th century, found a cave considered part of Mary’s house but she does not stay long in the town.  In 570 AD a pilgrim from Piacenza found Nazareth a hostile place:  “there is no love lost in the town between Christians and Jews.” Two Christian churches were built at that time, but after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 7th century the number of Christians in Nazareth declined further and their churches were destroyed.

When the Crusaders conquered the town in the 11th century, they rebuilt the Byzantine shrines and added their own buildings; some remains are visible today. But after the defeat of the Christians in the 12th century, Nazareth once more became a Muslim stronghold and Christians a minority.

Through the ages, the Christian presence in Galilee remained small, dependent mostly on Christian pilgrims coming to the Holy Land. After the crusades, it was considered dangerous for Christians to enter Nazareth.  In 1620 the Franciscans bought a site in the  town where the house of Mary was said to be and they continued to nourish a Christian presence in the town. Through their efforts the large Basilica of the Annunciation, built over the early Byzantine and Crusader churches and archeological remains from the ancient town, was dedicated in 1968. The Greek Orthodox church also continued its ministry in this revered spot.

Nazareth itself remained poor and undeveloped from the time of Jesus until recently, when it became the provincial capital of Galilee and its population soared. From less than 1,000 inhabitants in Jesus’ time, the number has grown to 70,000, mostly Muslim, today.

The large basilica of the Annunciation, with its extensive collection of art from all over the world honoring this mystery, is a gathering place for Catholic pilgrims. Here faith attempts to interpret this mysterious town “where our feeble senses fail.”

19th Century Nazareth

An English vicar left this quaint description of Nazareth as he approached it towards the end of the 19th century. Unlike its neighbor, Cana, the town then was experiencing a modest revival:

“Our horses began to climb the steep ascent of 1,000 feet that brings one to the plateau in a fold of which, three miles back among its own hills, lies Nazareth.

“At last, all at once, a small valley opened below, set round with hills, and a pleasant little town appeared to the west. Its straggling houses of white soft limestone, and mostly new, rose row over row up the steep slope. A fine large building,with slender cypresses around it, stood nearest to us; a minaret looked down from the rear.

“Fig trees, single and in clumps, were growing here and there in the valley, which was covered with crops of grain, lentils and beans. Above the town, the hills were steep and high, with thick pasture, sheets of rock, fig trees now and then in an enclosed spot.   Such was Nazareth , the home of our Lord. (p 513)

“The town is only a quarter of a mile long, so that it is a small place, at best; the population made up of about 2,000 Mohammedans, 1,000 Roman Catholics, 2,500 Greek Catholics and 100 Protestants – not quite 6000 in all; but its growth to this size is only recent, for thirty years ago Nazareth was a poor village.”  (p 516)

The Catholic shrines of Nazareth were not among the English vicar’s favorite places to visit, but he does recognize one of the town’s enduring holy places:

“The water of Nazareth is mainly derived from rain-cisterns, for there  is only one spring, and in autumn the supply is precarious. A momentous interest, however, gathers around this single fountain, for it has been in use for immemorial ages, and, no doubt, often saw the Virgin and her Divine Child among those who frequented it morning and evening, as the mothers of the town, many with children at their side, do now.” (p.515)

“The Virgin’s Spring bursts out of the ground inside the Greek Church of the Annunciation, which is modern, though a church stood on the same site at least as early as 700 AD.They say that it was on this spot that the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin; and if there is nothing to prove the legend there is nothing to contradict it.  Indeed, the association of the visit with the outflow of living water from the rock has a certain congruity that is pleasing. “ (p.516)

The Word Made Flesh

Nazareth, where Jesus lived most of his time on earth, offers few traces of the town he knew. Those were hidden years when the Son of God “humbled himself” by living inconspicuously, immersed in the steady, ordinary rhythms of a small 1st century Jewish town.  Jesus “became flesh” in Nazareth,  “one like us in all things but sin.”

Instead of Nazareth of the past, then, we may find him just as well in Nazareth of the present–or in any town or city or anyplace today, for that matter.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke recently of  the “adventure of God.” Beyond us, above the events of history,  “God did not remain within himself; he came out from himself, he united himself so radically with this man, Jesus, that this man Jesus is God, and what we say about him we can always say about God as well. He was not born only as a man who had something to do with God, but in him God was born on earth. God came out of himself. But we can also say the opposite: God has drawn us into himself, so that we are no longer outside of God, but we are inside, inside God himself. “ (Address to the Middle East Synod, October 2o10)

Jesus did not come only for the world then, he comes also for the world now, to dwell among us. Nazareth may help us understand the mystery of the Incarnation.

Later apocryphal gospels that date from the 2nd century relate miraculous stories about Jesus as a child in Nazareth, but they lack credibility. Jesus did nothing remarkable here. They did not watch his every move as he grew up here.

He worked no miracles; he did not impress or convert anyone in Nazareth, as far as we know. He was only “the carpenter’s son.”  His hometown did not recognize him as a prophet. Like any human being, he seemed to be part of the world in which he lived, under the influence of his time and place. Subject to Mary and Joseph and, hardly noticed, “ he grew in wisdom and age and grace before God and man.” (Luke 2,52)

His Own Received Him Not

Lk 4:24-30

Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth:
“Amen, I say to you,
no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built,
to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

Monday, 3rd week of Lent

The gospel from Luke brings us back to Nazareth, where Jesus lived most of his life among “his own.” Yet when he began his ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth, his own strongly reject him.  It’s hard to see how Jesus would not carry the hurt of that rejection with him;  how could he forget it?

According to Matthew’s gospel, the crowds that welcome him to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday call him “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  But  few disciples from Nazareth follow him into Jerusalem; a couple of women from there will stand by his cross as he dies. From what we know of Nazareth and its subsequent history, Jesus did not find much acceptance there. “He came to his own and his own received him not.”

To prepare us to enter the great mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the lenten gospels  help us understand the one who took on himself our sorrows. They also help us see what our own participation in that mystery will be like. Can rejection by our own be one of them?

Nazareth again

Nazareth: 1843

The gospel readings for the last two Sundays, and then today’s reading, make you wonder about Nazareth, where Jesus spent most of his life. He was rejected there, the gospels say, even by his own family. Why? Because they knew him too well, or at least they thought they did?

What happened at Nazareth afterwards? Did the rejection continue?

Archeologists and historians piece together some facts about the place where the Word made flesh dwelt. John Meier’s, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol 1, New York,1991, offers a lengthy assessment of what the gospels and other early sources say about his parents, his family status, the language he spoke, his education, his own place in society.

In his book, Meier criticizes the popular over-reliance on apocryphal literature like the Gospel of Thomas–which colors so many media presentations about Jesus today–  and asks why more attention isn’t given instead to the more reliable New Testament and patristic writers of the “great church.’

For the gospel writers, especially Mark,  leaving your own town and place was part of a prophet’s mission, Meier says, and so they have little to say about any connections Jesus had with his hometown during his ministry. Besides the story of his rejection there, Mark records some unpleasant visits from his family to Capernaum. (Mark 3, 21; 3,31-35) That explains somewhat the silence about Jesus’ hometown.

John’s gospel, though, mentions that after the wedding at Cana in Galilee, Jesus “went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples and remained there for a few days.” (John 2,12)

So there wasn’t a radical break.

Later, some from Nazareth took up his cause. Though they didn’t take part in his public ministry,  people from Nazareth were there when he died. In John’s gospel,  Mary, his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clophas–all presumably from Nazareth– stand beneath his cross with one of his disciples, and Jesus gives his mother into the disciple’s care.

The Acts of the Apostles say that Mary, his mother, along with “certain women’ and “his brothers” join in prayer with the eleven disciples after Jesus ascends into heaven. (Acts 1,14)

James, called the Just, likely one of those brothers mentioned in Acts, became a leader of the Jerusalem church. Paul met him a number of times, beginning shortly after his conversion . “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.” (Galatians 1,18-19)

Paul notes too that Jesus appeared to James after his resurrection. “…He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles”

James continued to be a highly respected leader of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and probably met his death there in 62 AD, for resisting the pressure of the Jewish authorities to limit the growth of that faith in the city.

He’s the author of the Epistle of James, a hard-hitting appeal for social justice. “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that. So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” ( James 2,15-17)

Besides James, a number of relatives of Jesus became leaders in the new Christian movement. We wonder about Joseph, but the silence of early sources seems to indicate that he died before Jesus began his ministry.

Still, others from Nazareth must have found Jesus “too much for them.” Early sources speak of the Ebionites, Jewish Christians who thought that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the messiah, but not the Son of God born of a virgin. There must have been some too from his native place who considered him a fraud. Jesus of Nazareth cast a dividing fire on the earth. “From now on five in one house will be divided, three against two and two against three…” (Luke 12,52)

But what about the Nazareth itself? The town  was certainly affected by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which reduced the presence of Jewish Christianity and Judaism  throughout that land.  When Jerusalem was rebuilt, gentile Christians became leaders of the Christian church there. Some relatives of Jesus still lived as farmers in Nazareth and kept memories of him alive, but their relationship meant less and less as time went by.

Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian writer of the 2nd century, says that at the end of the 1st century, Zocer and James, descendants of Jude, a relative of Jesus, were called to Rome for questioning by the Emperor Domitian, because of suspicions that as descendants of David  they might lay claim to his throne.

The emperor’s fears vanished when he saw the poor bedraggled farmers with callused hands standing before him, and he immediately sent them home.

In the 3rd century, another relative of Jesus, Conon, was arrested and stated that he was from Nazareth and was related to Christ. He was put to death; a shrine to him was built in the town and remains can still be seen.

Today Nazareth is a sprawling new city, the regional capital of Galilee, with over 60,000 people, the majority of whom are Moslem. Ancient and modern Christian shrines have been built over the old town. and remnants of the houses like the one where Jesus and his family once lived have been unearthed.

As with other great places of the past–Rome, Athens, Constantinople–the right kind of eye lets you see great things in this ancient town.

I hope to go there next November.