Later Nazareth

Hello Everybody!

We just finished our tour of Nazareth. What a beautiful town. It was way more modern than Bethlehem, and the Church of the Annunciation was beautiful!  The past 24 hours have been very exciting. We visited the Mt. Tabor where the Transfiguration happened and also had a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. Being on the boat was neat. We had a brief meditation time to ponder all the various stories of Jesus' ministry out on the sea. For the next couple days we will be visiting the other various sites in the north where Jesus lived and did a lot of His ministry. By the end of next week we will be in Jerusalem and back to a regular class schedule. We will be resuming our Gospel of John class and Prophets class.  Let me tell you. It's super cool opening the Gospel of Luke and reading the first 4 chapters give or take and being able to say I've been to those places. What a blessing!  Talk to everyone soon. 

-Chris

Photo Link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66858764@N08/with/9112948990/

That link should take you to my photos. It has Holy Land photos and all my Guatemala photos. I should be able to put more up eventually. Enjoy!

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Him O Lord

Hi everyone,

First and foremost I want to express my sympathy to the Foys family after the loss of Deacon Frank. Eternal Rest Grant unto Him O Lord, and Let the Perpetual Light Shine Upon Him. Deacon Frank actually trained me how to be an altar server. Learning how to be an altar server was a huge blessing in my life and a gift I have used ever since. Deacon Frank would always call me to serve weddings and funerals too. I also remember how he talked about wanting to deacon my first Mass as a priest as well. I always felt very loved and cared for by him. I'm going to miss him a lot. One of the last times I got to speak with him he told me the story of how he became a deacon. What a privilege to hear.  Thank you Lord for the blessing of his life and help me to be a good and holy deacon as he was!  Though I can't be home for the funeral, my prayers will be there. I'll be praying here in the Holy Land.

In the past few days I have been able to visit a lot of neat sites. What stands out the most is the Church of the Annunciation. What a beautiful church!  In there is the grotto where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and she made her Fiat to becoming the Mother of God. It's really neat seeing as the parts of the church that you can go in are on various levels. The big main church is on the "3rd" floor and the grotto where Mary met Gabriel down below. We also got to visit what was believed to be the home of the Holy Family.  We also visited Armageddon. This is the place where the "last battle" is supposed to happen. It was actually an old city inhabited for thousands of years that is now a lot of rocks. People have come though and excavated the site and it had some impressive features for its time.

We also visited by the Mediterranean Sea at Caesarea Maritima. This is the place where the Angel freed Peter from his prison chains and where Paul waited to be taken to Rome to be tried in a Roman court. Very cool to be there and quite beautiful!  The water was super blue!  So far I have seen many beautiful sites and holy places.  It will be a blessing to keep seeing these places and to keep seeing the Scripture in new light.    

Alright everyone. Talk to you soon and know of my prayers!

-Chris

...And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Good Evening (or Afternoon for everyone at home),

I hope everyone is doing well!  I'm doing very well. Today was an "ordinary" day. It started off beautifully with 7:30am Mass in the Manger grotto at the Church of the Nativity. The Franciscans  who run the Roman Catholic part of the church were very nice and let us take their Mass. It was beautiful to get to experience Mass there again.

Today was also a class day. The lectures today were on the Spiritual Direction course I'm taking.  It was a good chance to get some good pointers for being a future spiritual director.  If you have never experienced spiritual direction, I highly recommend it!  What a gift!  As a seminarian I'm required to have a spiritual director. However, required or not, it is such a blessing in my life. As we are learning, the purpose of a director is to help the directee grow in their relationship with God. That is the primary task of a spiritual direction relationship. Having someone to walk with you on that journey and assist you spiritually is a total blessing.

Free time today was spent just hanging out with the guys. I got to go to my favorite coffee shop too. I was able to have mocha and read my book for class. A nice way to spend the afternoon.

Tomorrow we visit the site of Jesus' Baptism and the Mount of Temptations. These are going to be two great sites!  They are very "human" sites I would say. In Baptism, Jesus sanctified the waters of the Jordan allowing us who are Baptized to receive the Holy Spirit. With that comes immeasurable graces and virtues. The Mount of Temptation is also a key site for you and I. In being tempted something happened to Jesus that happens to you and I...He was tempted!  The only difference, He never gave in. He never sinned. One of the things we can take from this though is that Jesus understands temptations and understands we as humans get them. We can turn to Him in our time of temptation and ask Him for the grace to overcome them just how He did. This isn't to say this is easy, but He is with us. The Holy Spirit is with us. And the grace is with us to overcome the temptation and defeat the sin!  A little prayer I was taught to pray when temptations arise, whatever they may be, is "Jesus, Saver of Souls". That's it. That little phrase. I've come to make it my own little prayer by adding, "Jesus, Saver if Souls, save my soul so I can save souls for you." The "image" of whatever was tempting you may still be there after this prayer, that's only normal and how our brains work. If we try not to think of something we start to think of it. But it won't have the power over you. Jesus deflates temptations power by His grace. It just takes our part of asking for the grace.

Alrighty it's getting late over here. Please know of prayers and please pray for me.

-Chris

Instant Coffee

2/2/15

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while!  I have been doing lots of different things during my stay and I would like to give y'all an update.  First I will mention the stars.  Living at home in an area with a lot of light pollution and other things in the air, you don't get many opportunities to see the stars.  Well here, that's a little bit different.  The stars are super clear at night, and the moon is the brightest I've ever seen it!  It is neat to be outside at night and just look up and see a beautiful night sky full of lights.  OK, time to complain a little.  Instant Coffee.  No me gusta.  That is really all they have for us though.  Coffee by the pot I have come to find out isn't that common here, at least where we are staying and the places I've gone.  I have found a way to mix one of the instant packs with some Nesquik powder.  This allows me to make the coffee more tolerable and relive my childhood at the same time.  There is a coffee shop though which is close by that makes a pretty good mocha.  That's a great place to go and study while I'm here.  It also has great wifi internet which is a gift!  The internet where we stay isn't the greatest, so to be able to stop and browse the net or Facebook like at home, while drinking a mocha, is pretty legit.  The other day my classmates and I had a night time Holy Hour at the grotto in the exact place Jesus was born.  That was super awesome!!  It was a beautiful prayer experience and a blessing to pray there.  I actually was essentially sitting in the Manger while praying looking at the star marking the place of His birth.  Super cool!  Another cool place that we have visited is the tomb of the Patriarchs.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, and Leah are all buried there.  Sarah might be also, I don't remember exactly.  To be at the tomb of Abraham and Isaac, for me, was super cool.  Classes have been pretty good so far in the Holy Land.  I have a Spiritual Direction course and a course on Ecumenism.  Both have been interesting classes.  In a couple weeks my classmates and I will begin some more classes that will continue into the school year.  It is a class on the Prophets and a class on the Gospel of John.  Today was a pretty good day too.  We visited the birth place of John the Baptist and had Mass there.  We also visited the monastery of the wilderness which is believed to be the location of "the wilderness" John the Baptist spent his time in.  Oh!  speaking of this reminds me of something funny during Mass.  Tons of stray cats are in the Holy Land.  They are everywhere!  I like cats, so I'm OK with it, but what was hilarious was during the homily, a cat actually walked into church and into the sanctuary during Mass.  Now I've seen bugs before in Church and Mass, but a cat...this was new!  We had a real nice lunch after Mass.  I was worried originally that the food wasn't going to be that great in the Holy Land.  It has far surpassed my expectations.  I have really liked the food, and the breads!  The breads, let me tell you. I love bread.  To explain, if Olive Garden Breadsticks were an option on the menu at Olive Garden with say a Coke, I'd be set.  So here they have a lot of fresh breads and pita breads.  They have all been super good on their own, but the "salads" they have given us to dip them in...super delicious! OK everyone, enough about food, or I'm going to need a late night snack, and we don't have any bread laying around or Portillo's close by, so that may be problematic. I'm going to get ready for bed.  The internet as I mentioned isn't great here, so I haven't been able to load many photos on my Flickr page.  However, if you want to see my Guatemala pictures in the mean time, scroll down into some older blogs and you will see the link.  Pax.

AMDG

~Chris    

Shepherds and Cats

1/22/15

Hey everybody!

I hope everyone is doing well back home. I'm doing very well in the Holy Land. It has really been a blessed experience so far. This week we started classes. I have a spiritual direction course and an ecumenism course so far. Some other courses will begin later in the semester and when I return back to school for classes in April.

We visited the Shepherd's Field today and had Mass there in one of the caves. It was super neat!  To have Mass in the space where the Angel appeared to the shepherds and let them know about the Birth of the Savior was really cool.  Fun fact about having Masses in these various locations. The Mass used in those locations is the Mass for the location. So for the Gospel at the Shepherd's Field they use Luke 2:8 which is the story of the shepherds so you are able to be in the exact spot of what is being proclaimed in the Gospel!  After Mass we had some prayer time and time to explore the grounds. The distance too between the field and Bethlehem isn't really as long as I imagined it. I imagined that they saw a star and would take a while to arrive, but in reality it isn't that bad of a walk. Kinda cool to put it in perspective.

We went for lunch to a place called the Shepherd's Tent. It was awesome!  We had a ton of great food. There were different salads for the first course. It was hummus and other things to dip bread in. Then came the meat and potatoes course. Then a small dessert. Was quite filling and delicious. I admit, I miss Portillo's, but the food here is doing an OK job filling in. A unique part to the restaurant was that wild cats are allowed to walk around the restaurant. Now in America that would be a major health violation, but in the Holy Land these guests are acceptable. It was kinda cool just having a cat walk around your feet while eating lunch in a nice restaurant. Not something I can say I've experienced back home.

The weather here has been beautiful. It has been in the 60's and sunny. I'm not gunna lie, I'm happy to be missing the cold and snow. I've been lucky in my international travels. When it was super hot back home I was cool in the mountains in Guatemala, and now here in the Holy Land I'm warmer as it's cold back home.

Alright everyone, please know of my prayers. This weekend we will have Mass at the study of St. Jerome where he translated the Bible.  I hopefully will get a chance to see some more places and explore too. Talk to y'all soon!

-Chris

Merry Christmas! (1/18/15)

1/18/15


Hola Amigos!

Como estan?  Well I guess I shouldn't be using Spanish for my blog right now since I'm no longer blogging in Guatemala, but blogging from the Holy Land! We visit Bethlehem as part of the experience, and what a blessing it has been.  Today (January 18th this year) is Armenian Christmas Eve, so it is still Christmas time here!  One of the coolest things I have done so far is have Mass at the grotto at the Church of the Nativity.  In this grotto they have a star marking where it is believed Jesus was born and also a few feet from it the manger where it is held they placed Jesus after he was born.  The Mass was at the altar in the area where the manger was.  It was such a beautiful Mass.  The area can only hold about 20 people standing around it, but what a blessing!  As the priest elevated the host, it was so cool to be looking at Jesus in the Eucharist, and to know the very same Jesus lay there over 2,000 years ago.  That I kinda, in a sense, had a role of one of the Shepherds or Magi.  That I was at the manger truly adoring the Lord how they did.

The food here has been good so far.  We have had meat, fish, potatoes, hummus, cheese, and lots of bread, just to name a few!  A beautiful thing jumps into my mind about bread.  Bethlehem means "House of Bread."  How beautiful that at Mass, I'm receiving the Bread of Life in the House of Bread...that's cray cool!  The culture is very different here from the United States, but in a way does remind me of Guatemala.  This reminder is especially true with the street vendors and the shops.

Some of us came across a "Starbucks."  I put it in quotes, because it isn't Starbucks, but they took the name, the logo, and sell coffee.  It's not half bad!  In fact it was great sipping on a mocha watching the Armenian Christmas parade going to the Church of the Nativity.  Tomorrow begins a full week of classes and touring around.  Time is going to start to go by fast I'm sure while we're here, but it will continue to be a blessing as it has been already.

Please know of my prayers for all of you, and please know I feel very safe over here.  There has been nothing here to cause me real fear or anxiety.  I ask for your continued prayers for safety, and prayers as I prepare for ordination.  As you know, I will be ordained less than one week after I return home from the Holy Land!  I hope all of you will be there!  I'm not sure how often I will get to blog since the internet is pretty bad, but please know I will keep you informed as much as possible.  I also hope to upload photos on a flicker account again when I get the chance.  When that gets set up, I'll add a link.  OK everybody, talk to you soon!

~Chris Lankford