The 2nd item in Michigan is about Holland, Michigan and their annual Tulip Festival. We have been to this wonderful event twice. We highly recommend it to anyone.
The 1st item is about the Franciscan Monastery located at Catholic University in Washington, DC. I have to say we lived there 20 years and I never heard of this place until after we retired and moved to Kentucky. This monastery received permission from the Vatican to recreate under the church located on their property and on the grounds surrounding their property sacred sites from the Holy Land. So we put it on our agenda.
We arrived a little before their next scheduled tour an waited in a large room off the chapel that had display cabinets full of artifacts and things of interest. I'll share two of my favorites. I tend to collect some pictures that can be used as I teach lessons and things. The first is a crown of thorns made out of thorns from the Holy Land. The 2nd is a replica of Antonia Fortress and some clay lamps.
Antonia Fortress fascinates me. It was built on the north wall of the temple mount right against the north wall around the temple area. It was built high enough on its 4 towers that the Roman guards could see into the temple area. This was important to keep down any problems during the holy days like Feast of the Tabernacles and Passover, etc. When we visited Israel we walked the floors of what would have been Antonia Fortress and saw where the Roman guards had carved into the stone floor their games they would have played.
Our tour guide wore a white uniform with red belt and patches sewn on it. This is because he is a volunteer, not a monk or church official. They dedicate themselves to preserving and assisting this Franciscan order with the church and grounds. He had a slight speech impediment and this made it a little difficult for me to understand all he was trying to tell us. That, and I'm sure I'm starting to lose hearing. But he was a very nice man and you could sense the reverence he had for the Catholic faith and his opportunity to serve as a tour guide in this place.
He took us into the main part of the church. Many Catholic cathedrals and churchs are set up in the shape of a cross. In the center is the main altar. In several of these buildings I have been able to tour, I have noted a wooden arch that reaches way toward the ceiling and the main altar is under this arch. Then at the end of each of the 4 parts of the cross pattern is an altar dedicated to someone. In this church they had beautiful altars covered with beautiful clothes with candles placed on top of the clothes. Above each altar there would be an elegant wood carving as long as the altar depicting the person that this altar was dedicated to. In several parts of this particular church there were also lovely stained glass windows over these altars.
One of the decorative elements I really liked as a star with a cross engraved in it. This cross reminded me of the Jerusalem cross that you find in Israel. It is a large cross with 4 little crosses in each of the four sections left by the larger cross.
Our tour guide would show us all of these things but underground in 4 corners of this church was where they have re-created places you may visit in the Holy Land.
The first of these we would visit was the portion devoted to the Tomb of Christ. Claude and I saw this in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. When in Israel we hiked very quickly down the Via Dolarosa from Antonia Fortress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This would have been the route it is believed Jesus would have taken as he carried the cross (It is believed and was practiced that a person would only carry the cross beam that the arms would have been attached to and this is probably what Jesus would have carried, not the entire cross.) The depiction of this portion of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is really very well done and looks a great deal like the one in Israel. They have a long rectangular stone with 1 post on each of the 4 corners of the stone. This was the cleansing stone and would have been where they laid the body of Jesus to clean it before placing it in the sepulchre. Behind this stone was a VERY ornament little chapel built over the tomb of Jesus. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre this would have been around a corner but it too had this elaborate little chapel over the site. A sepulchre in Jesus time was actually a multi-room affair. This one had an little room as you enter where the mourners and family would have been. Then you went into the next room where a shelf was carved out to lay the body on. If it was a larger sepulchre it may have had more than one shelf so that other family members could also have been buried in this place. These sepulchres were carved out of the stone on which all of Israel lies.
The pictures I chose to post on this blog are the following: 1) Our guide standing by the cleansing stone behind which is the chapel built over the tomb of Christ. You see a door and behind that door is the little room for the mourners and family. This particular room had a stone altar and I can't remember what the guide said it was for. Then there was another very elaborate gold guilded door taking you into the actual room for burial. 2) This is the slab in the 2nd room on which the body of Christ would have been laid.
Another place they have re-created is the Church of the Annunciation. This is located in Nazareth. It is where it is believed the angel told Mary (announced) that she was to be the mother of the Son of God.
Then we entered the catacombs. Claude and I have never been to the catacombs. There was so much to see in this portion. We walked down a representation of what we usually think of as the catacombs. The catacombs were a place where the Christians could hide from persecution, it was a place they could bury their dead, and it was all underground.
One of the things I learned was there were different types of burial niches in the catacombs. If you were a saint or martyr you were given a higher grade of niche. The light for this area was really clever. They had hanging lamps, literally! They had lamps shaped like the clay ones pictured earlier but made out of metal and hanging from the ceiling on a chain. They had light bulbs in them but they had the appearance of being clay lamps fueled with oil. Very clever I thought!
One of the rooms in the catacombs had some great artwork in it. There were wall murals made of mosaic tiles. Each told a different part of the belief of death and resurrection and the assignment of souls after death. I'm posting a picture of the mosiac mural of Lazarus being raised from the dead. There was an altar in this room and it had a wood carving on the front face of the 2nd coming and the horror some people would face at that day. Lots of red color in it. The 2nd picture is of this very dark altar.
Also found in this catacomb area were niches with a stone replica of the remains of a martyr, the actual mummy of a child, 2 paintings of Christians being persecuted in prison, a room with painting of stories from the Bible and at each end a glass case with a statue depicting a martyr and their pose tells their story.
Then we went to the Church of the Nativity. This can be found in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity. Each Christmas and Easter they hold HUGE programs on the plaza outside of this Church and they fill the Church with people. Often you see this square in the broadcast of these programs. They have the believed site of the birth of Christ in the basement of the church built over the site. They were very accurate in their replicating this site. Although I feel that the one in Bethlehem had a lot more gold and scarlet cloth and lamps hanging. This room has two portions to focus on. The first is a semi-circular area with a huge mosaic picture over it and a gold multi-pointed star imbedded in the floor. This is where the actual birth is believed to have taken place. The other is a little lower than the rest of this space and is where a stone manger is located. This is where Mary would have laid the baby Jesus. Stone is plentiful in Israel and most mangers to feed the animals would have been made of a carved out piece of stone. Hence, Jesus manger was probably really stone and not the wooden affairs we see at Christmas time.
This concluded our indoor tour with the tour guide. There was one other portion but it was under renovation. In fact, that wall of the sanctuary was draped in plastic from vaulted ceiling to floor. This would have been Golgotha. Claude and went outdoors to tour the magnificent grounds.
Around the out side front and sides of this complex are cloisters. It is a covered pathway with archways on either side. There were beautiful symbols between the arches on the outside of the cloisters. Inside at various intervals were mosaic pictures called 'rosary porticos'. Since we had no guide at this point I made the assumption that these are parts of what you may say if you were reciting the rosary. That could be entirely wrong but the mosaics depicted the life of Christ. Hence my assumption. Nonetheless, they were beautiful mosaics and I took a picture of all but the first 3 (because we didn't walk that far down to begin our walk of the cloisters). I'm posting a picture of what it looked like to walk through the inside of the cloisters and one of the mosaics depicting Christ being presented at the temple as an infant.
On the outside of this cloistered area and down a hill were some absolutely beautiful, quiet, peaceful gardens. In these gardens were the Grotto of Gethsemane, a replica of a Jewish tomb, the Tomb of Mary, a monument to St. Anne, the Lourdes Grotto replica, the Ascension Chapel, and the 14 Stages of the Cross. I'm posting the Lourdes Grotto (the woman in the center of the flowers is having a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus, on the rock face) and the 1st Station of the Cross.
As you exit these exquisite gardens, there is a butterfly garden. It is by the cloisters and you can see the church we just toured behind the cloisters.
Within the cloister and around the front and sides of the church are beautiful flower beds, statues of St. Christofer and St. Francis, a statue of Friar-Priest Godfrey Schilling, and the Portiuncula (the church that St. Francis first began his work).
This was a wonderful experience. I came away appreciating the people, their love and dedication to their religious belief, and their kindness to those who visit this Franciscan Monastery.
I didn't see a single Franciscan monk. But I did truly enjoy this stop on our trip.
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