Think of your favorite excuse for not writing...its mine.

I can’t believe Palm Sunday was three weeks ago. With that said I will do my best to recap what has happened since then.

While Jerusalem is the ideal place to celebrate Easter Sunday, I stayed in Tabgha to celebrate with our community.

HOLY WEEK:

Thursday night we extinguished all the lights in the church at the end of mass quietly and let the parishioners go their own way. The Tabgha family ate a quiet filling meal setup in fashion of the Last Supper.

Only a little work was done on Good Friday.

The band practicing for Easter Sunday

Holy Saturday was spent preparing for the next morning. ML and I hard boiled and dyed 300+ eggs with three elderly German women and two seminarians.



Easter Sunday began with a 4am mass. I woke up shortly before mass and felt my stomach growl and head slightly twinge, not used to the early hour. The congregation assembled out in front of the church and proceeded in, lighting the individual personal candles on the way. In the first 5 minutes after everyone found a seat an elderly woman keeled over. I thought Ohhh, I’m next there is no way I’ll make it the whole mass…I was alter-serving…you owe me Br. Paul. Consider that my donation to the BVC for the next 10 years.



Three and a half hours later and catastrophe free we headed down the path to the Pilgerhaus for a huge breakfast and (while nothing special added) some of the most satisfying coffee ever.

We chilled in the pool in the early afternoon enjoying our first post-Lent-fast alcoholic beverage (I mean I tried to refrain from consuming alcohol during Lent NOT that I drank this one quickly). I say try; no one is perfect.

The next Friday (17th) we had some of the monks from Dormition to Tabgha to celebrate as a family. It was a great fish and bread feast where I was actually tired of eating come Satruday night. Late in the night on Saturday Martin, ML, and I walked to Capernaum to watch the Eastern Orthodox Christian Easter celebration. Prior to the BVC I had no encounters with Orthodox Christians and I’ve found myself curious after many occasions, this one especially.

On the following Monday a group arrived from Bethlehem. Comprised of children ages 5-13 (I would guess) with varied abilities and disabilities this group makes a yearly trip to Tabgha to relax and let loose. The catch is: the children and adult leaders are only allowed 1-2 day passes to leave the West Bank and return, extending this time limit would result in loss of privilege to leave the West Bank or maybe worse.

Chaos and commotion

Because of the short duration the children spend as much of their waking moments in the pool and after our work sessions we would jump in with them. They would play keep-away with balls or climb all over us. It was constant commotion and laughter (much of mine).

Too strong...come get some

It was an unpleasant realization to think that some of the children only see a pool once a year. It sounds like nonsense and I can only hope that it is.