Capernaum, "Blessed are They," "If you love me ..."

My day began badly, but turned out that the bad thing was a good thing ... I still haven't fully adjusted to the new time zone, and I slept through my alarm this morning. This means that I didn't make it to morning prayer at the Church of the Multiplication. Turns out, however, that the Sunday morning prayer service isn't open to the public; so it's actually a blessing that I slept through my alarm! I don't know what kind of day it would have been had I cut my sleep short and walked to a church that I couldn't pray in!

I got to talk to Kathy, Reed, and Lucy this morning. It was wonderful. Conventional wisdom is that, being on retreat, I should cut myself off from the happenings back home. However, one of my lessons I need to learn while here is that this is a real place with real experiences for me ... and if I need to remember that the Holy Land is real when I'm in Atlanta, I must also remember that Atlanta is real even while I'm in the Holy Land.

We saw the "traditional" house of Peter, right next to an ancient synagogue. There is a new church built above Peter's house. Our tour guide suggested that the size of the house, and its proximity to the synagogue, suggest that Peter was a wealthy and powerful man in Capernaum - and would have been a good "sponsor" for Jesus' ministry. You'd think he'd come off looking better in the Gospels if he were providing all the financial support!

Next, we visited the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount, and the beach where Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me?" We celebrated communion near the beach. This was a good day of pilgrimage.