Mount Tabor

To get to Mount Tabor, we traveled by bus part of the way and then took a "very fast" moving van to the summit. The drivers could probably tell they were scaring us out of our wits as they wound their way around and up, but I tried to keep my mind on more significant things, and I prayed a lot!

Mt. Tabor is 1,500 feet above the Plain of Esdraelon, the biblical plain between Galilee and Samaria, where some major Old Testament battles took place. The Plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel was notably the place where Deborah and Barak defeated the forces of Jabin and Gideon defeated the Midianites. But most importantly, Mt. Tabor is believed by Christians to be the place where the miracle of Jesus' Transfiguration took place. If I am going to die, I thought, what better place than this!

In no time we were at the top and making our way to the Basilica of the Transfiguration, a magnificent church first erected in the 4th century and later enlarged by the Crusaders. But this one was not the original. This one has only been in existence since 1924. No matter, it is nevertheless magnificent.

Father celebrated Mass there. I had the privilege of doing one of the readings. Our Mass followed a beautiful Latin Mass celebrated by no fewer than twenty Franciscans. I did not take pictures of the Mass out of a sense of reverence and awe.

Afterwards, we wandered around the premises. I looked out at the Holy Land below and breathed in the crisp evening breeze. "Tabor rises up to Heaven like an altar that the Creator built to himself," I read somewhere. How true. In those moments, I was transported back through faith to witness the miracle of the Transfiguration.