As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on the faithful. For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust. Our days are like the grass; like flowers of the field we blossom. The wind sweeps over us and we are gone; our place knows us no more. Ps. 103: 13-16.
Caesarea was built by Herod in 40 B.C. He was merely a puppet king of Rome, but his ambitions were high. He wanted nothing less than to imitate Roman glory in Jerusalem. The program of building he embarked upon was unrivaled in the known world. Herod's aim to achieve lasting renown led him on an extensive building campaign with the construction of amphitheaters, temples, aqueducts, and palaces. His most ambitious project was the port city of Caesarea, named in honor of his Roman masters, and he imbued it with all the splendor of the day. Caesarea had a temple, a hippodrome, an amphitheater, a theater and baths. He built an aqueduct that carried water into the city from miles away. It was truly magnificent and Herod achieved his fame, but it was short-lived. Herod's magnificent port city began to sink almost as soon as it was built, for it had been built on an unstable fault along the shore of the Mediterranean.
Caesarea appears in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. In Acts chapter 8, we learn that a deacon named Philip ministered there and was visited by St. Paul. In Caesarea, St. Peter converted Cornelius the first Gentile to become a Christian. And St. Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea while waiting to be sent to Rome to be tried.
I had been on the Mediterranean in Spain and in Greece, but this place felt different. It was melancholy even in the bright sunshine. We sat in the Roman theater which still holds concerts and seats 5,000 spectators and we opened our Bibles and read about the conversion of Cornelius. It was a dazzling day, sunny and cloudless. The sea provided a beautiful backdrop. Everywhere we looked we saw ruins. In the clear waters of the Mediterranean we could see the remains of Herod's palace, a stark reminder of how fleeting and fragile life is. Our guide pointed out the barely discernible stables and the remains of the bath houses used by spectators and visitors to the hippodrome. The theater where we read was once the scene of the massacres of thousands of Jews who were forced to fight to the death as gladiators. As the Palmist says, they and Herod are all gone and what remains is in ruins. And so Herod is like the fool in Jesus' parable who built his house on sand, The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined. Mt. 7:27.
