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Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

St John Phocas, tr. Stewart, 1889

Chapter 10

Now the first place after Ptolemaïs is Semphori,¹ a city of Galilee, almost entirely uninhabited, and displaying not even a remnant of its former prosperity. After this is Cana,² a very small fortified place, as it appears at this day. Here the Saviour turned the water into wine. And now comes the city of Nazareth, built at the bottom of the ravines leading down from various hills, in the midst of which it stands, wherein the great mystery was announced by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mother of God, through the great and rich mercy of Him who for our salvation was made flesh, Christ our God. At the entering in of the first gate of this large village you will find a church of the Archangel Gabriel; and there is to be seen a little grotto on the left side of the altar in this church, in which a fountain wells up, pouring forth a transparent stream, wherein the immaculate Mother of God, when she was given by the priests to the just Joseph, and was kept in his house, used to come daily and draw water: but in the sixth³ month of the Forerunner, when she was about to draw water as usual, she received the first embrace from Gabriel, and, being disturbed in mind, went back trembling to the house of Joseph, where she heard the angel say, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace!’ and answered, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word,’ and thereupon received the Word of God into her immaculate womb. After this, the house of Joseph was altered into a beautiful church, upon the left side whereof is a cave, not opening into the bowels of the earth, but upon the surface. Its mouth is adorned with white marble. Above it the painter’s hand has drawn a winged angel descending, who greets with good tidings the Virgin Mother, whom he finds gravely working at a grave piece of needlework, and he is depicted as though he were conversing with her. But the Virgin, terrified at the unexpected vision, and hurriedly turning herself round, has all but dropped the purple from her hands. Trembling and leaving her chamber through fear, she meets a woman who was her relative and friend, and embraces her with friendly salutations. Entering, then, within the mouth of the cave, you descend a few steps, and then you behold the ancient house of Joseph, wherein, as I said before, the archangel announced the good tidings to the Virgin when she came home from the well. At the spot upon which the Annunciation took place there is a cross carved out of black stone upon white marble, and above it an altar; on the right-hand of the altar is seen a little chamber, in which the Ever-Virgin Mother of God used to dwell. On the left-hand side of the place of the Annunciation may be seen another small windowless chamber, wherein Christ our Lord is said by sacred tradition to have dwelt after the return from Egypt until the beheading of the Forerunner. For then, according to the sacred tradition, Jesus, hearing that John had been betrayed, left Nazareth and dwelt in Capernaum. Beyond this is a range composed of various hills, among which is the steep place down which the Jews intended to cast our Lord, but He passed through the midst of them and went to Capernaum.

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