December 29, 2000

The Church of the Ten Lepers in Burqin, Palestine.

We spent the day making lots of visits - I guess we're paying the price for being absent during the Christmas Holiday. It's a price we are quite willing to pay.

We took a wonderful side trip today that we have been hankering to do for months. Near Zababdeh is the village of Burqin, home to 12,000 people - about 100 of them Christians. Some of the folks in Zababdeh came from Burqin several centuries ago and still have family there.

There are two churches - a recent Latin church served by Abuna Alphonse from Jenin, and an ancient Orthodox church served by Abuna Yacoub from Beit Sahour. The church is the fourth oldest known church in the world, built on the site where Jesus healed ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) and one thanked him. There is an ancient cave within the church and a hole in the roof where people would deliver food to the lepers who had been quarantined in grottos.

View from the Church of the Lepers on the valley below in Burqin, Palestine.

Our "tour guide" remembered the whole Christian community coming to the church at night during the 1948 War to pray and be somewhat safer than they would be at home. Some things seems to change very little.

Returning to Zababdeh, we found ourselves in the thick of Christmas-Season visiting. The visits have their perks - loads of deliciously full plates of Palestinian food - but there must be a limit to the amount of coffee one can ingest!