Mary's House?

The big green and gold Neon Tours bus began an uphill climb as the driver downshifted.
"On the right is some of the ruins of the city of Ephesus," said our Turkish guide, Yesim. "We will visit it tomorrow," she added.

It seemed as though we had been on the bus a long time, although in reality it had only been about two hours since our last rest stop. The diver expertly navigated the huge bus around the mountain switch backs as the late afternoon sun produced lengthening shadows.

"We will soon be at Mother Mary's house.  Remember that it is a sacred place to Muslims and Christians alike. Please, act accordingly," our guide said.

Harold, the Chinese real estate agent from Orlando, asked, "It's sacred to Muslims too?"

"Oh yes, Mary was the mother of the prophet, Jesus."Obviously, the Muslim view of Christianity is considerably different from mine.

About fifteen minutes later we were at the site of the house of the mother of Jesus. It was crowded.  When there are several tour buses in the parking lot, things will be crowded.

Of course we were asking ourselves how anyone could know with any certainty that this is actually the last house in which the Virgin Mary lived. After I verbalized this question, my wife was quick to answer.

"According to the scriptures, John brought Mary here because of so much persecution of Christians  in Palestine," she said.

"But, to this house?" I asked as we walked up a stone walkway amongst large trees with overhanging branches laden with thick green leaves.

"That's where a German nun gets involved," she said, with a slight smile playing across her face.

By now we were walking by a cistern. Ahead was a line of tourists in front of a rather small  stone house. Claudette  continued as we walked, "A German nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, had a vision in which she saw the house and its location. The poet, Clemens Brentano, wrote a book based upon her visions. The house was found based on information in the book.  It was in ruins.  The house you see today was built on those ruins in the 1950's. One of the Popes visited it in 1896, although it has never been designated as Mary's house by the Catholic Church."

"That's quite a history; I'm impressed," I said.

She responded with a "ho-hum" look.  We were near the brown stone house now. I noted the flat roof and arched doorway. The structure has been converted into a chapel. It is fairly dark inside. There was an ornate statue of Mary as an alter piece with a large bouquet of fresh cut flowers nearby. The decor reminded me of the many cathedrals we've visited, but on a smaller scale.  People were now speaking in whispers.  Many were making the sign of the cross. The Indian woman who sat in fromt of me on the bus was on her knees beside me, her lips moving in prayer. 

In about five minutes we exited the tiny two room house and began our walk back to the bus. As we began our descent we saw a wall with faucets on our right.  We were told that this is holy water from a spring. A young woman in a mini-skirt and large sunglasses filled a half-liter plastic bottle. I wondered if she  knew it was holy as she took a big gulp. A few feet beyond this is the prayer wall. Literally thousands of small scraps of paper are stuck in cracks between the stones in this wall. Prayer requests are written in the hope they will be answered. We did not test it. Our conventional method seems to work.

It seems to me that it is almost impossible to visit the Virgin Mary's house without some feeling of the presence of high being, which as a Christian I refer to as God, and in his famous book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill referred to as "Infinite Intelligence".  We were in a Muslim country,  a country that holds the mother of Jesus in high regard.  It is also country in which ethnic cleansing had been practiced and a country in which honor killing is still practiced. 

As we climbed aboard the bus I asked Claudette, "Do you think that by helping Turkey's infant tourist industry we are endorsing such things as honor killings?"