Feast
of the Visitation of Mary (Mother of Jesus) to her cousin Elizabeth (Mother of
John The Baptist) in Ein Karem
Ein
Karem – where Mary exclaimed the Magnificat – “my soul doth magnify the Lord,
and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Savior.”
Crusader Church of the Visitation
In Ein Karem near Jerusalem
According to
Christian tradition, John the Baptist was born
in Ein Karem, leading to the establishment of many churches and
monasteries. In 2010 the neighborhood had a population of 2,000. It
attracts three million visitors a year, one-third of them pilgrims from around
the world.
According to
the Bible, Mary went "into the hill country, to a city of Judah" when
she visited the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. According to Catholic tradition
and dogma, Mary brought forth the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Theodosius
(530) says that the distance from Jerusalem to the place where Elizabeth, the
mother of John the Baptist, lived is five miles. The Jerusalem Calendar (dated
before 638) mentions the village by name as the place of a festival in memory
of Elizabeth celebrated on the twenty-eighth of August.
The Anglo Saxon
Saewulf on pilgrimage to Palestine in 1102-1103 wrote of a monastery in the
area of Ein Karim dedicated to St. Sabas where 300
monks had been "slain by Saracens.” The site of this crusader
church was purchased by Father Thomas of Novaria in 1621.
In 1672 the
Franciscan order received a “Firman” from the Ottoman Sultan and 'large sums of
mon[ies]' were expended in an extensive rebuilding program.
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