We ended our desert journey known as canonical year with a 5 day retreat facilitated by Fr. Lionel, reflecting on the life of Jesus and the covenant of God with His people. We also had an experience travelling around the desert area with Brother Elio, NDS during this Holy Week. By visiting significant places in the Bible history and our first Christian heritage we deepened more our understanding of the importance of the desert in our Christian faith.
? We went to Beth-Shemesh: as you can see in the book of 1 Sam. 6.
? Tel Azeka: 1 Sam. 14: 17; 1 Sam. 17:18
? Beersheba: Gn. 21: 9; 2 Sam. 24: 1-2; Mt. 6
? Ein Avdat, Carpentry and Ein Gadi particularly to the David waterfalls 1 Sam 24; Song of Songs 1: 13-14
? We also went to the tomb of David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel who dreamt that the desert would flourish and turn green.
? We ended our two day trip in the place of Qumran: Acts. 2: 42.
Qumran is the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in one of the caves located close to the Dead Sea near to Masada. History says that a Bedouin shepherd was taking care of his sheep and by chance he slipped and a stone fell on to one of the vessels. When he heard the sound, he went to find out what was inside of the cave and he found a vessel with a manuscript in it. And he took it and sold it to the shop in Bethlehem. Luckily the one who bought it was a well-known archeologist. He thought that it was only 50 years old but after some investigation he discovered that it was an important manuscript more than 2000 years old. At that time there were three groups (Essenes, Pharisees, and Zealots) waiting for the coming of the Messiah, and the one which was living in this area was the group of Essenes and their way of waiting for the Messiah was by living in the desert.
The Israeli people after some years found more manuscripts and now they have more than 800 manuscripts from more then 2000 years ago.

written by Maria Clara