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Click on areas on map with large red dots to view a virtual pilgrimage of the area. Ein Karem:
“… There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light” (John, I 6-8).
This church, beautifully located on the slopes of a rocky hill and shaded by cypresses, is also known as the Church of the Magnificat, in commemoration of the answer Mary gave her cousin Elisabeth in the Gospel episode of the Visitation. Her hymn to the glory of the Lord is inscribed in forty-one languages on one wall of the church. The present basilica is a Franciscan church designed by the Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi and built between 2938 and 1955. The Franciscan Order had acquired the land as early as the second half of the seventeenth century. The construction work revealed the remains of earlier, more ancient sacred buildings; in particular, vestiges of a church of the Byzantine era and of a similar building raised by the Crusaders in the twelfth century were found. In front of the Church of the Visitation, which is entered through an artistic wrought-iron gate, is a low portico topped by a graceful bell tower. This building also consists of two parts. In the so-called Upper Church religious services are held, while in the Crypt is to be found a cave in which a miraculous spring broke forth at the exact moment when Elisabeth welcomed the Virgin. Among other curiosities, it is worth mentioning a stone against one wall which bears the imprint of a young boy’s body. Traditionally, it is believed that this imprint was left by the infant John, when Elisabeth hid him from Herod’s soldiers at the time of the slaughter of the Innocents.
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Until 1948 it was an Arab village, and was then abandoned by the original population, to be resettled by Israeli immigrants over the following years. The village is famous in the Gospels for the episode of the Visitation of Mary to Elisabeth, her cousin: “And it came to pass that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb… And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour” (Luke, I 41-42 and 46-47); and for the birth of John the Baptist: “Now Elisabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son… and it came to pass that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John” (Luke, I 57 and 59-60). The Church of St. John the Baptist belongs to the Franciscan monastery of the same name. The first church rose here in the fifth century, over the place traditionally held to be the home of Zacharias and Elisabeth. Enlarged by the Crusaders and later used by Arabs as a caravanserai and stable, the church was rebuilt and transformed several times. The latest additions, carried out by the Franciscans, date from the second half of last century and from the thirties of this century. The most striking part of the pleasantly adorned interior is the Crypt, which houses the so-called Grotto of the Benedictus, considered to be the place where John the Baptist was born. A marble star beneath the altar bears a Latin inscription: “Hic precursor Domini natus est” (Here was born the precursor of the Lord).
Church of the Visitation
