St. Anne and the Valley of Bethesda

On Tuesday I went with some friends to St. Anne's Basilica and the Pools of Bethesda. The church is beautiful and a bunch of people from my group sang together in it and it had a wonderful echo. St. Anne is Mary's mother and the site is known as the birthplace of Mary. The pools were once healing pools and crowds of invalids in Jesus' day would wait by them to be cured. This is the place where Jesus healed a sick man in John 5. It was a really beautiful area and we got some good pictures here.

After St. Anne's we went to the Western Wall. The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is revered for its proximity to the sacred Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount, which is the Most Holy Place in Judaism. This means that for Jews the Western Wall is the holiest location that is currently generally accessible to the Jewish people for prayer. Every Friday night at sunset Jews come here to dance, sing, and pray to welcome in Shabbat. We went as a class to see it a few weeks ago, and then we went back during the day to see it. People go up to the wall and pray, and often leave prayer notes that they stick in the crevices of the wall.