St. Anne Church and Pool of Bethesda

Today we are visiting  St Anne Church which is located near the Lions Gate and right at the beginning of the Via Dolorosa.

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At this church of St Anne, Saint Mary, the mother of Jesus, was born to Anne and Joachim – the only grandparents of Jesus.

This is not just another church. The church of St. Anne is renowned for its outstanding acoustics design and you are just about to see why……

People from all over the world come and sing in the church throughout the day……It is amazing how a voice of one prayer can be sounds like an impressive choirs.

Now let’s tell the story of this church.

The church of St. Anne Church was built by the Crusaders during the first half of the 12th century but was captured by the Moslems in the very same century it was built. The Moslems cleansed the church of its Christian symbols and turned the church into a Madrasab – a religious school for Moslem children. Above the entrance, you can see an inscription testifying to this event.

Six hundred years later, in 1856, the Ottoman Sultan returned the church to the French, which, 22 years later, entrusted the Church to the White Fathers, an order of the Catholic Church named for the color of its priests’ robes.

Now let’s see where Mary was born. These stairs lead to the crypt where Mary was born. Note the notes left in the cracks of the stones by worshipers praying to St. Mary.

Right outside St. Anne’s Church lays the pools of “Bethesda” (Aramaic for “House of Mercy”). During the second Temple period, these pools and the surrounding area were used to heal and treat the disabled.

Now you’re probably asking what any of this has to do with Jesus….So this is where Jesus performed one of his miracles of faith at the Pool of Bethesda.

Legend has it that once a day; an angel would grace these pools and stir up the water. The first ailing person to get into the water when it began to stir would be healed immediately. One day, Jesus was walking in the pools’ vicinity and saw an ailing person lying next to the pool who had been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus approached this man and said to him “Get Up! Pickup your pallet and walk” and that’s exactly what happened. The man was cured at once.

Getting back to the present, in the middle of New York’s Central Park, there is a fountain with an angel’s status: the Angel, of the Waters Fountain, at Bethesda Terrace.

If we look around, aside from the pools, there are the remains of a Roman Temple to Asclepius, the Greek God of Medicine & Healing, and a Byzantine Crusader church.

I hope you have enjoyed visiting St. Anne Church and the pools of Bethesda.

I welcome your comments and suggestions to this video. It is essential that I learn what my viewers are interested in and how I can improve my blog

That is for today and until we meet again in my next video,let’s all live the Jerusalem Experience !!!!!