The Manger, Now with Baby Jesus Lying There

Today is the feast of Stephen. I chose this great saint and first martyr of the Church to be my patron at my Confirmation. So, that makes it my feast day as well. This morning I went down to the Church of the Nativity to see if maybe things would be a little quieter and I could pray. As I walked down to the Church I could tell that all the people of the last few days were gone and things were already back to normal. I was able to go down in the grotto of the church and sit next to the manger for a few hours and pray. They have placed a statue of the infant Jesus lying in a crib in the manger now. There were a few groups of pilgrims that came through while I was there it is often moving to see the great faith of the people that come. I was particularly taken by a couple groups of families from Korea. The father gathered all the children together with his wife and they all prayed together at the manger. There were also many more small children coming today and it was neat when the little kids would climb up into the manger to see the Baby Jesus.

 
Baby Jesus in the Manger

As I prayed this morning, my thoughts again returned to the shepherds, the first visitors to the manger. After receiving the message of the angel they had to go search and find the Christ child. What joy they would have experienced when they finally arrived at the cave and found the Holy Family. I was reminded of my own search and desire to find Jesus. For a while this morning I was able to share in the joy of the shepherds as I sat there and contemplated the miraculous things that took place here. The shepherds left the cave full of joy and wanted to go and tell everyone what they had seen. Their message has gone to the ends of the world now. This morning, following in the footsteps of those first humble shepherds, I and many others came to see the place where the Child was laid. Praise God for the wonderful Christmas gift of His Son.

St. Catherine’s Church Decorated for Christmas

See All The Pictures

Today we had a rather unique opportunity to attend a special ecumenical gathering at Bethlehem University. The heads of the various religious denominations in England were in Bethlehem on pilgrimage and were having an ecumenical prayer service together. The distinguished pilgrims included:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster
Rowan Williams, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, Primate of the Armenian Church in Great Britain
David Coffey, Moderator of the Free Churches

They were hosted by Archbishop Fuad Twal, the Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem

Distinguished Ecumenical Pilgrims from England

It was a nice prayer services as far as those things go. There’s only so much you can do when you can’t celebrate Mass. The highlight, I would say, really came after the prayer service. The university Olive Branch Choir gave a wonderful Christmas concert that really helped put me in the Christmas mood. I still felt a little chill when they were singing “Hurry to Bethlehem” and “O come ye to Bethlehem” and I had to think…O ya…I’m actually here this time!

Later tonight I went to an orchestra concert at St. Catherine’s. This was entitled a concert for Life and Peace that was televised all over the world and is apparently a pretty big deal. It was a very nice concert and the church was packed. It wasn’t Christmas music, but if was very nice. Manger square is starting to look like Christmas with lights everywhere. There still don’t seem to be many tourists thought. One bit of good news (for the locals anyway) was that it finally started raining today. That will be a nice Christmas present for a desert.

Concert for Life and Peace

We had Mass this morning at the St. Catherine’s Catholic Church which is connected to the Church of the Nativity. This church functions as a parish church here in Bethlehem and so the Mass was in Arabic. I was hoping for some Latin at some point so I could pray along, but the only words I could recognize were the Kyrie and Hosanna. After Mass the priest met with us to talk about the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. The Franciscan order has been taking care of all the holy Christian shrines ever since the time of Francis. It seems that his peaceful nature made him acceptable to both Christians and Muslims. After this talk I went down to the cave of the nativity and spend about 2 hours just sitting by the manger and praying. It’s such a luxury to be able to have time to do that here. We’re not tourists that have to run on to “see” the next thing right away. For a while it was just me down in the cave praying. We’re starting to see other pilgrims starting to arrive now so I imagine things are going to start to get busier. All the merchants and shop keepers are really counting on many people coming for Christmas. The whole economy here is dependent on tourism and recent times have been tough. I pray that many pilgrims will come.

St. Catherine’s Catholic Church