O Little Town of Bethlehem

 

O Little Town of Bethlehem

[Edited excerpt from the “Christmas in October” post by Teresa Albright on her 2016 travel blog A Tree Grows in Jerusalem.]

 …The next morning our Biblical Formation group climbed onto a tour bus for our final excursion outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. We headed to Bethlehem, a small town just five miles from Jerusalem, but outside Israel. We were entering Palestinian territory and the disputed West Bank. With passports in hand, it seemed we never left Jerusalem. The suburbs of Israeli settlements filled in any gaps of land separating the two states. I thought about a common Mexican-American expression uttered by those whose families lived in Texas since before it was a U.S. state. "We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Staring out the bus window, I wondered… “how many of the construction workers building these settlements are Palestinian?” I also wondered about those Israeli “settlers” – perhaps not unlike so many settlers of the U.S. West – who are often young, economically poor families making use of government subsidies for inexpensive housing…

Our first stop in Bethlehem was “Shepherds’ Field,” the location that since the fourth century, tradition has commemorated as the place where angels proclaimed the birth of the Messiah to shepherds. At the pilgrim site there is a small chapel adorned with angels and frescos depicting the Lucan nativity scene. Its domed ceiling is modestly decorated with small, circular skylights. We sat facing one another, eyes raised, and imagined ourselves on a hillside looking up at the night sky like shepherds so many years ago. Together we lifted our voices and sang the chorus to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Another tour group filed into the chapel one by one as we sang. Their gradual presence felt like a flash mob of Christmas carolers descending upon the unsuspecting fresco figures. 

After caroling we wandered around the grounds with more time on our hands than intended. I sat down in front of a tall, beautiful fountain at the center of an open square…The fountain is topped with a statue of a simple shepherd clothed in chiseled wool and with crook in hand. It is not often that one sees such a humble human figure atop a large, public structure. We usually think of kings, mighty warriors, political power brokers or mythical gods crowning such monuments. But atop this fountain stood a simple shepherd who had neither home nor a country to call his own. 

Staring up at this humble figure I thought it fitting that this shepherd was chosen as the witness to a message brought by a baby. The Good News the child would proclaim is that true and lasting power is not what we think it is – that the kind of power which lasts eternally is available to the humble shepherd, or a young girl, or a helpless infant. This Good News sheds light on the impermanence of power possessed by kings and imperial states. It reveals that powers which seek to control and oppress will one day decay and be forgotten. Looking at the stone shepherd perched in prominence, I smiled at the humor in Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” …

While others wondered as they wandered, I sat reflecting on the fountain that honored the shepherds in the field when Andrew from our group gestured for me to follow him into a nearby cave fashioned into a chapel. We had a half hour to kill before our bus arrived, so the group spontaneously decided to celebrate Mass. Father Andrew was our presider and he asked if I would present the Baby Jesus during the preparation of gifts. He handed me a near life size plaster Baby Jesus to hold until the time came to place him in a small wooden manager before the altar. The size of Baby Jesus demanded it be held the way one might hold a real baby. To have held this plaster likeness any other way would at best look awkward, and at worst appear sacrilegious. And so, I cradled the plaster Baby Jesus in my arms. 

The Mass was beautiful and intimate. We read from the Gospel of Luke and sang more Christmas hymns. As we made our way through the Liturgy of the Word I lost control of emotions I was trying so hard to hold in. Tears streamed down my face as I looked frantically for a handkerchief. Cradling Baby Jesus in my arms, I grieved for the baby that had died inside me almost five years ago. I grieved for the child that will never be. I grieved for my husband and a family legacy that ended as quickly as it began. In that cave-turned-sanctuary it became evident that I have no control over the progression of my own grief since no matter how many years pass, I still am unable to fill this hole left inside me.

I cannot control this body that for too many unknown reasons has refused to give life; I cannot control the passage of time that makes me despair of any hope. Nor can I control the suffering of people who inflict violence on one another an ocean and continents away. I grieved as I held Baby Jesus….I grieved for the children of this Land; the ones who are harassed by the constant presence of militarized authority; for the children who are pulled from their warm beds and incarcerated; for the adolescents who enter mandatory military service as teenagers and come out as wounded soldiers; for the children who come home from detention and are changed forever; and for the children who never come home at all. I wept that day in Bethlehem because I have no control over any of it… 

hope against hope

Our next stop was Bethlehem University, a Catholic university run by the order of De Le Salles Brothers. The University’s Public Relations Manager and six Palestinian students greeted us. These beautiful young people were eloquent, passionate and most of all – filled with hope. If I were to describe in one word all the students encountered on our campus tour, it would be “joyful.” The buildings where they learn carry the scars of Israeli missiles; their friends, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, remain detained without trial; and color-coded cards distributed by a foreign power arbitrarily segregate them from their family living in Jerusalem. And yet these young people - Muslim and Christian - have found peace within the university walls. Everyone in our group was so impressed and inspired by the hope and courage of this next generation. 

In a Q&A session with the students it became clear that even at their young age they already understood the limits of a power that seeks to control. They believe that neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Israeli government can resolve the bloody conflict that began a generation or two before they were born… The frailty of humanity as it manifests today…just might find its redemption in these Innocents. Recalling the child in the manger who reveals the ever-lasting Power of God, I wondered…will it be children, like these Palestinians at Bethlehem University, who will finally bring the peace of God’s Kingdom to this Land?

 Portal to Prayer: 

Blessing of the Children (Mark 10:13-16)

“And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’ Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.”

 

Faith Formation Moment: 

Did you know that this year’s parish book is a travel log about the Via Francigena. Pick up your household’s copy of “A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith” by Timothy Egan. Available for free in the church narthex and parish office.