Thursday, Feb. 6

We arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon, met our guide, Joseph and our driver, Moe, and rode our bus to Bethlehem.  We passed through the checkpoint that divides Israel and the Palestinian state.  Bethlehem is in the West Bank, land that had been part of Jordan until the 6-day War in June of 1967.  It was occupied by Israel for many years and now has some limited rule, but is almost entirely encircled by a separation wall erected about 15 years ago.

We are staying at St. Gabriel Hotel, and it appears nice.  While we are tired from the trip, a group of us went walked the 10-15 minutes to Manger Square where the Church of the Nativity is, just to check it out before making a longer visit on Thursday morning.


Thursday Morning: At 5:00 a.m. a group of us walked again to the Church of the Nativity.  The street in from the hotel is called Paul VI Street, in honor of St. Paul VI who visited the Holy Land in January of 1964.  The street rises at a good rate and then goes downhill the rest of the way to the Church of the Nativity which is built over the cave in which Jesus was born.  We took our time, listening to the Muslim call to prayer, taking pictures of the empty street, and pausing at Christmas Church, the Lutheran church in town.

Cave in which Jesus was born.

When we arrived at the Church of the Nativity, I was surprised to see the small door still closed, but the Franciscan door was open.  There we met someone who said the grotto (where Jesus' birth is said to have happened) was open.  Usually there is a 5:00 a.m. Mass, but today there was not.  We entered and found only two other people there, and were able to spend seven minutes there before the next Mass, a Greek Orthodox celebration was to be held and we were ushered out.   A worker let us spend a few minutes in the other caves that are beneath the church, and then we toured the main part of the church, walked down a few streets to show where shops were, as well as the Milk Grotto Church.  Then we headed back to the hotel for breakfast and our first day of touring. 

On our first full day we visited the Mount of Olives, going to the Pater Noster Church.  Today it is best known for the commemorating the teaching of the Our Father, and there are now over 200 translations of it hanging on walls near the church.  But it was originally the site of a church built by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine around the year 330 to designate the Ascension.  St. Helena, who found the true cross, built three churches: in Bethlehem for the birth of Christ; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for the death and resurrection, and a church on the Mount of Olives for the Ascension. (Luke 24:50-51).  We had a short prayer service there, and recited the Our Father.  Joseph, our guide, had been a seminarian for five years and studied many ancient languages, and prayed the Our Father in Armenian, the language in which it was probably taught to the disciples. 

After this we walked down the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem using the Palm Sunday Route.  Joseph gave us an overview of the history of the city of Jerusalem going all the way back to Abraham(c. 1800 BC) and pointing out various landmarks.  We also viewed the church called Dominus Flavus ( The Lord Weeps.)   Then we moved further down the hill to the Garden of Gethsemane where we had an outdoor Mass among the trees.  Immediately after we visited the Church of All Nations, so called because it was build with the effort of many contributing nations.  The pillars in the church are to look like trees, and in the dark church stars painted on the ceiling give you a sense that you are in the garden at night.  It is build over a large rock which extends the breadth of the church and beyond.  If Jesus knelt at a rock on that Thursday night before his arrest, it was probably that. 

After lunch we went to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem.  It is a very sobering place to visit.  A museum chronicles particularly the events from 1933 (rise of Hitler) to the liberation of the camps and the efforts of reconnecting with family afterward.  It ends in an area where you see an immense wall of books filled with the stories of as many of the six million Jewish victims.  It makes you realize that behind of of those six million, there was a particular life and story.  Other buildings on the site include one with an eternal flames and the names of the many concentration camps.  There is also a building particularly for the child victims in which one or a very few lights are multiplied by mirrors.  As you walk through the dark, circular building, you either hear mournful music or the reading of the names of children where were killed.   As I said, it is a very sobering place to visit.

We took the back way to Bethlehem to enter it in a different area.  The next day's blog gives some of the reason why.