We are now a mere two days away from Christmas and the celebration of the coming of the Lord.  There are many images we have in our head of what the first Christmas would have looked like.  This past year, I had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land, including Bethlehem, which was an amazing experience.  I wanted to share some of the images as we prepare for Christmas day.

The Church of the Nativity was built over the sight of the birth of Christ.  It was dedicated in 339 and is the oldest continuous place of worship in all of Christianity.  The Church is owned by three major authorities. The Greek Orthodox controls most of the Church with the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Roman Catholic Church sharing the rest of the control. 

The first thing I had the opportunity to do at the Church was celebrate Mass in the Chapel of St. Jerome.  While translating the Bible into Latin (which is the translation our own English translation comes from today), St. Jerome wanted to be as close to Christ as possible.  He chose to translate the Scripture next to the very spot Christ was born.  Today, only a single wall separates the location where St. Jerome did his work from the spot of Christ’s birth.  It was a humbling experience to say Mass that close to the location of the Nativity.

After Mass, our group had to get in line to make our way to the spot of Christ’s birth.  We got to see the beauty of the Greek Orthodox side of the Church that included amazing mosaics and beautiful icons, many of which date to the early centuries of the Church.  According to Scripture, Christ was born in the place where the animals would have lived, which at the time would have been in a cave.  Since it was a cave, we had to go downstairs into the inner cave.

Once in the grotto, you could see a star on the floor with a dot in the middle of it.  That is the location where Christ came into the world.  We were able to walk up to the spot and touch it.  It was quite a moving moment to be able to be in the place where Christ was born.  After a day of moving around a Church and waiting in a busy line, the quiet of the grotto brought us into that moment when all of creation was able to stop waiting for the Savior and celebrate that salvation was now at hand. 

I hope these pictures and description helps with each of you seeing what the Scriptures proclaim, and I hope each of you have a blessed ending to Advent.