Journeying towards Bethlehem
I remember once when I was younger, our parish priest returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and brought olive wood rosaries for all the students in my Catholic grade school. I enjoyed holding that rosary in my hands and breathing in its earthy smell. It reminded me of my grandpa’s shop where he made birdhouses and picture frames. To a lesser extent, I remember our priest showing a slideshow of pictures of himself standing in places I had only heard about in the Bible — Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem.
Even with these tangible signs of the Holy Land as a real place, the phrase carried a legendary, almost mythical, aura. Within my child’s imagination, this “Holy Land” was a place stuck in time where everyone wore sandals and robes tied around the waist with rope.
When I hear the words of scripture evoke places of the Middle East today, I can’t help but hear echoes of current events, especially those of the past several weeks in Israel and Palestine. O Israel, hope in the Lord, the psalmist sang a few weeks ago. Before that, a reading from Exodus: You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
The references will become much more direct in the coming weeks, as we enter the season of Advent and immerse ourselves in Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem.
May they also remind us that these lands do not only live in the pages of scripture, but are places within which people are desperately seeking to live with dignity and in freedom.
My instinct tells me to not ignore the echoes. As a Holy Land pilgrimage reveals, the physical places of our faith tradition have a way of transporting us through time, connecting us to the people of the Bible in an intimate way, revealing their humanity. Done with care and intention, drawing close to these places can also remind us of the humanity of those living there today — people who we hear about in the news with labels that reveal the horrors of the present situation: victims, hostages, refugees, soldiers, militants, even terrorists. Yet behind all of these labels are individual people whose suffering should not go unnoticed.
About 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to experience this mystical overlap of the past and present on a trip to Israel and Palestine as part of a course at Catholic Theological Union — Abraham’s Children. The trip offered a unique Holy Land pilgrimage through the lens of interreligious relations; after all, this land is not only considered uniquely holy to Christians but also to Jews and Muslims. Within each major faith tradition are factions with varying ideas of what it means to honor sacred ground.
Moreover, it is not a land stuck in time, dedicated solely to the preservations of religious sites. It is a place in which generations continue to be born, societies continue to advance, alliances and conflicts continue to evolve. Millions of people go about their daily lives — lives marked by love, loss, labor, learning, laughter … lives that are centered around things common to human experience.
Nowhere was this more beautifully illustrated than in Bethlehem. The ancient site is home to Jesus’ birthplace and a modern-day city in the West Bank Palestinian territory outside of the towering walls surrounding the State of Israel.
My child’s imagination finds comfort in the warm, quiet stable in Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph finally found a place for Mary to give birth. Today the dark cave where Jesus is believed to have been born is hidden below the Church of the Nativity, a maze of a church with a variety of altars, each dedicated to a Christian tradition. It is prominently located within a plaza lined with shops, hostels, houses of worship, schools and other businesses. Crosses representing visitors over the centuries are carved into the stone walls of the church. A narrow entrance leads into the cave. In a matter of seconds, we were ushered in and out of the manger.
After the visit, we walked the winding road up to Bethlehem University, a Catholic institution in the Lasallian tradition. With lush greenery and a lively mix of students on their way somewhere or socializing in casual groups, its campus felt relaxed and homey. Students shared their professional aspirations and their dreams to change society at large.
Walking across the grounds and talking with students reminded me of my own undergraduate experience, but it quickly became clear that the university’s embodiment of Catholic values takes on a unique sense of urgency within their local context, both 10 years ago and even more so today.
Today about 75% of the student body is Muslim; residents of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the surrounding villages and refugee camps whose lives are marked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Memorials honoring students and others killed in the conflict adorn the campus grounds. Respect, solidarity and hospitality are pursued not as aspirational, pie-in-the-sky ideals, but as the only road to meaningful survival.
Now, due to the escalation in conflict, classes are being held online. Vice Chancellor Brother Peter Fray shares that more than 40% of the student body are not being allowed into Bethlehem from East Jerusalem and Hebron. A few weeks ago, a Palestinian student at the university was killed in Jerusalem.
The university issued a statement regarding the current situation in Palestine. It reads, in part:
We call upon local and international intellectuals and academicians to stand firm against the demonization and dehumanization of a people to the point of forced displacement and genocide. We also condemn all expressions of selective moral outrage that obscure the pain and suffering of Palestinian victims as well as the structural injustices that give rise to violence in the first place. … The time has come for all who believe in justice to rise against this outrage by speaking out, demanding justice, and the affirmation of human rights. What is happening is an affront to all the morals and values that are accepted by conscientious human beings worldwide. We, at Bethlehem University will continue to teach life, and life to the fullest, to the best of our ability; for each of our students, for each of us, for Palestine, for the world and for the future.
They say that, in mourning and in honor of the Palestinians killed in Gaza, Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year. As we move into the next few weeks with our own Advent and Christmas traditions, reminders of the Holy Land will be abundant. They will connect us with a Mary, Joseph and Jesus who were and are very real.
May they also remind us that these lands do not only live in the pages of scripture, but are a place within which people are desperately seeking to live with dignity and in freedom. May our prayers with them and for them serve as a spring from which actions towards peace for Israel and Palestine may flow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Cortina is a mother raising three bilingual, bicultural children alongside her Mexican husband. She is an advocate for transformative and restorative justice and believes strongly in parishes as mostly untapped sources of radical community. She works at Kolbe House Jail Ministry in Chicago, Illinois.
