"House of Bread" - Bethlehem

We arrived into Tel Aviv, Israel early in the morning to start our pilgrimage.  From the airport we were blessed to start our trip by visiting the town in which Christ was born.  The tour guide reminded us as we entered the town of Bethlehem, the meaning of the name: "House of Bread."  How beautiful our Christian faith is, Jesus Christ was born and later proclaimed, as he does today, "I am the bread of life."  

Today, I had the opportunity with other seminarians to visit the birth place of Christ at the Church of the Nativity.  The Church is shared with three Christian Traditions: Roman Catholics led by the Franciscans, the Greek Orthodox, and the Armenian Orthodox.  To enter the church leading to the Grotto (the place where Christ was born) you have to bow your head to enter the Church!  It's just like in the Mass, when we bow our heads during the Creed with a slight bow acknowledging the Incarnation of God: "and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man."  

         Love always has the ability to capture.  And to say that my heart was captured by the Mass in the cave in which Christ was born is an understatement.  During the Mass I was pushed back into a cove because we were squeezing 20 guys into a small area.  I later found out that I was squeezed into the cove where Christ was laid in the manger.  I couldn't help, in the midst of the craziness and the crowd, even when I was unaware of it, the Lord was asking me to rest with him in the manger where he laid. There I was, after receiving our Lord in the Eucharist, bent completely over looking at the manger.  It was there that I lifted up a prayer to all the families I have encountered, for this was the place where the Holy Family began and resided.

        The Pilgrimage is just beginning, yet I believe one of the most powerful moments of this trip will be when I was able to receive Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, in the town named "house of bread." It was there that the Lord was born and asked me to rest with him in the manger.