Pilgrimage

Bethlehem

Today may have seemed to most people an uneventful day.  Our visit to the orphanage was rescheduled, so we had class and Mass in the morning, and were free the rest of the day.

However, a day on pilgrimage is never ordinary.  And a day in the final nine days before Christmas, as we pray the great ancient O antiphons (also the verses of “O come, O come Emmanuel”, can never be ordinary.

During these final days before Christmas, the Church remembers her history through the eyes of ancient Israel.  The O antiphons remember all the ways in which God revealed himself to Israel, and pray for the promised one to come.  The Church remembers and relives her pilgrimage through history until the coming of Christ.

We also remember another pilgrimage – that of Mary and Joseph, from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  Certainly as they were traveling, they too remembered how God had revealed himself to his people, in all the cities through which they passed – especially Jerusalem!

And they were coming here to Bethlehem, where the Davidic line began, and where it was about to see its most fitting end.

They were not only reliving the history of Israel, but they were becoming part of it themselves.  Indeed, every promise, every hope was about to be fulfilled in the child whom Mary carried in her womb.

Many of us took the opportunity to go to the Grotto of the Nativity to pray.  It was rather quiet and peaceful this afternoon, giving us a chance to stay a while.

We saw where our hopes have been fulfilled – the very reason why we hope today, because God has visited his people.  And we saw pilgrims continue to come, and families bringing their children to show them and teach them the faith, that they too would enter on pilgrimage, to join Christ from where he began his earthly pilgrimage, and one day enter into the house of the Father.