The Holy Land – Christmas day on the 9th Of November
Yesterday was Christmas day for me, we reached Bethlehem. The city takes its name from the fertile land that once made this now politically walled city, a bread basket. For Bethlehem means ‘House of Bread’ Like the shepherds and kings who paid homage to the Lord, every pilgrim to the Church must out of default bend low as the enter the Church.
Over the centuries, the entrance to Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity has twice been made smaller. The purpose in the last case was to keep marauders from entering the basilica on horseback. It’s now referred to as the “Door of Humility,” because visitors must bend down to enter and so we did.
Your guides will tell you that this is the first Church in the world but that is certainly not true as Armenia by then,had become the first country to establish Christianity as its state religion way back as 310 AD.
In 325 AD the Roman pagan Emperor, Constantine converted to Christianity and with him the entire Roman world. A religion persecuted for three centuries was now free to propagate its faith under royal patronage. By the year 327 he sent his mother Helena on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and it is to her that is attributed the recovery of many relics and sites in the Holy Land
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Fr. Warner D'Souza is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Bombay. He has served in the parishes of St Michael's (Mahim), St Paul's (Dadar East), Our Lady of Mount Carmel, (Bandra), a ten year stint as priest-in-charge at St Jude Church (Malad East) and at present is the Parish Priest at St Stephen's Church (Cumballa Hill). He is also the Director of the Archdiocesan Heritage Museum and is the co-ordinator of the Committee for the Promotion and Preservation of the Artistic and Historic Patrimony of the Church.