A visit to Bethlehem where Christ was born

For our special presentation on our talk show on Straight from the Sky, we bring you another encore presentation to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in this month of October, which Catholics believe is the month of Mary. This show was actually shown on December 26, 2011 when I featured a dear friend, Ms. June Keithley, wife of the late ABS-CBN Tonight News anchor Angelo Castro, Jr. who has since passed away.

June Keithley has done many documentaries of the Blessed Virgin Mary, some of which were featured in the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). For this show… we simply talk about the Blessed Mother and her role in the lives of Marian people. So watch this encore presentation with June Keithley and Mama Mary on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00PM with replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9:00PM M-W-F.

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Jerusalem, Israel — Arriving in Jerusalem for the first time was like coming back in time.  Strange, but I felt I was at home. Though Jerusalem today is a bustling metropolis, it is a city that nothing can compare when it comes to spirituality because the three major faiths in this world — Judaism, Mohammedanism and Catholicism — have their roots right here in this eternal city that caused our Lord Jesus Christ to weep because they rejected Him.

While the Jews were already here from the time of Abraham, Moses and our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks to St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine who converted to Christianity, she helped preserve the tradition sites where our Lord Jesus Christ walked on this earth. Indeed, our tour guide Exie “Romema” Schlossberg, who is a walking Bible encyclopedia and speaks excellent Hebrew, told us clearly that all these holy sites trace their roots to Catholic tradition. I say Catholic tradition because there are a lot of Biblical sites here that you can read in the New Testament.

We had an excellent hotel called the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is perched up on a high mountain overlooking the old walls of Jerusalem and nearby is the Knesset the Israeli Parliament and office of the Prime Minister Netanyahu. Our first visit was to the Mt. Olivet, which had a church known as the Ascension Church because tradition says that it is the place where our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. But today, it has been renamed the Church of the Pater Noster… as tradition also says that this was the spot where our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer.

We went down the Kidron Valley on foot, which is a very steep downhill trek in order to get to see the Basilica of the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where a huge stone slab is believed to be the place where our Lord Jesus Christ prayed in agony… to the point his sweat turned to blood.

We then visited the Shepherd Field, which had a chapel to honor the first people that received the Good News from heaven about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We had Mass said in one of the caves on that field officiated by Fr. Dante Barcelona. From there, we then proceeded to nearby Bethlehem. As we already wrote before, the Hebrew meaning of Bethlehem is “House of Bread,” and it isn’t a coincidence that our Lord Jesus Christ would refer to himself as the “bread of life.”

It is in Bethlehem that you can see the political boundaries between the Israelis and the Palestinians as this place is under Palestinian authority. There is a checkpoint with armed guards, but then tourist buses bring precious money to the coffers of the Palestinians so they did not have to check our bags nor our passports. But with so many tourists coming to the Church of the Nativity… it took us two hours from the time we alighted from the bus to the time we touched the very spot where our Lord Jesus Christ was born inside a cave and placed on a manger.

To enter the Church of the Nativity, you have to stoop low lest you bump you head on this very narrow door. The reason why the door is so small is due to the fact that the enemies of Christendom would often attack Churches and kill worshippers… while on horseback. Somehow even with a huge throng of tourists or Marian devotees arriving everyday, they never made the entrance to this church bigger to accommodate the tourists.

Inside you will see a small altar that was placed on top over a 14-star hole that is believed to be the very floor where the Baby Jesus was born inside a cave. In short, you really have to go on all fours on the ground right under the altar in order to touch that holy ground and each and every single tourist does exactly this. This is why an Orthodox priest is always on guard to yank you out of that altar if you stay a few seconds more than necessary.

On the way out, we passed the Catholic Church in honor of St. Catherine of Alexandra… yes, the patron saint of Carcar City. Tomorrow the tomb of Jesus.

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