Come to Israel, day 2, late afternoon…

St. Catherine’s church is on the same site as the Church of the Nativity, with a lovely courtyard between them.

However. As you can see in the courtyard, St. Catherine’s shares a wall with the church of the Nativity. That wall runs through all the levels of the church.

St. Catherine’s is gorgeous inside, and we stopped to pray at the main altar of the Church.  Leo told us that this is the church where their Christmas Mass is said every year.

The stained-glass window behind the altar is of the nativity scene. On the far right of the church is the cloister of St. Jerome, also created by Barluzzi, who of course designed this church, too. The cloister is lined with pillars from the original monastery where St. Jerome worked for many years, translating the bible.  In fact, the church was built right over that early monastery. We took the stairs on the right of the cloister, down to the lower level to the new St. Jerome Chapel, where we would celebrate today’s mass. This chapel is actually the study where St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. 

Next to St. Jerome’s Chapel is the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, where all of the babies murdered by Herod were buried.  The Chapel is actually right next to the spot where Jesus was born, separated only by the shared wall of the two churches. Leo explained that the people wanted their innocent babies to be buried as close to the birthplace of Jesus as possible.

This, too, is a real chapel and this is a picture of how the chapel looks when a mass is going to be said.

This was the last evening we’d spend in Bethlehem, and a dozen or so people from our group went out to several Christian homes for dinner.  I was unable to go, but the people who did go met wonderful people who are managing under difficult circumstances.

They learned that Christians living in Israel are not allowed to work at anything other than menial jobs and they must live in certain sections of the city; they can’t even use the same facilities as the Jewish or Muslim people…  Our friends returned deeply impressed by their warm welcome, delightful food and their interesting conversation.

In the morning, we would be heading off to Bethany and Tiberius…