by James Martin
NOW THAT WE HAVE a sense of what the Gospels are, how they were written, and how important it is to study them, you can see how reading them relates to faith. Yes, the Gospels were written by four different people in four different ways for four different audiences, but they all recount the same story: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As modern believers and seekers, when we read a Gospel, we strive to understand its context, not poke holes in the narrative. We read a story not to pick it apart, but to encounter Jesus. In that way, we read in the light of reason and with the eyes of faith. And even those readers who are not Christian, or who are not seeking to dedicate their lives to Christ, might consider bracketing issues of possible contradiction and read the texts generously.
That brings us to the final part of the Annunciation. A few years ago I was discussing this passage with a friend, a Catholic sister named Janice. We were talking about how this narrative mirrors the life of the believer: God initiates the conversation; we fear; God reassures us and tells us what will be required; we doubt; God points us to past experiences and helps us to trust; we say yes; and finally we are able to bring into the world, with God’s grace, something new.
“You’re forgetting the most important part,” she said. “Then the angel left her!”
Janice was right. Then came for Mary the time of faith. Who knows if before the Resurrection she ever had an experience as transformative as the Annunciation? The Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary “pondered” all these things in her heart. It may have taken many years for things to become clear.
Profound spiritual experiences usually engender feelings of confidence and trust. But as time passes, you may begin to wonder if those events were real. Or you may never again have an experience as profound. When Mother Teresa’s journals were published in 2007 as Come Be My Light, many readers were shocked to discover that after a series of mystical experiences early in her adult life, the rest of her days passed with little sense of God’s presence in her prayer. Mother Teresa spent the remainder of her life meditating on those earlier experiences, treasuring them in her heart.
Mary lived long enough to see her son perform wondrous deeds. She was present at the Wedding Feast at Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine, and she also would have been witness to him after the Resurrection. Yet in those intervening years, when Jesus was an infant, then a child and an adolescent, she may have asked the same questions that believers ask today: “Did that really happen? Was that really God? How can I believe?”
The Gospel of Luke tells us that, after the Annunciation, Mary rushed to spend time with Elizabeth, who was carrying John the Baptist in her womb. It’s hard to imagine that Mary would not have discussed her experiences with Elizabeth, a trusted older woman, and with her husband, Zechariah, a devout man steeped in the Jewish Scriptures. Both would have listened carefully as Mary told her strange story, reflecting on Mary’s experience in light of the Jewish traditions. But even with the support of the wise Elizabeth and her learned husband, Mary may still have questioned.
In time, on Easter Sunday, Mary received the ultimate answer. In time, so do we.
But first comes trust.
* * *
THE ANNUNCIATION
Luke 1:26–38
* * *
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
* * *
CHAPTER 3
Bethlehem
“She gave birth to her firstborn son.”
A FEW PEOPLE WARNED George and me away from Bethlehem. Its location in Palestinian territory was said to be dangerous. But once we reached the Pontifical Biblical Institute, the Jesuits told us not to worry. Besides, there was never any question about going. I didn’t care if it might be dangerous: I had to see it. Who knew if I would ever return to the Holy Land?
The best route, said Father Doan, was to take the Number 21 “Arab bus” from the Damascus Gate, an impressive arch in the city walls flanked by two crenellated stone towers. In ancient times a highway led from this gate to the capital of Syria. So early one morning George and I walked a now familiar route into the Old City: exiting the main gate of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, passing through a luxe apartment complex, and padding down a set of broad limestone steps. In just a few minutes we reached the Jaffa Gate, the entrance nearest the Jesuit residence. A few minutes later we passed over the invisible border that delineates the Jewish section from the Arab section and found ourselves across from the Damascus Gate, surveying a phalanx of idling white buses.
We were the only non-Palestinians aboard the Number 21. The bus reminded me of the minivans that I frequented during my two-year stay in Nairobi, complete with raucous music, ancient shock absorbers, and chatty passengers. During our thirty-minute trip, we could easily see the Wall, the massive barrier separating the Palestinian territories from Israel. As we entered Bethlehem an Israeli soldier boarded and swiftly checked our passports. The ease with which we entered Bethlehem surprised me. Leaving would be a different story.
We told the bus driver that we would like to see Manger Square, where the Church of the Nativity is located, and he helpfully dropped us off at the nearest stop. When we alighted from the bus, we were instantly surrounded by gesticulating cabdrivers, like bees to flowers, each energetically offering to drive us into town. Doan had recommended this arrangement, so we accepted the offer of a friendly Palestinian man, short of stature, whom I will call Aziz.
Aziz was garrulous and helpful, but also slightly pushy—not surprising for someone supporting his family on a taxicab driver’s income. Although George and I told Aziz that we most wanted to see the Church of the Nativity and Shepherds’ Field (where an angel announced the birth of the Messiah), Aziz insisted that there were many other places nearby that were worth a visit. “Well worth it! Well worth it!” he said.
As anyone who has traveled abroad (or at home for that matter) will tell you, there is no little danger involved in entrusting yourself to an eager cabdriver. But George and I were in an adventurous mood.
“First we go to Shepherds’ Field!” he said. Aziz’s yellow cab raced through the narrow streets of Bethlehem and, in a few minutes, deposited us at the entrance of Shepherds’ Field.
As should not have surprised us in the Holy Land, there are two Shepherds’ Fields, one run by the Greek Orthodox Church, the other by the Franciscans. Correctly intuiting that we were not Orthodox, Aziz had driven us to the second locale. Shepherds’ Field was not what I had imagined: that is, rolling green hills where friendly shepherds grazed their fluffy white sheep, who bleated cutely before a picturesque view of the Little Town of Bethlehem. That’s what comes from seeing too many Christmas cards.
Today Shepherds’ Field boasts an impressive garden with tall palm trees and flowering bushes. Down a hill, the tumbledown ruins of a small Byzantine-era church perch on a parched promo
ntory overlooking the dusty plains surrounding Bethlehem. Amid the ruins are an altar and a few metal benches, which make up a simple chapel for pilgrims. There were no sheep. On this day, a few feet away, archaeological digs were covered with metal roofs.
Was this where shepherds “watched their flocks by night,” as Christmas carolers would have it? In his guidebook, Murphy-O’Connor concludes that any historical significance of the location is “unlikely,” though the church was built on a site occupied by nomadic shepherds in the first century.1 As we stood on the windswept bluff overlooking the city, the sun raining down heat, I thought, Well, you never know.
In fact, Drew had told me that one of his happiest memories from his many visits to the Holy Land was watching, from the vantage point of Shepherds’ Field, a shepherd lead a mixed flock of goats and sheep down the opposite hill, past an Israeli settlement then being built, and away into the Judean wilderness.
After a series of improbable detours that took us to the desert, to Herod’s palace-fortress, to a lonely monastery, and to the edge of heat stroke, Aziz deposited us at Manger Square.
THE BEGINNING OF THE familiar Nativity narrative in Luke’s Gospel, which recounts the story of the events commemorated in Bethlehem, locates the birth of Jesus in history, a chief concern of Luke. “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus,” he begins. So we are somewhere between 27 BC and AD 14. More specificity: Quirinius was governor of Syria, says Luke.2
The decree orders “all the world” to their own cities for a census. And because Joseph was “descended from the house and family of David,” he travels to David’s city, Bethlehem, with his wife. By this time Mary is pregnant. Luke does not say how long the couple stayed in Bethlehem, but while they were there she gave birth to her firstborn (prōtotokos) son. The Greek word does not necessarily mean that Mary had other children, though the Gospels will later speak of Jesus’s “brothers and sisters.”3 Luke is simply telling us that this was Mary’s first child.
Did Luke the historian have all his facts straight? For the Gospel of Matthew tells a different story. In his version, Mary and Joseph were natives of Bethlehem, and so it was natural that Mary would give birth there. It wasn’t until after Jesus’s birth that they moved to Nazareth, after the death of the murderous King Herod, who, according to Matthew, sought to put to death every male child under the age of two in the area of Bethlehem, to eliminate the threat of the newborn Messiah.4 Murphy-O’Connor notes this about Luke’s version: “Their long residence in Galilee gave Luke the impression that they had always lived there, and he had to find a reason which would place them in Bethlehem at the moment of the birth of Jesus.”5 So we have two Gospel accounts, but the same place of birth: Bethlehem.
Luke tells us that Mary “laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” The word manger comes from the French verb “to eat” and is simply the wooden stand that holds animal feed. The one who will feed the crowds in the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, who will call himself the “Bread of Life,”6 is born in a manger.
But there’s a potentially more interesting word in this passage. The word used in most Christmas pageants—“inn”—is in the original Greek kataluma, which can also be translated as “guest room” or “lodging area.”7 So we might envision a room in a house or even an open space where travelers lodged. Thus, some scholars suggest this interpretation: since there was no room in the “guest room,” the baby was placed in a manger in another part of a house, most likely the ground floor, where animals were typically kept. Perhaps, then, the familiar image of the manger in a wooden stable is inaccurate. Either way, as New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson notes, “The transient condition of the parents is clear.”8 Raymond E. Brown, SS, emphasizes this in his massive book The Birth of the Messiah, perhaps the most extensive study on the topic. The Gospel image of the manger has less to do with poverty and more to do with the “peculiarity of location caused by circumstances.”9
Another ancient tradition holds that Jesus was born in a cave, a detail that first appears in the second-century writings of St. Justin Martyr and in an apocryphal gospel, The Protoevangelium of James. Caves are still common in the area around Bethlehem, and many houses in antiquity were built around or above them; the rough spaces were used for stabling animals. Murphy-O’Connor suggests that we can imagine Joseph taking Mary into his house (or, say, his parents’ house) away from the confusion of the main living space. Later on, St. Jerome, writing in 396, spoke of “the cave where the infant Messiah once cried,” and the first church commemorating the birth of Jesus (the forerunner of the Church of the Nativity) was built over a cave.
THE PRESENT-DAY CHURCH OF the Nativity is a squat, buff-colored, fortress-like edifice built on the site of the fourth-century church mentioned by St. Jerome. Its byzantine history is summed up by the physical appearance of the church’s main entrance, which clearly shows three stages of development—that is, the doorway was made progressively smaller and more difficult to enter, and the outlines of the larger, more ancient doors can easily be seen. Visitors can discern first, a large sixth-century opening (a wooden lintel is still embedded in the church wall); second, a smaller archway fashioned by the Crusaders; and finally, an even smaller entrance, from the Turkish and Ottoman periods, which was designed to prevent looters from entering the church with ease. Today the entrance to the great church is a three-foot-high doorway.
Thus, to enter the Church of the Nativity, one must bow or kneel. As a result, the paving stone has been worn smooth, with a marked indentation made by millions of pilgrims. Strangely, I found this entrance, called the Door of Humility, more moving than the church’s interior. As I entered the building on my knees, I thought not only of how God had lowered himself to enter into our humanity, but also, more specifically, how Jesus had lowered himself so much that he assented to be crucified.
THE LONG, HIGH-CEILINGED INTERIOR was jammed with people. Far from the gleaming marble space that I anticipated, the Church of the Nativity, with its smooth stone floor and timbered roof supported by massive columns, appeared dilapidated. Its walls and woodwork were dusty, understandable for a building dating from the sixth century. But knowing that the structure dated back to the time of the emperor Justinian imbued the gritty setting with a meaning that transcended the grime. I couldn’t wait to see the actual spot where Jesus was born. I anticipated being deeply moved. But where was it?
We made our way through the crowds and inched ahead in an ill-defined line with hundreds of tourists. Soon George got antsy, bothered by the crush. “I’ll see it later,” he said. I was already finding it a spiritual challenge to maintain a reverent attitude while being elbowed every few seconds by my fellow pilgrims. Gradually the throng carried me, like a twig in a river, to the main altar in the upper church. In a few minutes, the crush grew more intense as people spied our target: a narrow archway behind the main altar. Trying not to step on toes, I gingerly walked down a shallow stone staircase, squeezed my way through the arch, and was in the Nativity Grotto.
The Nativity Grotto was the only place where one of my original objections to visiting the Holy Land—the touristy sites would turn me off—proved justified. The crowd squished itself around two spots, with nearly everyone snapping photos or filming videos. The first, to the immediate right, was the traditional site of the birth of Jesus. Behind a small arch were the remains of a cave. Under an altar that stands in the front of the cave is the holy site, marked by a large silver star affixed to the stone floor and illumined by several hanging lanterns. I knelt down to kiss the cold stone and said a prayer. A few feet away is the Chapel of the Manger, where by tradition Mary laid her baby. I kissed that spot as well and prayed for my family: my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two nephews.
Upon rising, I was immediately surrounded by pilgrims talking loudly, snapping photos, taking videos, gesticulating wildly, jostling one another, and reaching into crinkly plastic bags for a water bottle
or candy bar. Over the years I’ve visited many other crowded religious sites—Lourdes, for one—but had never found it so difficult to pray. Why? Perhaps nowhere else did the visitors seem so blasé as they did at the Nativity sites. Maybe it was just this particular crowd on this particular day, but most people were strolling around and chatting as if it were Disneyland. I wanted to say, “Wait a minute! Remember where you are!” On the other hand, who knows what was going on inside of them? Fortunately, the rest of the Holy Land was infinitely more prayerful.
When I stepped back into the cavernous interior of the church I found myself confused. This ancient holy place, where Christian pilgrims had come to pray for millennia, where I had expected to be moved to tears, left me cold. I spied George sitting in a pew by himself. With his eye for the bizarre, he pointed out something hanging from the church’s ornate chandeliers. Apparently in keeping with Western traditions they were hung with garish red Christmas ornaments. “Ho! Ho! Ho!” he said.
I laughed aloud, but couldn’t stop thinking about this confusing place, at once holy and off-putting.
CONFUSION MAY HAVE BEEN what Mary and Joseph felt, though we are not told explicitly. Luke’s Gospel is more intent on describing the physical surroundings of the Nativity: the crowded lodgings, the common manger, the bands of cloth in which the child was wrapped. He says nothing about the emotional state of either Mary or Joseph. Compare that to his vivid description of the shepherds in the field, to whom the angel announces Jesus’s birth: “They were terrified.” But perhaps Luke does not need to state the obvious. Whatever the circumstances of the birth (a trip into Bethlehem or living in Bethlehem already), confusion would have been natural for the couple.
Recently I read a series of meditations by Adrienne von Speyr, a twentieth-century Swiss mystic, in which she describes insights into the lives of the saints that came to her in prayer. Although she was obviously not in Bethlehem at the time, and although the Catholic Church is notoriously reluctant to pronounce on “private revelations” (experiences in private prayer), what von Speyr wrote about St. Joseph seemed sensible: “Joseph, the righteous man, is involved in something that at first frightens him; he does not understand it. But then grace brings him a certain understanding, even if it remains incomplete.”10