Whenever people say, sometimes in
a rather superior way, “Oh, of course, you can’t prove Christ was born in Bethlehem
– or even existed” my thoughts turn to the 6th century Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem and the Star in the cave beneath the sanctuary marking
the place of the Incarnation.
The star may only have been added
in 1847 but the cave (known as the Grotto) is the oldest continuously used pace
of Christian worship in the world. Such was its power to draw people after the
death of Jesus in ca. AD33 that a century later, in order to destroy Christianity, the Emperor Hadrian had
it converted to a shrine for the worship of Adonis, a prime example of
the archetypal dying-and-rising god and mortal lover of Aphrodite, Greek
goddess of beauty and desire.
For over a generation, people had
come there believing it was the site of the Incarnation and the choice of Adonis
for the focus of Roman worship suggests that Hadrian who, at the same time had also
ordered the building of a temple to Jupiter (or Venus) over the site of the
Crucifixion and Resurrection in Jerusalem, chose the dedication of this temple
in the small town of Bethlehem with reason. At around the same time the early
Christian philosopher, Justin Martyr, noted in his Dialogue with Trypho that
the Holy Family had taken refuge in a cave in this area.
It’s impossible to ‘prove’ much
from ancient history and belief in the Incarnation of God-in-Christ is a matter of faith not
fact. But the fact that worship continued in this unremarkable town for two thousand years should cause
us to wonder at the Grotto of the Nativity and regard the mystery it proclaims with
humility, just as one has to bend in order to enter the Basilica first erected by
Hadrian’s successor, Constantine, to protect the place. This most stupendous mystery points to the truth of our potential and confounds those demagogues and dictators whose words and actions corrupt our humanity. Made for divinity, to bow bend before this Mystery of Faith acknowledges we are more than mere flesh and blood: we are of such stuff as dreams are made on ...
Low before Him with our praises
we fall,
Of Whom, and in Whom, and through Whom are all;
Of Whom, the Father; and in Whom, the Son,
Through Whom, the Spirit, with Them ever One.
Of Whom, and in Whom, and through Whom are all;
Of Whom, the Father; and in Whom, the Son,
Through Whom, the Spirit, with Them ever One.
Peter Abelard, 12thc. translated
from Latin J. M. Neale 1854
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