Dan Allen ’07, ’11 M.Div.
Spirituality Program Director, Notre Dame Alumni Association

The birth of a child is a special event. Often, when parents look back on their lives, they will cite the births of any children as some of their most important memories. It is quite remarkable that a baby, who has been gestating in a mother’s womb for months, suddenly comes into the world. And while inside of the mother, all the baby’s biological needs are invisibly met, but once outside, every need becomes a production. Newborn babies are completely dependent on their caregivers for food, warmth, comfort, and a seemingly never-ending stream of diaper changes. Babies simply cannot survive on their own.

We know all of this already, but I am describing it in detail because it underscores the amazing fact that this is how our God decided to first come into our human existence. Jesus was born as a baby, completely dependent on Mary and Joseph for his survival. It is not what we would first assume a divine being would do, and I think we can get a little too comfortable with Christmas and forget how radical an event it really was.

Our Holy Land pilgrims received a reminder of that today as we visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Interestingly, while there are sites here that dispute where a particular biblical event happened, everyone is in agreement about the place of Christ’s birth, and it is the oldest church in the Holy Land in continuous existence, surviving some of the destruction that other churches here have experienced.

Nevertheless, it is a church, like many here, in the midst of an ongoing renovation, and it bears some of the scars of history on its walls. Still, upon entering, a pilgrim gets a sense that it is indeed a very holy place. I was thinking this morning about how much of that applies to us as we experience Lent. We are painfully aware of our scars, sometimes inflicted by others, sometimes by our own sinfulness. We are by no means perfect temples of the Holy Spirit. That being said, we still have a capacity for holiness if we open ourselves to God’s mercy and grace.

Lent is a time of repentance, of washing the blackened soot off the walls of our hearts and revealing the beautiful mosaic of the Creator’s design underneath. We are patching relationships and preparing our inner sanctuary for the momentous event of Easter. It is hard work at times, but just imagine the finished product.

When we do realize all the work that we have yet to do, we can feel unworthy of God’s love. Yet, it is the example of the Incarnation that reassures us that this love has been ever-present. A reminder of this is actually the entrance to the Church of the Nativity, known as the Door of Humility. Basically, it is a door that anyone more than about four feet tall must bend low to enter, and it brought to mind the humility with which we approach God as well as Jesus’ humility and love in becoming one of us.

As the scriptures suggest, Jesus brings himself low in the hope of eventually raising us up. He comes not only to be with us but to experience the fullness of our lot. One of the gifts of visiting the Holy Land is that we are experiencing a closeness to Jesus’ life, including seeing the place of his actual birth and thereby discovering more intimately much of what he went through as a person.

Upon entering the Church of the Nativity, we made our way to the rear of the ornate and beautiful space where we descended some steps into the lower portion of the building. Once there, we had the chance to pray at the site where Jesus was born. The cave of his birth is also a low place, and to be near it, we had to kneel and then even lean forward to touch the stone and the silver star that marks the location. 

It was such an intimate moment, I can only offer my own experience of it. As I reached out my hand to touch the place where the divine entered the world, I had the sense that I was somehow mirroring the way that God had reached out to humanity in sending us Jesus. The human and the divine meet once again in love each time a person venerates the spot.

After then visiting the place of the manger, our whole group gathered together and sang “Silent Night.” It was clear that this was one of the most meaningful and memorable moments we shared together as pilgrims. Our voices combined in a resonant blend of sound, all singing the praise of our Lord and of that holy night.

One of the slowly revealed blessings of this trip is growing in affection towards our fellow pilgrims as we go through these experiences together. It provides an interesting parallel, I think, to the infancy narratives. Notice that no one in the stories visits Jesus alone. There are multiple shepherds in the field and wise men from the East.

Therefore, on our pilgrimage of Lent and of life, we would do well to be mindful of our fellow sojourners. We can be gifts to each other, providing encouragement along the way. And whether to the baby in the cradle, to the man on the cross, or to our God in heavenly light, we will find ourselves saying together, “O come, let us adore him.”