Israel & Jordan 2023: Bethlehem, part 2

From the main floor of the Church of Nativity, we went out a door on the side of the the nave and came out into a long hallway that leads to a little courtyard that opens into the Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which is the church where the Christmas Midnight Mass is held. A side note, where I grew up the town's patron saint (yes, we have that) and the main church is also called St. Catherine of Alexandria, so I was quite tickled to say the least that the church's name here is St. Catherine of Alexandria (and not Sienna which I thought was more popular). I thought it was fate. Honestly, I had no clue about the name, zilch.

Restored medieval cloister.

The small courtyard and the front of the church. This is the site where Jesus appeared before St. Catherine in the 4th century and predicted her martyrdom.

Tickets for the Christmas Eve mass are available for free, but one has to make reservations way ahead of time and whoever is on the ticket is the one allowed into the service. This is to discourage selling of tickets. This is the mass that is televised worldwide. I pray that this practice will continue next Christmas.

Something that took our attention in the courtyard.

We arrived at a time when a service was going on, and so the guide took us down the steps to the underground caves. What a pleasant surprise to see grottoes holding shrines and ancient tombs. However, there were other groups that visited at the same time and just like us, they too trooped down to avoid disturbing the mass upstairs. This created a packed-like-sardines feeling and made it very difficult to take good photos. I will try to show you what I photographed, but sadly due to a combination of time passing (it's been a year since this trip) and the crowd, I just could not remember what these grottoes are and who were entombed here. However, according to research after the fact, St. Paula, her daughter Eustochiom and St. Jerome are buried down here. In addition, it is believed that in one of these grottoes, St. Jerome have translated the Latin Bible into the vernacular.

A group shot outside of the Church of Nativity.

A couple of coffee spots in Bethlehem.

Friendly encounter at a check point on the way back to Jerusalem.

Our very limited time in Bethlehem ended, and we're back in Jerusalem at our hotel. It's Shabbat and we have limited options for dinner.

Not wanting to go out and eat - we were all tuckered out after a whole day of sightseeing - it was the hotel's buffet or the bar area menu, where they serve the same lunch menu for dinner. We opted for the lighter meals.

Something we learned is never take the Shabbat elevator because it stops at every floor even though there's no one else there.

This was an incredible personal experience and I can't still find the right words to express my sentiments about this trip. I fervently hope that peace time will once again prevail here and that many more people will be able to experience what we have experienced here.