With Open Doors

It was many hours – but it seemed like a short time – that I sat on the balcony and at the family table for stories, laughs, food and drinks with Issa’s mom and dad, his two brothers and his sister, the princess. At the end of dinner, we watched one performer on “Arab Idol.” For the first time, there is a Palestinian contestant. He is good. The Palestinians are so excited. I sure do hope he wins. Samia is a fan, can you tell? One other thing that you would obviously see if you were in their home or in their presence for even a short times: victor and Samia really love each other a lot!

Not only does Victor make my “priest shirts” in his tailor shop. He also cooked up one tasty display of meats on the grill at his home with his family. I learned a new way to “fan” the coals.

One of the patrons of our St. Andrew bingo, who reads this blog, handed me a $100 bill one Tuesday night before I left Milford, “Here is something for the nuns that have that school for the children in that valley that is being taken from the nuns and the children.” The nuns are grateful. This is a photo of me taking a photo of “your” school, Shirley.

Three ago I spent a couple hours in the emergency room of the Beit Jala hospital that is seen on the top of the hill looking down on Cremisan Valley. It has a name, but I refer to it as “my hospital.”

An honor it was to be with Father Gabriel and Father Mario to celebrate Mass with the hope-filled faithful in Cremisan Valley, an area of Beit Jala that is being taken from the Palestinian people of Beit Jala, unless God chooses to somehow intervene, that is. “Thy will and kingdom come on earth …. trespasses: forgive ours, and we, theirs …. deliver us from evil.” In the petitions I heard “Robert” and “America.” They prayed for us!

I am looking at the names of our “HOPE” teachers and folks from Cincinnati signed into the bottom of the chalice that they left in Beit Jala for Masses to be celebrated in the Cremisan Valley.

Up these 92 steps to say hello to some friends that I made a few years ago. The whole world could certainly learn something from the Palestinians about welcome and hospitality. The fact that it was a surprise, they did not know I was coming, they didn’t even know that I was in the country, and it has been a couple years since I have seen them, made no difference whatsoever. Just a quick hello and visit would not do. I was to have lunch with them, of course. When moving toward the table, one of the women apologized for using plastic plates and flatware for lunch, “We have no water.” The Israeli government controls how often the people of Bethlehem are allowed to buy water. It had been twenty days since they last got water. I noticed that the only small glass of water was at the place where they invited me to sit down. Stupid me, it did not dawn on me until later what they had done.

In Bethlehem there is an order of nuns who dedicate themselves to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

It is not often that one sees an image of Jesus nursing at the breast of Mary. It is here, venerated as a place where Mary fed Jesus, that women come to pray for the blessing of being able to conceive and birth and nurse a child. For some reason I feel very safe in this place called Milk Grotto.

This is one of my favorite photos thus far. I had to almost force myself to visit the church and “the star that marks the spot,” as guides will assure you. I was so busy with so many invitations to lunch and dinner, so tired when I finally got back to my hotel, so many times I have already been there – and besides he is “not there” anyway, any more than he is in the shrine of the empty tomb, as the angels told the visitors on Easter morning. But I am glad for this photo and the experience that went with it. Unmoved by visiting the place of the star, unmoved by kneeling in the local parish church from which Christmas Midnight Mass is broadcast, I spotted the sign marking the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. I knelt there for a moment, “Here he is, just like he is back home in St. Andrew, on the altar at Mass and in the tabernacle after Mass.”