November 2, 2025 Essay: At the Birthplace of Christ
Editor’s Note: In his Easter letter to the Parish, Father Yesalonia announced that we have established a sister parish relationship with the Parish of St. Catherine in Bethlehem, Palestine. In September, Roxanne De La Torre and Fr. Hilbert traveled to Bethlehem for an exploratory visit to the community there, meeting with the pastor and other parish leaders, youth groups, and families. They were welcomed with warmth and joy, and they began the process of developing projects of mutual assistance and shared faith. Roxanne is our staff liaison with the Parish of St. Catherine and will be reporting regularly on the budding relationship. The essay below contains Roxanne’s moving reflections on that visit.
“We are the living descendants of Jesus, born on this very land like he was. No matter how difficult life becomes or how much we are threatened, it is our responsibility to stay.”
I was sitting in the living room of a Palestinian family’s home with a parishioner of the Church of St. Catherine’s in Bethlehem, and his wife had just served us mint tea. When he said these words to me, I had to hold back the tears that instantly gathered behind my eyes. In fact, as I recall this moment now, I’ve had to stop and restart this reflection several times to allow the emotions I had initially held back to pour out of me.
Abu (Arabic for father) had been my guide for the day, introducing me to many other Catholic families in Bethlehem, teaching me a bit of the history of the place, explaining some of the hardships and challenges that Palestinians in this region are currently facing, and treating me exactly like a treasured member of his family. The kindness and hospitality were overwhelming.
There was much information relayed and explained to me verbally during the many hours I spent with Abu and his family that day, but there were also countless other realities I came to understand just by moving around town alongside them. Random road closures were commonplace, depending on whether a checkpoint was being left open or closed by the Israeli military, so a 5-minute car ride turned into an hour-long sojourn. Permits to travel into Jerusalem (less than 30-mins away) were not being granted to Palestinians, so regretfully all hopes to have taken me to see the Christian sites there were dashed. The family’s business, a tourism company, had been devastated over the past two years of war with almost no pilgrims visiting the Shrine of the Nativity, so there was no income. And like most Christian families in the West Bank with no health insurance or other safety nets available to them, they had to rely solely on the parish for financial support, with the pastor granting vouchers for medical visits, pharmacies, school fees, grocery supplements, etc. Life was a game of survival—with “normal” day-to-day activities made increasingly more complicated by the occupying party’s strategies to wear-down the Palestinian resolve. And yet, the Palestinian spirit persists, even when the effort to maintain a semblance of normalcy was thrown into chaos.
That afternoon, as we waited for their grandchildren to arrive home from school for the afternoon meal, a shooting at a bus stand a few miles away culminated in a military lockdown of all of Bethlehem. The gates were again closed and fortified on the open-air prison where Abu’s family traces their roots, in the land where Jesus took his first breaths. We were under siege, and there was no telling how long it would last. And yet, amidst all this, the family continued to move with intention, adjusted plans on the fly, relished the moments of joy, and generously poured into me from what they had. Their God-given resilience was on full display.
Hours after all of this, as we sat digesting the delicious meal of mansaf lovingly prepared by Abu’s wife, is when he shared those words with me and I was floored.
“We are the living descendants of Jesus, born on this very land like he was. No matter how difficult life becomes or how much we are threatened, it is our responsibility to stay.”
This statement hit me like a ton of bricks. But the tightening of my chest and the collecting of tears in my eyes were not born of pity. Nor were they born of an immediate desire to find ways to help or to ease their burden in some way. In a quite visceral way, I understood that there would be little I alone could do to change the impact of war on this family.
But what moved me deeply was that these words were delivered by Abu as if they were an extension of the Creed that we recite at Mass every week. For him and his family, staying in Bethlehem, despite the injustices of occupation and the daily threat of escalating war, was simply the clearest expression of their faith and trust in God. For Abu, to remain is his calling as a Palestinian Christian—an honor and a privilege granted to him by God alone that he daily prays for the strength to uphold. These words were a beautiful outpouring of his love for God, and his spiritual reliance on God’s return of love to him and his family that keep him going. I couldn’t help but think, with all the privileges and blessings I have in this world, have I ever loved God that much? Have I ever allowed myself to just fall into the love of God in trust and surrender the way Abu has? I’m not sure I have.
As I look back on the two weeks that Fr. Hilbert and I were blessed to have spent in Bethlehem this past September, I struggle to relay the complexities of life in the occupied West Bank, and thus the processing and sharing with our community will be staggered and spread-out. But I remain ever-grateful for the opportunity for our parish to get to know the people of St. Catherine’s more deeply in the years to come, and to share a bit of ourselves with them too. I look forward to more opportunities to share these stories with you, and to having you join Fr. Hilbert and me as we continue to build on the relationships we established there two months ago. As always, the grace of how we will move forward together will be in the hands of our loving God, Inshallah!
— Roxanne De La Torre, Pastoral Associate