Manger Relic's return to Bethlehem is cause for a historic Advent

A Christmas tree in Manger Square in Bethlehem. Creative Commons photo.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — A fingernail-sized piece of wood believed to be from Jesus’ manger was returned to Bethlehem on Saturday by order of Pope Francis.

The sliver of wood was sent to Pope Theodore I in Rome in 640 CE by Saint Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, shortly after the Arab Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in 637.

The artifact was displayed in an ornate silver reliquary case on Friday at the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center in Jerusalem. It was a cause for celebrations and prayer. Larger festivities followed on Saturday, when cheerful throngs greeted the sacred relic with great fanfare before it was placed in the Franciscan Church of St. Catherine adjoining the Church of the Nativity, which is shared by the Greek Orthodox and Armenian faiths.

The relic’s return was a spirit-lifting moment for the tiny minority of Christian Palestinians in the West Bank. It coincides with Advent, a four-week period leading up to Christmas. (Unique to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the birth of the Christian savior is celebrated here on Dec. 25 by the Catholic and Protestant churches, Jan. 6 by the Orthodox churches, and Jan. 19 by the Armenians.)

Young Palestinian scouts played bagpipes and the crowd snapped pictures as a clergyman held the silver reliquary and proceeded toward the church.

Brother Francesco Patton, the custodian of the Franciscan order in the Holy Land, said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had asked Pope Francis to borrow the entire manger, but the pope decided to send a tiny portion of it to stay permanently in Bethlehem. “We are excited and thank the Pope, the holy father, Francis, for the gift and the right to safeguard the holy relic,” said Patton.

The celebrations were capped off Saturday night when Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and other officials attended the lighting of a towering Christmas tree in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity.

“It is a historic move. It returns to its original place, and it will be a factor of attraction to believers from inside Palestine and to tourists from all over the world,” said Amira Hanania, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Higher Committee of Churches Affairs. “To celebrate Christmas with the presence of part of the manger in which Jesus Christ was born will be a magnificent and huge event.”

Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman told Wafa news agency that the return of the relic was requested by Abbas during his December 2018 visit to the Vatican to meet with the pope. It had been kept in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

“A thousand years ago, Rome was busy collecting relics from the East to build itself up as an alternative Jerusalem. Now, Rome is strong enough that it can return relics to Jerusalem and Bethlehem,” historian of Christianity in the Land of Israel Yisca Harani told Haaretz, adding that she describes this return as an “inversion of history.”

Relics were brought to Rome to develop the city into a “second Jerusalem” for Christian pilgrims. Gifting such artifacts to the wider public is something that is becoming more and more common lately, inverting the original philosophy.

In general, 2019 has been an extraordinary year in the arcane universe of Christian relics.

In April, la Scala Sancta (the Holy Staircase), which the Roman Catholic faithful believe Jesus ascended before being sentenced to crucifixion, was unveiled for 60 days for the first time in nearly three centuries. The 28 marble steps, worn down over the centuries by the worshippers’ hands and knees, are believed to have been part of Jerusalem’s Antonia Fortress. That was built by Herod the Great on the north side of his monumental Second Temple, where the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate sat in judgment of the Christian messiah.

In the 4th century CE, the steps were removed to Rome by Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the pagan Roman Empire. In 1723, the staircase – said to be stained with Christ's blood – was encased in maple planks on the orders of Pope Innocent XIII who wanted to protect the soft stone from the high volume of pilgrims. Today the shrine is housed in an old papal palace in St. John's Square in southeast Rome, near the Basilica of St. John the Lateran.

On June 29, Pope Francis gave nine bone fragments believed to be those of Saint Peter to the Eastern Orthodox Church. In a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Istanbul, Pope Francis said his decision was meant as a sign of the ongoing work toward visible communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

The bones, stored in a bronze box, were discovered during excavations in 1939 in the necropolis beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. The box bears the inscription, “From the bones found in the hypogeum of the Vatican Basilica, which are believed to be of Blessed Peter the Apostle.”

Pope Paul VI had the fragments removed to keep in the private chapel of the papal apartments.

The provenance of ancient relics is often questionable. Still, they are revered by the Christian faithful, among them the many pilgrims who squeeze through the narrow doorway in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity year-round to visit the grotto that is its centerpiece.

Local businesses anticipate increased tourism in Bethlehem and the adjoining city of Beit Sahour, the site of the Franciscan and Greek Orthodox Shepherds Fields. Hoteliers and restaurateurs are optimistic that this Christmas season will be the best ever for the tourism-dependent Palestinian cities.

2019 has been a record-breaking year for tourism in the Holy Land. Riding a three-year trend, officials see last year’s influx of 1.5 million visitors as merely the base mark for comparing this year’s surge in guests. Manger Square is decked-out like never before while hotels fall into two categories: new ones under construction and existing ones expanding their existing facilities. Tourists will have extended hours in which to visit Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.