Hadrian's Temples

Following is the text of the homily delivered by Cardinal Egan for Christmas Midnight Mass and the 10:15 a.m. Mass on Christmas at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

My dear friends in the Lord:

Forty-eight years ago, I visited the Holy Land for the first time. I was with eight classmates from Rome. We had completed a four-year seminary course and were about to return to our respective dioceses to begin work as parish priests. Before coming home, however, we wanted to walk, and especially to pray, in the land where the Savior had lived, preached and given His life for the salvation of the world.

Our guide throughout the tour was a celebrated Scripture scholar who seemed to know everything that could be known about the Holy Land. In due course, we arrived in Bethlehem and immediately made our way to the Church of the Nativity.

It was a hot summer day. We entered the ancient church and proceeded up the aisle to the sanctuary area. There we were shown a narrow staircase at the bottom of which we found ourselves in a rather dark cave with fading icons on the walls and oriental oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the cave, embedded in the pavement, we noticed a large 14-point star fashioned out of silver. On it we read in Latin: "Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary."

Outside the church after the visit, one of our number asked the guide how he could be sure that this was the place in Bethlehem where the Lord was born. The guide was delighted with the question and immediately launched into an explanation.

From the year 117 to the year 138 after Christ, he told us, the Emperor of Rome was a wily politician by the name of Hadrian. The empire that he ruled was expanding but becoming ever more difficult to control. In virtually every corner of it, groups were springing up to challenge the local governors whom Hadrian had appointed; and often enough these groups organized themselves around a particular religious cult or sect. Some of them the emperor treated with diplomacy and respect. Others he subjected to humiliation and persecution.

In the Holy Land, our guide continued, the followers of the itinerant preacher known as Jesus were not interested in challenging anyone or anything. They practiced their faith quietly and gladly left matters of government to Rome and its agents. Hadrian, however, had had to deal with a number of bloody uprisings in what was left of Jerusalem after its destruction by Roman legions a scant 40 years before he came to power. Hence, he assumed that the followers of Jesus in nearby Bethlehem might well be troublemakers and ordered that they be harassed and especially that their holy places be destroyed or at least desecrated.

One of those holy places was, of course, the cave which had been thought for almost a century to be the site where the Savior was born. Hadrian knew exactly what to do. He ordered his imperial architects to surround the area near the cave with a grove of trees and to build on top of the cave a temple to the pagan god, Adonis, whose sexual exploits were expected to shock the Christians and cause them to avoid the area at all costs.

The grove was planted, the temple was built and two centuries passed. In the year 313 after Christ, the Emperor Constantine seized power, permitted the followers of Jesus to practice their faith, tore down Hadrian's Temple to Adonis, and replaced it with the Church of the Nativity, whose foundation remains to this day, even though the structure above it has been rebuilt several times over the past 1,700 years.

"Constantine knew where the cave of the Nativity was," our guide announced with evident pleasure, "simply because Hadrian had tried to make everyone forget where it was and his shameful Temple to Adonis ensured that no one would."

Each Christmas, at Midnight Mass, when I hear the account of the birth of the Lord that was just read for us from the Gospel according to St. Luke, I thank my God for Hadrian's miscalculation. For by marking the spot where Jesus was born so clearly and so grandly, he did us all an immense favor. The reason is perhaps clear.

An account like the one provided by St. Luke in the Gospel of our Mass can easily be transformed into a kind of pretty fable in which the essential message of the Christmas story is tragically lost. In the hands of enthusiastic artists, the cave of Bethlehem can become a well-appointed drawing room. The Virgin can become an elegant lady in a blue silk outfit. St. Joseph can become a kindly old gentleman with a well-cut beard and an unusual air of sweetness. And to complete the presentation, the shepherds who were summoned to visit the Child in the manger can become pious acolytes with folded hands and lily-white sheep at their sides.

To save us from such a mistaken portrayal of what took place in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, we need a specific location, a concrete place that we can see with our eyes, touch with our hands and even visit on pilgrimage, so that the essence of Christmas not be robbed of its reality by the adornments with which we lovingly, but often excessively, surround the feast.

What actually transpired in the City of David 20 centuries ago? St. Luke supplies the essential elements, and the historians of the era fill in the details. The picture they present is both powerful and inspiring if we gaze at it with eyes and hearts wide open and willingly embrace the lesson it teaches. Here it is in all of its harsh beauty.

Aproud and ruthless emperor by the name of Caesar Augustus decides to find out how many human beings he rules. To achieve this, he forces his subjects to return to the hometowns of their ancestors to be counted. He is not concerned about the pain and inconvenience his decision will entail. It is his pleasure that there be a census, and nothing further need be said.

To be enrolled according to the emperor's plan, a young couple travels from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, because the head of the household is a descendant of David, the psalmist king who was born in Bethlehem. The journey of almost 90 miles takes four to five days on a dusty, dangerous road, very likely in a crowded, unruly caravan.

The head of the household, Joseph, is a carpenter or-more precisely-a "joiner-of-wood," that is, a laborer whose specialty is building fences, shelters and such. He is probably around 18, given the customary ago of marriage for Jewish men of the era.

The woman with him, Mary, is a girl of perhaps 15 or 16. She is pregnant, and her pregnancy has been the source of considerable hurt and embarrassment.

Together, they arrive in Bethlehem, a backwater town at best, dirty and crowded beyond capacity with foul-smelling animals and ill-humored travelers.

There is no room for them in what our English translation styles an "inn." In the Middle East, it would more accurately be termed a "kahn," consisting of a yard open to the skies with animals in the center and human beings huddled together on the periphery.

The couple, however, needs privacy; and they find it in a cave that has been cut into a hill to provide refuge for animals. Here Mary brings forth her Child without a nurse or midwife to help. She and Joseph are on their own, completely and pathetically alone.

She wraps the Child in a length of wool cloth with a sash to bind it, "swaddling clothes," as St. Luke describes it; and she lays it in a "manger," that is to say, in a trough out of which animals were to feed.

Unexpectedly, herders of sheep and goats appear on the scene coming from the arid plain that surrounds Bethlehem. They are rough, often violent, men, considered dangerous by most, and not even allowed to testify in court, so low do they rank on the social scale of ancient Judea. Nonetheless, they "hasten" to see the Child, as St. Luke reports; and they leave to tell all who will listen what they have seen.

This is the reality of Christmas that a specific location, a well-defined place available to be visited and inspected, drives home. The birth of the Son of God Made Man was not the lovely unreality that we in our piety are tempted to make of it. It was rather the central fact of history played out in the harshest of circumstances; and the message that it was meant to deliver was stunningly clear and not to be missed. It was a message of marvelously courageous obedience to the will of God on the part of Mary and Joseph and total sacrifice of self on the part of the Child in their care. We start with Mary and Joseph.

Mary, you will recall, had been told that her God had chosen her to be the Mother of the Savior, the Messiah about whom the prophets had spoken for centuries; and Joseph had been told that the same God had chosen him to be the guardian of Mary and her Child. Both undoubtedly had altogether different plans for the future; and both could have made a compelling case for refusing to answer the Lord's call.

"I am too young, completely unlettered and not at all prepared for such a responsibility," each might have pleaded. But neither responded in that manner. Though genuinely frightened, as the Gospel accounts of their callings make crystal clear, they heard the voice of God and answered with obedience and courage, unfaltering obedience and unlimited courage.

This is what brought them to the cave of Bethlehem, and this is what we must see when we look into the Christmas crèche and find them kneeling there. For their obedience and courage are meant to awaken in us the same qualities of soul.

Are we bearing a heavy cross? Perhaps a chronic illness, the loss of a much-needed job, loneliness, unfair attacks on our good name, abandonment by family or friends? We know we must deal with all such situations according to the mind and will of God-with justice, patience, honor and trust-that is to say, with courageous obedience. And this is never easy. In some instances, the pain and hurt can seem to be more than we can bear.

The Lord, however, has promised that we will never be tried beyond our capacities. His grace will always be sufficient. And strengthened by these assurances, we make our way to the City of David, find the cave of the Nativity, enter and focus on the young couple whom we discover inside. We meditate on their obedience and their courage; and with the help of an all-loving God, we are inspired; we are consoled; we are made strong.

This is the first element of the message of Christmas. For the second we turn to the Infant in the manger.

Some 30 or 40 years after the death of the Savior on Calvary's Hill, St. Paul picked up his pen and in his Epistle to the Philippians told us of the birth of the Lord in theological terms. His words, though brief, are as poignant and stirring as those of St. Luke.

The Son of God, Paul announced, did not consider manifestations of divinity something to which He had to cling. Thus, for the salvation of humankind, He emptied Himself of all display of the Godhead, became one of us, and handed Himself over to death, even death on a cross. He allowed Himself to be judged by unjust judges, to be beaten by brutal soldiers, to be spat upon by angry crowds, indeed to be crucified, just as He had allowed Himself to be born in a cave and laid in a manger. And all of this He did for us. Self was set aside. Self was sacrificed. You and I were all that counted.

In this life of ours, my dear friends, none of us escape occasions in which we are called upon to sacrifice ourselves at least in some measure for others. We may be asked to put aside well-made plans for the future in order to care for parents or children. We may be asked to spend resources we were saving for tomorrow in order to provide for the health or well-being of another today. We may be asked to put up with unfair treatment of ourselves in order to prevent greater damage to others. The possibilities are beyond number.

And we will find it easier to respond to all such demands as the Lord would have us respond, if the reality of the Infant in the animal's feeding trough has been allowed to sear its way into our souls. He came to give us life, He told us, and to give it to us "abundantly." But He came also to teach us how to live. "Learn of Me," He told the crowds; and among the principal lessons He taught is one we will find it easier to master if we have meditated the Nativity scene and come to understand what is really and truly there. It is a lesson of self-sacrifice-self-sacrifice without conditions, self-sacrifice without counting the cost.

Obedience to the will of God, courage and sacrifice of self-none of this is to be gleaned from Christmas as a pretty story or a charming fantasy. The meaning and lessons of Christmas are rather to be absorbed into our hearts when we dare to see the Nativity event for what it was in reality, for what it was in a cave where a young girl, her spouse and her Child huddled together, poor, frightened, alone and boundlessly holy.

Christmas is, of course, a delightful season of the year. Artists, poets and musicians have done much to make it so; and in all of this we rightly and properly rejoice. Still, tonight, as we celebrate together the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which the death of the Savior is re-presented on our altar, we must be sure not to allow the harsh reality and stark truth of the Christmas message to elude us. We look once again into the Christmas crèche. We study the lesson it is teaching us. We embrace it. We thank the Lord for it, and we beg for the strength of soul to live it.

"O Newborn Savior, with Mary and Joseph, inspire us, we pray, to yearn above all else for the courage to be ever-obedient to the law of our just and merciful God and the grace to be ever-willing to sacrifice ourselves for others. This is what we seek this Christmas night. This is our Christmas prayer."

To all of this, dear friends, allow me to add what I might call a "footnote."

Once or twice each year I have to go to Rome for meetings of various kinds. Never on these occasions do I fail to have a cup of coffee in the Roman piazza that is dominated by the splendid ancient edifice that is known as the Pantheon.

The Emperor Hadrian had it built early in his reign, and it was easily his greatest architectural achievement. Nonetheless, over the main portal there is an inscription in letters two feet high proclaiming that the Pantheon was constructed by a minor political figure of the era of Caesar Augustus.

How this extraordinary piece of misinformation came to be carved into the front of Hadrian's masterpiece, historians do not seem to know. The irony of it, however, never fails to amuse me. Hadrian built a temple in the Holy Land to make the world forget the place where the Son of God was born and, in so doing, ensured that the place would never be forgotten. And he built another temple in Rome that should have been among his proudest boasts, and the world believes it was built by another.

But there is more. The Roman temple, the Pantheon, has for 17 centuries been a church in honor of the young girl who with her betrothed taught the world most tellingly the lesson of courageous obedience to the will of God, just as her Son in the same circumstances taught the lesson of self-sacrifice without limits.

The message of Bethlehem is hard to suppress. It confounds even emperors.

Edward Cardinal Egan

Archbishop of New York