Fwd: Reflections after CW Advent Delegation to Palestine
Catholic Worker
From: Brian Terrell <brian195...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 3:25 PM
Subject: Reflections after CW Advent Delegation to Palestine
To: Catholic Worker <catholicw...@gmail.com>
Two Brief Christmas and Epiphany Reflections, January, 2026
“Forgetting this context, I think, is how Christians through the centuries have found themselves siding with the occupiers and against the refugees, the landless farmers, the poor, those whose side Jesus always took.”
Brian Terrell
December 19, 2025
I got home to the farm on Thursday, December 18, returning from an Advent delegation of Catholic Workers to Palestine. On the day before flying home, when our group was across the Jordan in the town of Madaba, I went by myself to the Shrine of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist there. In the shrine I saw this mural of John in prison conferring with his disciples: “When John heard in prison of the works of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to him with this question, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’” Matthew 11:2,3.
Just a few days before, we visited the town of Taybeh in the West Bank. Taybeh is the last community in Palestine with an entirely Christian population and had experienced atrocious acts of violence from Israeli settlers in the days before our arrival. Taybeh, known as Ephraim in the Bible, was where Jesus hid out after his raising of Lazarus from the dead offended the authorities: “So from that day on they planned to kill him. So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews, but he left for the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and there he remained with his disciples.” John 11:53-54
Jim Douglas’ new book, “Martyrs to the Unspeakable, the Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK” has been informing my meditations of late. The prophetic visions of peace and social transformation of John and of Jesus in their time were an affront to those in power, just as it was later in the time of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK and so, like these four men two millennia later, John and Jesus were marked for elimination.
In Advent of this year 2025, especially, it is essential to recognize the context of Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus was born under occupation and with his parents was made a refugee as a child. His ministry in Galilee, Judea, Samaria and the Greek speaking towns was always a step ahead of the occupation and it was the occupiers and their collaborators who finally put Jesus to death on a cross.
Forgetting this context, I think, is how Christians through the centuries have found themselves siding with the occupiers and against the refugees, the landless farmers, the poor, those whose side Jesus always took.
Epiphany Sunday, January 4, 2026
“The devil danced while the church composed the lectionary,” Phil Berrigan insisted. I have never been more convinced that this is true as I have been this Christmas season after spending two weeks of Advent, 2025, with a contingent of Catholic Workers in Palestine’s West Bank. It is as though King Herod had his lawyers purge the files of any testimony that might tie him into the massacre of the children of Bethlehem before the scripture could be read aloud in Catholic churches, especially on the very days when those churches are most crowded.
For all his efforts, Herod could not exculpate his name completely- we do hear about how Herod meant to harm the new born king and that he was not entirely candid when he asked the magi “to bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage,” but in Catholic churches, this year, anyway, we are not apprised of the murderous outcome of Herod’s antipathy, the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem.
In church the next Sunday, December 28, the feast of the Holy Family, the gospel reading was from Matthew, 2:13-15, 19-23. Joseph is told in a dream that Herod is out to destroy the child so he, Mary and Jesus take off for Egypt. The next thing we know, “Herod had died” and it was safe to return. The verses left out from what was proclaimed in church, 16-18, tell the rest of the story: “When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.’”
This morning’s gospel on the feast of Epiphany, Matthew 2:1-12, tells us that Herod was “greatly troubled” to hear from the magi of the birth of a rival king, but again, the faithful are spared the gory details. We are given only that the magi, after giving their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, being “warned in a dream not to return to Herod, departed for their country by another way.” In the homily I heard this morning it was explained that “they departed for their country by another way” was not about giving Herod the slip, but only that after their experience, their epiphany moment of meeting Jesus, they went home changed men, “by another way,” different from when they arrived in Bethlehem.
Herod is still on his throne today. He still raging, still “furious” still “greatly troubled” and threatened by the implications of the advent of Jesus. The Child is still threatening to Herod and so countless children are being massacred by Herod to this very day.
Post script: In Bethlehem’s Grotto of the Nativity, an altar remembering the children massacred by King Herod. This small chapel is immediately adjacent to the fourteen-point silver star that marks the spot venerated since the fourth century as the place of Jesus’ birth.