Chronicle of the Final Hours Leading to the Salvation of the World

Night fell dark, harsh, and cold. Mount Gilboa, in northern Israel, rose above the Jezreel Valley, about 25 kilometers from the Sea of Galilee and near the city of Afula. Beneath the frost that whitened the fields and mountains, the story of salvation unfolded at the slow pace of a donkey. It was no ordinary dawn, nor merely another journey. Joseph walked on foot, while Mary rode a donkey that followed the trail of the youngest animal, leaving behind the comfort of their home in Nazareth. Everything would have been easier there, in the warmth of their family hearth. But Joseph knew that the census ordered by Caesar Augustus required him to register in the city of his family, and as a man of the house and lineage of David, he had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, in Judea.

They crossed a landscape of arid scrubland, treading on the small cones of Aleppo pines, in a land the ancients considered “cursed.” Yet the couple’s gaze, fixed on the slow awakening of the shoots, already anticipated the future bloom of the Gilboa Iris. In the Virgin’s heart echoed the distant angelic words “Do not be afraid,” while in Joseph’s heart, responsibility manifested itself in constant vigilance, as befitted an old-fashioned knight whose first concern was always to find a place where his wife could rest.

At the top of a hill, they stopped to rest, shivering from the cold. Joseph comforted Mary by speaking of friends he had in Bethlehem, assuring her they would soon be helped to find a proper place to stay. They ate fruit and bread, and after resting, resumed their journey at first light.

What could have been a six-day journey was prolonged by Mary’s advanced pregnancy. They crossed the valleys of Shechem, seeking shade under a centuries-old terebinth tree, a silent witness to sacred history, where they paused to drink from a nearby spring. There, amidst the scent of thyme and vineyards, the Holy Family experienced the duality that would mark those days: the hostility of some and the charity of others. While the owner of a nearby farm refused them entry, his wife and some shepherds, moved by the travelers’ dignity, offered them food and a barn prepared for them to spend the Sabbath. Mary, with the natural ease of someone who makes any place a home, embraced the warm welcome of these people and taught their children, planting a seed of light in those who, when seeing them leave, felt the melancholy of having been touched by mystery.