The Holy Fire is the most important celebration in the Orthodox faith in Jerusalem. It seemed difficult to us to describe this Holy City event briefly without seeming to misrepresent it. That is the reason for this long account of the day, accompanied by some historical remarks.
Saturday, 26 April, 2008. With this year’s five weeks’ difference between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches, today is Holy Saturday for the Orthodox Churches. Since 3:30 this morning, the Christian Quarter of the Old City has been murmuring in Greek, Russian, Romanian. The Orthodox faithful, hosted by the monasteries and local residents since the beginning of the week, set out in small bunches toward the Holy Sepulcher, where the large bell tolled the death knell for the death of Christ.
It is not for a morning prayer that they are assembling in the middle of the night. They are going to the celebration of the "Holy Fire", the new fire, that begins the Paschal vigil. They set out ten hours in advance, even though the celebration is scheduled for 1:00pm and the Basilica of the Resurrection is only five minutes away on foot.
During the day, thousands and thousands of them will converge on the holy place, but only the earliest arrivals will be able to enter and see, or not, some of the celebration.
Toward five in the morning the migratory movement increases. When I arrive at the entrance to the Street of the Christians there are already almost 200 people massed behind the closed barriers under the vigilance of Israeli policemen. The latter do not want the faithful to enter too soon into the church, which is closed in any case, where they would have to stand and wait without being able to move. All entrances to the church are also closed.
It is 18 degrees centigrade (64 degrees F). Some pilgrims, frequently the youngest, end their night on the ground. That was the case for Georgetta, until the door she was huddled against opened and woke her. Georgetta is a Romanian from Bucharest. She is in her thirties and this is the second time she has come; the next two years are already planned. "I stayed here all night. Last year I was stuck in the street for 12 hours until I payed an Arab 100 euros. He told us to follow him, we went into a shop, there were four of us, and it was a miracle of God, we were able to get into the church’s forecourt." But this year Georgetta has every intention of getting inside.
The crowd is dense, many people are talking, many others are praying. A three-wheeled cart filled with bread arrives. Like every morning, it delivers bread to the stalls in the Street of the Christians. Some pilgrims want to buy the sesame seed-covered bread, kaak. It usually costs 8 eurocents (about 12 American cents). "Opportunity makes a thief," and this morning each kaak will cost one euro (about $1.50). But there are takers. I tell the delivery man in Arabic that he "has a long arm", a local expression meaning he’s a thief. He answers me "One euro, one euro," before realizing that I had just spoken to him in his own language. He lowers his eyes, embarrassed, but the young man accompanying him has fewer scruples and continues to take money as at the same time he tries to push his way through with his cart. The cart leaves and is quickly swallowed up by the crowd.
A water seller has set up at the entrance to the neighboring mosque. I go and ask the price. "It’s 3 shekels for the small bottle (50 eurocents, about $0.75), and five for the big one (90 eurocents, $1.40). "The baker is profiteering," he tells me sadly. "That is not good."
Day dawns slowly. All of a sudden the crowd surges. The barriers have moved. Maybe they will be able to enter the church and join the hundred or so pilgrims who were able to hide in its nooks and crannies to spend the night. These last will stay huddled in their hiding places during the early morning, so as not to be evicted by the large numbers of police and military security people.
As to the barriers, false hope. At 8:30 in the morning, they are still shut, as are most, if not all, of the gates to the Old City. The doors to the Holy Sepulcher will be opened at 9:30 by the Armenians. It is only then that the police, aided by soldiers, will try to regulate the inflow of pilgrims, estimated by the police to number some 10,000 by eight o’clock.
At the New Gate, which provides access to Saint Saviour’s church and monastery, neither the monastery employees nor the participants in a study day organized by the Studium Biblicum Franciscan are able to enter. The Custody sends an emissary to parley with the police. The students and professors at the Flagellation also had trouble getting arriving. Further inside the Old City , far from the neighborhood of the Holy Sepulcher, some of the roads are blocked. I speak with a group of Russians who have been waiting since three in the morning at Jaffa Gate. They are tired and have been standing up for five hours without being able to sit down. We are on opposite sides of the barrier. "Where are you from?" "Where are you going to put the photos?" "From France." "But then you are Catholic. How could you get in for an Orthodox feast?" The elderly lady is worried that there will not be room for her in the basilica if non-Orthodox Christians also enter.
10:00 I hope to rest for a few hours. But a neighbor has put a sound system on the roof and playing religious songs. The speakers are pointed at my windows… When the music ends, the young men of the town take over, their tabors and darboukas sounding throughout the narrow streets rhythmically accompanying chants to the glory of Christ and their Christian faith. They will go throughout the Christian Quarter before they break through to the basilica around noon. One of them is perched on another’s shoulders. He directs the chanting, brandishing an olive wood cross in one hand and a saber in the other. The others are waving flags: Greek, Armenian, the Vatican, the Custody… they merge with one another. And, in fact, these young men are from all Christian denominations: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.
Noon. At the Holy Sepulcher the crowd is at its peak. They can finally go inside. To use the Arabic expression, "you could throw salt and it wouldn’t hit the ground". The church is one immense, sustained murmur, prayers mixing with arguments. The wait is long, but the joy and faith, even if mixed with fatigue, are palpable. Finally they can enter. They are there. It’s up to God to do the rest.
But what is this celebration that engenders such ardor? What is this fire for which airplanes are standing by on runways, waiting to carry it off to Moscow, Athens, Sophia (the presidential Falcon chartered for the occasion), Bucharest… for the nighttime vigil?
"It is a miracle of God," the faithful will tell you. According to an Orthodox site (www.holyfire.org), the first manifestation of the holy fire can be traced back to the day of the resurrection itself, citing Church fathers Gregory of Nyssa and John Damascene, who themselves went to Jerusalem. The former, in his Second Homily on the Resurrection, writes: "Peter saw with his own eyes, but also through the elevation of the apostolic spirit, that the Tomb was illuminated even though it was night; he saw it with his senses and spiritually." The latter often mentions the brilliant, miraculous light around the Holy Tomb in his liturgical hymns . For example: "Peter, having rapidly approached the Tomb and having seen the light inside the sepulcher, was frightened."
The first written pilgrim testimonies go back to the Carolingian period, around 810. The Latin monk Bernard described in the 9th century: "On Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, at the morning service in the church in the Temple of the Tomb of the Lord, the Patriarch transmits the fire to the Bishop and then to all the people, so that each can light this fire in his home. The present Patriarch is Theodos (853-879); he was elevated to this honor for his piety." Preaching the Crusade, Pope Urban II himself reported during the Council of Clermont in 1095: "Truly, in this Temple (the Tomb of the Lord), God rests, even in the present day. He does not stop working miracles for, on the days of His Passion, when all the lights are extinguished around His tomb and in the church, suddenly the extinguished lamps are relit. What heart, no matter how hardened, would not be touched before such a manifestation!" The Roman Church historian Baronius reports in turn: "Western Christians, having retaken Jerusalem from the Saracens, saw a miracle when, on Holy Saturday, the candles lit themselves around the Tomb of the Lord. This miracle takes place there habitually." Baronius, Church Annals (1588-1593))
The (Russian) Orthodox site professes: "At that time (1093-1112), shortly after the Crusades, King Baudoin I, a Catholic, reigned in Jerusalem. From Daniel’s account, we learn that Baudoin I was present at the apparition of the Holy Light and received a candle from the Bishop, the Bishop being Orthodox and not Catholic, in spite of the fact that Baudoin was Catholic and Jerusalem had been taken by Catholic crusaders and under obedience to the pope."
The Orthodox Patriarch Simon had left the city for Cyprus and then Constantinople [1] upon the arrival of the Latin crusaders in 1099. The patriarchal seat being vacant, the crusaders themselves enthroned Arnulf Malecorne (also known as Arnulf of Chocques [2].
Catholic patriarchs, then, presided over the celebration of the Holy Fire during the Crusader period. Historians of the period do not hesitate in recalling that the Lord did not always respond to their prayer imploring a miracle, judging their faith too weak and the crusaders’ behavior too distant from the Kingdom of God. It could happen, then, that the light was not lit in the Holy Sepulcher but in Al Aqsa mosque which was a church at that time, or in the church of Saint John’s Hospital (belonging to the Knights Hospitalers, known today as the Knights of Malta) or that the Lord, playfully partisan, would light the candles in an Orthodox chapel rather than in the aedicule where the Latin Patriarch was [3].
When there was once again an Orthodox Patriarch to preside over the celebration, the Franciscans did not hesitate to mix with the crowd. Later this was forbidden on pain of excommunication, a threat that was lifted some fifty years ago. In our time, some Catholics try to mix with the crowd in the Holy Sepulcher, certainly more to observe the folkloric aspect with western eyes than to join in the unswerving faith in the miracle of the Orthodox Christians.
In Jerusalem on Friday, 25 April, 2008, all the lights of the tomb were extinguished and the closed doors of the aedicule were sealed with a 2-3 kilo block of beeswax. The aedicule had first been thoroughly searched to be sure that means to light the candles was there. Around 1:00pm the Orthodox Patriarch would enter, after having circled the structure three times, followed by monks and priests imploring God to work the miracle. His entrance is usually followed by that of the Armenian Patriarch, a point which is frequently discussed by the two Churches. It is not he, however, but the Lord himself who lights the candles. This is the miracle of the Holy Fire that has been perpetuated for years and years. For the Orthodox faithful, doubting it is not allowed. Inside the aedicule, the Patriarch follows the ritual and takes one or several votive candles lit by the Lord and distributes the Holy fire, beginning by passing it out of the Chapel of the Angels, the vestibule of the tomb, through two side openings. Then the crowd shares it and the church is lit with thousands of candles until it seems to be afire. But to avoid a real conflagration, they must put out the candles after a few minutes. That is also the Orthodox tradition. The tapers must be lit but quickly extinguished and carefully preserved; it is a testimony to the event.
The new fire, according to tradition, does not burn during the first minutes. The faithful pass their hand into the flame and many then touch their faces. The wax flows more generously from these tapers made of 33 candles than the flame. The young men of the city who run to distribute the fire in the roads of the Christian Quarter find it hot going, but so what? It is almost a right of initiation for them, and it is an honor.
All the Christians, Orthodox or not, who have not gone to the church wait at their doors for the holy fire: "You have to leave it lit for at least three days. And you must not put it out by blowing on it." Some people enclose the flame in a lantern to transport it. It is these lanterns that will be carried by the planes.
"The miracle of the fire marks the resurrection of Christ," an Orthodox priest tells me. In the streets, the faithful greet one another with the words "Christ is risen! He is truly risen!" It is 4:00pm.
The Paschal liturgy will take place during the night, beginning at midnight. The pilgrims inside the basilica go to have a few hours of rest. Those who could not enter nevertheless light their candles in the Basilica of the Resurrection which will once again be filled to bursting point tonight.
MAB
The photos of the inside of the Holy Sepulcher are from 2007; those of the exterior, from 2008.
[1] "In 1099 the Crusaders appointed a Latin Patriarch instead of the Greek Patriarch, who lived in Constantinople until 1187. See wikipedia
- Note the article is preceded by the comment: “This article is about the Patriarch of Jerusalem according to the Greek Orthodox tradition”.
[2] See wikipedia. What we learn from the monk Daniel is that the priests and faithful of all Christian traditions awaited the miracle together, each invoking God according to his tradition. Daniel wrote in Russian, a language unknown to the crusaders, that he felt that the Latins’ hymns were more cries than singing. He also noted that the Latins, who have authority over the city, apply themselves to favoring the presence of all denominations at the ceremony[[Daniel Eugumeno, Itinerario in Terra Santa, ed. Garzaniti, p 161
[3] Sabino de Sandoli ofm, Itinera Hierosolymitana crucesignatorum, Voll. I, II, III
Saturday, 26 April, 2008. With this year’s five weeks’ difference between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches, today is Holy Saturday for the Orthodox Churches. Since 3:30 this morning, the Christian Quarter of the Old City has been murmuring in Greek, Russian, Romanian. The Orthodox faithful, hosted by the monasteries and local residents since the beginning of the week, set out in small bunches toward the Holy Sepulcher, where the large bell tolled the death knell for the death of Christ.
It is not for a morning prayer that they are assembling in the middle of the night. They are going to the celebration of the "Holy Fire", the new fire, that begins the Paschal vigil. They set out ten hours in advance, even though the celebration is scheduled for 1:00pm and the Basilica of the Resurrection is only five minutes away on foot.
During the day, thousands and thousands of them will converge on the holy place, but only the earliest arrivals will be able to enter and see, or not, some of the celebration.
Toward five in the morning the migratory movement increases. When I arrive at the entrance to the Street of the Christians there are already almost 200 people massed behind the closed barriers under the vigilance of Israeli policemen. The latter do not want the faithful to enter too soon into the church, which is closed in any case, where they would have to stand and wait without being able to move. All entrances to the church are also closed.
It is 18 degrees centigrade (64 degrees F). Some pilgrims, frequently the youngest, end their night on the ground. That was the case for Georgetta, until the door she was huddled against opened and woke her. Georgetta is a Romanian from Bucharest. She is in her thirties and this is the second time she has come; the next two years are already planned. "I stayed here all night. Last year I was stuck in the street for 12 hours until I payed an Arab 100 euros. He told us to follow him, we went into a shop, there were four of us, and it was a miracle of God, we were able to get into the church’s forecourt." But this year Georgetta has every intention of getting inside.
The crowd is dense, many people are talking, many others are praying. A three-wheeled cart filled with bread arrives. Like every morning, it delivers bread to the stalls in the Street of the Christians. Some pilgrims want to buy the sesame seed-covered bread, kaak. It usually costs 8 eurocents (about 12 American cents). "Opportunity makes a thief," and this morning each kaak will cost one euro (about $1.50). But there are takers. I tell the delivery man in Arabic that he "has a long arm", a local expression meaning he’s a thief. He answers me "One euro, one euro," before realizing that I had just spoken to him in his own language. He lowers his eyes, embarrassed, but the young man accompanying him has fewer scruples and continues to take money as at the same time he tries to push his way through with his cart. The cart leaves and is quickly swallowed up by the crowd.
A water seller has set up at the entrance to the neighboring mosque. I go and ask the price. "It’s 3 shekels for the small bottle (50 eurocents, about $0.75), and five for the big one (90 eurocents, $1.40). "The baker is profiteering," he tells me sadly. "That is not good."
Day dawns slowly. All of a sudden the crowd surges. The barriers have moved. Maybe they will be able to enter the church and join the hundred or so pilgrims who were able to hide in its nooks and crannies to spend the night. These last will stay huddled in their hiding places during the early morning, so as not to be evicted by the large numbers of police and military security people.
As to the barriers, false hope. At 8:30 in the morning, they are still shut, as are most, if not all, of the gates to the Old City. The doors to the Holy Sepulcher will be opened at 9:30 by the Armenians. It is only then that the police, aided by soldiers, will try to regulate the inflow of pilgrims, estimated by the police to number some 10,000 by eight o’clock.
At the New Gate, which provides access to Saint Saviour’s church and monastery, neither the monastery employees nor the participants in a study day organized by the Studium Biblicum Franciscan are able to enter. The Custody sends an emissary to parley with the police. The students and professors at the Flagellation also had trouble getting arriving. Further inside the Old City , far from the neighborhood of the Holy Sepulcher, some of the roads are blocked. I speak with a group of Russians who have been waiting since three in the morning at Jaffa Gate. They are tired and have been standing up for five hours without being able to sit down. We are on opposite sides of the barrier. "Where are you from?" "Where are you going to put the photos?" "From France." "But then you are Catholic. How could you get in for an Orthodox feast?" The elderly lady is worried that there will not be room for her in the basilica if non-Orthodox Christians also enter.
10:00 I hope to rest for a few hours. But a neighbor has put a sound system on the roof and playing religious songs. The speakers are pointed at my windows… When the music ends, the young men of the town take over, their tabors and darboukas sounding throughout the narrow streets rhythmically accompanying chants to the glory of Christ and their Christian faith. They will go throughout the Christian Quarter before they break through to the basilica around noon. One of them is perched on another’s shoulders. He directs the chanting, brandishing an olive wood cross in one hand and a saber in the other. The others are waving flags: Greek, Armenian, the Vatican, the Custody… they merge with one another. And, in fact, these young men are from all Christian denominations: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.
Noon. At the Holy Sepulcher the crowd is at its peak. They can finally go inside. To use the Arabic expression, "you could throw salt and it wouldn’t hit the ground". The church is one immense, sustained murmur, prayers mixing with arguments. The wait is long, but the joy and faith, even if mixed with fatigue, are palpable. Finally they can enter. They are there. It’s up to God to do the rest.
But what is this celebration that engenders such ardor? What is this fire for which airplanes are standing by on runways, waiting to carry it off to Moscow, Athens, Sophia (the presidential Falcon chartered for the occasion), Bucharest… for the nighttime vigil?
"It is a miracle of God," the faithful will tell you. According to an Orthodox site (www.holyfire.org), the first manifestation of the holy fire can be traced back to the day of the resurrection itself, citing Church fathers Gregory of Nyssa and John Damascene, who themselves went to Jerusalem. The former, in his Second Homily on the Resurrection, writes: "Peter saw with his own eyes, but also through the elevation of the apostolic spirit, that the Tomb was illuminated even though it was night; he saw it with his senses and spiritually." The latter often mentions the brilliant, miraculous light around the Holy Tomb in his liturgical hymns . For example: "Peter, having rapidly approached the Tomb and having seen the light inside the sepulcher, was frightened."
The first written pilgrim testimonies go back to the Carolingian period, around 810. The Latin monk Bernard described in the 9th century: "On Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, at the morning service in the church in the Temple of the Tomb of the Lord, the Patriarch transmits the fire to the Bishop and then to all the people, so that each can light this fire in his home. The present Patriarch is Theodos (853-879); he was elevated to this honor for his piety." Preaching the Crusade, Pope Urban II himself reported during the Council of Clermont in 1095: "Truly, in this Temple (the Tomb of the Lord), God rests, even in the present day. He does not stop working miracles for, on the days of His Passion, when all the lights are extinguished around His tomb and in the church, suddenly the extinguished lamps are relit. What heart, no matter how hardened, would not be touched before such a manifestation!" The Roman Church historian Baronius reports in turn: "Western Christians, having retaken Jerusalem from the Saracens, saw a miracle when, on Holy Saturday, the candles lit themselves around the Tomb of the Lord. This miracle takes place there habitually." Baronius, Church Annals (1588-1593))
The (Russian) Orthodox site professes: "At that time (1093-1112), shortly after the Crusades, King Baudoin I, a Catholic, reigned in Jerusalem. From Daniel’s account, we learn that Baudoin I was present at the apparition of the Holy Light and received a candle from the Bishop, the Bishop being Orthodox and not Catholic, in spite of the fact that Baudoin was Catholic and Jerusalem had been taken by Catholic crusaders and under obedience to the pope."
The Orthodox Patriarch Simon had left the city for Cyprus and then Constantinople [1] upon the arrival of the Latin crusaders in 1099. The patriarchal seat being vacant, the crusaders themselves enthroned Arnulf Malecorne (also known as Arnulf of Chocques [2].
Catholic patriarchs, then, presided over the celebration of the Holy Fire during the Crusader period. Historians of the period do not hesitate in recalling that the Lord did not always respond to their prayer imploring a miracle, judging their faith too weak and the crusaders’ behavior too distant from the Kingdom of God. It could happen, then, that the light was not lit in the Holy Sepulcher but in Al Aqsa mosque which was a church at that time, or in the church of Saint John’s Hospital (belonging to the Knights Hospitalers, known today as the Knights of Malta) or that the Lord, playfully partisan, would light the candles in an Orthodox chapel rather than in the aedicule where the Latin Patriarch was [3].
When there was once again an Orthodox Patriarch to preside over the celebration, the Franciscans did not hesitate to mix with the crowd. Later this was forbidden on pain of excommunication, a threat that was lifted some fifty years ago. In our time, some Catholics try to mix with the crowd in the Holy Sepulcher, certainly more to observe the folkloric aspect with western eyes than to join in the unswerving faith in the miracle of the Orthodox Christians.
In Jerusalem on Friday, 25 April, 2008, all the lights of the tomb were extinguished and the closed doors of the aedicule were sealed with a 2-3 kilo block of beeswax. The aedicule had first been thoroughly searched to be sure that means to light the candles was there. Around 1:00pm the Orthodox Patriarch would enter, after having circled the structure three times, followed by monks and priests imploring God to work the miracle. His entrance is usually followed by that of the Armenian Patriarch, a point which is frequently discussed by the two Churches. It is not he, however, but the Lord himself who lights the candles. This is the miracle of the Holy Fire that has been perpetuated for years and years. For the Orthodox faithful, doubting it is not allowed. Inside the aedicule, the Patriarch follows the ritual and takes one or several votive candles lit by the Lord and distributes the Holy fire, beginning by passing it out of the Chapel of the Angels, the vestibule of the tomb, through two side openings. Then the crowd shares it and the church is lit with thousands of candles until it seems to be afire. But to avoid a real conflagration, they must put out the candles after a few minutes. That is also the Orthodox tradition. The tapers must be lit but quickly extinguished and carefully preserved; it is a testimony to the event.
The new fire, according to tradition, does not burn during the first minutes. The faithful pass their hand into the flame and many then touch their faces. The wax flows more generously from these tapers made of 33 candles than the flame. The young men of the city who run to distribute the fire in the roads of the Christian Quarter find it hot going, but so what? It is almost a right of initiation for them, and it is an honor.
All the Christians, Orthodox or not, who have not gone to the church wait at their doors for the holy fire: "You have to leave it lit for at least three days. And you must not put it out by blowing on it." Some people enclose the flame in a lantern to transport it. It is these lanterns that will be carried by the planes.
"The miracle of the fire marks the resurrection of Christ," an Orthodox priest tells me. In the streets, the faithful greet one another with the words "Christ is risen! He is truly risen!" It is 4:00pm.
The Paschal liturgy will take place during the night, beginning at midnight. The pilgrims inside the basilica go to have a few hours of rest. Those who could not enter nevertheless light their candles in the Basilica of the Resurrection which will once again be filled to bursting point tonight.
MAB
The photos of the inside of the Holy Sepulcher are from 2007; those of the exterior, from 2008.
[1] "In 1099 the Crusaders appointed a Latin Patriarch instead of the Greek Patriarch, who lived in Constantinople until 1187. See wikipedia
- Note the article is preceded by the comment: “This article is about the Patriarch of Jerusalem according to the Greek Orthodox tradition”.
[2] See wikipedia. What we learn from the monk Daniel is that the priests and faithful of all Christian traditions awaited the miracle together, each invoking God according to his tradition. Daniel wrote in Russian, a language unknown to the crusaders, that he felt that the Latins’ hymns were more cries than singing. He also noted that the Latins, who have authority over the city, apply themselves to favoring the presence of all denominations at the ceremony[[Daniel Eugumeno, Itinerario in Terra Santa, ed. Garzaniti, p 161
[3] Sabino de Sandoli ofm, Itinera Hierosolymitana crucesignatorum, Voll. I, II, III