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10. Bright Pascha in Jerusalem
The Russian Abbot Daniel, who traveled to the Holy Land in the twelfth century, describes the celebration of the Bright Feast before the Holy Sepulchre as follows:
“On Great and Holy Saturday, at the sixth hour of the day, an innumerable multitude of people gathers at the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. Natives come, and pilgrims from other lands — from Babylon, Egypt, and Antioch. All gather there on that day in countless numbers and fill the place around the church of the Lord’s Tomb. There is great crowding in the church then: many even struggle to breathe because of the crush.
All these worshipers stand with unlit candles and wait for the doors of the church to be opened. Then they are opened, and everyone enters the church, forcing their way in and pressing against one another, filling the whole church and the porches. Everywhere there are crowds — inside the church, outside the church, around Golgotha and the Place of the Skull — even as far as the place where the Lord’s Cross was found.
And all the people pray with only one prayer: ‘Lord, have mercy.’ So loud are these cries that the earth seems to groan and tremble throughout that whole area from the shouting of the people. Those who truly believe weep then from compunction, and even the one whose heart is hardened feels shame, remembers his sins, and says within himself: ‘Will the Holy Light truly not descend today because of my sins?’
So all the faithful stood with tears and with contrite hearts. Suddenly, after the ninth hour, a small cloud came from the east and stood above the church (for the church had no roof), and rain fell over the Holy Tomb and thoroughly soaked those who stood near it. Then suddenly a light shone forth in the Holy Tomb, and from the Holy Tomb of the Lord a radiant brightness spread out, at which everyone looked with awe.
The bishop with four deacons approached and opened the doors of the Tomb. Taking a candle, the bishop entered the Tomb, lit it from that Holy Light, and brought it out from the Tomb; from that candle we all lit our own candles. The Holy Light is not like earthly light, but shines differently, wondrously bright; and its flame is red like cinnabar.
So all the people stand with burning candles and pray without ceasing: ‘Lord, have mercy,’ looking upon the Light of God with great joy and wonder.
Whoever has never witnessed the joy of that radiant day may perhaps not believe this account, but the one who believes the lesser thing will also believe the greater miracle; while to an evil man even truth appears false.
Afterward all went out from the church in great joy with burning candles, and each guarded his own candle so that the wind would not put it out. With this Holy Light the pilgrims light candles in their own churches and conclude the evening chanting, each in his own church. And we, with the abbot and the brethren, returned to our monastery carrying burning candles, and there, after finishing the evening singing, we went to our cells, offering praise to God who counted us worthy to see such grace.
And the next morning, on the day of Bright Pascha, after serving Matins in the usual way, after exchanging the kiss with the abbot and the brethren, and after the dismissal — at the first hour of the day — we went to the Lord’s Tomb while singing the kontakion: ‘Though You descended into the tomb, O Immortal One,’ and entering the Tomb itself, we kissed it with sincere love and tears.”
11. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem
No church in the world draws as many pilgrims from every land as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Built by the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine the Great and his holy mother, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen of Constantinople, this church was many times devastated. It suffered especially in the terrible fire of 1808, when its main vaults collapsed and all the decorations perished in the flames. Yet the foundation and a large part of the walls have survived from the time of Constantine until today.
The church is entered through double gates. One of them is sealed up, while the other is locked at night by the Turks, who, for the sake of order, remain constantly in the church during the day near the doors. The first holy place seen by pilgrims upon entering, directly opposite the doors and only a few steps away, is the Stone of Anointing, on which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemos wrapped in linen cloths and anointed with spices the most pure Body of the Lord Jesus Christ after He was taken down from the Cross. This stone is now covered with a rose-colored marble slab. Above it stands a canopy on four pillars, beneath which hang many ever-burning lamps, while large candlesticks stand at the corners.
From there pilgrims are led to the left, to the western part of the church, which is a majestic rotunda — that is, a circle formed by eighteen pilasters joined by arches in two stories. Upon these pilasters rests an enormous dome, and in the middle of the rotunda stands a small chapel of yellow marble called the Aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre. In this chapel is kept the priceless treasure — the Lord’s Tomb, that cave in which our Savior Jesus Christ was buried.
From the life-bearing Tomb one passes by the Stone of Anointing to Golgotha, where the Only-Begotten Son of God suffered and died as man for all of us sinful sons of Adam, slain upon the Cross as the spotless Lamb who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world.
Holy Mount Golgotha occupies the southeastern part of the church. In the time of the Savior this sacred rock stood outside the city wall, as the Apostle says: “The Lord chose to suffer outside the gate.” Near the rock of Golgotha was also the garden of Joseph of Arimathea: “Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden... and in the garden a new tomb” (John 19:41). Therefore even now the Lord’s Tomb and the rock of Golgotha stand within one and the same Church of the Resurrection.
The rock is covered in stone, and one ascends it by twenty-eight steps. At the top of Golgotha is a church divided into two sections, almost like two churches. Into one, where the Lord’s Cross was raised, light enters from the west, from inside the church; this section belongs to the Greeks. The other southern section, where our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, is served by the Latins.
The Greek altar is of white marble. In its front side is an opening, so that a person kneeling may easily bend beneath the altar, where is found the very place in which the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord was fixed. While sacred hymns are sung, devout pilgrims ascend Golgotha and with fear and love bow down before this holy opening, kissing with tears of heartfelt repentance the edges of the sacred rock, which are covered in silver and engraved with scenes of the Lord’s Passion.
Behind the altar, upon a raised marble platform, stands a majestic full-length Crucifixion of the Lord. His life-giving Blood seems to flow from His most pure wounds upon Golgotha. Standing beside the Cross in deep sorrow are His most pure Mother and the beloved disciple John the Apostle.
To the right and left of the Lord’s Cross, slightly behind it, two black circles can be seen in the marble. These mark the places where the crosses of the thieves crucified with Christ were raised. According to tradition, the crucified Savior faced west, so that the cross of the wise thief on His right stood on the northern side, while between him and the Lord’s Cross stood our Protectress and Intercessor for all sinners, the Most Holy Theotokos.
On the right side of the altar of Golgotha is a deep crack, formed during the earthquake when the Lord gave up His Spirit upon the Cross. This fissure runs through the whole rock of Golgotha and is remarkable because the stone split not along its natural layers but across them, something not seen in ordinary earthquakes. Clearly, the earthquake at the death of the Savior was not an ordinary act of nature, but a special miracle of God for the instruction of the hard-hearted Jews.
Beneath Golgotha is a small cave-church. Here, according to tradition, was buried the king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek, the Old Testament priest of the Most High God. In the depth of this cave stands an altar dedicated to the Forerunner of the Lord and to our forefather Adam. Behind the altar, through an iron grate and by the light of an ever-burning lamp, the same crack in the rock can be seen.
Here, according to ancient tradition preserved in the writings of many Holy Fathers, the skull of Adam was buried, from which the very rock received the name Golgotha, meaning “Place of the Skull.” Tradition says that when the soldier pierced the most pure side of the Second Adam — our Lord — the holy Blood and water that flowed from His side passed through the crack in the rock and washed the skull of the first-created Adam. In accordance with this tradition, in our Orthodox Church, depictions of the Lord’s Crucifixion always show beneath the Cross a human skull resting on crossed bones.
From Golgotha pilgrims descend behind the altar of the main Church of the Resurrection. There, in a dark semicircular gallery, are several small chapels and the descent to underground churches. The first chapel from Golgotha belongs to the Greeks and is called the Chapel of the Mocking and the Crown of Thorns. Beneath its altar lies part of a gray marble pillar on which our Lord sat when the soldiers mocked Him in Pilate’s praetorium. In the wall behind glass and a grate is preserved part of the Crown of Thorns.
Next to this chapel is the door to the underground church of Saints Constantine the Great and Helen of Constantinople, reached by descending thirty-three steps. This church was hewn in the natural rock at the time when Queen Helen sought the Life-Giving Cross. It is spacious, about thirty paces long and wide, and its dome is supported by four thick columns. It belongs to the Armenians.
To the right of the altar is a stone seat where, according to tradition, Saint Helen sat while the Cross was being sought. From there one descends another thirteen steps into the cave where the Holy Cross had been buried for three hundred years. Here the three crosses were found: one the Lord’s, and two belonging to the thieves crucified with Him. The actual place of the Finding of the Cross belongs to the Orthodox. It is paved with multicolored marble, with an image of the Cross in the center.
Further on are the Chapel of the Division of Garments, belonging to the Orthodox, and the Chapel of Longinus the Centurion, belonging to the Armenians. According to Armenian tradition, Longinus was from Armenia. He pierced the most pure side of the crucified Savior with a spear, later believed in Him, and came here to weep over what he had done. He died a martyr in Cappadocia.
Farther on, beneath an altar behind a grate, are shown the Bonds of Christ, or two holes in the stone into which the feet of the Divine Sufferer were fastened when He was confined until morning before being led to Pilate. Nearby is the place called the Prison of Christ, where according to tradition the Lord was held until preparations for His crucifixion were complete, and where later the Mother of God, when her Divine Son was led to Golgotha, sank to the ground weeping in sorrow, supported by devout women.
After going around the main altar, pilgrims proceed along the northern side of the church to the west. Opposite the northern side of the chapel of the Holy Tomb is the Latin church, on the place where according to tradition the Savior appeared after His Resurrection to His most pure Mother. At its sides are two smaller altars: on the right, the Chapel of the Holy Cross; on the left, the Scourging, where part of the pillar to which the Lord was bound during the scourging is preserved behind an iron grate.
Between the Church of the Appearance and the chapel of the Holy Tomb, two marble circles in the floor mark the places where, according to tradition, the Savior appeared to Mary Magdalene in the form of the Gardener. Nearby is a Latin altar in memory of this appearance, and behind it a painting depicts the event.
In the far western part of the church, in the gallery behind the Lord’s Tomb, is the burial cave of righteous Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his new tomb for the Savior. Here also his friend righteous Nicodemos was buried.
From there, passing around the chapel of the Holy Tomb, pilgrims enter the main Church of the Resurrection of Christ, which belongs to the Greeks. It occupies the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The marble iconostasis has four tiers. The local icons are of fine Russian workmanship. The Royal Doors are carved and gilded, crowned by a double-headed eagle. Behind the iconostasis in the altar are choir stalls in several rows, and above the altar is a marble canopy.
In the middle of the church hang three large chandeliers with fifty candles each, all gifts of our Orthodox tsars. Besides these are countless lamps everywhere, so that on feast days more than four hundred lamps and up to fifteen hundred candles are lit.
Whoever has seen this church and the chapel of the Lord’s Tomb on the night of Bright Pascha will never forget that wondrous sight. Such is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
It is comforting to remember that for those unable to visit Jerusalem, there is in Russia, fifty-seven versts from Moscow, an exact likeness of this church in the monastery called New Jerusalem Monastery. This church was built by our ever-memorable hierarch Patriarch Nikon of Moscow. Walking through the holy places in that church, one is involuntarily carried in mind and heart to the treasured shrines of Jerusalem.
12. On the Descent of the Holy Light
The Holy Light among the Greeks — the Sacred Fire (or the grace of the Lord), among Russian pilgrims — the miracle that has from ancient times appeared in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on the last day of Holy Week, at two o’clock in the afternoon, is a celebration without equal in the whole Christian world.
I was fortunate to witness the descent of the Holy Light in the Church of the Resurrection twice. It is not easy to convey with proper accuracy the unique spectacle experienced by the outward senses.
Usually on Holy Saturday, at half past one, the bell rings in the Patriarchate, and from there the procession begins. Like a long black ribbon, the Greek clergy enter the church, preceding His Beatitude, the Patriarch. He is in full vestments, with shining mitre and panagias. The clergy move with slow steps past the Stone of Anointing, proceed to the platform connecting the Aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre with the cathedral, and then, between two rows of armed Turkish guards barely restraining the pressure of the crowd, disappear into the great altar of the cathedral.
The Patriarch stops before the Royal Doors. Two archimandrites with hierodeacons remove his vestments. Without mitre or episcopal insignia, clothed in a white linen robe and girded with a leather belt, he returns, accompanied by metropolitans and bishops, to the entrance of the chapel. The entrance is sealed with a Turkish seal and guarded by Turkish soldiers.
The day before, all candles, lamps, and chandeliers in the church had already been extinguished. In earlier times this was carefully supervised: the Turkish authorities made the strictest inspection inside the chapel. Because of accusations from Catholics, they even went so far as to search the pockets of the officiating Metropolitan, the Patriarch’s deputy, when the Patriarch still resided in Constantinople.
After the clergy, preceded by banner-bearers, make a threefold procession around the chapel of the Holy Tomb while singing the sticheron in the sixth tone, “Your Resurrection, O Christ Savior, the Angels hymn in heaven...,” the Patriarch stops on the platform before the outer entrance of the chapel.
There he is met by an Armenian bishop in vestments. A Turkish officer removes the seal. After the Patriarch enters, followed by the Armenian bishop, the door is locked again. The Greek hierarch then passes through the low opening in the partition wall into the Holy Tomb itself. There reigns the complete darkness of night.
Then follow fearful... passion-filled moments... sometimes fifteen minutes, sometimes twenty. It is an entire age of trembling expectation. Tomb-like silence. Imagine the deathly stillness of a wild crowd of many thousands — so complete that if a bird flew overhead, the beating of its wings would be heard — and then you will understand the intensity of this people’s expectation. Only those who have lived through those moments can understand how hearts pound.
In the Aedicule, in the Chapel of the Angel, there are two oval openings in the north and south walls, each about the size of a large serving dish. Suddenly in the northern one appears a long candle... burning!
“Grace! Lord, have mercy! Kyrie eleison! Waladin, iladin, el Messiah!” (in Arabic: there is no faith other than Orthodoxy!)*
Shouts, cries, unrestrained outbursts rise from below, above, from balconies, galleries, ledges, and cornices; deafening exclamations everywhere, bells ringing, solemn sounds of wooden semantra, the crack of drums, sharp trills of metal hammers. Everyone leaps, cries out, climbs onto one another’s shoulders. It seems to me that I am inside a vast building engulfed in fire.
The flame instantly appears everywhere. Everyone’s bundles of candles are lit. They lower them by ropes from the galleries; burning bundles are sent upward. The whole church is filled with flame. The temperature instantly rises to forty-five degrees and higher.
The soldiers, with enormous effort, barely manage to clear a path for the Patriarch as he comes out of the Aedicule. Pale, with suffering features from deep inner emotion, the Patriarch slowly approaches the cathedral altar. So once did Moses descend from the heights of Sinai.
The Patriarch stretches his lit candles to both sides. Whoever can extinguishes his own bundle and catches the flame from the Patriarch’s candles.
I could never explain to myself how the Fire, barely noticed in the northern opening of the Aedicule, appeared almost in the same instant near the altar of the cathedral. There all candles are already burning at the very time when the Fire has only just begun to be passed from hand to hand among those standing nearest the chapel.
At the opening usually wait two designated messengers with lanterns; one of them immediately rides on horseback to Bethlehem. But how the other could in a single moment pass through the packed mass of people and reach the altar remains completely inexplicable.
The Patriarch rests in the altar no more than five minutes and then departs; gradually all the clergy also disappear from the church.
What, then, has happened? From where did the Patriarch obtain the Fire? Such are the questions that naturally come to a skeptic’s lips.
Soon after Pascha, I, together with several newly arrived pilgrims, accompanied the Patriarch on the road to Jericho and to the Jordan River. Halfway there we were invited into his tent for a meal. One skeptic, choosing a convenient moment, suddenly asked:
“From where, Your Beatitude, do you receive the fire in the Aedicule?”
The aged hierarch, paying no attention to the ironic tone of the question, calmly replied:
“My good sir, you should know that without spectacles I am no reader anymore. When I first entered the Chapel of the Angel and the doors were closed behind me, half-darkness reigned there. Light barely entered through the two openings from the rotunda of the Holy Tomb, which itself was only dimly lit from above.
In the Holy Tomb itself I could not distinguish whether I held a prayer book in my hands or something else. Barely visible was a sort of whitish patch against the black background of night: evidently the marble slab upon the Holy Tomb shone faintly.
But when I opened the prayer book, to my surprise the text became fully readable to my sight without spectacles. I had scarcely read three or four lines with deep inner emotion when, glancing again at the slab, which was growing whiter and whiter so that all four edges were already clearly visible, I noticed upon it something like fine scattered beads of many colors — or rather pearls the size of pinheads or smaller.
The slab positively began to emit a kind of light. Unconsciously sweeping these pearls together with a large piece of cotton, as they began to merge like drops of oil, I felt a certain warmth in the cotton and just as unconsciously touched it with the wick of a candle.
It flared like gunpowder — and the candle burned, illuminating the three icons of the Resurrection, as it also illuminated the face of the Mother of God and all the metal lamps above the Holy Tomb.
I leave it to you now, my good sir, to judge what my inner emotion was at that moment — and to receive the answer to your question.”
Notes by Translator:
* The parenthetical translation is almost certainly incorrect, and the phrase as transcribed is probably a phonetic, garbled rendering of Arabic cries heard in a noisy crowd by a Russian writer. The quoted words: “Waladin, iladin, el Messiah!” do not correspond clearly to a standard Arabic sentence meaning “there is no faith other than Orthodoxy.” Older pilgrimage accounts often wrote crowd chants by ear, especially Arabic, Greek, Turkish, or mixed local cries. In the chaos of Holy Light ceremonies, authors frequently misunderstood what they heard.
Arab Orthodox Christians have long used distinctive celebratory chants, especially Palestinian and Jordanian Orthodox communities. These are rhythmic, loud, communal acclamations rather than formal liturgical texts:
1. هٰذا هو الإيمان الحق Hādhā huwa al-īmān al-ḥaqq (“This is the true faith.”)
2. هذا هو الإيمان الأرثوذكسي Hādhā huwa al-īmān al-urthudhuksī (“This is the Orthodox faith.”)
3. لا إيمان إلا الإيمان الأرثوذكسي Lā īmān illā al-īmān al-urthudhuksī (“There is no faith except the Orthodox faith.”)
Continued
