If not by its mystical beauty alone...Sinai’s remote hermitage of the Holy Unmercenary Saints Kosmas and Damianos remains etched in history as the place where the prayers of Saint John Klimakos saved a monk from sudden death.
Giant boulders still decorating the landscape, together with an ancient irrigation system, attest to the experience of Monk Moses, who had been sent by Saint John to water the garden, much as monks are sent today. Overcome by midday heat after attending to his duties, Moses found refuge from blazing heat in the shade of a huge boulder.
Anyone who has spent time in the wilderness of St. Catherine’s easily puts himself in the sixth century monk’s place: While the mountainous altitude (at 1500 metres, nearly 5,000 ft) protects from the suffocating heat of the lower Sinai, one would not wish for exposure to summer's midday sun. But fierce rays are easily mitigated by any small spot of shade. And despite the barren rock of the terrain, shade is not difficult to come by, for the sun soon dips below the surrounding peaks. As evidenced by these photos captured at 2 pm, shadows stretch long across deep ravines by mid-afternoon.
Of course, the main work of monks is not gardening, but nightlong vigils – and once again like his descendants of today – Monk Moses followed the physical labors of morning with afternoon rest in preparation for the sleepless night ahead.
As the Life of Saint John Klimakos recounts, at the same time the monk was taking his rest under the rock, Saint John was praying in his cave in the adjacent valley. Overcome by a light sleep, the Saint was woken by a voice asking, “John, how are you sleeping so peacefully while Moses is in great danger?” The enormous rock under which the monk was sleeping was about to collapse on him.
Indeed, a very few decades ago, the holy Greek abbot of beautiful St. George Chotzeva Monastery in Palestine was martyred by just such a fate.
Swiftly coming to his senses at the divine warning, John sprang up to arm himself with prayer for his disciple. Nothing more was known on the subject until that evening, for with typical monastic circumspection, Moses maintained silence upon returning to Saint John’s cave.
Later that evening however, John inquired whether anything untoward had happened during the day ...
In fact, Moses answered, the enormous boulder under which he had fallen into a deep sleep was about to crush him beyond recognition when he suddenly heard John’s voice warning him to safety – as a result of which he sprang out of danger just as the huge rock came crashing down with a roar.
The famously humble John mentioned nothing of his vision, constrained by the force of love to cry out his gratitude to God in secret hymns of the heart ..
On the occasion of the feast day of Saints Kosmas and Damianos, Saint John's successor as abbot of St. Catherine's Monastery, His Eminence Damianos of Sinai extends his blessings to all the Friends of Mount Sinai with appreciation for the crucial help offered by their own love to St. Catherine’s Monastery, whose example of multi-cultural peace remains so vital to those seeking peace in today’s world.
While much has changed at Sinai in recent decades, His Eminence notes that the Sinai monks’ ancient way of life continues very much as it always has. In the attached photos, one can note the shade drawn by enormous boulders surrounding Saints Kosmas and Damianos’ hermitage, the ancient canals still used to irrigate its garden, one of the local gardeners whose cooperation with the Monastery is so fundamental to its long history, and the olive, cypress and palm trees bathed in the holy prayer of those measureless centuries.
The below pictures are from: http://sinaitrekkingandsafari.com/main-attractions/st-katherine-and-mt-sinai/
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