A Week at Mount Sinai Monastery: CONVERSING WITH HISTORY.

A Week at Mount Sinai Monastery: CONVERSING WITH HISTORY

At the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine of Mount Sinai, the oldest monastery in the world, where the Greek language has been spoken for 15 centuries, we open a window into our Byzantine heritage.

By author Angelos Rentoulas

Photos: Christina Georgiadou, Nikos Karanikolas

Sinai penetrates you. I remember the first image, the first morning after our evening arrival: leaving the guesthouse, climbing the dirt path among olive, eucalyptus and cypress trees. In a breathtaking landscape, where two rugged mountains meet, an austere castle-town grows. We bend and pass through a small, heavy, ancient door -the cut-through entrance - we enter the monastery. In its cobbled streets, you feel like you are walking in the corridors of history. 

We sneak into the chapel of Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring. Divine Liturgy is celebrated. It’s penetrating and mystical. A small skylight lets in a little light. It's freezing, two or three oil lamps are burning, there are spots of oil downstairs. Detachment of self, nestled in shared experience.

A few hours later, at the Refectory - a fellowship. The food: lentils. The fruit: unripe strawberries and ripe dates mixed on tin pates. Water and wine. The Refectory was built in the Crusades era.

A few hours ago, I touch the walls, the Catholicon, its carved door, everything that was built under Justinian, under his personal care. A section of the wall has been restored by Napoleon. I am in a living monument, a Greek cell in the middle of the desert, which survived the ravages of time.

The progenitor of Islam, Muhammad, with his Ashtiname [Book of Peace], acknowledges in writing the sanctity of the place, thus enclosing it in an impenetrable cloak of protection. Arab caliphs, Turkish sultans, and great European rulers had also paced the monastery under their patronage. Thus, Sinai remained unscathed by looting and destruction.

You don't have to be a believer to realize the value of this place. History flutters over Sinai. Here time breaks down. The Monastery of Saint Catherine is a goldmine of Byzantine memory. In its foundation, the political will of Byzantium to safeguard its borders. Here, at this end of the world, at the edge of his state, Justinian secured a fortress. Not just any fortress, but a Christian Ark of letters and culture. Justinian safeguarded the spiritual quest and the yearning for creation, ensuring its uninterrupted continuity.

I am, perhaps, oversimplifying, but not overinterpreting: in Sinai, you are offered a gift of the possibility of profound self-knowledge. I remember, on the first day, the American Father Justin, the librarian and prosphora-maker, showing us around the Library and in broken but exquisite Greek telling us: Greek has never stopped being spoken in Sinai. For fifteen centuries Greek has been heard continuously in the desert. A great thing.

Great things: in the Library, in the Sacristy, by the Burning Bush, in the cobbled streets of the monastery, one's gaze expands towards the past. I caress with my eyes the backs of old manuscripts and palimpsests, the terracottas, the peeling wood on the railings of the monastery. The collection of icons: I have never seen more beautiful paintings in my life. The dryness of the desert is ideal for preserving materials.

We will live close to a week in the monastery - with cooking, with guided tours, with conversations. In the company of the Fathers, who are heirs and continuers of this priceless tradition. Father Porfyrios, a meek Cretan, sixty years old, with a soul and energy of forty, is omnipresent. He takes care of us like his own children. He explains everything to us. Father Daniel, the Econom, makes sure that everything in the Monastery works like clockwork. He quietly ensures the success of our mission. I remember his sense of humor. Monk Stephen, a tireless guide, teacher and companion.

In the mornings and afternoons at the Archontariki [sitting room], we drink coffee and sweet tea, eat pita bread and dessert. A joyful community, which offers spiritual solace to its members, residents and visitors alike, in their desert expedition, in their journey through life…

The seven-day wandering in the Monastery complex, in the valley of the Forty, in the Bedouin household, had multiple dimensions. In the place where God Walked on Earth, the local and the universal, the divine and the human are reconciled; and you witness the fascinating interweaving of the spiritual with the material. You move physically, you move in time and mentally. You win something, and you are also definitely won over - Sinai puts its spell on you.