Descent of the Holy Fire, 2009, photo essay
Saturday 18 April was a pleasant spring day. My husband and I are not Orthodox. But for Orthodox people it was a very important day - Great Saturday. On this day, the Holy Fire descends in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The fire has descended, we are witnesses, which means that the end of the world will not come this year.
On Saturday we headed to the Old City to see the miracle. We received invitation cards for the press in advance. It is very difficult to enter the Temple without an invitation. We got out late (after ten) and it turned out that the invitations at this time are no longer very helpful. Until twelve o'clock we walked along different streets, getting closer to the Temple, everywhere we met police barriers. Having walked a lot, they ended up in the Temple. They took the last and not very good places for the press.
The descent of the Holy Fire is a miracle that Orthodox Christians have been awarded, and of course they are the majority in the Temple on this day. But Christians of other faiths, Jews, Muslims and other people also come. Everyone wants to see the miracle and touch it.
There are always a lot of people in the temple on this day. There are rumors about 10-20 thousand people who fill all the aisles of the church. Passages are specially left for the movement of the clergy, ministers and dancing Arab guys.
In the afternoon, noisy dancers appeared. These are Orthodox Arabs who are sure to dance on this day, as if creating an atmosphere for the appearance of fire. Healthy guys climb on the shoulders of their buddies, wave their arms, beat drums, sing, chant in Arabic, calling for fire. The dance went on for twenty minutes. Then a procession of the Greek Church appeared with banners and a patriarch. The procession went around Kuvuklia (chapel over the bed of death and resurrection) 3 times. After that, the police checked the patriarch and the Armenian bishop for the absence of flammable objects. Holiness undressed and in a cassock went into Cuvuklia.
At that moment, the lights in the Temple were turned off. From all directions began to appear glare. At first it seemed that these were camera flashes, but almost no one took pictures using a flash. I honestly looked for the source of glare in the ratunda. I didn’t find it and made sure that these are real lightnings that rush around Kuvuklia, preceding the appearance of Fire.
After 2-3 minutes, several candles blazing with fire were taken out of Kuvukliya. And then joy or grace came to the Temple. You can see it on the faces of the people we photographed.
