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Even
in the days of the early Church, Christian devotion and
worship at
Mount Sinai
was already an established way of life.
Monks from across Christendom traveled to Mount Sinai
to commemorate this holy place, located at the southern part
of the
Sinai Peninsula
.
The
location has been a holy site for thousands of years because
of its connection with God's presence on earth.
In Exodus 3, we learn that Moses was tending a flock on the
mountain when he came upon a burning bush that was not
consumed by the fire. As he approached it, God
declared: "Remove the sandals from your feet, for the
place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your
father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of
Jacob." Our Lord appeared a second time on the
holy
mountain
of
Sinai
. According to the narrative in Exodus chapters 19-34, Moses
experienced and communed with God for forty days and nights
and received the key teachings of the Mosaic Law, including
the Ten Commandments.
There
are several reasons as to why Christians chose to seek a
spiritual life in the region near
Mount Sinai
. First, as Moses was initiated into the details of
liturgical ritual and moral rules for the chosen people,
they prefigured the Divine Liturgy of the Church and the
moral life exemplified by Christ, which we try to follow as
Christians. The holy monks and ascetics who desired to
be near God chose to be at Sinai because they recognized the
holiness of God's presence there and what it meant for the
Christian life. Second, the holy prophet Elias sought
comfort at Sinai, after forty days and nights of traveling
and fasting due to persecution from Jezebel. When he reached
the mountain, Elias encountered God not in an earthquake,
nor in a great fire, but in a still "small voice"
(l Kings 19). For the monks at
Mount Sinai
, Elias was the perfect type of monastic ascetic before
monasticism, a "type" for the hesychast, and one
whose zeal for God was a powerful inspiration to our
Christian tradition and the Melkites in particular. The
figures of Moses and Elias from the Old Testament enhanced
the God-blessed sanctity of
Mount Sinai
as a location consecrated to the ascetical and mystical
life. The monks recognized at Sinai an essential theme of
physical and spiritual self-discipline in order to conform
the human will to the divine.
While
Sinai is part of the great desert region, it had been
touched by God. As early as the second century, there were
Arab, Egyptian, Greek, and Syriac-speaking Christians living
in the Sinai desert. By the third century, many
Christians seeking to flee from Diocletian's persecutions
(AD 284305) sought refuge in this holy place and among its
Christian monasteries. According to contemporary writers of
the time, there were likely thousands of Christians living
in the area at the time.
Our
narrative of the saints begins at this point. There were
groups of holy monks living on a summit in the Sinai region
called Raitho, where they had established a monastery.
They were seeking a respite from all the evil in the world
as much as one could, and they hoped to cultivate their own
ascetic virtues at the holy place of God's dwelling, living
in humility and simply in the mountains and caves of the
mountain. Following their practices of prayers, they
would come on Sunday , to gather in the Church and celebrate
the Divine Mysteries and continue to instruct one another in
faith. However, a group of Bedouin tribesmen in the area
named the Blemmyes appeared at the monastery. They were
polytheistic nomads who lived along the Red Sea in both
Egypt
and
Arabia
. Initially, they hoped to raid and pillage the monks.
But they found only straw mats and monks dressed in
hair-shirts! The infuriated nomads then chose to
sacrifice the thirty-three fathers of Raitho in their
hatred. Not only did they take their lives, but they
destroyed the monastic complex as well, leaving only the
ruins of Raitho. The martyrdom of these Christians has been
recorded for history by the Egyptian monk Abba Ammonius, in
his "Discourse upon the Holy Fathers slain on
Mount Sinai
and Raitho." He would later become one of the first
ascetic spiritual advisers to the
Byzantine Imperial Court
in the late fourth century. The terrible massacres
were also related by the Eparch Nilus as well (AD 390-451).
They recalled, "As Rachel wept for her children who are
no more, so Raitho wept for the Fathers taken by the
sword." Even during later periods other monks were not
free from the danger of attacks. They returned on several
occasions to plunder the monks. The first time was in AD 305
or 312, the second time was under Valerian, on 28 December
AD 370 and finally in AD 400 during the reign of Arcadius.
The collective feast for all these monks is commemorated on
the fourteenth of January.
The
martyrdom of these exemplars of faith did not prevent more
monks and spiritual ascetics from coming to the region.
Moreover, the events led to the building of a larger
fortified monastery at the foot of
Mount Sinai
. With a substantial gift from the Emperor Justinian
and the contribution of Egyptian, Byzantine and local Arab
architects, the new walled and fortified monastery of Saint
Catherine of
Alexandria
was built on a nearby site in the sixth century. Even today
it remains one of the holiest monastic sites in the Eastern
Christian tradition. It was also a great center for
Arabic-speaking Christians, and there are hundreds of Arab
Christian manuscripts that remain in the possession of the
monastery.
To
be a martyr is to be a witness to faith in Christ. The
holy fathers at Raitho bore witness that we may seek peace
in the face of violence, as Christ did in his suffering upon
the cross for our sakes. Today, their relics in our churches
remind us of the call to be imitators of Christ and to be
bold in telling the story of our own faith in our Lord God
and Savior Jesus Christ.
Dr.
David Bertaina
Assistant
Professor of History at the
University
of
Illinois
in
Springfield
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