Monk Mitrophanis (1926)

Monk Mitrophanis

The Greek monk Mitrophanis was born in 1900 in the city of Kerasounta in the Pontus region. In 1921, during the genocide of Pontians by the Turks, his whole family was slaughtered. He, at the age of 21, was taken prisoner and sent to a prison at Diyarbakir, where prisoners were used as forced labor in the production of gravel. Most of the prisoners were condemned to die from the contaminated food and terrible living conditions.

After a few months of such servitude, the future monk Mitrophanis managed to escape. Without a country or family, his sole purpose in life was to be able to reach Jerusalem alive, in order to worship at the Tomb of Christ.

For many weeks he walked barefoot through the mountains, like a wild animal, hiding from all humans. Going south, he reached Aleppo in Syria whence he traveled to Beirut in Lebanon, and after walking for days on end along the coastline he reached the port of Haifa in Palestine.

His pilgrimage was completed on 1 November 1923 when he reached Jerusalem, where he fulfilled his vow to worship at the Holy Sepulchre.

Two years later, in 1925, he was ordained a monk and appointed by Patriarch Damianos I as warden of the Holy Sepulchre. In this capacity he participated in the rite of the Holy Fire on Easter 1925. For many months he was possessed by questions and doubts relating to the true nature of the miracle. His faith had been shaken and he wondered if it was indeed a true miracle.

The answer to his questions came a fewmonths later, on Holy Saturday 1926, when he managed to hide in a niche in the ceiling of the Holy Sepulchre from where he could watch what exactly went on in its interior.

Everything he experienced that day he related fifty-five years later, on Easter 1980, to the Cypriot priest Savvas Achilleos, who recorded it in his work I saw the Holy Fire. That year Monk Mitrophanis was 80 years old and had been warden of the Holy Sepulchre for fifty-six consecutive years.

He confessed that when he was a 25-year-old young man he had become possessed by an uncontrollable desire to see with his own eyes everything that occurred in the Sepulchre interior at the moment when the Holy Fire descended.

“I had to see, like another doubting Thomas,” he said, “with my own eyes, exactly what takes place inside the Sepulchre in order to believe.”¹

For a long time he looked for a way to provide an answer to his questions, when one day as he was cleaning the dome of the ceiling inside the Sepulchre he discovered a tiny niche that barely accomodated the body of a grown man. It was the only place where he could hide in order to watch the descent of the Holy Fire, without being seen.

At midnight on Good Friday of the year 1926, Monk Mitrophanis set his risky plan into practice. At half past midnight on Holy Saturday morning he asked his assistant to give him a ladder so he could check the hanging lamps. Once he went up to the ceiling of the Sepulchre he asked his assistant to take back the ladder, with the excuse that he would jump down once he had finished with the inspection.

But Mitrophanis stayed in the crypt the entire night. The hours that followed were miserable, he relates, as he began to feel an unfamiliar dread. Guilt and remorse tormented him for what he had dared to do. “I began to chastise myself,” he says, “for my wretchedness and my juvenile decision…The whole world believes. It is only you, Father Mitrophanis, who does not believe.”²

For twelve hours, he remained stationary and silent. He had taken with him only some water and a small flashlight, which he used at 11:00 am when the Tomb was sealed and he was left alone in the dark.

According to the custom, one hour later, at twelve noon, the door of the Tomb was unsealed and approximately one and half hours later the Greek patriarch entered. The excerpt that follows describes all that took place after the entry of the patriarch, exactly as narrated by Monk Mitrophanis:

Then I discerned the figure of the patriarch, who stooped in order to enter the life-receiving tomb. At just that moment, when my agony was at its peak in the deadly silence in which I could only hear my own breathing, suddenly I heard a slight hissing. It sounded like a light gust of wind. And immediately I saw an unforgettable sight, a blue light filling the entire sacred space of the life-receiving Tomb… How restless was that blue light, by which I clearly saw the patriarch, whose face was bathed in perspiration… And as he was illuminated by that light, he began to read the prayers… And immediately the blue light began to transform into a pure white light, just like that of the Transfiguration of Christ. Then that pure white light transformed into a bright sphere like the sun that remained motionless over the patriarch’s head. Then I saw the patriarch holding bunches of 33 candles. And as he slowly raised his hands, the holy lamp and the four bunches of his candles ignited automatically. Just then the bright sphere disappeared. My eyes filled with tears and my entire body was on fire.”³

This is the narrative of Monk Mitrophanis about his bold act on that Holy Saturday 1926. He is the only eyewitness who, without being entitled, experienced the descent of the Holy Fire inside the actual Tomb of Christ.

Notes:

1. Savvas Achilleos, Ι saw the Holy Fire, Athens 2002, p. 102.

2. Ibid., p. 124.

3. Ibid., pp. 130–31.