Muslim family holds key to sacred sepulchre

sfgate.com ^ | Sunday, March 27, 2005 | Matthew Kalman

[Destro]

Muslim family holds key to sacred sepulchre
For centuries, their ancestors have opened door to church where Jesus believed buried Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Jerusalem -- Every morning at 4 a.m., Wajeeh Nuseibeh walks through the walled Old City of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most revered shrine in Christendom. He takes an ancient 12-inch iron key, climbs a small ladder and opens the huge wooden doors to the place that most Christians believe is the site of the crucifixion, tomb and resurrection of Jesus.

Every evening at nightfall, after three raps of an iron doorknocker spaced out over half an hour, Nuseibeh closes up and places the key in safekeeping.

He inherited the job from his father and grandfather, in a chain stretching back more than 1,300 years. But surprisingly, Nuseibeh, doorkeeper of the site of the crucifixion, is, like his ancestors, a Muslim.

"It goes from father to son, from one generation to the next," said Nuseibeh, a small, dapper 55-year-old man in a suit and tie. "I was 15 when I first opened the church. I thought it was fun. As I grew up I realized it is a big responsibility."

This weekend, thousands of Christians flock to the Holy Sepulchre for Easter services, processions and the ancient ceremony of the Holy Fire, in which Nuseibeh plays a central role. The ceremony, held on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, symbolizes the resurrection of Christ.

[Destro]

The miracle of the Holy Light described in the article occurs on Orthodox Easter - I posted pictures and a report about it on here last year or so.

[newberger]

I was under the impression that the ceremony of the Holy Fire
only occurs on the Orthodox Holy Saturday (This year, April 30)!?!

[Twinkie]

Is this Holy Fire business for real? One would think this Muslim guy who is the witness to the sealing of the tomb would be sufficiently impressed by this sign to convert to Christ.

[Destro]

It does - probably describing a past event.

[Destro]

Muslims whp converted at the sight were killed on sight. So Muslims learn not to. I described the story in my earlier post on the Holy Fire ceremony.

[Destro]

The Pascha miracle of Holy Fire appears at the tomb of Jesus Christ (pictures)

"Once the Armenians (monofisits - ed.) paid the Turks, who then occupied the Holy Land, in order to obtain permission for their Patriarch to enter the Holy Sepulchre, the Orthodox Patriarch was standing sorrowfully with his flock at the exit of the church, near the left column, when the Holy Light split this column vertically and flashed near the Orthodox Patriarch.

A Moslem Muezin, called Tounom, who saw the miraculous event from an adjacent mosque, abandoned immediately the Moslem religion and became an Orthodox Christian. This event took place in 1579 under Sultan Mourad IV, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem was Sophrony IV.

(The mentioned split column still exists. It goes back to the XII c. The Orthodox pilgrims embrace it at the "place of the split" as the enter the church).[2, date and name are corrected]

Turkish warriors stood on the wall of a building close to the gate and lightning-struck column . When he saw this striking miracle he cried that Christ is truly God and /leaped down from a height of about ten meters. But he was not killed--stones under him get as soft as wax and his foot was imprinted in the stones. The Turks tried scrape away these prints but they could not destroy them; they were like witnesses [5].

He was burned by the Turks near the Church. His remains, gathered by the Greeks, had laid in the monastery of Panagia till XIX shedding chrism.

[Twinkie]

Several years ago, I attended an Orthodox church of mostly American extraction for a while. I even joined the church and participated there for over three years. At first, it was quite an Americanized service, with beautiful songs, songs of the Sermon on the Mount, we had chairs (I have health concerns that do not allow me to stand for an hour and a half or longer.) I liked the incense, did have some introspection about the wooden pictures (icons), but was able to deal with that aspect as I only genuflected to pictures of Christ, and otherwise respectfully gestured to the ones of the Virgin Mary and saints.

However, gradually, after every visit of the Greek bishop, the service became more and more Greek, until I no longer felt all that comfortable with it. I am just a plain old Southern country girl; I am not Greek. When standing most of the time became the norm, I could no longer deal with it physically. (I know, they said there were chairs available, but not many, and those were all taken for the most part.) I enjoyed the incense and the aspects of the liturgy, but the ethnic part of it just took over. Then I had a personal trauma in my own life and am now just visiting around to the little redneck churches in my area (not Orthodox). There was also the aspect of most of the congregation of the Orthdox church I attended being newcomers from up North, so I fit into that like a bull at a cow meeting. The priest was very friendly, but his wife wouldn't speak to you if she met you in the hall alone, and for the most part people weren't all that friendly. I'm still thrashing about with many "religious" disappointments.

[Destro]

The ethnic Orthodox churches are pretty insulated - mostly because they suffered discriminations as immigrants and thus are distrustful of outsiders. There are some Orthodox churches designed for the "American" Orthodox - though they may not be near you. The Orthodox Church is native only in Alaska - the immigrant Orthodox churches never tried or wanted to disrupt the Protestant and Catholic faiths in the rest of America. The interest in Orthodoxy has come as the American Protestant and Catholic churches have seen a decline in traditional values which has taken the Orthodox by surprise. Since the Orthodox never considered evangelizing to the already Christian Americas they never unified their churches in the Americas because they never thought the church would grow beyond the individual ethnic communities.