The Holy Spirit at the peak of Mount Sinai.

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When the Getty Museum in Los Angeles hosted the exhibition “Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai” in 2006-07, the courier and caretaker of the artifacts on display was Father Justin Sinaites.

He is the librarian at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, where the extremely dry climate has kept ancient manuscripts from deteriorating the way they might in many places in the world. This monk librarian came from Texas to the Egyptian monastery many years ago; at least once before I mentioned him on my blog after my late husband and I heard him speak in Berkeley, California.

As I write, the sun has set on this Sunday of Pentecost, a celebration full of joy and light. So we are now, according to Church Time, in the day after, on which the Orthodox Church celebrates Holy Spirit Day; Father Justin has written a blog post about how they keep the feast at St. Catherine’s: “Liturgy at the Peak of Mount Sinai”:

“Every year, we celebrate the Divine Liturgy at the peak of Mount Sinai on the day after Pentecost, the Monday of the Holy Spirit. This year, we were joined by pilgrims from Greece and Russia. We made the ascent in the night, and began the Liturgy at 4:00 AM.”

The blog post consists mostly of Fr. Justin’s own photographs, which I always find very appealing. I learned more about the monk himself in this interview on the Travel Potpourri website: “Saint Catherine’s Monastery Interview with the Librarian Father Justin.”

One paragraph:

“I didn’t go from El Paso, Texas, to Sinai, in one big step. There were lots of little steps. But even in El Paso, I read the account of Moses and the Exodus in the Bible. I saw Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” which contains scenes filmed at the traditional Sinai, with Charlton Heston climbing up the mountain, and walking along a ridge with the Sinai range in the background. Also, El Paso is a desert. I used to wander in the desert for hours and came to love the stark beauty of the desert landscape. All of this was in the background when I began to read about the history and the theology of the Orthodox Church.”

If you are interested in the manuscript collection itself, you may want to look at: This Reuters article, which explains that the abbot of the monstery feels an urgency about completing the project of digitizing all 4500 manuscripts in the library, many of which are in the Syriac and Arabic languages, and very rare.

But today, all I want to do is visit Fr. Justin’s blog, and through his photographs get another glimpse of the daily life and worship at Saint Catherine’s, Sinai.

5 thoughts on “The Holy Spirit at the peak of Mount Sinai.”

  1. I don’t know if you recall, but I was blessed to visit this exhibition, for the strangest of reasons. J. was in the hospital at UC Irvine for 2 weeks – son C. was released after just being there overnight – and one day, when I needed a respite from visiting the hospital daily, I went with our friends at St. Barnabas Antiochian Church in Costa Mesa to that beautiful exhibit. I have a particular memory of seeing the icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent. I believe it had not been “cleaned” in any way. It was almost luminescent and shone with a sort of glory that I have never experienced. But the entire exhibition was infused with a sort of surreal presence which was of particular help to me in a time of trouble.

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      1. What was “weird” is that the icon of The Ladder of Divine Ascent – it was a 1000 years old or pretty close to that – but it was literally shining with a sort of bright newness. This was not logical, since it had surely been in the presence of many candles and much smoke. I think it was the oldest icon on display, yet it shone with a bright newness which had none of the dark smokiness that should have accompanied it with the candles lit beneath it through the ages.

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      2. That is what is remarkable to me, too, as I’ve seen pictures of it looking very dark! Its light now shines without candles – a small part of that Light that shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t extinguish it. Glory to God.

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