The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1877-05-10
NO. 12.
MONKS IN THE DESERT.
Where No Woman NIny Enter--A Chapci
Sunk I'm solid Rock.

Sunk In solid Rock.
The San Francisco Chronicle says: A
letter of introduction is necessary to
secure admission to Mar Saba. The
Greek patriarch of Jerusalem provides
it. You ring at the great gate OF the
convent on the top of the cliff; some one
looks out of high tower and takes an
observation; you give word of friendly
greeting and wave your letter in the air,
At this stage keys are dropped down into
an inner court. An attendant takes
them, opens the outer gate few inches,
examines the passport, and then, looking
| to see that we are not likely to be
women in disguise, we are admitted.
Another gate still shuts us out from the
convent. Our Bedawee is not permitted
to come even thus far, for the place has
several times been the scene of hideous
slaughter. At last we are given welcome
by monk, who is to pilot lis over the
face of the cliff, and show us how like
the birds they all live at Mar Saba.
Down stairs-ffty of them--into stone
court with chapel; up stairs into an
other chapel, sunk into the solid rock,
all ablaze with golden lamps and sweet
with incense, for the bones of 600 mar
tyrs lie under the pavement-part OF
! them you see through q grating when the
monk thrusts flaming taper i'll among
them. They were all hermits, and lived
with the swallows until the Persian
hordes fell upon them and cast their
bodies to the iackals in the abyss below.
Bridges leap from chamber to chamber;
tunnels dart through the cliffs, and i'll
the walls are windows looking out upon
the most desolate spot in the world; and
doors that open into cells just big enough
to creep into, and there curl up into
holy heap.
Mar Saba, OF st. Saba, was born in the
fifth century. He renounced the world,
the flesh, and the devil at the age of
eight. 1t might have been harder duty
little later in life. At eighteen st.
Saba, who had been ten years in a mon
astery, finding the monastic life too gay
and frivolous, plunged headlong into the
howling wilderness, and joined st.
Euthymius and his Laura in the Kidron
gorge. This amazing hive of monks
grew out of the enthusiasm of the young
saint, who before his death had achieved
anne and was surrounded by host of
nchorites, who emulated their spiritual
ader in his severely simple life. One
day as st. Saba was returning to his cell
in the cliff, he found a lion sleeping
within. Lions were not rare in those
good old times. Saba said to him: "Be
good enough to come out of that" but
the lion replied that he chad as good a
right to it as any one," and so he lay
where he was. Then Saba seized him
and threw him out of the way; but the
lion returned, and matters were growing
unpleasant, when the saint said: "Well,
let us share it together" and they slept
in the same cave, and had their portraits
painted for the mc mastery which was to
grow out of the rock, and grew to be
thirteen centuries old before 1 was to
have the pleasure of seeing it and hear
ing this veritable tale from the lips of a
monk as I sat in the cave of Saba and
the lion.
There is solitary palm tree reigning
over one of the small garden terraces, and
this palm is said to have been planted by
st. Saba himself. The monk said SO
and then he took me up stairs and down
stairs, through trap doors into subter-
ranean passages full of surprises and
queer smells; he gave me "rakee," the
strong drink of the East. and pipe on
one of the terraces, and brought rosaries
and carved crucifixes scented with fra
grant gums. He sold as much as he
could, and then begged little more, but
he had well earned all that he got from
our caravan, for the Peris who were shut
out of this Greek Eden with its one lonely
palm discouraged the spirit of generosity
which the marvellous place had
awakened.
How marvellous it is Even in sun
shine it is tangle of shadows that hang
in long fringes from the cornice of the
cliff. In twilight it is swallowed up in a
purple flood through which the stars fall
like dew-those showers of restless stars
that dart through the heavens above the
orient. When the moon is full a vision
of Mar Saba is like relief in pale-tinted
marble, chiseled by the hands of gods.