|
U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
|
This Rock
Volume 5, Number 10
 October 1994 
|
|
|
IN preparing for Catholic Answers' pilgrimage to the Holy Land I reread H. V. Morton's In the Steps of the Master, an evocative account of his explorations of precisely sixty years ago. Morton devoted several pages to the Abyssinians who, in his day, lived in huts on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
At one time these monks, from the poorest of the six churches that controlled chapels and living quarters within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, found themselves unable to pay the bribe demanded by the Ottoman authorities. They were dispossessed. Most of what they had was transferred to richer churches. Unwilling to abandon their claim to the holy site, the Abyssinians moved themselves to the roof, where they set up modest huts and where Morton marveled at their peculiar Easter rites.
I wanted to climb to the roof and see these men. When I asked how to gain entrance, I was pointed to a door. It was bolted tight, and I gave up hope. But the next day a few of us were wandering through the Old City, confusedly making our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and instead of turning right we wandered through a partly open door--which took us to the rooftop hermitages of the Abyssinians. Unable to communicate except by signs, the monks smilingly directed us to the ground level. How I wish I could have spoken with them, poor men whose only claim now in the great church is the tiny tomb where Joseph of Arimathea was buried after having given up his finer tomb to Another.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
