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Jerusalem's Hidden Pilgrim Chapel

By Eva Marie Everson
Guest Writer

CBN.com – Domini Ivimus; Finding the Keys To St. Vartan’s Chapel

A cement courtyard welcomes visitors just outside the massive double doors leading in to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, located in the Christian quarter of Jerusalem. It teems with people as it does every day about this time. Some days more than others. I have been here only once when no one else was around with exception to my Jewish companion, a photographer, and a few of the priests who dwell here. It was an unusual moment to be sure.

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But today is typical. Nuns of every age and size walk from the shadowed and narrow passageways leading toward the Via Dolorosa to where the sun pours in to the courtyard. Priests dressed in flowing brown garments speak to a few who have stopped long enough to engage in conversation. IDF soldiers mill about. Tour guides wave their arms and elevate their voices. “This way, this way,” they shout. And, like baby ducklings to their mother, their pilgrims gather and follow.

A few of the faithful are here alone, such as myself. I am here only because it is a part of my assignment for the pictorial book I will write with my friend, a woman who has been one of those tour guides for more than thirty years. We are sitting on the narrow steps directly opposite the doors and I am telling her that, after my last visit here, I am not really all that excited about entering again. “Too … eerie,” I tell her. “Too many icons, too much pomp and ceremony.”

And the priests, I think, seem angry almost. Irritated that anyone, let alone those who come in search of something—anything—to remind them of the sacrifice of their Lord, have infringed on the hallowed sense the early morning brings. Though part of me understands. I have sensed that same consecration. I have slipped between the ancient stone walls and stepped across the worn flagstone flooring when it felt as though the only other presence was that of God Himself. I have breathed in that holiness and felt it become one with myself. Remarkably different than when the “house” is full.

Miriam interrupts my thoughts, telling me of a place, far beneath where visitors weep and pray. A place she has not seen in years, she says. “Fifteen years, perhaps?” she muses. “Beneath the church,” she tells me, “is an etching, carved into the wall of a cave which is part of the Chapel of St. Vartan.”

“What is it of?” I ask, my curiosity now aroused.

“A ship with a broken mast,” she says. “Beneath the drawing are the words Domini Ivimus.”

My Latin is rusty. The first part I know, the second I’m not so sure of. “Which means?”

“Lord, we came or Lord, we went.”

She goes on to tell me that some believe the drawing to come from 2nd century pilgrims from Rome who, having traveled by ship and survived a possible storm, came to this very spot to worship. Others say it dates only as far back as the 4th century. Either way, as someone who gets excited when she sees a Revolutionary War soldier’s grave in an antiquated cemetery, I’m now pretty much ready to see this drawing. This, I determine, is far beyond gold and ornate lanterns, incense, rocks that may or may not be the place where Jesus was crucified, slabs of stone that depict where his body was laid for burial preparations, and where He may or may not have lay buried for three days. This is an absolute fact. Someone who loved Jesus then as much as I do now made the journey to the Land of the Bible and left their mark, just as I hope to do. Somehow.

“Miriam, I have to see it. Can you take me to it?”

There is a problem, she tells me. The Chapel of St. Vartan, which is beyond the Chapel of St. Helene—dedicated to Constantine’s mother—has a set of double doors, both of which are locked. There is a key, yes, but only one priest has the key. Locating that one in a church full of sects that barely speak to one another, is nearly impossible.

“But can we try?” I am already pulling my camera out its bag.

“Well,” she says with a shrug, “why not?”

We had come for two reasons on this pleasant February afternoon. One, to light a candle as a prayer for a woman in the States who Miriam’s brother, Rabbi Paul, had been notified of. She and her newborn were critically ill. A family friend, a Catholic, had called his friend Paul to ask if he knew of anyone going to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that day. If so, would they light a candle for the woman and her baby? Paul called Miriam, knowing we would be heading toward the Christian quarter that day.

Another reason was so I could take photos of both the inside and outside of the church for the book project Miriam and I were working on.

Now, we had a third reason. To somehow, someway, find the priest with the key to the Chapel of St. Vartan.

We walk across the courtyard, making a thin passageway through the throngs of visitors. At times we are shoulder to shoulder. Mostly, I keep in step behind Miriam. As soon as we enter the church, I feel a rush of cool air and incense swirl around me. Directly before me is the memorial slab; a cluster of men and women kneel around it, kissing it, pressing their palms against it, weeping over it. I glance over my right shoulder. A narrow stone staircase curving as it leads upward is wall-to-wall with others both ascending and descending, a Jacob’s Ladder of sorts. All faces appear stoic. It is no wonder; they have touched the possible site of the crucifixion.

Miriam’s determination is focused to the left and I must follow. We enter a small room where a young priest stands near a highly polished desk. Its patina shows its age. It is here, Miriam tells me, and from this robed man of God, that we will purchase our candles for lighting and prayer. She speaks to him in Hebrew. Tells him what we need.

He produces two white tapered candles.

We each pay a shekel before Miriam broaches the issue of the key. The chapel. The etching in the cave wall. The priest shakes his head. “Lo, lo, lo …” he says.

This much I can understand. “No key. No chapel. No etching.”

But Miriam is persistent. She folds her arms over her chest. “And if there should happen to be a donation to the church?” she asks, continuing on in Hebrew.

The priest stares at her without blinking; I am practically witness to a showdown, standing to one side, fingering my camera, which dangles from my shoulder by its strap.

“Go light your candles,” he says. “Then return.”

Miriam smiles. She leads me to the left side of the ambulatory, beneath the Dome of the Rotunda and then around and directly behind the edicule. There we are met by a round-faced man sporting a long robe and a black beard. Miriam tells him we have come to light our candles. Then, one at a time, we enter a tiny Coptic chapel. Miriam prays for the family in the States. Not being Catholic, I am a little unsure as to what I am doing and why, but I figure that if Miriam, who is Jewish, can be so humble, then surely I can as well. When in Rome, I tell myself. And then, as surely as I believe God is more interested in the heart of the man than the method of prayer, I pray for a particular family issue we are going through.

When I exit the cave-like room, Miriam is in wait for us to return to the young priest. I follow behind her, retracing our steps from just moments before. The priest stands at the doorway of his office. His left hand is nearly hidden behind the folds of his robe but I clearly see a key dangling from his fingers. “Quickly,” he says.

Then, as if we are 007 agents in a movie, Miriam and I rush behind our reluctant guide. We pass the Stone of Unction, the door to the Adam Chapel, past the U-shaped Derision Chapel where, they say, Jesus was mocked and tied to a pole. It has been years since I have entered into the coolness of the room, since I have peered at the stone and the depictions. I cast a glance over my shoulder, then continue forward. The priest is not waiting on us. He is a good six feet ahead, following the path beneath the ornate red and gold lanterns seemingly suspended above us. We follow as he whisks down a long flight of narrow stone steps between walls etched with crosses by medieval pilgrims. With every step, we dip into the recesses of the church and into the Chapel of St. Helene. Here a mosaic floor has nearly faded under the steps of the seeking. Remarkably, no one is in the room, save us.

I pant in effort to catch my breath as the priest stands at a door to our left. First, he must unlock an iron gate, then a steel door. The first swings open, followed by the second. “Quickly,” he says again.

We step through the door, down three more steps, into a cave. This is a chapel? Not just, Miriam tells me later. What we are standing in is the quarry of the first temple. She points to a hole in the wall. “It’s through there,” she says. “Inside the cave.” I raise my camera to take a photo of where we have come and am horrified.

“Miriam,” I say. “My battery is dying.”

But she has already disappeared into the opening. I proceed behind her. We follow a carved path between cold stone. “It’s right here,” Miriam says, pointing to a frame against the opposite wall. “And the wall behind it dates to the original Constantinian church.”

I press myself again stone and slide to the floor. Seventeen hundred years, I think. And it’s nearly incomprehendable. A possible seventeen hundred years have passed between the pilgrims who etched this drawing and my friend and me in awe before it.

“This was discovered in 1971,” Miriam whispers. “You can see they put glass over to protect it.”

“Miriam,” I mumble again. “I don’t know if my camera has enough juice to take this picture.”

But I raise shaking hands anyway, take a deep breath, hold it, and press the shutter. I watch through the lens as the scene before us flickers. And then, as if by miracle just for us, the lens slides together, opens, and …

… a perfect photo.

The camera dies as my heart soars. “Oh, Miriam,” I whisper, for to speak out loud would spoil the moment. “I got it.”

But I have gotten more than just a photograph for a book project. In these moments inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I have come to understand better why so many come here. Perhaps this is the place Jesus died and was buried. Perhaps not. Perhaps it was in another location. It doesn’t matter because here all who come can remember that he did die. He was buried. And, I believe, he rose again.

Now, like pilgrims seventeen hundred years before me, I have come.

Both the woman Miriam prayed for, and her baby, were miraculously made well, an amazing testimony to the power of prayer when it is prayed from the heart.

Reflections of God’s Holy Land; A Personal Journey Through Israel by Eva Marie Everson and Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, published 2008 by Thomas Nelson (Nelson Bibles)

Related stories from Eva Marie Everson:

Nazareth Village from CBN News

Five Things You Didn't Know About Nazareth

Israel's Paradise: Tel Dan

Masada: The Heroic Jewish Stand

Israel: The Fifth Gospel

tour israel

Jerusalem's Hidden Pilgrim Chapel

By Eva Marie Everson Guest Writer

By Eva Marie Everson
Guest Writer