Near the Syrian city of Aleppo, the Church of St. Simeon the Stylite commemorates the 5th-century ascetic who became an ancient sensation by living atop a tall pedestal for decades to demonstrate his faith. Krak des Chevaliers, an awe-inspiring castle near Homs, was a fortress for the order of the Knights Hospitaller in their quest to defend a crusader kingdom. Seydnaya, a towering monastery in a town of the same name, was probably built in the time of Justinian.
In late July, delegations of the Local Orthodox Churches came to Ukraine to celebrate the 20th anniversary of His Beatitude Vladimir’s tenure of office as Metropolitan of Kiev. These were the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, the Church of Czech Lands and Slovakia and the Orthodox Church of America.
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At the heart of this community is the Orthodox Church of St. George. The church broke ground in 1884, when the Greek Orthodox community saved enough funds to start construction. But to the surprise of the builders, under it were the remains of a Byzantine dating back to the 3rd century. It was on the floor of this ancient Greek church that the earliest, most extant map of Palestine was found; it literally put the map on the map.
Following their literal understanding of some of Jesus Christ’s teachings, these monks abandoned all their possessions and families (Mark 10:17-31) to live a life of chastity, fasting and asceticism in the desert.
