Last week, Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew signed an historic document in Istanbul. Francis is the leader of the Catholic Church and Bartholomew is the leader of the Orthodox Church. For a thousand years, the two churches, one representing the West and the other representing the East, have been separated. The Pope and the Patriarch pledged to do all they could to reunite the two great Christian churches. That probably won’t happen anytime soon, but it demonstrates the great scandal of Christianity. It is a divided religion, when it is supposed to be united. This is not to mention the even greater division in the West, namely the divisions within the Protestant churches. As we witness the horrible events in the Middle East, between Sunni and Shi’a Islam and the tragic consequences that are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, we have little credibility denouncing them when we Christians continue to quarrel with one another.

It was not always so. Up to about the year 1000, there was only one Catholic Church. No Orthodox, no Protestants. In theory, all believers in Christ belonged to the same church. Not everyone got along, but the Church was one.

It is something of an arrogance that we speak about a “middle east”. One might ask east of what? The simple answer is east of Jerusalem or even east of London. On one side of an imaginary line, it’s west and on the other side, its east. Move the line and you have different sides. Right smack dab in the middle of the Middle East is the ancient city of Jerusalem. Once the site of the Temple of the Jews, it is now the spiritual home of two other religions, Christianity and Islam.

Not far from Jerusalem is a desert monastery called Mar Saba. It is one of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world, dating back more than 1,500 years. It’s built into a cliff in the Judaam Desert. It was almost impossible to get there, but today there is a paved road leading to it. I was there the day before the road was paved and have some idea of its remoteness.

It is an Orthodox monastery and it took me some negotiating to get inside. About 20 monks live there. They weren’t too friendly, but at least I got inside.

What makes it famous, in addition to its long history, its ancient library and its magnificent icons, is that it is the burial place of today’s saint, St. John of Damascus. He is important because he lived there for almost 50 years in the 8^th Century, before the split in the Church. He had a great influence in the Middle East (West Asia) trying to unite the churches of Islam. His grandfather, his father and he himself- all Christians- once worked as high officials in the Muslim caliphate.

The biggest controversy of the time was about paintings called icons. Icon means “window” and of course it is now used in computer languages. As religious items, they are important windows to another world. Muslims and Jews do not allow representations of human beings, by paintings or statues. Only in Christian churches will you find such objects. Such as we have here.

Without St. John of Damascus, we would have a bare room. There’s something to be said for that, but strictly speaking, neither Jews nor Muslims are allowed photographs. And, in truth, no one knows what Jesus looked like, but we all have an image-or icon- of his human form. Remembering that it is a window, we need to look beyond the surface to find the true image of Christ. It is an excellent project for Advent. Remember; at this time of year we refer back to baby Jesus. That doesn’t even raise a ruckus in Western Christianity. But we must keep in mind that it wasn’t the birth of a baby that saved us, but the death and rising from the dead of a grown man. However one imagines that.

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