Holy Fire (Orthodoxy)
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The Holy Fire is convinced Orthodox Christians every year on Holy Saturday in the -afternoon Jerusalem Holy Sepulcher ereignendes miracle . The sacred fire should not have a natural origin and should not scorch in its first few minutes.
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The fire only arises on Orthodox Easter (according to other sources it sometimes descends at other times) and only in the presence of the Jerusalem Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church (or a representative). After the Jerusalem Patriarch has been searched for matches, flint or other means of ignition, he enters the Holy Sepulcher Aedicule . The ceremony is attended by the hierarchies of the various Christian denominations and some tens of thousands of Christians.
According to popular belief, the year in which the Holy Fire does not descend is the end of the world .
Since 1993 the Holy Fire has been brought to Russia by plane on Holy Saturday . There are also special flights to Bulgaria , Greece and Romania and more to Armenia and Georgia every year, where the Holy Fire is received at the airport with the honors of a head of state and from there is distributed to the metropolises or by the Armenian Catholicos .
literature
- Johann Lorenz von Mosheim : De Lumine Sancti Sepulchri Commentatio , Helmstedt 1736
- Anton Hungari (Ed.): Little Easter Bells. Uplifting conversations for the Easter festival group in the Catholic church years. JD Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main 1862, pp. 434–437 ( The holy fire of the Greeks in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem ).
- Gustav Klameth: The Holy Saturday fire miracle of the Holy Sepulcher Church , Vienna 1913
- Otto Friedrich August Meinardus : The Ceremony of the Holy Fire in the Middle Ages and Today , in: Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte , Volume 16, Cairo 1961–62 (pp. 242–253)
- Charis Skarlakidis: Holy Light. The miracle of Holy Saturday at the grave of Christ. Forty-five historical testimonies (4th-16th centuries) , Athens 2012, ISBN 978-960-99255-8-7