Syrian Christians Reminisce About Miracles 7 Years After Siege

The priests of the Christian churches in the Syrian city of Sednayah, seven years after a siege by militants, remember how they escaped capture, experienced miracles and how their monasteries became a place of salvation for refugees

SEDNAYAH (Syria) (UrduPoint news / Sputnik - 13th March, 2019) The priests of the Christian churches in the Syrian city of Sednayah, seven years after a siege by militants, remember how they escaped capture, experienced miracles and how their monasteries became a place of salvation for refugees.

In 2012, international terrorist groups started to siege the city, which is located close to Damascus, and also began its systematic destruction. The first shell hit the convent in January of 2012, following the murder of the priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, Father Basil Nassar. The shell did not explode and many believers considered that a miracle.

The militants shelled the city from the top of the Sednayah's highest mountain, where, at an altitude of 2,100 meters above sea level, stands Cherubim Patriarchal Monastery. In October 2013, a bronze 32-meter sculptural composition with the image of Christ in the center was installed in this monastery.

The monument was erected on the historic pilgrimage route of Constantinople - Jerusalem. It could be seen from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. There were no hostile activities during the three days of its installation, but then the militants occupied the dominant heights, plundered the monastery of the Cherubim and for several years were firing at Sednayah and the neighboring town of Maaloula, another holy site of early Christianity.

Maaloula fell, but the Russian intervention prevented the seizure of Sednayah, so the Syrian Christians consider the Russian military, and all the people of Russia, as liberators.

The area where Sednayah sits, known by its Aramaean name of Danaba, was settled in the 6th century BC. According to legend, this is the place where Cain killed Abel, where Christianity was born, and many residents of this city still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Here Byzantium emperor Justinian I laid the Convent of Our Lady in 546. The famous icon of the Virgin, which is called the Shaghoura in Syria, remains its greatest treasure. According to the legend, this is one of the four icons written by Saint Luke the Evangelist. It ended up in the convent in the 7th century and was kept in a separate chapel.

Before the war, Orthodox believers from all over the world came to Sednayah to pay homage to the second holiest place after Jerusalem. Virgin Mary under the name Myriam is revered in islam as the mother of the Prophet Isa (Jesus), therefore Sednayah is sacred to Muslims as well.

"Historically, there were 40 churches and monasteries in Sednayah. But our country has been the target of barbarian invaders for centuries, and to date, hardly half of the ancient temples have been preserved," Seraphim, the father superior of the church of St. George, said.

His church appeared in the 19th century over the thousand-year-old hermit's caves. At first, a chapel was built, then a church, where the patriarchs of the Antiochian Orthodox Church were buried.

Since the it has become a place of pilgrimage.

"We did not even know about the war before the beginning of 2012, it did not concern us. And then we received a very large number of refugees, and the Sednayah churches, including ours, St. Christopher Monastery and the Convent of Our Lady, became a shelter for people who looked for salvation and consolation," the father superior added.

He recalled how militants shelled the city with mortars, tried to storm Sednayah, sent intruders and saboteurs, and how locals were afraid to be out on the streets.

"But thanks to our military, the militia, we were able to survive and win," Seraphim said.

The mother superior of the Convent of Our Lady named Fevronia recalled the legend of the foundation of this monastic house, the most famous one in the middle East. According to the legend, the Mother of God in an image of a gazelle led the army of Emperor Justinian, which suffered from the heat and thirst, to a mountain spring, and then asked him to lay a temple there, and promised to become its patroness. After defeating the Persians, whom he fought against, Justinian kept his promise.

The mother superior remembered how hundreds of thousands of pilgrims before the war were annually coming to the convent to pay homage to the famous icon of the Virgin, how the convent became a shelter for refugees, including Muslims, when in 2013 the militants of the Nusra Front (terrorist group banned in Russia) actually blocked the city.

Fevronia recalled that people in the convent were starving and praying tirelessly to the icon. According to her, they were preparing for death when suddenly holy oil began to flow from the icon. By the evening, a truck with a trailer filled with food from an unknown benefactor arrived at the convent. There was enough food for three months. This saved hundreds and hundreds of people, who were hiding from shelling in the walls of the convent, she said.

"And during the war it was like this all the time. If something was urgently needed for the convent, the help always came, and always from unknown people," Fevronia added.

The mother superior also told a story when she was going to take the children out of the monastery school to the bus that was supposed to take them home, but she suddenly lingered, and at that moment a mortar shell exploded in front of the school. Fevronia could not explain what exactly made her stop the children at the exit.

"This is a sacred land, there is no place for anger here," Fevronia said.

After the war, the convent reopened its doors to girls from all over the Middle East. It accepts children from the age of one and provides them with everything they need until the age of 18, after which the girls can become nuns or return to public life.