Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1911 — Caster at mount st.Sepulchre [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Caster at mount st.Sepulchre

BY WALDON FAWCETT

6 HK United States is the scene of a -. number of widely varying forms of church observance on Easter moma ■ St ing,, ranging all the way from the IIW// novel rites in the Moravian Lj churches of to the fashionable services in the churches on Fifth avenue, New York, attended by the '400" of metropolitan society. There is little doubt? howft c Q ever, that the most impressive and 'I the most picturesque of all Easter services is that w-htch takes place on the joyous spring holiday at Mount St. Sepulchre. The fact

that only a very limited number of people have ever witnessed the significant program here carried out and that, indeed, the great majority of the public is unaware even of the unique character of the services at this mecca for worship ere, serves, perhaps, to add interest to the place and the eVent. Mount St. Sepulchre is located at Brookland In the District of Columbia and is the seat of the most important church and the most famous monastery reared in the New World by the fYanciscan brothers. However, it should be emphasized just here that the casual Easter visitor to this retreat at Easter tide need not be a Catholic nor yet even an adherent of any church to appreciate the solemnity and marvelous beauty of the services which take up the greater portion of this, the most momentous day on the church calendar. The most important architectural feature of the church at Mount St. Sepulchre, and one from which the church and monastery takes its name, is the location in the sanctuary of an exact duplicate of the Holy Sepulchre which has been reproduced exactly as it exists in Jerusalem. This in Itself would lend interest to the Easter services held in such a setting, but intensifying the meaning of the religious program for all the spectators is the circumstance that the services are an exact duplicate to the smallest detail of the services which are being held under similar aus pices and at the corresponding hour at the last resting place of the Savior in Jerusalem. It is as though the congregation at Brookland were suddenly transported to the Holy Land for an hour or a day. To appreciate the novelty of all that transpires

at. Easter at Mount St. Sepulchre it is necessary to know something of the history of this Institution. The Franciscan brothers have a number of monasteries or houses of the order located in various parts of the United States, but the community in the District of Columbia is in a class by itself in that It is in effect the American “branch office" of the Franciscan friars who are laboring in Palestine. For, of course, the Franciscans are a brotherhood whose work is of world-wide scope and one of the most important branches of this work is found in their function of “keepers of the holy places." For more than seven hundred years the Franciscans have been in possession of almost all of those places in the Holy Land, which are most dear to all adherents of the Christian faith—such places as the spot where Jesus was born in Bethlehem and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem —and this order of monks has made of It a labor of love to restore and preserve these sacredly historic localities. A large share of all the funds with which this work is carried on comes from America and most of the Franciscans who are nowserving actively as “keepers of the holy places” have been educated for their task in the States —at this self-same institution at Mount SL Sepulchre. Officially this community Is designated the Chapel and College of the Holy Land and the thirty monks who make up the community are known as the Fathers of the Holy Land. Not only la this a college for the education of the young members of the order who are to go as guides and missionaries to the Holy Land, but It is also the headquarters and business office of the Commissariat of the Holy Land. p This latter is a legally organized corporation which Is authorized by law to receive bequests and donations of all kinds made for the purpose of commemorative and restorative work at the holy places In Palestine. A country wide organisation of laymen known as the “Crusade for the Holy Land** la ever active In the cause and the funds raised by the “Crusaders” or by means of the collection taken once a year in all Catholic churches are sent to Mount St. Sepulchre for transmission to Palestine. ' With such an inspiration it Is, of course.

not at all strange that the Franciscans at Mount St. Sepulchre are enabled to present particularly impressive services at Easter. Moreover a number of the members of the community have resided for yearß at a time in the Holy Land and are familiar from long participation with every deail of the Easter services as conducted at the tomb of our Lord in Jerusalem. This is the caae with the present superior or the community. Rev. Father Bede Oldgeering, who is the celebrant of the solemn high mass which is the principal feature of the Easter program. It is doubtful if any church in America is embellished with a more lavish floral decoration than that in the Chapel of the Holy Land on Easter morning and equally notable is the special music by the choir of male voices made up of members of the community with one of the brothers acting as organist. The chapel at Mount St. Sepulchre, and which is all too small to accommodate the throngs that come hither on Easter, is in the shape of a five-fold cross, the large cross forming the main body of the church and the small crosses being represented by chapels. This cross, symbolic of the five wounds of our Lord, appears again and again at Mount 3t. Sepulchre and a representation of it In Venetian mosaic forms the pavement of the Church. The central aisle of the large cross has. at the entrance of the church, a portico which supports a gallery, while at the other end is the sanctuary. The whole interior with Its rows upon rows of columns and arches and its significant white and yellow decoration, la stately and majestic in the highest degree and affords the best possible background for the Easter decorations. %The whole arrangement <ft the interior conduces to focus attention upon the sanctuary which is the main point of attraction in the church and especially so on Easter when it becomes the locale of much that transpires. The architect who directed the erection of the duplicate of the Holy Sepulchre spent much time in Jerusalem studying the original and he has produced a marvelously faithful and accurate replica. Two marble stairways, one on either side of the Sepulchre, lesd to Mount Calwiry, which forms the high altar of

the church. A low door, set between two ornamental panels leads to the outer room of the tomb. In the middle of this, supported by a low pedestal, !there is a stone called the Stone of the Angel, the original of which, tradition avers, is a fragment of the very stone on which the Messenger of Heaven rested when he gave the glad tidings on that memorable Easter morn. Naturally this is an object of the most intense interest to the Easter throng. Through a second door in this sac-simile Sepulchre an opening even lower in height than that above men t i oned

the visitor reaches the representation of the place where the Savior was laid. From the celling depend memorial lamps and every detail of the tomb in Jerusalem is reproduced, even to the famous silver panel by Raphael representing the Resurrction. Above the Sepulchre. as already explained, is Mount Calvary. the altar being a replica of the one at Jerusalem. While the Sepulchre .itself is naturally the climatic point of interest on Easter, services of special character are held in the church throughout the week preceding this, the most significant Sunday of the yfear. Of the throngs of Easter visitors to Mount St. Sepulchre, no women and very few men are admitted to the “enclosnr<s” of the monastery—for this institution, being designed as a college as well as a chapel, is built on the old monastic plan with a courtyard laid out

as a garden—-the traditional cloister in tba form of an open gallery measuring 200 fe<* on each of its four sides, which serves the friars for their walks on rainy days when it is inconvenient to take exercise in the open. However, visitors, though denied % peep at this sheltered retreat, are admitted to the wonderful shrines and subterranean chambers beneath the chapel and which are in large measure responsible for the rapidly growing fame of this institution. Reached by. flights of stone steps from the main chapel are two underground chapels, one being a representation of the Grotto of Nazaretb and the other the Grotto of Bethlehem where Jesus 'was born. The two grottoes are qonnected by means of an underground passage which duplicates in appearance the Catacombs of Rome and this passage has at Its central point a crypt In reproduction of the ancient sepulchral chambers where an altar was erected over the tomb of some famous martyr. From this crypt another underground corridor leads to the subterranean Chapel of Poor Souls which is intended for funeral services. In these underground shrines burn votive lamps that are never extinguished, day or night, from one end

of the year to the other. These underground shrines, representative of the spot where Jesus first opened His eyes upon the world and the humble home of the Holy Family in Nazareth, are both, as in the case of the Holy Sepulchre, exact reproductions of the originals in the far-off Holy Land. Indeed, so faithful Is the duplication even in little things that we see in its proper place the stone bench upon the counterpart of which in the Holy Land sit the Turkish sentinels who stand guard over the spots so hallowed by Christians.