January 12, 2011
Science cannot explain a mystery of the cloud that descends on Mount Tabor each year. Mt. Tabor is where, according to the Bible, the Transfiguration of the Lord took place.
Komsomolskaya Pravda daily writes:
"Sergey Mirov, a participant in the research organized this summer by the working group on miraculous signs at the Synodal Theological Commission, said the investigation was conducted by Russian and Israeli meteorologists. According to him, summing up the results, the experts concluded that fog cannot be generated in such dry air and temperature."
Mirov stressed that the "descending of the blessed cloud" takes place only in a territory of the Orthodox monastery. He said that during a festival service a glaring sphere rushes over believers, then the cloud appears above the cross of the Transfiguration Church; it grows in dimensions and descends on believers, covering them and pouring life-giving moisture over them.
Interfax reports: "In his turn Pavel Florensky, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences academician and head of the working group on miraculous signs, said that his team examined the appearance of the Holy Fire at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Easter eve with the help of modern highly accurate equipment."
"The conclusion is simple: the appearance of fire is accompanied with powerful piezoelectrical phenomenon in the church and adjacent territories similar to those that take place during thunderstorms, but there was no thunderstorm... Thus, it means that this event can be considered miraculous," he believes.
The Monastery of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor
Already in the 4th century the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Empress Helena built a temple in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor. At the end of the 11th century the Crusaders, having seized Palestine, have found a few temples and monasteries on Tabor and converted them to Roman Catholic. During the victory of the Saracens over Palestine at the end of the 12th century, the Taborite holy places were destroyed. For a long time the holy mount remained uninhabited and only on the day of Transfiguration the Orthodox and Catholics performed church services on the ruins of the former temples. In 1849 the Patriarch of Jerusalem Cyril II started to strive for permission from the Turkish government to construct a temple on Tabor. The decision was implemented only in 1860 when a temple was built on the ruins of an ancient Greek church. Above the door of the temple is an inscription in Greek: "On the ancient ruins on Mount Tabor a sacred temple of our Divine Lord and Savior of the Transfiguration is providentially constructed under the auspices of the Most Blessed Patriarch of Jerusalem Cyril II at the expense of the Brotherhood of the All-Holy Sepulcher".
In Russia there is also a memorial of the glorious Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor. In the Moscow All Sorrows Church and in the church in the village of Novospassky (Dedenevo, Moscow Province) where stones from Mount Tabor brought there a very long time ago are kept. There is a basis for thinking that these memorials on the sacred mount for Christians are not unique in our temples.