Translation of the video I published on Monday, April 21:
THE SACRED FIRE
[Published by QNTLC, title: El fuego sagrado, milagro del Santo Sepulcro. P. Javier Olivera Ravasi
Watch the video on YouTube, you will see the Holy Fire, how some people pass it over their faces and it does not burn]
St. Paul says: while the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks for wisdom, we preach a crucified Christ, a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.
Now let's see the miracle of the Holy Fire, so that they don't tell you about it.
I am Father Olivera Ravasi and we are at Easter 2025, a rather special Easter because this year coincides the Easter of the Roman Apostolic Christians with the so-called Orthodox, or schismatics (Russians, etc.) but also with the Byzantine Catholics. And I wanted to share with you an article that I published in 2021 on my blog www.quenotelacuenten.org something that I had heard but never finished researching, and that is the famous miracle that year after year happens on the Easter Vigil at the Holy Sepulchre, in the place where Our Lord Jesus Christ was buried and that can be seen even by those who can visit and have the grace to be there this holy night [he is speaking on Holy Saturday]. I recommend that you watch this video and not only listen to it because you will see images that will shock you about a miracle that happens every year.
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Let's see then the miracle of the Holy Fire.
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For centuries, Roman Catholics have been celebrating Easter and Christmas earlier than the so-called Orthodox. They, for example, in the year 2021, in the month of May; in 2025 it is exactly like us, in the month of April. You may ask why this difference if after all we are Catholics even though they have separated from communion with Rome.
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The problem is that the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church does not always coincide with the calendar of the Eastern or so-called Orthodox churches. And this is since 1582, the year in which the Gregorian calendar was adopted against the so-called Julian calendar, in force until then, the sixteenth century. However, even before that change of hands, and even after the Eastern Schism, in 1054, something happened in Jerusalem that is still almost completely unknown in Catholic circles at least. And I am referring to what happens every Holy Saturday, that is, today night [he posted the video on Holy Saturday, April 19, 2025] at the Holy Sepulcher, the place where Our Lord Jesus Christ was buried.
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As has been happening for centuries and as attested to by Popes even of antiquity, the Miracle of Light, or the so-called Holy Fire, takes place.
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Many years ago I was studying the history of the crusades and I was reading a famous book by Harold Lamb about the crusades, and I was reading about the year 1095 when I came to a passage that I read to you now, the summons of Pope Urban II to the crusades, listen well to what he said (I was a young man of about 18 or 19 years old and I was reading this passage):
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Urban II summoned the crusade:
“Set out for the Holy Sepulcher, wrest those lands from the power of the cursed race” (the Muslims) "and keep them for yourselves, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. There Christ died for us and there He was buried, and in the sepulcher an annual miracle continues to be performed. I tell you what you well know." (year 1095) "every year during the Passion the lamps were lit without human intervention in the dark church. And now only a few have witnessed the miracle“ (the Holy Sepulchre was occupied by the Muslims, the Holy Land was under siege by Islam, and that is why the Crusades were going to be, to defend the Christians who were under siege by Islam) ”The lamps“ (says Pope Urban II) ”continue to be lit miraculously" (what is he talking about? ) [he wondered when he was young and read this without knowing about the Holy Fire] “this should be an encouragement to us. Who would be so hard-hearted that he would not be moved by such a great miracle?”
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So much for the quote from the famous speech of Pope Urban II calling for the crusades to defend the Christians from the infidels. What was he referring to? He speaks of lamps, of miracles... At the time, when I read this, I let it pass a little, but several years later I returned to the subject.
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It was nothing more nor less than the annual miracle of the Holy Fire or Sacred Light that since at least the fourth century, year 300, has been occurring almost uninterruptedly in the Holy Sepulcher, the place where the Body of the Lord was placed after His Crucifixion and death. In that same building, very ancient, very beautiful, there is not only the place where the Body of the Lord rested, but also a higher chapel with the place of Calvary, where the Lord was crucified. All this together in a monumental ensemble. [he is showing it in a video] All that in a magnificent, magnificent church.
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The phenomenon, at least where I have studied, is attested by Eusebius of Caesarea, one of the first great Christian authors, third century, fourth century after Christ. Also by St. Gregory of Nice, 4th century... and it is always mentioned as an uncreated light. An uncreated light that on the night of Holy Saturday miraculously arises ....
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In the year 865, a French monk named Bernard describes what he could have seen with his own eyes in Jerusalem, I quote this source which is from the 9th century: (quote) "On Holy Saturday morning, after Mass, the people sing the Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy), until the lamps hanging over the Holy Sepulcher are lit [without human intervention] and the Patriarch (the bishop of the place) begins to distribute the fire among the faithful. Until that time there was no division between Orthodox and Catholics. So clear, it already narrates in the ninth century how the Patriarch of Jerusalem witnesses a miracle and distributes the Holy Fire. So clear.
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Only a couple of centuries after the separation between East and West (11th century) the Catholic Church will begin to silence or minimize this miracle, we reiterate, always after the schism of Orient, unfortunately. It was the attempt to distance himself from the schismatics. Then it began to be silenced, at least this theme of the Sacred Fire or of the Light. This was the case of Gregory IX, who even denounced this as a kind of fraud. He denounced the same Orthodox separated from the Church, schismatics, as if this had been a fraud. But for 1000 years, or at least 700 years, the Church, the Saints, the crusaders had witnessed all this.
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According to Niels Christian Heat [I don't know if I spelled the name right, maybe it's Beat] who traveled to the Holy Land to witness this prodigy, this happens year after year and is witnessed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and later by the Armenian Patriarch, obviously prior to a rigorous examination by the civil authorities who guard the Holy Sepulcher, both of their vestments and of the very place where the Body of the Lord was placed.
Beat points out in the early '90s what, in his meeting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theodore I said. We are talking about the late 90's, Patriarch Theodore I died in 2000.
The journalist asks him, “Your Beatitude, what happens when you enter the Sepulcher on the night of the Easter Vigil?”
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I repeat: the night of the Easter Vigil, which sometimes falls differently for Orthodox than for Catholics. Just in this year 2025 they coincide by an astronomical issue the same dates. Patriarch Theodore I responds:
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“I enter the Sepulcher and kneel in holy fear, before the place where the Body of the Lord lay after His death, and from where He rose from the dead. Praying at the Holy Sepulcher is always a very sacred moment for me. It is from here that He rose with Glory and it is from here that He spread His Light to the world.
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I seek my way through the darkness to the inner chamber, where I fall to my knees. Here I say certain prayers that have been given to us through the centuries. And having said them, I wait. Sometimes I wait a few minutes, but usually the Miracle occurs immediately after I have said the prayers. From the center of the same stone where Jesus lay there arises an indefinable light. It usually has a blue tint. But the color can change and take on several different shades. It cannot be described in human terms. The light rises from the stone like fog rises from a lake. It looks like the stone is covered by a cloud, but it is light. Every year this light behaves differently. Sometimes it covers only the stone, while at other times it illuminates the whole Sepulcher, so that people standing outside can see it filled with this light. The light does not burn. In the 16 years that I have been Patriarch in Jerusalem and received the Holy Fire, my beard has never burned. The light is of a different consistency than the normal fire that burns in an oil lamp. At a certain point the light rises and forms a column, in which the fire is of a different nature, so I can light my candles from it. Once I received the flame in my candles, I go out and give the fire, first to the Armenian Patriarch and then to the Coptic Patriarch, then I give the flame to all the people present in the church.” So much for the quote from Orthodox Patriarch Theodore.
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Reportedly, the miracle is not limited only to what happens inside the small tomb in which the Body of the Lord was placed, but many report that the candles themselves, the ones that the crowded believers have around the small tomb of Christ inside the great tomb, the great Basilica, light themselves, before the Great Patriarch of Jerusalem comes out of what was once the tomb of the Lord.
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In the year 2020 you could see very clearly when unfortunately we were totally enclosed by the issue of the Covid and company, then only the Patriarch enters the almost empty Sepulcher and it can perfectly be seen even in the filming.
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As with any miracle, there are people who believe that this is a fraud of the Orthodox implying that every year the Patriarch of the time enters previously with some artifact, with some lighter, with matches or whatever, however something like that seems very unlikely for many reasons: first of all because of the strict prior control of the local forces, the local forces control the Patriarch, the Israeli forces, by the way, so that no strange thing enters inside his vestments or whatever. Also because of the difficulty of maintaining a fraud for so many centuries, it has been going on for at least seventeen hundred years. Even when there were no matches or lighters, this has been going on for a long time, at least, as we said, since the third or fourth century in an almost uninterrupted way. And above all by the authorized testimonies of some Franciscan of the custody that I myself have been able to consult for this topic.
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Then there remains the final detail: eyewitnesses point out that at least in the first few minutes the Sacred Fire doesn’t burn the skin or the clothing.
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In 2008, for example, a team of Russian scientists from the Pavel Florenskij Academy of Natural Sciences, headed by Professor Andrei Alexandrovich Volkof (I don't know if I spelled the name right), conducted a series of physical measurements at the Lord's tomb on the same Orthodox Holy Saturday. The main hypothesis of the work was that the apparition of the Fire was due to a kind of electric discharge. On the basis of this version it was decided to record the long-wave electro-magnetic spectrum during the Mass, and especially at the moment of the apparition of the Holy Fire. From this study it was concluded that the electromagnetic radiation was recorded in an automatic way within a frequency range from 0 to 360 khz, the fire appearing at 15.04 and 15.08 every Easter vigil. We have shown, it is said in the study, what exactly happens and we have described the phenomenon in scientific terms, commented the professor, pointing out that he could not reject a supernatural origin for this phenomenon.
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What does all this teach us? That if the miracle is true, God still continues to manifest His gifts for the good of believers, in spite of the unbelief of the anti-Christian world in which we live.
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But some will say: Is this not confirming the schism of the Orthodox, of the schismatics? And the answer is that, to think so, would not only be a fallacy of false association, but also an error of historical inaccuracy, because besides the fact that God works miracles when He pleases, the date of this Easter is more Catholic even than the Virgin Mary [there he exaggerated a little, because the Blessed Virgin always knew that Jesus is God, since the Incarnation; 33 years before the Easter of Resurrection. Perhaps he meant that this miracle was celebrated before the Blessed Virgin, but I understand that the Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven is celebrated from that moment, because there was a girl, outside the tomb, who witnessed the Assumption], because not only has it been celebrated since centuries before the schism, but it is still being celebrated by the Catholics of the Byzantine rite to this day.
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In short, we must continue to pray that one day we may once again achieve the union so much desired, without giving up the truth, with those who have departed from communion with Rome, but who still have a great deal in common with us.
God bless you all, happy Easter and 'que no te la cuenten' [ 'don't let them tell it to you'. (he repeats the name of his YouTube page)].