Mary Is With Us: The Maryam Monastery of Lake Tana, Tigray, Ethiopia

Dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time of Coro­n­avirus, I will be shar­ing excerpts from the book, Mag­ni­fi­cat: Mama Mary’s Pil­grim Sites, a col­lec­tion of 24 tes­ti­monies by peo­ple whose lives were changed by Mama Mary.  I hope that these arti­cles remind us that Mary is with us dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time. May you find solace in these per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ni­als.  ~ Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, edi­tor of Mag­ni­fi­cat.

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ETHIOPIA – The Maryam Monastery of Lake Tana, Tigray 

The fol­low­ing arti­cle presents an extant and almost unheard of sto­ry of Joseph, Mary, and the Child Jesus, except in the African Chris­t­ian coun­try of Ethiopia. The Holy Fam­i­ly returned to Nazareth but it took them awhile to trav­el back.  They stayed in the premis­es of Lake Tana, Tigray province of Ethiopia, where a body of apoc­ryphal gospel sto­ries doc­u­ment the mir­a­cles asso­ci­at­ed with the Blessed Vir­gin Mary rais­ing Jesus from infan­cy to ear­ly child­hood. Ancient trade routes show Tigray, Ethiopia as the nat­ur­al cross­ing point for traders on their way to the land of Israel by way of the nar­row straits of Aden and then fol­low­ing the south-north trade routes to Jor­dan and thence to Galilee. The effect of par­tic­i­pat­ing on this one-of-a-life­time pil­grim­age is a real revelation!

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THE MARYAM MONASTERY: LAKE TANA, TIGRAY, ETHIOPIA

Pené­lope V. Flores

Intro­duc­tion

THE BIBLE doesn’t tell me any­thing. Why do we have such a lacu­nae of mate­ri­als con­cern­ing the Blessed Vir­gin Mary and Baby Jesus? Why do we get only a Bible pic­ture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on the Flight to Egypt? And after that, the next Bible inci­dence we hear is an almost adult 13-year-old Jesus in the Jerusalem Tem­ple dis­cussing the­ol­o­gy among the learned priests. What hap­pened dur­ing the infan­cy years up to his being a teen? The big black hole seems to have swal­lowed Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus in his infan­cy and child­hood days.

Why?  Is it because, we Catholics are unfa­mil­iar with the oth­er canons of faith that reside in the ancient Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties of the Arme­ni­ans, Cop­tics, Chaldeans, and Byzan­tians, who were in fact the Ear­ly Chris­tians before Rome’s Vatican?

I was able to get some pieces of Mama Mary’s life by fol­low­ing the foot­steps of the Holy Fam­i­ly in Egypt, which led me to Ethiopia, where local leg­end says Jesus lived as a child.

I was in Ethiopia, 2002 to 2003 as a Unit­ed Nation Devel­op­ment Project’s con­sul­tant to the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. I had to vis­it schools in Tigray where Lake Tana is locat­ed. Lake Tana is a sacred and holy place. “What makes it holy?” I asked.

Dr. Chalchisa, one of my col­leagues at Haile Selassie Uni­ver­si­ty, answered: “It is the place where the Vir­gin Mary with St. Joseph raised their child, the Infant Jesus.”

I was sur­prised. I nev­er heard this sto­ry before. He brought me a tele­phone book and point­ed to Ethiopi­an fam­i­ly names: Maryam (Mary), Gebre (Gabriel), Hos­sein (Joseph), Hesu (Jesus). He declared, “Those are old Ethiopi­an Cop­tic Chris­t­ian names.” Then he referred me to the Bible. Look at Gen­e­sis, he ordered. The coun­try Ethiopia is men­tioned eight times! That riv­er Gihon over there, he point­ed, was part of the four rivers men­tioned in the Bible that went through the Gar­den of Eden.

I picked up my Bible right away. There it was, Gen­e­sis 2:10:  “A riv­er water­ing the gar­den flowed from Eden: from there it was sep­a­rat­ed into four head­wa­ters. The name of the first is the Pis­hon: it winds through the entire land of Hav­i­lah. The name of the sec­ond riv­er is the Gihon, it winds through the entire land of Cush.”

Dr. Chalchisa, who said he and his trib­al peo­ple in Ethiopia are called Cushites, con­tin­ued: The third riv­er is the Tigris; the fourth riv­er is the Euphrates. Ethiopia, he declared, is an old and ancient Chris­t­ian coun­try. In fact, he said with a flour­ish, what coun­try besides Egypt can pride itself with hav­ing the Holy Fam­i­ly reside with­in its borders?

I could hard­ly con­tain myself. How did this happen?

The sto­ry goes back to the evan­ge­list Matthew and his sto­ry of the Flight to Egypt. In the Bible sto­ry, Matthew 2: the Three Magi came to Beth­le­hem to adore the new King, born Jesus in Beth­le­hem. The ruler at that time was Herod who, when he heard this birth of the King of the Jews, was dis­turbed. “Who’s this king who will usurp my throne,” he asked? He then ordered the death of all those born in that peri­od.  In today’s cal­en­dar, Decem­ber 28^th is remem­bered as the “Niños Inocentes,” the day when inno­cent new­born males were put to the sword.

The Bible sto­ry con­tin­ues: “How­ev­er, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the moth­er and child and escape to Egypt.” This Flight to Egypt has been depict­ed in many icons and paint­ings, and is an endur­ing mem­o­ry of that event.

Why Egypt? Why not Dam­as­cus or Constantinople?

Egypt is where Jacob and the 12 tribes lived when Joseph became the vizier of the Pharaohs. Moses start­ed his min­istry in Egypt. It’s also in the scrip­tures that dur­ing Jesus’s Way of the Cross, when Jesus fell, a bystander, Simon of Cyrene helped him car­ry the Cross. In the Cop­tic Bible, Simon is a Cairene, (from Cairo). In oth­er words, lin­ger­ing past mem­o­ries of the Holy Land are embed­ded with­in the cul­ture of Ancient Egypt, Cairo being also the seat of the Cop­tic Chris­t­ian religion.

The Blessed Vir­gin Mary and Miracles

So far so good. So, the Holy Fam­i­ly went to Egypt. From Beth­le­hem, they joined some car­a­vanserai to Gaza, who went on to the Mediter­ranean and land­ed on the delta near Alexan­dria, Egypt. With­in a vast sys­tem of canals that criss­crossed the delta and the Nile, leg­ends abound of the mir­a­cles asso­ci­at­ed with the Vir­gin Mary and the Baby Jesus. The Holy Fam­i­ly resided in Cairo. In what is now Old Cairo, I joined a pil­grim­age to the Sus­pend­ed Church, the old­est Chris­t­ian church in Egypt, known as Al Mual­laqah. It was here, I was told, that the Blessed Vir­gin Mary stopped to nurse the Baby Jesus. There’s a foun­tain near­by with milky white water gush­ing out. I said, this water must have col­lect­ed the cal­ci­fied min­er­al silts of the Nile, that’s why it is whitish. I got cold stares from the crowd. “I’m a nat­ur­al skep­tic,” I apol­o­gized to no one in particular.

I vis­it­ed the Cop­tic Synaxar­i­um to exam­ine an ancient Bible dis­played at the Alexan­dria Muse­um, Egypt. There I got an intri­cate map of how the Holy Fam­i­ly trav­eled from one place to anoth­er. It seems they were mov­ing a lot. They left a path now marked by dots of Chris­t­ian church­es all with­in Mus­lim Egypt. Joseph the car­pen­ter had to find work in the vil­lages where his skill was in demand. It also told of Mary and baby Jesus per­form­ing feats and mir­a­cles, of palm trees bow­ing when the Holy Fam­i­ly passed the road, and of the nail clip­pings from baby Jesus. Where they were thrown, med­i­c­i­nal herbs with mirac­u­lous prop­er­ties report­ed­ly grew. I inspect­ed the herbs. Believe me, they were “cilantro” in my un-ortho­dox and sac­ri­le­gious mindset.

But I’m get­ting ahead of my story.

The Holy Family’s Return Trip to Israel

Let’s get back to the Bible sto­ry. When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared again in a dream to Joseph in Egypt say­ing, “Arise and take the young child and his moth­er and go back into the land of Israel. For they are dead which sought the young child’s life.” And he arose and took the young child and his moth­er and came into the land of Israel” (Matthew 2, 19–21).

How­ev­er, if we look at the Holy Fam­i­ly map, we get a sense of what is real­ly hap­pen­ing. They were already far beyond the bound­aries of Cairo and were trekking their way with their itin­er­ant car­a­van group along the Upper Nile approach­ing the uplands of Lake Tana in Ethiopia.

In a book­shop in Addis Aba­ba, the cap­i­tal of Ethiopia, I found a tiny book depict­ing the mir­a­cles of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary, or St. Maryam, accord­ing to the locals. I was told that angels were present in Lake Tana and remain the guardians of the holy site to this day. The next thing I did was get to the North East­ern province of Ethiopia, to Tigray. In the com­pa­ny of Mr. Mekko­nen, Mr. Gebre, and Dr. Chal­sisa of the Min­istry of Education’s Research and Devel­op­ment Depart­ment, we sal­lied forth, to vis­it ele­men­tary schools but for me after the edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, to make a pil­grim­age to Lake Tana.

I will now describe what I actu­al­ly felt dur­ing that momen­tous trip, what my obser­va­tions were, and what sig­nif­i­cance it made on my spir­i­tu­al quest for the mean­ing of Mama Mary and of her sacred life.

Fac­tors Con­tribut­ing to the Pow­er of Lake Tana. 

Lake Tana’s geo­phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sacred site bears wit­ness to its iso­lat­ed and serene loca­tion. It is a qui­et and calm envi­ron­ment, acces­si­ble only by a small canoe made of papyrus reeds as a fisherman/ boat­man pad­dles expert­ly with his wood­en oar. The Holy Fam­i­ly domi­cile is now a monastery for Ethiopi­an Ortho­dox monks, who have many anti­quar­i­an rules. Their fast­ing prac­tices are very elab­o­rate. Besides observ­ing reg­u­lar fast­ing days, they include spe­cial fast­ing just for St. Mary every Wednesday.

This lake is one of the sources of the riv­er Nile. Lake Tana becomes the “Blue Nile” of Ethiopia. Lat­er it “merges into the “White Nile” of Sudan and goes down straight to Egypt as the “Gift of the Nile.” The Holy Fam­i­ly fol­lowed this Nile reach­es up to Ethiopia.

The sacred geom­e­try of the Maryam monastery is cir­cu­lar with dou­ble doors fac­ing East and West. Entrance doors have mean­ings. Not know­ing where to enter, I fol­lowed the flow of the crowd most­ly men and acolytes. The build­ing mate­ri­als of the cir­cu­lar build­ing are of local papyrus reeds, mud, and spit­tle. Local stones are soft tuff, a char­ac­ter­is­tic of a carved-in church in near­by Lal­i­bela, a Chris­t­ian Ortho­dox Church dug deep into the soil. It was believed angels helped in its con­struc­tion and fin­ished it overnight.

The Ethiopi­an influ­ence of light and col­or is sur­re­al because of the absence of pol­lu­tion. When I arrived, the sound and music of birds, the drones of chants, the whin­ing of the local stringed instru­ment and cym­bals gave the cer­e­mo­ni­al atmos­phere just the per­fect set­ting for med­i­ta­tion. In addi­tion, I real­ized that the use of spices, myrrh, frank­in­cense, and beeswax can­dles car­ry mean­ing when imbued with aro­mat­ic food, includ­ing car­damom mixed in our Ethiopi­an cof­fee and the herb “chat” that reduces stress and tense mus­cles. This drink was offered to me at the vestibule.

The influ­ence of visu­al scrip­tures estab­lish­es the shrine as a Cop­tic church. Illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts filled the walls of the Mary Monastery as paint­ings of icons served as space hold­ers for stray thoughts. No seats were seen, and stand­ing endurance pre­vailed dur­ing long sermons.

The pres­ence of accu­mu­lat­ed ener­gy from cen­turies of cer­e­mo­ni­al activ­i­ty is an old ancient rit­u­al. I guess it’s a mix­ture of Armen­ian Ortho­dox rites and Ethiopi­an Ortho­dox rites. I saw lit­tle resem­blance to the Catholic rites I had known in my child­hood years.

In addi­tion, the pres­ence of ephemer­al spir­i­tu­al ener­gy for the large num­ber of pil­grims who have vis­it­ed the sacred place had invad­ed the height­ened effect of reli­gious prac­tices per­formed at this St. Mary’s sacred site. I felt it.

This influ­ence result­ed from a cul­tur­al col­lec­tive belief in the pow­er of mir­a­cles and of ideals enshrined in a Blessed Vir­gin pil­grim­age cen­ter. Child Jesus apoc­ryphal sto­ries were relat­ed to me. What I liked most was that Mama Mary would bathe the child Jesus in a tub basin. The bath water was col­lect­ed and dis­trib­uted to sick vil­lage chil­dren. They all mirac­u­lous­ly got bet­ter after using the bath water.

I could feel the pow­er of change ema­nat­ing from the relics and cer­e­mo­ni­al objects, includ­ing mirac­u­lous icons. I fin­gered the Gihon Bible, writ­ten in Tigray script. I also touched the score for a hym­nal song, believed to be the first church musi­cal scores used in this monastery in Ethiopia.

I felt a celes­tial influ­ence in this sacred place. I was con­nect­ing with the pow­er of the place through med­i­ta­tion. I said a prayer, and with the rest of the pil­grim­age fol­lowed the required cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion going coun­ter­clock­wise three times. This is why old ancient Chris­t­ian church build­ings are in the round topped by a dome–in order to make a pil­grim­age walk around it — an ancient prac­tice now lost. Out­side the St. Maryam monastery I retraced the cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion path.

I fol­lowed the rest of the crowd kiss­ing the church door thrice. In fact doing reli­gious activ­i­ties in Ethiopia must be done thrice, like kiss­ing and hug­ging when meet­ing a friend, in sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Holy Fam­i­ly. Hand­shak­ing as a greet­ing required three shakes   Cups of cof­fee are offered thrice and it’s con­sid­ered rude to refuse the offers.

Did I expe­ri­ence a pay­back from my pil­grim­age to Lake Tana? You bet I did. It was the feast of the Epiphany when I went. Every monk, dea­con and nun in every monastery on Lake Tana came out en masse. What hap­pens when a con­gre­ga­tion of mul­ti­col­ored monks, priests, and acolytes dressed in gold trims and car­ry­ing aloft daz­zling umbrel­las over their saint­ed heads appears in a pro­ces­sion? It’s over­whelm­ing! The tableau of the Holy Fam­i­ly and the Blessed Vir­gin Mary is always enact­ed because it has a local his­tor­i­cal point of view. They are proud that St. Maryam, as they call her, stayed on Ethiopi­an soil, per­formed many mir­a­cles and shared the Baby Jesus with them.

All dur­ing my pil­grim­age to Lake Tana, I felt imbued with some­thing that I could not explain. Being a nat­ur­al skep­tic, I thought the stress of my work with the Min­istry, (crunch­ing sta­tis­ti­cal data and ana­lyz­ing its effect on the school­ing pat­terns) made a great toll on my dai­ly rou­tine. But after my St. Maryam trip, I was con­front­ed direct­ly with one of the mir­a­cles. Leg­end says that she picked a twig branch and with it brushed Baby Jesus teeth. Nowa­days, if you go to the open pub­lic mar­ket place, they are still sell­ing this twig as a home­made tooth­brush… just like Jesus’ tooth­brush. (Just so I would remem­ber, I kept a small twig to present to my San Fran­cis­co orthodontist).

How­ev­er what caught my fan­cy was an artist paint­ing with the local twig. I gin­ger­ly took hold of a twig brush, shaved it into a paint­brush, dipped it in fresh oil paint, applied it on paper and voila, a mir­a­cle! The result was amaz­ing! I did not real­ize that I could paint.

I returned to my hotel room heav­i­ly imbued with a cer­tain pow­er. It was not an out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary. The change was with­in me. For the first time, the cre­ative surge appeared in my per­sona. I took a brush and with three oil col­ors, I paint­ed Lake Tana. It was as if Mama Mary told me, “Lose your­self. Paint my Lake Tana ema­na­tion and your can­vass­es will show feelings.”

The next day, that local twig paint­brush wouldn’t stop act­ing up. In about half a day in my fever­ish state, I fin­ished 24 can­vass­es. Unbe­liev­able!!! Me, a feisty old pro­fes­sor, who nev­er before held a brush, was now an artist. This was an incred­i­ble revelation.

That was 2003. Sub­se­quent­ly, where I could apply oil paint on can­vas with my brush, I have done so. The psy­cho­log­i­cal change in me is not only spir­i­tu­al, but also rich­ly emo­tion­al, cre­ative, and trans­for­ma­tive. More­over paint­ing has becalmed my spir­it as if I’m once again enter­ing the sacred mirac­u­lous place of Lake Tana and the pris­tine Maryam Monastery.

The mir­a­cles attrib­uted to the Blessed Vir­gin Mary and the Baby Jesus was, for me, not an out­side occult hap­pen­ing. Unlike oth­er mir­a­cles where a cer­tain image attracts mirac­u­lous atten­tion, my expe­ri­ence in Ethiopia was the exact oppo­site. The mir­a­cle hap­pened with­in me.

BIO of Author:

PENẺLOPE V. FLORES is a Pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion, Emer­i­tus, at San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty. She is the author of sev­er­al non-fic­tion books, and edi­tor of sev­er­al antholo­gies. She was an orig­i­nal founder of the Philip­pine Amer­i­can Writ­ers and Artists, Inc. (PAWA) and was its past pres­i­dent from 2000 to 2007. She has a Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, a Mas­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and a Bach­e­lors and teach­ing cre­den­tial from the Philip­pine Nor­mal Uni­ver­si­ty, Mani­la. Pene­lope paints still lifes and land­scapes. Cur­rent­ly she’s work­ing on her lat­est project: José Rizal’s land­mark apart­ments in Spain and Ger­many. Her Rizal paint­ing has been exhib­it­ed at the Oak­land Asian Cul­tur­al Cen­ter for the 150^th Rizal birth­day anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, June 2011.

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Book: Mag­ni­fi­cat: Mama Mary’s Pil­grim Sites

Col­lect­ed and Edit­ed by Cecila Manguer­ra Brainard

Anvil, 2012, soft­cov­er, 168 pages, ISBN 9789712727115

Hard copies avail­able from Philip­pine Expres­sions Book­shop: 1–310–548‑8148 or 1–310–514‑9139

Avail­able from Ama­zon Kindle 

Con­trib­u­tors are: Lucy Adao McGin­ley, Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, Angeli­ta Calu­ag Cruz, Maria Cio­con, Celeste, Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Mil­li­cent Dyp­i­ang­co, Ma. Mila­gros T. Dum­dum, Pene­lope V. Flo­res, Almi­ra Astudil­lo Gilles, Ma. Tere­si­ta Her­rera-Tan, Fe Aida Lac­samana-Reyes, Jaime C. Laya, Guia Lim, Lin­da Nietes-Lit­tle, Ma. Tere­sa Z. Lopez, Aimee Gaboya Orte­ga Lucero, Lyn­ley Salome R. Ocam­po, Ma. Cristi­na Padil­la-Sendin, Mar­sha C. Paras, Rev. Dr. Sebas­t­ian Peri­an­nan, Bri­an Ascalon Roley, Julia H. Wol­s­ki, and Lin­da Yamamoto.

Praise for Magnificat

“This is anoth­er out­stand­ing book by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard. Pro­found­ly Mar­i­an and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten by the con­trib­u­tors as these are their per­son­al expe­ri­ences! To our fel­low devo­tees and would-be devo­tees of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary, you will sure­ly fall in love with Mag­ni­fi­cat: Mama Mary’s Pil­grim Sites and love Our Blessed Moth­er even more.” (Bish­op Leopol­do C. Jau­cian, SVD, DD, Bish­op of Bangued, Philippines)

“The devo­tion to Mama Mary is strong in the hearts of every Fil­ipino.” (Father James B. Reuter, SJ)

“The Mag­ni­fi­cat has always been a tes­ta­ment to God’s para­dox­i­cal deal­ings with his peo­ple. This book assem­bles a tableau of wit­ness­es to how a fleet­ing vis­it with Mary can turn into a life-chang­ing intro­duc­tion to her Son. Through their sto­ries the author offers their read­ers the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting the stage for a per­son­al, if vic­ar­i­ous, epiphany.” (Father Dion­i­sio M. Miran­da, SVD, Pres­i­dent, Uni­ver­si­ty of San Car­los in Cebu)

“Run­ning as a leit­mo­tif in all the essays in this book is the writ­ers’ pal­pa­ble love for Mama Mary. Each writer has under­gone a change in his or her life or out­look fol­low­ing a vis­it to a Mar­i­an site. Some may have expe­ri­enced a “mir­a­cle,” or felt con­soled and renewed; oth­ers a deep­en­ing of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, or an epiphany, an insight into the divine. Although we know that Jesus is the only Way to the Father, it is our belief in the pow­er of Mary’s inter­ces­sion to her Son, borne out of the Bible’s Cana sto­ry, that makes us all turn to Her, whom Her divine Son will nev­er refuse. Kudos to Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard for putting togeth­er an engag­ing col­lec­tion of sto­ries that mag­ni­fy the hum­ble hand­maid of the Lord.” (Erlin­da E. Panlilio, Writer and Editor)

This blog is also pub­lished in Cecilia’s trav­el blog: https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2020/03/mary-is-with-us-maryam-monastery-of.html

Tags: book review, Mar­i­an, Mama Mary, Catholic, reli­gion, Chris­tian­i­ty, anthol­o­gy, Medugor­je, Coro­n­avirus, Covid 19, Lake Tana, Ethiopia