And the Almost Unknown Little House Where it all Started.

Hidden among the narrow streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, G. Willikers discovers the Syriac Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark—an ancient church preserving a remarkable tradition reaching back to the earliest days of Christianity. Willikers enters while the Divine Liturgy is underway, with the haunting sound of Syriac chant filling the small sanctuary. He passes an icon of the Virgin Mary traditionally attributed to St. Luke, then descends beneath the modern streets of Jerusalem to a room believed by the Syriac Orthodox Church to have been part of the house of Mary, mother of John Mark. According to Acts 12, it was to Mary’s house that St. Peter went after an angel miraculously freed him from prison, finding the Christians gathered there in prayer. An even older Christian tradition identifies this house with the Upper Room—the place associated with the Mystical Supper, Christ washing the disciples’ feet, and the gathering of the Apostles at Pentecost. Can these ancient traditions be proven with certainty? Perhaps not. But beneath St. Mark’s are remains reaching back toward the first-century world, while Christians have preserved the memory of this place for many centuries. For Willikers, however, the greatest significance is not archaeological. Upstairs, Christians are still worshiping. Downstairs is the memory of the first believers gathered in prayer. Nearly two thousand years separate them, yet the faith continues. Empires have risen and disappeared. Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt. But the prayers of the Church have never ceased.