Under the dome of Holy Wisdom
For nine hundred years Hagia Sophia was the cathedral of Constantinople. Today it is a mosque, and Christ still looks out from its walls. We could pray there only quietly.
Justinian's church was dedicated on 27 December 537: a dome some thirty-one metres across, on a ring of forty windows, the largest church in the world for nearly a thousand years. When the city fell in 1453 it was made a mosque and its mosaics were plastered over. In 1934 it became a museum and the mosaics were uncovered. In July 2020 it became a mosque once more.
Inside, the building is half in shadow and half in gold, its floor covered with the carpets of a mosque. But Christianity has not been scrubbed from its walls. High in the upper galleries Christ still looks out: in the Deesis, between His mother and John the Baptist, His hand raised in blessing; enthroned between the emperor Constantine IX and the empress Zoe; and over the doors, the Virgin and child receiving the city from Constantine and the church from Justinian.
Jesus, all I want is to suffer for You, and I lay down my life at the altar for You.
We walked through it slowly, and grieved. Here the creed was confessed and the emperors were crowned; here the light of the gospel shone over the whole east; and here, now, the name of Christ may not be preached. We prayed there, quietly, for the land and for its people.
Constantinople was once the light of the Christian world. Its greatest church is a mosque. Yet the God who removed the lampstand can set it in its place again.
“Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” Revelation 2:5
