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"Look at it!" said Fr. Theophanes waving a hand at the dark rocky gorge beneath us. "There it is: the Valley of Doom. The Valley of Dreadful Judgement."

Below us the monastic buildings of Mar Saba fell away in a ripple of chapels, cells and oratories, each successive layer hanging like a swallow's nest from a ledge on the rockface. Opposite, the top of the cliff wall had turned an almost unnatural shade of red in the evening light. The rock was pitted with a honeycomb of caves, each formerly the cell of a Byzantine monk. All were now deserted.

"It's very beautiful," I said.

"Beautiful?" said Fr. Theophanes, rustling his robes in horror. "Beautiful? See down there at the bottom? The river. Nowadays it's just the sewage from Jerusalem. But on Judgement Day that's where the River of Blood is going to flow. It's going to be full of freemasons, whores and heretics: Protestants, Schismatics, Jews, Catholics. More Ouzo?"

"Please."

The monk paused to pour another thimbulful of spirit into a small glass. When I had gulped it down, he continued with his apocalypse:

"At the head of the Damned will be a troop composed of all the Popes of Rome, followed by their deputies, the Vice-Presidents of the Freemasons..."

"You're saying the Pope is a Freemason?"

"A Freemason? He's the President of the Freemasons. Everyone knows this. Each morning he worships the devil in the form of a naked woman with head of a goat."

"Actually, I'm a Catholic."

"Then," said Theophanes, "unless you convert to Orthodoxy, you will follow your Pope down that Valley, through the scorching fire.

"We will watch you from this balcony," he added. "But of course it will then be too late to save you."

I smiled, but Fr.Theophanes was in full swing and in no mood for joking.

"No one can truly know what that day will be like." He shook his head gravely. "But some of our Orthodox Fathers have had visions. Fire- fire that will never end, terrible, terrible fire- will come from the throne of Christ, just like it is on the icons. The saints- those who are to be saved, in other words the Orthodox Church- will fly in the air to meet Christ. But sinners and all non-Orthodox will be separated from the Elect. The damned will be pushed and prodded by devils down through the fire, down from the Valley of Josephat, past here- in fact exactly the route those Israeli hikers took today- down, down to the Mouth of Hell."

"Is that nearby?"

"Certainly," said Theophanes, stroking his beard. "The Mouth of Hell will open up near the Dead Sea."

"That is in the Bible?"

"Of course. Everything I am telling you is true."

"Look at those clouds in the East," said Fr. Evdokimos, the deputy archimandrite (abbot), deliberately changing the subject. "There may be rain tomorrow. What do you think, Theophanes?"

"The rains here in Palestine are not like the rains of Greece," replied the other monk. "There we get big rains- proper cloudbursts."

Theophanes smiled happily at the memory: "Ah, the rains of Greece," he said. "They are a reminder of the Deluge."

I had arrived at the Great Lavra of Mar Saba earlier that afternoon. The monastery lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, a little to the North of the Dead Sea. Above Bethlehem, where you first enter the West Bank, the soil is still fertile and the olive trees stand out against the terraces cut into the hard white hillsides. But as you drive on the cultivation recedes. The soil becomes thinner, the valleys deeper, and the villages poorer. The driver warned that we were entering Hamas territory and hung a Palestinian keffiyeh over half the windscreen to make sure that we would not be mistaken for Israeli settlers and stoned by the local shabab.

Passing the last village, we entered the desert; below us the barren shale hills fell away towards the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea, a quivering drop of mercury in the distance. Straight ahead, a pair of small rectangular Byzantine watchtowers rose vertically against the lip of a deep wadi. In the forty miles of landscape visible from the hilltop, those two towers were the only buildings in sight.

It was only when you passed underneath the machicolation of the nearest tower that you caught your first glimpse of the monastery that lay hidden in the depth of the gorge. The two towers were linked by a great wall which swept downwards in a U-bend to enclose turquoise domes and copulas, balconies and cave-cells, all propped up by great lines of massive, heavy buttresses.

In the middle of the sixth century A.D the wastes of Judea had become so filled with monks and monasteries that, according to one chronicler, “the desert had become a city”. Yet of the 150 odd monastic settlements founded during the Byzantine rule, only six are still occupied, and of those only one, Mar Saba, still supports enough monks to really qualify as a living monastery. It has been occupied continuously since its foundation in the late fifth century: apart from a two week hiatus following a massacre of the monks by marauding Persians in A.D 613, the divine office has been sung in the rock chapel of St. Sabas every morning for the last 1,517 years. The skulls of the hundreds of monks killed by the Persians, along with those subsequently murdered by marauding Bedouin, have been carefully kept in the abbey church, stacked in neat rows as nonchalantly as other churches might stack their hymn books.

Mar Saba remains one of the most austere of monasteries. The monks rise at two in the morning and sing the office for five hours, until dawn begins to break over the iconostasis of the abbey church. The fathers then rest until eleven when they eat their one meal of the day: bread (baked once a week, nice enough for three days but increasingly stale and mouldy thereafter), thin soup, boiled vegetables and strong Greek cheese. They do not eat meat, and allow themselves fish and oil (for dressing the vegetables) only on Sundays and feast days. After their meal they retire to their caves and cells for the rest of the day, emerging only to sing lauds, vespers and compline at the appointed times.

If Mar Saba is now remarkable mainly for the terrible severity of its asceticism, it was once famous for its scholarship. When the English pilgrim St. Willibald visited the monastery in the early eighth century the monks were busy copying manuscripts and composing some of the most beautiful hymns and poems ever written in Byzantium. But you would never guess any of this from talking to Mar Saba's current inhabitants:

"So you're a writer are you?" asked Fr. Theophanes when he brought me my supper on a tray at the end of vespers. "I've stopped reading books myself. The Divine Liturgy contains all the theology I need. Once you've read the word of God I can't see the point of reading anything else."

"They say books are like food," pointed out Fr. Evdokimos, philosophically. "They feed your brain."

"But Father," said Theophanes quietly. "Monks should try to eat as little as possible,"

It was nearly dark. As we talked Theophanes took out a box of matches and began to try and light a pair of battered old paraffin storm lanterns (there is no electricity in Mar Saba).

"What did you do before you became a monk?" I asked as Theophanes sat trimming the wicks.

"I was a policeman, in Athens. I came here for the first time on a pilgrimage. As soon as I saw this monastery I recognised it as my true home. I went back to Athens, gave in my resignation and said goodbye to my mother. A week later I was back here. Since then I've never left."

"Never?"

"I went back only once. For forty days."

"Was that difficult?"

"My mother cried sometimes. But otherwise, no. Things change very quickly. I hardly recognised my old city. My people had suddenly become rich from your European Community. There were so many new buildings. New buildings and new crimes."

"It must all have been a quite a change from your previous work."

"Not so different," replied the monk. "Demons are very like criminals. Both are very stupid. Both are damned."

The lanterns were alight now, casting shadows over the room and across the face of Fr. Theophanes.

"You don't actually believe in demons?" I asked.

"Of course. They are in the Bible."

"Sometimes when we are praying the demons make strange noises," added Fr. Evdokimos, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, stroking his beard. "At first I thought it was just the animals of the desert. But then I noticed the noises came most loudly when I was praying. It is the demons trying to distract us. "

"Each demon has its own personality," added Theophanes. "They live in the desert and come to the cities to make men into criminals, Catholics and Freemasons."

"They can work miracles and make false prophecies," said Evdokimos.

"They are worse than criminals," said Theophanes. "But here, within the walls of Mar Saba, we are protected."

"What do you mean?"

"St. Sabas is alive here. He protects his monastery. I have experienced it myself."

"How?"

"Three years ago on a windy night in the winter I was praying in my cave. It was night and I had not lit a lamp so my cell was pitch black. As I prayed I heard footsteps coming up the corridor. It was the noise of a monk walking: I could hear the rustling of his habit. The footsteps came, closer and closer and then stopped outside my room. I waited for the monk to speak but nothing happened.

"Suddenly I heard very clearly the noise of hundreds of feet tripping down the stairs from the opposite direction.. They were like madmen, jumping down the steps very quickly- loud, irregular footsteps: there were maybe five or six of them, all running. I thought: the Bedouin have climbed the walls and broken in and now they want to kill us. I froze behind my door, but nothing happened. After five minutes and still they didn't come in. So very slowly I opened the door and went out.

"It was a full moon that night. I could see clearly that the corridor was empty. There was silence in the monastery. I walked up to the courtyard and at that moment I saw Fr. Evdokimos' light moving from the latrines to his room. So I went up and said: 'Father- there are thieves in the monastery.' He asked: 'You are sure?' I said I was. 'Alright,' he said, 'we'll look together.' So we both took sticks and for an hour we went all around. We searched in the church, in the towers, inside the deepest caves. Nothing: the door was secure and no one had come in over the wall."

"It was only later," said Fr. Evdokimos,"when we discussed the matter with the abbot that we understood what had happened. The first set of footsteps were those of St. Sabas. The loud rabble were demons coming to turn Fr. Theophanes into a freemason. St. Sabas knew what they were planning so he stood in front of Fr. Theophanes' door to guard it. Then he chased the demons away."

"The devil will capture everyone if he gets the chance," said Theophanes gravely. "But the saints protect us. In this monastery I feel secure, although it is in the middle of the desert, with Bedouin all around us. We are protected."

It was late and the monks began to drift of to their cells carrying their lanterns. Theophanes showed me to my cell and promised to come and wake me for matins at two.

All night, it seemed, bells were peeling. At 1 am a monk began to knock the wooden simandron to call the brethren from their beds; he rang it again at 1.30 and at 1.55. At two I was treated to a full scale bell-ringing display: the bells in the campanile supplemented by a selection of handbells, one rung very loudly at the door of my cell by Fr. Theophanes. But as soon as silence had returned I fell asleep again and it was nearly 4 am before I finally pulled myself out of bed. It was pitch dark and very cold. I dressed by the light of the lantern then picked my way downstairs through the empty stairways and corridors of Mar Saba, towards the deep swell and eddy of monastic chant.

In the church all the lamps were lit, casting a dim glow over the basilica. The monastic kyries echoed around the dome. Only the occasional creek of a misericord gave away the position of the singers; the monks themselves were invisible in their black robes as they roosted in the choirstalls. Every so often a breeze would swing one of the chandeliers, rotating it slightly so that shadows raced around the church, the returning flash of candlelight picking out the highlights in the frescoes: the wings of angels and the long white beards of the desert fathers. The chant eddied out across the narrow valley, echoed and amplified by the domes and copulas.

Towards 6 o'clock first light began to filter in, gently illuminating the Christ Pantocrator in the dome. Half an hour later, with the sun now rising over the desert, you began to be able to pick out the monks themselves, black bearded, black robed, hooded and cowled in their stalls. What I had initially taken to be a low table near the lectern turned out to be Fr. Evdokimos kneeling, bent forward on the ground in a long prostration before the iconostasis.

One by one the monks glided from the church, each stopping to kiss the most sacred icons as they went. At seven I returned to my bed, and slept until noon when Fr. Theophanes woke me to say that my driver had arrived.

"You must visit us again," said Theophanes as he led me to the gate.

"Thank you."

"Maybe you will have converted to Orthodoxy by then?" said Theophanes hopefully.

I smiled.

Taking a huge key from a jailor's ring, the monk undid the multiple bolts of the low gate in the monastery wall. "Think about it seriously." said Theophanes gravely as he let me out. "Remember you will be among the damned if you don't."

The heavy metal door swung closed behind me. Outside, a dust storm was just beginning.

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