Igoumenos Sergios was blessed to travel again this Summer to Greece, arriving in Chios in late June and spending several days on the adjacent islet of Oinoussis. In sharp and pleasant contrast to last year's pilgrimage at the same time, this year the weather was moderate and blessed with cooling breezes day and night. The revered Gerontissa, Mother Maria, in her 90's, continues to be alert and dynamic, participating actively in reading the appropriate parts in services, and continuing to offer exemplary leadership to her nuns and the many pilgrims coming to the community.

Another full week was spent in Athens and again, as in past years, the city's wealth of sacred relics beckoned us as did sites hallowed in recent times by the holy lives of such 20th century luminaries as Papa Nicholas Planas and Fotis Kontoglou. We visited the monastery and venerated the relics of the renowned Elder of Aigina, Geronta Ieronymos, who played such a decisive part in the spiritual formation of the founder of Boston's Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Archimandrite Panteleimon, as he did in the lives of so many others, including Mother Maria of Oinoussis and her family. While on Aigina, we also venerated the relics of St. Nektarios of Pentapolis.

Another full day was dedicated to visiting the relics of St. John the Russian on Euvoeia. In addition, we visited monasteries in Kapandriti and Keratea and were hospitably received by the active sisterhoods in those places, which have played such distinctive roles in the history of the Church of Greece since 1924.

Athens was very hot, in contrast to Chios, and pounding with the din of street and building renovations in preparation for next Summer's Olympic Games.

On the Holy Mountain for the Sunday of the Athonite Saints and the following week, Father Sergios visited old friends, staying in the Kapsala region, and made an extensive day pilgrimage to Prodromou Skete, Lavra, St. Athanasios' Well, Iviron, Skiti Iviron, and Protaton in Karyes, meeting new friends along the way.

The uncertainties surrounding the fate of the biggest community on Athos today, Esfigmenou, have disturbed much of the usual peace of the Athonite community. The matter is in the hands of the Greek Supreme Court, which will hand down its decision later this year regarding the demand of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew that the 120-strong Brotherhood be expelled because of their refusal to commemorate him at their services.

Even members of commemorating monasteries give strong expression to their dismay at what is regarded as an unwarranted interference by the Patriarch into Athos' internal affairs, feeling that the Athonites themselves should resolve this matter in their own way, and with patience. Patriarch Bartholomew, however, is not a patient man, and is particularly impatient at any signs of disapproval of his unionist/ecumenist agenda, and he has enforced his will in this matter with the help of the younger, more recently-installed Abbots, whose education in the secular institutions of "the new Greece" has disposed them to think in terms less resistant to modernist ecumenism than did their immediate predecessors.

The general feeling among traditional Christian monks on Athos at the moment seems to favour the view that the Supreme Court will decide the case against the Esfigmenou Fathers, that they will be expelled and replaced with a community led by an Abbot favourable to the agenda of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and that eventually the large community of non-commemorators scattered hither and yon throughout the Athonite peninsula, living in sketes, hermitages, caves and small cells, of whom the great majority will not commemorate an ecumenist Patriarch, will also be expelled.

This does not seem to engender any panic or bitterness, and is spoken of with humble acceptance everywhere. Truth to tell, the last mass-expulsion of Athonites, in the 19th century, when the Kollyvades Fathers were scattered throughout Greece by decree of the ruling Athonite communities and of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of that day, saw the re-education and the renewal of ecclesiastical life throughout the country as Kollyvades monks exiled from Athos took up residence everywhere, on the mainland and on the islands. In pursuit of his ecumenist goals, the current Patriarch may actually be doing traditionalists a great service in the long run.

This Summer brought Father Sergios into contact with a hitherto-unsuspected group of gifted, educated, non-commemorating Athonites, coming from new calendar families, from non-observant families, even from communist backgrounds, most of them having been entry-level professionals - engineers, teachers, lawyers, medical personnel - who at various times and in various ways underwent a conversion experience, usually to the new calendar, ecumenist State Church, and then, encountering the doctrinal crisis brought about by that community's decision to embrace syncretist ecumenism, a further conversion to what is popularly, if inadequately, called old-calendarism, who later became monks, and today are quietly absorbing the unique gifts of the Holy Mountain for whatever time they are given to be there. Those Father Sergios met live scattered here and there in small, often very remote cells.

The non-commemorating movement on Athos has recently received unusual and unexpected support from one of the ecumenist State Church's most prominent public figures, Father George Metallinos, a professor on the theological faculty at the University of Athens and Greece's best-known ecclesiastical television personality, who has bluntly stated in the national media that the Esfigmenou Fathers are indeed right to not commemorate any Patriarch who embraces the theory and practice of institutional ecumenism.

Other voices from the State Church, perhaps emboldened by the public statements of Father Metallinos, have been raised to similar ends, and as of this Summer, the debate over the Esfigmenou matter has become far more serious (albeit admittedly marginalized in contemporary, secular Greece) and far more responsible than any debate involving the question of the calendar since 1924 - and this is because the debate has largely ceased to be about the calendar, and has become, rightly enough, a debate about the real question raised by the shift of calendar in 1924, namely, about religious syncretism.

That in turn will increasingly reveal itself to be a debate about the person of Jesus Christ and the nature of the Church, amongst the competing dogmas of the world's religions, just as, at a certain moment, the ikonoclast question ceased to be a question about ikons and became a question about the Church's teaching about Jesus Christ.

Again, the unintended result of the current Patriarch's decision to call the question of Esfigmenou may turn out to be the reinvigouration and renewal of the badly-divided, and often inadequate and irresponsible character of contemporary traditionalist movements in Greece.

But, as the Athonite Fathers say in mild voices, "As God wills".

+ Archimandrite Sergios Gregoriosinaitis