April on the Holy Mountain, May in Greece, 2004
May 2004 Bishop Sergios
Over the past years I have been a pilgrim on Athos in January and rejoiced in the lovliness of the Theotokos' Garden in Winter, and in July, and rejoiced in the Garden's Summer, although heat, humidity and mosquitoes conspired to make the Athonite Summer a test of patience. This year, by a great mercy, I was able to be on the Holy Mountain in April, leaving Greece in May. On the long flight to Greece I turn 62 somewhere over the Atlantic.
Visiting old friends and familiar places, venerating the wonder-working ikons (the great Axion Estin ikon of the Virgin is now in a small chapel across the street from its usual home in the apse of the Protaton, and is much more easily seen and venerated - the move brought about by the recent fire in the Protaton's belfry) and the relics that strengthen faith, nerves and the souls of pilgrims.
The Athonite Spring is a wondrous event, unusual for Greece in that the entire region is heavily wooded, abundantly fed with water, and relatively unspoiled. Irises, red poppies and other flowers of every colour and description waved in cooling breezes, making the long walks from one place to another events of great joy. A sad note was sounded by the terrible wound inflicted on one of Athos' most beautiful Monasteries - the burned-out sections of Hilandar, victim of yet another fire on Athos. Far more of the overall complex was destroyed than verbal descriptions had suggested. The place is filled with volunteer workers from Yugoslavia.
This year, for the first time, I visited St. Basil's Skete next to Hilandar's arsanas, having viewed it from a distance for many years. The interior of the old chapel has some impressive frescoes that are gradually being uncovered.
This year I encountered some younger monks who, in spite of their youthfulness, have attained remarkable depth as they pass through the tough spiritual school of Athonite monasticism. Almost all put some years in at large communities; but the ones whom I met are now living in small settings which enjoy a number of descriptive names in Greek - Kathismata, Hesychastiria, Kalyvia - living by 2's and 3's and 5's here and there, in old (usually Russian-built) dwellings some of them having been empty for generations, with the attendant neglect and decay of the structures. But new life and younger men have quickened the rhythm of modest, gradual repair and recovery - a new tile roof here, newly-plastered walls there, a new floor somewhere else. Everything is simple, austere, and lovely.
At the same time the renewal of the fabric of buildings is accompanied by an attentive and intelligent renewal of the surrounding olive groves, garden areas and fruit orchards. Paths are rebuilt and re-paved, almost always by the very small communities themselves, perhaps with the occasional help of Romanian workmen who are still trained in stone-masonry and other construction skills which make working on these late-18th and early-19th century buildings natural. There is a judicious and ascetic employment of electric power, almost always sourced in solar panels, and often modern fixtures have replaced the Turkish toilets that were practically everywhere - even in the ruling monasteries - when I first went to Mount Athos in 1976.
Of course, all this renewal reflects the inner renewal of men, who come from our own world of contemporary western technologies and conveniences and systems of education. Some English at least is almost always found, and a modern sense of history and science and the arts is far more widespread than was the case a generation ago. But these men have left that world, and turned to a different world, to learn its skills and languages, and to lay the foundation for an entirely different life - one that "knoweth no eventide".
After all the times I have visited St. Panteleimon's Monastery over the decades, after all the time I have spent at that vast Monastery, I had never visited Old Rossikon, well up in the hills from the big seaside complex. This April a young monk who has been given a rather old pickup truck by his family offered to take me and my host there to see the hut in which St. Silouan the Athonite - patron of our chapel in California - had spent some time. So off we went and stopped first at the man-made lake put in by the Russians so long ago, in a very different world. The place is one of surpassing beauty, and is often well-covered in photograph books on Athos.
On we went and suddenly great stone buildings loomed up out of a tangled Athonite forest - Old Rossikon, built to house a large monastic community, now home to a single caretaker. The beautiful Church bears the date 1889 and is in very fine condition. Across the new logging road from the big Church is a small incline, overgrown with every possible vine and plant and shrub under the big trees and there in the midst of this tangle is a tiny hut, stone, plastered, painted white, peeling, with much of the roof in disrepair and both doors off their hinges, and that is where St. Silouan spent, our driver told us, some 3 years in intense spiritual activity. We entered, and were overcome with the sense of the spiritual world inhabited by St. Silouan and inhabiting him over the long years of routine monastic struggle. But what a routine!
Praying in the place, walking around the building and slowly walking back through the jungle-like tangle to the logging road and the old truck, the 3 of us were all absorbed by the place and the memories that have been handed on by the writings of monastic ancestors.
Everywhere in this world, there is the familiar sober joy of the monks who are utterly absorbed in the process of inhaling Athos' wisdom and practices that support that wisdom, made more sober still in that almost all of my time is spent with monks who will not commemorate the ecumenist authority installed in our times almost in every direction one looks.
For the most part well- and even highly-educated in the world, the non-commemorators are humble witnesses to the faith of the Church catholic and to the canonical order that manifests that faith in practical, daily affairs. Extremists to the right as well as to the left of the catholic orthodoxy of the Church are equally regretted, and equally prayed-for. I found neither triumphalism nor despair amongst the ranks of these intense, intelligent and prayerful men - but a continuing joy in the monastic life, wariness in the face of their own inner temptations, and sadness for the terrible plight of Christians in our ecumenist age. It was said of Christians in the era of the first "world wide heresy" - of the Arianism of the 4th century - that "the world awoke and groaned, amazed to find itself arian"; one feels that in our time, few awaken to the dreadful corruption of faith entailed in ecumenism, but surely among the awakened are these gifted, humble men, equally pained by the excesses of ecumenist extremists as of the extremists of the right.
Following a long pilgrimage on Athos came unexpected visits to other areas - among them Thebes (Thiva), where I met 2 dedicated monks who are building an entirely new monastery, one of whom was a youthful disciple of the renowned Elder of Aigina, Priestmonk Ieronymos.
The "resistance" in Greece is certainly numerically diminished from its heyday in the '30's and '40's and even into the '50's. But the impression is that intelligent fervour remains very high, spiritual morale is very high indeed (I speak of the monastic members of this "resistance") and if there could be a wider agreement on "first principles" amongst the Synods of Bishops and a wider agreement regarding what must be insisted on, and what can be left to gradual, pastoral resolution over time, one has the impression that there are certainly very many and dedicated people ready to support the work of the Church in the face of an almost overwhelming, but shallowly-rooted, engagement with ecumenist principles. The bones could live.
Athens is a cacophany of jack hammers and drills and cement trucks as the August Olympics loom, somewhat fearfully. Greece is the land of deferred maintenance, and the decision to go after the Summer Olympics has revealed just how deferred essential maintenance has been since World War II. The serious threat of terrorist action adds to the unusual mood of this over-populated, unregulated sprawling city that is home to over 50% of the nation's population. The Olympics will strain the country mightily in August and if Greek newscasters and pundits are to be believed, for years if not decades beyond.
On my last Sunday in Greece we celebrate the Liturgy in the beautiful women's Monastery of Kapandriti, where the elderly Abbess, Gerontissa Theologia, is bed-ridden. We take communion to her and, later, have the service of Unction. The clear, bright air of this small village north east of Athens tells why the late Archbishop Avxentios of blessed memory chose it for his residence.
The Abbess' illness seems to have resulted in a focussed brightness in both her own face and in the life of the community as a whole. She lies abed, awaiting the death that comes to all of us, and her quiet joy invites us to consider ourselves and our own frail existence in terms that console and inspire. Gerontissa Theologia is a strikingly handsome old woman - she must have been a great beauty in her youth - but the veil of the flesh has become transparent to the beauties of faith, of hope and of love, and her actual radiance is all the more apparent through the slow wasting of her body. We leave Kapandriti refreshed and buoyant, filled with the reflective gifts she is offering to everyone who visits her.
We visit a large number of monasteries everywhere, and everywhere we visit, there are stories - the early, hard days, the uncertain times, the opposition, the near-collapse of the community, the endless work, the thin resources, and the victorious trust in the Saviour that gradually transforms everything - these stories with variations on the theme are repeated again and again. As the days and visits go on one is increasingly humbled and made all grateful for everything, for everyone - the gifts to us pilgrims of these often unnoticed, small monastic communities.
We venerate ikons and relics, we sing the troparia of the patrons and the saints whose remains we are blessed to kiss, we are treated to Greek coffee and loukoum and raki in every kind of monastic venue, we are given paper prints of ikons and photographs of buildings and communities. What a world, what a course in sheer survival, all fueled by faith and love and hope.
The final days of this year's 3 week pilgrimage come, and one is filled with joy and amazements, glad to have been able once again to touch the living face of this wondrous world, glad too to be returning to one's own monastic home, to be serving again with one's own brethren, to be breathing the familiar air of one's own place.
And, paradoxically, aware also of how relative this "one's own" really is. One could as well not return, but stay. And another gift of the pilgrimage comes into view on the long ride home to California - the gift of inner freedom.
Archimandrite Sergios
Friday before Pentecost, 2004
Visiting old friends and familiar places, venerating the wonder-working ikons (the great Axion Estin ikon of the Virgin is now in a small chapel across the street from its usual home in the apse of the Protaton, and is much more easily seen and venerated - the move brought about by the recent fire in the Protaton's belfry) and the relics that strengthen faith, nerves and the souls of pilgrims.
The Athonite Spring is a wondrous event, unusual for Greece in that the entire region is heavily wooded, abundantly fed with water, and relatively unspoiled. Irises, red poppies and other flowers of every colour and description waved in cooling breezes, making the long walks from one place to another events of great joy. A sad note was sounded by the terrible wound inflicted on one of Athos' most beautiful Monasteries - the burned-out sections of Hilandar, victim of yet another fire on Athos. Far more of the overall complex was destroyed than verbal descriptions had suggested. The place is filled with volunteer workers from Yugoslavia.
This year, for the first time, I visited St. Basil's Skete next to Hilandar's arsanas, having viewed it from a distance for many years. The interior of the old chapel has some impressive frescoes that are gradually being uncovered.
This year I encountered some younger monks who, in spite of their youthfulness, have attained remarkable depth as they pass through the tough spiritual school of Athonite monasticism. Almost all put some years in at large communities; but the ones whom I met are now living in small settings which enjoy a number of descriptive names in Greek - Kathismata, Hesychastiria, Kalyvia - living by 2's and 3's and 5's here and there, in old (usually Russian-built) dwellings some of them having been empty for generations, with the attendant neglect and decay of the structures. But new life and younger men have quickened the rhythm of modest, gradual repair and recovery - a new tile roof here, newly-plastered walls there, a new floor somewhere else. Everything is simple, austere, and lovely.
At the same time the renewal of the fabric of buildings is accompanied by an attentive and intelligent renewal of the surrounding olive groves, garden areas and fruit orchards. Paths are rebuilt and re-paved, almost always by the very small communities themselves, perhaps with the occasional help of Romanian workmen who are still trained in stone-masonry and other construction skills which make working on these late-18th and early-19th century buildings natural. There is a judicious and ascetic employment of electric power, almost always sourced in solar panels, and often modern fixtures have replaced the Turkish toilets that were practically everywhere - even in the ruling monasteries - when I first went to Mount Athos in 1976.
Of course, all this renewal reflects the inner renewal of men, who come from our own world of contemporary western technologies and conveniences and systems of education. Some English at least is almost always found, and a modern sense of history and science and the arts is far more widespread than was the case a generation ago. But these men have left that world, and turned to a different world, to learn its skills and languages, and to lay the foundation for an entirely different life - one that "knoweth no eventide".
After all the times I have visited St. Panteleimon's Monastery over the decades, after all the time I have spent at that vast Monastery, I had never visited Old Rossikon, well up in the hills from the big seaside complex. This April a young monk who has been given a rather old pickup truck by his family offered to take me and my host there to see the hut in which St. Silouan the Athonite - patron of our chapel in California - had spent some time. So off we went and stopped first at the man-made lake put in by the Russians so long ago, in a very different world. The place is one of surpassing beauty, and is often well-covered in photograph books on Athos.
On we went and suddenly great stone buildings loomed up out of a tangled Athonite forest - Old Rossikon, built to house a large monastic community, now home to a single caretaker. The beautiful Church bears the date 1889 and is in very fine condition. Across the new logging road from the big Church is a small incline, overgrown with every possible vine and plant and shrub under the big trees and there in the midst of this tangle is a tiny hut, stone, plastered, painted white, peeling, with much of the roof in disrepair and both doors off their hinges, and that is where St. Silouan spent, our driver told us, some 3 years in intense spiritual activity. We entered, and were overcome with the sense of the spiritual world inhabited by St. Silouan and inhabiting him over the long years of routine monastic struggle. But what a routine!
Praying in the place, walking around the building and slowly walking back through the jungle-like tangle to the logging road and the old truck, the 3 of us were all absorbed by the place and the memories that have been handed on by the writings of monastic ancestors.
Everywhere in this world, there is the familiar sober joy of the monks who are utterly absorbed in the process of inhaling Athos' wisdom and practices that support that wisdom, made more sober still in that almost all of my time is spent with monks who will not commemorate the ecumenist authority installed in our times almost in every direction one looks.
For the most part well- and even highly-educated in the world, the non-commemorators are humble witnesses to the faith of the Church catholic and to the canonical order that manifests that faith in practical, daily affairs. Extremists to the right as well as to the left of the catholic orthodoxy of the Church are equally regretted, and equally prayed-for. I found neither triumphalism nor despair amongst the ranks of these intense, intelligent and prayerful men - but a continuing joy in the monastic life, wariness in the face of their own inner temptations, and sadness for the terrible plight of Christians in our ecumenist age. It was said of Christians in the era of the first "world wide heresy" - of the Arianism of the 4th century - that "the world awoke and groaned, amazed to find itself arian"; one feels that in our time, few awaken to the dreadful corruption of faith entailed in ecumenism, but surely among the awakened are these gifted, humble men, equally pained by the excesses of ecumenist extremists as of the extremists of the right.
Following a long pilgrimage on Athos came unexpected visits to other areas - among them Thebes (Thiva), where I met 2 dedicated monks who are building an entirely new monastery, one of whom was a youthful disciple of the renowned Elder of Aigina, Priestmonk Ieronymos.
The "resistance" in Greece is certainly numerically diminished from its heyday in the '30's and '40's and even into the '50's. But the impression is that intelligent fervour remains very high, spiritual morale is very high indeed (I speak of the monastic members of this "resistance") and if there could be a wider agreement on "first principles" amongst the Synods of Bishops and a wider agreement regarding what must be insisted on, and what can be left to gradual, pastoral resolution over time, one has the impression that there are certainly very many and dedicated people ready to support the work of the Church in the face of an almost overwhelming, but shallowly-rooted, engagement with ecumenist principles. The bones could live.
Athens is a cacophany of jack hammers and drills and cement trucks as the August Olympics loom, somewhat fearfully. Greece is the land of deferred maintenance, and the decision to go after the Summer Olympics has revealed just how deferred essential maintenance has been since World War II. The serious threat of terrorist action adds to the unusual mood of this over-populated, unregulated sprawling city that is home to over 50% of the nation's population. The Olympics will strain the country mightily in August and if Greek newscasters and pundits are to be believed, for years if not decades beyond.
On my last Sunday in Greece we celebrate the Liturgy in the beautiful women's Monastery of Kapandriti, where the elderly Abbess, Gerontissa Theologia, is bed-ridden. We take communion to her and, later, have the service of Unction. The clear, bright air of this small village north east of Athens tells why the late Archbishop Avxentios of blessed memory chose it for his residence.
The Abbess' illness seems to have resulted in a focussed brightness in both her own face and in the life of the community as a whole. She lies abed, awaiting the death that comes to all of us, and her quiet joy invites us to consider ourselves and our own frail existence in terms that console and inspire. Gerontissa Theologia is a strikingly handsome old woman - she must have been a great beauty in her youth - but the veil of the flesh has become transparent to the beauties of faith, of hope and of love, and her actual radiance is all the more apparent through the slow wasting of her body. We leave Kapandriti refreshed and buoyant, filled with the reflective gifts she is offering to everyone who visits her.
We visit a large number of monasteries everywhere, and everywhere we visit, there are stories - the early, hard days, the uncertain times, the opposition, the near-collapse of the community, the endless work, the thin resources, and the victorious trust in the Saviour that gradually transforms everything - these stories with variations on the theme are repeated again and again. As the days and visits go on one is increasingly humbled and made all grateful for everything, for everyone - the gifts to us pilgrims of these often unnoticed, small monastic communities.
We venerate ikons and relics, we sing the troparia of the patrons and the saints whose remains we are blessed to kiss, we are treated to Greek coffee and loukoum and raki in every kind of monastic venue, we are given paper prints of ikons and photographs of buildings and communities. What a world, what a course in sheer survival, all fueled by faith and love and hope.
The final days of this year's 3 week pilgrimage come, and one is filled with joy and amazements, glad to have been able once again to touch the living face of this wondrous world, glad too to be returning to one's own monastic home, to be serving again with one's own brethren, to be breathing the familiar air of one's own place.
And, paradoxically, aware also of how relative this "one's own" really is. One could as well not return, but stay. And another gift of the pilgrimage comes into view on the long ride home to California - the gift of inner freedom.
Archimandrite Sergios
Friday before Pentecost, 2004