Saint Gregory of Sinai was born around 1265, and reposed on November 27/December 10, 1346.  He was thus an older contemporary of Saint Gregory Palamas, who was born in 1296 and reposed in 1359.  This year the monastery celebrated its altar feast with the help of visiting Protopsaltis John Presson from the Portland Cathedral, whose mastery of Byzantine chant enriched the community's offering of prayer and worship on this high feast.  We were moved by and grateful for the presence of quite a number of pilgrims this year whose presence multiplied our joy.  

The writings of Saint Gregory of Sinai have not received the intense academic interest enjoyed by his younger monastic contemporary, Saint Gregory Palamas, but his basic writings are available in volume 4 of Faber's Philokalia  (212-286) with a brief introductory note (207-211).  Kallistos Ware (titular Metropolitan of Diokleia, Ecumenical Patriarchate) wrote a short essay The Jesus Prayer is St Gregory of Sinai, and another British academic, David Balfour, presented Saint Gregory's Discourse on the Transfiguration in an edited version with English translation, in successive issues of Theologia, printed as a single book by Borgo Press in 1989.  A recent (2004) book in modern Greek by Aggeliki Delikari studies the slavonic translation of Saint Gregory's works (Agios Grigorios o Sinaitis: I Drasi kai i Symvoli Tou sti Diadosi tou Isichasmou sta Valkania).  Among the questions that interest modern academics is whether or not the two great hesychasts, Gregory of Sinai and Gregory Palamas, were in contact with one another.

All those who feel jarred and distracted by the confusions of the 21st century will be consoled by the life of Saint Gregory of Sinai.  Born and raised in early youth near Klazomenai, in Asia Minor, he was captured by marauding Moslem pirates with his family and other Greek townsmen and held for ransom.  While in detention he was noted for his ability as a chanter by the Christian worshippers living under Moslem rule.  Once ransomed he seems to have left his family - although still young - and to have gone to Cyprus, where he became a rassoforos monk (the first grade of monastic profession) and then moved on to Sinai where he was tonsured as a fully-professed monk (hence his title, of Sinai, although he spent comparatively little time in Sinai).  There is today a small kelli (one-room monastic cabin) at some distance from the great monastery of Saint Katherine dedicated to Saint Gregory, and the contemporary local view is that he moved to this small hermitage and spent some time there.  Whatever the case, for those who love the Saint it is a very moving experience indeed to stand in the wonderful katholikon of Saint Katherine's on Sinai and consider that he stood in the same building seeing the same great ikonographic program that impresses itself on worshippers today, centering on the great mosaic of the Saviour's Transfiguration filling the eastern apse of the temple.

He moved on to Crete where a monk Arsenios taught him (evidently for the first time) about the guarding of the nous, true watchfulness and pure prayer as his biographer and disciple, the Holy Patriarch Kallistos I of Constantinople wrote in his biography of his beloved Elder.

From Crete Saint Gregory moved on to Mount Athos, probably around 1300, when he would have been about 35.  He did not enroll in one of the great ruling monasteries, but in a remote skete, named Magoula, the ruins of which can still be seen about a half-hour's walk eastward from the modern ruling monastery, Philotheou.  Not much is left of Magoula, but again the ruins bear powerfully upon any who are devoted to Saint Gregory.

Saint Gregory was to live for about a quarter of a century in this place until, around 1325-1328 Moslem piratic incursions became so intrusive and distracting that those seeking solitude and its peace and silence opted to move away from the Holy Mountain (rather than into one of the strongly-fortified ruling monasteries).    He attempted a return at some point in the 1330's but soon abandoned the idea of living on Athos altogether.

Saint Gregory ended his life beyond the borders of the Empire of the New Rome, in a place called Paroria in the Strandzha Mountains overlooking the Black Sea, safely within the borders of the Bulgarian Empire whose Emperor, John Alexander, was devoted to monasticism and its practitioners.  Emperor John Alexander provided not only a monastic facility, but dedicated a number of villages to Saint Gregory's community - the basis of monastic economic life in that era - and provided, in addition, a military guard sufficient to ward off Moslem intrusions.  One must note that Moslems were not Saint Gregory's only problem:  monks in the Strandzha Mountains were moved to jealousy by the imperial patronage given to Saint Gregory's monastery, as also by the high esteem in which the Saint was held by numbers of Christians from far and near, and these envious neighbours stirred up no end of hardships for Saint Gregory and his community.  Time, however, was on the side of the Parorian community, and by the time of Saint Gregory's death, his community counted large numbers of Greek- and Slav-speaking monks, some of whom were to play high and prominent roles in the life of the Church both in Constantinople and in the Slavic areas of the Balkans, and who were to constitute the core of what has been called the 'hesychast international'.

Saint Gregory seems to have played no role at all in the polemics of the era, in which Saint Gregory Palamas defended the practice of hesychast prayer and spiritual life against attacks both by Barlaam of Calabria (acting as a representative of western theological principles) and by a number of Orthodox Christian theologians equally uncomfortable with the assertions of articulate hesychasts, who were emboldened by an experience that was personal and clearly overwhelming, although the Greek-speaking opponents had somewhat different presuppositions at work in their polemical opposition to hesychasm than did Barlaam (and subsequent western critics).

However absent Saint Gregory of Sinai was from the extant polemics of the age, his writings agree entirely with the theological point of view defended by Saint Gregory Palamas.

After many hours of liturgical worship, our community gathered in a very different age and on a mountainside far removed from Athos and the Strandzha range feeling powerfully encompassed by the intercessions of its heavenly patron, noting one and all that for all the contributions of academic monographs to our understanding of the hesychasts of the 14th century - its golden age - nothing compares with a few hours of liturgical Vigil and Liturgy for accessing the heart of the matter.  And to that, Amen.

+Sergios of Loch Lomond, Igoumenos
November 27/December 10, 2007

On November 15/28, as we celebrate the Feast of St. Paissios Velichkovsky whose life and work is crucial for the renewal of hesychast spirituality in the Church, and the beginning of the fast for the Nativity of our Saviour, we are also marking the 70th anniversary of the repose of the New Martyr, Catherine Routis of Mandra, in Attica, Greece.

Her Troparion (printed in The Struggle Against Ecumenism, p. 305) sums up her significance in the life of the Church:

The crown of martyrdom didst thou receive, O Catherine, by struggling steadfastly for the tradition of our Fathers; and thou didst surrender thy soul to Jesus the Bridegroom, when, on the festival of the Archangels at Mandra of Megaris, thou didst sincerely proclaim the dogmas of the Faith of the Scriptures.

New Martyr Catherine was born in 1900 in the village of Mandra in the region of Megara, between Athens and Corinth.  When the western calendar was forcibly imposed on the Christians of Greece in 1924, large numbers of Greek Christians spontaneously rejected both the new order of things and the Hierarchs responsible for enforcing that new order.

The forcible (and violent) imposition of the western calendar was the result of a sinister combination of secularizing political policies, inaugurated by the government of Emanuel Venizelos, coupled with the reformist-ecumenist ideas associated with syncretist freemasonry and an infatuation with the West, which had been quietly emerging within a circle of Hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarch (and elsewhere) from the 19th century forward. These ideas would become the stated policy of that Patriarchate under the guidance of the freemason and ecclesiastical adventurer, Patriarch Meletios IV Metaxakis.  

New Martyr Catherine and her husband joined the widespread populist and spontaneous rejection of the government's Synod of Bishops and their policies, and continued to worship with clergy and laity according to the traditional calendar.  While much is written in our times concerning the futility and the wrong-headedness of making an issue of the 13 day difference between the western and the traditional calendar, the fact is that neither the 13 days nor even the calendar itself is the primary issue, any more than boiled wheat (kollyva, in Greek) was the issue during the kollyvades  dispute; any more than painted pictures were the issue during the age of ikonoclasm.  The question raised by the heresy of ikonoclasm was a fundamental christological issue; the issue raised by the kollyvades Fathers concerned the liturgical reflection of fundamental Christian faith and practice, and the issue raised by the "old-calendar" movement is the issue of the basic definition of the Church herself, as that definition is manifested in the decrees of Councils and the writings of acknowledged Fathers.

The defense spontaneously organized by humble laymen and clergy in Greece from 1924 on was only in the first instance the defense of a given calendar, because contained within that defense was the instinctive defense of the integrity of the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" as such.

On the feast of the Archangels, November 8th (November 21st on the western calendar), 1927, Catherine was part of a large congregation of confessing Christians in her native village.  During the Vigil for the feast (presided over by the Presbyter Christopher Psallidas) a detachment of police, ordered out by the Ministry of the Interior acting in response to a demand issued by the head of the government Synod, Archbishop Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, surrounded the village church.  After an all-night Vigil, as the Liturgy for the feast began, the police began to batter down the doors of the church with their rifle butts.  Windows were smashed.  The apparent goal of the police forces was the arrest of Father Christopher (and the consequent termination of the liturgical assembly).  But the efforts of the police were not met with success and they called for reinforcements.  Meanwhile, inside the temple, most of the congregation received Holy Communion, and were preparing to leave the church and rest after the all-night service.

As the communicants began to leave, and as it became evident that the police were intent on arresting Father Christopher, a group of pious women surrounded him to form a protective wall, under the impression that the police would not physically attack women.  Catherine Routis had left the church after Communion and made sure that her husband and 2 children were safely home, and then she had returned to the church to join the congregation's non-violent efforts to protect its Presbyter.  

The police fired their guns into the air to scare off the lay defenders of their Priest, but to no avail.  One woman, Angeliki Katsarellis, still inside the church, was hit in the forehead by one of the stray bullets.  Women raised their voices against the violent police attack, and when a policeman raised his rifle to strike Father Christopher down, Catherine stepped between the Priest and the attacker and received the hard blow from the rifle butt on the back of her head.  Falling to the floor of the church, her last words were Most holy Mother of God.

She was transferred by some of the women to Annunciation Hospital in Athens, along with the injured Angeliki Katsarellis.  For 7 days New Martyr Catherine suffered in the hospital.  At 4 am on November 15 (November 28 on the western calendar), the first day of the Nativity Fast, Catherine Routis died.  She has been commemorated among the Church's New Martyrs ever since.

It is interesting to note that there is a widespread belief amongst the ecumenists that the old calendarists constitute a violent movement.  There has been violence aplenty, in fact, both in Greece and in Romania and elsewhere, directed against the confessing, traditional Christians by the ecumenists, but actual violence directed by the confessing members of the Church against the ecumenists has yet to be documented.

Sadly the pristine early years of steadfast resistance to the ecumenist innovations were followed by our own era, characterized by disturbances from within, as confessing but undisciplined and irresponsible Hierarchs, much-given to employing the tactics of verbal abuse and to the violent denunciation of fellow confessing Hierarchs, ad hominem for the most part, have become the familiar face of traditionalism in the public square.  This undisciplined and unworthy behaviour defines the confessing Church of our times in the eyes of many, and it does the confessing Church a terrible disservice.  

While theological debate and the defense of truth is necessary, the tone in which that defense is undertaken can determine the actual impact of Christian apologetics. It is not possible to view with any satisfaction the increasing failure of a style of apologetics that clearly has alienated many from within the ranks of the so-called "old calendar" movement, and kept many traditionalists within the ecumenist communities from abandoning their ecumenist Hierarchs and affiliating with confessing Orthodox Hierarchs.  

Clearly, this is not the way to speak for the Church, because clearly, the actual interests of the Church are not served.  One can disagree, without being disagreeable, and one can effectively defend the Church without ad hominem attacks.  When the confessing Hierarchs of our own time understand this, the confessing Church will once again become the real option for serious and honest seekers for the truth both from the ranks of the ecumenist Synods, and from the ranks of those who have no connection with either "world" or with "confessing" Orthodoxy.

New Martyr Catherine of Mandra, pray to God for us and for the steadying and clearing of the Church's voice in our confused and contentious times.

+Bishop Sergios of Loch Lomond, November 28, 2007

Our patron, Saint Gregory of Sinai, has, as we say, three feasts and no services. He is celebrated on April 6 (and on some calendars, April 7), today, August 8/21, and on the day of his repose in 1346, November 27/December 10, the day we keep as our main feast.

The three dates all occur within periods of fasting in most years, appropriately enough for a monastic. The absence of a service is curious. Saint Gregory is a major figure within the world of hesychast spiritual life, and one would expect that a liturgical composer would have been found early-on, drawn from the same circles that composed the service for his younger (and better-known) contemporary, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. But no liturgical text is extant for Saint Gregory of Sinai.

Saint Gregory was born in the 1260's (traditionally 1265) in a family which we may see as rural gentry, in a village at the southern end of the bay of Smyrna (currrently Turkish Izmir). He comes to public attention when he, with his family, falls victim to a Moslem raiding party looking for prominent captives who will be ransomed, and humbler captives for the slave markets. The captives were taken to Syrian Laodikeia where they were indeed ransomed, as expected. But during their captivity Saint Gregory comes to the attention of the local community when his chanting in a local church is unusually accomplished, and his physical beauty is remarked. We do not know the fate of the rest of his family after their release, but an apparently teen-aged Gregory goes off to Cyprus, the first stage of a life-long pilgrimage in search of a deeper union with God. On Cyprus he is clothed in the first stage of the monastic life (the stage called rassoforos, from the wide-sleeved robe donned by the beginner) by a hermit. Gregory moves, after a short time, to Mount Sinai, where he is fully-tonsured into the ranks of the monastics at Saint Katherine's Monastery. Looking at the buildings, the interior walls and ikons, and at the magnificent mosaic of the Transfiguration in the conch of the basilica's apse today, we see what Saint Gregory saw during his stay at Sinai. Here he became adept at the ascetic disciplines designed to deconstruct the worldly man, and to reconstruct the heart in Christ. Strictness in keeping the fasts, lengthy vigils (in the church's liturgical cycles and in the individual kelli, the cell), prolonged standing during prayer, all-night chanting of psalms and other severe feats tamed and disciplined the flesh rendered unruly and self-absorbed as a result of the mortality programed into the human condition as a result of the ancestral sin in Eden. The goals included a growing self-mastery, a purification of individual will, and a capacity to detect, and deflect the assault of the daemonic, working through the passions to which all flesh falls heir.

Our knowledge of this phase of Saint Gregory's life and spiritual growth comes from a companion of those early years, one Father Gerasimos, whose verbal account was heard and written down by one of Saint Gregory's late disciples, Kallistos, who later served as Oecumenical Patriarch (twice, in fact: 1350-1353 and 1355-1363). Patriarch Kallistos' life is our one source for the life and teaching of Saint Gregory of Sinai. Kallistos lived in obedience to Saint Gregory for a number of years.

Confronted with the envy of other brothers in the Sinai monastery, Saint Gregory quietly quit the place, taking Gerasimos with him, and landing on Crete during a storm, the two took the landfall as a sign that they were to settle in a quiet, obscure place. Finding a cave, they took up residence and lived on a spare diet of bread and water, while looking for an older monk to mentor their struggle. The Holy Spirit inspired an elderly holy monk, Arsenios, to find them and it was from Arsenios, on Crete, that Saint Gregory learned of the practice of hesychasm, which we call by various names today - contemplative prayer, inner prayer, prayer of the heart. Arsenios told Saint Gregory that the following of a regimen of interior spiritual discipline and prayer could result in the hesychast's becoming wholly light (olos fotoeidis). He explained that Gregory's efforts until now fell under the heading called 'praxis' (bodily ascetic practices), but his advice would be to move inward to 'theoria' (interiorized ascetic disciplning of the mind and of the heart).

The establishment of this connection between Saint Gregory and the monk Arsenios would be, as one of Saint Gregory's recent biographers notes, "a milestone in the great Hesychast Movement which swept through the monastic world, triumphed in the mid-fourteenth century . . . and launched among the Slavonic and other non-Greek Churches dependent on it a broad and beneficial wave of spirituality and reform, of which the effects lasted for centuries and can even be felt today". (David Balfour, "Discourse on the Transfiguration", p. 65).

Immediately, Saint Gregory left Crete and landed on Mount Athos, where he searched wide and far for hesychasts who could continue and further the education of his mind and heart. Significantly, he found almost no one - none at all residing in the great ruling coenobitic monasteries - and finally settled a half-hour walk to the right of the main gate of Philotheou, in a small skete called Magoula, where three monks (Isaiah, Kornelios and Makarios) followed a way of life attending to both the familiar 'praxis' and to 'theoria' as well.

Here Saint Gregory constructed cells for his own disciples, and at some distance, a kelli for himself. Here, concentrated within himself, and using the Jesus Prayer (Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me), he began to undergo a 'good and strange transformation' as the energy of the Holy Spirit transformed the inner man. And, just as had been predicted by the monk Arsenios, his kelli was filled with 'light, the effulgence of Grace' while Gregory himself overflowed with joy, weeping tears, filled with divine love. His desire for God was overwhelming, and he himself - as well as his kelli - was filled with light.

Now Gregory's attractiveness - physical, when noted in his teen years by the Christians who came into contact with him during his captivity - becomes spiritual and monks of all kind flock to his side 'like bees to honey'. Some are already adepts, and well-known. Others - like the Bulgarian Kliment - are simple - Kliment was a humble shepherd. The mixing of ethnicities and languages at this early stage will continue as Saint Gregory lays the foundation for what a 20th century Romanian Byzantinist will call 'the hesychast international'.

One is reminded of the late Father Alexander Schmemann's remark that the history of the West is a history of 'radical discontinuities' while the history of the East is one of 'radical continuities' - much of the material in Patriarch Kallistos' biography of his Elder is practically identical to material found in the early and classic reflections of the Christian spiritual life as practised by the monastic community, such as Saint John Klimakos' 'Ladder of Divine Ascent'. This is not merely the repetition of cliches, but the manifestation of a continuum of effect in the God-man relationship. And again, turning to Father Alexander's gift for summarizing distinctions memorably - 'While secularized Christians in the West always want to hear Christ saying, "Behold, I make all new things", the fact is that Christ said, "Behold, I make all things new", and that fundamental truth informs the amazing continuity one finds within the Church.'

Patriarch Kallistos notes in his biography that the gifts found in Saint Gregory's life as he went from glory to glory could not 'safely be described to uninitiated persons . . . who believe the grace and gift of the Spirit is a mere creature' - he is referring to the westernized opponents who spoke out vehemently against hesychasm, and who were confronted by the writings in defense of the hesychasts penned by Saint Gregory Palamas (+1359). The Latin West held that grace is created; the Church knew grace as uncreated. The fierce polemics between Saint Gregory Palamas and the hesychasts, on the one side, and the partisans (who included some Byzantines) of a westernized understanding of grace and the spiritual life, racked Constantinople and what was left of the empire of the New Rome for years, and while the final vindication of the hesychast position came within Saint Gregory Palamas' lifetime, that victory was by no means assured during the heat of an intensely-fought battle. Saint Gregory of Sinai, however, seems (as far as the extant documentation indicates) to have stood apart from the polemics of the age, preferring the unhindered, undistracted pursuit of the joys of the heschast life to their public defense under the most trying conditions.

At times even the mild tasks of mentoring like-minded hesychasts under his direction proved overly-distracting and Saint Gregory would leave Magoula for a time, for remoter, uninhabited regions, where he had built cells for the purpose. However, a more serious intrusion came in the form of Moslem raiding parties which afflicted Athos during this period of the final break-down of the security of the civil life of the eastern Roman Empire.

Saint Gregory evidently decided to return to Sinai, and, taking a number of disciples (including the future Oecumenical Patriarchs Isidore and Kallistos - his biographer) with him, he journeyed to Thessaloniki, then on to Chios (intending to go on to Jerusalem, a plan abandoned when they met a monk from there who warned them against the idea) and Lesvos and Constantinople. But the idea of going on to Sinai was evidently abandoned, and the party returned to Athos, where Gregory was well-received at the Great Lavra, and was given a hermitage (hesychastirion) nearby. Moslem raids, however, only increased and finally Saint Gregory and his brothers found themselves in the Strandzha Mountains on the then-border between the Empire and the Bulgarian Kingdom. Near Paroria, above the Black Sea coast, the final monastic settlement was established, not without terrible trials, including some from envious local monks jealous of Saint Gregory's reputation and success in recruiting disciples. But Gregory was much-aided by the timely attention of the Bulgarian King, John Alexander (reigned 1331-1371), a man of piety who loved the monastic life, who provided both material resources and a force to police and secure the area, ensuring the undistracted and unhindered pursuit of the hesychast life as far as was possible in an age of upheaval and violence.

Here recruits from Slav- and Greek-speaking communities included some of the most famous spiritual leaders of the next generation, Saint Theodosios of Trnovo and Saint Romylos among them.

Many days before his repose, Saint Gregory was forewarned of his impending departure from this life. He went to an isolated cell taking with him a disciple. Here his final days on earth saw a horde of daemons descend on him, seeking to destroy him. Saint Gregory was not frightened by this daemonic invasion, although the daemons continued to attack. For three days he neither ate nor slept, and he encouraged his single companion to join him in the "hard wrestling" by "clinging to prayer and psalmody". Then, a deep spiritual composure settled on the Saint and filled him with consolation. He noticed this change and gave thanks to God saying "Thy right hand, O Lord, hath crushed our enemies, the daemons, and destroyed them utterly . . . . " He called his disciple who came and found him joyful and tender, smiling, and telling him that "some divine force has come down and driven away the evil spirits and freed us from their temptation." (Balfour, 90-91 for the full account).

And today's Gospel is the appearance on the water of our Saviour, Who invites the bold Apostle Peter to join Him in the miracle, and Peter does. And then, Peter notices the storm, and sinks.

How often does our Saviour come to us in the context of a storm, of a situation that threatens us and terrifies us. And at its heart, stands the Saviour Who is the Lord of storms at sea and of storms in our family life, our professional life, our community, our inner life. The Saviour calls to us from the eye of the storm, calling us to be with Him in the context of what is an unbelievable miracle, a miracle that turns what we know inside-out, that inverts and re-orients all our certainties.

We would prefer a Savioiur of easy days and quiet afternoons, of sunny weather, of gentle breezes, a Saviour Who allows us to apprehend Him when all is calm, within and without. But that is not always going to be the case. How well the life of Saint Gregory of Sinai illustrates this. His life is time and again torn apart, all the routine gestures of routine daily affairs broken down, and he is left like Peter, all exposed.

Christ, or the storm. How often those are the alternatives before Saint Gregory, as they were before Peter the Apostle. Saint Gregory suggests that the path of sanity and health, of personal stabilty and spiritual strength, is laid down within our heart through the discipline of ascetic struggle. And that must be the way we look at things, whether the ascetic struggle is carried out in the context of married family life or of the monastic life. Consistent, persistent, motivated by love of God and of the least of His brethren, whose serving accomplishes our salvation - these are the elements that converge today on our patronal feast as we hear the Gospel of Peter and the storm, at whose heart is Christ. We already hear the Saviour's triple question to Peter, asked after the resurrection: Peter, lovest thou Me?

The Lord grant that we hear all the lives of all the Saints who speak to us across the centuries, or from our own fleeting moment in history, who discover Christ in the midst of the day's stormy struggles and questions. And may the prayers of the uncomplaining Gregory of Sinai, driven hither and yon in a time of violent change, strengthen us in our own struggle and in our own love for the Lord of the storm.

--A word from Bishop Sergios on the feast of Saint Gregory of Sinai, August 8/21, 2005

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

Evidently every year for the past few years, the liklihood that there would be a Pilgrimage to the Middle East from Boston seemed small given the continuing upheaval, the veritable civil war, disturbing the peace in that region. But until now the Pilgrimage has confirmed its reservations year after year in spite of all the bleak and disturbing news, and flown into Tel Aviv for a highly-concentrated 10-day tour of the sites where our salvation was wrought in the midst of the earth.

This year we are 36, including some teen-agers travelling with their parents or guardians, some quite elderly women, and many in-between. Some, of whom I am one, arrive already with sore throats and cold symptoms. Fortunately, an unusually compassionate and communicative medical doctor (V. Mihailoff) is with us with the kind of bedside manner that prevents any of us slipping off into despair over the barb in our throats that makes every swallow painful. We also have an eye surgeon with us - our Deacon, Father Chris Patitsas.

Only a few of the moments along the path trodden by this year's Pilgrimage can be recalled here in this essay. The highlights, almost overwhelming in significant presence, are of course in Jerusalem itself, within the walls set up by the western Crusaders and, more particularly, the Muslims who drove them out of the Middle East. The Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha rest beneath a veneer of modern marble slabs and an overlay of 19th century, mostly-Russian, ikons, themselves overlaid with the elaborated silver and gilt metal covers reflecting the ecclesiastical taste of that era, the whole fronted by a wall of oil lamps suspended on chains. At the sites, one reaches into recesses, down through the veneers, significantly enough, to touch the actual rock that was the surface of the events we celebrate every year in Holy Week and at Pascha. Over the time of almost daily visits to the principle shrines, the names of the men and women who stood just where we are standing reel through the mind like the long lists of credits at the end of films, there are so many, they are so close to us who from childhood have been told the Bible stories that constituted the core of what had been the Christian West.

Archimandrite Panteleimon, leading yet another crowd of pilgrims through the labyrinth of the Old City, and through the Holy Land and Sinai, came here in 1957, 22 years old, dazed with reverence for the place which still reverberates with the awesome mystery of the Church of the Old Testament and of the New, and lived for a time within the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre in a tiny wooden cell built out from the stone walls of the present Crusader-built church, high up, reached by a ladder. He knows all the older people who are still resident here, and all the little alleys and winding staircases that course through the vast constructions like veins.

Everywhere we walk, someone carries a little censer with the familiar incense fragrances made in Boston, and gifts of incense and coloured glass oil lamps are given to all the shrines we visit. There is an outpouring of alms for the poor of Jerusalem - and at all the holy places throughout Israel and on Sinai - that is especially awaited by Palestinians in these long oppressive years during which, as always, it is the poor who pay the heaviest prices for the violence over which they have no contral at all, and by Bedouins in Egypt. Tourism and pilgrimage are at their lowest ebb in memory and everywhere we go we are told we are the first to enter the shop since the last pilgrimage a year ago.

We visit Khozeva, an ancient monastery deep in a ravine ("wadi") well-documented in Derwas Chitty's wonderful history of the first centuries of the monastic adventure, "The Desert a City", written almost half a century ago, still in print (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, NY) and still by far and away the best account in any languge of the early history of Christian monasticism. When Father Chitty visited Khozeva in 1925 he remarked its poverty and particularly remembered two monks, whose personal and spiritual inadequacies served him as a kind of existential question mark over the whole enterprise of monasticism as such. Khozeva had been burned in 1917 by retreating Turkish troops, defeated by their Arab co-religionists in episodes familiar to us from the celebrity of Lawrence of Arabia, and the monastery, remote and difficult of access as it was and is, still showed signs of the Turkish destruction when Chitty visited it as a young archaeologist in 1925 . Today it is in far better material and spiritual circumstances. It is a small community (one of its members is Japanese, whose courteous hospitality was wonderful) but overall it is a young and fervent brotherhood. I have no idea if the chanting today includes the "interminable, tinny, nasal, gabbled Kyrie eleisons" that Father Chitty found so irritating in 1925, but the kindness and warmth of the small community could not itself have constituted a more harmonious prayer.

We venerated hundreds of relics from the more thorough destruction of this (and many other) monastic settlements in the 7th century by Chosroes II of Persia. When the famous Qumran "Dead Sea" scrolls were found in 1947 inside a cave, western academics of all kinds descended on these valleys and deep ravines, ransacking the caves and simply throwing the human bones (devoutly interred in them when the monks returned to survey the carnage and destruction of the Persians in the 7th century) out into the ravines. The famous modern Elder, Saint John the Romanian of Khozeva, beholding yet another depradation wrought against the monastic community, prayed that God would intervene and, suddenly, a large section of a ravine collapsed and fell down, covering the naked bones carelessly tossed out like so much garbage. St. John the Romanian's body is incorrupt and reverently venerated inside a glass casket at Khozeva. In addition to a life of remarkable ascetic struggle, he left a body of wise sayings and the example of steadfast fidelity to the Church's historic calendar and faith.

We visited Bethany School, a most beautiful complex of buildings put up by the Russians in the 19th century. During the First War the Turks used the buildings to stable their horses and mules and a great deal of wanton damage was done by the retreating, demoralized Turkish military. Metropolitan Anastassi, the second Primate of the Russian Church Abroad, had lived in Jerusalem in the 1930's, and he it is who began the work of repair, reconstruction and renewal. The site's importance lies in a large rock, on which sat our Saviour awaiting Martha and Mary to escort Him to Lazaros' tomb. One venerates this rock in the forecourt of the School, remembering what words were spoken here. The administrators of the school, Mothers Martha (a Russian-Australian) and Agapia (a Greek-American) offered coffee, banana cake, a tour of the neighbourhood and the most insightful and carefully-balanced assessment of the ongoing crisis brought about by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heard on the pilgrimage. We also saw the wonderful work being done at the school which educates some 300 girls, some of them Moslems.

A highlight of the trip was a tour through Galilee, positively green from the Jordan river and a beautiful contrast from the rocky desert landscape predominating elsewhere. We are in Cana, Nain, we are on Tabor, and we are on a long boat ride on the Sea of Tiberias/Galilee ending up in Capernaum on a wonderfully mild day, in a modern boat modelled on one dug out of the lake bottom some years ago by archaeologists and dated to the time of the Saviour. We then are back on our Arab bus, driving through Gadara (of Gadarenian Daemoniacs fame) and pass by cliffs where, one day, a herd of Hellenistic pigs tumbled off into the water. And we end the day changing into chitonas, and going down into Jordan River, chanting the troparia of Theophany. On the way back to Jerusalem, in addition to troparia, a few African-American spirituals themed to Jordan are also sung. Quite amazing.

One morning we are up at 3 am and onto our bus, stepping off later that morning at Mount Sinai, spending the night, and (almost everyone) up again at 3 am to climb Mount Sinai and see the sun rise. But of the 3 of us from St. Gregory of Sinai two of us are having about our worst days coping with sore throats (in the midst of it, Father Anthony alights on the right phrase for our collective suffering - "barbed throat", which says it all) and general malaise and we decide to forego that climb in favour of a far easier walk out into the desert to the cave of St. John Klimakos, the author of the "Ladder of Divine Ascent". A Bedouin teen ager is hired as guide and off we go, just under an hour of mild climbing and descending out through the stark beauty of great granitic cliffs, changing colour as the sun rises (we leave at 5:30 am) and we spend over an hour in and around St. John's cave, mostly in a silence meant to honour one who gives so much to our lives.

A nun from France lives in a modern, tiny complex of Chapel cum living quarters at the base of the cave, where one begins the climb up and into it. She is highly-educated, in her late 60's, and tells us that St. John spent only one year as abbot of Sinai. Put off by the demands on his time and attention there, he returned as soon as he could to solitude and spent overall 40 years in this very cave. It was here that he wrote the "Ladder of Divine Ascent".

We read the "Ladder" every year during the 40-day Fast for Pascha, communally, in our chapel. All of us are also reading the "Ladder" throughout the year in our cells, and if any single book other than the Bible informs our particular community off in a remote forest here in northern California, the "Ladder" is that book. We three pilgrims return to St. Katherine's Monastery certain that other than Jerusalem's major shrines, this is the highlight of our pilgrimage - that we came here to see this, to stand in these places, to pray here.

The long time spent in silence at this place gives us the chance to look out at the stark rocks soaring high up into the sky, not very much changed since the time that St. John gave a lifetime to this place. Here he worked out what is, for all the change in vocabulary (especially in the last century thanks to the popularizing of a kind of psychology), the most amazing study of the human condition - we often call it the "Grey's anatomy of the human soul".

No matter how many times we read this book, it is always pouring new things into us, and demanding new things of us. One understands how it came to be the companion of the salvation of so many Christians since it was first written. It was the second most-popular book in Christendom (based on the number of extant manuscripts) until early modern times; it was the first book to be printed in the new world (in Lima, Peru, in the 16th century, long before English Protestants landed on Plymouth Rock) and until fairly recently, was standard lenten reading even by married laymen in Russia. The beautiful editions found today in religious bookstores in Greece demonstrate its continuing vitality.

A fine and incisive study of the "Ladder", entitled "Ascent to Heaven", written by Father John Chryssavgis (his doctoral dissertation at Oxford), is available from Holy Cross Press. The best English version of the "Ladder" is published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston, based on (and improving) a translation done originally by Archimandrite Lazarus (Moore) published in the '50's by Faber's. Another, less complete and somehow less successful version is published by the Roman Catholics (Paulist Press). We were glad to see the Boston edition in use wherever the "Ladder" was in evidence throughout the Holy Land, and glad to hear monastics everywhere calling it the best edition for English-speaking readers. It is that.

Particularly moving for us is the fact that our patron, St. Gregory of Sinai, was here, albeit briefly, and as we look up into the conch of the apse above the Holy Altar, at the great mosaic of the Transfiguration of the Lord, it is something to realize that he also stood here looking at the same great ikon, as did, apparently, St. John of the Ladder - and how many, many others whose names we hear at the dismissals through the year. This Church is one of the few Byzantine constructions still above ground and in use, and the sense of connectedness with the culture that is normative for the Church, and especially for monastics, is overwhelming.

A pilgrimage like this is not for everyone. The pace is intense, and the constant Israeli military check-points and the presence of uniformed soldiers armed with machine guns everywhere is frankly oppressive. There is no need to comment on the Palestinians' grievances against the Israeli's and no need to comment on Israel's need to eliminate terrorist attacks. On the whole, it was interesting (upon return to the US) to compare notes with non-Orthodox and non-Christian visitors to Israel over the past 20 years or so: the vast majority come away with a markedly pro-Palestinian tilt. This might have something to do with the characteristic preference for the "underdog" to be sure. It may, however, have wider sources as well. Never has the phrase, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" meant more, however, and while instances of unfortunate behaviour were encountered on both sides of this deep human divide, one is grateful to remember kindnesses on the part of both communities as well.

Towards the end of the pilgrimage, one began to hear from all age groups the idea that it would take a long time, after returning to the US and Canada, to "unpack" this experience. That has turned out to be so, writing this reminiscence about a month after the pilgrimage's end.

We were told by "old hands" that this was a most remarkable pilgrimage. First, the weather was uniformly wonderful, mild and pleasant day after day. There have been times when from beginning to end the pilgrims had to cope with cold, or heat, and often with constant rainstorms. We had light rain in Jerusalem off and on for the last 2 days, and it was welcome and refreshing. Secondly, at 36, we were a small group, moving more conveniently and able to hear more of Father Panteleimon's descriptions of the sites accompanied by reminiscences of what the places were like almost 50 years ago when he lived there. There have been as many as 50 on these pilgrimages, making for a more crowded, more slow-moving and less agile tour overall. Third, in spite of hearing from time to time of "incidents" here or there in Israel, we were remarkably secure throughout. We had one unpleasant encounter with conservative Jews - four men in their early 20's in yarmulkas at the pool of Siloam who heckled us throughout Deacon Chris Patitsa's chanting of the Gospel associated with that site, but the Israeli soldiers the four Jews summoned and encouraged to tell us to leave instead pushed them off and when, a few minutes later, they returned alone, their catcalls and derisive gestures were much toned down. And at the end of the tour, a power outage one night caught some of us (me among them) out in the labyrinthine, tunnel-like streets of the old city on the way to the Holy Sepulchre, and for a few minutes there was a sense of unease, quickly overcome. Minutes later we were all inside the Holy Sepulchre, a blaze of warm light from candles and oil lamps, finding the rest of our party already inside, and everyone feeling very safe indeed. In contrast to what pilgrims have encountered over the centuries of coming up to Jerusalem, we were in very comfortable circumstances indeed.

Around the turn of the 20th century, an Anglican named Stephen Graham wrote a series of books including one about a pilgrimage he took alongside Russian pilgrims of that era. Three nuns from our convent in Boston were on this pilgrimage and they had copies of that book with them which they loaned to our California pilgrims. It remains a fascinating book on its own merits but, for us who were there, it became a wonderful revelation of that world of piety bludgeoned into bloody graves by the marxists who short years after Graham's pilgrimage, imposed a lawless power in the world's largest Christian nation, ending a thousand years of national aspiring to that salvation to which we are summoned by the Church, and driving the Church herself underground into the pre-Constantinian world of catacomb Christianity, having murdered St. Constantine's last heir, and his family. Nothing could inform a pilgrimage like ours more deeply and movingly than the view of those earlier pilgrims coming from a radically different culture than our own, yet who gave evidence everywhere of our own ecclesiastical life.

Next year, as God wills, three more from the forests of Lake County will be part of the pilgrimage, all things earthly being equal in Israel. We have some idea of what they will be feeling as they move from sacred site to sacred site. We ask their prayers, long in advance, at those holy places.

Archimandrite Sergios

The Dormition Fast begins with the feast of the Procession of the Honourable Cross, a Constantinopolitan office for taking a fragment of the True Cross processionally through the neighbourhoods of the City each day until the feast of the Dormition. It was the high season of contagious diseases in the hot, humid eastern Mediterranean Summer, and Constatinopolitans poured out into the streets to share in the purification of the air, praying to be either delivered or preserved from illnesses.

The other side of the feast has to do with the inauguration of a fast which, on Mount Athos and undoubtedly in the many equally great, now-vanished monastic centres of the world of New Rome, is taken as seriously and observed as intensely as is the Holy Forty Day fast before Pascha. And of course no fast - no effort involving ascetic struggle - is possible without that personal self denial which is the unique gateway to the Cross of the Saviour.

August was always - as it is today - a season of intense labours in the agriculturally-based empire of the New Romans. Long as the days are, there is never enough time to finish the work of the day and the level of physical exhaustion for the great majority of the New Romans was high. And yet, coming just at the centre of these hard months is this great 15 day fast. The surviving literature from the period attests to the seriousness with which all parts of society fasted and prayed, certainly inspired by the ubiquitous figures of the monks and nuns living everywhere across the face of the empire of the New Rome.

With all the well-known and glaring defects of that Christian civilisation, with all its short-comings and outbursts of heresy and violence and the sinful betrayal of the Gospel, the Church still provided the calendar of a structure of life which kept the incarnate Logos in full public view, and at prime focus. The great public processions that constitute so striking a feature of the liturgical experience of the early Church, beginning at Jerusalem, and which have been virtually ruled out today by an increasingly-strident secularism that stifles the Church's public role and her visibility, those great processions were indeed the popular rallies that kept the faith so vibrantly a part of the populist Christian culture of the eastern Mediterranean.

The fragment of the True Cross, moving solemnly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, stopping at the great squares of the City for special litanies, purified more than the fetid air of an August Constantinople. Through the rite, the nation itself prostrated in prayer before the All-Holy Trinity and referred itself forward to Christ as the central figure in the human saga.

And here on the southern flanks of a small mountain in Northern California we, too, "clear the air" for the beginning of another fast, another time of opportunity, to redress the wrongs of the inner man, to repent of those things that tend to go off so long as we are alive in space and time, to let go of all things corruptible and corrupting - to let the dead bury their own dead - and, relieved of darkness and the stink of death pervading life on earth, to find again in Christ that blinding light in which we see never so clearly, in Whom already we find the fragrance of eternal life.

Like most of the people living in the Christian empire of the New Romans, this Brotherhood is also for the most part an agricultural work-force, struggling not only with the usual round of tasks every day of the long growing season but coping this year with an unusually-long heat wave that has sapped our strength and left us very worn down. And yet, no matter how much fatigue we bring to the Vigil for the feasts of the season, we are always remarking how quickly we are revived and provisioned with stamina aplenty to accomplish what must be done.

The Vigil for the Procession of the Cross could not be simpler and is shorter than most, a mercy under the circumstances. As in past years, everyone left after its final words last night, renewed for the great engagement of self-denying love that has been laid out by the office as the main matter to be considered until the fast is done.

This morning's liturgy began early - still in darkness - and after its communion, we blessed water and then, after blessing the Monastery itself with the new holy water, carried it out into the fields and gardens and orchards that we have started - all growing organically - and which are now in their second and third year - and blessed them and the work of our hands.

And what might seem to be somewhat odd - a fast in the midst of the season of hard, physical work - becomes another gift of the liturgical calendar, another joyous excursion during the slow unfolding of the Christian year. Everything is filled with the spirit of thanksgiving for all things and the sanctification of the time of our lives.

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

Monday in Saint Gregory Palamas week, the 24th (11th on the Church calendar) of March - and we are celebrating the Memorial Service for the renowned Athonite Elder and confessor, Archimandrite Ioakeim of St. Evthymios Skete in the desert at the end of the peninsula, next to the Cave of St. Neilos the Myrovlite, who reposed on Friday the 21st (8th).
I met Father Ioakeim in January 2000 under challenging circumstances. A blizzard had blown up after the small boat carrying me from Daphne to Kavsokalyvia had left port, and instead of disembarking at the Kavsokalyvia port, the boat discharged all passengers at the port of Katounakia, far distant from my intended destination. By the time I had clambored up a sharp ascent from sea level to the top of a rock face along lightly-indented steps cut into the rock, the snowfall was accumulating alarmingly, cutting off the mid-afternoon light and leaving me wondering when - and eventually if - I would find shelter before sundown locked all the gates on Athos.

And, although I arrived after sundown, the famous zealot Skete of Saint Basil had left its gate open, and took me in, finding room in an upstairs hall usually occupied by one of the many young novices crowding this small facility in recent years. More than half the monks living on Athos live in the deserts, not in the ruling monasteries, and the vast majority of the desert-dwelling monks will not commemorate the ecumenist Patriarch of Constantinople, a matter which divides the contemporary Athonite community tragically.

By morning, the snowfall was a meter deep on average, and the Skete Fathers forbade me to attempt to continue my journey. But by 8 am I had convinced them that the inexorabilities of a fixed-date airline return ticket necessitated my attempting to move on and, promising to return at the first sign of trouble, fortified by toast and jam and raki, and several cups of hot "nes", the updated form of coffee on the Holy Mountain, I set out, arriving at the katholikon of the great Kavsokalyvia settlement on the eve of the Feast of Saint Maximos of Kavsokalyvia, whose intense freedom from attachment to the comforts of this world took the form that gives the settlement its name - he periodically burned down the hut he happened to be living in, with all its contents (they could not have been many, given the austerity of this monk) and moved on.

He had lived around these steep, forbidding parts in the 14th century, he was a contemporary of our Saint Gregory of Sinai, and a famous conversation held by these two great hesychasts, recorded by a disciple, forms part of our modern Philokalia. I spent the festal eve with the Fathers of this Skete, well-supplied with a feast prepared for an expected 100 pilgrims, none of whom came given the storm, and slept in a large guest dormitory - also well furnished for the multitudes - by myself. Early the next morning, after the Liturgy and another overly-laden table, I went to a cave once inhabited (and not burnt!) by Saint Maximos, and thence on to the Skete of Saint Evthymios, laden with greetings from a monk in Boston who had lived with Father Ioakeim for some time, and with other greetings and gifts.

Father Ioakeim was ill when I arrived but insisted in sitting up in the spartan arkhondariki - the guest reception room - in a very small, dilapidated stone building, in process of rehabilitation by the 4 or 5 young monks and novices who formed his Brotherhood. While reduced to a real minimum of elaboration, the building, its rooms and furnishings were scrupulously clean and the small guest area, accomodating 5 guests in a single, and two bunk beds, was thankfully supplied with a small wood stove to take the damp chill out of the low-ceilinged room in the evening.

The first thing one noticed about the Elder was his voice - clearly coming from within and, at the same time, in a most amazing way, coming from a place not within himself - truly a voice from another age. He was entirely calm at all times, and fixed his attention both on the Skete's daily program of activities, and on its guest, and at the same time, on a deeper level, his attention was always clearly somewhere else. It was an entirely wonderful 2 hours' conversation, made more wondrous by his strange gift for making himself understood to someone not fluent in Greek.

Father Ioakeim was a strikingly handsome old man, and shows up here and there in the standard photograph books on Athos - twice in a volume called "Athonite Moments" published in German and English, on page 101 (over the caption, "Fromme Gestalt - A Saintly image") and on page 196 (over the caption, "Asketen" - "Ascetics"). The photographs are accurate and show a face dominated by large, ikonic eyes, just as he really was in life, his austere face framed with a great white beard and hair. The photographer saw what truly was to be found in that face, in those eyes - meekness, humility, charity, and the courage that these virtues engender - a face, really, on which is written St. John of Sinai's wonder-working book "The Ladder of Divine Ascent", a face on which is imprinted the Gospel, for which he had ears with which to hear. What the photos do not capture is the transparency of the face and hands.

Any who can consult these books will also see, in the photo on page 196, one of his own monks, in fact his eldest monastic son, Father Evthymios, to the far left (the other two are neatly-attired visitors from elsewhere) and it was the vigourous Monk Evthymios who acted as my guide to the immediate region of St. Evthymios Skete, taking me on a hair-raising climb down into the Cave of Saint Neilos the Myrovlite on my first two visits, he skipping like a goat, and me lagging far behind in vertiginous terror at the great height of the place, and the sheer drop into the sea.

In discussions of the contemporary crisis in the Church at large and on Athos, Father Ioakeim was dispassionate, never evincing the slightest anger or passion of any kind, but maintaining always a complete and, one could say, saturated peace, reminding me of that peace in the heart spoken of by Saint Seraphim of Sarov. When mention was made of some clear breach of faith on the part of Bishops or Athonites still claiming the name of Orthodoxy while embracing the heresy of ecumenism, he would merely gesture quietly heavenward with his hand and, pointing there, say in the mildest voice, "O Theos" (God), or again, "God will judge".

When a currently-famous remark of a well-known Elder, to the effect that the Virgin Mary had advised the man, in a vision, to support the program of the current Ecumenical Patriarch, Father Ioakeim said, again in an entirely uncombative voice but with firmness and with the complete confidence that comes only from an authentically humble heart, "Psemmata" (Lies), as the content of this well-known tale was repeated, clearly not for the first time, in his hearing. It was very odd to hear such a strong word of condemnation spoken with a complete absence of rancour, bitterness or anger: it was not only Father Ioakeim's face that was "ikonic"!

Father Ioakeim had a great respect for the founder of the venerable monastery in Boston, Holy Transfiguration - Archimandrite Panteleimon - and spoke of his remarkable achievement in founding a truly Athonite house in the uncongenial environment of the contemporary, paganized culture of the U.S. He was particularly concerned that his admiration and support for Father Panteleimon and his work be realized.

I visited again in January of 2001, and last year in July. With each visit, I became more familiar with this small, intense community, some of whom hailed from traditional Orthodox families in villages, and two of whom were the sons of new calendarist families in Thessaloniki. Quiet, self-effacing, given to the hard work days required for survival in the desert of the Athonite peninsula, without self-pity or sentimental expression, an air of quiet, sober joy permeated the place where prayer without ceasing reigned in the hearts of all who dwelt there.

When, a few years ago, Father Ioakeim made the demanding trek from his Skete to Great Lavra, from which the Skete is leased, to have his youngest monk written in according to Athonite custom, the Fathers at Great Lavra refused to accept the name, as the policies of the current Ecumenical Patriarch harden against those who will not commemorate the name of an ecumenist Ecumenical Patriarch. Father Ioakeim shrugged peacefully, turned and said to the young monk, "Well, the Panagia will write you in" and they departed, after venerating the relics in the Katholikon.

What will now be the fate of these young, dedicated monks of true confession, in the increasingly rigidly-polarized world of the Holy Mountain?

Perhaps they will be allowed to continue their lives in this historic Skete. One of the factors motivating commemorating ruling monasteries to allow zealot, non-commemorators to inhabit their sketes, kellia and hesychastiria, is the fact that the zealots take very good care of the ruling monasteries' far-flung properties, rehabilitating them and providing an otherwise economically-unattainable work-force, in the long run, improving the monastery's assets.

Another is the fact that even within the ruling monasteries' in-house communities, there is almost everywhere a significant population in overt or covert sympathy with the zealots' position on the matter of syncretist-ecumenism. The cold expulsion of a small house of zealots can have a disproportionally disruptive effect on the home community, and simply not be worth the trouble.

But finally, the pressure to expel numbers of zealot Athonite Fathers into mainland Greece may also be restrained by memories of the 1920's, when the expulsion of the first generation of so-called "old calendarists" into Greece merely spread the cause of rejecting the uncalled-for - and already often ecclesiastically-condemned, and deeply-divisive - new calendar across the nation. No government in Athens is openly courting the galvanizing of one of the country's most significant, if also most unreported and unacknowledged fissures, especially in times that daily seem more unsettled, above all for a country in as vulnerable a position geographically, socially, economically and politically - not to mention spiritually - as contemporary Greece.

"As God wills", would say the newly-reposed confessor of the faith, and, "God will judge". "Aionia i mnimi tou", we sing in the Memorial Service - "Eternal be his memory". There will be many who, having sung that, will be quickly seeking the intercessions of this dispassionate, confessing monk, this quiet zealot who, already in this earthly life, was a truly heavenly man.

--Archimandrite Sergios Gregoriosinaitis Monday 11/24 March, 2003 Feast of Saint Symeon the New Theologian

Father Sergios was on pilgrimage in Greece and on Mount Athos from June 24 to July 17, and was blessed to visit Monasteries and Shrines on Chios and Oinoussai, in and around Athens, on Evia and Aigina, in Thessaloniki and on the Holy Mountain.

He spent a number of days at Esfigmenou, which is now the largest monastic community on the Holy Mountain, thriving through a number of difficulties for which it glorifies God, and at Kapsala, where he visited the kellion of the renowned confessor of the faith, Father Savvas (reposed 1991), whose remarkable letter on the crisis in the contemporary Church, the result of enforcing syncretist-ecumenism from 1924 until today, has appeared in English translation in an appendix to "The Struggle Against Ecumenism".

Kapsala remains a region of great faithfulness to the Church during our troubled times, and not the only one on the Holy Mountain, for which glory be to God. Father Sergios was able to see a number of other old friends on Athos, as an additional blessing.

Metropolitan Moses of Seattle upheld the Monastery's liturgical life while Father Sergios was away, for which the Brotherhood and everyone worshipping with us is grateful.

If God wills, a more detailed report of this pilgrimage will be forthcoming here.

The Monastery has had to neglect updating this website for the better part of a year due to construction work on our first building, coupled with increased work due to the blessing of having more, and more frequent visitors than had previously been the case.

Monk Simon completed one phase of frescoing the east wall of a local church and has re-set up his studio in our new building, continuing to prepare and paint individual panels for communities and individuals. Monk Simon also serves as Devteros of the Brotherhood and is responsible for our liturgical music.

Monk Aimilianos has continued to work as site and building manager, and with some consultation with local builders and contracters, has kept the various projects moving forward smoothly. In Monk Simon's absence, Monk Aimilianos has charge of the choir and, if the building project ever ends, will return to the Ikon Studio.

The construction of a multi-purpose structure, 120 feet long and 24 feet wide, has been completed through the exterior tar paper stage. Interior facilities have been completed just short of final cosmetic details such as window and door framing. If God wills, before the cold rainy late winter/early spring weather departs, we hope to stucco the exterior of the building using techniques partly derived from our work in fresco painting, using a special hydraulic lime imported from France for the final layer. That will complete the weather-proofing of the structure, at which point the three decks (one north, one south and one connected to the exterior staircase leading to the attic) will receive their permanent decking, a beautiful cedar cut from our own forest and milled locally with our help which has been air drying for some months.

Novice Ephraim was appointed Ekklesiarch by Metropolitan Ephraim, and saw this past Christmas' line of cards through printing. Monk Simon had a new card based on an illumination which he painted in traditional technique and media on vellum. Novice Ephraim also acts as the Monastery business manager and chief administrator and, if his tasks ever lighten, will be found in the Ikon Studio. This year we also have a new card for Pascha based, again, on a traditionally-painted illumination on vellum by Monk Simon.

Novice Athanasios continues to maintain the interior of the Monastery facility, acts as Guest Master, and chants most of the weekday services. Novice Athanasios is also in charge of the Monastery dispensary and inventory and maintains our weather records

Novice Nilos participated in a three-day ecology conference sponsored by Ecology Action in Willits, California, in early November of last year, which enabled him to introduce the French Bio-Intensive Double-Dig method of preparing seed and transplant beds in our vegetable garden, which even without this approach gave us bumper harvests of heirloom Black Krim tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, squash, peppers of several varieties and a summer- and fall-crop of small intensely-flavoured strawberries. A variety of herbs also did well in a garden which, until last Spring, had been a forest floor for untold centuries, worked up into a basic garden by Priest Bohdan Barody visiting from Calgary, Canada. The very large local deer herd and rabbit population respected our fence, although a few ornamental plants were not so lucky. As if gardening were not enough, Novice Nilos also acts as Monastery cook.

Due to errors made by a local immigration lawyer, our petition to secure residency last year for Novice Nilos failed and he was ordered back to his native Canada on September 11 - it was some time, of course, before he could actually find his way back given the tragedy of that day, and he remained in Canada until October 26. Priestmonk Sergios travelled to Calgary a week before that date to help with any questions raised by US immigration, but in fact all went smoothly. Father Sergios and Nilos were blessed to participate in the patronal feast day of our parish in Calgary Thursday evening and Friday morning, returning to California that evening.

The Monastery was greatly blessed this past November when a large contingent of adults and children were received into our Diocese by Metropolitan Ephraim, assisted by Protopresbyter Neketas Palassis, Dean of St. Nectarios Parish in Seattle.

Due to the growth of our Diocese in the western United States, our Synod of Bishops decided to establish our flagship parish of St. Nectarios in Seattle as a Cathedral, and named the Vicar Bishop of Roslindale, Moses, as the first Metropolitan of the new See. Metropolitan Moses elected to reside at our Monastery whenever not on active pastoral and administrative duties, so we have the joy of welcoming a new monk who is also our Chief Shepherd. A native of San Jose, Metropolitan Moses is familiar with the West Coast and had visited our Monastery several times, contributing construction skills this past Summer learned as a novice in Boston when he joined them almost 30 years ago. His presence in the Brotherhood has been a blessing beyond words. We reap where we did not sow.

Most of the Brotherhood drove north to Seattle for His Eminence's installation on December 30 by his brother Bishops, Metropolitan Makarios of Toronto and Metropolitan Ephraim of Boston.

Metropolitan Moses presided at our celebration of Theophany, blessing the Monastery facilities and walking up to the center - and highest point - of our 300 acres, accompanied by a large contingent of kids