(You can click on any pictures to see a bigger version of them)
An OCF RealBreak group came to Thessaloniki during the second week
of Great Lent (March 1-7), and Fr. Spyro took them under his wing and organized
their program, since he knows English pretty well. He invited me and some
others to come along, and I went to as many things as my schedule allowed –
things that I never would have done otherwise. There are two things in
particular that I want to blog about.
The first is the sisterhood of St. Xenia
of Rome, Ἡ Ἀδελφότητα Ὁσία Ξένη, which is a group of lay women under the spiritual
direction of an elderly priest-monk named Fr. Gervasios. These women have dedicated their
lives to Christ without taking monastic vows. Their mission is to serve the
imprisoned and they have done amazing work, always with Fr. Gervasios as their
head. It was really great and inspiring to see their home and talk to some of
them. Fr. Gervasios also spoke to us a little. Their patron saint is “The holy
bandit of Golgotha,” i.e. the thief who confessed Christ on the cross. Their
website is http://diakonia-filakon.gr/,
and there is an English version there as well, if you want to read up on them.
The other thing I want to mention was that we met Fr. Athenagoras,
a celibate priest who serves the parish in Dendropotamos, which is basically
the ghetto on the west side of Thessaloniki. Many gypsies have settled there in
the past few decades, and it is also known as a center for drug trafficking.
Fr. Athenagoras has opened a center called Φάρος τοῦ Κόσμου (Lighthouse of the World), which is part of the parish and
started out as just trying to make sure that kids reported to school every day,
stayed until school finished, and were well fed. It’s grown into a big ministry,
with many full- and part-time volunteers, 8 or 9 kids living in a house there,
and many others coming multiple times per week for various reasons. Some of the
first kids have actually gone on to university, and others have entered trade
schools. Many of them also take an interest in robotics and were invited to a
robotics tournament in St. Louis last year. I never would have known about this
even though I live so close. Even when Fr. Spyro told me about this the week before, I could never have imagined the scale on which it is happening until I saw
with my own eyes. I’m very grateful to God for giving me these opportunities. Their
website is http://www.farostoukosmou.gr/.
From what I can tell there is no English version, unfortunately.
+Father Thomas Hopko reposed in the Lord
on March 18, during the third week of Lent which is dedicated to the Precious
Cross of Christ. My last blog post was about Fr. Tom: http://www.superman-oli.blogspot.gr/2015/03/father-thomas-hopko-55-maxims.html.
His funeral was March 23, at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration,
outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I watched part of it online, live
streaming, and from what people have told me it was absolutely amazing to be
there, a real sense of χαρμολύπη, joyful sadness.
May we have Fr. Tom’s prayers!
On the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent (Saint John Climacus) (March 22 this year), I went with a young couple who are friends of mine and who teach Sunday School (κατηχητικό) in a village called Saint Anthony (Ἅγιος Ἀντώνιος). I take Byzantine music lessons with the wife, and have met her husband through her. She invited me to come with them that day to the village. I was glad to go, it was a nice experience. We ended up doing Sunday School on a hill several hundred feet from the church. The middle school kids were a little distracted, as could be expected. Anyway, it was a nice experience.
The Feast of the Annunciation this year
fell on Wednesday of the fifth week of the Fast. I had the blessing to be at the
convent of the Annunciation in Ormylia (a village of Chalkidiki), which is a
dependency (metochion) of Simonopetra on Mt. Athos, and is known for their
chanting. I was there for the vigil of the Feast (Small Compline, Great Vespers
and Orthros – 7:00 pm to 12:45 am), and the next morning for Hours
and Divine Liturgy (7:00-9:30 am). It was amazing! I was so glad to be there!
On Saturday of the fifth week we chant the
Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God, in its entirety. It is properly done at Orthros
but it is now the practice to do it on Friday evening at Small Compline. At St.
Haralambos we did on Friday evening at 9:00 pm, but instead of doing the
Akathist during Compline, we did Saturday morning’s Orthros, and went straight
into the Divine Liturgy which began around midnight and finished around 1:20
am.
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Father reading one of the Akathist stanzas during Orthros.
You can see me in the choir, to the right of the protopsaltis, i.e. on his left hand. |
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| Father censing the decorated icon of the Panagia |
After the Akathist vigil I was on a church
high (if you can call it that) and was hanging around because I didn’t want to
leave (usually after vigils I am exhausted and leave immediately). I was
talking to a group of Cypriot students who live in Thessaloniki and come to St.
Haralambos quite frequently. They told me they were going to Meteora the next
morning for a one-day trip, and invited me to come with them. I was very
grateful for the invitation but hesitant to accept because I was low on sleep
and was looking forward to getting some things done on Saturday. I set my
alarm, though, and called the trip organizer in the morning to tell him I was
coming.
They had rented a mini-bus and had the
whole day planned out, including bringing sandwiches, snacks and water bottles
along. We left around 8:30 am from Thessaloniki. We made it just in time to venerate
at the women’s monastery of St. Stephen before it closed at 1:00.
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| Me on a ledge looking across to St. Stephen's monastery |
Then we
continued to the monasteries of Varlaam and Great Meteora (the latter is dedicated
to the Transfiguration, and I had been there once in the summer of 2008).
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| The group at the Monastery of Varlaam |
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| Me in a tunnel that composes part of the ascent to Great Meteora. I got through without ducking (barely), but it looks a lot lower here because of visual effects. |
We left Meteora and went into the
mountains to the old monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Chrysinou (Ἱερὰ
Μονὴ Κοιμήσεως τῆς
Θεοτόκου Χρυσίνου), outside the
village of Kalampaka. This monastery had been completely destroyed except for half
of the church. A monk named Fr. John (πατὴρ Ἰωάννης)
had gone there then, and fell in love with the place and vowed to rebuild it.
He restored the church and built up the monastery around it. He currently lives
by himself but hopefully more fathers will join him one day.
We had dinner (i.e. veggie sandwiches, chips, popcorn and homemade brownies), crowded under a gazebo on the side
of a country road (while it was raining). We got back to Thessaloniki around 9:00
or 10:00 pm (I don’t remember), and we lost an hour that night because Europe
started daylight savings’ time.
I am fundamentally opposed to daylight
savings’ time. I think it is a stupid trick to make us think we have more light
when really if we didn’t have it we would be no worse off, we would just have
more light in the morning instead of the evening. We can’t change what time it is. And it just makes
us tired when we switch clocks (the only nice thing about it is the extra hour of
sleep in the fall, but I could do without it if the whole silly system were
abolished. It’s not natural to have either 23 or 25 hours each day. I’ll take
24, thank you very much!). Anyway, it’s not up to me so I have to follow what
the bureaucrats say. In spite of all this, it seems like this year daylight
savings’ time brought spring with it, because since Sunday there have been the
most gorgeous sunny spring days, not to hot or cold, a few clouds, and a little
spurt of rain for a few hours in the middle of the week. The weeks prior to this
it was raining off and on for at least two weeks, almost continuously. The earth needs
rain, but I am very glad to have the sun back!
Blessed Feast of St. Lazarus and Palm
Sunday (Lazarus Saturday is one of my favorite days of the year)! A little piece of liturgical trivia: Since Palm Sunday is a Feast of the Lord, we do not chant anything Resurrectional, all the hymns are for the Feast. So in that sense, Palm Sunday is not technically a Sunday, it's a Feast Day. But Lazarus Saturday is almost like a Sunday, in that we chant everything for the Feast, but we also chant the Resurrectional Evlogetaria at Orthros (Blessed art Thou, O Lord... The assembly of angels was amazed...); we say "Having seen the Resurrection of Christ" before the 50th psalm; and at the Liturgy we chant, "Save us, O Son of God, Who art risen from the dead..." The raising of Lazarus is a prefiguration of the Resurrection of Christ which we will experience just over one week from today! And it is intimately connected with Palm Sunday because the raising of Lazarus was one of the reasons that the people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem triumphantly, and those were both reasons why the Jewish leaders plotted to put Him to death.
Blessed Holy
Week! And Good Resurrection (Καλὴ Ἀνάσταση),
as the Greeks say! I’ll be sure to blog after Pascha again sometime.
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