Agios Nikolais, Icons, Relics, and Veneration

Next morning we got up for Emma’s required swim. Christopher went in and Basil got a little wet, Grandma and I enjoyed a cup of Nescafe and the local ham/cheese pie for breakfast. We washed up quickly, so quickly that we left Basil’s shoes behind (bummer!!) and headed up to the monastery Agios Nikolaos. A 20 minute drive brought us down a very long dirt road to find the monastery nestled in a little fold in the hills, overlooking a vast sloping ravine dotted with brilliant white churches and not much else.

They happened to be serving Liturgy as we walked into the church. A miraculous icon greets you as you go in the church, unusual because it is a fresco and not a painted icon. The eyes of the Virgin are very dark and several times before disasters like an earthquake and another time 3 days before the island was attacked by pirates, she begins to weep. We also saw two clusters of dead flowers, wrapped in fine netting and ribbons, hung at the sides of this icon. A particular lily is cut and placed there every year on Pascha (Easter) and left without water to dry naturally and die. Fifty days after Pascha, on the feast of Pentecost, these flowers miraculously bloom again.

There were also beautiful icons of St. Nicholas and a huge gold and silver icon of the Panaghia (Theotokos) in the narthex-area before the frescoes. Inside the nave of the church is the other miraculous icon. It is a depiction of the Theotokos in the center of a tree, surrounded by small medallions, each containing a small depiction of a patriarch: Jesse, David, Solomon, Abraham, etc. It is called “The Root of Jesse” icon, and this one streams myrrh.

Icons basically have two general miraculous manifestations in the Orthodox world. They can be myrrh-streaming, or myrrh-weeping. The myrrh-streaming icons have a very fragrant oil that beads up all over the surface of the icon with no known or visible cause. As the beads grow bigger they begin to stream down the upright icon. Even if the myrrh is wiped off, it still beads up and continues to run down the face of the painting. The phenomenon is quite amazing. All the icons we have seen in Greece have been myrrh-streaming and have been doing it for many years. When this happens, a case is built to enclose the icon and allow the myrrh to run down the face and collect in a little trough or receptacle which the monks can empty. They soak small pieces of cotton in the myrrh and give it out to pilgrims.

The other kid of miracle with icons is when the figure (usually the Mother of God, but rarely, also Christ) begins to weep. The same kind of fragrant oil beads up only in the eyes on the icon, and runs in two little streams down the face. This is usually interpreted as a sadness for the behavior of people in general, or the spiritual sign of some disaster to come.

One of the reasons we had come to Andros, besides seeing and praying before these miraculous icons, was to venerate the relics of my own saint, Saint Macrina. I had done this years before. After the service, kissing the icons and the relics of another saint they have there, I asked the abbot if I could venerate the relics of St. Macrina. He obliged me, and brought us back into the church.

My mother and I had previously had a talk about why Orthodox venerate relics. We’ve had a lot of discussion along our travels about the differences between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. I was raised Methodist, and my mother has always faithfully attended that denomination, so that was our point of reference.

She noticed that in the Orthodox Liturgy, the main part is communion. We talked about how we believe that communion is our reception of the actual Body and Blood of Christ, whereas in the Methodist church, this belief was abandoned by Luther, along with a number of other Christian beliefs and practices that had been maintained for 1500 years. In the Methodist church, as in most of the Protestant denominations, communion became a symbolic act, and not a reality and physical presence of Christ, as it still is for us.

When we came to talking about the veneration of relics, we returned to this point. Orthodox Christians kiss icons and also the bones of saints that we still have. This is called veneration, and it is not the same thing as worship. Worship belongs only to God Himself, in Trinity. However, because we believe in and actually experience the sanctity of matter, we also venerate things in this world that have been sanctified and made holy. When we kiss an icon, it is as if we are kissing the saint depicted there, as one would kiss a friend or relative when greeting him. But the worship is given to Christ who helped that person to become sanctified. The person is only remembered and venerated because she lived her whole life for Christ, was filled by Him, illumined by Him, and made fully human and fully herself through His mercy and love. This person lived Christ in her own unique way, becoming sanctified in this life.

When a person like this dies, sometimes a miracle occurs and the bones and sometimes even the skin of the person do not decompose. After many years, a normal human body turns into dust, even the bones. But the saints’ bones not only remain solid, but they usually also have an incredible fragrance, just like the myrrh from the icons. How can this happen? We do not know. But when you venerate a relic of a saint and smell it, there is no mistaking its reality. It is like a condensed smell of very sweet flowers.

So sitting in the church on Andros, I again was able to hold my saint’s hand in my own. Macrina’s left hand is encased in silver, with some gems embedded in the precious metal, and a little window through which you can see the bone of her wrist. It is extremely fragrant, and I wept to hold it and to be so close to her and realize how far from her I truly am in the way that I live my own life. I cherished the moments to pray with her there, and to ask for her help. She was such a wonderful teacher for her siblings and a very strong and faithful woman who lived her life entirely for God: loving the Scriptures, serving the poor, building up the church.

I am deeply blessed.