Dionysiou

It sits on a tall rock like the monasteries in Meteora. The climb was similarly arduous. We were installed in a room in the wall over the precipice and slept through the rest of the afternoon.

Fr. Nicholas did not nap. He went looking for Fr. Modestus from Kent, England, whom Fr. Damian from Grigoriou had recommended. He was standing outside the catholicon when a monk passed.

“Excuse me, do you speak English?”

With a British accent: “Certainly!”

Fr. Nicholas immediately opened his heart, he told me, concerning the difficulty of finding hesychia (“stillness”, “quietness”, but in the sense of intensely concentrated and, when possible, continuous prayer) in the modern world. Fr. Modestus, in turn, said that it is difficult to find even in the monasteries any more. He complained about the growing numbers of pilgrims – scores of them passing through every day – the construction equipment everywhere, and even the tour boats that pass several times a day with loudspeakers that are particularly disturbing. One can hear what they are saying, pointing out the monks and their life as though it were a quaint curiosity in a museum or even an exotic zoo.

The entire Holy Mountain is one giant construction zone. Heavy equipment and scaffolding is everywhere at the main monasteries. I heard rumors that the European Union is pouring large amounts of money into restoration of medieval sites, and this is one of the largest. The EU also is trying to apply pressure to open the monasteries to tourists.

Mount Athos is an independent self-governing monastic republic. Its influence, devoted to the purity of monastic life, has been essential in the history of Orthodoxy. The number of pilgrims, large as it seems, is limited. Women are not allowed at all. This may seem strange at first; it is the only such place I know of, even among Orthodox monasteries. This has been the case since the earliest centuries of the Christian era. One hears that the EU wants to change it.

Traditionally, the monasteries depended on Orthodox kings to support their upkeep. After the fall of Byzantium, the kings of Russia, Romania and Serbia were key benefactors. Today, Prince Charles has become an ardent supporter.

Much of the construction work is necessary. Many buildings are old and in poor repair, and there is no denying that they have tremendous historical significance. But some of the monks feel that the scale of construction is completely out of proportion to what is appropriate for the environment of the Holy Mountain.

However, Fr. Modestus said, there is a hesychastic elder who lives halfway up the ridge.

“You and I are going there in the morning,” I said when Fr. Nicholas informed me of this news.

“We may not have time to get back before the boat leaves for Daphne,” he said.

“If we miss the boat, we miss the boat,” I said. “We’ll have to stay here another night. But this is what we came to Mt. Athos for.”

After Vespers and trapeza (the meal), Fr. Modestus showed us the frescoes in the church. They were of Theophan the Cretan and his school, but had been plastered over and re-painted in the Western decadent style influenced by Romanticism, far inferior. So the newer plaster had been removed and the original damaged frescoes had been cleaned and painstakingly restored. It is a monumental task, almost unthinkable. The restorer has to study the technique and style and match it. The result has to be the work of Theophanes, not the work of the restorer. The results were stunning.

He also showed us particular portable icons. One was a Virgin of mastic and wax, exceedingly ancient, attributed to the hand of St. Luke himself. This was once stolen by the pirates that plagued Mt. Athos after the fall of Byzantium. Their boat, however, would not move on the water, and a voice from the icon said, “Take me home!” This so terrified the pirates that after returning it one of them became a monk.

I am sorry to say that I lost track of how many miracle-working icons we venerated.
Next he took us to the cemetery. This is beautifully perched on a terraced shelf cut from towers of rock above the sea and shaded by tall, slender cypresses. An old stone wall met the tumbled boulders of some ancient avalanche so seamlessly that one could hardly discern where the hand of man had been fitted into the hand of God.

Finally he took us up higher to the cave of St. Niphon.

St. Niphon, once a monk at Dionysiou, later became Patriarch of Constantinople. He returned to the monastery after retiring; but in his age, no one recognized or remembered him. He entered as a novice, never mentioning his former rank. He was assigned to shepherd’s duties, and also to watch the sea for pirates. He slept in the cave; but most of the night he was in prayer. Repeatedly the abbot saw a column of fire in the region of the cave at night, and did not understand until he was commanded by a voice to go receive the saintly Patriarch with honor. When the whole brotherhood came out to reverence him, he tried to run away, but they restrained him.

We climbed a set of precarious stairs and came to this cave by a cell, on a terrace of the cliff above the cemetery. Fr. Modestus began speaking of the Elder Porphyrius. He said that there were many holy elders in the twentieth century, but that Elder Porphyrius was perhaps the greatest mystic the church has seen since St. Seraphim of Sarov in the eighteenth century. I did not even realize that St. Seraphim was a saint of that stature.

The sun was going down. We were quiet; everything was quiet. We all prayed for a while as dusk pulled its drape over the Holy Mountain, leaving a glow upon the waves. It was dark by the time we climbed down, but we came to the gates in the wall just before they were shut.

Christopher

Note: Chronologically, the post entitled "The Springs of the Holy Mountain" should follow this post, and then "The Ruined Monastery".