"Are You Orthodox?" (Part 9)

After the service of esperinos (vespers) we went straight into the refectory for an early dinner.

Compared with Iviron, St. Paul's put on a lavish spread.  While a monk read from Scripture, we enjoyed hard-boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, generous servings of cucumber-tomato-and-pepper salad (each plate garnished with a small salty fish like a sardine but larger), bowls of fasolada (bean soup) with more potatoes, and bread.  There was also wine, but it was unpalatable, tasting more of the feet that had trod the grapes than of the grapes themselves.

St. Paul's Refectory

We visitors sat together, the monks separately, at marble tables fixed permanently to the floor along the refectory's long walls.  The abbot, seated between a monk and a visiting priest, presided from the head table.  When he was satisfied that everyone had eaten, he rapped his knife handle once on his bench.  That was the reader's cue to stop.

To the accompaniment of prayers, everyone rose and lined up along the refectory's central aisle.  Like a head of state reviewing his troops, the abbot, accompanied by the others from the head table, proceeded down the aisle at a dignified pace, paused at the door while a monk recited a short prayer, then exited.  The rest of us followed in two parallel lines.

Outside the door, the abbot took a place immediately to the right.  Opposite him to the left, two monks held a continuous bow as we filed past.  When everyone was out of the refectory, the two bowing monks kissed the abbot's hand, still not raising their heads.

*  *  *

After dinner, I inquired about Father Andreas.  The monk who had sat beside the abbot at dinner promptly led me up three flights of stairs to a private apartment.  Following a knock on the door, there stood Father Andreas in his undershirt.

I had come unannounced, and he didn't recognize me at first.  But when I explained who I was, he quickly recalled our meeting four years before.

His cozy apartment glowed warmly in the late-afternoon sun, which streamed through west-facing windows with views out to sea.  A French door opened onto a small terrace overlooking the katholikon in the direction of Mount Athos.

Father Andreas on his terrace

We spoke for a long while as the sun went down.  I learned that about a year earlier he had suffered what sounded like a stroke, maybe a heart attack.  He had been gathering grapes with others near his kathisma.  The others had just left, and he didn't expect to see anyone again for ten days.  On going inside he started feeling dizzy and collapsed.  He woke up about two hours later (he thought).  He was on his back and could see blood on the floor.  He couldn't move his arms or legs.  Eventually some sensation returned.  He rolled onto his stomach and crawled to his bed, all the while burping and gasping for air.

In bed, he prayed for help, directing his prayers to a cross hanging nearby.  He crossed himself once, twice, and with the third cross came a loud knock at the door.  It was a total stranger (not a monk) who had just happened by.  The stranger went immediately for help.  Father Andreas was transported to Athens where his treatment consisted simply of rest.  When I saw him, he had recovered sufficiently to walk short distances, but one of his fingers remained completely numb.

After that episode, he returned to St. Paul's and took up residence in his pleasant aerie.  He spent his days mostly sewing and reading.  Meals were brought up to him.  In a small glass bottle he kept an elixir, a root-based brew made from a formula issued by St. Nektarios (d. 1920), who was known for his curative miracles.  Father Andreas claimed it had cured cancer in two people.

*  *  *

After our conversation I found my way back down the stairs in darkness and was assigned a bedroom to myself.  It was simply furnished but tidy and clean, like a class D hotel.  The lavatory down the hall, though still of the squat-and-shoot variety, was porcelain and was kept clean with running water.  Everything bespoke good order and regular maintenance.  Cenobiticism was on fine display at St. Paul's.

Bells rang twice during the night, once at about 1:00 and again around 4:00.  I was too tired to find out what services they announced.

*  *  *

Rising at 6:00 and gathering my things, I found my way in darkness to the katholikon.  Candles burned in a chapel to the side of the narthex; chanting emerged from further within.  Finding the doors to the nave closed, I refrained from intruding on a service already underway.  My sublime consolation was to sit outside the narthex and let the chanting bring the dawn.

As the monastery came to life I climbed the stairs to see Father Andreas one last time.  We had only a few minutes before saying our good-byes, just enough for coffee and a photo on his little terrace in the dim light of the new day.

Good-bye

 

"Are You Orthodox?" (Part 8)

I'd been at Iviron long enough.  With the Great Lavra out of reach, it was time to find Father Andreas.

He no longer lived where Dad and I met him four years earlier.  He had returned to his old monastery, Aghiou Pavlou (St. Paul's), farther down the western coast of the peninsula.  Getting there would require taking the early morning bus to Karyes and onward to Dafni on the coast.  There I would meet the daily southbound caïque coming from Ouranoupolis.  The caïque would deliver me to St. Paul's.

But first, a good-bye to the guest-master, Brother Kosmas.  Was his embrace oddly prolonged, his brotherly kiss unusually fervent?  Or was it just my imagination?

*  *  *

Dafni

I reached Dafni around 9:30 a.m.  There I learned I would not be waiting for the arrival -- at 1:00, no less -- of the roomy southbound caïque from Ouranoupolis.  Rather, I would be waiting for the departure at 1:00 of a junior caïque.  There it was, bobbing alongside the Dafni pier, teasing me with its unavailability till 1:00.

With only two cafés, two souvenir shops, and nothing of the remotest historical interest anywhere within walking distance, it promised to be a long 3½-hour wait.  I opted for one of the cafés, where I could at least read and write.

But reading and writing proved difficult.  At other tables, clutches of monks, priests, and lay brothers smoked, drank coffee, and talked.  And talked, and talked, and talked in a non-stop bombast.

Were they elucidating the procession of the Holy Spirit?  Were they debating the true nature of the Holy Trinity?

Sadly, no.  The topics of these loud, animated exchanges were painfully mundane.  One particularly energetic row was over the relative merits of the paths between one monastery and another.  Details of each path were dissected and compared with anatomical precision.  One path was extolled over another for its time-saving blessings.  Another particularly heated exchange was about whether it was here or there on the path where Brother So-and-So had been overtaken last month.  One old priest went at it non-stop for over an hour -- standing the whole time!

Such were the fruits of a lifetime of prayer.

*  *  *

The large caïque from Ouranoupolis arrived packed.  Among its passengers were the young priest from the prior evening and his friends Manolis and Takis.  While I was making my way to Dafni by bus, they had walked from Iviron to Xeropotamou and from there to Roussikon, where they had caught the boat from Ouranoupolis.

I had been under the mis-impression that the large Ouranoupolis caïque serviced the entire western coast of the peninsula and would therefore continue southward from Dafni.  But Dafni proved to be its terminus.  Passengers who needed to proceed farther south transferred to the smaller caïque, which was no larger than Ammouliani of four years earlier.  But unlike Ammouliani it was burdened with forty-five squirming passengers, their baggage, and additional southbound cargo.

*  *  *

Before St. Paul's there were intervening stops at the monasteries of Simonopetra, Grigoriou, and Dionysiou.

Simonopetra

While cruising between stops, there was barely a sound from the passengers.  Silence prevailed except for the chugging of the diesel engine and the plashing of the boat's bow wave against the hull.

But everything changed as the boat approached a landing.  The first decrease in engine revs was the signal to start the ritual of commotion that punctuated each stop.

First came impatient stirrings by the passengers.  As the boat slowed even more, the stirrings became anxious (and pointless) strivings to get off.

Grigoriou

These movements elicited the captain's barks:  "Don't rush!  You'll all get off!"

In the final few yards before the boat touched the bulkhead, volleys of shouts erupted like cannonades between ship and shore:  "Where's so-and-so?"  "Grab there!"  "Did you load such-and-such?"  "Hold off!" 

Dionysiou

Then came the effusive greetings, hugs, kisses, backslaps, etc. as disembarking passengers and those still aboard greeted their friends ashore.  The felicitations continued in high gear all the while the boat was tied up.

They immediately subsided, however, when the boat pulled away for its next destination.  Silence, diesel chugging, and bow-wave plashing reigned supreme again until the ritual was repeated at the next stop.

*  *  *

 We reached St. Paul's in forty-five minutes.

The monastery is built against a crease in the foothills of Mt. Athos.  From the landing, its crenellated wall and tower gave it the appearance of a castle.

St. Paul's from the landing

The name "St. Paul's" has murky origins but is probably attributable to the monstery's late-10th-century founder, Paul Xeropotaminos, rather than to the author of the Epistles.  The monastery is dedicated to the Purification of the Virgin.

It was a Serbian kellion before acquiring the status of a monastery and taking its place in the Athonite hierarchy by the late 14th century.  Benefactors have included Byzantine emperors, Russian tsars, Serbian princes, and the rulers of the lower Danubian kingdoms.  Its holy relics include the Gifts of the Magi and a fragment of the True Cross.

The monastery's fortunes have risen and fallen over the centuries.  The 17th century saw two hundred monks in residence.  But during the Greek struggle for independence (1821-1830), St. Paul's was nearly deserted.  The monastery was re-established by Patriarch Gregorios VI in 1840.

The main structures looked older than they actually were.  The relatively unadorned but solid-marble katholikon was finished in 1844.  It of course replaced a much older one, but its 19th century construction made it a relative newcomer on the Holy Mountain.  At the beginning of the 20th century, a disastrous fire (1902) and floods (1911) required much rebuilding.  St. Paul's is also said to be the first monastery on the peninsula to be associated with a road, a pre-1963 construction that facilitated the delivery of timber from the mountain above to the landing below.

At the time of my visit, St. Paul's was cenobitic and had about ninety monks.  Thirty-five lived in the monastery proper, the rest in various dependencies.

*  *  *

A half hour's walk from the landing brought me to the main gate.  On entering the monastery, we new arrivals were ushered immediately into the katholikon.  Someone thrust a candle into my hand, which a monk promptly lit.

A funeral was underway in the nave, which had been closed off from the crossing by a curtain stretching from pillar to pillar.  The deceased lay a few inches above the floor on a simple wooden pallet.  His feet pointed to the altar; an icon rested on his chest.

I feared the funeral was for Father Andreas.  He had been sick, I was told.  I couldn't be sure, however, because the deceased monk's face wasn't in view.  His body was wrapped in a black garment (perhaps his daily vestment) and was covered with a colorful cloth (perhaps an aer, a liturgical veil interpreted as the shroud of Christ).

Monks shuffled back and forth as they read through the service.  At the final prayers, each monk approached the body and, facing the altar, took a position to one side or the other of the deceased's head.  One by one, each monk crossed himself three times, each time touching the floor with both hands on the bottom stroke.  Each monk then removed his headgear and bent to kiss the icon on the deceased's chest and then the dead monk's forehead.  With headgear re-secured, the floor-touch crossings were repeated three times.

Burial followed immediately.  The body was carried out of the katholikon to the tolling of a single bell and the striking of a horseshoe-shaped gong (an iron semandron) in a peculiar three-beat rhythm.  Everyone followed.

The procession passed out of the main gate, down a short vine-covered path, and into the cemetery through a small gate.  Past the small ossuary (where three monks remained to say prayers), the group assembled in a corner of the cemetery where a narrow grave had already been dug.  More prayers.  Then the colored covering was removed from the body.  Two younger monks took hold of the feet and shoulders.  With a grunted "Opa!" they lifted the corpse off the pallet and swung it into the grave.

The body was not stiff.  I saw it bend at the waist.  I later learned that the flexibility of monks' corpses at burial is said to be a phenomenon unique to Mt. Athos.

After a few more prayers, a couple of monks quickly filled the grave with dirt using garden hoes and forceful strokes.  They seemed to want to be done with the matter quickly.  With the grave filled, all faced Mt. Athos (or something else in that direction) while one monk intoned one hundred times "Your servant is at rest," keeping count by fingering his koumboskene.  As this went on, all the other monks crossed themselves continuously.

My fifty-knot koumboskene

There were no tears, no display of emotion at all.  It struck me then that there had been none in the katholikon either.  The tone of the funeral had verged on indifference.  The dead monk was not to be mourned.  Like his brothers, he had eagerly anticipated this day his entire life and had now achieved his blessed release to the realm of eternal glory.

*  *  * 

Passing the ossuary on the way out of the cemetery, it was impossible to ignore the sun-bleached skulls resting atop piles of bones gathered in used olive oil tins.  These were the remains of earlier-deceased monks who had been exhumed and now awaited permanent lodgings in the ossuary.

Bending closely over one of the skulls, a lay brother asked "Who's this?"  A grave marker resting next to the tin clearly  identified the remains, but the lay brother evidently couldn't read it.  The monk next to him answered joshingly:  "Don't you recognize him?  It's Dimitri."

On re-entering the monastery I was much relieved to learn that it wasn't Father Andreas whom we'd just buried.  It was Brother Kalistratos, who had died almost exactly twenty-four hours earlier.

*  *  *

Finally, we were brought into the visitor's room.  As at Iviron, it was decorated with portrait photos of Greek kings, Greek Prime Minister Metaxas (dead since 1941), and various patriarchs and archbishops.  The customary Greek coffee, tsipouro, and a spoon-sweet were offered.

In the guest book I wrote:  "Today a funeral, but no tears."