by Scott Cairns
The first appears to enjoy, already, the kingdom of heaven; the second, to suffer, already, a species of hell.
My sense of the demographic making up the community of Saint Anthony’s was that while the monks were manifestly of the first sort, the local folk may have tended toward the second. My own continuing struggle during that week of services was to keep my eyes from wandering. Whenever I glanced at the faces of the other folks in church—stern, harsh-seeming, joyless—I fell headlong into sin.
I wrestled with this enigma nearly every day. Why, I wondered, does the worship that brings me peace, joy, and a laughing heart appear so like a burden to these my scowling brothers and these my pucker-faced sisters?
Not to put too fine a point on it, they sort of ticked me off.
Then, as soon as I realized the attitude I was developing toward them, I realized that I had, in that moment, compounded sin.
This, then, led to my being even more ticked off. Et cetera.
You get the idea. It was a long week.
Saint Isaac of Syria helped me break the cycle. Reading through the homilies of his “second part” in my room at midweek, I was reminded (duh!) that sin is best understood as an illness. I was reminded that the church is fairly understood as a hospital, the site of our healing. Extending that metaphor, I came to see that a monastery—especially a monastery that makes itself as available to outsiders as Saint Anthony’s does—is fairly understood as something of a trauma center, an emergency room. This is where we can come when the ravages of our illness have drawn us very near to death.
I repented of my failure—a long-standing failure, actually—to love these others, and, that week anyway, the problem didn’t come up again.
Another took its place.
For most of the week, as I worked with the monks, savored the services, pursued prayer, I looked forward to a chance to meet and speak with Elder Ephrém. At midweek I was cautioned by Father Arsénios, the monk who arranges these visits, that the elder is uncomfortable counseling pilgrims in English, and that because I didn’t speak fluent Greek, I would more likely be visiting with Elder Paísios, the abbot. This was, actually, fine by me. Seraphima had expressed great love for both men and told me that she had been helped many times by each. As my primary hope was to discover if one of these holy men might become my spiritual guide in prayer, it made perfect sense that I should seek a father who was comfortable with English.
On Tuesday, the appointed day, I arrived in the waiting area of the katholikón at 11:00 a.m., just as Father Arsénios had instructed. I sat there, praying, for the next five hours, as a continuous stream of pilgrims came and went. This was a little puzzling, but I eventually realized that these others were men and women who already had long-standing relationships with the elders, whereas I was a newbie who should just be patient and wait his turn. I was flying standby.
No biggie. I sat. I prayed. I waited my turn.
A little before 4:00 p.m., Father Arsénios called me to the door of the small office where Elder Paísios was hearing confessions. I entered with reverence, kissed his hand, and was immediately struck by the weariness on his face—and perhaps a subtle indifference. He was clearly worn out.
I stammered a bit about this being my first visit with an elder here in the States, and confessed that I didn’t really know how to begin.
He didn’t say a word.
I kept yammering, saying I had been seeking prayer for some years now, and that I didn’t feel I was making much progress.
Not a word.
Growing more anxious, I said, “Yéronda, I’m asking for direction, for a rule of prayer. I need guidance.”
He took a deep breath. He asked what my rule of prayer was, and when I’d told him, he pointed to my prayer rope and said, “Add two ropes of the Jesus Prayer and one rope to the Theotókos.
“Do you do prostrations?” he asked.
I told him that I end my prayers with the prayer of Saint Ephrém, a sequence of prayers that includes three prostrations with each repetition.
He then asked if my health was good, and when I said yes, he said, “Add twenty prostrations to your evening rule, and ten to your morning rule.”
I said I would.
He then went on to tell me—as my jaw dropped—about three related issues in my life that I had neither mentioned to him nor to anyone else at the monastery.
And then he stood up.
I thought he was standing to bless me. Instead, he pointed to the door, saying, “Trápeza will start soon.”
I turned to go, then turned back, standing before him and bowing. I raised my cupped hands to receive his hand, saying, “Evlogíte.”
“O Kýrios,” he said, blessing me with the sign of the cross.
I kissed his hand, and left.
My mind was spinning.
Back in my room, I pulled my calendar from my book bag to see when I might be able to squeeze in another trip to Mount Athos. I needed to talk these things over with the fathers there.
The next morning, as I was passing Father Arsénios in the garden, I asked him if I might be able to see Elder Ephrém for just a moment; I promised not to take up much of his time, but only hoped he might bless my prayer rope, and bless me. Father Arsénios thought this was a good idea, and told me, once again, to arrive at 11:00 a.m., when he’d squeeze me in between the elder’s visits with his many spiritual children.
It all sounded very likely.
I showed up at the appointed time, and—long story short—was finally called in to see the elder at about 5:00 p.m., after everyone else had gone. In the meantime, I had started thinking that the Arizona elders were, at the very least, giving me a memorable lesson in patience.
Just before I was called in, Father Arsénios said that I was in luck, given that there was no one behind me—not now, anyway—I would be able to ask the elder a question or two, using Father Arsénios as my translator.
All good. Very good, even. Yéronda Ephrém has a reputation for being something of a clairvoyant. He is considered by many also to be one of those men whose charísma includes the ability to discern helpful solutions to difficult matters.
Inside, I bowed, kissed the elder’s hand, and received his blessing. When Father Arsénios and I were seated, Father asked if I had a question for the Elder. As it happens, I did. I asked about a family matter, a health matter, and he responded with a warmth and sweetness that both humbled and comforted me. He insisted that love, clearly expressed love and acceptance, would be the saving grace in the matter. He looked at me, beaming.
Father Arsénios asked if there might be something else. And I asked a question having to do with a range of difficulties and concerns in our parish back home. There were a number of developments over which I had been, quite frankly, anguishing. I spoke of them as generally and as calmly as I could, asking the elder to help me understand what the best course of action would be. At least, I asked, could he help me to see how I should respond to these difficulties.
Yéronda looked at Father Arsénios with an exceedingly pained look, and said that this was a question for Elder Paísios.
I thought maybe I should rephrase the question or explain myself, but I didn’t have time.
Reading the situation, Father Arsénios stood up. I followed suit. “Evlogíte,” I said, kissing the elder’s hand.
“O Kýrios,” he said, squeezing my hand in his, and making the sign of the cross over me. I hurried out, hoping to get to my room before anyone saw how depressed I had suddenly become. As I got to the outer door, Father Arsénios called out to me, and caught up with me on the sidewalk.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I mumbled. “I think I squandered an opportunity here. I should have asked about prayer instead of petty parish matters. I thought maybe the Yéronda might miraculously know what to say to me.”
“Well, sometimes it actually happens,” he said, “but it’s not something yo
u can predict, or control.”
“I get that part.”
“Don’t be upset,” he said, “just remember his words about love; they might be the answer to both questions.”
I skipped trápeza and stayed in my room praying all night. Hunger helped me focus on my prayer, kept me fairly wakeful all night. About an hour before the tálanton—about 2:00 a.m.—I left my room and wandered the grounds, the gardens, praying in the cool desert air. In a very surprising way, I was feeling a mix of vague disappointment about my visits with the elders and delight from my exchanges with the young monks here. I was both discouraged about the prospect of finding—at Saint Anthony’s—a father to guide me and increasingly eager to return to Mount Athos to speak candidly about this with Father Iákovos, for one.
In short, I was feeling a little torn, but happily torn.
As I walked, I passed the katholikón and then walked along the attached building structure where Elders Ephrém and Paísios heard confessions and gave counsel. The lights in both men’s rooms were still burning, and as I passed his window, I saw Yéronda Ephrém speaking even then to a troubled man who appeared to be sobbing. I realized that these elders’ lives were not their own, that long into the night they were still there giving comfort to their spiritual children.
That I wasn’t one of them was no one’s fault, unless it was my own for presuming such a relationship occurred at whim and on demand.
I kept walking.
Sitting on the lip of an unfinished fountain and staring out into the dark of the desert, I found that the prayer proved a powerful comfort. As well as the Jesus Prayer, I was also saying certain prayers of Saint Isaac, and, in particular, I found reassuring confidence in acknowledging, “for it is You who gives prayer to those who pray.”
PART THREE
The Near
14
…accepted as adopted sons…
My son, Ben, agreed to join me on my third pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain. As the time of our departure approached, he became increasingly eager to try áscesis on for size. He said he was looking forward to the long hikes, the fasting, the physically and mentally demanding worship services. When he first signed on for this leg of the journey, I had more or less assumed I would spend another two weeks traipsing the peninsula, this time with Ben by my side; but as I studied the map and recalled the various trails and terrain, I wised up some.
My primary desire, this time out, was that Ben would love the Holy Mountain as much as I had come to love it; I wanted him to taste the stillness and develop a hunger for it.
If he did, I knew the stillness of the Holy Mountain would become a lifelong resource for his own journey, wherever it took him. The last thing I wanted was for him to be burned out by our taking on more than he was ready for. So with some helpful advice in a letter from Father Iákovos and in e-mails from my friend Stelios Zarganes—one of my two Greek rescuers, and a man with whom I had continued to correspond—Ben and I planned a more reasonable route that would give us two nights at Simonópetra, two at Grigoríou, one at Saint Andrew’s Skete, two at Vatopédi, and a final night at the lovely Xenophóntos. I was especially glad that we would be at Vatopédi for the Feast of Pentecost Sunday, including a festal vigil Saturday night. There would be plenty of hiking, but, for the most part, we would have restful days between treks when we could stay put and pray, experience the rhythm of Athonite life.
Stelios and his wife, Sophia, met us at the airport and helped us get ready, giving us a restful evening of hospitality and reminiscences of Mount Athos—of Simonópetra in particular. Trýfonas, their son, took a short break from his studies to spend the evening with us. He and Ben hit it off right away, and the two boys spent a good bit of the evening playing computer games and listening to music.
The family’s very good friend, Father Metrophánes—the monk who’d been in charge of port operations at Dáfni and the man who had secured speedboat passage for Stelios, Argyris, and me during the winter—had recently succumbed to cancer. He had fallen asleep. So the evening became, off and on, somewhat subdued by occasional reference to his passing, and, off and on, somewhat illumined with memories of their many years together. He had been especially close to Trýfonas, and one particular recollection of a snowball fight between the boy and the monk on the ridge above Simonópetra had us all in tears, if very mixed tears, both sad and joyful.
While this had been a heartbreaking experience for those around him, it had not been unexpected, and Father Metrophánes had accepted his fate with calm anticipation.
During Great Lent, the Orthodox often use the term harmolýpe—sometimes translated as bright sadness—in an attempt to articulate the curious emotion that infuses the fasting period before the Feast of Pascha, our name for Easter. The two-sided coin of that term serves to reveal this curious mix of both grief and promise that—I gathered from what the family was saying—also infused Father Metrophánes’ last days among his brothers at Simonópetra.
Stelios went to a cabinet in the living room and lifted a komvoskíni from where it had been hanging on a knob. He brought it to me and laid it in my hands. “Father Metrophánes’ prayer rope,” he said. “Now it’s mine. I want to take very good care of it.”
In the morning, Stelios fetched Ben and me from our hotel and—after lavishly feeding us again and loading us up with a sack of tirópita (cheese pies) to sustain us for the short term—dropped us at the KTEL, where we boarded the bus for Ouranoúpoli.
I again enjoyed the tour of the countryside, but mostly I enjoyed watching Ben’s response to the landscape and villages; he studied every nook and cranny and ouzería along the way, and by the time our three-hour bus ride ended, he was already talking with confidence about the year he would be living in Greece between high school and college. To myself, I was thinking, Maybe after college.
Ouranoúpoli itself was his idea of the perfect town—small, coastal, full of friendly people and great food.
Much as Nick and I had done in September, Ben and I savored our first evening in Ouranoúpoli at a seaside café—the same café, in fact—taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, gazing as far as we could down the peninsula to where the Holy Mountain disappeared into a darkening purple sky.
Morning had us up at dawn, packing our gear into backpacks and scrambling to gather our diamonitíria, our boat tickets, and a quick breakfast before boarding the Áxion Estín and setting off onto an impossibly blue Aegean Sea. The boat was, again, filled to overflowing with monks, workmen, and a wide array of pilgrims. There seemed to be less beer.
“We’re on our way now,” Ben said, giving about as wide a grin as I’ve ever seen, his silver braces sparkling.
On board, we met a half-dozen men from America, including a priest and a deacon who were part of an Orthodox tour group arranged by Saint Herman’s Seminary in Alaska. I was also pleased to see, yet again, the Bulgarian monk I’d first seen in September at the Thessaloníki KTEL, scratching at a lottery ticket. I’d seen him a second time in December praying on the seawall in Dáfni, and here he was yet again, leaning against the stern rail, looking off into the distance, prayer rope in hand.
When we reached Dáfni, Ben and I scrambled through the crowd to the port’s back forty, where—as directed by Stelios—we would meet the microbus to Simonópetra.
Father Iákovos was waiting for us when we arrived, as was Dr. Nick, who was still here and, it was finally confirmed, would be joining the brotherhood as a novice very soon. We were greeted with humbling warmth. Once again, as he embraced me, Father Iákovos said, “Welcome home.”
The way they all responded to Ben—rather, Benyamín—was an added perk. He was immediately taken under their wing as a favorite grandson. Within minutes, he’d met a dozen monks, young and old, and they had loaded him up with loukoúmi and hard candies to stick in his pocket for later.
In particular, we met Father Athanásios, the gregarious guest master, whom, we learned, was the son of another of the fathers the
re at Simonópetra. Their story is an amazing one, a genuinely humbling one. I had met Father Galaktíon, the father of the pair, during the first day of my visit in the wintertime. He had struck me immediately with a glowing warmth, a ready kindness. Corny as it will no doubt sound, one of my most treasured moments of that pilgrimage came while I was washing dishes with Dr. Nick on my second day at Simonópetra when Father Galaktíon happened by, watched us a moment, then said, “Isaák, Isaák,” his face positively beaming. It seems like such a slight gesture, perhaps, but it literally—and yes, I do mean literally—warmed my heart.
Now I was learning from Father Iákovos that the monk I was meeting now—this storytelling Father Athanásios—was Father Galaktíon’s son. The father, it turns out, had followed the son into monasticism. “More surprising yet, Father Galaktíon’s eldest daughter serves as the yeróntissa, the abbess, of the convent at Ormýlia, where—get this—her mother also serves as a nun. There are three other daughters, two of whom are presvytéres—wives of Orthodox priests—the younger of these two being married to another Father Athanásios, who serves as a priest in Thessaloníki at Simonópetra’s metóchion, a dependency of the monastery. While we were visiting in the archondaríki with Father Iákovos, Father Athanásios, and Dr. Nick, Father Galaktíon stopped by, as well. He was exceedingly happy to play grandfather to Ben, dropping a handful of hard candies into his hands.
By the time vespers came around, Ben knew his way around the place as if he’d been there many times before.
Vespers at Simonópetra is, of course, always beautiful, always moving, but this time, as I inhaled the censed air of the katholikón, savored the beauty of the icons, intoned the vespers hymns under my breath and prayed the prayers, it was all the more sweet to look over from time to time to see my son in the stall next to me, his eyes wide with interest, his smile intermittently brightening, at least for me, our already luminous evening prayer.