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1. A great orator and ecclesiastical writer of the third century was asked, by his contemporary the then Patriarch of Jerusalem, to ascend the lectern of the Sacred Church of the Resurrection, at the All-holy Sepulchre, on one official feast, and to speak a word of enlightenment and comfort to the multitudinous crowd of the faithful. And he, in spite of his tremendous education, the eloquence and ease at his disposal for this, anxiously sought from the Lord the occasion, pretext and the content of his homily.
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Address to the Friends of the Holy Mountain, Vienna, 1981.
2. Finding himself high up in the pulpit, he
opened the Holy Scripture, in order to receive
from it a beginning, reading this: "But to the
sinner God has said, 'Why dost thou declare my
ordinances, and take up my covenant in thy mouth?...'"
Then, immediately, he fell silent, being unable to
speak a word more. Full of fear. and self-knowledge
he descended from the rostrum, without declaring the
majesties of God, honoring them only with his silence.
3. This same voice, my dear and respected friends,
I hear in my heart, from the mouth of the Lord to
me. And, inasmuch as it depended on me, I would
never have reached this podium, in the presence of
your love and interest. Or, at least, at this very
moment, to be silent.
4. However, I venture the continuation of my word,
only as a translation of the dutiful greeting that
I owe from my heart, which I would have directed to
you if I were meeting you entering into the courtyard
of my monastery. Or, fulfilling my ministry in the
Guesthouse, clasping your hands, refreshing you from
the laborious ascent, making your faces glad by offering
you successive glasses of the cold water of the Gospel,
and rejoicing your hearts with wine from the king's table,
as is fitting to a slave and servant, ready and eager
for your eyes and your questions, at your disposal; for
obedience, for Christ.
5. And now, finding myself among you, not high on the
rock of the meteoric Simonopetra, but in the beautiful,
magnificent and famous city of Vienna, philhellenic
par excellence, I am the captive, as both invited and
sent, of the love and the honour that I experienced
from all of you, quite some time ago, in the person
of my exceedingly respected and very Reverend Elder
Fr. Metrophanes Chilandarinou, Representative of his
holy monastery in the Sacred Community of Holy Mountain,
and in a certain way the spiritual father, steward and
inspirer of your Society, "THE FRIENDS OF HOLY MOUNTAIN".
But also of the President and founder of the society,
the honorable ethnologist Professor ROHSMANN, known and
dear to us from his frequent visits, along with many of
you, to Holy Mountain.
6. Recalling a little from our meetings at Athos,
and keeping in view the fact that, in spite of your
worldly wisdom, scientific knowledge and brilliance,
many of you have the good habit of furnishing and arming
your hands, or of praying, with the prayer rope; and
urged toward this by the Rev. Fr. Metrophanes.
I chose the topic that we will analyze. within the
confined limits of our time:
7. But before beginning, permit me, Your
Eminence, Metropolitan of Austria Monsigneur
Chrysostom, filially to pray for the courteous
and good President, the members of the Society
and all of you, that any friendship of yours
toward the Holy Mountain will issue in divine
love, real and profound, while of its
spiritual inheritance and testament may you
be established undoubted participants; and
with you, may I include my self?
8. At night, especially, the Holy Mountain
likes to pray . It groans and travails
together with the whole creation in its
quarantine. The alternating lapping of the
waves on its shores, the utter stillness and
serenity, the sleeping sweet-voiced birds of
its heaven, the beasts of the field, that go
about seeking their meat from God, the
vertical prayers of the cypresses with all
the rest of their varied company, the steep
naked rocks and the caves in their hearts,
the babbling springs in the overshadowing
forests and on the precipices, the heights
and the tranquil slopes, all are praying.
Together with the lofty and incomparable
Athos, and the crowns of the domes of the
monasteries and the hermitages, sealed with
the cross of Christ: Who alone disperses the
otherwise indissoluble darkness, in order
that the approaching new day of the Lord may
dawn.
9. The raised aged hands of the hermits, the
knees bending again and again of the young
monks and the rest, the priest in the
sanctuary lifting up the holy offering,
co-celebrating with other priests and deacons
who are censing, readers reading: "Through
the intercessions of Thy Saints, Christ our
God, have mercy on us", the unceasing
commemorations, the sweet smells and the
psalmody, which always want to say: "Praise
ye the Lord in every season and day and hour,
for all things given by Him, for His great
mercy to all", are something from the mystical
power and glory of the Holy Mountain, that
covers itself with the darkness of the night
and is revealed by the golden light of the
full moon. It is, yet, one note from the
harmonious melody of the entire prayer, that
it hymns to Christ the Bridegroom, from the
time that His All-holy Mother set foot upon
it, strolled about it and was pleased.
10. As Sinai was without glory, before Moses
ascended and before God descended there, as
Tabor was without radiance, before the Lord
was transfigured there, so also Athos was
accurst, before the Virgin chose it, before
the Holy Fathers established it a Holy
Mountain. A contemporary saint of Patmos,
very characteristically summing up the spirit
of his fathers, writes, "By prayer you
sanctify the place where you stay and the
work you do." Thus, the Holy Mountain is holy
because of its saints, who labored and brought
forth a prophetic spirit, a spirit of
salvation.
11. First God came to dwell in the hearts of
His saints, and afterwards they wanted to
glorify Him by building temples of His glory.
Very numerous, if not innumerable, are the
saints of Athos. Their sweat and blood, their
tears and myrrh that irrigated its rocks and
soil, even these are unable to characterize
and enumerate its saints. Only He Who is
glorified in the council of His saints knows
His blessed martyrs.
12. Below and round about the peak of Athos,
in the summer, studding some rugged spots,
an unwithering flower of Panagia comes up;
it maintains its whiteness and its strong
fragrance for as many years as may pass.
The virgin, the Mistress of Her garden,
chose the Holy Mountain exactly for this
reason, from amongst all the beautiful and
wondrous places on earth: in order that this
garden of Hers may be cultivated the
unwithering blossom of the spiritual virginity
of the monks.
13. She herself so zealously rules, guards
and cares for it. She enlivens it with the
delicate breeze of Her love. She covers it
with her mantle, She raises it with her
intercessions. She endowed it with so many
of Her wonder-working icons. Before the eyes
of Her Son, and it the face of the everyday
necessities of life, She makes up what is
lacking in the holiness and the spirituality
of the monks. And She became and exists in
the Mountain as Abbess, as eldress as Steward
as Doorkeeper, as the Merciful One, the
Directress, the Oil-gushing, the Supplicant,
as the guarantor of Her children, ensuring
them with an eternal testament.
14. She has even appeared to grant gifts
worth of the labor and piety of Her angel-
like chanters; to sweep the courtyards, to
serve refectories, to weep with the poor, to
feed hungry travelers, to be recognized as
the benefactress of those, who discover Her
now and find Her repeatedly, the Empress,
from the traces of Her footstool on Athos.
Further, She is the One who orders the things
of Her house and institutes new ways of life.
And with Her embrace, and with Her virginal
kiss, She transmits gifts of mental prayer
and keenness of heart: gifts of wonder-working
and of the knowledge of God.
15. Thus, when she herself here claims Her
rights; She wants it for Her own. Exactly
for the same reason that She asked for it
from Christ.
16. The fringes of Her spiritual garment
cover it and separate it and sanctify it
more than the smoke and flames and lightning
did Sinai, when God descended on it. And
therefore, if it was forbidden for anything
to approach Sinai, man or beast, with a
penalty off instant death, how much more,
the venerable and incontrovertible rule of
inaccessibility to women and separation for
God weighs here, from God's Mother Herself!
17. In this mountain, burning and flaming
with spiritual fire, it someone is incapable,
at least like Joshua of Nun, of coming in and
following after Moses, after the saints, let
him stand with fear and trembling, rejoicing
exceedingly from afar for the sight and sound
happening in the morning and by night in the
Mountain. Because, otherwise, if someone
says, "And what does this Mountain have above
and beyond anywhere else? Doesn't He who is'
everywhere present and filleth all things'
reside everywhere?" Danger exists that he or
she might contract leprosy, as did Neeman the
Syrian, before he decided to worship God at
the Jordan and be healed. And further, if
someone says, "So what? Maybe the monks,
especially the monks of the Holy Mountain,
are the closest to God?", perhaps he or she
will share the unhappy fate of the famous
Miriam, after she said, "Has the Lord indeed
spoken only through Moses?"
18. The Holy Mountain is a spiritual boundary
mark; an ideal lived in the here and now.
It is a gift of God to His Bride the Orthodox
Church - and through Her to the whole world.
Aptly an Hagiorite abbot said: "It's
impossible for someone to speak about the
world, if first he doesn't put in a big
chapter explaining the Holy Mountain. And
it's impossible for someone to understand the
Holy Mountain, if he doesn't know the world".
It is an offering of the world to God. Flesh
and bone and bowels from the bowels and flesh
of the world. Since in every age, like the
bee fills the comb with wax, the world fills
the cells of its monasteries and the dens of
its earth with monks.
19. But since we said that it is an offering,
thus, corban, something set apart, therefore
it is also something accepted especially by
God and belonging to Him personally. It is
impossible for this ever to become an object
of our curiosity, or even of our spiritual
needs - much less, of our material needs.
It will ever remain as priceless myrrh,
poured out abundantly on the feet of Jesus.
And let this incomprehensible to persons who
think otherwise.
20. The devotion of a holy and simple soul
reached the point of pronouncing it a sin
even to approach, even to see the Holy
Mountain from a distance. And some orange
peels from the Garden of Panagia that found
their way to her, she took and dried, in
order to take them every morning, together
with blessed bread and holy water, as a
blessing. Some such souls, in reality,
"are meet for the holy mountain, in no wise
being shaken by the attacks of Beliar".
21. So inside this cloud, what is performed
every day? What else, but the unceasing,
the perpetual approach to God. It is an
Israelitish journey, unswerving, without
return. How absolute and uncompromising
and conclusive was the departure from Rome,
of blessed Peter the Athonite, for Athos!
And always such must be the disposition, the
renunciation, the departure and the
commitment of every monk in Holy Mountain.
Only in such bowels, decisive unto death,
is it possible for Jesus Christ, God and Man
born from the virgin, to be conceived
spiritually, and to indwell and walk in the
hearts of His servants, with the Father and
the Holy Spirit. And if we closely observe
every saint of Holy Mountain, from St.
Athanasius the Athonite, whose renunciation
in Holy Mountain creates a new, yet so old,
mean in its successive history and development,
until even the latest contemporary monk or
novice, we will see this.
22. The fire that Christ came and lit in the
world, this same flame, now and always, when
it comes consumes hearts, the desire for the
divine causes them to come out of the world
forever and to follow, unconditionally, the
footsteps of the incamate Word, to form a
little flock, a dynamic leaven, an elevation
and a support and a hope for the world - even,
an entrance into and a violent seizure of the
Kingdom of Heaven. It is a new creation, a
new situation. It is God's government on
earth - a government that Pilate couldn't
understand, when he was asking the Lord: "Art
thou a king then?" A prophetic community of
Nazarenes is constituted, of which the
sustenance is the spirit that is descended
and poured out in the hearts of those seeking
it.
23. The daily life is simple, natural,
straightforward, ascetic. It has the intense
characteristics of the openness that Adam had
before the Fall. Unaffected and uncalculating,
taming even the wild beasts, and, if it
should come to pass, the wildest of all, the
human being.
24. The paths and gardens and walks of the
Holy Mountain are closed for the Lord. There
love sleeps. "Do not awaken her." So
beautifully a small child, like those about
which the Prophet-king David said, "Out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings shall I
bring forth praise", from the stories he
heard about the Holy Mountain, felt in his
heart that there Christ lives with Panagia.
And since then, day and night he begs his
father to bring him, to see them face to face
and worship. Yet, without fail, here also
His Spirit is crying. Because "He who gives
prayer to the one praying" is also He who
gives those praying there prayer and the
All-holy Spirit, who prays within them,
making intercession for them with groanings
which cannot be uttered crying: "Abba,
Father."
25. The Hagiorite worship is a daily
triumphant victorious revelation of Christ.
It is a reference to that divine flashing
chariot that brings down and takes up the
Holy Trinity every day in the Holy Mountain.
It is worship that, as from a spring, bubbles forth from the heart of the monk. It is experienced in the cell alone, in the hidden and secret chamber, before the eyes of the Heavenly Father who sees invisibly; and it is magnified in the Church "among the people", "in the midst of the great congregation".
26. And so, finally, the prayer of the Holy
Mountain, we would say, is the prayer of the
particular monk, of every monk, known or
unknown, more or less holy, virtuous or
sinful. Prayer is his respiration. The name
of Jesus is the sign of his royalty. It is
the seal of his heart. It is the grace and
the sweetness blossoming forth on his lips.
And what is more, it is his inhalation itself,
his breath. We know that our every breath
without Him is an unnatural relationship with
ourselves - a situation what leads us, sooner
or later, to the decomposition of our being,
since from within us the cohesive inner force
is absent.
27. After all this we perceive that when we
speak about the prayer of Holy Mountain - the
prayer that is going on in the Holy Mountain
- it is as if we are talking about the Christ
of Holy Mountain. As we would speak about
the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. And thus, the Christ of Holy
Mountain means Christ, as He was experienced
and is experienced by His saints, by the
monks, living and working and worshiping in
Holy Mountain - since the whole life
experience of the monastic is one extension
and reference and turning of the mind to God
alone, through repentance, which is the basis,
the starting point and the entrance to the
Hagioritic life itself.
28. Therefore the whole Mountain, all its
monasteries, the chapels, the cells, and
above all the deep heart of the monk, become
places and means of exchanges with Christ.
He is so situated there as the singular one
walking and shepherding, coming in and going
out. As long as He wants, He keeps the keys
of the virginity of this place and way of
life. Every exodus of a monk occurs by His
command and afterwards, by His good pleasure;
from the most practical reason, until the
call to shepherd His people something that
has happened many times in the past. As for
instance, with St. Gregory Palamas, St.
Kosmas the Aetolos and so many others who
constitute, without wanting or seeking it,
initiators and axes and shapers of
personalities, bridges that unite add
transfuse the Hagioritic experience in every
age, grafting many into Christ's good olive
tree, re-educating communities and peoples in
Christ.
29. Yet even when the monastics remain
completely unknown the eyes of the world,
they lack nothing in brilliance and glory
in the presence of God. Rather, as precious
pearls, they radiate even more, in order to
be glorified by God and glorify Him, when He
is magnified in the day of His universal
appearance. In the diptychs of their hearts
they unceasingly commemorate as many names
as they remember from the time they were in
the world, without knowing any longer which
are alive and which have fallen asleep. And
with themselves, through their tears, they
lift up humanity for compassion and mercy
before the lover of Man. These are the
friends of God of whom Elisha the Tishbite
was ignorant, when he was complaining to
Jehovah that he was the only one left of the
prophets. They are kings, teachers, masters,
elders, fathers, able to give birth to
holiness and to bless those who bless God.
"Stretching out their arms in the form of a
cross" blessing the four corners of the earth;
they are hidden, like Melchizedek in the cave
of Mr. Tabor, able to be seen and venerated
sometime perhaps only by some "chance"
Abraham.
30. All these which we said, myth. dears,
about the prayer of the Mountain, build up
the Church, as the rushing waters of the
river making glad the city of God.
31. And certainly, now, I consider your open
eyes and hearts, asking: Aand as for us?
What relationship do wee have with all this?
What profit is there in our blood, in h our
descent into the corruption of our sins and
our inability and our inescapable isolation?
Out of all this, what is possible bring into
our lives, turning a message into an
experience? Such questions. and just as many
others, are very natural.
32. But if at this strange report of such
paradoxical things we don't say, together
with the Athenians: "We will hear thee again
of this matter." and we don't condemn all
these as "new devils" before even hearing
them, but are among those who seek God in
every place of His dominion, then, really,
my respected friends, all these will belong
within our capacity.
33. In the way, where we will be seeking or
discussing Him, we will meet Him - or rather,
the meetings and greeting will prevent us,
those of Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary, who
will be bearing in Her arms, as our dowry,
all those sweet-tasting, unwithering and
God-formed fruits, all those that we
described, and all those that "eye hath seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man , from Her most excellent
garden on the earth. From the Holy Mountain
of Athos.
34. As Paul was sent by Christ to Ananias,
as Mary Magdalene was sent by the resurrected
One who she had seen to evangelize the Eleven,
so we also: in our search, as long as we
wander in this vale of tears, when we meet
His traces, or we are blinded by the
unbearable blaze of His light, we will
discover that we are not alone. Many others,
a people chosen and prepared, with
torch-bearing maidens going before, surround
us in the journey of our souls to God. And
even, as some exceptional enabling gift, as
a refreshing cloud and a manifest pillar of
fire enlightening the polyphonic, roaring, so
well-lit and yet so dark desert of this
individualistic space age of ours, prayer,
the prayer of Holy Mountain, will transfigure
our hope into vision. It will free us secretly
from the bonds of our rationalism and
self-sufficiency, like the demon-possessed of
the Gadarenes from his chains, and the
resurrected Lazarus from his graveclothes.
35. Then, when our eyes are opened, we will
see that over our heads battling and casting
down the strongholds of the evil one are
angelic powers of the majesty of Heaven. And
when we seek God again many times, then our
feet will be established, confident in the
Lord since we will discover that His friends,
His disciples and servants, are preparing
portions and seats at the marriage feast of
the Son of God the King, for us personally.
36. When, by seeking the Lord, someone escapes
from the spectrum and the barrier of the
world, he or she meets those warriors of God,
like David's soldiers, like those around the
zealot savior of Israel Simon Maccabees, who
sleep with their belt girded about them like
men, with their sandals bound on drinking
water out of the cup of their hands. "These
are they which follow the Lamb, whithersoever
He goeth", ready to abandon even the Mountain
itself and to leave, for God, for Whom they
were set apart, free of everything, certain
of the hope that is set before - which causes
them, entirely surrendered to God, to lay
down the last cry of their souls, as they
pray or walk, as they eat or rest, as they
sleep or converse, as they chant to Him or
worship Him, with books open on their laps.
And so then they are translated from the
earthly to the heavenly - "to the heavenly,
to the heavenly", as one great Father of the
Church said when he died.
37. Like a queen bee, buzzing with life, the
Monasticism of Holy Mountain, which "Eastern
Orthodox Monasticism" from the beginning,
surrounds Christ the King, closely observing
His every gesture and movement, in order to
possess Him, in order to follow Him.
38. You could still say: "What are the
everyday applications and the practical
extensions to us, from all that has been
said?" Oh, but what else! If you have faith
about all this, already you have the
possibility as well. For then automatically
and by their own power these things influence
us inside and embrace our spirit and connect
our souls to the source of Life. Our intimacy
with the coming kingdom develops without,
however, observation through the criteria of
our scientific knowledge. A certain audacity
suffices: from the darkness in which we were
born, not to be afraid and not to refuse the
light that approaches and shines around us.
To have the disposition and the power to lift
up our heads, because our redemption is at
hand. An elementary imitation of the monks
dauntless daring and their acrobacy between
heaven and earth constitutes the most
important equipment for a point of departure.
39. A review and account of our lives. A bold
leap, a heroic vault and a decisive passage
through the doors that separate us from the
space and the communion of those "written in
heaven", "the firstborn in Jerusalem", where
they eat and drink Christ, exactly as He was
given up and gave Himself to His holy Disciples
and Apostles, and they transmitted to the
Church of their successors and our only
genuine fathers, the Saints.
40. Further, an asceticism and ceaseless
abandonment to the Spirit: daily concrete
encounter, a specific appointment with God,
short or long, at night or in the early
morning, with the elements of the invocations
of His name, of worship of His glory, of
tracking Him and studying Him in the Holy
Scriptures and the lives of His Saints, in
the texts that deliver God to us. A reformation
and regulation of our lives, for spiritual
scrutiny.
41. And He who sends His angels to His servants
- Philip to Candace's steward, Paul to Thekla,
Raphael to Tobias, the angel who gave food
and drink to the desolate prophet, how easily
He can relate you, the friends of the Holy
Mountain, with those having the office of the
Apostles, His monks. And if someone gets to
know a monk, then, like him who was conversing
with St. Seraphim of Sarov, he or she enters
into, or rather is comprehended by, the
dimension of his prayer. His bones are
sweetened and enriched. In the light shall
he see light.. Because the hand of the monk
who hears him is firm, since he has contended
with Satan in the desert; and he seized God,
like Jacob, before the day dawned. He drank
vinegar from Hell and did not despair; he
drank water from Paradise and did not become
proud. He freely enters and exits the gates
of life with Him who treads behind the seven
candlesticks, as His confidential friend.
42. He who finds such a monk, discovers the
prototype of the human person, his own
much-desired reflection. Then, along with
the disciples of St. Pachomius the Great, the
citizen of the desert, he will cry out: "Come
let us follow him and die with him, for he
guides us rightly in the way of God". With
a confidence and an abandonment to him who,
previously, himself accepted to be drowned
in the abyss of the love of God. This love
guides the strong toward the weak, to give a
helping hand , but with the logic of God,
however, who knows how to honor the one in
need and stabilize the stormtossed. Then all
the feasts and joys and empires and
misfortunes of all people, of all ages,
pale and fade, because the joy-creating and
life-giving Christ draws near: the Lord of
all the kings of the earth, the gladness and
the cure of the most exhausted and
extinguished heart.
43. But if our lack of time or our ignorance,
our internal dichotomization, as "another law
in our members", or our rationalism, our
circumstances or our oppressing needs exclude
from us any brightening at all? Even the
slightest change? Ah, then, yet again, He
continues His visits to our Hell; to the
bottom of our well; to the "doors-having been
shut", uncommunicating and haunted tower of
our souls. Wherever each of us is, seeking
Him, we can meet Him. He is the one most near
us, our neighbor; the one hidden in our own
selves; the one identified with the person of
the other, our brother, our friend, our
child; our husband, our wife, our enemy. He
is there beside us, on our left or on our
right. Innocent, He is crucified for us, just
beside our own personal crucifixion. Only,
when we will recog, nize who he is, it will
be necessary to follow Him.
44. At this point let us say the most daring
thing.
45. If even in the Holy Mountain, nothing of
this exists? If the lamps and the lighthouses
have disappeared in the darkness? If the
pillars have all fallen down? If in coming
there one finds not even a crumb of life, but
is just kicked as if by a mule?
46. When we think this way, let us take into
consideration and delve into the behavior of
the Lord toward the Canaanite woman, of
Anthony the Great toward Paul the Simple.
Let us not hurry to judge and to draw
conclusions according to appearances,
according to our own limited impression and
from the isolated - or even repeated, it has
no significance - instances, that we might
meet with and become disappointed.
47. Once a monk under obedience in the
Monastery of the Great Lavra of Holy Mountain
died. The Abbot was secluded far away on the
other side of the Holy Mountain, and was not
in time to come. However, a little before
they were to bury the brother - whose relic
was giving off a very sweet smell - the hour
they were reading the last funeral prayers,
he stretched out his hand from the bier, and
as many ill persons as kissed it became well.
This fact was learned everywhere and for days
many people were coming to be healed. When
the Abbot was informed, he got angry. He
rushed to the monastery and with his staff
striking the dead hand, said banteringly to
his spiritual son: "You were crazy, monk,
when you were alive; and now that you've died,
you're even more crazy. Since with this which
you're doing, all the sick people in the
world will gather here, and the monastery
will be turned into a subway. Quick, pull in
your hand". And he who was obedient, even
after death, drew in his hand and was buried
with his fathers in the cemetery of the
monastery.
48. We finished. And if you like, from all
this let us keep these last, as a memento.
49. The monastic dress is the treasure-house
of the Church, that guards the legacy of the
Apostles. It is the mane and the neck of the
lion of Judah. The life that hides in its
folds is the life of Christ. The monastic
habit is, therefore) we would say, the garment
revealing God. It is woven theanthropically.
It is Christ's tunic woven from top to bottom
without seam by the most pure fingers of the
Virgin for Her Lord and Son.
50. Consequently, our last question,
previously, let it be met by the following
reality in the guise of an answer: the robe
of Christ was played for with the die of the
soldiers; it covered Pilate, until the first
apostle of the resurrection took it away from
him; it seemed that it was torn by Arius and
those like him always. Yet it remains
astonishing. Taboric and "uncreated", finally.
While the Holy Mountain is a basic element of
its uncontrived beauty and composition, since
the Lady Theotokos used it so exclusively.
And now, whatever the Holy Mountain hides and
whatever it has in it, is that much more
God's; as is undisputed among its inhabitants.
51. And for the Friends of the Holy Mountain,
what is left? There remains that Greek
saying which is really true: "The things of
friends are common." And so, who of you has a
complaint? But there is this, as well: the
criterion and proof of friendship is death on
behalf of one's friend. And the Holy Mountain
lives and bears the dying of the Lord Jesus.
For this it is beloved and lovely to
generations of generations. For what friend
can commune and rejoice in the friendship, if
he has not previously decided to experience
daily death on its behalf?
52. This is the secret and sacrament of the
life of Jesus.
EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS MONASTERY
322 00 THEBES BOEOTIA, GREECE.
email: ypsosis@fhc.org
Telephone: 30.226.2062265
Fax: 30.226.2062004
To send e-mail to the monastery, click the mailbox below:
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