Living in Greece, Part 05

Sunday, 05 September

This day has lifted my mood, considerably.

We attended the Church of St. Anthony, where Fr. Zisis is the priest. He looks at once kindly and rather fierce, with his big, gray eyebrows; and he has a long, gray beard and short, curly, white hair. He preached on love, emphasizing that Christians are to love everybody, not just their own families or ethnic groups. And he said no other religion than Christianity was truly philanthropic (loving toward mankind).

The church building is ancient, but I couldn’t tell you how ancient. Byzantine, though. It probably was originally struccoed, but the rendering has been worn away by wind and water, and the stones now show through. Inside, it is rather small, holding about 150 to 200 people with a degree of comfort. The floor is of marble, and the icons are rather, well, rudimentary. The ceiling has exposed beams and above those, a slightly arched ceiling decorated with what looks like folk art. Little squares with medallions in their centers. Another section of the ceiling, above another aisle, has parallelograms in red, blue, and yellow; and yet another long section of ceiling simply has stripes in those same colors. A child could have painted the entire, and that’s exactly what is so touching. Somebody without great skill nevertheless did his very best to honor God.

The pulpit, near the ceiling and reached by stairs that look more like a ladder, is disused. But it’s octagonal, with more of the lovely painted folk art, mostly curlicues, vines, blossoms. It is complete with a place to lay an open book, on the back and spread wings of a carved dove, which in turn sits upon an outstretched human fist. (?)

The most important feature of the church is probably the miraculous icon of the Mother of God. I’ve told you the story of it before, but it’s worth repeating.

One night in 1945, five Greek resistance fighters were being closely pursued by the German SS when they ducked into this church and begged the priest for sanctuary. (He was known to have helped other resistance fighters before.) It’s a small church; there are no hiding places. But Fr. Parthenios (I think that was his name) told them to hide behind the icon of the Theotokos. We’re talking now about five adult men trying to hide behind an icon perhaps two feet wide and three feet tall, at most. In a few moments the Germans were in the church. They forced Fr. Parthenios to light all the oil lamps, which sill left the church quite dim. They switched on their flashlights, which shone right on the face of one of the Greeks. But although they searched and searched, the Germans never found the resistance fighters.

Later, in thanksgiving, the icon was covered in silver, except for the faces and hands, and today it sits in a special shrine, very fancy, painted red and shiny gold. Unless I’m mistaken, the shrine is new since we were here last.

Did the icon work the miracle? Or did the Theotokos? Or did God?

These questions all make the mistake of presupposing an either-or answer. God did the miracle, of course. But God entrusts various ministries to His servants. Furthermore, the holiest of His servants are in such communion with Him, so close to Him, so full of the Holy Spirit, so like Him, that God works in and through them, just as Christ promised, telling His disciples they would work wonders greater than He was working. Moreover, we do not suppose God’s reposed servants to be dead, but still very much alive in Him. In accordance with His promise, they never taste death. “He who believes in Me shall never die…” God does many wonders through His saints, both those we can still see and those we (usually) cannot.

And yes, these servants of God may use material objects, any material objects, to minister to us. Christ used mud and spit. St. Paul’s aprons and handkerchiefs were sent around to the sick, for healing. People sought out St. Peter’s very shadow for the same reason. And sometimes icons are the locus of miracles today.

There were a lot more people in the church than could comfortably fit, as the people know a wonderful priest when they encounter one; so although Demetrios went right on in, I couldn’t. Tightly packed crowds bother me and I begin to feel I can’t breathe. I don’t feel afraid, just miserable. I’m not afraid of small, enclosed spaces such as elevators, either, just crowds, but I suppose that still qualifies as claustrophobia. It grows worse with age. So I mostly stayed in the glassed-in narthex that has been added to the front of the church, and was able to hear almost everything.

Unfortunately, I was quite eager to get out of there afterwards, when the crowds began filling the narthex, so we had no time to look for Constantina and the others we met last time. I didn’t even take the time to do what I wanted very much to do, take the *antidoron from Father Zisis; but Demetrios brought me a piece.

We decided to walk to St. Sophia Square and have a bite to eat there. So we took a table as shady as we could find and enjoyed watching sparrows bathe in the nearby fountain.

Times are hard. It used to be that in the course of your meal in a sidewalk cafe, one or two street vendors and/or beggars would come around soliciting. Today I lost count of how many, but we sat there well over an hour and they came, on average, at least every 10 minutes: African men selling beads, young Chinese women selling cheap toys and trinkets, old men selling lottery tickets, Albanian beggar women with the invariable baby.

One old man came limping along and a woman at a table near ours began shouting at him. “The cane! What’s the cane for, old man? I saw you earlier and you didn’t have a cane, and you were walking perfectly well without one! You no more need a cane than I do!”

As it was a glorious day, very warm but with a breeze, we decided to walk down to the waterfront to have dessert.

But on the way we passed the Metropolitan Church, the Church of St. Gregory Palamas, and outside it was a crowd of people dressed as if for a wedding. “Let’s stop and watch!” I said. “It looks as if these people are waiting for the bride and groom to come out.”

So we stopped and watched, but nothing happened. So we were about to leave when I had another idea, a naughty one. I said, “Let’s go mingle with the crowd and let that photographer include us in his pictures of all the guests! Give the happy couple something to puzzle over when they see the wedding photos!” I was surprised when Demetrios went along with this prank.

We went inside the church, too, where a woman standing in the doorway slipped a little bracelet on my wrist, a cleverly tied contraption of adjustable pink cord, with a pink plastic cross, signifying the christening of a little girl. It’s something like a party favor; it also identifies you as one of the party when you arrive at the reception.

We weren’t wedding crashers after all; we were baptism crashers!

We only stayed a few minutes, leaving during the initial prayers (the triple exorcism) but we did venerate the relics of St. Gregory before we left. (I know, I know. That sounds totally incongruous, doesn’t it?) His bones are in a magnificent coffin, all done up in elaborately-formed brass, sitting atop an equally ornate plinth. The top of the coffin has one corner cut away, as it were, with a square of glass instead of brass, through which you can see one or two large, brown bones, as in arm bones, perhaps.

I love venerating those bones, because I am always conscious of what a huge debt we owe to St. Gregory Palamas, this native son of Thessaloniki, this defender of the Orthodox faith against those who attacked its very core by denying a person could actually have any firsthand experience of God; this Saint who, to that end, articulated perhaps better than anyone before (although they preached and wrote it, too) the distinction between God as Noun, forever unknowable, incomprehensible, and unreachable; and God as Verb, Whom we can know in the most intimate communion, with Whom we can be fully one, in Whom we can be glorified and made like Him.

Then we took our refreshment beside the sea. We watched it turn from gray to blue as the day brightened and brightened; we watched the sparkles dance on its surface; we watched the cargo ships riding at anchor outside the docking area and the tug boats and ferries making their way across the water.

We remembered how my purse was stolen last time we sat here. (This time, as ever since then, it was hanging by a shoulder strap across my neck, not to be removed except back at the house.)

After a most pleasant interlude, we walked a couple of blocks to catch a bus that took us home.

Near our own stop, Demetrios made a small detour to show me something he discovered yesterday: an old drawer laid under a thick shrub, containing a small blanket and kittens. There was only one there as we approached, about 8 weeks old, snoozing. I reached over and petted its head, very gently, and it let me – until it woke up, and then it became skittish. A darling kitty, charcoal gray with four white paws and white chin and belly. I am glad someone is looking after it.

In the late evening, we took another stroll through our neighborhood and along the waterfront, enjoying the feel of the city, still alive and bustling at night. Even small children were still up, playing in the park, riding their bicycles, walking with their dogs. People’s windows were open, their televisions sometimes on, their conversations drifting out into the street. Some shops were open (yes, on a Sunday night) and we spent a longish time looking through the window of a secondhand/antique shop. (Among the other antiques we saw a telephone exactly like one of ours in Richmond, which gave us quite a laugh.) The owner came out and conversed with us for a while.

Delightful to be among them all and part of it all.