Orthodox Pivot

The text from the tomb a former metropolitan of Thessaloniki reads “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life” Revelation 2:10.

My Saturday afternoon trip into town was an epitome of the dynamic my time in Greece – setting out in search of clues from the ancient past only to be confronted with vital and mystical signs from the present. My destination was the crypt at Ayios Dhimitrios, the cathedral church bearing the name of Thessaloniki’s patron saint, Dimitri. I had been there once before but without my camera and my phone camera was not up to the job of picking up much of the material on display in the subterranean gloom, so now my goal was to squeeze every ounce of information from the this fourth century treasure trove.

On arrival at Ayios Dhimitrios, a firmly locked wooden door at the bottom an unlit flight of steps put paid to my plans, and I went and sat in the nave of the church. Soon I had the feeling I had entered some sort of time warp or was on the set of an adaptation of a Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky novel - vigorous young men with tied back dark hair, whispy beards, dark eyes, high cheek bones and somewhat pinched looks on their faces appeared from the entrance making their way from the veneration of one icon to another and then paying long respects to the remains of Dhimitri himself. It was as if one of those old black and white pictures from the Tsar’s Russia had come to life. I was mesmerised by the spectacle feeling the whole culture and history of a people crystallised in these busy, mysterious figures. Images filled my mind of an austere and simple life in the dry openness of the summer steppe, and of such men in snow clad churches clothed in golden vestments chanting the liturgy by candlelight in the dark and perishing cold of winter – a harsh but determined existence, so far removed from the comforts and mild climate I grew up with. This was the atmosphere of almost physical proportions that took hold on me and left me trying to capture it in some discreet way with my camera. (By the way, St Cyril, who developed the script used in Slavic lands, was from Thessaloniki)

After moving on from there I was treated to amazing views of Mount Olympus across the gulf. There was sort of purplish light and then the sun emerged as it began to set and got caught in some kind of mist, creating a yellow wedge across the middle of the vista. Again I made some photographic efforts, which may give some hint as to the nature of the spectacle.

An experience rich 60 minutes culminated a less elating but no less significant event. I made my way up the next stretch of the hill to the Byzantine Church of the Prophet Elijah. The doors were open and the lights were on which is usually the sign with these smaller churches that a liturgy or other service is in progress. This was indeed the case, and I went in, as is often my custom, to observe for a while. Apart from a woman sitting in the shadow beside the door and those involved in the service, the building was, as far as I could see, empty. I stood in a quite central location, and the minute a woman who was moving the candles and microphones saw me she came straight up to me saying something to the effect that I couldn’t look at the church whilst the service was in progress. I explained that I was not a tourist (although I obviously looked like one), I regularly visited churches, was in contact with a priest and so on. We moved outside to continue the conversation and it emerged that the priest there insists that there be no non-orthodox in the building during services. I reasoned with her for a while along the lines of what happens elsewhere and the logical consequences of such a position might have in terms of people finding out more about orthodoxy, and then went my somewhat bemused but not entirely surprised way.

This morning I went to the suburban church where Father Gregory is based and I have the opportunity to speak to the chorister. Fr Gregory was somewhat amused when he heard about the incident and tried to phone the assistant priest at Elijah, whom he knew. Thanis, the chorister, mentioned an old tradition of catechumens being required to leave the liturgy at a certain point, which he doesn’t think is practised today – he went on to say that every religion has its Taliban.

The text from the tomb a former metropolitan of Thessaloniki reads “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life” Revelation 2:10.