Agion Oros - Mount Athos

Geronta as I remember him during my tenure at Athonias Ecclesiastical Academy, 1992 - 1996. The dearly departed Elder Meletios, for a series of years commencing 1953 was the teacher of Byzantine Music and Art at the Athonias Ecclesiastical Academy of Karies Agion Oros (Mount Athos). He gave his all and devoted countless hours of selfless service for his beloved students. All of his works, which he always avoided, publishing, were written specifically for the students of the Athonias Ecclesiastical Academy. He will be graciously gifted for all of his generous gifts of the Byzantine arts to generations of students by The Gift Giving Lord on the day of judgement. He settled on Agion Oros from a young age of 17 years old and was instilled with the traditional Athonite style of Byzantine music. He lived with the excellent chanters Deacon Dionisios Firfiris, Deacon John and others, who introduced Elder Meletios as their elder and their teacher. May the Most Holy Lord rest his soul in e...

Day Four: Saturday, 16 June — Iveron to the Great Lavra Having been warned against trying to hike the exceptionally tortuous and poorly marked footpath from Iveron to our next destination, the Holy Monastery of the Great Lavra, and not wishing to follow the only alternative land route—one of the newly bulldozed, and very dusty, forest roads, which would have taken us five hours or so—we elected to travel by water. One of the monks in the bookstore was kind enough to telephone the captain of a little boat (named “Saint Athanasios the Athonite”) that trolls up and down the coast of the peninsula shuttling pilgrims between the monasteries, and arrangements were made for us to be picked up at Iveron’s arsanas at 10:00 a.m. We had managed to find a couple of rather scrawny apples and a handful of raisins in the guest house and made a breakfast of these as we waited for the boat, which appeared about 10:20. It was a very quick trip of about thirty minutes down the coast to the port of ...

Day Three: Friday, 15 June — Stavronikita to Iveron We rose this morning at 5:00 a.m. to catch the end of Orthros and then the Liturgy. Since “breakfast” would not be served until mid-day, Father Palamas, knowing we needed to leave fairly early, kindly offered us some bread, homemade apricot jelly, and water, as we sat under the grape arbor   just outside the guesthouse. Another, older monk also gave Trevor a small cross he had fashioned from the seeds of olives. We had arranged the night before to share a “taxi” with four Greek pilgrims, rather than walking back up the same dusty road we came down yesterday. The taxis are eight-to-ten-person vans, some driven by monks, though in this case the driver was a layman. Arriving in Karyes around 9:00 a.m., we elected first to walk up the hill on the northeast side of the village to t he Skete of Saint Andreas ,  a dependency of Vatopedi that boasts the largest catholikon on the Mountain—owi ng in large part to the patronage of two...