A Visit To The Holy Mountain ATHOS, Greece

tonight on this Easter Sunday we're going to take you to a place outside our world it's not Mars or Venus but it might as well be it's a remote Peninsula in northern Greece that millions believe to be the most sacred spot on earth it's called Mount Athos and prayers have been offered here every day with no interruption for more than a thousand years it was set aside by ancient Emperor's to be the spiritual capital of Orthodox Christianity and has probably changed less over the centuries than any other inhabited place on the planet the monks come here from all over and do everything they can to keep what they call the world far away not surprisingly journalists are not exactly welcome for more than two years now we've been corresponding negotiating and frankly pleading for an invitation but ran into one monastic wall after another then much to our surprise and delight a few months ago the monk said ok come see who we are this Byzantine cross marks the border between Mount Athos and the 21st century the monks come here as they always have for the beauty the tranquility and the isolation but most of all for this video I and they said me my gal O'Neal said ass on the mother's father yeah kvass is one of the few Americans on American he's been here more than half his life you have to understand the words that were saying in today's liturgy are the same words that Christ was saying the same words that Saints from the first century the second century the third century the fourth century and nothing has changed in orthodoxy since then it's the only branch of Christianity that can make that claim father Allah say oasiz the abbot the top man at Simona's Petrus one of the 20 monasteries it was Abdullah sayers who invited us here and never let us forget what a rare privilege it was 18 in me of what of the healing of course hold on Bana it happened once in 1981 plus the last time you invited their television crew here was 1981 yeah correct we weren't going to invite you but your persistence convinced us to open the door the door he opened revealed the wonder that is Simona's Petrus which fits like a crown on top of the rock eight hundred feet above the Aegean it was built in the 14th century and the monks will tell you it must be considered a miracle that it hasn't fallen into the sea there are 20 monasteries on mount athos some look like medieval fortresses others are so large they resemble small cities they rise from virgin forests and line the coast shrouded in mist there's nothing on this 130 square mile Peninsula other than monasteries and monks nothing we expected Mount Athos to be a quiet place but we couldn't have imagined how quiet until we were dropped off here the silence is only broken by the occasional tapping on the chiseled piece of chestnut it's a call to prayer and it started being used here before there were bells Yantra people Riskin des Eaux a continent a monadic escapo the monks here have one goal and that is how to get closer to God farthest wrap Ian wanted us to understand that there is no place on earth closer to heaven than Mount Athos won't open a posse less ecclesia Scott American on the le Turia every day a thousand divine liturgies are celebrated on the peninsula in a monadic oh it's unique in the world and in the Orthodox Church exactly what makes it unique or politte Ostrow post is oystermen horn it's the absolute way of life of the monks it's a Spartan way of life but all the month we talked to said they never want to leave not even for a day so they try to be self-sufficient they grow their own fruits and vegetables through their own tailoring and when they get sick there's an N monastery dr. father Emilio's who's not very busy because the monks are an excellent shape there's remarkably little cancer virtually no heart disease or Alzheimer's they must be doing something right in addition to drinking wine at 9:00 in the mornings off of the affordance Neela's they eat two meals a day there is what they call the first meal which lasts ten minutes and the second meal which lasts ten minutes there's no meat and no dinner table conversation the only sound a monk reading from sacred texts we were surprised by how busy the monks are where they're not praying they're working father Theodosius born a Lutheran in Germany is a mechanical wizard who has given the monastery continuous electricity and occasional hot water many Christians in the world they are they are looking for for the original church you know for the ancient church you think this is the closest to the original Church yes when you come to Alex you will see it it has everything you ever sought for father of Vecchio's takes care of the ancient footpaths here he clears the trails we went with him on what was for us an exhausting hike on the hills above the monastery it wasn't tough for him though he says that after decades of roaming the world this is his path I've been to many places tell me where from Switzerland of course from Sweden Finland Spain Portugal Singapore Australia and Texas Exes how did you like Texas I liked very much I liked mostly the people there with all the tribe when you've done how did you end up here I was searching for a way of life I can give all of myself to that and I think the God of Jesus is above all the others man a lifestyle even family the family is semanas Petra's consists of 54 monks from eight countries father Yaakov ours came here 25 years ago from Winthrop Massachusetts this beautiful as it gets I think so he took us on a tour of the monastery it'd be tough enough to build a monastery on top of a rock today but how did they do it in the 13th century you know that's something which even modern day architects are amazed at when the workers came and saw the site were Saint Simon the founder of our monastery wanted to build they looked at him they said you crazy are you crazy worse so being crazy was not a bad thing no not at all now back then how did you get stuff up here we have mules it takes 15 minutes to walk through the monastery into the sunlight enough time to find out that father Yaakov OSes journey to Mount Athos started at the age of six when his father showed him a picture it was just so impressive and I turned one I said to him dad you know I don't think that I'm gonna be able to believe that somebody lives in that building until I step on those balconies myself destiny it is a little bit from the age of six yes father Yaakov ohs doesn't follow what's going on in winthrop or anywhere else today there are no newspapers no radio no television on Mount Athos there are a few telephones and father yacouba's got a call last year his father was dying prior to his death he was asking if I would go so I could see him one last time reasonable request from a father I think so my response was negative though you didn't go I didn't go I didn't go because of the fact that monastics do not go to funerals of the relatives or their friends they remain here at the monastery when your father asked you to come see him one last time and you said no was there any feeling of them letting my father down not at all I know that we're going to see each other in paradise one day the whole idea at Mount Athos is not only to isolate oneself from the outside world but to let go of all memories of one's past life the purpose of your being here as I understand it is prayer without destruction I'm not being distracted now why here why you're laughing first first tell me why you're laughing why am i laughing because Saint Paul says what to pray unceasingly what's funny about that that's not what's funny about it what's funny is how you think I can stop praying you're praying every minute of the day even right now when we're talking really of course you don't see father Yakov O's praying while he's talking but look at these other monks their lips never stop moving not for a second they just keep reciting the Jesus Prayer day and night Lord Jesus have mercy on me it becomes like breathing someone say they can pray when they sleep and they get no more than three hours sleep a night but Mount Athos gets more applicants than it can handle it's harder to get into than Harvard the man comes as a novice he's free to leave if he doesn't like it and the monks can tell him to leave if they don't like him when a novice arrives here can you tell whether he's gonna make it or not can you tell whether he's gonna qualify to be a monk Hey okey para burn up or relaxed or not look at the Levin omen after a while it becomes pretty obvious whether or not someone is cut out for it which is why we have a trial period which can last up to three years I bet you know a lot sooner than three years diverse certainly once he's accepted into the community it's a lifetime commitment and life never changes here never every day at 3:00 in the morning a single bell rings informing the brothers that is time to stop praying on their own and start praying in church on a typical day and everyday is a typical day the services last eight hours the monks say it's an eight-hour conversation with God a dress rehearsal for eternity and remember this doesn't only happen on Sundays it happens every day 365 days a year a monk never gets a day off this is the Divine Liturgy the life of Christ celebrated by men whose only passion is to move closer to Christ every day the depth of their devotion defies description they didn't look like the same monks we admit in the gardens in the workshops they were utterly transformed with a concentration so profound they were immune from distraction there were occasional flashes of ecstasy this old monk could have risen out of a Rembrandt Voula men process gesture to Sandra's empathy dough there are no musical instruments in the church just chanting chanting without end because that see or some male many of the voices the basis in particular could have made it at the met we didn't understand the words we didn't really have to this phrase we knew lord have mercy the most miraculous thing about Mount Athos when we return you what is the relationship between Mount Athos and Greece Mount Athos is an autonomous self-administered region within the territory of Greece in the early part of the 20th century when after Mount Athos was liberated from the Ottoman Empire its Charter was included within the Greek Constitution which recognizes its special sort of privileged status as a kind of autonomous region as I've said you don't vote in Greek elections no no can you hold office in Greek government no no there's any monk from Mount Athos old office in the Greek government certainly not you're sort of an independent republic well we're not a sovereign state we're not as its it would be mistaken to say that we're a state within a state I mean from its very origins Mount Athos has always been a territory within a state so it was initially a territory within the Byzantine Empire later it was territory within the Ottoman Empire and now it's territory within a modern Greece but it's a self-administered autonomous territory self-administered self-governing right what respect is it not a republic well we don't have our own banking system we don't have it we don't have an ambassadorial sort of system we don't issue our own currencies and all of the things that people think of when they think of a sovereign state you issue your own visas we needed a visa because we before we could come visit you you're referring to the sort of the piece of paper with a colorful stamp on it that's a yeah it's what it took for us to get on the boat right this is this is this is the holy mountains of permission that's given to visitors and pilgrims but it's not it doesn't have the kind of status that that it's not stupid on stamp your passport in other words right in that respect you are or in several respects you're different from the Vatican in several and many and some would say in all the most miraculous thing about Mount Athos may simply be the fact that it's still there over the centuries it's been invaded by Crusaders Ottomans mercenaries pirates and Franks the Nazis had their eyes on it to the two thousand monks attribute their survival not surprisingly to divine intervention but they've also been pretty crafty some of the measures they've taken will surprise you if you'd like to come for a visit though it can be arranged but it's not easy first you'll need a visa issued by the monks and unless you're an Orthodox pilgrim it can take a while next you'll fly to Athens and make your way to a scruffy little town in northern Greece where there's no airport and where the roads are dicey then you hop on a ferry unless a trip has been canceled because of rough seas that happens all the time but on a calm day it can be a very pleasant ride the monks will tell you it takes years of prayer and soul-searching before they're ready to leave the world from Mount Athos for the likes of us though it takes a little more than an hour it was the beginning of Lent when we took these pictures and the ferry was packed with pilgrims from all over the Orthodox Christian world Greeks Bulgarians Serbs Romanians Russians it wasn't long before the first monasteries came into view and we thought we were sailing to Byzantium to a fantasy land of castles and palaces we were headed for vato paving one of the oldest and largest monasteries on Mount Athos it had the feel of a medieval city holiness seemed to seep from the very stones from the frescoes on the tenth century church from the marble font for holy water but then there was the monastery secular looking centerpiece there's nothing remarkable about the clock tower to Votto petit monastery except for one thing check out the time it's just about 8:30 now my watch reads 230 that's a six hour difference and there's nothing wrong with their clock or with my watch it's because the monks on Mount Athos keep Byzantine time the day starts at sunset not at midnight the monks measure time this way during the days of the Dizon teen Empire that's the Christian Empire that followed the fall of Rome and that's the flag they still fly here how long ago did the Byzantine Empire fall here the dark wash up in under 3 F 1453 that's a well-known fact well it wasn't to us but to fathers rampion 1453 is the day before yesterday this peninsula is the only place in the world that still keeps byzantine time era left another lohia it has maintained this time for some 550 years was a beautiful baby it was harvest time when we arrived and dozens of monks were hard at work in the olive groves on the hills overlooking the monastery that's where we ran into father Nick and rose from Melbourne Australia this place looks like a like a summer resort like a holiday resort s like a retreat that's not it's an arena it's an arena yes what do you mean ants a wolf a unseen warfare that's right what does that mean before against the angels of the dark side you see the demon of the devil there Satan the battle against Satan and the darkside is waged here every day the spiritual leader at vato pegging is Abbot Ephraim yamete is really storm here the life of Christ is experienced in a genuine way and this doesn't happen in many other places in the world what I'm talking about is the art of salvation it just so happened that while we were there the monks celebrated an elaborate seven-hour vigil and the church was packed with code rooms it's held once a year to honor the ark angels Gabriel and Michael according to the Bible Gabriel and Michael led the army of angels that expelled Satan from heaven the church's relics are brought out every day and pilgrims ask for the blessing of the Saints the most sacred relic on the entire peninsula is in this case fabric said to be part of a garment worn by the Virgin Mary the irony is as well the mother of god is revered here no other woman is permitted to even set foot on Mount Athos it's been like that for a thousand years the reason according to Orthodox doctrine is that Christ gave the peninsula to his mother and all other women have been excluded so as to fully honor the Virgin Mary it's also been said that in the days before the ban when women did come here the monks became distracted and couldn't devote themselves entirely to prayer they say it's been a lot easier since the last lady left keeping women out certainly wasn't much of a problem three four hundred years ago do you feel that's becoming problematic today oh you know I don't think so because the monastery itself and all the land around it is our property and if we don't want women coming onto our property we have every right to do that can't oppose maybe the last all-male Bastion in the world and father Arsenio says it has to stay that way stone the whole raft oh yeah here we are concerned solely with purity and our elevation to Eternity and the rock music women are permitted they bring their families and their children this place would become a tourist attraction and no longer a place of silence if we wanted to experience profound silence were advised to go to Stavrou nakita it's the smallest monastery on the holy mountain but it has some of the most remarkable treasures you stained the silence just by walking in there's no electricity here so the icons and mosaics are illuminated only by shafts of sunlight and a few candles Saint Nicholas the patron st. John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary we were stunned by the magnificence of the art here but then we ran into father Maximus a former professor at the Harvard Divinity School he told us what we were seeing cannot be described as art their devotional objects and their part of the living liturgical life of the church so we don't have any art and we're not a museum I mean to have to put it starkly whatever you call it it's priceless that's why the monasteries have been invaded and plundered so many times over the centuries the monks most recent brush with history happened only 70 years ago the Nazis were coming their way in the spring of 1941 the Germans invaded and occupied a Greece they marched up the Acropolis raised the swastika beside the Parthenon and were about to invade the monks asked for a meeting with Nazi officers who advised them to appeal to Hitler himself and the monks wrote a letter a letter was written and in the letter the monks identified themselves they say this is who we are and they asked Hitler to place the holy mountain under his personal protection what kind of response did you get well it seems that Hitler liked the idea and accepted the invitation to become the personal protector of the holy mountain let me just get that straight Hitler the personal protector of the holy mountain that's right that's right I'm totally gonna get a pop under Hitler did send a team of German academics to Mount Athos they took 1,800 pictures of the mountains treasures and it wasn't because they enjoyed photography Hitler wanted the monasteries riches in Berlin the professor's were sent as an advance team to catalogue the treasures of the holy mountains so that a selection of things could be made to be removed didn't happen to know it didn't not a single thing was taken father Maximus believes they have the Russians to thank for that that by the time the Nazi scholars completed their work Hitler was bogged down in Russia and wasn't thinking about icons that Nazi period has been largely forgotten here to the monks it was just one more blip on the road and a small one at that today vatopedi is the most popular destination on the mountain it hosts 35,000 pilgrims a year and offers more than spiritual sustenance the monks have their own fishing boats and the catch is pretty good the fish are served fresher than in any Greek restaurant the refectory dates from the 12th century and since the 12th century the food here has been free photo pepe has been supported by rich benefactors emperors princes kings and today partially by pilgrims with deep pockets who commissioned icons in the making but the ancient treasures not a chance they can't even see them they're under lock and key it's not a new security system but it works normally it takes more than one monk to unlock the door because no one monk is allowed to have all four keys at the same time it's sort of a medieval version of the nuclear launch control to keep those keys in your pocket funner try not to father Matthew from Fond du Lac Wisconsin was given the abbot's blessing to let us into the inner sanctum once inside there was still another hidden door behind the curtain we walked into the world of the Xanthian it was hard to imagine that everything here was at least 600 years old because the billions had not faded there are almost 4,000 icons stored in this monastery alone Wow the highlight a 14th century icon of Christ every monk will tell you the sole purpose of life on Mount Athos is to get closer to Christ every day and they say total union with Christ is only possible when they leave this world proto pragmatic an honest man of course in an epistle sonnet the first thing a monk does is embrace and love death embrace and love death yet the asana dose because death is the ticket to the other life without a ticket you can't travel where do you get to take it and those days are you have team in this life that's what we do each day we prepare for death yato backsides much pasta murano and we are joyful about our journey to heaven right father Matthew offered to take us to the transit point between this world in heaven when a monk dies he's buried until there's nothing left but bones then he's brought to where every monk who's ever lived here ends up the ossuary any idea how many skulls are out here thousands not sure how many thousands any idea how far they go back the ones here would be to the 16th century when you look at the yes you arey what comes to mind mostly I see that this is where I'm going to be I always like to say these are my future roommates there was nowhere for us to go from there so we headed back to the mainland the monks invited us to come back any time and if we do or if our grandsons or great-grandsons Doom after 10 days here this much we believe nod Athos will not have changed at all this place is built like a fortress yes it really is why well there are two basic reasons ones symbolic of course and one is practical I suppose we should begin with a symbolic reason it's because of the fact that monasteries are fortresses they're bastions of the Orthodox faith does everyone on the other side of these waters live in sin of course not that's why because we also still remain in the world where were apostles of Christ you know he said his apocalypse not be biblical it's very practical impetus you don't have television no live radio no you don't have newspapers no you're trying to keep the world out we're trying to keep sending out evil

Channel: Orthodox Notes

Views: 483,497

Rating: 4.8820448 out of 5

Keywords: athos, mount athos, byzantine music, orthodox monks, orthodoxnotes

Id: 5D8OxrSZZU8

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I too watched this when I was thinking about converting. I love how befuddled the reporter is by the whole thing.

[u/DarryLarrell]

I watch this about every 6 months. Wish there were more great videos/pieces out there. There are a few but I’m always searching for more haha.

[u/AdaBwana]

how do i apply?

[u/Whimyniki]

Do you know when this was originally recorded/aired?

[u/wisdomattend]

How did you stumble across the video?