Vatopedi Holy Monastery on "My Greek Odyssey"

you would think that the greek islands are a laid-back place where time is insignificant and for the most part you'll be absolutely correct but there's one place in this region where appointments must be kept where there are strict rules that have lasted for over 1100 years to visit this place we needed a permit which was organized many months before there are also stringent clothing regulations meaning no shorts or short sleeves so the usual beach garb was packed away if you want to step foot on this hallowed ground there's a number of other restrictions you must adhere to also all of which exist to maintain the sanctity of the place the location i'm referring to is mount athos where 20 monasteries sit on a 300 square kilometer peninsula it's about as holy a slice of earth as you can find anywhere and a location i've long wanted to visit not particularly from a religious point of view but to see what all the hubbub and mystery is about very excited right now we're about two hours drive from thessaloniki man athos is right behind us 50 kilometers of peninsula seven kilometers wide this boat's going to take us there because you can't go by road special spot now better get going my priest waiting for me i better go we're just having a few issues trying to get on because cameras are not allowed on mount ethos all sorts they know that we're taking the camera and we can't hide that you know but we've got we've got we've got a letter from we've got that letter haven't you despite all the paperwork and agreements in place we still had to negotiate our way aboard countless phone calls to various powers cajoling by captain yani request from our office in athens to the head abbott and we were finally given permission to board the ferry mind you it does help when you tell them that you've flown your parish priest all the way from australia to escort you [Music] or father g as some of us know him he's my parish priest his brother is a monk at mount athos so who better to take me on this segment of my odyssey so you haven't seen your brother for five years we're going to see him today what are the emotions like separation feels like someone's passed away but the great joy is that you get to see them every now and then five years that's not every now and then father that's right all right so so what is the emotion it's right now how do you feel it it's measured anticipation and i've got to tell you major anticipation for me because i've read a lot about man ethos but i'm not too sure what to expect a lot of men obviously well it's all men and uh mount athos is a place of uh full spiritual commitment and dedication uh to the spiritual life major sacrifice sacrifice all the wealthy things the property the money and they maintain their virginity as well yeah coming into the monastery of waterpedi sent shivers down my spine to say i was blown away is an understatement my first thought was that i wished helen was there to share that feeling with me but that could never happen we'd do everything together and i know she like my mother would have loved this spiritual journey well the monastery in its present form was built in the late 10th century and it was one of the first monasteries built on the holy mountain of the present era there was a monastery that existed here before that time which according to the tradition had been built by the emperor theodosius the great in the late 4th century on the place of a church built by constantine the great a few years before that is the largest monastery in greece today as far as the the volume of its buildings go it has about 10 000 square meters of living space and number of monks number of monks so right now we're about 125. how does that rank in the uh on the mountain it's the largest brotherhood in greece wow and uh and we're still growing when i when i came here in 1993 we were about 40 so the monastery has tripled [Music] this was more than just a step back in time it was a leap through the ages the architecture was medieval and spectacular the stillness absolute quiet and simplicity were unlike anything i'd experienced before i felt humbled it's definitely the perfect setting for meditation collecting of thoughts and of course prayer you know the common denominator i see in the mount athos monastery is these big thick defensive walls in the first two centuries of settlement here in mount athos there were 180 monasteries and 20 000 monks and the only ones that survived through the crusades and pirate attacks were these large monasteries with these big defensive walls the monks actually used to defend themselves from all these pirate attacks for the next 800 years the monks learnt to negotiate an armistice with their conquerors and that's why they survived these 1100 years these monasteries have had to endure many difficult times over the last 11 centuries they've survived all types of crisis from economic and political to the forces of nature and several wars today vast numbers of pilgrims visit the monasteries in search of healing solace and meditation others simply want to get away from the rat race and collect their thoughts but most come here to be surrounded by the beautifully adorned buildings and reboot their spiritual journey in life making this your home is a major commitment only eating twice a day praying for five hours in the morning and having no women on the island would test even the most about i definitely wouldn't last long here the work that has been done here for the last three decades has been remarkable and and how many monks are in here now it's about 123 and together with those monks there'd be anywhere between 50 and 500 visitors daily and how many monks were there back in the 80s and 90s there weren't many were there in the 80s there were about 10 monks left after a period of decline during the 20th century and now there's over a hundred so it's really shot up isn't it since the 90s with the coming of a new brotherhood which had new life and i think the average age even now is about 35. that's impressive it's something you wouldn't expect here a lot of people think monks you know monasteries everybody's old but there's a lot of young people here there are and they're actually quite educated university trained i mean your brother howl's your brother my brother is uh in his mid-thirties and um he was universally trained himself in australia and he came here uh almost a decade ago so they're all young people it's something you wouldn't expect it's it's an amazing thing i'm dying to find out why there's so many young guys coming here to give their life to sacrifice everything for the rest of their lives here in the monastery i'm dying to mind you i'm dying to go into that place and have some something should we go let's do that first let's go the monks live by a code that centers around the celebration of god and a life of contemplation and sacrifice their daily life is a product of this code and an example of its simplicity is their meals the food is very raw generally some fruit vegetables lentils and fish once a week [Music] i don't think i've ever been in a dining hall this old it's a thousand years old just these marble tops they're 1500 years old they were given to vatorpedi from a monastery in constantinople from 4th century [Music] the abbot sits down there with the priests all the monks sit in this space here the pilgrims sit back there moments from now everybody will be in here it'll be full i better grab a seat right now because i'm starved ready to go oh kiwi fruit in mount athos [Music] it felt a little awkward being served by a man of the cloth but that's the way it is here monks grow and collect the vegetables from the field they cook everything and then serve you if you studied as an accountant lawyer or doctor and want to take up life as a mum then that's what you'll most probably be tasked with at the monastery this place is a living breathing city it's almost totally self-sustained they rely very little on the outside world the majority of the food is grown here they make their own clothes provide basic medical treatment maintain their equipment and have minimal influence from beyond the monastery walls you could easily see it as limiting but for those that live here this minimalist life is liberating and if there's one thing i learned from this experience when you eat only twice a day the food tastes that much better [Music] life for a monk in the pilgrims in athos it's an early morning and a long day the bells just went off at three o'clock and we even get snooze buttons there's a guy a monk hitting sticks every 10 minutes to make sure you wake up for prayer now we're not going to go to prayer we're actually going to go to the kitchen and see him cooking fish this morning so i've no one being quiet because everybody's up if the monk with the sticks doesn't like you the scent of frying fish certainly will my nose led me to the kitchen god only knows how they're praying for this at the moment i for one was starving and the food smelled amazing there's about eight or nine monks working in here and it's a well-organized kitchen i mean i worked in the kitchen before and and you can see this process happening it's well organized they know exactly what's going to happen next they're feeding 130 monks and probably about 50 pilgrims this morning for breakfast and it's uh 5 o'clock in the morning so we're not far away from wrecking they're all in prayer at the moment these guys miss prayer they'll do it later they not only fry and grill food for 200 people the monks also catch and clean the fish from their own aquaculture farms after having come to the same process for centuries it's no wonder they've become incredibly efficient at it this has to be the longest running vertically integrated business in the world eleven hundred years and they haven't gone broke maybe they should consider listing on wall street it's a real buzz they're trying to ramp it up because they want to make the last hour of prayer the one hour of liturgy at eight o'clock it's um 20 past five i'll tell you what the aroma is awesome i'm starved i don't know if i can wait for three hours [Music] as day breaks at a time when most other people are still sound asleep mount athos has already been awake for hours the dramatic backdrop leaves you breathless however this is just another day in the life of the monastery the kitchen is running at full steam preparing breakfast while the rest of the monks are in prayer they do this every morning it's their job praying from 4am to 9am only then will they eat the pilgrims are invited to prayer here they will stand with the monks for hours it's part of their sacrifice and of giving up your normal routine for what you believe in this is where you see the monks true devotion this is a life that's tough for the average person to understand we have our possessions our jobs and most importantly our families these things are hard to give up and for the majority of us it's impossible but the monks have willingly left that life in the outside world behind them for something they believe is greater the love of god and this thought is what gives them purpose and fulfills them it was expressed beautifully by all the monks i spoke with however none had a story more enthralling than the three australian brothers i met who had found their home here all the way from the gold coast you are the one i'm most excited to meet i have been thinking about your story for a year and i'm sorry to make you all nervous but uh it's a great story when did you first come to mount athos first came in uh 2006 after being here for a period of time uh my brothers came to visit yep uh together together two brothers came yep um one had an experience here it was uh he stayed the other went back and my other brother came with my other brother and he stayed and the other one went back so one sort of handed off the other right and so all three of you are now here yeah how is life different here with your brothers the experience that you have with your two brothers compared to what it was like in australia yeah our life here is a spirit more of a spiritual connection we have it's more spiritual than anything [Music] was in the world was we had a connection there was more so well the heroes are on the same path as well as um we share the same sort of goal together and you still have that same connection that you had have you lost at all i think it's more we're closer more so here wow because it's it's the um it's a life in christ with the fiance which is the true life the worldly life has its um uh human weaknesses in between but the spiritual life is is which is uh higher than the uh the worldly life you're sacrificing your career you're sacrificing your family um even though we have some minimal contact with them obviously was sacrificing our own family that we could have had as well all for christ and in essence we are fulfilling the first commandment which is to love god with your whole being your mind your soul your heart this is the fulfillment of the first commandment in absolution i was 14 when i first got here we stayed for two days forgot about that experience and then came back here when i was 22. and you've never left since and from then i'm still here how many years have you been here seven years now seven years and what did you do when you were in australia before you came here i i studied music and philosophy and i was concerned about thinking about certain things but i was pretty pretty stuck onto my music yep i started going out i thought all my friends were working in a bar i'll start working in a bar as well i was a barman for for a couple years for a few years and then all studied music i'll start playing music started playing the music i enjoyed and i was pretty much just living around that whole getting as much joy fun happiness out of life as i could but in doing that i started to realize that there was something inside that was still empty and i thought that it was probably just going to be filled by getting married having a family having that sort of thing i mean i'd tried girlfriends i'd seen sort of what it might be like getting married and i realized that there's still something that's even deeper than a person's emotions there's something that exists that's even more inside that whatever happens if a person doesn't have some spiritual connection if a person doesn't touch onto god then he could become 80 years old and not ever really have lived a second of his life are there any regrets i mean are you happy to be here are there any intensity little regrets of not being for me it wasn't it was a metaphor in the will of god and once i found it that was it it seems absolute it's the same answer i get from all of you it's like you're singing from the same hymn sheet these are this is not um something some god does for each one even though i was incredibly happy in the world i'd lived anything that anyone could dream to live like it wasn't all my friends had the thought had the question if you were the happiest guy we knew why why would you chuck that stuff away and it seemed strange at the time when i did it but for me it was the most natural thing to do all that can happen without somebody to somebody having the monastic calling there's something special which comes from above and calls someone to the monastic life and not everyone gets that um so we have to respond to that calling and we respond to that with our whole heart and that's why we sacrifice all these things that we said before talking about your brother were you happy to see him after not seeing him for five years of course i was happy to see him yeah yeah yeah but he doesn't drink coffee you don't drink coffee either as well do you really really i'm still young and strong so i can last in the services when it's dark so you need to force yourself a bit i think listen we've got very little time together as brothers and sisters so why don't we go and have a coffee with him we'll convince him to have a coffee yeah i might have a tea okay let's go [Music] at the monastery of atuperi the sound of a mallet tapping rhythmically on a board is the centuries-old way of gathering monks for prayer food or to wake of a morning with over ten thousand square meters of floor space you can understand why it takes the monk a while to get around each time no doubt he's a fit guy too racking up plenty of steps on his daily routine at the moment he's waking up everyone from their afternoon haps and getting them to mass which will last another few hours before dinner again this happens every day some monks still look as though they could do with a little more sleep but the work has to continue regardless of how one feels tradition is important here it takes back a millennia so change is not overly welcome the old guard maintains control of how everything operates and educates and mentors the new arrivals with this new way of thinking and into embracing the strict way of life so in order for there to be any variation in the processes it would take somewhat of a revolution although from what i see with the younger generation they're chipping away at it albeit very slowly one thing they've modernized a little is their farming practices in order to feed all the new arrivals and service their ever-growing export demands the monks have embraced certain contemporary agricultural luxuries you know modern society over the last 10 or 20 years have become sustainably conscious but here at vatopedia mount ethos they've been doing it for over a thousand years and not only do they do it well but they sell their product to the outside and they do it on the best real estate in the best climate on this earth have a look at this working the land for centuries these monks have learned a thing or two about agriculture and to a greater extent business they export a number of products ranging from skin care shampoo herbal creams and therapeutic soap to books and iconography it's a well-oiled machine that has lasted the test of time as the world has developed massive technology-filled cities this monastic state has battled through the ages with little or no change to their community's way of living it's a long movie on pause and no one wants to press the play button it's certainly got both its arden followers and others that want to pull this male only institution into the 21st century to be honest i can understand both views in the end even though i couldn't share this experience with helen i must say the small sacrifices i had to make and spending a few days away from my family were well worth it well everything comes to an end and my stay at mount athos at vatopedi finishes now i've got to tell you it was an experience that i'll never forget i was a bit underwhelmed coming here because i had to put the long sleeves and the long pants on and it was like i was being prepared but i wasn't prepared i wasn't prepared for what was about to happen my whole view of what a monk does and his life has changed they're just like you and i my whole view of mount athos has changed it's it's it's been a spiritual enlightenment i loved it the architecture the food the people the sustainability it's been absolutely awesome it's something i'll take with me to the grave

Channel: Antonis Georgiou

Views: 10,277

Keywords: vatopedi, greek, monsatery, orthodox, greece, Monks, Mount Athos

Id: BmEbLZBnSgE

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022