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The Aegean Triangle
20th June, 2009 - Posted by Archbishop Mark -
I’m writing this from a boat anchored off Mykonos. Perhaps I should say a ship because it’s a very big boat. In fact, compared to anything St Paul took to sea in, this is enormous. But compared to the vast floating hotel anchored close to us, our vessel looks puny.
I’ve been saying to the pilgrims that this isn’t a cruise; it’s a voyage…a pilgrimage across the water from Athens to Ephesus via Mykonos, Rhodes and Patmos. This Aegean world became the Apostle’s natural habitat. For much of his missionary life, he moved in a triangle made up of Corinth in the west, Ephesus in the east and Macedonia (Philippi and Thessalonica) in the north….with a lot of water and islands in the middle.
Sea travel in Paul’s day was such a precarious business that he often preferred to go overland. It may have taken longer and been much harder work, but it was less hazardous than sea travel in an age when ships hadn’t mastered the art of tacking into the wind which was always adverse in the sailing season if travelling in the Mediterranean from east to west or south to north. If the wind were adverse, as it often was, then you could be becalmed for days or weeks. Even when the wind was favourable, the ships were small, hard to steer and very unstable even on the mill-pond of the Mediterranean. They tended to stick as close as possible to the shore or to lurch from island to island as best they could.
I said to the pilgrims today that we have no record of Paul ever visiting Mykonos, but it isn’t wholly impossible given that ships would have pulled into any port at hand if they got into trouble in the notoriously windy Cyclades where Mykonos lies. The wind was up today and the boat was rolling quite a bit as we made our way through the white caps. In fact I went up at one stage on to the prow of the boat and nearly got blown to Turkey, It was blowing a gale. I could only wonder what it might have been like to be out on that water in the kind of boat that Paul would have known. I headed straight back to the air-conditioned lounge which was very unPauline.
We went for a stroll through the incredibly crowded town of Mykonos which, for all that it’s overrun by tourists of every kind and even a few pilgrims, still has real charm. But to stay focused we popped into the Catholic Church right in the heart of the town near the water. I said a few words about Paul moving through the hustle and bustle of his time just as we had through the maze of Mykonos. We listened to some of his words from the Letter to the Ephesians, said the Lord’s Prayer and sang a song. I should add perhaps that earlier we had Mass of the Sacred Heart on the boat (in the bistro!), praying for all the priests of the Archdiocese, living and dead, on this first day of the Year of the Priest. Like the Mass, this moment of prayer was all the better for being very simple and even a little untidy.
After we had prayed, we scattered to the various restaurants and cafes of the town for a quick feed of the local seafood. I kept thinking that Paul must have enjoyed this stuff as I hoed into calamari and octopus. Through the day we had a fair bit of hustle and bustle, but returning to the boat from the town was sheer chaos. I won’t bore you with the detail, but our guide said that we now know that chaos is a Greek word. I agreed heartily; they invented it, perhaps on Mykonos.
Still we made it back to the boat and now we prepare to sail through the night to Rhodes. St Paul certainly made it there, albeit briefly. There for a much longer time were the Hospitaller Knights of St John of new Jerusalem who became the Knights of Rhodes before ending up the Knights of Malta. Theirs is a fascinating story that still continues. Still more fascinating is the story of Paul which also continues to this day and echoes with a special power in this Aegean Triangle.
Tags: Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, footsteps of saint paul, pilgrimage, st paul
Posted on: June 20, 2009
Filed under: Archbishop Mark's teachings
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