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There is only Christ
22nd June, 2009 - Posted by Archbishop Mark -
Patmos and Ephesus is a big double in one day, but that’s what it’s been for us. I’d been to Ephesus about twenty-five years ago, but I’d never been to Patmos, even though the place had always intrigued me. The tradition of St John’s presence there and of Patmos as the place he wrote the Apocalypse is strong, but in the end I don’t know what to make of it. I know all the scholarly arguments which suggest that the Apostle John didn’t write the Apocalypse, even if it bears the hallmarks of the Johannine tradition. One of the fascinating things about the New Testament is the way in which it weaves together in a great tapestry all the different strands of primitive Christianity - the Pauline, the Johannine, the Petrine and so on. Each was a distinctive voice - if I may change metaphor - but all the voices are brought together triumphantly into a single harmonious voice which bears witness to the communion of the Church inwhich there are many different voices but no cacophony; only the harmonics of Paradise.
Whatever the empirical truth - which is probably irretrievable - Patmos was very evocative on a glorious Aegean morning. These islands rise like bare rocks from the sapphire waters, yet in the morning light the islands themselves seemed like jewels. Travel on the water was a nightmare for Paul, but he must have breathed a sigh of admiration as he saw these jewel-like rocks rising from the mirror waters on a summer morning.
In John’s Cave - where, it is said, he dictated the Apocalypse to Procorus - the Eucharist was being celebrated in the Greek way with the chants that sound so strange to our Western ear. How right, I thought, that in this cave where - whatever the empirical facts - the memory of the Apostle John is so touchingly celebrated the mystery of the Eucharist was unfolding as we pilgrims wandered through. No-one seemed troubled by our presence; the real action was on the other side of the iconostasis where the clergy were. In sacrament it celebrated the new life that comes from death, just as the Apocalypse in its cryptic way speaks words of hope to those suffering persecution. John was in many ways the great proclaimer of the Incarnation and the Eucharist; and here in this cave the Word was made flesh once again, pitching his tent among us in the most amazing way.
We also visited the still functioning Monastery of St John on Patmos. The visit was remarkable for many reasons, but I was struck in particular by something I saw in the Monastery museum. I have long admired a circular icon of Sts Peter and Paul exchanging the kiss of peace, and I’ve even used in teaching. But I hadn’t realised that the original was in this Monastery. But there it was - gloriously - in the Museum, the jewel in a crown of splendid icons. It was like meeting an old friend. I was so taken by it that I decided to buy a beautiful reproduction of it to give as a gift from the Archdiocese to the Old Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul, Goulburn, when the restoration is completed.
I had been to Ephesus twenty-five years ago, but much has been done on the site since then. The excavation of this huge and wonderful site continues, but much of what Paul would have known well is now on view. The Apostle spent more than two years here, building up the community which Prisca and Aquila had evangelised and stirring up the energies for mission in the church of Ephesus to the point where the Gospel went out from here to communities like the seven churches of the Apocalypse, Colossae, Magnesia and Trallis, all of which were part of the Ephesian network. You can see what a missionary power-house Ephesus was in the Roman province of Asia Minor and why Paul would have made it his eastern missionary base.
Ephesus also preserves in a special way the memory of St John the Apostle and the Virgin Mary. I kept wondering how this memory converges with the memory of St Paul. Paul makes almost nothing of Mary in his Letters; the one oblique reference is in Galatians where he says that Jesus was “born of a woman”, which is hardly big news. We have no idea whether Paul ever met John or Mary. Theoretically it is possible, but there is no evidence of any kind that he did. Still, it was here that the Council of Ephesus took place in 431, and it was there that the Church decided to proclaim Mary as “Theotokos”, the God-bearer. This was more a statement about her Son - that he was truly divine as well as truly human - than it was about Mary herself.
Perhaps it is here that Paul, John and Mary truly converge - in the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, with all that that entails. The Letter to the Colossians says that “there is only Christ”; and I had some sense of that today. You can agonise endlessly over what exactly happened where, but in the end the point where all the witnesses converge, all the voices come together, is in proclamation and praise of the Word made flesh (as John might have said), the Saviour who died and rose again to set us free (as Paul might have said). Born of a woman, Jesus has given that woman to all of us as mother, and strangely she brooded over this rich and tiring day of the pilgrimage..
Tags: Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, footsteps of saint paul, pilgrimage, st paul
Posted on: June 22, 2009
Filed under: Archbishop Mark's teachings
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