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Archbishop Mark - The Two Headed Eagle
24th June, 2009 - Posted by Archbishop Mark -
We have made it to the edge of Europe - or at least to the edge of Europe as the Roman Empire understood it. We are at Kavala which used to be Neapolis, the port at which Paul first set foot upon the soil west of the Dardanelles (or the Hellespont as it was the called). This is the thin stretch of water which separated Roman Europe from the province of Asia Minor which included much of the western part of Turkey. Not far from here was the city of Philippi where Paul founded his first European community.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we’re told that Paul came here after a vision of a Macedonian man pleading that Paul come across the water to help them. The vision was convenient because it certainly matched Paul’s sense that he had received a divine commission to preach the Gospel where no-one else had been. At this stage, Christianity had certainly reached Rome, though we’re not too sure how and when. But Macedonia was virgin territory for Christian missionary work.
Whatever about the vision, the decision to launch a European mission was a huge one for Paul and his team. I can imagine long team meetings discussing the pros and cons. Then once the decision was made, there must have been more meetings discussing the strategy - who would go where and when and how they would operate once they reached European soil. The risks were enormous. How would they be received? What if the whole thing came to nothing? Would they even survive, given the likelihood of persecution? What would the Church in Jerusalem think? What would be the response of Paul’s opponents who had created such havoc in Asia Minor? These were surely some of the questions that Paul, Silvanus and Timothy discussed.
But the discussions came to an end and they sailed from Troas (better known as Troy), lurching from island to island until they hit continental Europe at Neapolis where my hotel balcony looks out to the water which must have looked much the same when Paul sailed in almost two thousand years ago. The city may have changed, but the water hasn’t much.
Once he hit land and set out for Philippi just down the road, the Pauline version of the Gospel (which turned out to be right despite all the claims of Paul’s opponents) was on its way to the ends of the earth - even to places like Australia. None of us was born Jewish, which means that all of us are in some way the sons and daughters of the Pauline mission. This is because the European churches have had such a massive influence around the world. That influence may at times have had its dark side, but no-one could deny its power - which is why St Paul, as the progenitor of European Christianity, must rank as one of most decisive figures in history.
In Paul’s time, the imperial eagle looked only one way. There was only Rome; Constantinople was not even on the radar screen. But everywhere you go in Greece now, you see churches and monasteries which have beside them a yellow flag emblazoned with a black two-headed eagle, one head looking west, the other east. The eagle now looks to Rome and Constantinople - and has since 330 AD. Trouble both political and ecclesial was brewing once the eagle began to look two ways. Constantine’s decision to move his capital from Rome to Constantinople is in some ways the reason we now have such chronic political instability in the Balkans and such an ecclesial chasm between the Churches of the West and the Churches of the East.
This morning we were in the magnificent basilica of St Demetrius in Thessalonica. It was the Feast of the Birth of St John the Baptist (for once East and West coincide) and the Eucharist was being celebrated. I sat there for some time listening to the chants, admiring the mosaics and standing whenever the priest emerged from the sanctuary. It was fascinating and I would have stayed there for longer. But the group had to move on; such is the way of the pilgrimage.
It left me thinking how different these ecclesial worlds have become - not just theologically but culturally. In recent years, great gestures of communion have been made between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the most recent of which was the presence of the Patriarch of Constantinople at the Synod of Bishops last October where he made a memorable speech to the Synod Fathers in the Sistine Chapel. But there is so much further to go, and I wonder how we can get there. Perhaps it will take the same kind of vision and courage that Paul and his team showed when they decided to set forth on what may have seemed to many Mission Impossible, but which was in the end a mission that changed the world.
Tags: Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, footsteps of saint paul, pilgrimage, st paul, video blog
Posted on: June 24, 2009
Filed under: Archbishop Mark's teachings
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