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Reflections from the back of the bus - Meteora
24th June, 2009 - Posted by Ursula Stephens -
It’s Tuesday and we are up bright and early for breakfast. There’s another pilgrimage here from Italy and we share a few words of friendship.
We have another long day ahead. We start our journey with the pilgrim’s prayer and Archbishop Mark reminds us of the Monastic tradition.
We start by visiting two monasteries perched high on these rocky outcrops.
We arrive at the Monastery of the Transfiguration, and the girls who are wearing trousers are asked to put on “obliging skirts” a Greek translation of ’skirts of obligation’. We make a striking sight and I expect that Neil will load our photo on the blog.
This Monastery is extraordinary. It seems precariously placed in space- we’re high above the town of Kalambaka and from our vantage point we can see four other monasteries nestled into the craggy rocks, as well as dozens of caves where hermits once lived.
The rules here require men to wear trousers and Bob has worn shorts today so we left him below us as we climbed the nearly 200 steps with the instruction from Archbishop Mark: “Roberto, please put on your pantaloons!
James provides a wonderful explaination of the icons here and explains the patterns of the icons which tell stories from the bible for the mostly illiterate populations.
We move on to the second monastery,the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, established by St Stephen which is undergoing renovation. A chapel damaged in WW2 is being slowly restored and the icons replaced. Here we have the chance to see how vibrant the icons are when first painted, before they were affected by fumes from the old oil lamps and candles.
Archbishop Mark explains the interplay between tradition and creativity in icon writing. The churches of the east always stressed the traditional while in the western churches, the creativity of the icon writers led to different styles emerging.
He tells us too of the iconoclast crisis - resolved in favour of icons - as a legitimate way to represent how God speaks to us.
So, as we leave that very holy place, we say The Angelus and the Rosary and settle in for the long drive to Berea where Paul preached to the Jews in 54 AD.
We will have Mass here before continuing to Thessaloniki for our overnight stop.
From our pilgrim journal:
” The Christian life also comprises an individual pilgrimage. That life has a beginning, often but not always the point of conversion. There are significant moments or places along the way, vantage points from which the journey can be surveyed. Its end is both to be with Christ and to be changed to be more like him.”
Tags: Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, footsteps of saint paul, pilgrimage, Sights and Sounds, st paul, Ursula Stephens, video blog
Posted on: June 24, 2009
Filed under: Reflections from the Back of the Bus
2 Comments
Dennis Sleigh
June 24th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Ursula, reading that challenging quote from the Pilgrim Journal, I felt glad that your physical pilgrimage is also being shared by those of us on this e-pilgrimage. I was reminded of the distinction made by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks between a pilgrim and a tourist. The concept is expressed by Fr Chris Gleeson SJ in this way:
Pilgrims are those people who want to engage with the world and not be mere spectators, people whose goal is less to reach a particular destination than to be transformed in the journey itself. A tourist goes somewhere to see something new, while a pilgrim goes somewhere to become someone new.
I pray that you, Stephen, Fr Warrick, Fr Francis, Neil and Mary, and your intrepid leader, Bishop Mark, plus the many others whom I don’t know, will all become someone new and then share your newness with us.
Travel safely.
Dennis
Denis Matthews
June 25th, 2009 at 1:39 am
These video clips are good to see but the audio is poor. Please get the person speaking closer to the mike
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