Feast of the Translation of St George's Relics

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning, we celebrated the feast of the translation of St. George's relics with Bishop Panteleimon, 9 priests, and 1 deacon. Above is the bishop's entrance into the church during Orthros.

Here we are gathered around the throne just before the start of the Liturgy.

Here we are around the altar during the Liturgy.

While Rebecca watched the boys, Pelagia brought Phoebe for the Liturgy, and here she is taking Holy Communion from Fr. Panayiotis. For more photos from the Liturgy, click here. Photos, by the way, were courtesy of Fr. Dn. Ephraim Rivers, an American from an OCA parish in Alabama visiting Greece on business.

In the evening, Fr. Ephraim took me and my friend Philip Navarro (another American studying here) out to dinner in the city--at an Indonesian restaurant owned by Fr. Daniel Byantoro's cousin, who is also an Orthodox convert.

The Relics of Sts Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene

On Monday night, in honor of our parish's feast for the translation of St. George's relics, Fr. Alexios arranged for the relics of Sts Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene to come to our parish.

At 5:30 yesterday evening, then, we gathered in the town's square and awaited the arrival of the relics, which were accompanied by a police escort.

As Fr. David got out of the car with the relics, the priests venerated them, and then we all processed into the church.

We then went outside to await the arrival of Bishop Panteleimon of Theoupolis, a retired bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who lives in Thessaloniki.

When the bishop arrived, we all went into the church to begin Festal Vespers for the secondary feast of our patron saint, St George. In the photo above, the bishop is venerating the relics of Sts Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene as he entered the church.

Here we are in a procession during the Liti--of 15 priests and 1 deacon--with the relics and an icon of St George.

And finally here we are blessing the loaves during the artoklasia. For more photos from the evening, click here.

Benjamin and Phoebe

This photo is from Sunday. Pelagia read Benjamin a book, and he seemed to really enjoy it -- he was looking at the pictures.

Here's Benjamin taking a nap in the swing yesterday.

Here's Phoebe laughing yesterday.

And here's Phoebe trying to hold her bottle while she looks at the camera.

Parish Trip to Alexandroupolis

On Thursday, I took Rebecca on a day trip with our parish to Alexandroupolis, a relatively large city near the border with Turkey.

We headed off at 7:30 AM with nearly 60 pilgrims from our parish (mostly retired people) and, with one stop, arrived at the Monastery of Panagia Evrou in Nea Makri (just outside the city of Alexandroupolis) around noon.

Above is a photo of everyone going through the entrance to the monastery.

The nun responsible for sounding the semantron gave Rebecca (and the rest of us) an ear-ringing demonstration of how it works. Here Rebecca is pretending to give it a try.

After venerating inside the church, especially the wonder-working icon of Panagia Evrou, the nuns took us on a tour of their work facilities, including the studios in which they make mosaics, icons, and finally vestments.

The photo above is of the mosaic currently in progress. As you can see, they are actually made from the back and then turned over when complete. All the colors are from naturally occurring minerals, which is part of the reason (along with the intensive labor) that they are so expensive. A 2' by 4' mosaic, for example, would probably cost around $20,000.

The group slowly made its way back out of the monastery and toward the bus.

Before we left, though, Sister Maria showed Fr. Alexios and me the huge new church that is being built just outside the monastery walls. Like many monasteries in Greece, faithful lay people flock to them on Sundays and feast days, and this church will be able to serve them better while marking out a separate space for the monastery. The nuns at Elder Paisios' monastery in Souroti have done the same thing.

After the monastery, the bus headed into the center of Alexandroupolis, where everyone was free to spend a few hours having lunch and walking through the city. Rebecca and I went with Fr. Alexios and George, a chanter from our church, to a great little restaurant with traditional Greek food (and lots of oil!). Here, all the food can be seen in buffet style pans behind glass and you point at what you want. I even got Rebecca to try to the local dish which featured bits of lamb liver inside (see above). Of course, I neglected to tell her what it was until after she had tasted it. :)

After a big lunch, one of the ladies from the parish insisted on buying us sweets and the local sweet shop. Above you can see Fr. Alexios, Rebecca, and George with their sweets, and Alexandroupolis' landmark lighthouse in the background.

After the big lunch, we took a long walk along the waterfront.

Rebecca and I then split off and walked around the city for about 1.5 hours. We stopped at the Metropolis (above), and were fortunate to run into someone just as they were reopening it for the evening. It is an absolutely enormous church, and I was deeply impressed at studying their weekly calendar of activities, which includes daily liturgies, confession times, classes, etc.

We left the city around 6 and arrived home around 10, tired but having enjoyed a nice outing with the parish.

For more photos from the day, click here.

Babies!

My mom sent the babies some warm winter outfits, and here's Phoebe modeling hers with Rebecca.

Paul was really tired yesterday afternoon and took a nice nap after finding his thumb.

Pelagia captured the brothers holding hands this morning.

Gracanica

After visiting the women at Djakovica, we left Bishop Teodosije and headed east to the Serbian enclave of Gracanica, which is famous for its ancient monastery.

The photo above was taken from inside the car as we entered the village. Although we crossed no border or passed any walls, I was struck by the sudden shift in the scenery, from Albanian flags, billboards, and mosques to Serbian flags, billboards, and small little icon shrines.

As one monk at the monastery would later tell me: "There is an invisible border, and everyone knows where it is."

When we arrived at the walled compound of the monastery, which also now serves as the headquarters for Kosovo's lone diocese, we once again encountered heavy KFOR protection, including several jeeps and armored personnel carriers. This time, the soldiers were from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

When we entered, we first went to meet His Grace Bishop Artemije, a spiritual child of the Blessed Fr. Justin Popovic. Bishop Artemije has been no stranger to controversy, both in his role as sole bishop of the disputed province and on the wider stage as a critic of the ecumenical movement.

Bishop Artemije was very gracious to us and, after visiting with him for awhile and exchanging books, he took us to the small chapel dedicated to St. Maximos the Confessor inside his diocesan headquarters. We are in the chapel in the photo above.

Afterward, a monk took us over to the famous katholikon which lay in the center of the compound.

I hope the photos can give you some idea of beauty and antiquity of the frescoes there.

Here we are in front of the katholikon with one of the sisters of the women's monastery there. The compound is mainly and historically a women's monastery, but, out of necessity, the diocesan headquarters and episcopal residence have moved there now, along with about 5 monks who assist Bishop Artemije.

Next we went to visit the icon studio, where Sister Magdalena is now working on a special icon for Western American Diocese of the Mother of God, Queen of Angels, Protectress of Los Angeles (see photo above).

We finally left the monastery around 4:00 to begin the journey back to Belgrade. On the way out of Kosovo, we drove through Gazimestan, the site of the memorial erected to the Holy Martyr Lazar of Kosovo commemorating his sacrifice at the Battle of Kosovo there in 1389.

Finally, we reached the "border" with Serbia, and here things got interesting. Because Serbia (and many other countries, such as Russia) do not recognize Kosovo as a country, there cannot, ipso facto, be any border. For them, it is a part of Serbia that is being administered and occupied by international peacekeeping forces.

Since we had left Serbia on Friday, my passport had been stamped out of Serbia. And because we entered Kosovo through Montenegro (which recognizes Kosovo's independence), we had been stamped into Kosovo. Now the problem was that, for the Serbian authorities, I was sitting in the middle of Serbia with nothing certifying that I was legally in the country. This wasn't a problem for Bishop Maxim or Fr. Sava, so once again an American was complicating things in Kosovo. :)

Apparently, this is a known problem (although not to us), and the solution for passport holders of countries which have recognized Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence is to enter Serbia by a recognized border. If you're in a car, that means crossing into the FYROM and then entering Serbia from there, a detour of many hours.

Here's where traveling with a bishop can be helpful. The first thing I should note was that the Serbian guards who greeted us at the unofficial "border" were happy to see us, and gladly received gifts of small paper icons of the Panagia which we had brought from Decani. I also noticed that several of them wore prayer ropes on their wrists.

After some discussions, the head of the post called the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic. Since it was Sunday afternoon, I suppose it took some time to find him, so we waited. But after about 45 minutes, he had been reached and gave me special permission to enter Serbia. So we waved goodbye to the friendly guards and headed on to Belgrade.

But this wasn't the end of the story. On Monday evening, when I went to the Belgrade airport to come back to Thessaloniki, I had the misfortune to get a bright young woman as border agent. Although my passport is filled with all sorts of stamps, she was one of the rare few who decided to try to sort them out. As she was asking me where my entry stamp into Serbia was, she flipped onto the page with the entry stamp into Kosovo and she went silent. I was foreseeing a problem, so I quickly explained what had happened and her face softened.

She explained in no uncertain terms that the stamp from the "Republic of Kosovo" was invalid, a proposition to which I was and am only too happy to consent, and then proceeded to cross it out and put a Serbian stamp next to it (see photo below).

I had another interesting episode at the airport that night. Since it was rather late, the airport was dead when my friend Rastko and I arrived there. We went to the counter for JAT (the Serbian national airline), where the woman was quietly reading a book. I had a bottle of Decani Monastery's famous red wine that I was hoping to bring back with me, but she kindly informed us that, since it was a liquid, I could not carry it on with me. I asked about checking it somehow, but she said it would probably break. We agreed that Rastko would just take it and, thanking her and wishing her a good night, we started to walk away.

Then Rastko stopped and said: "Why don't we give it to her?" I thought it was a great idea, so we turned around and offered it to her. Her expression was priceless. She was so surprised and happy! She took my blessing and Rastko and I headed out to find a place to sit and wait. When we walked back by the counter some minutes later on the way to security, we looked over and what did we see? She had invited all her co-workers over to her desk, where they had opened the bottle and were drinking it!

I thought: Ah, I love Serbia! :)

That's it for this adventure. Again, for all the photos from the Kosovo portion of the trip, click here.