The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopedi

29-30 April, 2010
On my journey from the administrative centre of Karyes to the Vatopedi monastery, the signposts were good at times along the walking track.

At other times the sign posts were not so clear. But at one of those times I felt very much that God was looking after me. Just as I took a wrong turning down a road some monks passed in a car, and I asked them for directions, just to be sure. They pointed me back to the right path.

The path through the forest was very pretty. There were some grand views,

but most of the time it was just beautifully quiet with bird song and insects the only noises to be heard, and the spring flowers along the path and various shades of green from the trees the main sights to be enjoyed.

Occasionally I caught sight of a dwelling (skete) along the way,

but apart from that and the occasional monastery in the distance or car as I walked down a road, I was alone. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk, which was very beautiful on a beautiful day.

After about 3 hours walk, I rounded a corner in the path and saw Vatopedi bay set out below me with the monastery down by the sea.

It took me a while to get down to sea level, and some of the way I walked down the road to the monastery. As I walked along, I noticed the amount of marble as rubble on the roads, and there was obviously quite a lot of marble among the rock in the mountains. I picked up some small pieces as mementos of my time in Athos.

I got down to the monastery around 5pm, so the prediction I had been given of the time it would take me to walk was very accurate.

I received a friendly welcome from the monk at the gate and he outlined the ‘programme’ of the monastery. 5.30pm dinner, and 6pm veneration of the relics today, then tomorrow, 4am Matins, 6.30am Eucharist, 8am breakfast, 4.30pm Vespers, 5.30pm dinner and 6pm veneration of the relics. As a non-Orthodox person, I was only allowed in the first room of the church during worship at this monastery (but would be allowed to see the main church later). Some of the monks positioned themselves in the first room as well, so I was never the only person there.

The abbot at Vatopedi had given an instruction that no photos were to be taken within the walls of the monastery, so I followed that instruction, which means that you will not get an idea here of the size of the monastery. I can say though, that 109 monks are at Vatopedi, and many of them are young. There seems to be a real revival of Orthodox monasticism (both male and female) at the moment. And with this renewed vitality, and money from the European Union to repair and restore the monasteries, there is a strong sense of renewal not only at Vatopedi but throughout the Holy Mountain.

After dinner, I was given a tour of the main church (katholikon) by one of the monks, and was shown the holy relics, including relics of St John Chrysostom, a very famous 4th century Patriarch of Constantinople, and some icons with which recent miracles had been associated. I am not sure what I think about these things. It is certainly not my tradition to venerate relics and icons, but I can clearly see the faith and holiness of life of people who do. One Orthodox teaching that can help understanding here is that they believe that as God intended us to be a integrated whole both physical and spiritual, so a person’s body can become holy, not just a person’s spirit. The Orthodox believe that that person’s earthly remains still participate in that holiness. The holiness of matter can extend as far as the matter that is used to depict something deeply holy, such as Jesus Christ, his mother, Mary, the Theotokos (mother of God), or the saints.

I went to bed early and rose to attend the morning prayers. Obviously, with it all being in Greek, I didn’t understand much at all, but just let the prayer and chanting wash over and around me. Following breakfast I did some washing, read a brief guide to the monastery and then went for a walk on the other side of the monastery from the way I had come. Again there were beautiful spring flowers.

and a lovely view of the monastery and its lands.

I had a sense that I was looking at a medieval monastery, in the sense that this monastery had the vitality that Western European monasteries had had in the Middle Ages. This monastery was so ancient and yet so alive and spiritually active. I had a mysterious sense of being both in the past and in the present at the same time.

I went back up above the monastery on the other side to try to take a photo that showed its size.  This is the photo I took.

When I returned to the monastery I joined in the Vesper prayers, had dinner, and then met the Guest Master who invited me to join a tour of the monastery treasury later that evening. The tour was simply amazing. It would have been nice to have a camera! The treasures include ancient illuminated manuscripts that look as if they were printed yesterday. There were early Bible texts as well, glorious icons and many other precious objects.

There were two items in the treasury that stood out for me. The first was a miniature icon of Christ on the cross made out of tiny mosaic stones. The workmanship was exquisite and unless you looked closely you would not have recognised that it was a mosaic, the expressions of Christ and those around the cross were so finely represented. A second item was a calyx, a large bowl-shaped chalice made out of jasper, a type of stone, and set in gold. The jasper was so thin that you could see the light through it. The guest master said that the monastery had recently tried to get a copy of this done so that it might go on display. But none of the master craftsmen they approached was willing to try to replicate it. It was such fine workmanship that they did not think they would be able to reproduce it. As I recall, the original was made in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and 600 years later and with all our modern technology people cannot do comparable work!