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The Prophetic Role of Mount Athos in the Contemporary World

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Mount Athos, the center of Orthodox Monasticism located on an autonomous peninsula in Northern Greece, has what Dr. Jean Claude Larchet calls a “prophetic role” in the modern world. This is true not only for Orthodox Christians, but believers in other religions and even atheists, Larchet writes.

Why is this so? Why is Mount Athos a place of such enduring and widespread fascination, even mystery? Larchet offers some compelling answers that draws deep from both his experiences on the Holy Mountain and his training as a Orthodox theologian.

One reason Larchet cites is that Mount Athos is a “witness to the Kingdom of God already present among us.” Mount Athos appears, in the words of the Psalmist, “as ‘the fertile mountain’, ‘the fruitful mountain’, ‘the mountain where it pleased the Lord to live’ and where He ‘will live forever'” (Ps 67: 16-17).

Mount Athos is a place where God lives among men, where the Kingdom of God can be realized in part in our fallen and broken world. It is a respite from the cold and darkness that has entered the hearts of men and thus the world, and a beacon that shows men the way back to the love and light of God.

How The Great Truth Dawned

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A lingering vestige of the Cold War between the United States and Russia includes what could be called a ‘reflexive bi-polarism,’ a simplistic and crude reduction that caricatures not only Russia’s political role in the world today, but its history, culture, and people. It’s an unfortunate and impoverishing state of affairs.

Gary Saul Morson sees through that. Drawing on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and then digging deeper into how literature, not solely history, informs Russian self-consciousness and culture, Morson reveals how Russian literature is able to enter the deeper arenas of human experience and give the means by which they can be comprehended and understood; things like good, evil, suffering, meaning — all the constituents that elevate man above animal or machine.

Solzhenitsyn is a fitting choice. In the great political conflicts of the last century it was Solzhenitsyn (not analysts, politicians, journalists, academics, churchmen and others occupied with the same questions) who succeeded in decimating the Marxist establishment of Western Europe, the same establishment that was unable to see, let alone comprehend, the great evil the materialist dogma had unleased on the Eastern half of Christendom. The publication of the “Gulag Archipelago” series accomplished that. It proved true the maxim that has become associated with that great writer: One word of truth outweighs the world.

Russia is emerging from the materialist darkness that the West is rushing into head-first. Wise men are those who listen to men of experience. Morson shows us how to do it.

Recent Articles

The Three Principles of Orthodox Spirituality: The Path to Prayer

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In this lucid and accessible talk, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) takes us to the heart of Orthodox spirituality. His approach here is emphatically practical, rather than theoretical or technical. In the first part, he lays down three basic spiritual principles that serve to sum up the Orthodox hesychast tradition as articulated in the Philokalia. In the second part, Metropolitan Jonah gives practical counsel on how these three principles may be set to work, ending with a discussion of repentance and confession, along with a guide to examining ourselves prior to confession.

Freeing the Soul: Reflections on Thirty Years as an Orthodox Confessor Part II of II

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Of all the memorable encounters to be undergone in Moscow, one of the most extraordinary is a meeting (or better yet a confession) with Fr Artemy Vladimirov. His spiritual depth and intensity, his fanciful sense of humor, his gentle and playful demeanor, and his ability to bring the warmth of love into the heart of those he meets have made him a magnet not only for pious Muscovites, but for many American expatriates and visitors.

In this wide-ranging interview with Mother Nectaria McLees, the theme of confession becomes a lens through which a broad spectrum of issues in Orthodox Christianity and the lives of both parishioner and priest become powerfully illumined, ranging from styles of priesthood and priestly approaches to confession, and continuing through frequency of church attendance and confession; sexual and reproductive issues such as pornography, premarital sex, abortion, and homosexuality; as well as the importance of a prayer rule and the question of worldly entertainment.

Throughout the interview, Fr Artemy does not offer us rules and formulas, but rather reveals to us his own wise and engaging embodiment of an Orthodox phromema or mindset as he discusses the Christian life.

Freeing the Soul: Reflections on Thirty Years as an Orthodox Confessor Part I of II

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Of all the memorable encounters to be undergone in Moscow, one of the most extraordinary is a meeting (or better yet a confession) with Fr Artemy Vladimirov. His spiritual depth and intensity, his fanciful sense of humor, his gentle and playful demeanor, and his ability to bring the warmth of love into the heart of those he meets have made him a magnet not only for pious Muscovites, but for many American expatriates and visitors.

In this wide-ranging interview with Mother Nectaria McLees, the theme of confession becomes a lens through which a broad spectrum of issues in Orthodox Christianity and the lives of both parishioner and priest become powerfully illumined, ranging from styles of priesthood and priestly approaches to confession, and continuing through frequency of church attendance and confession; sexual and reproductive issues such as pornography, premarital sex, abortion, and homosexuality; as well as the importance of a prayer rule and the question of worldly entertainment.

Throughout the interview, Fr Artemy does not offer us rules and formulas, but rather reveals to us his own wise and engaging embodiment of an Orthodox phromema or mindset as he discusses the Christian life.

Why Beauty Matters

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The world lost one of its finest, most original, and most independent thinkers with the repose of Sir Roger Scruton last weekend. Sir Roger was also a friend of Another City; we featured several of his articles, and we were proud to have him as an early subscriber to this journal.

In his memory, we offer a video presentation in which he discusses what was perhaps his most urgent topic: the importance of beauty, along with the consequences following modernity’s insistence on turning its back on beauty and its overall refusal of transcendence.

The Death of the Lion and the Dream of the Jersey Shore: Maturity Seasoned In Time

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In this enchanting tale, Fr Stephen takes us back to his Fishtown neighborhood in Philadelphia, where Kusheri’s and Fr Naum’s fantasy of soaring in the summer sky over the Jersey Shore is interrupted by a young couple in love and the recollection of childhood questions about the relation of God, man, and animals — about the relation of the childlike and the mature — and about questions of death and resurrection.

Theophany and River Gods: What Are the Strange Figures on the Theophany Icon?

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Pagan antiquity, writes Fr. Stephen De Young, often portrayed a world in chaos. Ancient gods were viewed as fighting monstrous creatures of chaos, a kind of primordial being represented by natural forces — the “elemental spirits of the world” as St. Paul put it — against which the battle for order had to be won.

Contrast this with the writings of the Old Testament where the God of Abraham conquered these forces not by a contest but by a spoken command. There was no battle. There was only the uncontested power of the God above all gods. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One God.”

Motifs that reflect these ancient views are common in the Old Testament because it was written with the pagan beliefs of Israel’s enemies in mind. One of them continues in the Theophany icon. Fr. De Young explains how it does.

Mother and Child

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Sometimes what seem like simple, everyday reflections can run deep. That is, they can be radical in the original sense or returning us to the radix or root of the matter, taking us not to exotic locales but bringing us back to a home we had almost forgotten. It seems to us that this short contemplative reflection by Another City Contributing Editor Frederica Mathewes-Green possesses precisely this quality.

We Have Come from Afar: A Christmas Oration

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We have come from afar to venerate the infant Christ — not from the land of the wise men but out of the darkness of our own souls, out of the murk of sinfulness. We have been guided by the miraculous star that has risen within us, obeying its mysterious and powerful call.

We have seen from afar the radiant manger and the heavenly glow above it, but we have found the approach to this holy place to be difficult and terrifying; for a long time we did not dare raise our eyes.

Would it not be better to return into the darkness, to re-immerse ourselves in the murk of our souls, and from the arduousness of the path, to hide once again in mute numbness? No, it is too late. We cannot hide and we do not desire to close our eyes to that which has flashed before them. For living in darkness, we have seen a great light; and now it draws us on irresistibly.

Calculating the Date of Christmas: Why We Celebrate the Nativity Feast on December 25

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It is sometimes believed that we celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the Church Fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. But in fact, just the opposite is true. The choice of December 25th was based not on pagan festivities, but on a careful chronology of sacred events concerning the Incarnation of our Lord.

Ironically, it was the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, that sought to create a pagan alternative to a date that had already been established by Christians. In short, the “pagan origins of Christmas” narrative is a fiction without historical substance.

Body Mutilation, Biopunk, and Transgressive Individualism: Is Society Now Adopting the Values of ‘Blade Runner’?

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Ominous tattoos, bizarre body piercing, and transsexual mutilations are only the beginning, argues Orthodox bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. “Transhumanists” are true believers who envision a point in time—known in movement parlance as “the Singularity” — when the crescendo of technological advances becomes unstoppable, culminating in attaining the age-old dream of material immortality via uploading minds into AI computers, merged with robotic technologies, to create blended beings with the intellectual and physical powers of the cyborgs depicted in “Blade Runner.”

How Not to Perish Eternally

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A merciful heart is the likeness of God. And if we reject such a heart, then we of necessity reject God Himself. And how then can we be saved, how then can we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven?

How to Pray in the Event of Civil War: The Unusual Story of the Prayer of Patriarch Hermogenes

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“How have we arrived,” asks Stanford University historian Victor David Hanson, “at the brink of a veritable civil war?” And a recent “Washington Post” headline reads: “In America, talk turns to something not spoken of for 150 years: Civil War.” Surely the political and cultural polarization of America has now reached levels comparable to that most terrible national conflict of the nineteenth century.

The Bishop — A Short Story by Fr. Stephen Siniari

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We tried to get his old shoes and coat ta’ throw ’em in the trash. Carol said not even the rummage sale at Front and Girard would take his worn-down shoes and screen-thin overcoat. He stuffed ’em in his paper shopping-bag suitcase he carted all his bishop stuff around in and said he knew somebody who needed ’em.

Theologies as Alternative Histories: John Romanides and Chrestos Yannaras

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During the twentieth century, the self-understanding of Greek identity, especially in relation to Western Christendom, became focused on finding a cultural continuity between Ancient Greece, Byzantium, and the modern Greek nation. Nicolas Prevelakis argues that this issue was successfully resolved through an interweaving of history and theology in the writings of Fr John Romanides and philosopher Christos Yannaras.

In Depth Articles

Original Sin According to St. Paul

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In regard to the doctrine of original sin as contained in the Old Testament and illuminated by the unique revelation of Christ in the New Testament, there continues to reign in the denominations of the West a great confusion, which in the last few centuries seems to have gained much ground in the theological problematics of the Orthodox East.

The Divine Liturgy as Mystical Experience

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There are cases in scripture where God appears directly and sensibly to man—indeed, does not only appear to him, but walks, speaks, dines, and even wrestles. There is no suggestion that, because God is “purely spiritual,” such appearances are not of God “as He is in Himself.”

Nature and City in the Greek East

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The poet seems to suggest that we can now find the natural city only in the imagination. The bridge for the modernist poet is now an interior, and even a psychological function. It was not always so.

Lost in Manhattan

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