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“The Nativity,” Oil on canvas, 1936. “Mural of the Peribleptos Monastery in Mystras. Copied by hand by Photios Kontoglou, after being freed from soot and salts, in the year of salvation 1936, in the month of August.” |
By Photios Kontoglou
When I was very young, I spent the holidays with my family on a storm-beaten mountain, at Agia Paraskevi.
Most of the hours I would go and sit inside the small, fragrant little church — not only during the services, but also at times when no one else was inside except me. I would read the ancient hymns and would find myself in a state that I cannot convey to another. Above all, the iambic canon “He saved the people” (Έσωσε λαόν) made me feel as though I were in the first days of creation, just as primeval as the nature that surrounded me: the gigantic rock hanging over the little church, the sea, the wild trees and grasses, the clean stones, the small deserted islets visible out on the open water, the icy north wind that blew and made everything appear crystal clear, the lambs bleating, the shepherds clothed in sheepskins, the stars shining at night like frozen dewdrops.
I saw everything through the Christmas hymns, through those iambic, revelatory words such as these:
"Leading everything toward the life-bearing light,
God was brought forth from sunless gates..."
"You have come, bringing back the wanderer
to the flower-bearing pasture from the desolate hills..."
Those “desolate hills,” like the mountain on which I lived — what a secret echo they had within my soul. The following troparion seems as though it were written for the present age:
"The fierce sin of the frenzied world,
which boasted uncontrollably and raved obscenely,
You have utterly destroyed with all Your might;
and those whom she once ensnared,
You save today from her nets,
having been willingly incarnate, O Benefactor."
Alas! Christ abolished ancestral sin, which had made the world savage and mad with carnal lust, opening the door of redemption to all who wish to be saved. But for those who do not heed His words and do not care for the salvation of their souls, this door of mercy is — and remains — closed unto eternity.
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| "Agia Paraskevi," Sepia on paper, 1912, Fotis Apostolelis |
Today, the world is once again "frenzied" and immersed in "fierce sin, which boasts uncontrollably and raves obscenely," just as it was at the time when our Lord and Redeemer was born, and even more so.
For this reason, blessed are those who have Christ in their hearts. Blessed are those who have cut off every hope from this “fierce” and pitch-black world and have drawn near to Christ, who lies in the Manger, together with the innocent ox and the gentle donkey. To these few and despised ones the Kingdom has been given.
Source: From the book Aivali, My Homeland. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.