By Stelios Koukos
Every second day of Pascha, in the capital of the monastic state of Mount Athos, Karyes, the procession of the icon of the Axion Estin takes place. Following the morning Paschal services of Matins and the Divine Liturgy, celebrated in the magnificent Church of the Protaton, with its famous frescoes, shining like a full moon in its splendor, the great procession of the wonderworking icon of the Axion Estin is held.
The procession is led by the Greek flag, followed by the hieromonks and deacons, who cense the icon with their thuribles. The icon of the great noblewoman of Mount Athos is protected from the weather by a large umbrella, which also serves as an indication that she is a person worthy of great respect.
The chanters of the Protaton also participate in the entire procession, chanting Resurrection hymns throughout its course.
The icon is initially carried by hieromonks, then by monks, and toward the end of the procession, pilgrims from the world, and in our world, are also permitted to carry it as a blessing. In fact, the first year that I carried it myself, the icon had no weight. After several years, the friend with whom I had carried it together revealed to me that he had experienced the same thing. The second year, however, it had weight.
Every year, then, the icon passes through specific cells according to a prescribed order, as well as through the konakia of the monasteries, where their representatives reside and participate in the administration of Mount Athos, in the Holy Epistasia and the Holy Community. There they await the icon with special preparations and receive it with censers, as well as with fragrances with which they sprinkle all those taking part in the procession.
A prayer of supplication is read at the cell, and the entire procession then departs after being offered refreshments from the provisions prepared by each cell. Among these is wine, for the joy of the feast.
This “magnificent” departure of the Panagia Axion Estin from the Protaton, for the blessing of Karyes and the rest of the monastic state, reminds me of the departure of Saint Kosmas the Aitolos from Mount Athos.
After years of study, seclusion, ascetic practice, and spiritual illumination on Mount Athos, Saint Kosmas the Aitolos was moved by the thought, as he himself says, to go out into the world in order to help his enslaved brethren. He knew very well that the land had become savage, since the hearts and souls of the people had become hardened, and the delicate and poetic sensitivity of Saint Kosmas could not tolerate this condition. And this was the greatest and worst form of slavery for the already enslaved Greek people.
In any case, Saint Kosmas did not turn his thought into a banner, as we do every day, but presented it to other Elders and received their blessings for his departure from Athos into the world. And, of course, he did not fail to receive the blessing and benediction of the Ecumenical Patriarch, renewing it whenever a change took place on the Ecumenical throne.
Nor did he fail to request the permission and blessing of each local Metropolitan in every region he visited, showing them the corresponding written authorization from the Patriarchate.
Everything he did, therefore, was carried out according to proper order and with blessing, and for this reason his entire undertaking had the corresponding success.
The blessing that he scattered throughout the land was unmistakable! His journeys remind us of the Apostle Paul, even if they took place within the “narrow” Greek world of today. We could find other differences, but also correspondences. After all, neither of them traveled freely and without fear of the other ethnic and religious communities that viewed with suspicion this magnificent Athonite procession unfolding before their eyes. Even the Venetians placed an agent to follow him, and his reports to the responsible authority have survived to this day.
Moreover, this Athonite “departure” — perhaps even a sudden “assault” — into the midst of the actual slaves and persecuted people who had lost every right to their existence and their livelihood, took on, in a certain sense, the form of a movement. A movement and a pre-revolution that bore many fruits, arising from the anguish of one man who thought sacrificially, collectively, and universally, rather than in an individualized manner!
It is well known that during this Athonite Paschal procession, Saint Kosmas was accompanied by ordained collaborators, forty to fifty of them, who assisted him in his spiritual and pastoral work, as well as by many others who served, like the deacons of the early Church, at the tables and meals offered to his distinctive spiritual followers.
Moreover, a multitude of people followed him, unable to get enough of listening to his honey-sweet, discerning words, which spoke directly to people's hearts.
His entire pastoral influence upon the enslaved, or rather spiritually impoverished, Greek people could be described as a dividing line, a boundary between the period before his preaching and the period after it.
Saint Kosmas was a bulwark against conversions to Islam, which constituted the greatest ecclesiastical, but also national, problem.
Thus, although we cannot claim that the Saint was the ideological leader of the Greek Revolution of 1821, he was certainly one of its most important spiritual foundations. Perhaps the most important!
The Athonite hieromonk, clad in a single garment, foretold the Desired, as he cryptically called liberation from the Turks. And after instilling faith in the souls of the Greeks, who had been exhausted in so many ways, he also established a distinct and particular springboard for the rayahs through the creation and operation of Greek schools.
Thus the Greek land and people began once again to fill with spiritual gardens and flowers, just as, in a certain sense, the Athonite landscape gives off its fragrance in springtime during the Paschal procession of the icon of the Axion Estin.
As for the operation of the schools, he entrusted it to local officials and the parish priests of the churches. For this, the leading men, community elders, the Church, and the people were all expected to contribute. It is said that his exhortation to establish schools was addressed to Greeks throughout the wider Greek world, from Moldavia and Wallachia to Egypt! That is, even in regions he himself did not visit.
What, then, enabled this Athonite hieromonk to exert such a great and transformative influence upon the spiritually brutalized and impoverished Romans?
Why did bandits decide to abandon their lawless and inhuman activities after hearing his sermons?
Was it his education?
Was that the foundation of his addresses?
Was his discernment also the fruit of study concerning how he might approach and persuade his listeners regarding the beautiful purposes he proclaimed?
Certainly not. The entire success of his work was the product of his holiness, of his heart, burning with love for God and for his brethren, which radiated outward from Athos so that he might encounter and minister to those under bondage at the most difficult moment of their personal lives, and at the corresponding moment in the life of the Nation.
His love, fiery even unto martyrdom, could not remain hidden. This is confirmed by the good transformation that spread among his listeners through his words, or, rather, through his very presence, through his entire spiritual constitution and being. That is why their conversion did not merely seem instantaneous. It was! Instantaneous!
His listeners became, to the extent of their ability, imitators and followers of him, and thus they also saved their own philotimo, which at that time was in a state of complete “inadequacy, if not directed and inclined in the opposite direction.” His own blessed flame, kindled in the eternal Pascha and procession of Athos, was the kindling that the “living dead” rayahs needed in order for their own existence and lives also to be set aflame and consumed by the fire.
Even today, in the places through which he passed, people still say: “Saint Kosmas the Aitolos passed through here.” The one who set things ablaze, one might say!
Afterward came the fireship crews who set fire to the Turkish warships and flagships.
As for the unalloyed spiritual flagship, that was Father Kosmas himself, who regenerated the Greek people from their ashes, rekindled their hearts, and placed within them the good thought of the Desired, that is, of their Resurrection, so that it would trouble them spiritually. They themselves, too, had to prove worthy of such a spiritual regeneration and revolution, centered upon the sacred letters, which do not provide dry, sterile knowledge.
After all, throughout the continuity of Greek civilization, knowledge must be connected with virtue, and virtue requires spiritual cultivation. Any other proclamation can very easily be dismantled, if not turned toward what is more evil and “more beneficial.”
As for Saint Kosmas himself, his Athonite Paschal procession to his brethren also had the surest foundation. And that was his martyrdom on August 24, 1779.
His descent into Hades laid the foundation for the first Resurrection of the Nation!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
