Tag Archives: Mt. Athos

Shaft of the Abyss

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Another fresco from Mt. Athos that illustrates the Apocalypse. Here we see the attack of the demonic locusts described in chapter 9, the “first woe” of three to be unleashed by the angels faithful to God. These locusts, an allusion to the 8th plague that struck Egypt at the Exodus, are allowed to torment–but not kill–the people of the earth.

I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given a key to the shaft of the abyss. He opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke came up from the shaft like smoke from a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. Out of the smoke came locusts… (Apoc. 9:1-3)

A fallen star is a fallen angel. Hence, the star is “he” and given a key to the abyss. Stars–in apocalyptic writing–are always angels, whether good or bad, faithful to God or not. The tradition of fallen angels is ancient though it does not appear in the oldest layer of biblical writing; the story of the angelic fall is told in 1 Enoch 6-13, an expansion of Genesis 6:1-4. Jesus also refers to the fall of the angels: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).

The “abyss” is the usual Greek translation of “the deep” (ex. Gen. 1:2, Psalm 105:9, 107:26); it is also used to refer to Sheol (Job 41, Romans 10). In the Apocalypse, the abyss-the deep-sheol is the provisional prison of Satan and the fallen angels. In the gospel, the demons beg Jesus not to send them there (Luke 8:31). In this chapter of the Apocalypse, a shaft leads to the abyss-the deep-sheol and a fallen angel is allowed to unlock it.

Out of the abyss comes a great cloud of smoke and ash; from the smoke and ash come the monstrous locusts that attack people but are not allowed to attack the earth itself, unlike natural locusts. These supernatural locusts attack and torture but cannot kill; they can sting like scorpions and have a king (the word is more usually translated as “emperor”), unlike natural locusts (Proverbs 30:27).

Is the Apocalypse comparing the locusts to the imperial Roman system by using the Greek word for “emperor” rather than “king” to describe their organization? If so, then the Roman state–and any political system that is in opposition to God–can attack and torment the faithful but cannot destroy or overwhelm the Kingdom of God. I have recently discovered the work of Walter Wink, who writes about the demonic aspect of human political systems. As my friend Daniel says, “Phenomena like The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror do occur, but the real danger is from beings that assume power over humanity in the form of nations, corporations, political ideologies, and economic systems.”

The Seventh Seal

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Dionysiou Monastery on Mt. Athos was founded in 1374. In its refectory (dining hall) is a magnificent series of frescoes that illustrate the Apocalypse. In this illustration of chapter 8, we see the seven angels with trumpets, the censer with smoke, a mountain in the sea, the bloody sea water, destroyed ships, the fountain of water, the star Wormwood (in the rocks in the right corner), a darkened sun, etc.

When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. I saw the seven angels who stand before God and they were given seven trumpets. (Apoc. 8:1)

The silence in heaven is momentous. It grabs the attention. It is louder than the thunder and commotion that either precede or follow it. Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the lull between events, one thing having finished and the other not yet having started as sometimes happens when a reader or performer is not ready to begin. Silence is a living presence.

I read many years ago that the most brilliant moment in music is the silence before the Et incarnatus of Bach’s “B Minor Mass.” The silence in heaven is like that. It is the sudden silence that follows Dorothy’s house crashing into Munchkinland as it drops from the cyclone in which she has seen Miss Gulch become the Wicked Witch.

This silence in heaven is an echo of the silence in heaven that preceded God’s first utterance: “Let there be light.” (see 4 Ezra 7:30-33) The apocalyptic silence in heaven is liturgical silence, the moment when all creation holds its breath seeing the Word of God crucified. It is the silence of the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday: God the Word has died and descended into Hades. It is the moment before all creation is turned topsy-turvy by Life himself tearing Death to shreds from the inside out.

Before the angels blow their trumpets, another angel-deacon comes to offer incense at the heavenly altar. There is “much incense” offered. The smoke creates an impenetrable cloud, much like the cloud of incense that the prophet Isaiah also saw (Isaiah 6). It was said that when the High Priest offered incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur that there was not enough smoke if he could still see his hand in front of his face. The smoke creates a buffer that serves to protect the human from the brilliant glory of God that would annihilate anything or anyone that dared stand unprotected in the terrible light.

In the Our Father, we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” Before the kingdom comes, all creation holds its breath and peers through the smoky clouds of incense, waiting to see what will happen when God reveals himself.

Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God & The Visitation

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A 17th-century Russian icon of the Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God.

July 2 has long been a feast day of the Mother of God in both the Eastern and Western Churches although the feasts each had a somewhat different emphasis.

According to legend, the Mother of God died and was buried by the apostles in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary’s Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (also called sash or cincture) to the Apostle Thomas. Another version of the story recounts how the Mother of God gave her sash to one of the women tending her as she was dying and the sash was passed down in that woman’s family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, the sash was reportedly made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camel hair. Whether it was given to St. Thomas or the woman tending the dying Virgin, the sash was kept at Jerusalem for many years. It was brought to Constantinople in the 5th century, together with the robe of the Virgin Mary. The robe and the sash were both deposited in the Church of St. Mary at Blachernae. The sash was embroidered with gold thread by the Empress Zoe, the wife of Emperor Leo VI, in gratitude for a miraculous cure. The anniversary of this deposition of the sash of the Mother of God at Blachernae is celebrated every year by the Orthodox Church on July 2.

Later, the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347–1355) donated the sash to the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day. (I was given a relic of the sash on Mt. Athos by a good friend of mine; I highly prize it. I have also been given a small stone from Golgotha by a parishioner and a small stone from the tomb of the Mother of God in Jerusalem as an ordination gift.)

July 2 was the traditional date for the Western Church to celebrate the Visitation of the Mother of God and St. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:39-57). Feeling the presence of his Christ in the womb of Mary, John, in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, jumped with excitement. Elizabeth greeted her cousin Mary as “the Mother of my Lord,” realizing that the baby was not just kicking in her womb for no reason. (Many western Christians moved the Visitation feast to May 31 in 1969.) Keeping the Visitation on July 2, however, strikes me as a fitting way to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians and to foster goodwill among the adherents of a common, “mere” Christianity.

Read more about the Visitation here and here. You can read more about the Deposition here. See Mere Christianity here.

A contemporary icon depicting the Mother of God giving her sash to St. Thomas the Apostle after her Dormition (Assumption).