Extra: Life on Mt. Athos

Are monks living at Mt. Athos in northern Greece happier people than people in the outside world? Father Matthew certainly thinks so and explains why.

[paulwilliams]

God bless holy mount Athos. May God preserve the holiness in these times of worldliness.

[fotis]

I been there for 6 times. I went blind and I return blind. I spoke to a person who met the Saint Paisios. He told me the real treasure of Agion Oros is the monks. There are 50 monks like Saint Paisios he claimed. I wish one day to go blind and return one-eyed.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord You can find the names like Gemistos Plethon and others in a database at NDSU that has all the Math PhDs of all time. They are Greek and I can tell you Orthodox. Just before Byzantium collapsed in the 15th century all these elements migrated to Venice and other Italian cities and contributed greatly to the Renaissance.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Orthodoxy developed and expanded by Byzantium the Eastern Roman empire with capital Constantinople (Instanbul in Turkey today) in post Roman and medieval times. At the time the Byzantine world was Greek cultured and had a core of what is now Asia Minor, Greece and some Balkan regions. It was richer and more developed than any country in the Western world. It lived for a longer period of time about 1000 years that any country now in Europe.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord I came to the States for education mainly, graduate school, not for money. When I came in the 80s I had a better education than any American in my class. I was competing mainly with my German classmates and was even more prepared than my Chinese classmates. A large percentage in my school was not American. I had German, English and Greek professors together with the Americans.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord I can tell you that if Byzantium had managed to survive, Europe would be much different than it is today. You would have a quite developed nation possibly called Byzantium or some other name the size of Turkey and Greece or more and probably as developed and prosperous as any Western European country and possibly as strong as Russia or the USA for that matter.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord You even had Italian students coming in secret to Greece to dig out the bodies of their professors that had returned to Greece and bring them back to Venice. That was done with Plethon’s students.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Christianity came from the East which was more developed and richer than the then Western world and it was like what we now know as Orthodoxy. The oldest Christian Churches, Armenian, Coptic, Greek etc are all versions of Orthodoxy.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord You need to know that what Orthodoxy is now was how Christianity was in almost everywhere where Christianity appeared, even in now Catholic countries. BTW Catholic is a Greek word for global and has nothing to do with (Roman) Catholics. The Orthodox Church (which at the time included all churches) in the Nicean creed calls itself catholic just for that reason.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord . I am quite well off thanks to the environment of freedom and opportunity in the States and my hard work and I am grateful for it that is why I am a citizen.
The States represent the closest country now to the Democratic ideal of Reason and Law as thought off by the Greeks.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Modern Greece is very young, younger than the USA. You need to pay attention what happened throughout history in Greece to learn something. I explained it all here. There is a lot of corruption in Greece but this is not the only problem. Todays China is one of the most corrupt countries in the world but one of the richest so is not just corruption. In any case for what it is worth Greece has the 32nd economy in the world with a GDP of 300B. For a country of 10M this is amazing.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord
Your argument is quite ignorant. Yes in the early times the church was less technologically advanced and formally less educated but that does not mean that it was less spiritually advanced. I would say that it was more spiritually advanced. To be spiritually advanced requires the Holy Spirit and the heart for it and that is all. Jesus did not ordain women but he did ordain men.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord It was built by immigrants fleeing Europe not only for religion but for a better life and not being in the hands of land owners and kings. It is mostly protestant because it was the Protestants of Western Europe that were persecuted by the Catholics that’s all. But soon after you have a lot of Greeks and others. I think it is a lesser country just because of the protestant culture.

[nkodogi]

@nkodogi 3. As long as the Church as a whole lives with it I am fine. If God wanted it otherwise there would have been a change with no fuss involved.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Byzantium was a wall of prosperity and culture protecting the Western world from Islam and barbarous migrations of the time and allowed it to develop to what it is today. Byzantium had the first University in Europe in Constantinople. The first elements of the Renaissance appeared in Byzantium. It is interesting to see the first Math PHDs (they were not like PHDs of today but anyway) are coming from there. Year 1300.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord
And when the protestants realize the shallowness of their beliefs they are amazed. About protestant countries in Europe my experience is that they are indeed more educated but mainly by far more secular than anywhere else. So they are not really protestant or they are not practicing christians in essence. The majority of European Russians are Orthodox and they are in general more educated than the average Western European.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Even though I do not have much time I will try to address your points no matter how ignorant they are. What is the corruption in these nations that you are talking about having to do with Orthodoxy?. The fact that these Balkan nations seem to be behind the times and as a consequence dysfunctional and often corrupt has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord
2. The church (the real church not the pseudo-Christian Protestant one) moved on without any tension in this matter which probably means it is in the correct direction. Pretty much like Athos not accepting women. But its protector is a woman, the Mother of God, the Holy Theotokos. I would not have a problem with women priests unless this is pushed onto the Church for politically correct reasons like it happened with the Protestants.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord Greece actually is a very Western country (for better or worse) and you will not find much difference compared to most of the cities in the States if you visit there. It has developed some and has a great tourist population every year. So what are you talking about? The main reason of the backwardness and less development of a lot of Orthodox countries in the East is historical and political not religious.

[nkodogi]

@NixonisLord That is why some Orthodox countries are less developed and not as strong. They are quite behind in the course of development. But they will catch up soon enough although they missed all of the Renaissance unfortunately. Communism is also another reason for some of those. Greece is actually catching up though.