Great Friday

On Great Friday morning, we walked down to the Cave of the Apocalypse, which is about halfway between the port of Skala and the mountaintop town of Hora. Instead of the road, we walked down the old Byzantine foot/donkey path, which was very pleasant.

The top photo is a scene from along the path.

The middle photo is of the famous “triple-fissure” from inside the cave. The rock split here when St John received the Revelation. Of course, you can’t really see anything in the photo – we didn’t use the flash inasmuch as photography “is forbidden” inside the cave. Of course, in Greek, “forbidden” means only that maybe perhaps you should consider using some discretion in taking photos – I was a real literalist in interpreting that to mean “no flash.”

Rob has some video from inside the cave with me giving a little tour, which will be forthcoming. I will post the link as soon as he has it ready.

The bottom photo is of Pelagia and Patricia outside the cave, at the entrance to the old footpath.

That night, for the Lamentations, we went to the women's monastery of the Life-Receiving Spring in Hora.

As our neighbor and translator friend James Lillie told us, the name is actually Life-Receiving Spring, rather than Life-Giving. He’s not sure how this mistranslation lodged its way into permanent use among English-speakers, but he suspects that someone originally misread a manuscript, as there is only a one-letter difference between the two in the Greek.

(Another mistranslation that has stuck, he pointed out, is actually ‘Christ is risen!’ The Greek ‘anesti’ is clearly a present perfect verb – i.e. has risen. The verb form of ‘is risen,’ in English, if it means anything, would have to be taken as a passive verb – i.e. I am risen from sleep by my brother, or Christ is risen by…?

All that being said, Christ has risen! (Or Christ is risen! It doesn’t really matter, as I don’t think God will be judging us on grammar anyway.) ( :

Anyway, on the way back to our place from the Monastery of the Life-Receiving Spring, we ran into the procession held by the local parish in Hora. There are some grainy shots with all our photos here and Rob's video will also show more.