New Baby Girl Edwards

Yesterday, Monday, June 3, a new baby girl was born into the Edwards family in Greece, around 8:15 PM. She weighed in at 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs) and measured 52 cm (20.5 inches) in length. Above is the first photo of her, just minutes after being born.

Another photo a few minutes later.

Mother with child.

Today, Tuesday, we took the kids to go meet their new sister. Here we are in the waiting room of the clinic. We were joined by our good friends Fr. Stavros and Pres. Maria.

Phoebe was the most eager to meet her new sister. Here is Phoebe with her godmother talking to the baby.

And here are the triplets climbing all over Fr. Stavros just like the do me. They must have been confused by the similar appearance...

No name yet. In Greece, the baby does not officially have a name until the baptism. Until then, she is simply "Baby Girl Edwards."

For more photos, click here and here.

Parish Trip, Part 3: Delphi, Arahova, and the Monastery of the Prophet Elijah

After Osios Loukas, we headed toward nearby Arahova for lunch. The kids fell asleep during the short ride over. Above, you can see Paul still sleeping as we ordered food. 

Here our friend Fr. Stavros, the driver, gives Phoebe the phone to talk to his presvytera, Maria. Phoebe told her in Greek all about our trip.

Here's our group enjoying lunch.

After lunch, we took a walk through Arahova to admire the views. Above, you can see some of the stairs leading to one of the village's two churches. The stairs seemed to go on forever! And you could just make out the church at the top.

And here's the town's other church, in a picturesque location.

One of our parishioners, Christina, an iconographer, is from the area. She served as a kind of guide for us. Here she is with Phoebe in Arahova.

Here we are as we're about to get back on the bus. Many wealthy Athenians have second houses in Arahova, like those you see in the photo above. They even have them set up so that they can turn on the heating via internet, so that the house is warm by the time they drive the 2-2.5 hours from Athens!

Coming out of Arahova and heading to our final destination, we passed through the famous city of Delphi, which the ancient Greeks considered the center of the world. We didn't have time to go into the archaeological site and explore, so we had to settle for taking a photo from a distance.

Our final destination with the Monastery of the Prophet Elijah, where we had Saturday night Vespers along with another visiting priest and his parish.

This monastery is renowned for its hand-carved templon or iconostasis, featuring intricately carved scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The work dates to around 1830 and is said to have taken 20 years for the artist to complete.

After that, we headed back toward Volos, finally making it into Portaria shortly before 10 PM. A long day, but with many blessings. We hope to make next month's trip either to the monasteries of Evia or to the monastery of St. Ephraim in Nea Makri.

For all the photos from the day, click here.

Parish Trip, Part 2: Osios Loukas in Steiri

Our next stop was the highlight of the trip -- the Monastery of Osios Loukos in Steiri, founded around 960 by Osios Loukas (St. Luke), an ascetic monk who is not to be confused either with the Evangelist or the Surgeon, of Crimea. At its height in the 12th century, the enormous monastery had 800 monks. Today, it has just three, who co-exist along with the Archaeological Service, and millions of visitors. We arrived around 12:45 and stayed for about an hour and half, during which time we saw countless buses full of tourists, including some from Japan. The monastery is rightly a UNESCO World Heritage Site.



The monastery has three main churches. The first church, dedicated to the Panagia, dates from around 960. The main church, seen above, dates to around 1010, and is dedicated to St. Luke. Finally, a third church, dedicated to St. Barbara, was built directly underneath the main church during the monastery's height around the 12th century. The first and second churches are connected by a passageway, where the full relics of St. Luke are kept for visitors to venerate. The relics are said to have exuded myrrh and been the conduit of many miraculous healings.

Here we are inside the main church, listening to one of the guides from the Archaeological Service. The monastery's height met a swift and sudden end with the Franks' Fourth Crusade in 1204. At that time, Boniface of Montferrat, the new king of Thessaloniki, came to Central Greece, expelled the Orthodox monks and installed Catholic ones, who stripped the monastery. Then the Prince of Achaia, Godfrey II Villehardouin (1218-1245), sacked the remaining treasures of the monastery and took them to Rome. At the time of the Duchy of Athens-Thebes (1205-1308), the de la Roche family considered the monastery to be theirs. The Catalans, after their victory in Kopais (15 March 1311) and their occupation of Levadia, sacked the monastery again. 
But when the Italian scholar Cyriacus of Ancona first visited the monastery in 1436, he found the monastery in good shape. During the Ottoman period, from 1460 (when Levadia fell) until the day of liberation, the monastery struggled for existence. Despite all this, the French explorer Jacob Spon, who visited the monastery in February 1676, wrote that it was "thriving and beautiful," while the English traveler George Wheler, who also visited that year, was so attracted that he wanted to become a hermit there.
After the area was liberated from the Turks in the 19th century, the Greeks themselves did what the Turks were unable to do -- close the monastery. It remained in the hands of the Archaeological Service until the 1980s, when a local priest cut the locks on the door to the church, and went in and "illegally" celebrated Liturgy. After that incident, a compromise was found whereby the monastery could once again function as a real monastery.

All the marble on the floors, and the naturally colored marble on the walls, as well as the mosaics, are all original. In some areas of the church, the mosaics were destroyed, but many are intact. They are considered the work of the same school that did the mosaics in Agia Sophia in Constantinople.

At some point in history, an earthquake caused the dome to collapse, along with the original mosaics there. The dome you see above is frescoed, dating to the 17th century, while the mosaics all around and in the apse are original, dating to the 11th century.

Above and below, some of the beautiful original mosaics.

Here we are in the crypt Church of St. Barbara, which was built around St. Luke's original cell (which was also where his disciples buried him).

Here's Paul exploring a small passageway in the crypt church.

Behind the main church, we explored some buildings, whose original use was not immediately clear. There was also an old sundial behind the building in the photo above.

A passageway along the south side of the main church, with the entrance down to the crypt off to the left.

Here's Paul exploring again, this time climbing up some steps to...

A balcony over the entrance to the crypt church.

After the tour, a few of my parishioners gathered for conversation in the shaded outer courtyard with a beautiful view.

Part 3 coming.

Parish Trip, Part 1: Monastery of Jerusalem

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On Saturday, May 25, we went on our monthly parish pilgrimage, this time about 3 hours southwest, around the area of the famous ancient city of Delphi.



We left from Portaria at 7:00 with Anastasia and the kids, leaving Pelagia to enjoy some peace and quiet for the day. After about two hours, we made a brief rest stop near Lamia, and then continued on to our first destination near Davlia, the Holy Monastery of Jerusalem, an usual name owing to the fact that its first monk and founder hailed from the Holy Land. In the mid-18th century, the monastery became a dependency of St. Catherine's on Mt. Sinai for tax relief. In 1770, during one of the failed revolution attempts, the monastery was destroyed by raiding Albanians.

In the photo above you can see Anastasia and our friend Stavroula playing with the kids just outside one of the small church's side doors.

As you can see from the photos, the monastery is surrounded by beautiful nature and lots of green. After venerating inside the church, the abbess spoke to our group -- a little about the history of the monastery, about St. Jerusalem and her three children, and some encouraging words. 

Paul wanted to ring the bells.

The nuns, of course, treated us all to some of their sweets, and then a group of us decided to hike out about 10 minutes above the monastery to the original cave/cell of the monastery's founder.

Here we are inside the small cave/cell, which also includes a small chapel, with iconography from the late 17th century, in the famous Cretan style, by Nikolaos Kallergis.

Here some of our group are taking photos in the scenic, shaded courtyard just outside the monastery walls.

After staying there from about 11:00-12:00, we got back on the bus and headed to the next monastery. Above you can see Phoebe having fun wearing her godmother's sunglasses.

And here Phoebe is looking over our the shoulder of our driver, Fr. Stavros, at the herd of goats we passed.

Stay tuned for the next monastery.

For more photos from the whole day, click here.

Panegyri at Our Chapel of Sts. Constantine and Helen

One of our "chapels" was originally the central church of a men's monastery in Portaria. The main church, built in 1860, is dedicated to Sts. Constantine and Helen, so it parish tradition to celebrate their feast day, as well as the Elevation of the Holy Cross (Sept. 14), at this chapel.

Given that a large number of Greeks celebrate their name day on the feast of Sts. Constantine and Helen, we had a particularly large crowd, especially for the festal vespers on Monday evening. Our friends Babi and Popi take care of the chapel, and so it was, of course, clean and ready for the feast. You can see the altar above.

Another woman, Anastasia, has many people in her family who have their name day on this feast, so she also takes it upon herself to help with preparations, provide the bread, wine, and oil for the artoklasia, etc. In fact, many people brought bread and wine for the artoklasia, such that this large table in the middle of the church was overflowing.



Here are some of the local women sitting outside the church before the service began on Monday evening.

To the north side of the church are the remain of the monks' cells (seen to the left in the photo above). From what I can gather, monks occupied the monastery until about World War II.

My chant teacher, Constantine, (who is also the teacher of our chanter) was able to attend, along with another fellow student, so we had an excellent choir.

Here is the front of the church, taken from down the bank.

Here we are processing around the church during the Litia, just before the Artoklasia.



Here we are at the artoklasia, reading many, many names.

Our chanters.

A photo of the church from the northwest.

From the northeast corner. You can see that there are also two side chapels. The one to the north is dedicated to St. Minas, and the one to the south to St. Anthony.



After the service, Anastasia treated everyone to pitas, sweets, juice, etc.

On Tuesday morning, after the Liturgy, we had good news that a friend of ours who works with the Archaeological Service had managed to find some timber for us from an old church being restored in nearby Makrinitsa. This was a big help, because the roof of the side chapel to St. Minas is badly in need of repair, as is the southern section of the overhang of the exo-narthex. The Archaeological Service requires repairs be done with original materials, so getting the right material was a great help, as our funds for the chapels are quite limited. As my friend noted when he brought the materials: "See, the saints provided for their church on their feast day!"

For a few more photos, click here.

Cousin Comes to Visit

The kids' cousin -- and Phoebe's godmother -- Anastasia arrived last week for her fourth visit to us in Greece, but first in our new home in Portaria. She graciously came to help us as we prepare for the new baby.

Above is a photo of the kids on the stairs in the church courtyard, with our bell tower in the background. The flower and white runners were for a wedding on Sunday afternoon, and the kids were wearing their Pascha clothes, which they generally like to wear every Sunday.

Here are Anastasia and the kids at the playground. The Monastery of Panagia Odigitria can be discerned in the background, just to the right and below Ana's hands.

For a few more photos, click here.