Mount Athos׃ The highest place on earth

Publication Data: Athens, Greece: EN PLO Editions, 2007
Format: softcover
Number of Pages: 153
Dimensions (l × w × h): 20.1 cm × 13.2 cm × 1.1 cm
ISBN: 978‒960‒6719‒17‒2

   
Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia
Translated by Caroline Makropoulos

“This is no ordinary travel book, although at first it may seem so. The author is bound on an inner journey of the soul and the heart as much as an outward journey. His is a journey of discovery into the soul: it is a discovery of self and of his vocation, something at first he so little suspects and so vehemently rejects. Just as the author is startled by the ascetics who emerge suddenly out of their hiding places in the Athonite desert, so too are we startled by the newness and originality of his thought and manner of expression, his language and his way of looking at things. He and the characters he meets use images and metaphors from science, and especially from physics, to talk about the world of the spirit, challenging us to review and reappraise our conception of ‘saints’ and ‘saintliness’ and surprising us with visions of the heavenly in the here and now of this physical world.”
—“Thoughts of the Translator”

CONTENTS

   Thoughts of the Translator
   Introduction — ‘The Mount which God Desired for His Abode’: A Place of Universal Coordinates and Heavenly Bearings
PART ONE
THE VISIBLE ATHOS
   Chapter 1 — Childhood Vision
   Chapter 2 — Between Dream and Fantasy
   Chapter 3 — A Night at Karyes
   Chapter 4 — At Fr Paisios’s Hut
   Chapter 5 — Stavronikita Monastery and the Feast-day of Iviron Monastery
   Chapter 6 — Katounakia and the Danielaioi Brotherhood
   Chapter 7 — Karoulia: View of the Invisible
   Chapter 8 — At Fr Ephraim’s Hut
   Chapter 9 — Sketes — the Fragrance of Holy Relics — Return to the World
PART TWO
THE INVISIBLE ATHOS
   Chapter 1 — The Life and Dormition of the ‘Immortal Ones’
   Chapter 2 — The Desert of Mount Athos
   Chapter 3 — God Has Chosen the Foolish Things of the World
   Chapter 4 — The Meeting with God through Transcendental Risks
   Chapter 5 — Treading on Untrodden Ground: The Rule of the Avaton
   Chapter 6 — Comparing Yesterday with Today
   Postscript