Source: Papadiamantrian Priest
February 2, 2021
Below is an excerpt from Sin’s Ghosts (1900) by the Greek author Alexandros Papadiamantis, translated by Fr. Ioannis Fortomas. OrthoChristian recently reported about Fr. Ioannis leaving the Greek Church to join the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia because of the Ukrainian Church crisis.
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How well we matched – my poor cousin Mahoúla and I – relations of the eighth degree! If I strictly censor and judge myself, I uncover that not for a moment was I worthy of her trust and confidence. She narrated her passions, her tortures, and her sufferings as we crossed the vineyards of the valley, peregrinating on the night of the 24th to the 25th of September to the chapel of St. John the Theolgian, the Dependency of the Holy Cenóbium of the Annunciation. There, a meager vigil was to be celebrated from the ninth hour of the evening until the third hour of Matins, and then, after a brief respite of two hours, the Liturgy was to occur at daybreak.
We didn’t premeditate or agree to set off together. And this vigil wasn’t the exception. On the eighth of September around the third hour after midnight, after the dismissal of Matins at the Feast of Panayía Limnía, my cousin Mahoúla and I – arm in arm – descended the cobble stone path which began at Captain Nikóla Mataróna’s home and reached the seaside market. Despite there being a harvest moon, the night was pitch black. The melancholy luminescence anointed – as an impoverished inheritance – the roofs of the hamlet’s hovels, the window sills, the balconies and the blossoms. For us wanderers on that cobble stone way, it couldn’t spare a merciful flicker. And so we slipped and slid, my Mahoúla and I.
... Read the rest at Papadiamantrian Priest.
