Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality by Kyriacos C. Markides

Author:Kyriacos C. Markides [Markides, Kyriacos C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Religious/Philosophy, Spirituality, Travel, Philosophy, Religion
ISBN: 9780385500920
Publisher: Image
Published: 2001-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

10

Strategies

Father Maximos spent most of the morning in his office chatting with two fellows in their mid-twenties. They had arrived at the monastery two weeks earlier and were staying in a cell reserved for visitors. I assumed at the time that they were potential novices exploring the option of a monastic life. But Stephanos, being a kind of lay father figure to the younger monks and therefore having intimate knowledge of the goings-on in the monastery, informed me confidentially that the newcomers had a very severe drug problem. They had arrived with the aim of freeing themselves from their deadly addiction, and were not primarily concerned with the salvation of their souls. Father Maximos was their therapist and the monastery was serving as a detoxification center of a sort.

I was sitting on the bench outside my cell reading when Father Maximos came out of his office and waved at me to join them. It was then that the two young men volunteered to reveal in graphic detail how they had become addicted to drugs. One had just completed a two-year jail sentence for possession and use of cocaine. The other, a tall former Olympic athlete from Greece, had an even greater problem. “Bad company,” he said, led him into all sorts of mischief and eventually to heroin addiction. He was sent to Cyprus by his desperate parents after they heard from a Cypriot friend of Father Maximos’s reputation as a charismatic elder.

Had it not been for the hospitality and care they received at the Panagia monastery and Father Maximos’s spiritual guidance, they would have been back on the streets, they both told me. When I asked them whether they considered the possibility of becoming monks they emphatically replied that they had no such intentions. Their temporary stay at the monastery was for purely therapeutic purposes. While staying there, however, they had to follow the routine activities of the monks, including waking up at three-thirty every morning to attend long services, practicing the Jesus Prayer, fasting, and working in the gardens. This regimen apparently worked well for them, and while in the monastery the young men did not suffer any withdrawal symptoms. Father Maximos later told me that he was concerned that a brief stay at the monastery may not be sufficient for their long-term rehabilitation. An additional concern was how serious a problem drug addiction had become on the island, and how little the government was doing about it. He felt that he had to do something himself.

That afternoon Father Maximos asked me to drive him half an hour down the mountain to the construction site of the Holy Shelter, a drug rehabilitation center that had started a year earlier at Father Maximos’s initiative. During the ride he described the circumstances that led to the creation of the center.

About a year and a half ago Father Maximos began to regularly visit an imprisoned young man in an attempt to help him with his drug problem. This fellow was about to be released but there was no agency which could at that time take up his rehabilitation.

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