Pergamon

One of Alexander the Great’s generals established this city on the top of a hill (arcropolis). The city grew up around an ancient temple to Zeus, whose foundations can be seen under these three trees.

The name of the city is related to our word “parchment’ which means “Pergamon paper.” It’s place in history is related to it’s library. The great library of Pergamon contained 20,000 books and was second only to the library in Alexandria. Our tour guide is pointing out the reading room of the ancient library and to the right is Suzanne who has taken most the the pictures I have posted from our trip.

When John wrote his Apocalypse letter to Pergamon, he referred to “the seat of Satan” which referred to either that pagan temple to Zeus or to the more prominent monument the Romans set up there to honor their emperor as a divine being.

Today Pergamon is famous for its hand woven rugs. We visited a carpet factory there to see young girls weaving the Persian carpets. It is a labor intensive project which requires three months to complete one medium size carpet. The woolen rugs are the less expensive as they contain fewer knots per square inch of material, next is cotton, and the most expensive are the silk carpets which contain hundreds of tiny knots per square centimeter of fabric and make take years to weave. Because each knot of material is cut off at an angle, the coloring of the hand woven carpets changes depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The brightest colors appear when the carpet is viewed from the angle of the cut.

The Red Courtyard of Pergamon is a square surrounded by the town at the base of its acropolis. It was built as a temple for Egyptian gods, but later was used as a Christian Church. The present day town is full of shops displaying their local carpets and weavings. At the factory we were shown how silk is extracted from the cocoon and spun into rolls of thread on the spinning wheel. Images used by St. Teresa immediately came to mind.

After Pergamon, we drove to Thiratira, our last pilgrimage to the seven of John’s Apocalyptic churches to which he writes in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of the book of Revelation.
We spent the night in Bursa. Excuse me, the call for evening prayer just rang out of the minarets. We are constantly reminded that we are in a Moslem country. The next morning we visited the famous green Mosque in Bursa. It is surrounded by the oldest Sycamore trees I’ve ever seen. They must be centuries old, some perhaps as old as the mosque itself.

Apocalyptic Churches

Our tour of Turkey takes us through the seven churches of the Apocalypse, beginning in Ephesus, a city sacred to both St Paul & John the Evangelist. Our first picture of the day is from Leodecia where I distracted our group by mounting the tallest ruin in the area where our tour guide had stopped to take a picture. When I get home I’ll post the picture I was taking. As it is spring in Asia Minor, the poppies and wild flowers are a glorious adornment to the ruins of Leodecia, but they need a proper perspective in order to show their full glory to my camera. To achieve this perspective, I hopped to the top of this ruin, losing my balance in the process on the first try. Luckily I ended up on my fat bottom, so no harm was done. You see my second and successful attempt to mount the obstacle and take the picture. I’m sure few of our pilgrims remembered the valuable information our tour guide, Mehmet was giving due to the drama taking place behind his back.

The next apocalyptic church we visited was Philadelphia. There are few ruins in Philadelphia due to the fact that it is today still a thriving town, unlike Ephesus and Leodecia. But in the middle of busy streets, one block contains this partial arch from a Christian church to the left of which our tour guide Margarita Dufilho and I stand. Notice the minoret in back of us: a common sign of this 90% Moslem country. Archeologists excavated a couple of places around this church to reveal the ruins of the ancient city upon which this church had been built.

Next stop was Sardis, a city close to home as Marylake borders Sardis Road. This tiny hamlet in central Arkansas was named after this biblical city. We took our pictures amid the columns of the old temple which formed the center of this ancient city. A Christian church was build adjacent to the temple.

Next was Smyrna, where we stopped at St Polycarp church to celebrate Mass. Getting into an active Christian complex in a Moslem country was a complicated procedure. The Sister in charge of the locked gate had called ahead to change the time we had planned to arrive. When we finally arrived at the church, we were 15 minutes early, but the gate was still locked tight, and we had to drive around the town until we negotiated with the lady who held the keys. We were not able to remain there at the church because our bus blocked the narrow street. We did get the feeling when we finally got in, of saying an underground Mass in a definitely non-Christian land, a feeling that St. Paul and St Polycarp would have known well.

A great restoration project is underway in the ancient part of Smyrna. Houses are being purchased one by one in the old quarter of the city, and stripped of their modern additions to reveal the old ruins which lie beneath. In this picture, you see the presently occupied homes to the left behind the old historic structures. To the right is a more contemporary wall which will be stripped away to reveal what’s underneath once that structure can be bought by the archeological society. Societies from various countries send their archeologists to fund such work. In one place it was the Italians, in another Princeton, another Harvard, etc. Turkey is a very poor country and so far has welcomed this assistance in recovering their past.

Modern day Smyrna is Izmir. While wandering through the city trying to get back to St Polycarp we took a detour around the bay and caught this nice shot of the waterfront.

Ephesus

On Monday we arrived at the great port of Ephesus. It was one of the greatest cities of Asia Minor in Paul’s time. The city had to be relocated three times due to the gradual filling in of its bay from silt of the river that poured into the sea there in ancient times. The Ephesus of Paul’s time was the third relocation. It was a thoroughly modern city complete with sanitary toilets (better than in most Turkish towns of today; the restaurant where we had lunch today had only holes in the floor to squat over!) Here you see our pilgrims checking out the biblical “water closet” of Paul’s time in Ephesus. There was a large Jewish community here due to all the trading and bartering and shopping of this busy port. Jewish symbols are mixed here with Roman and Christian ones.

This angel holds a laurel crown and palm for those who have run the good race. We also visited the grave of Cleopatra’s sister who met an awful death here, but was buried with honors befitting a princess along the great road that formed the main street of the city leading down the hill toward the bay.

As you might expect from any port, there was a brisk business in prostitution. During the excavation of Ephesus, a graffiti was found containing a footprint leading the way to “beautiful women”, not far from the great Celsus library whose façade was been restored. This façade can be seen in its full glory in one of my first postings. We also stopped in front of the library to have our group picture taken. There are thirteen of us, which our tour director keeps reminding me was exactly the number of Jesus and his apostles. I keep wondering who might be our betrayer, so I kept an eye out for any of our group who might be heading toward that lady’s footprint, but as all thirteen were here for the group picture, all seemed safe.
From Ephesus we moved onto to the seven churches of John’s Apocalypse, so our next posting will find us in Laodecia where I distracted the whole group by climbing on top of a high ruin behind our guide to get a better view and fell. So keep logging in.

Ephesus to Patmos

The main church Paul founded in Asia Minor was Ephesus. He wrote many things to the Ephesians. This became the mother church of the area presided over by John the Beloved disciple. This is all that’s left of what was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: one single column of the Temple of Artemis. Artemis was the goddess of fertility. She had more breasts than any goddess ever needed. No I didn’t count them but we had chickens when I was growing up and it would take the whole flock a week to lay as many eggs as Artemis had breasts. Anyway this temple was where the first city of Ephesus was located. By the time Paul came, it had relocated three times due to the diminishing shoreline of the bay of Ephesus. When John the Evangelist set up his cathedral church he chose a spot closer to the original site. The four columns in the background are said to have been the site of John’s basilica.

Marys Mass

On Sunday we celebrated Mass at the home of Jesus’ mother. According to sacred scripture, Jesus gave his mother to John as his legacy from the cross as he was dying. John would have taken her to Ephesus when he became bishop there if she were still living at that time which is highly likely. We don’t know when John came to Ephesus. We know when he was exiled to the barren island of Patmos however, for that was during the reign of Diocletian.

Marys House

There is this verdant spot on a hillside near Ephesus where an early Christian church was erected over a single family dwelling. This is thought to be the home where the Virgin Mary spent her last days on earth and from where she was assumed into heaven. If this tradition is true, it gives whole fresh perspective to the universality of Mary’s motherhood, having left her native land to live in this foreign Turkish land to spend her remaining years on earth.

We also visited the Greek Monastery of the Apocalyse, where John wrote the final book of our bibles. It was a Sunday, and the divine liturgy was being celebrated with chant as we walked through the room where John had his apocalyptic dream, and later dictated that revelation to his scribe Phosphorus (or something like that!) These 12 monks have the biggest chalice I’ve ever seen.

There used to be as many as a hundred monks living in this monastery set on one of the highest hills of the island. They wouldn’t need but that one chalice to serve them all a hefty swallow. After trudging up that high hill I concluded that if the monks could not get to heaven with their prayers, they certainly got as close as they could get to it with their feet.

Sunday was our day of transition. We passed through customs at the Turkish port of Kusadasi. Towering over the port city is a monumental statue of a Turkish General, Kamal Ataturk. This guy was something else. He’s like the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of modern day Turkey. When he became the first president of the country in 1923, one of the first things he did was to change the alphabet from Arabic to the same alphabet used in Europe and the west. He adopted the Gregorian calendar, liberated women from the headdress they had been required to wear under the Sultans, did away with the African fes hat for men, separated church from state in this 90% Muslim country, and generally opened the country up towards cultural ties to Europe rather than to their Asian border nations including Iraq. It was good to end the day relaxing under the protective gaze of dear old Ataturk.

Rhodes
Here’s the Bay of St Paul on the island of Rodos. Rhodes is known mostly for the Colossus which once stood at the entrance to it’s principal bay. The Colossus was an enormous bronze statute which fell into the sea centuries ago and was never replaced. Today two columns stand at the base of the ancient Colossus. On the top of each column stands a deer which is the symbol of the island which was saved from snakes by bringing in deer. The bible doesn’t mention much about Paul’s stay in Rhodes, but he took shelter in this small bay from a storm his ship ran into on its way from Crete.

Rhodes follows many of the Greek islands with its own acropolis. We are getting our exercise on this trip by hiking up to the highest hill on each island to the top where the temple was built. I think this temple, like the one in Corinth, was dedicated to Apollo. I tried to illustrate how the Christians might have tried, in a Samson-like manner, to take these temples down. The guy on the left is a priest from Brooklyn with whom I concelebrated Mass on Saturday evening.

Antony and Hope joined us in Frankfurt as they flew in from Dallas. We celebrated their 46^th year of marriage at the banquet on our last night on the Greek ship Aquamarine. Tomorrow we sail for Patmos and then disembark in Turkey to continue Paul’s journey’s through Asia Minor.

On our first day of the pilgrimage, we took off from Athens and headed down the road to Corinth. Corinth was an important port in the days of St Paul because it was where ships passed from the Aegean to the Ionian seas. Because of its strategic location in the middle of the Mediterrean, Corinth became a major shipping channel. The main temple of Corinth was built for Zeus’ son, Apollo. Here we are walking up the main road to the city. This ancient road was excavated by American archeologists in the 1950s. It was a rainy day. My Mass in Corinth among these ruins of the ancient city, was celebrated in the most primitive conditions imaginable. If you ask who I am wearing as I stroll down the ancient red carpet leading into the old city, the answer is “Trash bag chic.”

From Corinth, we headed back to Athens and trudged up the Arcropolis which towers over the city. The rain had stopped by the time we got back to Athens, so I was able to shed my makeshift “raincoat” for a picture with Heloise who is the vicar for Religious in the archdiocese of Houston. We are standing at a corner of the famous Parthenon. I was thrilled to see all the restoration work that has been going on in this magnificent building since my last visit in the ‘80s.

Our final stop at the acropolis was Mars hill. I am standing on the old steps which Paul probably used to ascend this natural “pulpit” of rock from which he delivered his famous speech from the Book of Acts, “Men of Athens.” The entire speech is written out in the original Greek there on a plaque.

The day ended with a wonderful dinner on the 8^th floor of our hotel, which a view out the window of the acropolis. That light in the middle of the horizon is the Parthenon. Tomorrow we head for the island of Mykonos, and then onto Rhodes.

OK, Here we are at Bush International. That's the Lufthansa checkin counters in back.
The first eight of our little group of thirteen [left to right}: David & Phyllis Garcia, Corazon Banks, Susan Acut, Sr Heloise Cruzat OP, Margarita Dufilho, Cathy Miranda, and Maurice Dufilho. We're about to board the plane for Frankfurt. Then onto Athens tomorrow. Pray for us.

The importance of Paul to the Christian church cannot be over emphasized. Of all the saints, none left a more lasting impression upon the church as we know it than did Paul. Paul carried the message of Jesus out of the confines of Israel. Paul even boasts that he converted Peter, and he did! We would all be still observing the dietary laws of Judaism, going to synagogue, and reading the Talmud were it not for Paul confronting Peter, for Paul took Jesus' message out of the synagogue. How could Peter have ever set up church headquarters in Rome, had not Paul blazed the way there through Asia and Greece?

Paul was born at the wrong place in the wrong time. While Jesus was preaching in Galilee, Paul was studying with the Pharisees in Jerusalem. When Jesus chose his apostles, Paul was not there. Paul was making tents in Tarsus while Jesus chose fishermen in Galilee. When Stephen was stoned, Paul was standing on the wrong side.

This painting is by Pompeo Batoni.

Paul was never to know in this life, the man he chose to devote his life to. Paul never met Jesus. He came close. He lived at the same time, he visited the same places, but their paths never crossed, not until that fateful noon on the road to Damascus.