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.