You were the invisible ladder between heaven and earth.
You set our souls on a voyage
to seek the pure and the grand.
Hiding our dreams in your warm embrace,
you gave us wings to travel all over the world…
Oh! How your pleasant figure withered so suddenly.
How the waves drowned your thunderous voice.
And now you stand dead alive, our ill-fortuned mother,
Expecting a bell to signal your resurrection.
— Anonymous poem by Orthodox theologians, "To Our Mother, the Theological School of Halki"
I was late.
The ferry for the island was leaving at 9AM, and it was already 8:15 when the phone rang in the hotel room. "Are you coming, or not?" Joshua Trevino asked. "The ferry leaves in 45 minutes…"
"Be down in seven minutes," I said.
And so I was.
Joshua's father, the Reverend Eben Trevino of the Russo-Carpathian Orthodox Church, and his mother, Diane, along with Jerry Tatum, also a Russo-Carpathian Orthodox, had already gone down to the harbor when Daniel Schmidt from the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I joined Joshua in the hotel lobby.
"Should we call a cab?" I asked.
"I've ordered one, it's waiting outside," said Josh, an Orthodox scholar, typing messages on his laptop.
I went outside and came back in.
"There's no cab outside, Josh," I said.
He looked up with a bemused expression, then closed his laptop and hurried outside with me and looked over the empty parking lot.
"We'll have to call another," he said.
Ten minutes later, our taxi appeared, and Josh, Dan, and I were underway. Quickly we drove down toward the harbor, and the driver let us out across the street from the wharfs, where a dozen ferry-boats were waiting. We zig-zagged across a busy street, and Josh called his father on his cell phone.
"Which boat?" he asked.
"Where are we going?" I asked Josh.
"Heybeli," he said. "Halki in Greek. The ferry is just a few yards that way…"
We started down past streams of passengers issuing from a ferry boat that had just pulled in. But when we came to the boat entrance, the destination marked above the gate was wrong. Josh dialed his father's cell phone again. Busy. I asked a ticket man, "Heybeli?" He pointed the opposite direction. Down the wharf we hurried, until in the distance we saw Father Trevino in his white collar and precisely trimmed goatee.
Just before 9AM, we stepped up two wooden gangplanks and onto the ferry which would carry us for an hour or more out toward the islands which ring the harbor of Istanbul, and toward one of the most holy monasteries of Orthodoxy.
Our odd group of six American travelers in a city of some 16 million Turks sat for a moment on the deck of the ferry until a stiff wind forced us down inside.
I looked back on the great city of Istanbul, which stretched along the coast as far as the eye could see, rank on rank of apartment and office buildings. There on a promontory rose the great dome of Hagia Sofia, solitary, with the solemnity of that wisdom which ascends, open and confident, from this earth toward heaven. The glory of Istanbul, it stood there red-brown against the grey-blue sky, guarded by four slender minarets set about it in a square. To its left, just a bit lower, its dome slightly less rounded, the magnificent Blue Mosque, with its own four minarets.
Mother of Patriarchs
"The place where we are going is one of the most important places in the world for the Orthodox," explained Josh. "It is the Halki Patriarchal School. It's on the top of a mountain, and you can't get to it except by horse-drawn cart. Since the 1840s, almost all the Patriarchs of Constantinople – including the present patriarch – have done their theological studies at the school. But the Turkish government ordered it closed in 1971. So for 35 years, Orthodox students have been unable to study there. It is one of Greek Orthodoxy's greatest hopes that the Turkish government will reverse its decision, and allow the school to reopen. Patriarch Bartholomew has met with Turkey's president and other authorities to ask them to reopen the seminary. But so far, no change."
We stop at a place called Kadikoy. A white building embroidered in blue arabesque houses the ticket office. The ferryman casts out a green braided nylon tow line the thickness of a man's leg, a man on the dock wraps it around a bright blue iron cleat, the ferry surges against the two enormous tires which protect the wooden piers at each end of the dock, and crushes with a sound like a sigh the 16 smaller tires which line the dockside. The ferry settles as the dock pylons shudder. Thirty passengers get off, and some 150 hurry on board – so quickly that the ropes are undone, the gangways pulled in, and we are off again in no more than 60 seconds.
Now looms our destination, the island of Halki. There, on the hilltop near us, rises a beautiful, yellow-orange monastery surrounded by green pines.
"Where you want to go?" asks a man by the harbor.
"Hristos Manastiri," Josh says.
"OK, OK, come, come," the man says, gesturing, and guides us to two horse-drawn carts. Three of us sit in one, three in the other, and the horses jolt us up through the town's little streets and a curving road toward the mountain top.
At the gate, we are greeted by a Greek man in a western suit. We introduce ourselves. He tells us his name is Elia Horeftaris, that he is from Salonica in Greece, that he has lived for the past year at the monastery.
"Why did you decide to come to live here, to Turkey?" I ask.
He is silent for a moment. "Perhaps it is a calling," he answers. "I am attempting to work out my soul's salvation. And if I do that, perhaps I can help others to do the same thing."
We walk up the wide path to the monastery entrance. Inside on the wall is a picture of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk. We are met by a bearded man in Orthodox clerical garb.
"You are from the French television?" he asks.
"No," Father Trevino answers, and explains who we are.
"Wait here, please," the cleric says, and shows us to a waiting room.
I ask Elia how many people are now staying at the monastery. "Less than 20," says. And how many used to live here? "When the monastery was flourishing 50 years ago, 120 or more would live and study here. From 1844 to 1971, 950 students graduated from the Theological School. Of them, 330 became bishops. Twelve rose to the Ecumenical Throne. Two were elected to the Patriarchal throne of Alexandria, and two to the Patriarchal throne of Antioch. Four became archbishop of Athens, and one of Tirana."
It Is a Calling
A TV crew from France Cinq, one of France's leading television stations, arrives by horse-cart, and unpacks their cameras. They are going to interview the monastery's abbot, Apostolos.
Another cleric joins us, a man who seems to be past age 70 with a long white beard. His name is Policarpos. He is visiting the monastery from Greece for three months. He will leave in December. He speaks very little English.
Then the first cleric comes back. He speaks fluent English. His name is Theodore. "I am a deacon," he says. "I have lived here for seven years. I am 68 now. Until I was 60, I was an economist."
Theodore takes us on a tour the monastery. We look into empty classrooms, filled with empty desks. We visit the small chapel with its beautiful icons.
A large group of devout Greek Orthodox Americans arrive, about 60 people, husbands and wives, financial supporters of the monastery, and we are invited to join them for prayers in the chapel.
Now we see the abbot, Apostolos. He is a small man with a thin, sensitive face and intelligent eyes, about 60 years of age. As he leads the prayers, Theodore and Policarpo stand beside him, and Elia stands in the back.
We are invited to lunch in the monastery refectory. We dine simply on lettuce and tomato salad, fish soup, and bread, seated at two long tables, with the abbot at the head table in the center.
I turn to Elia. "If the patriarchs of Constantinople for 150 years were all students at this seminary, and the seminary has now been closed for 35, where will the next patriarch come from?"
"That is the question," Elia replies.
"Then it will be hard to find a successor for Patriarch Bartholomew, in time to come?"
"Very hard," he replies. "Because there is a law in Turkey that the head of the patriarchate must be a Turkish citizen, and there are only about 2,000 Orthodox who remain, and only a handful of men who might be qualified to be patriarch, perhaps five."
I am astonished. I had known the situation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was not easy, but had never realized until this moment how truly difficult its position is. I turn to Josh, express my surprise.
"It's true," he confirms. "The situation of the Patriarachate of Constantinople is dire. It has been official Turkish policy since the founding of modern Turkey in the 1920s to reduce the Greek Orthodox presence in the country. Tens of thousands of Greeks have left the country, and the exodus has not ended. And the government has an active program of expropriation where, if a Church property falls into disuse, the state seizes it. It is a threat even for this monastery. The night when there is no longer a monk to sleep here, the state may declare the property unused, and expropriate it."
I turn to Elia. "But how many monks are there, really, who stay here now? You told me less than 20…"
And he, after a pause: "Four."
"Four?" I ask.
"Yes," he replies. "The others are all non-Orthodox workers who keep up the grounds of the monastery, and who cooked this meal. We are four: Apostolos, Theodore, Policarpos, and myself."
"And Policarpos is just visiting," I say. "He will be leaving in December…"
"Then we will be three," Elia says.
And so, as all eyes turn toward Turkey on the eve of the pope's arrival here, the presence of the Orthodox Christian community seems to be like a flickering candle on the verge of going out.
As we leave the monastery, I ask Elia how he has the courage to stay here and continue in the face of such evident pressure.
"It is a call," he says, quietly. "It is not my work. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who does everything, even when we do not understand what or why. He also brought you here today."
As we take the boat back towards the great city, the sun sets, blazing red into the sea, and the lights of the city twinkle on against a blackening sky. I think of the story the Venerable Bede tells at the beginning of his Ecclesiatical History of the English People. He was left in a monastery in England after his parents died in a plague. One by one, the monks also died. Finally, he was alone, a small boy of seven, responding to the verses of the Psalms sung by the abbot, who was the only monk still living. And later, Bede wrote the history of the coming of the faith to England, our sole source for those 200 years of Church history. The monastery of Halki, the glory of the Orthodox world, has been reduced almost to that state. At Christmas, there will remain only three monks: the abbot Apostolos, the deacon Theodore, and the layman Elia, who has come here because he senses a calling.