Αn Encounter with an Athonite on the Third Friday of Great Lent

 

Last night during the service of the Akathist to the Mother of God for the Third Friday in Great Lent a memory suddenly came to mind. The memory of meeting Fr. Daniel from the Danielites on Mt. Athos. It was a cute memory I captured in my second book The Sweetness of Grace. I’m glad to share it with you.

 

A WOMAN’S GLORY

 

(An excerpt from The Sweetness of Grace: Stories of Christian Trial and Victory, pp. 97-99 published by Ancient Faith Publishing)

 

 

 

THAT’S IT—I’m cutting my hair off! I vowed to myself after weeks of thinking about shedding my long locks in favor of a short bob. All it took to convince me was seeing a woman with short black hair after the Akathist service at our parish one Friday night during Great Lent. She had the hair I wanted.

 

I was standing in line waiting to venerate the icon of the Annunciation, decorated with flowers and prominently displayed in the center of the church on an icon stand with a large burning candle next to it. That night we participated in the reading of the third stasis of the Akathist to the Mother of God. It is a custom in some Orthodox churches (the Greek church in particular) to chant the service in four parts on the first four Fridays of Great Lent, combined with the Small Compline service. The Akathist is read in its entirety on the fifth Friday of the Great Fast.

 

This particular night, we had the blessing of hearing the service chanted by a renowned veteran chanter from the Danielite brotherhood of Katounakia on Mount Athos, Fr. Daniel. He was down from the Holy Mountain and decided to attend the service at the church of St. Anthony the Great, our parish. I was told he had been nicknamed the “nightingale of the Holy Mountain” on account of his beautiful voice.

 

That Friday night, we heard a voice that matched the majesty, beauty, and solemnity of St. Romanos’s words in the Akathist hymn to the Most Holy Lady Theotokos: “New was the Creation which the Creator showed to us His creatures, when He sprang forth from the seedless womb; and He preserved it incorrupt even as it was, that we, seeing this marvel, may praise her as we cry out” (Ikos 7). Those words are some of my absolute favorite words of the Akathist hymn, and that third Friday in Great Lent we heard a voice worthy of those words chant them.

 

After venerating the icon of the Annunciation, I noticed that a crowd had gathered at the back of the church, clearly waiting to greet the elder monk and take his blessing. I waited with them, not only for the elder but for my husband, who, having served as deacon, was divesting in the altar.

 

Having finished, my husband joined me, and we waited together with my brother for the elder to pass by. Our friend and chanter was escorting him down the main aisle in the church, and when they arrived at my husband, our friend introduced us to the elder. We took his blessing, and he held both our hands, one in each of his. Since we had been introduced as Americans, he told us about a trip he had taken to America to visit St. Anthony’s Monastery in Arizona and about his impressions of the people and the state of the church there.

 

“People want to see our beards,” he told my husband. “They want to see our rassos (cassocks). It’s a symbol of piety. Some mock us, but it’s okay. You with your beard . . . it’s a confession of faith.”

 

“And you,” he said, turning toward me, “with your long hair! Saint Paul says a woman’s glory is her hair.”

 

At this, involuntary loud laughter erupted out of me. I think I may even have startled the patiently waiting crowd with my sudden and unexpected laughter. Of course they didn’t know that just moments before I had made up my mind to chop off my long hair, but I did.

 

Fr. Daniel asked if we planned to return to America, and when we affirmed this, he told us, “Good, because saving just one soul, one soul, covers many sins,” to which my husband responded, “And we have many sins.”

 

Needless to say, I kept my hair long for a few years after meeting Fr. Daniel, and I have chuckled numerous times thinking back on our conversation with the holy elder. This was the greatest element of our life in Greece: the countless opportunities available to encounter living saints and receive spiritual words from them, even ones as seemingly insignificant as concerning the length of one’s hair.