The small geographic area where Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East converge is, arguably, the epicenter of world history and religions, existing together in guarded harmony. In November of 2016, our cruise from Rome to Dubai took us on a journey to this region where it was revelatory to see the diversity of doctrines, beliefs, faiths, and many layers of ancient cultures and civilizations.
Our religious odyssey began on the small island of Patmos, Greece, only 13 square miles large, in the Aegean Sea, celebrated in the Christian religion as the location where John the Apostle, believed to have been sent there in exile in AD 95, received a vision from heaven that inspired him to write the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation. With a long history as an international shrine for Christian pilgrimage, Patmos is dominated by the towering fortress-like Byzantine Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. John, overlooking the harbor and the port town of Skala. Just a couple of miles away is the charming village of Chora, its lovely traditional whitewashed houses with pastel colored shutters and doors hugging the narrow streets and steep alleyways beneath the 50-foot walls of the monastery.
Founded in 1088, St. John’s Monastery is a maze of interconnecting courtyards, stairways, arcades, and roof terraces. The main chapel and adjoining chapel are covered in exquisite frescoes depicting allegorical images of the life of St. John.
But the main attraction, along the road between Chora and Skala, is the Cave of the Apocalypse, known to be the sacred spot where the elderly St. John received his heavenly vision from Christ and dictated it verbatim to his young assistant, Prochoros, who then wrote it down. Around the Holy Cave is now a building which encompasses it, within which photography is forbidden and silent reverence expected. Inside the small stone grotto is a tiny chapel surrounded by religious icons, artifacts, symbols of piety, and plaques describing the details of the event that occurred there.
The very spot where the Evangelist was believed to have laid his head in rest is noted as a small divet in the stone wall and the cleft of rock in the ceiling from which the Voice of God was said to be heard are all worn smooth from the caressing hands of centuries of devoted believers. I watched as visitors were spiritually moved, some to tears, others in fervent prayer and, despite millenniums of time and, dare I say, some religious commercialization, within this stone shrine there was still a discernible atmosphere of mysticism and wonder.
Makes me want to visit the shrine.