TRAVELING MT. ATHOS EXHIBITION COMES TO AMERICA, OPENS AT HOLY CROSS SEMINARY
A new exhibition dedicated to the Holy Mountain will be traveling throughout America in the coming months.
The display, “Mount Athos: The Ark of Orthodoxy,” opened at the Maliotis Center at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese’s Hellenic College-Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Tuesday.
The exhibition presents a reflection of a day on Mt. Athos, featuring one panel dedicated to each of the 20 ruling monasteries, and additional panels presenting the history and institutions, art, architecture, natural environment, and spiritual life of the Holy Mountain, reports the National Herald.
The opening of “The Ark of Orthodoxy” included speeches by Archbishop Elpidophoros, Hieromonk Loukas of Xenophontos Monastery, the mother of an Athonite monk, and various scholars, and the showing of a recently discovered documentary about Mt. Athos from 1929.
Abp. Elpidophoros spoke about Mt. Athos as a unique phenomenon in the Church:
Mount Athos–το Περιβόλι της Παναγίας–is a unique manifestation of the Church in the world. For over one thousand years, the fathers of the Holy Mountain have labored in the deepest ways to connect with God, as well as with one another. And although they have left the world, they are bound with it as its most fervent intercessors.
This magnificent peninsula, crowned by the summit of the mountain, embodies the living and fragrant tradition of the Holy Spirit that first blossomed in the deserts of Skete, Palestine and Cappadocia. The Holy Mountain’s unbroken history of more than a millennium is a sign from God that the essential teachings and doctrines of our Church are as unchanging as the life of the holy brethren who inhabit this Garden of the Panagia…
Mount Athos is truly the Ark of Orthodoxy, holding within itself all the elements of the spiritual life that can be lived by every human being in the world, who is willing to delve the depths of their own souls.
The exhibition will remain at the Maliotis Center through the end of November, and will then begin traveling throughout America.
Contact the Mount Athos Foundation (info@mountathosfoundation.org) to schedule the exhibit at local venues in 2023.
