Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 28

28

My Hand Gets Kissed:

After I had been at Saint Anne’s a couple of weeks, Father Athanasius gave me standard-issue black work clothes and one of the monk’s black bill-less caps to wear. I was supposed to tuck my long hair up under it like all the unshorn Greek monks do. I had let my beard grow on my long pilgrimage from Germany to Holy Mountain so I suppose I looked just like any Orthodox monk except they all had black Greek beards and mine was sort of a Nordic brown.

As I have said, many Orthodox men from all parts of Greece love to take a free summer vacation away from families and routine life and make a pilgrimage from monastery to monastery on Agion Oros. One day, as I was helping stack a pile of boards near the main gate of the “close”, a new group of these Greek “summer vacation” pilgrims arrived.

One of the more devout pilgrims seized my hand, raised it to his lips and gave it a big kiss. No one had ever kissed my American hand before and I was so surprised that I snatched my hand away from him and hid it behind my back.

The brother monks behind me almost burst with silent laughter at my odd behavior and later on Father Athanasius suggested that I simply accept any hand kissing that came my way. “You look to the pilgrims like one of us and it is a custom for Orthodox men to show their respect for monks and priests by kissing our hands. Just let them do it. It won’t hurt you.”

Tomasito


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